Chapter 402 - Heaven-Sent Talent

“Send in the chimera unit.”

At Count Molsen’s command, Lierbart raised a flag. A messenger saw the small flag in his hand and ran, shouting.

“Move out! Move out!”

At the messenger’s cry, the second blade the count had prepared began its charge.

The count had sent a pack of wolf-men to Border Guard. Humans turned into monsters, they were wolf-men in the truest sense. Naturally, those he had sent to Border Guard were not all he had. The main army was here.

His cavalry was being driven back, his mounted archers had been caught by Aesia and her fellow order members, and his infantry was losing the contest of formations. That was because an unforeseen force was running wild among the count’s infantry. More precisely, it was all the work of one ignorant swordsman with a terrible sense of direction.

Lierbart saw it too, but remained composed. Given the strength at their disposal, their performance could only be called abysmal. They looked to be getting pushed back mercilessly. No, they actually were. Yet the count merely watched, as though it made no difference.

As his subordinate commanders moved their troops according to their own judgment, the count’s losses mounted. In other words, people were dying. Into those gaps ran the chimera unit. It seemed an appropriate decision. Committing another force when being pushed back was basic tactics, after all.

Most wore torn leather clothes or ragged sackcloth riddled with holes. This group, dressed so incongruously for a battlefield, began running forward. Up close, their dull eyes held not a trace of reason. They were occupied solely with obeying the simple command to advance.

Then, as they ran, they changed. Feathers sprouted all over their bodies, thick, mane-like hair grew, and their bodies swelled. Their nails sharpened, and murderous intent filled their vacant eyes. They became monsters born solely for slaughter.

Owlbears, wolf-men, and bear-men. Transformed into those three kinds of monsters, they charged with monstrous cries.

HOOOOOO!

AWOOOO!

GRAAAAH!

The howls would have raised gooseflesh on any ordinary person, awakening an instinctive terror. Howling, they aimed for the royal army’s right flank. Well over a hundred monsters, enough to plunge those facing them into despair and hopelessness.

That was when a cry from one side rang out toward the beasts. It was clearly human, yet there was something different about the strange call.

ULULULULULU!

A rolling tongue and breath drawn deep from the belly sent the cry far and wide.

“Drive off the wolves!”

“Beasts, oh beasts. You’ve taken the wrong path!”

ULULULULULU!

Shouts mingled with the strange calls. From one side of the plain appeared people running so fast it was hard to believe they were on foot. Their speed seemed almost equal to a respectable cavalry charge. They were certainly no slower than the charging monsters.

Every one carried a long wooden staff or spear and wore a dark brown leather cloak. There could not be two groups like this. They were the Shepherds of the Wastes. People who made their living running the wastes and tending sheep.

At the continent’s northernmost reaches, they tended Thick-Horned Mountain Goats in the mountains and Lean Sheep, reputedly the continent’s fiercest herbivores, in the fields known as the wastes. They numbered fewer than twenty, but they were a force comparable to a knight order.

They ran straight at the monsters. Fewer than twenty charged a horde of more than two hundred. At a glance it looked like mass suicide, but the outcome was nothing of the sort.

“Die and make the soil fertile.”

A man named Pell led the charge. He wielded Idol Slayer, a sword inhabited by a demon’s soul.

A cut meant death. It was like a blade coated in deadly poison, a sword that killed by cutting the soul rather than the flesh. He had been warned not to use it carelessly, for continued use would awaken the demon imprisoned within. But against monsters like these, surely it was right to use it without restraint. This was the Shepherd and the sword that had once forced Encrid to repeat today.

Pell thrust his sword into an owlbear’s eye. There was no need to pierce its head. A light thrust, then he pulled it straight out. A modest wound would suffice. Of course, gouging out an eye was hardly a modest wound. Only a Shepherd would consider it one.

“HOOOOOO!”

The stabbed owl monster shrieked. Instead of dying, it endured. Will? No. It owed that to its monstrous nature.

The sword trembled, sending a brief vibration through his hand. It disliked what it had just cut. That meant he could swing it as freely as he pleased. He could use the demon sword’s power without feeding it souls, couldn’t he? He would simply have to cut and slash and stab and thrust more often than when cutting beings that actually had souls.

In any case, if one cut did not work, he need only cut twice. Pell closed in as quickly as he had withdrawn and stabbed the other eye. The owlbear swiped its paw-like hand, claws extended. Drawing his sword out, Pell ducked beneath it. His eyes shone.

He intuitively understood the information pouring in from every direction and moved accordingly. He began to rampage in earnest. Two companions approached him, both older-looking Shepherds. One wore a cap made from a wolf’s head, the other a bear’s head.

“Pell, you crazy bastard. Rein it in.”

“Honestly, youngsters these days.”

One wielded a long spear, the other a long staff. For generations, the Shepherds of the Wastes had favored long weapons: spears, staves, and the like. Among such people, Pell insisted on using a sword.

“Can’t you just let me handle it?” Pell asked, kicking the dying owlbear.

“You’re saying you don’t want to hear us nag right now?”

“I suppose I should take your lack of manners up with your father?”

Noisy old geezers. What Pell said was different from what he thought.

“Yes, I was wrong.”

“All talk. All talk.”

“Honestly, youngsters these days.”

The old man in the bear-head cap said “youngsters these days” so habitually that Pell could simply ignore him. He thought he would be better off having a pleasant chat with an owlbear. A pleasant chat involved laughter, but he would be the only one laughing. The dead couldn’t laugh, and he had no intention of giving a monster that kind of leisure.

The two old Shepherds watched Pell and followed in support. Two more joined the three, and the five moved as one. It was the Shepherds’ basic formation.

Five striking as one. A diamond-shaped spearhead, an iron-shod staff, and Pell’s sword mercilessly killed the experimental subjects turned monsters. In the end, the count’s chimera army had failed to achieve any part of its purpose.

How, then, had the Shepherds of the Wastes come to be here? It was Krang’s doing. He had asked for help from the Shepherds he had happened to meet during his travels across the continent, and they had come to repay his kindness.

No, to be honest, it had been several years since they arrived. Nor had they been waiting solely for this day. They had come because they wanted something too. Of course, Krang knew all of that and made full use of it. Wasn’t arranging matters around what the other party wanted the very foundation of politics? Krang had done just that, and so twenty Shepherds of the Wastes were here.

There was nothing “mere” about these twenty. To the soldiers, it felt as if there were now two of Encrid’s Lunatic Company. An older commander thought it was like a knight order splitting into three forces to ravage the enemy.

Aesia and the squires. The Shepherds of the Wastes. And Encrid and the Lunatic Company.

Ironically, the most impressive of the three was the Lunatic Company. The Scarlet Cloak Knight Order’s destructive power was the most modest. Even without a knight among them, that was an absurd state of affairs.

* * *

Count Molsen was, in short, a boil. Painful if left alone, nastier still if carelessly disturbed. A boil like that had to be cut out in one stroke.

That was why Krang had made a claim that sounded absurd at first.

“We need a civil war.”

By civil war, he meant gathering every last sickness into the boil that was Count Molsen, then cutting it out and burning it away. Thus the battle now underway was driven more by Krang’s intentions than by Count Molsen’s.

Did that mean Count Molsen had been unaware of Krang’s intentions? Whether or not he was a born politician, he was a cunning man of ambition. He knew what he needed to know. He had accepted despite knowing. And that had led to this moment.

Marcus’s mind worked faster than ever. He moved his troops based on the information from the scouts. He had to deny the enemy any opening and destroy every measure they had prepared. So far, he had done just that.

As he did, he silently posed a question to the count.

‘You didn’t expect us to go this far, did you?’

They had brought in an entirely different fighting force in place of the knight order. Surely that would catch the enemy off guard. He had heard that the Shepherds of the Wastes had been promised a tract of land in exchange for coming.

Their leader would receive a nominal noble title, and their land would become an autonomous territory. Besides their northern lands, they held similar tracts scattered through kingdoms and the Empire alike. That did not mean they governed the land themselves. They simply kept tenant farmers and received a share of the crops.

It went without saying that the Marquis of Fertile Lands had worked to arrange it. Without his skill, it could never have happened. That made it all the harder to foresee.

‘Try stopping this, you turncoat.’

Blades that had tended sheep in the far north of the continent were now tearing through the enemy’s chimeras. For some reason, Count Molsen sent yet more troops against them. His next move was unexpected.

‘What?’

Marcus frowned. What was he doing?

‘Overwhelm us with numbers?’

These were not trained soldiers. The trained troops parted to either side, and units from the rear flooded down the path they opened. There were so many that they looked like an incoming wave, but they simply ran headlong without any formation at all.

‘Soldier-farmers?’

Men who reclaimed frontier land in peacetime and became soldiers in war. Even soldier-farmers received basic military training. Those who excelled sometimes became professional soldiers, while those who fell short were still required to train in peacetime.

So these were not soldier-farmers. Far from keeping formation, they seemed occupied with running in a disorderly mass. They were ordinary civilians. More precisely, people from the count’s domain who had been given a spear and sent out.

Behind them stood a group of missile troops with arrows nocked. Those who forced soldiers to fight, even by killing men who fled, were called executioners. The count had formed blocking troops. Retreat, and they died to arrows. Advance, and they died to enemy blades.

They had also been given a reason to fight through promises of land and status if they survived, but Marcus had no way of knowing that. He racked his brains.

‘Is he trying to wear us out?’

It was a move he could not avoid even if he understood it. The count was no fucking idiot. He had been a towering figure in his day. In his youth, he had even been called the guardian of his domain.

The meat shields he had sent reached the allied troops and were cut down and torn apart. It was the inevitable result. Behind them came the army the count had trained.

The fighting continued without respite. Whatever the count’s intentions, one thing was certain. Blood would drench this land like a downpour.

* * *

Ragna was busy stabbing and cutting down the enemy.

“Stop him!”

“Kill him!”

Blood sprayed. Bones broke. Heads burst, spilling brains onto the ground. Severed limbs fell beside the corpses of soldiers who had died with their eyes open.

Ragna showed no mercy with his sword. More accurately, he paid little attention to those dying. Instead, he honed his techniques. He had made this place his training ground. He could afford to.

As he stabbed, cut, and swung his sword, he thought, reviewed his battles, and reached new understandings. He did it all at once. In the process, he created several arts.

Naturally, he consolidated and organized what he possessed, discarding what he did not need and keeping what he did.

‘Breaking the rhythm is a mere trick.’

He had learned and used it on the spot after watching the proto knight he had fought before. On reflection, it was not a technique worth keeping. It might work against weaker opponents, but would be meaningless against someone near his own level. It could briefly disconcert them, but little more. So he had no need for it. Ragna readily discarded what he had learned and forgot it.

He reached several small realizations like that.

‘Stronger and faster.’

Increase his strength and speed overall, then use them to lend power to the fundamentals of cutting and thrusting. That was the crux of it: physical enhancement. Not mere conditioning, but enhancement as an art founded on Will.

He walked without needing to question whether this was the right path. He did not need to ask anyone for directions. Nor did he need to look from side to side or consult the stars. That was talent. He was a genius, blessed with heaven-sent talent.

Right there, Ragna was creating an art he would need to master, practicing it over and over. In the midst of that, men who did not even know how to fight came up before him. The count’s soldier-farmers in name only.

‘Annoying.’

Why? He did not need to know. Without a second thought, Ragna moved. He kicked off the ground, seeking men at least worth swinging his sword at. Professional soldiers, for instance.

He soon found a group to fight. As he abruptly approached, the unit opened a circle in its center, moving as though inviting him in. Ragna walked into the middle of their formation. Men carrying thick rectangular shields formed a circle around him.

Like hunters surrounding a ferocious beast. They had trained for this. The signs were unmistakable.

“Now!”

The moment he stepped inside, a net flew overhead. Along with it came crossbow bolts and arrows from every direction, all aimed at him alone.

Ragna raised his sword and cut the net. It was not difficult. Nor was dodging the arrows while cutting it. He flowed forward like water and swung his sword parallel to the ground, aiming at the shields. He intended to cut through both shields and bearers in one stroke.

But then...

SKRRAAANG! CLANG!

For the first time, his sword was stopped. By nothing more than shields held by men who were neither knights nor proto knights.

They were no ordinary shields. Nor were the men holding them ordinary. These were heavy infantry clad head to toe in thick iron. The shields in their hands were triple-layered slabs of iron, five times heavier than ordinary shields.

Even with Will of Scission, it was only natural that a sword could not physically cut beyond its own length. That was what had just happened. His sword had cut into a shield, but it was too thick to split apart.

The shield-bearers glared at Ragna, breathing hard. He glanced at his sword, then looked up. Fierce eyes stared at him from behind the shields. These were elite soldiers, trained to overcome fear, able to stand firm despite their terror.

Ragna thought they would be good for testing his newly honed art.

‘Faster.’

Stronger. Better cuts. Better thrusts. That was the core of his new art. Practicing by cutting and thrusting through those thick shields would serve nicely.