"Hmm?"
Ragna, already aware of what was happening, lifted his head and looked forward. The mist, which had started at their feet, quickly rose.
Nothing was visible now.
The thick fog obscured their surroundings, just as it had before.
It was the same spell he had encountered once on the battlefield—Mist of Massacre.
"Prepare."
Enkrid pulled Anne closer to his right as he spoke. Ragna stood at Anne's right side.
The attack was here.
He had been wondering when it would come, and now it had. What would it be this time?
A monstrous creature beyond imagination? Or a spell?
As the fog thickened, even Anne, who stood right beside him, faded from view. However, sounds could still be heard.
The technique of the spellcaster was different from that of the Grand Duchy of Aspen. There were no visible banners.
"Front."
It was Grida's voice.
Whatever method she had used, she had sensed the enemy before Enkrid did. Among the five senses, his sense of touch sharpened to its limit.
Every hair on his body stood on end, detecting the slightest vibrations in the air.
Thud, thud, thud-thud.
Rather than sound, it was vibrations that struck his skin. There was no actual thud-thud-thud.
Enkrid did not immediately draw and swing his sword, Penna.
Instead, he shifted his position four times, blocking possible attack routes.
Clang, clang, clang.
Four projectiles ricocheted away, each precisely deflected. They were darts.
If no attack had come, perhaps they wouldn't have been discovered.
But throwing something like this made pinpointing their location simple. The Mist of Massacre concealed presence, but it did not erase it completely. Then came a question.
"After all this effort to hide their presence, their attack is just a few darts?"
That couldn't be all.
Following his instincts, Enkrid remained on high alert.
Meanwhile, Ragna, seeing his commander guarding Anne, raised his sword.
"I'm going."
"Yeah."
With just those two brief words, their roles were decided. Ragna stepped forward, raising his greatsword high.
His feet pressed against the ground as he bent his knees before straightening them. A simple motion—yet what followed was anything but.
His body tore through the fog as if splitting it apart.
Whooooom!
His sheer presence cleaved through the air, weighing down everything around him. And then—
Boom!
With a powerful swing, he scattered the mist around him. Could a mere sword swing dispel a spell?
For an ordinary person, such a feat would be unthinkable.
But he was a knight.
A severed head hovered in midair, its mouth stretched forward into a protruding snout.
Keekreek!
The brief clearing of the mist allowed a fleeting glimpse of the head's form, but not its full details.
"Scalers."
Someone recognized them immediately. Three steps to Anne's right, Grida spoke.
Scalers—monstrous creatures typically found only in the Demonic Domains. A faint scent of magic began to waft through the air.
The scent of sweet decay.
A spell was coming—one of deadly magnitude. Enkrid had predicted it, and he was right.
Suddenly, a light source appeared above.
Fwoosh!
No, not a light source—a fireball.
The flaming mass immediately plummeted downward. Once again, it was aimed at Anne.
Enkrid's eyes followed the fireball while simultaneously anticipating the aftermath of slicing it.
"Mages like to prepare multiple spells before casting them. Like how one might lower the temperature of an area in succession before ultimately freezing everything solid."
It was the same technique Esther had used when she killed the cultist mage who wielded walking fire.
And Enkrid had been taught from her. His mind accelerated.
The fireball's descent seemed to slow almost to a halt as he analyzed the situation.
"If I were the mage, I wouldn't just throw a simple fireball."
The enemy had already seen him cut down bat fiends before.
Was this fireball more threatening than those creatures? No.
It was slower, lacked intelligence, and simply fell in a straight line.
"They want me to cut it."
With his thoughts racing, Enkrid's reaction was lightning-fast. Instead of Penna, he drew Samcheol.
Shing, shing!
His speed in sheathing and drawing his swords was blinding. Why wouldn't it be?
He had techniques refined for dual-wielding.
Among the madmen, his sword-drawing speed was unrivaled. Gripping Samcheol with both hands, he changed his stance.
The thick iron met the fireball head-on.
From below, he swung upward with the flat of his blade.
Boom!
The fireball was launched skyward.
Far above, it burst into dozens of smaller fireballs, which scattered in all directions, carving through the mist in streaks of flame.
A rare and spectacular sight.
For a moment, the fiery tendrils illuminated the battlefield, parting the Mist of Massacre.
"To counter spells, one must think beyond common sense."
Esther's words rang true.
Who could have anticipated that the fireball would split into dozens upon impact? But that was the nature of magic.
Though its source was the same, it was unlike Will—the continent's strangest power, beyond comparison.
Had the enemy mage been momentarily stunned by the sight? No follow-up spell came.
The fiery fragments scattered and fell, their effect dissipating.
Then, a sudden stench filled the air, foul enough to make one want to pinch their nose shut. The mist, parted by the fire, crept back in.
But no spell could conceal its medium forever. Enkrid had anticipated this.
And soon, his expectation became reality.
Thwack!
A wet, sickening sound echoed from one side. The mist began to clear.
Enkrid's gaze landed on a bipedal creature with snake-like scales, lying dead on the ground. It was a full head taller than an average human.
Around Ragna, several quadrupedal lizard beasts lay slain—each large enough to devour two people in a single bite.
Of course, they had already been sliced apart by the directionally-challenged swordsman wielding his greatsword.
Grida had been right. Scalers.
Monsters resembling lizards, their bodies covered entirely in scales. And with the death of the Scaler, the spell had unraveled.
'Can the medium for sorcery also be something living?'
That would mean there's at least one magician and one sorcerer hiding their presence among the enemies blocking the path ahead.
Now that he looked around, he saw Scalers filling the area.
It seemed that the fog had been spread as a trick to prevent their approach from being noticed.
"They're creatures that hide their presence and strike from behind,"
Magrun said again.
As he spoke, he drew his sword and scanned the surroundings. A rough count showed over a hundred lizard heads.
Meanwhile, the stench of rot still stung their noses.
It was so pungent that it overshadowed even the sharp scent of magic.
"What's this smell?"
"Aren't Scalers supposed to be odorless?"
Grida and Magrun spoke in succession. "It's the Bride of Plague."
Now that the fog had lifted, Anne had a clear line of sight.
Just as she said, a few strange creatures were mixed among the Scalors.
"If you so much as brush against them, you'll contract a disease. Be careful." One of them was already approaching Ragna.
Its bare, scab-covered feet were grayish, and it wore a tattered, dress-like garment. Its hair was wild and spiky, and its eye sockets were empty holes.
Green fluid dripped from its nose, making for a grotesque sight.
It was the kind of thing you wouldn't want to encounter at night—or perhaps, it was even more nauseating to see in broad daylight.
"Guaaaaah!"
The Bride of Plague let out a scream-like wail and lunged at Ragna. Its dress billowed in the wind.
Calling it a dress felt like an insult to actual dresses, but as Anne had said, this specter was called the Bride of Plague.
It was likely a magician's summoned creature. Regardless, Ragna easily rejected the bride's approach.
He shifted to the left, smashing a Scaler's head with the pommel of his sword, then swung his blade vertically, cutting down the bride's proposal in a single stroke.
Shrrk.
With a sound like old paper crumbling, the Bride of Plague was sliced in half from the chest down.
But then, the severed specter reformed on the ground and stood up once more.
"Regular attacks— No, just take this!"
Anne shouted and lifted her left foot, then hurled something with all her strength.
Whoosh!
Ragna, gripping his sword in his left hand, reached out with his right and deftly caught the object midair.
It was a glass vial, sealed with a cork stopper.
"If things get urgent, break it and coat your sword with it!" Anne straightened her posture after throwing.
Enkrid, watching the exchange, couldn't hold back his curiosity.
"What the hell was that throw? Do alchemists need to practice throwing too?"
"Of course not. I just learned it playing with kids when I was little."
Children raised in slums learned the harshness of life early. Catching birds in mid-flight was one of their means of survival.
If they accidentally struck a carrier pigeon or crow delivering a message, it was practically a death sentence.
"Here."
Anne handed a vial to Enkrid as well.
Inside, an amber liquid swirled, proudly asserting its presence.
"I'm a healer, but I'm also an alchemist. Against things like that, I'm never at a disadvantage."
Holiness was the natural counter to all specters, but alchemy was the easiest way to destroy them.
It was a common saying across the continent,
a phrase passed down from a renowned alchemist of the previous era. And it wasn't wrong.
Enkrid poured the amber liquid onto Samcheol.
The liquid trickled down and clung to the blade.
The moment it met the air, it hardened like sugar water, leaving the blade bathed in a faint amber glow.
"I've got mine,"
Grida said to Anne first, then pulled out a leather pouch.
She bit down on the string, loosening it, and sprinkled powder onto her sword. It had a subtle pearl-like hue.
Magrun accepted the amber vial from Anne.
Meanwhile, Ragna once again rejected the bride's proposal—this time, slicing it horizontally, separating its torso from its legs.
Thud!
A soft noise accompanied the act.
The severed Bride of Plague was purified.
Specters were amorphous monsters, given form through malice and hatred, manifesting as negative energy.
For them, purification meant losing their very existence— which was simply another way of saying they had died.
With a faint crumbling sound, the Bride of Plague turned to dust and scattered away.
Hissssssss!
While Ragna destroyed the specter, the Scalers hissed like snakes, as if cheering each other on. Their cries sent tremors through the air, making it difficult to sense anything by touch.
"They use sound to mask each other's presence," Grida said.
She had fought Scalers before while exploring near a Demonic Domain, so she knew what a nuisance they were.
The Demonic Domain was often called the 'graveyard of knights' for a reason—countless creatures within it posed a threat to them.
Not that this particular group of Scalers was a real threat, but they were certainly annoying.
They constantly aimed for their enemies' backs,
and they were intelligent enough to coordinate their attacks.
"Hah!"
With a sharp exhale, Grida slashed backward, severing the heads of three approaching Scalers. It was a single swing, but the trajectory twisted midair, carving a zigzag pattern through them. The monsters collapsed before they could even react.
"Where do you think you're going?" Grida adjusted her grip on her sword.
Meanwhile, Enkrid quietly scanned the battlefield. 'Let's assume the sorcerer isn't here.'
Was the magician still waiting for the right moment?
Or had they withdrawn, unwilling to take even the slightest risk?
He wasn't sure what kind of perfume the Bride of Plague used, but it had even masked the scent of magic.
'Could they have realized that I perceive things through scent?'
…No, that was too far-fetched. That would be pure speculation.
'No matter how powerful the magician is, they couldn't possibly know how I perceive the world.' No matter how powerful magic was, that was impossible.
Thanks to the time spent with Esther, he had learned the limits of what magic could achieve. There was no spell that allowed one to read another's thoughts.
That was a certainty—an unchanging truth. 'Let's assume there's still a mage left.'
Even so, cutting down the monsters before him wouldn't be difficult. Tak, boom, crack!
He swung his sword at the creature approaching within three steps.
The blade of Samcheol traced a smooth arc, splitting the jaws of a Scaler in two. Its forked tongue lolled out, its vertically slit eyes losing their light.
Enkrid knew his blade had reached the creature's skull.
At the same time, he also knew the monster before him was merely playing dead.
"Cunning bastards."
He spoke as he moved.
Enkrid twisted his sword and slammed it down toward the ground. The Scaler, feigning death, had no time to react.
Just as the light was returning to its eyes, Samcheol paid a brief visit inside its skull. As he pulled the blade free, black blood and brain matter clung to its edge.
"Terrifying."
Anne muttered.
It was understandable.
The horde of Scalers ahead and the eight remaining Brides of Plague still had their gazes fixed on her.
"Don't worry. Lady Samcheol in her amber dress will protect you." Enkrid chose his words carefully to reassure her.
"...That sword is a woman?"
"Today, she's wearing an amber dress, so she's a woman."
"So it changes gender whenever necessary?"
"That's the advantage of a genderless sword."
He spoke while holding up Samcheol, which gleamed amber. Blood from the slain creature dripped from its tip.
"Crazy bastard."
Anne barely moved her lips.
She had whispered it, but he heard it all.
Enkrid decided to generously overlook her cheeky defiance.
She was clearly just scared, blurting out whatever came to mind.
"Now then, my lady. Shall we dance?"
Enkrid asked once more.
"Oh, for god's sake, just fight already."
At last, Anne overcame her fear and took a more encouraging stance.