Chapter 45 - Friede

The following evening, with one day left before they reached the Great Forest, Bera sat in the carriage at their campsite, eyes closed as he waited for dinner to be ready. His expression twisted into a deep frown at the presences that kept grating on his nerves.

'... We have a tail.'

Ever since they had left town, those presences had followed them at a fixed distance for nearly an entire day.

There was no chance they merely happened to be traveling the same road. This road led straight into the Great Forest, with no other towns or noteworthy destinations along the way. His party was clearly the reason their paths coincided.

Bera clicked his tongue softly and turned to look at Renée. A faint trace of fatigue lingered on her face as she rested with her eyes closed.

'Traveling through the night is out of the question.'

He could not ask Renée to push herself while her stomach was still suffering from the aftermath of her hangover. Her well-being took precedence over everything else in his itinerary.

That left only one option.

"Saintess."

"Yes?"

"May I take a brief look around outside?"

"Oh, of course."

Eliminate their pursuers.

At Renée's permission, Bera bowed his head slightly and replied,

"I will be back shortly."

He opened the carriage door and stepped outside, approaching Norn and Hella as they busied themselves setting up camp. He spoke quietly.

"We have a tail. I'll go deal with them. Keep watch over the area."

Norn flinched at his words, then nodded and asked,

"... Aren't we leaving immediately?"

"We will stay here tonight. The Saintess has not yet recovered from her fatigue."

"Ah..."

"It won't take long. I'll see you shortly."

Bera turned away as soon as he finished speaking. Watching him go, Norn said to Hella,

"Stay beside the Saintess. Your father will see to the camp."

"Got it."

Norn looked up at the sky. It was still early evening. The night had only just begun.

* * *

Bera focused on the scattered, concealed presences and continued thinking.

Where had they begun following him, and why?

As he considered the cause, the answer came quickly.

'... The Saintess's drunken outburst.'

The words Renée had shouted in her drunken state in the inn's dining room.

["Not Saintessss!!!"]

At first hearing, they could have passed for a drunk's nonsense, but someone was bound to have found them suspicious.

Their pursuers would be either those who had grown suspicious themselves or people who had heard about the incident. In that case, their target was obvious.

Bera clenched his fist tightly and stared toward the presences with glittering eyes.

'How dare they.'

They were after Renée.

SHING.

Bera drew his sword and tensed every muscle in his body. His mind swiftly began working out the most efficient way to fight.

'Sanctuary...'

He could not use it. No, it would be more accurate to say that using it would be inefficient.

It was an extremely conspicuous ability, and without knowing exactly who his opponents were, choosing the restrictions to impose would be too uncertain.

'... Then.'

Quietly and swiftly. He would eliminate the scattered pursuers before they could realize they were under attack.

Bera moved his lips slightly, activating his sacred mark.

"From this moment until I have defeated every enemy, I will not open my left eye. I will take fewer than twenty breaths per minute, and I will not unclench my left fist."

This was the primitive form of oath he had used before developing Sanctuary.

What he needed now was to use it to maximize his physical abilities.

"In return, for as long as I continue fighting, I gain greater speed and finer senses."

HUMMM.

His sacred mark blazed. The vow rose in gold upon his ink-black soul.

With senses sharper than before, Bera counted the presences he could detect.

'Twenty-one.'

He could feel them spread out over a wide area in groups of three.

He turned toward the three nearest presences and stepped forward.

RUSTLE.

All he left in his wake was the sound of wind brushing fallen leaves.

* * *

Bera knew very well how to deal with pursuers.

He could hardly fail to know. He had spent his entire previous life being hunted; ignorance would have been stranger.

As a rule, pursuers advanced in an encircling formation, leaving enough distance between their teams for each to cover the others.

It allowed them to search a broad area while tightening the encirclement and pressuring their quarry.

Naturally, having always broken through those pursuits, Bera knew how to destroy such a formation.

He simply had to do what he did best: wield his blade, slicing apart their net and throwing it into disarray.

SLICE.

A clean cutting sound. Having severed three heads with a single strike, Bera shot forward again without even examining the bodies.

Unless his pursuers were complete fucking idiots, they surely had some way of communicating with one another.

He needed to cut down as many as possible before they noticed anything wrong.

That was the fourth team. With twenty-one pursuers in total, three teams remained.

There was nothing to worry about.

Even now, the power of his sacred mark filled him with tireless vigor. Leaving the other restrictions aside, it was certainly easing the strain of moving with his breathing restricted.

Bera extended his awareness over a wide area and concentrated on the presences he felt. Then he frowned as his pursuers suddenly began behaving strangely.

'They've noticed.'

They seemed to have realized they were under attack.

One could call them slow for noticing only after more than half their number had fallen, but it was hardly good news for Bera, who had intended to finish them all off one team at a time.

'Nine.'

They were all converging on one location. The direction they were gathering in was...

'... The campsite.'

Toward Renée.

Bera ground his teeth with an audible crunch and drove his feet faster.

THOOM.

With that sound, his figure shot forward even faster.

* * *

Far ahead, Bera caught sight of nine figures moving together toward the campsite.

At this speed, they would arrive within ten minutes.

He had to settle this here.

Bera pushed divine energy toward his sword's tip, coating the blade, then swung it in a wide arc and launched the energy gathered at its end.

He was imitating a technique he had once seen knights perform with aura.

The divine energy pierced two of the figures. Their bodies swelled in an instant, and then...

SPLAT!

They exploded at once, becoming chunks of flesh that scattered through the air.

"Gael! Ron!"

Those seemed to be the names of the two who had just burst apart.

Bera sharply drew in a breath and held it. Tensing his leg muscles, he charged at the apparent leader in the very center of the pursuers.

A clean horizontal slash struck home.

The leader's head flew into the sky.

Already certain of victory, Bera moved again.

Try as they might, the pursuers were no stronger than he was. He had moved so stealthily not out of wariness toward them, but for Renée's safety. Naturally, what followed was a one-sided assault.

Three figures charged without faltering. He deflected the paths of their outstretched swords, making them stab one another.

Three remained. Two drew bows, while the third turned and moved to flee.

Bera gathered divine energy at his sword's tip once more, this time sweeping a broad area with a horizontal slash.

Great portions of his divine energy drained away.

The sight that followed was such a clean explosive death that the expenditure felt well worth it.

SPLAT!

All three figures burst apart at once, scattering chunks of flesh.

Realizing that all nine remaining pursuers had fallen, Bera erased the oath he had kept inscribed upon his soul.

"Phew..."

A long breath escaped him.

Bera steadied his breathing, then looked with calm eyes at the pursuers' bodies that still retained some semblance of their original shape.

Naturally, he intended to determine who they were.

They had moved in a fairly organized manner. As for their strength... he had swept them away with single strikes, so he could not judge its exact level. But remembering the one who had tried to flee at the end, he reasoned that a larger group stood behind them.

The escape attempt would have been meant to get information back safely.

He would have liked to follow the fleeing one and wipe out their base as well, but he could not venture any farther from Renée. In the end, he had chosen to kill them.

STEP.

Bera walked over and picked up the head of the leader he had cut down first.

Long gray hair hung from it. Beneath it, the face stared wide-eyed, still wearing an expression that had not even registered its own death.

'Young.'

That was his first thought upon seeing the face. Quite young, and rather clean-cut.

To be precise, the features were so androgynous that it was difficult to distinguish the person's sex.

While examining the head from various angles, Bera suddenly went still as something caught his eye.

'The ears...'

They were missing.

More precisely, scars occupied the places where the ears should have been, as though they had been cut away.

Bera narrowed his eyes at the scars and continued thinking.

'... Noir.'

Elves who had turned their backs on Aedra. The outlaws of the southwest.

Their androgynous appearance and severed ears made that the first possibility to come to mind.

Bera frowned and considered the thought for a moment, then tossed aside the head and headed toward the body.

There was a way to turn his suspicion into certainty.

He reached down to the corpse sprawled grotesquely on the ground and began removing its clothes.

'If they're Noir, they won't have genitals.'

Being elves by origin, they would have no reproductive organs between their legs.

With that thought in mind, Bera was stripping the headless corpse when...

FWOOSH!

A shot of wind streaked past right in front of his nose.

Bera flinched, then swiftly rose and drew his sword.

This was no figurative gust of wind. Wind itself had truly been fired past him.

Bera knew who wielded such a technique.

His eyes narrowed. He bent at the waist. His muscles swelled as he tensed them to their limit, and his awareness sharpened.

A presence was rapidly approaching from afar.

SWISH.

Narrowing his eyes and focusing his vision on a single point, Bera studied the slender figure coming through the dense trees to the sound of wind.

Blond hair shone in the moonlight even in the darkness of night. Delicate features and striking, luminous green eyes marked that figure whose sex was difficult to distinguish.

'... Friede.'

It was Friede, the Bowstring of the Wind—one of the heroes Bera had fought against in his previous life.