Enkrid saw fragments of emotion in the Head's eyes for the first time then. They were eyes filled with worry or concern, but the traces of emotion in those eyes disappeared as quickly as they had appeared. So Enkrid couldn't be certain he had seen them properly.
"Don't follow me."
The Head spoke again like a steel puppet stripped of emotion, and Ragna bristled. Enkrid sensed that he was somehow incredibly angry, and he was right. Ragna was furious.
"Do you want to receive the sunrise right now?"
Ragna said as he stepped forward with his left foot. It was a step that crossed the threshold marking the doorway's boundary, and it symbolized his readiness to draw his sword at any moment. This was even more intense fury than when Rem stole his special meal.
Emotion became momentum, and momentum became pressure that filled the corridor in front of the room.
The Head didn't respond to Ragna. He acted like a person possessed of wisdom. He simply looked at Enkrid silently, urging him through his gaze.
But it looked almost like a plea filled with desperation.
Something was a bit strange.
Enkrid thought this as he nodded inwardly.
If he didn't understand the situation, he should act first and see what happened.
If the Head was up to something as Grida suspected, this would be an opportunity to find out.
"Ragna, stay here. I'll be back shortly."
Enkrid said. Ragna glared at the Head silently, then nodded.
Only after seeing that did the Head begin walking with a splash-splash sound. It wasn't the soundless steps of before. His rain-soaked boots made their own music as they rubbed against the corridor.
Of course, outside a grand orchestra of thunder, lightning, and storm was raging, so hearing footsteps required the kind of hearing that could distinguish them amid the whooshing sounds of the tempest.
It was a sound that wouldn't be audible unless you were a knight.
And Enkrid saw subtle relief in the Head's steps.
That is, though he didn't openly display emotion, it was like the subtle emotional expression Alexandra had shown when she led him in swordsmanship and expressed her gratitude.
Well, it was fifty-fifty. It seemed that way, but it also seemed like no emotion was mixed in at all.
The Head readily opened his mouth to Enkrid, who was following him outside.
Whoooosh!
His voice reached his ears through the curtain of rain falling like a waterfall from the sky.
"Ragna listens well to what you say."
"There's no reason for him not to."
"He never listened to anyone since he was young, and even after returning, he seemed completely unchanged."
"Well, that's probably because he was convinced by it himself, isn't it?"
"More than that, he'd listen well to your words. How did you cook my son?"
Cook him? He had no idea. Enkrid thought briefly as he stepped forward and answered.
"I don't know about cooking him, but after struggling to survive and making it this far, I found Ragna swinging his sword beside me."
This time the Head paused as if choosing his words. With the tempest's whoooosh as background music, only the alternating splash-thud sounds of their footsteps could be heard. Then the Head spoke again.
"Yes, a person's heart can't be forced into submission. So I have some regrets about it. Should I have subdued him with force instead? Now I think everything is too late."
Outside the lodging stood Alexandra wearing a black cloak. Her face was impassive. Milleschia had been her longtime friend. She had died. For Zaun.
That fact stabbed at her heart. That's why her expression disappeared even more from her face.
It had been twelve days since Enkrid arrived in Zaun. It was a day when a storm had come that made it impossible to distinguish day from night.
Enkrid's goals and thoughts were the same as when he first came here. Nothing had changed. The perspective that he didn't need to pretend to be a problem-solver and search for someone remained the same.
That someone would also step forward when time passed. Until then, what Enkrid had to do was simple.
'Protect Anne.'
Maintain his physical condition quietly and wait.
"Head!"
Someone shouted through the rain, lightning, and storm.
The calm was over and the tempest had arrived.
Crash!
White lightning painted the world. Beyond one side, those who had gathered in a line split into two groups.
An invisible line seemed drawn in the center of the groups, and the two groups looked as if they would fight immediately.
Then Enkrid realized he had the Head in front of him and Alexandra standing behind him.
He also realized that these two were among the strongest in Zaun, and if they attacked simultaneously, there wouldn't be many people who could survive.
In other words, before he knew it, Enkrid was positioned with Zaun's most dangerous blades in front and behind him.
'I will eliminate this disease.'
Anne had resolved this repeatedly.
The disease called a curse had killed her family.
To tell the story according to the flow of time: an epidemic broke out and frightened people set fire to the slums. Her family, whom she could call family, burned to death in a fire set by fellow slum dwellers.
That's when Anne decided.
Let's get revenge.
The target of revenge existed beyond a hazy fog.
So first she had to know, and Anne did just that. Learning and mastering new things, she stepped into the world of alchemy.
She made disease and ignorance her first targets of revenge. In the process, the annoying business of hanging a few alchemists who experimented on children or made chimeras by ripping apart human organs was more of a cleaning concept than revenge.
Anyway, even though she made ignorance a target of revenge, it would be a lie to say she didn't enjoy exploring the world called alchemy. This was an incomparably enjoyable task.
Whether it was a whim of the goddess of fortune or the price of effort, she didn't know, but the euphoria she felt when unique ideas came to her and solved problems was the first kind she had ever experienced in her life.
'Ah, I've got it.'
Anne felt that euphoria again this time.
She had identified the type of seed spreading through Zaun and found a solution. Not completely, of course.
'But I understand the core principle.'
To explain it to someone who didn't know, she would have to start with a lecture on the essential characteristics and basic properties of a substance called essence. So explanation would be difficult. However, she had something to tell Ragna.
That the moment had come to remove the curse placed on this family.
However, there were also parts beyond her ability, so she would have to tell him that as well.
She was about to open her mouth and raise her head when someone spoke to her in an unfamiliar voice.
"I still don't understand."
Anne's room had a window large enough for a person to have difficulty entering and leaving, but sufficient for a face and hands or something else to come through.
And the source of the suddenly heard voice was also outside the window.
"Why should I have to move for someone like you?"
Crash, whoooosh.
Even amid the harmony of thunder, storm, and pouring rain, his voice pierced clearly into Anne's ears.
Clang!
The window frame twisted and the window was torn away. The opponent tore out the window frame with his bare hands and continued speaking.
"Well, there's no emotion."
The guy with wet blond hair plastered to his face aimed what he held in his hand. It was something like a short spear. It had a sharp blade at the tip, and the handle was a bit short to call it a spear.
Even in the raging tempest, Anne found the opponent's face familiar. It made sense. It was one of the faces she had seen continuously while coming here.
An angular jaw, blue eyes, short blond hair, and distinctive features. Anne recognized him.
It was a man named Odinkar.
'Huh?'
Anne's eyes widened in surprise, but Odinkar himself only threw what he held with emotionless eyes. Anne's eyes couldn't see the movement of his arm.
She only knew that the opponent had done something.
Clang!
And that this side had also done something.
The moment Odinkar tore part of the window frame and threw the short spear, a greatsword flying from behind struck it.
Thwack!
The deflected short spear embedded in the wall.
Anne felt someone grab and pull her arm.
Naturally, it was Ragna. He pulled her behind his back to hide her and opened his mouth.
"What are you?"
Anne realized she had been holding her breath.
"Whoa, whoo, whoa."
First she caught her breath. The guy standing outside the window looked at Ragna with an indifferent gaze.
Anne's gaze reached the tips of his fingers gripping the window frame. She glimpsed it briefly, but his fingertips were black.
That was a symptom from handling poison for years.
"That's not Odinkar."
Anne was intelligent. Her thinking ability functioned properly even in moments like this.
She hadn't smelled any potion scent from Odinkar while coming here. In other words, that was fake.
The fake standing at the window frame pursed his lips.
"Oh."
He uttered a short exclamation and spoke again.
"How did you figure it out?"
"How could I not know when there's such a stench?"
Ragna answered instead. He had also immediately recognized that the opponent wasn't Odinkar.
The will's nature was completely different. Moreover, there really was a terrible smell.
Ragna looked at the opponent with steady eyes without even twitching an eyebrow, but he didn't rashly rush toward the window. To be precise, he couldn't.
'There are many.'
The opponent wasn't alone. There were many things hiding around, waiting for an opportunity.
'How did they get inside?'
Someone must have opened the door for them to enter.
There was no point pondering such things. So he gave up pondering.
Crash.
White lightning filled the room and illuminated outside the window too. Behind the guy standing blankly outside the window, several feathered monsters came into view. At a glance, there were more than five.
'The captain said he saw special individuals in the city of Oara?'
He had heard such a story. It seemed those in front of him now were like that.
Special individual monsters, in other words, were monsters that handled will.
Since Ragna held a greatsword, he judged the current space wasn't advantageous to him, and while making that judgment, he thrust his sword.
Using his left foot as an axis, he twisted his waist and thrust the greatsword, piercing the shoulder of the guy standing outside the window.
Thunk!
He had tried to smash his head, but because the opponent dodged, he only pierced part of his shoulder. Moreover, the guy twisted his body backward while being hit by the greatsword, so his shoulder blade wasn't shattered and one arm didn't get cut and hang in tatters.
The opponent's dodging was one reason, and another reason was that the guy's skin was quite hard.
Ragna knew this from one sword strike.
"That hurts, you bastard."
The guy spoke and sprinkled what he held in his hand. Yellow liquid flew toward them, but Ragna had already jumped backward and escaped to the corridor holding Anne after thrusting his sword.
Hiss!
The desk and floor that the liquid touched melted.
"Think you can escape?"
The opponent's words were heard from behind. As soon as he opened the door, Ragna felt a presence dropping from overhead.
Both targeted Anne without caring about their own lives.
Without even looking, Ragna perceived the form of the monsters' attack.
His five senses combined to spread a net around his body, drawing the opponent's movements.
Two owlbears with their bodies fully extended and claws bared.
The two rushed at him as if their bodies were arrows shot by ballistae.
Ragna held Anne with his left hand and swung the sword in his right hand.
His breathing stopped and he exploded his will. A sword imbued with speed and power that couldn't be blocked even if known flew toward the charging monsters.
Thwack, thunk!
The monsters sent flying by the impact crashed into the corridor and rolled about.
One had its head split, and the other was cut from chest to jaw, creating a large line across its body. Black blood flowed thickly, filling the corridor floor.
Rainwater that had blown in and made things damp diluted the black blood as it flowed.
Even after cutting down two creatures and jumping to the side following his instincts, Ragna smelled a pungent, acrid scent.
'Not good.'
That's what his instincts told him.
At the same time, Anne, held in his arms, couldn't adapt to the high-speed movement and stuck her head out to vomit up her stomach contents.
"Urgh!"
Yellow vomit splattered on Ragna's boots.
Ragna's high-speed movement just before was not a speed that an untrained body could endure.
Even while Anne suffered from dizziness that felt like someone continuously hitting and shaking her head—simply put, like she was dying—she gritted her teeth and spoke.
"Poison!"
It was a single word, as she had no strength for longer speech. Ragna had just realized it too.
'The two monsters charged after coating their entire bodies with something.'
It was as if they had bathed in poison.
Because of that, Ragna inhaled poison through his nose and simultaneously felt strength draining from his limbs.
His will moved and began fighting the poison in his body. It was a natural phenomenon.
But will couldn't eliminate all poisons. It would just help him endure a little better.
However, this poison seemed made to target knights, as its effects circulated through his entire body quickly. His legs gave out. Even without doing anything, he couldn't properly put strength into his body.
"Just because you're a knight doesn't mean you're free from all drugs."
Ragna and Anne were moving from the corridor to outside, and the opponent—the guy who looked like Odinkar—was speaking as he emerged from Anne's room into the corridor.
It was Odinkar's face, but the contents were someone else.
"That's nonsense. So don't act arrogantly just because you're knights, you bastards drunk on omnipotence."
Ragna observed the opponent quietly. The guy's arms and legs had become thicker than when first seen, and his torso had also swollen.
It wasn't a cotton doll, and it couldn't have swollen from being rained on.
He was someone who had modified his own body.
He raised his blackened finger to point at Ragna and spoke.
"You will cough up blood, roll on the floor, and beg for your life."
The guy naturally acted like someone who knew of his victory.
Without even smiling, he spoke calmly as if his words were truth and would come to pass.
Compared to Rem or Enkrid, Ragna wasn't the type to use his head.
Therefore, he didn't think about how this situation came about or why it happened.
Instead of using his head, he always just knew what needed to be done right now. This was also Ragna's talent, if it could be called talent.
"When I start fighting, find the captain and go to him."
Ragna said.
If this was the moment to burn the last of his life and that last moment was saving this woman, then so be it.
If what he could leave behind at the final moment was Anne, he could be satisfied. He just thought that. Was it a short life or a long life? Long or short, he had no regrets.
Ragna steeled himself.
"What are you saying? You crazy person. Chew on this."
Anne roughly wiped her vomit-stained mouth, then pulled out a pill about the size of a thumbnail from her belongings and shoved it into Ragna's mouth.
When Ragna obediently took the medicine in his mouth, Anne asked.
"I'll block that bastard's tricks. Then you can cut them all down while protecting me, right?"
Ragna nodded at her spirit and answered.
"That's easy."
The opponent—the guy with Odinkar's face—frowned.
What was that brat saying now?
"Don't you both want to die gracefully?"
Should he make them regret running their mouths like that by using them as test subjects until just before death?
He spoke, and Ragna felt the strength that had been draining from his limbs while smelling that acrid scent earlier being restored, and he also felt his will calming down.
The medicine's effect was immediate.
Originally, detoxification was several times more difficult than poisoning, yet this happened.
Those who knew alchemy might say this:
Anne's skill was at least ten times superior to the guy standing in front of them now.
It was the difference between genius and mediocrity.
It could also be seen as the difference between a child and a trained adult soldier.
Of course, Ragna didn't know such things, so he raised his sword.
He knew it was time to do what he did best.
In other words, even without using his head, Ragna instinctively knew all too well what he had to do.