Chapter 73 - Because He Trained Every Moment (2)

The attackers’ methods were strikingly similar to those of thieves. Blackened daggers, crossbows, and throwing knives made up the bulk of their weapons. 'Well, now.'

Their skills, however, were worse.

'I don’t think they’re even at the Gilfin Guild’s level.' "He dodged it?"

The surprised reaction to his dodging a dagger hardly suggested a professional. Assassination clearly wasn’t their specialty. Encrid spun the dagger he had taken from the dead attacker’s hand. A flick of his fingers shifted its position; then he gripped the blade between thumb and forefinger and thrust his arm forward. The sequence produced its result. The dagger whizzed through the air and buried itself in the forehead of a masked attacker. With the blade still lodged there, the man toppled backward. His skull struck the floor with a thud, and red blood streamed across the inn’s floor. "Aaaah!"

Several townspeople who had merely stopped for a meal fled outside screaming. The waiter and waitress carrying food had already hidden beneath the tables. The attack brought screams, and the screams brought chaos, but Encrid’s party hadn’t suffered so much as a scratch. "... Kill them all!" one attacker shouted. "We’re under attack! Fight back!"

"Get your weapons!"

The trading company’s guards sounded the call to counterattack as well, each drawing a weapon. Blades rang against scabbards. Hearing them, Encrid remembered that this was an escort mission.

"I’ll go."

He addressed the Fairy Company Commander, then turned away. Someone had to secure the client. If the ground floor was in this much chaos, surely there would be trouble upstairs too. She did have guards close at hand, but...

'If something happens here, we’re responsible too.' He was beginning to wonder what lunatic had ordered this. Attacking a trading company escorted by the standing army, inside Border Guard itself? Encrid headed straight upstairs. Not a single person barred his way. Little wonder: Jaxon had placed himself between them. He picked up a chair and swung it like a shield, blocking every incoming dagger. It soon became an abstract work of art—a wooden chair bristling with daggers and quarrels. When throwing weapons failed, some approached with shortswords or clubs. Every time one entered his reach, Jaxon swung his sword and parted soul from flesh with a single stroke. It was clean work, pure and simple. He blocked and cut; there was nothing extraordinary about his blade’s path, yet they failed to block it time and again. CLANG! One barely managed to block, but Jaxon had kept his stroke short from the outset. The deflected blade shot forward like lightning and plunged into the man’s face. His nasal bone snapped, a new hole opened above the bridge of his nose, and he fell. Jaxon pulled his sword free and resumed the same work. Block flying daggers with the chair; cut down approaching enemies with the sword. He was several times better at throwing daggers than Encrid, but he didn’t use that skill. There was no need. "What the fuck is this bastard?"

Jaxon didn’t answer. What was there to discuss with men about to die? While Jaxon held their attention, the Fairy Company Commander stepped right into the midst of the attackers. Nidle slid from her hip. As the leaf sword danced, attackers began collapsing with their hands at their throats. She cut, then cut again. Blood sprayed through the air, painting scattered patterns across her face and body as well. No one could counter the Fairy’s nimble movements. This group held no fighters of that caliber. "If this is all you have, I’m disappointed."

She stood on one foot, the other raised two handspans from the floor, her leaf sword poised toward an opponent. She looked as though she were about to dance. Her voice was clear and lilting, but to those hearing it, she might as well have been the demon king of the underworld. One masked man backed away without realizing it.

"Fuuuck."

The mutter came from one of the remaining attackers, his face crumpling toward tears. The leader of the ground-floor attackers thought,

'As long as we accomplish the objective.'

They had bought enough time. Whether the job upstairs had succeeded or not, staying any longer would mean death. The escorts were several times better than he had expected. Had they brought nothing but Frontier Slaughterers? He didn’t know. Nor did he need to. His part was done, he decided. It was time to withdraw. "Kill them all!"

Shouting that, the leader ran for the door. He intended to escape while his subordinates bought him time. As far as he was concerned, the operation was a success. "Glory to Aspen!"

One of the remaining subordinates shouted. Leaving the cry behind him, the leader fled. They were the remnants of the spies still in the city. They threw away their lives for their country and honor. Their leader was only in it for the money, of course. But wasn’t this precisely what one cultivated loyalty for? Watching the fleeing leader closely, Jaxon touched the thin blade hidden at his waist, then withdrew his hand.

'No point.'

Killing that one man hardly seemed likely to change anything. Letting him escape wouldn’t cause any great trouble, either. Jaxon turned back and continued his work: mercilessly butchering and killing the enemies who charged him. He was the gatekeeper barring the stairs to the second floor. It hardly suited his usual attitude, but among everyone gathered in the inn’s main hall, his skill was second only to the Fairy Company Commander’s. No one could get past him. Even as she gleefully swung Nidle, the Fairy Company Commander glanced behind her now and then. More than Encrid, who had climbed the stairs, it was the skill of the squad member guarding them that caught her eye.

'You stand out.' The troublemaker squad, was it? A squad member better than his own Squad Leader. That wasn’t unheard of, but the gap here was unmistakable.

'City-level, at the very least.' The soldier grading system was Naurilia’s invention. Across the wider continent, strength was described differently. Having spent her life wandering, the Company Commander was more familiar with that other system. Village, city, continent.

There were further distinctions—a large village or a small city, a region of the continent or the entire continent—but that was the basic structure. Was someone skilled enough to make a name in a village? Or good enough to trade on their reputation throughout a city? How good did they have to be to become known across the entire continent? By her standards, a continent-level fighter had to be at least knight-level. Without awakening to the “power” they wielded, it was difficult. Excluding frauds who hired a Bard to spread their names, of course. "Interesting," she murmured. To the attacker who had just lost all four fingers of his right hand trying to block Nidle, it was a horrifying thing to hear.

"Nngh, what?"

The fingerless man spoke through his tears. Without a word, the Fairy Company Commander struck the back of his head with Nidle’s pommel. THWACK. Unconscious. Should she stop the bleeding from his hand? No, it wouldn’t matter. If he died, she would leave him to die. There were plenty of mouths left to testify anyway. She hadn’t killed everyone. Neither had Jaxon. A few who looked young and likely to talk had been spared, with cuts to their thighs or merely knocked unconscious. They had also kept alive the first man to shout about Aspen. He would be useful in several ways. 'And upstairs?'

As she fought, the Fairy directed a fraction of her attention upward. Her hearing opened, informing her of the situation above. An odd smile crossed her face.

'Interesting.'

The thought kept returning. Had it been when she was young, when she first received Nidle? She thought she had enjoyed herself this much then, too. With that thought, the Fairy’s Nidle moved again. Already, the attackers’ numbers had been halved.

* * *

Encrid bounded upstairs two steps at a time. His body felt light as he raced up the stairs.

'The Isolation Technique.'

It had certainly changed his body. Audin called his progress slow, but Encrid himself felt the difference clearly. His body was lighter than before. The moment he reached the second-floor corridor, an assassin dropped from overhead, blade in hand. This one was inferior to the assassin he had faced before. He could sense the attacker’s presence almost as clearly as if he could see it. He twisted sharply in the narrow corridor, flattening himself against the wall to dodge. The armed man dropped to the floor, his eyes meeting Encrid’s. Encrid grasped his longsword’s grip with his right hand and bent his knees into a half crouch—the drawing stance of the Heavy Sword Technique. Regaining his balance after landing, his opponent held his shortsword perpendicular to the floor. It was an excellent defensive posture for blocking the horizontal draw-cut of the Heavy Sword Technique. Against the vertical cut from Encrid’s left hand, however, it was atrocious. THUNK! Deceiving the man with his right hand and stance, he struck with the shortsword he had secretly drawn in his left, as though splitting the crown of his head. The double draw of the Valen Mercenary Sword Technique. The deceived man’s eyes trembled. He said nothing, though. The dead never did. "Are you insane? Hiring assassins here, of all places?"

A woman’s voice rang out.

"Not so fast!"

Then another woman’s voice. Encrid leaped over the corpse and ran down the narrow corridor. He spotted a half-open door, and a masked assailant blocking it. "Idiots."

The man saw Encrid charging and flicked his hand. A throwing knife zipped toward him. It wasn’t even a quarter as fast as a whistle dagger. The boldness granted by the heart of the beast let him face the flying blade head-on. His focus, kindled by Concentrate on a Single Point, made it seem slow. His sense for the blade joined them, reading its trajectory. And now he had the muscle and explosive speed to support it all. Encrid merely tilted his head aside. Before—before he began repeating today—he could never have imagined such a move. He had thought it nothing more than a stunt. Dodging a flying blade with only a tilt of the head! Hadn’t he carried a shield on the battlefield because he couldn’t dodge the arrows of that fellow called Claws of the Hawk, or whatever it was? Now, he felt he could dodge those arrows too. Only the hiss of the passing projectile remained beside his ear. When Encrid dodged with a tilt of his head and charged, the man’s eyes widened in surprise. Even so, his hand moved. He appeared ready to throw another dagger. Encrid raised the shortsword in his left hand as though committing to the charge, then swept his right arm once. FWEEE! A whistle followed the sweep of his arm. The whistle dagger pierced the man’s throat. "Ghrk."

Blood burst from his neck, and bloody froth spilled from his mouth. Reflexively, he completed the motion he had begun, throwing the dagger in his hand. But he was already dying; there was no strength behind it, and it merely dropped to the floor. The dodge and throw had all happened within a few breaths. Without slowing, Encrid rammed his shoulder into the man with the pierced throat and sent him flying sideways. THUD! WHOOSH! CRASH! The man struck a door on the opposite side of the corridor, drawing a startled cry from within. This was an inn. Of course people were staying here. It wasn’t quite broad daylight, but launching an attack in the middle of the city, and at an inn, no less? Whoever was behind it had extraordinary nerve. Either that, or they were all fucking morons. "Nnnngh!"

Having just dealt with that man, Encrid kicked through the open door and entered the room. He saw one of the trading company’s guards collapsing with a sword wound in his belly. The masked man who had stabbed him pulled his sword free and immediately tried to cut down the client. A split-second opening. A whistle dagger flew from Encrid’s hand. FWEEP! CLANG! He had thrown too hastily to put his full strength into it, but the whistle dagger served its purpose. The man faltered as he blocked it. Encrid was already charging as he threw. His opponent ignored the charging Encrid. Instead, he swung the sword that had blocked the whistle dagger at the client—the trading company’s young lady—once again. 'You fucking bastard.'

Encrid cursed the relentless assassin. With no other option, he briefly imitated the movement of the squire he had seen on the battlefield. Naturally, he couldn’t reproduce it exactly. He lacked that talent. But the distance was short. The room wasn’t large, with just a bed and a couple of pieces of furniture. In such close quarters, an imitation was worth trying. He lowered his stance and kicked off the floor, closing the distance in a single burst. Drawing and throwing another whistle dagger wouldn’t stop the man, he judged, so Encrid hurled himself forward. WHACK! As he put himself between the sword and the client, the blade struck his back. It sliced through his gambeson and cut into his lower back beneath it. Reflexively, Encrid twisted at the waist, deflecting the sword that had struck him. Having stopped the blade with his body, he caught sight of the client. He had expected wide eyes and a face drained of color. Instead, he saw a resolute-looking woman with her jaw clenched tight. This was an escort mission. And what was a mission? A task entrusted to him. Something he was supposed to do. Taking the sword on his back meant bearing its full impact with his body. At the same time, he silently thanked Audin.

'Thank you, Audin.' ["Learning to take a hit properly comes first."]

Audin had called it a wrestling fundamental. Yielding to the force as one was struck—deflecting a blade with the body. Learning it had felt like dying. But now that he had learned it, here he was, putting it to use. "Excuse me."

Encrid pushed the young lady aside with his hand.

"Mm!"

Rather than scream, she held her breath. She seemed the strong-willed sort. "You bastard!"

Realizing what had happened, the assassin glared at Encrid, holding his thick-bladed sword—a gladius. "Shall we take this downstairs?"

Encrid turned to face him, spoke, then charged. The man’s blade stabbed toward the space between his eyes. Encrid had never dreamed that his experience facing whistle daggers would prove so useful. This stab was slower than a whistle dagger. He dodged, dropped into a deep crouch, and cupped the backs of the man’s thighs with his palms. Then he scooped his opponent upward and charged for the window. BANG! CRUNCH! The wooden frame splintered and the window shattered. Encrid and the assassin plunged out of the second floor.