Chapter 537 - Something Unholy

Sinar's gaze swept over Ragna. She did not even need a Fairy's keen senses to assess his condition.

'He's not dead.'

He stood with his half-sword planted in the ground in place of his foot, using it as a cane to support himself. His eyes were still open, still somehow looking relaxed.

'Looks like he could swing a few times if anyone came near.'

He would probably block a projectile or two as well. Of course, there was no telling what would happen if the glaring enemy soldiers before her, iron spears in hand, deliberately threw their lives away. But that would only matter if she were not here.

She and Ragna had tacitly agreed that one of them would face the enemy general, and the general had targeted Ragna first. That had settled their roles.

'He's alive, so I'd better bring him back.'

Had Ragna died, Sinar would have stepped in next. Adding one knight to another did not double their strength, so this was the right way to fight.

Ragna looked close to death, but she judged that he could readily survive. As for the enemies before her, they scarcely qualified as a threat.

Then the commander glanced about and tried a ploy.

"No surrender! We will kill them! Every one of our names will be inscribed in the Hall of Honor!"

Aspen had built a great hall in the heart of its capital, and having one's name engraved there was an honor. Only the names of the dead were inscribed—specifically, those who had died for their country. Their families also received annual compensation.

Some acted for posthumous glory. Others, for their families and descendants. As one, the armored infantrymen pulled out pouches hidden at their waists beneath their armor and tipped them into their mouths.

They made no attempt to measure the dose, and powder scattered around their mouths and fell to the ground. Most of it, however, certainly went into their mouths, mixed with their saliva, and went straight to their stomachs. Beneath their helmets, veins bulged across their foreheads and temples.

Taking a drug would not suddenly let them wield Will. It merely made them forget pain and fear for a short while and exert nearly twice their normal strength. Called Fury, the drug was only found on the black market. It stimulated rage to forcibly draw out latent potential.

"For our homeland!"

One particularly patriotic soldier shouted. As he did, tiny vessels burst in his eyes, spilling tears of blood. Some suffered profuse nosebleeds from the drug's side effects. No, five of them actually collapsed, their limbs convulsing. Their bodies could not withstand the drug's potency.

The rest kicked off hard and charged, drooling saliva and blood, their bloodshot eyes wide with madness.

An ordinary person would have been terrified at the sight. Even someone courageous would surely have felt a chill. Knights were not devoid of emotion; at the very least, they should have felt disgust. But not Sinar. She calculated coolly.

'I won't catch that one.'

That was her only thought as she watched the commander flee behind the men who had gulped down the drug and charged.

"Raaagh!"

Sinar swung her leaf sword at the man rushing her, saliva and blood spilling from his mouth. As before, her sword emitted spiritual essence and severed his neck before the blade even touched him. She knew that reaching the level of a knight had not made her weigh any more.

In other words, if she let that mindless charge close in, she too could be knocked down and hurt. Of course, no such thing happened. It would not happen even if she fought with her eyes closed—and that was no figure of speech.

She sprang off the ground with a thump and soared like a butterfly. Its wingbeats were her leaf-shaped sword, which struck necks and split heads without pause.

Move only as much as necessary, at the necessary moment, and cut only what needed cutting. That was what she did. It was enough.

The soldiers who had taken Fury charged at Ragna, but not one could reach him. If she left Ragna, she could catch the fleeing commander, too.

'Is there any need?'

Sinar felt none. Nor could she leave her post. Ragna would not meekly let himself be killed if she left, but his condition was indeed critical. His shoulder and knee were problems, certainly, but unless someone treated the wound around his eye soon, he might evolve into a one-eyed man with no sense of direction.

So this was more rational and efficient. Sinar slaughtered every drugged soldier, and in the meantime, the commander escaped.

* * *

'I'm going to die.'

Since childhood, Corwin's Insight had been akin to an innate supernatural ability. After several clashes, it delivered a single conclusion.

Whatever he did, he would die. Stay here, and he would die. That was the predetermined outcome, a fixed and unchanging fate. That was the future he saw for himself. Fate, as immutable as his sword's name.

Steeped in terror, he chose flight. It was not a considered decision.

His game of moves and countermoves using foresight was utterly useless against Rem. That terrified Corwin beyond measure. Why did something that worked even on Varnas not work here?

The reason was that Rem thought of nothing until the instant before he attacked. He simply fought on instinct, finding the best course in each moment's decision. That was how he fought.

The sling whirred, tearing through the air, and no sooner had it moved than another assassin's head burst—whether they called themselves the Swamps of Montterre or the Morons of Montterre. Yet even that movement escaped his Insight.

'How is that possible?'

It was possible. Rem was merely spinning the sling, intending to launch whatever he had, stone or iron ball, at whatever target he saw. There were no calculations in his head. Every decision was spontaneous.

He chose the best course each time, without deliberation or thought. But could anyone always choose correctly in a crisis? That was impossible. Even for Rem.

When red energy swirled behind him and Red-eyes appeared in mist form, Rem was still thoughtlessly trying to split Corwin's crown. Reading the intention that became visible for only a fleeting instant, Corwin barely blocked the blade, while Red-eyes thrust a wavy-bladed dagger—a kris—at Rem's back. The curved blade carried spell-made poison.

To give the result first, Rem was not stabbed. A pale, legless wolf had suddenly appeared and caught the dagger's blade in its jaws.

"I never said I was fighting alone, either."

Rem almost muttered the words. It did not matter if he failed to choose correctly—as long as he had the ability to cover the opening.

The instant Red-eyes saw the wolf, he twisted the dagger's hilt and let go. The blade turned red and shone. He was gathering shamanic power to detonate it.

"Eat it, Cloud."

At his words, the wolf spirit Rem had summoned swallowed the glowing red dagger and darted away to one side. A bang sounded in the distance. The wolf scattered, then regained its original form. It was merely a little smaller than before.

Instead of feet, the wolf had something like clouds, which carried it along as though flying. The sight of it swallowing a dagger filled with spell-made poison was impossible to ignore. For a brief moment, both Corwin and Red-eyes were distracted.

Rem loosed the sling in his left hand, raised his right foot and stamped down with its sole, then brought his axe down vertically. The sling shot pierced the skull of an assassin throwing a net from behind, while his foot crushed the collarbone of another approaching beneath the ground.

The axe targeted Red-eyes. Broken down into separate movements, its swing had begun last, yet its edge was already at Red-eyes's head while Rem was firing the sling and stamping down. Everything happened in an instant, and it was a bold sequence of moves.

Had Corwin, who was holding his ground behind Rem, thrust his sword at that moment, it looked as though he would have landed a hit somewhere. That was how boldly Rem had exposed his back. Of course, he would have blocked the thrust, too. The wolf called Cloud was far away, but he could simply pull his descending axe back to defend.

He had already been fighting that way for a while. Whenever he cornered one, the other helped, making it a nuisance to focus on beating either of them down.

But instead of thrusting, the man behind him bolted.

"I'll take the front!"

He even added one last dirty trick, pretending to attack before fleeing. His innate foresight had given him a talent for modifying intimidation, and Corwin put it to use. He raised his presence as though about to charge straight in. It felt utterly real.

He seemed to have completely forgotten his anger over all those remarks about fucking Ghouls. But Rem knew it was a bluff. He was already familiar with that trick, having seen it countless times while sparring with Encrid.

'A fake, huh?'

His judgment was made, and his hand did not stop. The axe dropped straight toward Red-eyes.

Red-eyes blocked with two krises he had drawn before anyone noticed. The two wavy daggers and the axe paused in midair as though testing each other's strength, but the daggers were immediately driven downward.

CLANG! SCREECH!

Rem put more strength into the stroke and dragged his axe down. With a metallic clatter, it shattered one dagger's blade, shifting slightly off course into a diagonal cut.

"Aaagh!"

The axe caught Red-eyes's ear and sliced it off. He immediately turned to mist, but that trick was useless against an ancestral weapon.

Ancestral weapons were made by pouring shamanic power into them to begin with. Rem's axe had even served for a time as a vessel for his sealed spells. It was, quite literally, a mass of shamanic power. Trying to use spells against it was a mistake.

"Wow, that bastard really..."

Even amid all this, Rem tried to keep track of the fleeing man's presence, but there was nothing he could do. Even he had not expected the man to run away quite so fast. All that attention and caution had been wasted. Well, there was no helping it now that he was gone.

With that thought, Rem looked back at Red-eyes.

"Even with a favorable matchup, you'd get the same result."

He had roughly identified the source of his opponent's power and spoken after weighing their shamanic advantages and disadvantages. But Red-eyes had barely attained the stature of a knight by awakening and appeasing a sealed ancient soul. He did not understand the shamanic principles Rem meant.

'Corwin, you son of a bitch.'

Instead, after watching Corwin flee, he concluded that this situation was as fucked as a Ghoul's dick. A split-second decision would determine whether he lived or died.

'Leave it to me.'

The voice that had been tempting him all this time sounded again. It was the whisper of the sealed ancient soul. Normally, he would never have listened.

The ancient soul was a kind of vampire, and it desired only one thing. Blood, blood, blood, and more blood. It was a creature maddened by gluttony. But what if doing nothing would get him killed anyway?

"He told me never to do this."

Varnas had forbidden it, but Red-eyes felt he had no choice. He pledged part of his soul to the ancient vampire. Still, he did not intend to give in without a fight, and made one last desperate attempt to resist.

He tried to form a contract that would surrender only part of his soul and safeguard the rest. It was an arrogant notion. He had believed that one day he would subjugate this vampire's soul, find other ancient souls, and become a soul knight unlike any before him.

"This body is mine now."

The ancient vampire's Will seized control of the body in an instant. The briefest opening had been enough.

"The mortal world."

The vampire spoke. Rem picked at his ear. He had never heard that language before. Naturally—the language spoken in the vampire's time was markedly different from the one used now.

Was that a problem? It made no difference.

The vampire's eyes radiated red light, uncanny and alluring. He looked straight at Rem and spoke.

"Come and bow your head. This is the proper height for your eyes before mine..."

THWACK! CRACK!

"What are you babbling about?"

The vampire realized his charm spell had failed. He also realized that, for an instant, he had lost sight of the axe this ignorant bastard had swung. That axe had just split his head.

Blood vessels tangled between the vertically divided halves of his skull, knitting them back into one. The sight alone was nauseating. Blood and vessels writhed together, the entire process of regeneration laid bare.

"You wretch!"

The vampire flared with anger before his head had even finished joining back together.

"How many pieces can you handle?"

Rem spoke dispassionately, swinging his axe again to split the vampire's head.

THWACK!

Only after the axe had passed did the vampire raise an arm. His reaction was far too late.

With all his abilities at his disposal, the ancient vampire was indeed a match for a knight. But he had only just seized the body. He had not had enough time to control it properly. He needed time to adjust.

Of course, even if he had adjusted, Rem would not have lost. The gap between them was that great.

The axe danced, and the vampire could speak no more. Naturally—the next stroke smashed his tongue and fangs. The mass, cut into dozens of pieces, twitched, then vanished in a puff of gray smoke.

Rem merely flicked his axe through the air before him and said, "Got something unholy on it."

At least his axe did not seem to mind. That was a relief.

His gaze turned in the direction the other man had fled. One had escaped, but he had done his job, hadn't he? Rem set off. It was time to chase the fugitive or rejoin the Captain.