Chapter 288

The moment Jaxson caught Encrid, a sinister sixth sense flared.

‘These maniacs.’

No sooner had that bandit bastard Lykanos—mother unknown—fallen back than others filled the gap and charged.

Trained movement. A prearranged strike for just such a moment.

The sound of blades cleaving air reached his ears first.

Fwoof-fwoof-fwoof-fwoof!

Who knew how long they’d been waiting; men in black drove in stiletto-like swords.

Every one of them threw their bodies away in a suicidal rush, and every one of them was fast.

A thrust to pierce a single point.

A heavy, swift stroke—an attack that truly burned one’s life for a single cut.

Jaxson yanked Encrid with his left hand and swung his sword with his right.

At the same time, he made a cooler judgment than ever.

‘I can’t stop them all.’

Jaxson’s blade moved like a dance. It called to mind a butterfly’s light wingbeats.

With its tip lifted, a butterfly flew through the downpour of pikes.

Where the butterfly’s wing struck the pike-blades, it jittered into irregular motion. So, bouncing and bouncing again, it twisted most of their lines.

Tat-tat-tat-tat-tang!

He couldn’t bat everything aside. He missed two cuts.

One grazed Encrid’s left shin.

More precisely, Encrid twisted his waist and avoided it.

Cloth and leather of the guard tore and fluttered.

The last slammed Encrid’s beltline.

There was only a thud; the blade didn’t punch through his body but rebounded.

‘Armor.’

The strength of the armor he’d gotten before. Jaxson had seen the captain wrap it around himself like bandages.

Jaxson poured more power into his left arm. He meant to fling Encrid back and carve down the rest.

But as soon as he hurled Encrid rearward, the men scattered.

‘Damn.’

Fighting while guarding someone was not Jaxson’s forte.

He’d fought with enemies at his back, sure, but he’d had little experience fighting while protecting an ally. You could call it vanishingly rare. That was the problem.

‘A mistake.’

He should have accepted a little damage and put Encrid behind him—or pushed him clean back out of reach. He’d missed the timing.

The men in black leapt overhead, crashed in below, and rushed from left and right.

Sickeningly blind sword-work.

When he split his attention to the rear—

“I’m fine.”

Encrid’s voice came. His right arm was hurt and he was tired, but not to the point of death.

Only, the problem—

‘These lunatics, seriously.’

The black-clad shock troops threw their lives away.

You couldn’t dismiss men who wore thin, springy leather in place of armor.

Wherever they’d learned it, their single-point kill thrusts were superb.

Jaxson kept swinging, feet shifting without pause.

Pik, puk, puk.

He sliced an arm half off and punched a hole in a thigh. His sword played its part as an emotionless strip of steel, but so long as they weren’t dead, they twisted their bodies and came on again.

A mad band whose personalities had been cut away, living only to pierce with quick blades.

He slipped aside, and a sword slashed the spot he’d just vacated. He’d sensed it a step early and dodged. The blade stabbed into the cold dirt.

Thunk!

The man who’d planted his sword in the ground lifted his head; his eyes looked haunted.

None of that meant anything to Jaxson. He simply buried a knife in the brow of the one who’d flubbed the strike.

A plain knife whistled out and became a reaper, stealing a life.

Even while thinking that fighting with his full self on display wasn’t his specialty, Jaxson pared them down one by one.

Encrid glanced at Jaxson’s fight and swept in the men charging at him.

‘Not good.’

His right arm had been wrecked by Lykanos, and his shin had been raked by a stroke just now—a wound far past a mere scrape.

The leather of the guard was cleanly cut, and it left plain marks on skin and some muscle.

The strike to his torso had been stopped by the armor, but the shock remained.

His viscera rattled. Braced by his abs, he’d gotten off light; a normal man would have suffered ruptures.

On top of that, Lykanos’s last strike had half-crippled his right arm.

Only the left would move.

Encrid did what he could.

He slid the gladius into its sheath, took his main sword in his left, and swung.

He minimized movement in his legs and held the blade softly.

The Fluid Sword Technique.

He received and received again. His breathing was fine. In stamina, he could be called a monster—second to none.

Tat-tat-tat-tat-tang!

Moments after he’d flicked away three or four blades on instinct, another was suddenly at his nose. A honed edge, bright and icy.

‘I can’t block this.’

[Heart of the Beast] opened his eyes, and a pinpoint focus lit his brain aflame.

Even if he showed the best he could, he figured he’d lose one eye.

Their ploy was the better one.

Fail to pin and kill the main strength with Lykanos, and they’d sent in a sword unit.

This was the result.

He could see the future where he lost an eye. He couldn’t slip that gap in split time, but he could ask and answer himself.

Lose an eye? And that’s a problem?

Even with one eye gone, nothing changed.

Encrid turned his head. He meant to deflect and slip it.

In his head there was no option to die here and start over.

If he were the sort to toss his life, give up, and start fresh over something like this, he’d have stalled and been weeded out long ago in his repeating days.

The point swelled, and the dot looked like a thick club.

Thock!

With a jaunty sound, the club that had filled his sight vanished.

The owner of the sword aimed at him flew into the air. Naturally, the sword flew with him.

“Gyaaaah!”

He screamed as he flew. Flew well, too. In that instant, he’d envy a bird.

Of course, his flight was finite, and its end anything but auspicious.

The man crashed among the Border Guards’ standing troops, and, startled by the sudden incoming body, a soldier lifted a spear—skewering him midair.

Encrid, who’d been blocking, bracing, and falling backward to not die, landed on his rump.

Looking aside like that, he saw a wild stallion that had just launched a man skyward with its hind legs.

Neeeeeigh!

“One-Eye?”

Neeeeeeigh!

It seemed to cry that it hated the name, but in a moment like this, a name he’d forced on it didn’t come to mind.

Rrrr.

And Esther was there before he knew it.

She couldn’t take human form, it seemed; she was in her Lake Panther body.

The glossy black silk of her coat called to mind her hair as a human.

And then, flanking the black-clad stabbing unit, came a man who could lose his way and still live so long as he had a sword.

Whoosh, thud, whoosh, pik, whoosh, pak, whoosh, rip.

Encrid’s eyes spun without rest, trying to follow the flurry of cuts unfolding before him.

Ragna swept in from the side, and with one step swung five times to hew down the five before him.

‘What kind of trick is that.’

One step, five strikes.

How was that possible?

A cut you couldn’t measure.

Speed ahead of the opponent’s speed—the blade of the first strike. Ragna’s sword was showing that now.

“I’ll kill them all; you go first.”

A blunt tone, bangs fallen to cover his eyes.

Through the blond, dry red eyes stared straight ahead.

He swatted arrows from over his head and killed the ones closing in.

Even to Encrid’s eyes, Ragna’s blade began to move so fast it seemed to break.

As arrows fell over Encrid’s head, several soldiers with shields came up behind him.

“Disgustingly good with that.”

That was Dunbakel, watching from the side.

She smashed an assassin’s skull—one who’d rushed in with two daggers from behind—as she spoke.

The instant she registered the assassin’s lunge, she planted only her right foot and drove her left knee into his head.

Of course, Encrid had reacted too, sword in hand.

Either way, her gaze, too, was on Ragna.

With arrows pelting from above, One-Eye charging like he’d fly to save him, Esther and Dunbakel there, and behind them their allies closing in around him with great round shields—Encrid judged he wouldn’t die today.

Naturally his gaze went forward.

‘Lykanos.’

Ragna’s blade was fast now, but at the last moment that Lykanos’s blade had been faster.

And the blades of the men who’d charged him now had been much the same.

The ones who’d thrown themselves in retreated when Ragna carved down a few.

Ragna, in the meantime, took a rake to the thigh.

His armor was slit and blood stained his clothes, but he returned as if nothing had happened.

“Don’t spare arrows!”

“Die, you bastards!”

“The flower of the battlefield is infantry!”

“The end of pain is joy!”

They fought, spitting curses and battle cries from all sides.

One man died with an arrow pinned in his skull.

Another took a throwing axe and pitched forward mid-charge.

“Yorororororo!”

A mercenary in some furry leather cuirass thumped his chest and let out a strange ululation—

Vell appeared and dropped him with a thrown spear.

“If you don’t want to die, fight!”

Vell’s shout rang out.

Encrid was carried back. Three soldiers moved to support him. With the gash in his left shin looking bad, walking was out.

“Damn, they’re nasty strong.”

Graham spoke, eyes on the far side of the field.

Lykanos was there.

Encrid saw him too.

He hadn’t only taken at the end.

He’d given the man a cut on the face.

Thanks to that, half his face was a bloody mess, and still the man was composed.

Lykanos didn’t smile; he stared silently at Encrid and company, then turned away.

The black-clad, lightning-blade shock troops massed as he fell back.

“Too many.”

Graham muttered.

“Agreed.”

Krys, a little ways behind, face gone pale, agreed as well.

A unit that gambled their lives to kill with a single thrust—

At a glance there were more than fifty left.

Accounting for the number they’d lost, and assuming you had to block hidden assassins striking in between—

‘This is going to be a headache.’

Encrid thought so, and Krys agreed.

The fight had been short.

Audin didn’t step up because that so-called Wolf Bishop hadn’t, and Ragna didn’t go deeper either.

Jaxson had returned at some point, too.

The commanders on both sides didn’t look like they meant to finish things in a single day.

Before they’d even steadied matters, Graham—face white—came to Encrid, whose bleeding had been roughly stanched with bandages.

Seeing that, Krys spoke.

“I knew from the start one go wouldn’t do it. We finish within three. We only need to break their core. Above all, battle is decided by the small elite to begin with.”

His voice sounded oddly drained.

No wonder. Krys had believed in Encrid’s might.

Even if he couldn’t knock their heads off in one blow, he figured they’d win in the end.

But no.

The first battle was no different from a loss.

To fall back into the city was the worst play; they had to end it here.

And in the shortest time possible.

Three thrusts in that limited time.

‘If we only endure, we lose.’

Behind the Border Guards, Azpen still hadn’t even drawn a blade.

‘Damn it.’

Keeping a calm face, Krys schemed escape in his head. It was really time to check the bolt-holes.

‘A rat-hole, maybe?’

He’d made various preparations just in case.

“The cultists look like they’re just watching, no? Only siccing a few wolf-beasts?”

Surveying the whole line, Graham held back committing the heavy infantry.

If they were husbanding strength, so would he.

If he pushed in his strength rashly and was repulsed, they’d be annihilated.

If the elite fight was on a knife’s edge, the rest would fall to the main infantry.

And the heavy infantry’s role in that would be anything but small.

“Right. No telling if they’ll just watch tomorrow.”

Krys said, looking at Encrid.

The captain was, as ever, composed. A flat face.

‘Ha. I’m going to die here, really.’

He couldn’t leave him and run. Krys had been a merchant, a thief, even a pickpocket—

But among those, he’d never turned away from the one who’d saved his life.

That was a matter of character before occupation.

All the more since, with a little effort, he could save him. It wasn’t even a matter of staking his own life.

“Next time, I’ll cut him down.”

“Fast, though.”

Ragna spoke; Encrid answered in the same tone as ever.

“If that’s all, I just cut him.”

At Ragna’s firm words, Encrid fell briefly into thought.

It had been fast, sure.

He couldn’t use his right arm for now, and his left shin was bad.

Though the armor had caught it, he had a bruise on his gut. His insides weren’t damaged, but they ached.

The Isolation Technique was an art laid up by stacking repeating days.

He’d held out thanks to strength maintained, trained, and sustained.

So a blow to the torso would heal with good food and a night’s sleep.

But not the right arm.

“For now we rest and put tonight behind us. Beware a night raid, and keep the scouts moving without pause!”

Graham shouted.

The heavy infantry would see to the watch themselves tonight.

Short as it was, the battle had cost them more casualties than ever before.

The dead were into two digits.

Encrid sank into deep thought.

Krys watched, then stepped before him.

With a torch behind him, his shadow wavered, moving over Encrid’s head.

It was a newly raised tent. Outside was the wild stallion; inside were Ragna, Audin, Dunbakel, Teresa, and Esther.

Wheeee.

A chill wind slid in through the half-open tent flap and shook the torch.

Krys’s wavering shadow doubled, then merged again.

“Why?”

Encrid leaned back at an angle.

Krys had just finished changing the bandages over his whole body.

Krys swallowed and spoke.

“Let’s run.”