Magical beasts switched up their methods again and again. Sometimes once every two days, then once every three.
A few quick fox-beasts made a wide loop around the village and hid along the road to the lake, but they couldn't fool Enkrid's senses. Above all, it was within his range of prediction.
'If magical beasts learned human cunning.'
Even that just had to be factored in and prepared for.
"How do you know all this and prepare for it?"
Halfway through, Eirik asked.
Since he was at it, Enkrid told the boy in front of him this and that. Even when Eirik asked where the east was and Enkrid answered that the sea was that way, he listened intently. His ears seemed to perk, and he blinked far less than usual. It was the posture of one who truly listens.
"Even if you don't need it right now, it's good to carry at least a little force. That may become your fangs, and it could be the last means to save you from danger."
By chance, the stranger before his eyes proved extraordinary. Not an ordinary man.
What Enkrid told him was grounded in Krais's thinking.
Back when he barely got out alive, the very first thing Krais had said was that.
"And if, while you're at it, you end up with abs that make a woman's eyes linger, even better."
The rest that followed didn't need passing on, so he omitted it.
"It's not that you know everything and prepare for it all—you prepare for everything that can be predicted."
Enkrid tapped his own head with his right index finger as he said it.
He layered his own thinking over Krais's and passed along what he'd experienced.
People would call this instruction, education.
After making preparations against magical beasts' raids, he only drilled them on maintaining formation; he taught Brunhild how to fight along with technique, tricks, and training methods; and with Eirik he mostly held conversations. Those talks themselves were like a secret sword manual for Eirik.
"You don't prepare by knowing everything. You prepare for everything that can be predicted."
Some might tilt their heads at that, but Eirik did not.
"Ah."
Perhaps he'd had a realization; a small exclamation escaped him.
Krais was always anxious, and to quell that anxiety he prepared for everything.
If you applied that to this village—
'Shrink the area to defend and gather every resource you can use.'
Ordinarily, they would have had to guard the food stockpiled in the storehouse, guard the road to the lake, and be ready for magical beasts that targeted children or the elderly, but now, they didn't have to.
'Reduce what's needed and prepare for everything within the limits of what you can do.'
This could be called the Krais-style tactic.
Enkrid imitated that and applied it. He didn't just rely on feel; he actively took preemptive measures. He didn't shy from using his head.
And so, people leveled spears and fought magical beasts.
Enkrid sat up in a tree and watched those betting their lives thrusting with their spears.
"If it's breached!"
"We die!"
They even had a call-and-response now, and Enkrid hadn't taught it to them.
"If it's too hard, don't hold the line—fall out!"
Repetition gives you the knack. If one of ten lagged, they pulled him back. Even nine could keep the circle rolling. Those not fighting took care of the one who'd dropped out.
Two who were good with bows stood braced at the center of the circle.
After almost having their shoulders torn off by an owl-beast two nights ago, they volunteered.
A thick-forearmed woman kept flicking glances up overhead.
If an owl came, crows might dive too. Being daytime didn't mean you relaxed.
They weren't predicting magical beasts' actions; they were putting everything into a fight of defense and endurance. Enkrid's teaching had taken shape in reality.
"Don't fall out just because it's hard! Hold!"
They even picked squad leaders of ten in their own way.
A few beasts did try to poke at gaps mid-formation, but—
"Where are you going."
Brunhild checked them.
Innate talent blazed. The spearhead smashed the sunlight and punched into a beast's skull.
It was a simple thrust, but the prep motion was very short. The wolf-beast that faced it died before it could even brag about how sharp its fangs were.
Pivoting on her left foot, Brunhild twisted her waist and drove her spear through the beast's hide.
'More exactly, she didn't target the hide; she jabbed in from the softer inside of the mouth.'
The spear that stuck inside the mouth and poked out the back of the skull was yanked free in a dynamic motion.
Brunhild kicked the beast's shoulder with both feet while airborne and pulled out the spear.
She made up for lacking strength with springy movement. Then—thup—she stabbed the ground with the freed spear, flipped in a somersault, and came right up on her feet. All of it attested to superb body-handling.
'Some don't need it.'
His heart thumped.
A thought he'd had while watching people dying once upon a time.
What if, before they hoped for help, they'd had the strength to protect themselves?
Even if you toss a beggar a gold coin, once it's gone he has to go back to the days of begging.
But if you teach the beggar how to work instead of a gold coin, he learns to live by labor, not begging.
'Even if I leave, the threat of magical beasts remains.'
Last night, the Ferryman's whisper still rang clear in his ear.
"Look here. Say you help and then leave—after that? These people will die sooner or later. Can you turn your face away and leave them to die?"
Should he call it an attempt to find a weak point and stab at it, no matter what?
Enkrid didn't waver.
He would do what he could. The choices after that were each person's to make.
He would put a leash of deterrence in their hands based on the continent's law. It was the same principle as founding a frontier town.
You kill magical beasts again and again, stake out signposts with blood and death, and proclaim your domain.
Mark your territory with strength.
'You can't kill all magical beasts.'
These were people who had already stood up on their own; all they needed was a bit of strength in their hands.
Most didn't know Enkrid's intent, but Harkvent had more or less caught on, and Eirik had realized it long ago.
Brunhild and a few others, it seemed, hadn't even thought along those lines.
'Some don't need it.'
The same words came back again.
He had seen the charred corpse of a child.
He had seen the body of a mercenary who, trying to protect that child, had his head torn off.
Amid the dying, Enkrid had thought such thoughts.
And now—
"Ha!"
With a shout, they put magical beasts to flight.
None among them had died.
'Holding out.'
Eirik had seen it right. Enkrid had made them hold out.
That was enough. From the tree, Enkrid's gaze turned to one side.
Compared to other knights, Enkrid had exceptional senses, and he hadn't missed how a malicious gaze had clung to them for days on end.
'Planning to watch until I leave, are you?'
If there were Eirik and Brunhild among humans, among the magical beasts there was one like them too. One who knew how to think and fight.
That one would be the mover behind all this.
Enkrid couldn't kill every beast at once, but he could swat aside a few troublesome ones just like that.
A magical beast pack was like dozens of colonies gathered together.
Among them, each colony would have a core beast in charge. If he killed only those, the immediate threat looming before their eyes could be reduced.
Enkrid stepped on a branch and launched himself. Like a flying squirrel, he leapt from tree to tree—but twice as fast as any flying squirrel.
Then, when there was nothing fit to step on and he dropped to the ground—
Two spotted leopard-beasts burst out to his left and right.
They'd done it so stealthily that he hadn't felt a thing until just before they closed.
Right before they struck, Enkrid felt the down on the back of his neck bristle.
A warning from instinct.
The instant he acknowledged the warning, he shifted his center of gravity. He planted his left foot, loaded the forward momentum into it, and stabbed the earth to stop.
Bang!
With the boom, dirt, stones, twigs, and such splashed up to eye level.
Through that spray, the claws of the two leopard-beasts targeted Enkrid's head and flank.
Left and right at once wasn't enough; they split it up and attacked high and low. Cunning bastards.
But that was all. Enkrid, from his halt, simply thrust his blades left and right.
It was the hour when the sun blazed firm overhead. The track that Tri-Iron took drew a circle as if it had set a new sun behind his back.
Instead of heat, the keenness of steel scattered like a sun around him.
Pvvt.
The follow-up sound was small. There was no need to swing a blade faster than sound.
Use their own forward rush—set the edge and push-draw.
Tri-Iron's edges were keen enough for that.
That was exactly what Enkrid did. He cut the one on the right with True-Silver and split the one on the left with Black Gold.
He cut at a standstill and ran again. All of it in a single breath.
Behind him, the two leopard-beasts he'd passed bled black and spilled their guts as they sprawled on the ground.
He stamped off the earth again, and it was as if a long line trailed after him.
He could make it a battle of endurance and still run them down, but that would take time.
No matter how he'd set things up to make them hold out, there was no way those he'd left behind would be safe forever.
So he had to run them down on a time limit—was that difficult?
'No.'
Not all explosions of lines are the same. There are narrow lines and fat ones.
What if he took Hard Angle—the method of loading Will into the legs—and layered on the knack he'd learned from the explosion of lines? Doing so made his body lighter still. Trees warped to either side as he blasted past.
Naturally, his reflex speed changed in proportion to his sprint speed.
And so he neither scraped nor got stabbed by branches while running.
Enkrid's sprint brought him face to face with a fox.
The fox, rather than flee and get run down from behind, chose to face him.
Smart on this side too. The instant he confronted it, more than a hundred fox-beasts ringed the area.
Hidden in shade, eyes glinting, their presence masked.
'A skill learned in the wild.'
They say a knight's Fairy Footwork was learned watching fairies, but seeing the beasts' skill now made him doubt that.
If fairies had learned the footwork of predators—then you could just say they'd learned from magical beasts to begin with.
Valmung's stories came to mind.
Humans—
'Learned intimidation from monsters.'
If Fairy Footwork had learned from beasts—
Matching that, now even monsters and magical beasts learned by watching humans.
'What else lies inside the Demon Realm?'
The Demon Realm stirred his curiosity anew. The people fighting there, and the Balrog who was not a fragment.
The fox-beast hid a blade in its tail and even had claws pop out, but compared to the path he'd walked through today, it was an easy fight.
Enkrid's Tri-Iron and Penna stepped out to a ball.
With the sun as chandelier and beasts' black blood as carpet, the only protagonists at that ball were the two blades.
Slash, thrust, burst, kill. Then, returning to the village—
Faces of villagers, eyes wide, filled with a mix of cheers, relief, and astonishment, stared at Enkrid.
"…Bring water for washing."
Harkvent said it, taking one look. Maybe the sight was ghastly, with his whole body drenched in black blood.
Even so, no one scolded him for it.
It wasn't just a single gaze Enkrid felt.
Among the beasts targeting this village, three dangerous ones remained.
He didn't change the tactic. While they held out, he would kill the key beasts.
The beast pack might have given up, but they never withdrew in the end.
'It means they want something.'
It was easy to guess, but he didn't bother to argue it out.
Twice more, after similar pursuits, Enkrid killed a small but very fast bear, and in the midst of a pack where five hundred jackals and wild dogs moved like a single body, he cut the throat of one black dog.
And the last was a tiger whose hide had hardened tougher than steel.
Up to now, he'd pursued one-sidedly, but this last beast had come out to meet him, as if to welcome him.
Grrrr.
"What, dreaming of becoming a Beast King?"
Enkrid asked according to his gut. Of course, beasts couldn't answer in human tongue, and yet the growl sounded like a yes.
To see the essence of a thing without going through the operations of sense, experience, association, judgment, or inference—this was intuition.
Enkrid's intuition already surpassed that of ordinary people and even your average knight.
Today behind him, the piled-up experience, the knowledge earned facing inhuman monsters and demons—all overlapped into this answer.
'Beast King.'
He didn't know the name. The tiger truly dreamed of becoming king among beasts.
In the Pen-Hanil Range, even as a magical beast you couldn't remain a carefree apex predator.
Having become a beast, the tiger dreamed.
To make the range its domain and race across the whole continent, chewing human flesh in the morning and drinking fairies' blood in the evening.
Grrrrrr.
A brazen and daring dream. And it might even have come true. The reason the tiger-beast had targeted this place was the ore hidden behind that village.
If it chewed and swallowed that, it would become something new.
If not for the human before its eyes.
No—if not for the other ones who'd interfered up to now.
The reason a single human village had survived thus far was that, on the opposite front, a few monsters had come in and tangled with them.
Enkrid did not underestimate his foe.
It had reached the top, uniting beasts across species, and had changed the range's balance of territory.
Just as there are knights among intelligent species, special individuals can be born among beasts.
'And among monsters, those especially outstanding.'
Such beings gathered in the Demon Realm.
The one before him now would be similar to those.
The tiger's shoulder muscles contracted. You couldn't see it outwardly, but a sixth sense beyond the five read it.
The moment he recognized strength packing into its hind legs, the tiger's forepaw fell from above his head.
You couldn't tell while it crouched, but standing up it was bigger than a house-sized bear, and yet its movement was nimbler than that fast-handed bear he'd fought before.
Sound vanished and the air pressed down heavy on his shoulders. It felt like fighting while sunk in a swamp. It was the pressure of stretched-out subjective time.
To wrench free of that heavy pressure took strength beyond human limits—brute strength.
Enkrid wrung his muscles, added Will, and swung Tri-Iron.
And the tiger, mid-swipe, opened its jaws and spewed fire. A move outside his expectations.