Cypress reacted to Enkrid's bold charge. If he left it alone, it would be the same as letting the enemy knight order surround the three of them, and he couldn't just stand by and watch that.
"Lien. Ingis."
At his call, red cloaks fluttered. These two were also proud members of the order, and owners of heaven-sent talent.
"Yes."
"I'm going."
The two stepped out the moment they answered. There was no hesitation. Even if they died here today, that was what they wanted.
Ingis charged at the black-skinned knight holding a club, and Lien looked for the bastard who, earlier, had been flapping his lips about whether to dodge or not from behind the Faceless Knights.
"Finish fast and join up, so don't overdo it."
Lien said right before they split. Lien was a knight who knew how to fight. In other words, he had the knack for spotting his opponent at a glance.
"Yes."
Ingis was stubbornly steady. Enduring and fighting was his specialty. If he bought time, Lien would clear out the rest and switch opponents. That was the picture Lien drew.
"Hey!"
Lien ran forward immediately and shouted. With that shout, Lien's pressure took shape like a boulder dropping down from overhead and struck the enemy.
"Hm."
As expected, instead of being crushed under the pressure, the enemy knight slid to the side. Blond hair, round eyes—an impression that would easily win anyone's favor.
He had been aiming for an opening in Enkrid and the other two, but he sensed Lien closing in and stopped.
Starting with the movements of these two, everyone found their own opponent. Naturally, it became a shape where each took one and fought.
"Sto-p ma-king a jo-ke o-ut of th-is!"
Among them, the giant's shout rang the highest. It wasn't enough that it shook the entire battlefield—some soldiers, startled, covered their ears or let out groans.
The giant bastard went thud and stamped the ground, then jumped up. It was clearly a strange sight. A giant's body was incredibly heavy. That was why monstrous strength existed for them.
Without that kind of strength, moving that hard, heavy body would be hopeless.
Because of that racial trait, giants rarely left the ground. Lifting that body was hard, and the shock on landing would be several times worse than for other races.
They weren't called the earth clan for nothing. In terms of body structure, they were even closer to the ground than dwarves were.
And yet, a body two heads taller than an ordinary giant shot up into the sky and fell. Maybe because of its weight, it fell faster than it rose.
Booom!
It was like a boulder several times larger than a human body had dropped straight down. The ground shook and dust scattered. Centered on where he landed, the earth caved in, inward. A pit had been made in an instant.
He held two clubs, thicker toward the ends, in both hands, kneeling on one knee. It was a dizzying bulk, a dizzying entrance.
And in front of the giant who bared his violence without restraint, a beastwoman with snow-white hair stepped up and blocked him.
"My ears are gonna burst, you bastard."
Dunbakel lifted her head, one leg cocked, gripping her scimitar. Even with one knee down, the giant's eye level was higher than hers. He was too big.
'If Audin had fought him, it would've been fun.'
The body of the one nicknamed the bear beastman would've looked like a child.
It was a body outstandingly large even among giants.
"It stinks. Something that's neither beast nor human."
The giant spoke. Just him talking made her whole body vibrate—his voice was that big. It felt like wind slamming into her.
If this bastard had shouted the start of battle instead of a horn blower, some soldiers' eardrums would've burst.
"Hey. You stink worse, you bastard."
Dunbakel said, pinching her nose. Their eyes met, and their momentum turned savage. Just their eyes meeting felt like sparks flying. The giant moved first.
The club swallowed sound and dropped down over Dunbakel's head. For his size, it was speed that was hard to imagine.
From Dunbakel's point of view, it was like some stone pillar was trying to smash her.
She jumped back and dodged. The distance—if you counted it in steps—was more than ten. Dunbakel's thigh muscles swelled as she sprang back. At the same time, white fur covered her body. Beastman transformation.
Her fangs grew, and even her face changed into something like a beast's. Compared to ordinary beastmen, her beastification ratio was plainly higher.
Booom!
The stone pillar in the giant's hand smashed the ground, leaving a deep mark in the earth. Knight or not, if you got hit by that, it would be hard to be fine.
A few watching soldiers clicked their tongues. A monster among monsters had appeared. Everyone's heart tightened with tension.
Of course Dunbakel's heart tightened too. She'd been like that before, she'd been like that in the East, and it was the same now.
'I don't want to die.'
She was a coward.
The Eastern king, Anu, had said you had to know fear to show courage, hadn't he.
If recklessness was charging in without knowing anything, courage was stepping up even when you knew.
'Then I just won't get hit.'
Dunbakel used even the survival instinct inside her for battle. That was what she had learned, trained, and awakened by going all the way to the East.
"My name is Haramut!"
The giant shouted, and right before he sprang forward, Dunbakel moved first and returned right in front of him again.
"Shut up."
At the beastwoman's words as she closed in, the giant swung the club in his left hand horizontally.
Whoooom!
A fierce wind rose along the path the club passed. Pebbles the size of fists were swept up in that wind and flung in all directions.
Dunbakel jumped back again and dodged. Just like before. She widened the gap in an instant, making the attack range itself useless. The giant had planned to slam down with the club in his right hand if the beastwoman ducked her head up and down to dodge, but he couldn't even try.
The lion beastwoman, her whole body covered in white fur, had already pulled far away.
She bounced in place a few times and spoke.
"It's been too long, so I can't control my strength. Bear with me."
"What are you saying?"
The giant spoke and wrapped Will around his whole body. Among knights' arts, if Assimilation learned by watching fairies, and Pressure learned by watching monsters' killing intent, then Iron Armor was where their techniques began.
A giant refines and uses Will on parts of the body, and calls it "Fury." It's an art based on rage.
The nickname "red-blooded monster" hadn't been pinned on giants for nothing.
Haramut loosened the reins on the instinct flowing in his blood. His eyes were dyed red in an instant. Rage close to madness numbed his reason.
"Everyone dies."
The giant burst his will on the basis of rage. Fury seeped through his entire body, making his bulk harder than ever.
Thung!
Dunbakel's scimitar, looking like a white line, grazed past his forearm, but only a faint red line remained on it. It didn't even become a scratch.
"It's u-se-le-ss!"
The giant shouted. That shout boomed in all directions.
I told you it was loud.
Dunbakel's voice started from far away and ended right in front of the giant's nose.
Thump!
The giant hurriedly shut his eyes. He'd just seen a single point stab for his eye. That point was blocked by his eyelid.
At the same time, the giant swung the hand holding the club, but Dunbakel had already hopped back, so it turned into empty air.
"You damn beastwoman bitch?"
The giant burst even more rage, but it was useless.
Dunbakel slipped out of his range every single time. Her beastman transformation was different than before. Her thighs became plainly thicker.
At the same time, what she was doing now was hunting, using a beastman's traits.
'What flows in my body is the blood of a born hunter.'
Her sense of smell was an assistant that helped that. Dunbakel did it that way because she knew what she could do.
The giant was slower than an ordinary knight, and Dunbakel was their natural enemy.
She was fast. Hadn't someone Pel fought called himself the fastest?
'What a load of crap.'
In the East, there were knights faster than her.
Anyway, the way she used space was different. If she fought like this—running freely across such a wide ground—the giant would never catch her.
Hit and run. Repeating it, and repeating it again, the giant tried all kinds of tricks.
He even pretended to fall on purpose to show an opening, and used deception one after another, but—
"Bullshit. Seriously."
All he got was a harsh insult. Normally, Dunbakel's opponents were Enkrid and the Mad Order of Knights.
Compared to them, the giant's deception was like a child's prank.
"No matter what you do, you can't pierce my skin."
In a situation he hadn't expected, the giant hunched his body. He was going into endurance.
As if she'd been waiting for it, Dunbakel pulled back and lowered her stance.
'Force is proportional to speed.'
A simple proposition.
"What are you gonna do with that bulk, if you're not gonna use it?"
That was something the Eastern king Anu always had on his lips.
With hit-and-run hunting, you can't put power into a single blow. But she was a born hunter—and she was also a knight.
While pulling back, she pressed power into the foot that braced on the ground and compressed it. The art she was showing now was made in the East, and completed after she returned.
The pants wrapping her swollen thighs went pop and tore. Her leg muscles swelled to a thickness that made no sense. From calf to thigh, not only did she not lose compared to Audin—she became thicker than him.
An illusion formed, like Dunbakel's body had sunk halfway into the earth.
She gathered power, and gathered it again, then burst it.
It's long if you put it into words, but the process itself was simple and short. Pulling back, then bursting forward—that was all.
Only the power carried in that simple motion changed.
Thud!
Dunbakel put strength into the hand gripping her scimitar, and with her left hand she grabbed her right wrist, fixing it all the way to the elbow, and leaped.
Clang!
Her scimitar broke. The broken blade spun and flew away.
Then the giant let go of the club in his left hand and grabbed his own neck.
"Grrk, you…"
On his neck, the wound left by the broken scimitar was clear. His neck was cut halfway through, and blood poured between his fingers.
The giant was resentful that he hadn't even gotten to properly trade blows. Hadn't his opponent just pulled far back, come in to slash, and pulled back again?
He hadn't even gotten to contest strength, or properly exchange moves.
The giant dropped thud— onto one knee, lowered his head halfway, and looked for the beastwoman.
She was already far away. Dunbakel also stopped, catching her breath, and looked at the giant.
She didn't look like she had the slightest intention of coming close. There was no carelessness. The giant's anger exploded.
If she were within reach even now, he would've poured out every last bit of strength and smashed that beastwoman's head.
"Gaaah!"
As a final struggle, the giant charged at Dunbakel without thinking. Blood streamed from where he passed, drawing a long line.
Dunbakel deliberately stood somewhere away from the allied units. And instead of waiting for the giant to reach her, she jumped and dodged.
Not long after, the giant's body—having bled too much—used the earth as its bed and lay down.
Thud.
With a gurgling sound, blood kept flowing without stopping and pooled under his body.
"I won."
Dunbakel said indifferently. To her, it was only natural.
Of course, this result wasn't natural to everyone.
First off, more than half the allied soldiers watching stood there with their mouths open. They knew she was part of the Mad Order of Knights, but was she a fighter on that level? She was the beastwoman who got hit a few times a day by that guy named Rem. She also never stopped talking nonsense.
But she had toppled a giant that was enough to carve fear into everyone, and she didn't even have an injury.
***
The High Pontiff's eyebrow twitched.
"Is what I'm seeing real?"
The words slipped out. Even the adjutant at his side had nothing to say.
'What are those?'
The ones who had beaten Balrog's fragment were dropping like fallen leaves in an autumn wind, and the giant couldn't handle a single beastwoman and got beaten one-sidedly until he died.
And giant Haramut was one of those who were spoken of as the strongest among the southern giant clan, and yet.
You can't win every fight. But you should be able to at least put up some kind of contest. What he'd just seen was too one-sided.
"If my eyes aren't wrong, they won?"
At the High Pontiff's question, one adjutant nodded.
"Yes. That's right."
A voice with no emotion in it. The High Pontiff's fist struck the adjutant's head.
Pop—his head burst, blood and brains spraying into the air.
"Why?"
It was hard to hide his bewilderment. But even so, would a king show that in front of everyone?
"They prepared better."
Thud! Crack.
The second adjutant's neck snapped.
"Right. That's how it looks."
With two outbursts, the High Pontiff steadied his mind.
If they had prepared that well, then he also had to pour in what remained. It stung his insides, but things had come to this, so there was no helping it.
At least it was something that the one remaining knight was just about to kill Ingis of the red cloaks.
Baerlich would be at a relative advantage too.
"There is no defeat for the Rihinstetten order of knights."
The High Pontiff said and reached out his hand. Heat gathered in that hand, warming the air and raising a shimmer.
"Make those who surrendered kneel. Kill every last one who resists."
He spoke. Absurd was absurd, but there was no way a king of a nation would waver here. Showing himself as that light wasn't what a king did.
***
"I shouldn't clench my fist and hop up and down here because I'm happy, right?"
Crang was saying that, but—
"You must not."
It was the guard captain speaking. It wasn't only for the king's dignity.
"You're already in a position that's easy to become a target. If that line breaks through, it's a foregone conclusion that I'll be the first to die before Your Highness, but if you're itching to kill me, then by all means, you may draw the enemy's eyes as much as you like."
"At some point, you became an eloquent man."
"Serving Your Highness, my tongue grew."
"Is that my fault?"
"I meant it's thanks to Your Highness."
In a fight between knights, it was hard for an ordinary person to grasp the flow of battle, but it was easy to know which side was ahead.
'We're ahead.'
That didn't mean there could be no sacrifices at all. It looked like the first sacrifice would be Sir Ingis.
And if there was no hand that could help him right now, it looked like it would happen that way."