"Hm?"
Because Ragna knew it too, he lifted his head and looked ahead. Fog that started at their feet surged up in an instant. Now, nothing was visible. A dense fog simply veiled their sightline. It was a sorcery he had once experienced on a battlefield long ago—the Fog of Annihilation.
"Ready."
Enkrid pulled Anne in to his right as he spoke. Ragna stood to Anne's right. He had wondered when it would come—now was the moment. An ambush. What would it be this time? Some unimaginable monster? Or a spell? The fog lay so thick that even Anne standing right beside him was no longer visible. But sound, at least, reached them. Perhaps because their sorcery differed from that of the Aspen Principality, there was no banner in sight.
"Front."
It was Grida's voice. However she did it, she sensed the enemy even before Enkrid. Of the five senses, his sense of touch stood on edge, sharper than ever. Downy hairs bristled as he felt the vibration of the air.
Thrum-thrum-thrum.
Vibration struck his skin in place of sound. There was no literal thrum, thrum. Instead of drawing Penna and swinging, Enkrid only shifted his angle, moving four times as if to block a path.
Ting, tang, ting.
With those four movements, four incoming projectiles were deflected one after another. Darts. If there had been no attack, he might have lost them; but once something was thrown, finding their position wasn't hard. The Fog of Annihilation didn't hide presence. Even so, doubt and suspicion immediately reared their heads.
'After hiding their presence to the end, their first strike is just a handful of darts?'
That couldn't be all. Following what his instincts told him, Enkrid remained on guard, and Ragna—knowing his captain was guarding Anne—raised his greatsword.
"I'm going."
"Mm."
Two short lines were enough to fix their roles. Ragna stepped, raising his greatsword overhead. He stamped the ground, bent his knees, and uncoiled. Simple motions, yet what followed was anything but. His body surged forward as if tearing the fog apart.
Whoooooom.
He split the air, his presence pressing on everything around him. Then—
Boom!
With a sound like rending the air, he swung so hard that the fog retreated around him. Driving back sorcery with a slash? It would make an ordinary person gape—but he was a Knight. The knight's stroke sent one severed head spinning into the air.
Kreeeeek!
It was a head with a snout jutting sharply forward. Ragna's slash had only parted the fog for a heartbeat, so he saw just the shape of the head, not the details.
"It's a Scaler."
Even that was enough for someone to recognize it. From three steps to Anne's right, Grida spoke. It was the name of a monster one might see near the Demon Realm. At the same time, a faint scent of magic began to waft in. That sweetness. A spell would follow as well—and in a lethal form. That was Enkrid's expectation, and so it was. A light bloomed above their heads.
Fwoooosh.
Strictly speaking, not a light, but a fireball. And it immediately dropped straight down. Enkrid watched the falling fireball, once again targeting Anne. At the same time he predicted what would happen when he cut it.
"Mages like to 'prepare' several spells and cast them in sequence. Like layering cold across a stretch of ground with back-to-back chill spells, then freezing everything solid in the end."
Back when he cleaved the Walking Flame, that was how Esther had killed the cultist mage. Enkrid had learned from that Esther. His thoughts accelerated. The falling fireball slowed, and slowed, until it seemed almost to stop. In that accelerated gap of thought, Enkrid kept thinking.
'If I were the mage, I wouldn't throw a simple falling fireball.'
The enemy had already seen him cut down the bat-fiend before. Was this fireball more threatening than that beast? No. It was slower than the fiend and, not being alive, simply came down stubbornly with no judgment at all.
'They want me to cut it.'
Because he had accelerated his thinking, Enkrid's response was instantaneous. Not Penna, but Tri-Iron.
Chring, ching!
The speed with which he sheathed one sword and drew the other was lightning itself. Of course it was. There are skills sharpened by wielding two blades. In sheathing and drawing alone, Enkrid was the craziest of the mad. He angled the drawn Tri-Iron. Switching his grip, he took the hilt in both hands. And it was not the Black Gold nor the True-Silver, but the Meteorite Iron section of the blade that met the fireball. From low to high, Enkrid swept up with the flat of the blade, batting the fireball away.
Boom!
The struck fireball shot straight up and burst far overhead into dozens of pieces. Dozens of firelets split the fog and spread in every direction, a sight seldom seen. For a moment, the firelight even parted the Fog of Annihilation and lit the surroundings.
"When you face a spell, you have to step outside the bounds of common sense."
Esther had been right. Who would predict that a fireball would split into dozens as it fell? But that was the nature of spells—they could be like that. Power that changes the world. Its source might be said to be the same, but on this continent it felt nothing like Will—the strangest power of all. Did the mage, watching the detonation in midair, lose focus for a moment? No spell followed immediately. A few strands of fire fell, scattered, and that was all. And then, instead of another spell, a stench hit them—so foul it made you want to pinch your nose. The fog that the fire had parted had already closed around them again. But they could not hide the medium of the sorcery forever. So Enkrid thought. And so it was.
Thump!
With the wet tearing sound from one side, the fog began to lift. Enkrid saw a bipedal monster with snakeskin-like scales collapse to the ground. They were at least a head taller than an ordinary human. Near Ragna were several quadrupedal lizard-beasts large enough to swallow two people in a bite. Naturally, they were already dead—split in head or trunk by the greatsword of the direction-idiot. Grida had been right. Scalers—lizard-like monsters sheathed head to toe in scales. Enkrid judged that a Scaler's death had dispelled the sorcery.
'So a living creature can be the medium for sorcery?'
Then at least among the foes blocking their way ahead were a mage who could hide presence, and a sorcerer? Now he saw it—the area was thick with Scalers. It seemed likely the fog was a trick to hide their approach.
"They hide their presence and go for the back. That's their habit."
Magrun spoke again. Grida drew her sword and swept her gaze around. Even at a glance, there were over a hundred lizard heads. Meanwhile the stench still stabbed at the nose. It was so rancid it made one forget the mage's sweet scent.
"What is that smell?" "Weren't Scalers supposed to be odorless?"
Grida and Magrun spoke in turn.
"Plague Brides."
With the fog lifting, Anne's field of view was secure. As she said, a few peculiar fiends stood among the Scalers.
"Just a brush will afflict you with disease. Be careful."
One such creature was closing on Ragna. Its bare, lichened feet were ashen, it wore something like a tattered dress, its hair stuck out in wild bristles, and its eyes were hollow sockets. Green ichor dribbled from its nostrils—an awful sight. Something you never wanted to meet at night, just from the look of it. Or perhaps more nauseating to see by daylight.
Gwaaaaaah.
The Bride screamed something like a shriek and leapt for Ragna. The Bride's dress snapped and flapped in the wind. Calling it a dress felt like an insult to dresses, but as Anne said, the specter was called a Plague Bride. No doubt the mage's summon. Either way, Anne's concern proved needless—Ragna refused the Bride's approach. He slipped left, crushed a Scaler's skull with his pommel, then brought his blade down vertically, splitting the Bride's proposal in one stroke.
Crrrip.
With the sound of old paper crumbling, the Plague Bride was cut in two at the chest. But the severed specter merged on the floor and rose again.
"Ordinary attacks—no, just take this!"
Anne shouted, lifting her left foot as she hurled what she held in her right. With a swoosh, Ragna—holding his sword in the left and reaching out his right—snatched it out of the air. A glass vial stoppered with cork.
"If it gets urgent, smash it and smear it on your blade!"
Anne recovered her stance as she spoke. Enkrid, watching the exchange, couldn't help but ask:
"What's with that throwing arm? Does alchemy train that too?" "Of course not. I learned it playing with kids when I was little."
Children raised in the slums learned life's cruelty early. Shooting birds out of the air to eat was one of their life-and-death survival methods. If you hit a courier crow or pigeon by mistake, death was a given—so yes, they literally risked their lives.
"Here."
Anne handed Enkrid a vial as well. Inside, amber liquid sloshed, flaunting its presence.
"I'm a Healer, but I'm also an Alchemist. Filthy specters like that aren't a threat in front of me."
Holy Power is the bane of all specters, but nothing kills them as easily as Alchemy.
It was a continental proverb. Passed down by some brilliant alchemist of a former age—but not wrong. Enkrid poured the amber liquid over Tri-Iron. The liquid trickled down and clung to the blade. The instant it met the air it set like sugar water, giving blade and spine a gentle amber glow.
"I've got my own."
Grida said to Anne first, then fished out a leather pouch, bit the cord to untie it, and sprinkled medicine along her blade. It was a powder, faintly pearlescent. Magrun took an amber vial from Anne. Meanwhile, with his anointed greatsword, Ragna once again refused the Bride's proposal. This time he cut horizontally, parting torso from hips.
Thump!
With a small thud, the sundered Plague Bride was purified. Specters were monsters of negative energy realized through malice and hatred—amorphous things given form. For them, purification meant the loss of form itself—in other words, death. With a soft, sandy hiss, the Plague Bride collapsed like dust and vanished.
Sssssssss!
While Ragna was destroying one Bride, the Scaler horde hissed in chorus like snakes, as if cheering each other on. The sound made the air vibrate, so that it became hard to sense by touch.
"They're hiding each other's presence with sound."
Grida spoke. She had once gone as far as the Demon Realm's edge and fought Scalers, so she knew. She also knew just how annoying they were. There was a reason the Demon Realm was called a knight's grave. Inside were countless things that could threaten a Knight. Not that this Scaler pack was a dire threat—but they were, as said, a nuisance. They constantly aimed for your back—and they could use their heads.
"Ha!"
With a kiai, Grida cut the necks of three Scalers closing on her from behind. It was one swing, but she bent the path into a zigzag, her strokes crossing so quickly the monsters fell without a reaction.
"Where do you think you're going."
While Grida spoke and adjusted her grip, Enkrid quietly scanned the field.
'Let's assume the sorcerer isn't here.'
Was the mage waiting for an opening? Or had they pulled back to avoid any risk at all? Whatever perfume the Plague Brides wore, it even smothered that sweetness of a spellcaster.
'Did they notice that I perceive by scent?'
No—that was reaching. Baseless.
'No matter how great the mage, they can't know how I perceive.'
No matter the spell, that wasn't possible. Thanks to his time with Esther, he knew the limits of magic. There was no spell that read another's thoughts. He was certain. An unchanging truth.
'Assume the mage is still around.'
Even then, cutting and carving through the monsters ahead wasn't going to be hard.
Tak, whoosh, thwack!
As one happened to come within three steps, he swung. Tri-Iron traced a gentle arc and split a Scaler's snout in two. Its snake-like forked tongue lolled out, and its vertically slit eye lost its light. Enkrid knew the blade had reached its skull—and also that the creature was playing dead before him.
"Crafty beasts."
Grida said as much a heartbeat later. Enkrid turned his blade and drove it down into the ground. The pretending Scaler couldn't react in time. The instant light returned to its eye, Tri-Iron paid a brief visit inside its skull. When he drew the blade out, black blood and brain matter clung to the tip.
"Scary."
Anne spoke. Understandable. The Scalers ahead, and the eight Plague Brides still left, were all staring at her.
"Don't worry. Lady Tri-Iron in an amber dress will protect you."
Enkrid chose his words to reassure her.
"…That sword is a woman?" "Today she's in an amber dress, so a woman." "So it changes gender whenever needed." "That's the advantage of a genderless blade."
He said it while holding Tri-Iron, glowing amber. Monster blood was still dripping from its tip.
"You insane bastard."
Anne's lips moved. She whispered, but everyone heard. Enkrid decided to overlook Anne's cheeky rebellion with magnanimity. She was obviously blurting things out because she was scared.
"Shall we dance, my lady?"
Enkrid spoke again.
"Ah, seriously, just fight already."
In the end, Anne overcame her fear and settled into cheering him on.