Chapter 183 - A Horse’s Kick Can Kill You

The Third evaded the horse’s attack by a hair’s breadth and rolled backward across the ground.

The force was terrifying. Had he reacted even a little slower, the enraged horse’s forehooves would have crushed his shoulder.

It was too soon to breathe a sigh of relief. Displeased that its decisive blow had missed, the lion horse scraped the ground and immediately gave chase.

‘Black Shadow energy arts!’

Pitch-black energy billowed from the Third’s entire body. His Black Shadow energy arts hid him behind a curtain of darkness, but the lion horse’s mane stirred strangely and pinpointed his position yet again.

Belatedly realizing what that mane could do, the Third’s eyes widened.

‘It reads the wind with its hair! What an ability. A fine steed like this was rare even in the Kingdom’s day...!’

There was no helping it. He had wanted to subdue the horse with as little injury as possible, since he needed to use it.

The Third pulled throwing knives from inside his clothes. As he poured energy into them, pitch-black power surged from their blades, which melted into the darkness in an instant.

In the dim street, the Third scattered the invisible knives.

“You’re just a beast!”

A stab would quiet it down. Blades shimmering in the darkness flew toward horse and rider. Even someone protected by bullet-repelling energy would not escape unharmed. A beast that could use nothing but its innate strength would howl in pain.

But...

TING.

The knives bounced off with an anticlimactic sound. The Third’s eyes went wide.

In the blink of an eye, tough, sturdy cloth armor had enveloped them. Every vital spot was covered, on rider and horse alike.

That much was possible. The Third knew it well. The Military State had packets, after all.

But something else had startled him.

‘Not even... a scratch on the cloth? From knives infused with energy?’

Had the Third known who he was facing, he might have understood.

The Weaver, Sephier Bakia: the third head of Seamless Heavenly Garments, the Military State’s foremost holding company, which had even collaborated in developing military armaments.

The Military State’s finest alchemist and tailor, in name and in fact.

To call clothes she had made with no expense spared mere cloth garments would insult all the accomplishments built up under the name Seamless Heavenly Garments.

But the Third knew none of that, so it was only natural that he felt cheated.

Peto shrugged.

“The president provides good employee benefits.”

With that, a face covering closer to a mask spread over Peto’s face. Clothing that enclosed the entire body perfectly—something only a packet could achieve.

Though he wore cloth armor, Peto looked every bit a knight of old reborn.

Holding a riding whip instead of a lance, he pointed it at the Third and declared,

“Peto Tinhart of Skevali. Here I come... Ah, shit! Old habits! This is why I shouldn’t pick up weapons!”

Shuddering at the habit ingrained in him during his years as a squire, Peto extended his whip. It came down on the Third as he retreated from the horse.

This was why knights had once ruled the world. Mounted on creatures far faster and stronger than humans, they wielded their might from on high, incarnations of violence.

Only another knight could stop a knight clad in expensive armor and protected by energy arts.

“Ghh...!”

Pushing his concealment arts to their utmost, the Third managed to dodge several more times, but his opponent was a horse. Even carrying a human on its back, the lion horse dug its hooves into the concrete and twisted its heavy body as though it had forgotten the very concept of inertia.

The whip-wielding rider made slipping past its flank a dangerous proposition. Not because the whip itself was frightening, but because getting caught for even an instant could mean being trampled beneath those hooves.

“If, if it weren’t for that horse...!”

He had made the mistake of failing to gauge his opponent’s skill—or, more precisely, the capabilities of his equipment.

But could he be blamed? Since the knights’ downfall, fine steeds had all but vanished from the Military State, and packets revealed nothing until they were inserted.

And on top of that...

‘Who would expect a horse to put on barding with a packet...! Without that armor, a mere beast would be nothing!’

Perhaps those stray thoughts distracted him. Before the Third could catch himself, the lion horse was upon him.

Grinning as though it finally had him, the lion horse rammed the Third with its head and shoulder.

“Ghh...!”

He jumped backward to bleed off the force, but the impact still engulfed him, twisting his entire body like laundry being wrung out. If he hadn’t covered himself in energy, his bones would have broken.

Even as he flew, the Third deftly unfastened his cloak and wrapped it around the horse’s head. While the startled animal paused, he skillfully sprang up onto another streetlamp.

His quarry now out of reach, Peto looked up in frustration. The streetlamp was quite tall. His whip could reach it, but it would hardly do any damage.

Having secured his safety, the Third gritted his teeth and retorted,

“Just you wait. Next time, I’ll come when you’re unprepared.”

It was a grave warning by the Shadow’s standards, but Peto, who had been dragged into this fight in the first place, found it utterly absurd.

“Sorry, but I didn’t exactly come prepared for a fight this time, either. My whole life has been one unexpected incident after another.”

“Like the baby your wife wound up having?”

Someone’s voice rang out from the dim street.

* * *

Busy, busy.

I had contacted the Shelter and told them to collect their children, then sent an errand runner to tell the Family to prepare for a fight. Those two had some fighting strength of their own, so they wouldn’t go down easily.

Sigh. Playing babysitter, playing lookout like a meerkat. Where else would you find such a friendly neighbor, such a good person to know? I wished the Military State would hurry up and award me a medal for civilian bravery.

Anyway, that was taken care of. All that remained was the Market, and I had a bad feeling about them. Unlike the Family and the Shelter, they had plenty of openings to slip through.

If they wanted to fight the transport union, that was none of my business. But the Shadow was another matter.

All right. Time to look in on the Market. Having more or less sorted out the other places, I drove the motor carriage toward it.

“All that running around with the captain paid off.”

Touring the Military State with the captain had certainly been worthwhile. I hadn’t managed to read the minds of the officer-level Penumbras, but at least I could identify their targets through the memories of messengers and contacts.

As expected, their targets were the Market, the Shelter, and the Family: organizations that had established and maintained their own power bases in the Military State’s backstreets.

Unwilling to share the pie with them, the Shadow intended to use the discontent accumulated in the backstreets as gunpowder and blow everything up at once.

Unfortunately for them, when I see a pile of gunpowder, my first instinct is to put a match to it. I had lit the fuse that was supposed to burn slowly and set it off ahead of time.

And this was the result. Not a fight orchestrated by the Shadow, but genuine chaos, desire clashing with desire.

If you’re going to fight, go all out. Don’t dance to somebody else’s tune.

I was muttering that to myself on my way to the Market when it happened.

There was a commotion up ahead. I craned my neck to look and found my old senior Peto fighting a Penumbra on horseback.

Peto, who had given me such heartfelt advice back at the host bar... It might have carried more weight if he hadn’t been kicked out for falling for a widow whose husband had died away from home.

Anyway, he was fighting well. He acted as though he had PTSD whenever knights and squires came up, but all that experience brawling over women clearly hadn’t gone to waste.

Actually, the horse was doing more of the fighting than he was, but still. Even with it bucking and charging, he stayed mounted and kept his sights on his opponent.

In numbers alone, it was two against one, and Peto had the advantage in equipment, too. On top of that, he was mounted. Not just on any horse, either, but an armored one.

Sure enough, the horse rammed the Penumbra with its shoulder. The Penumbra jumped backward to absorb the impact, then used that momentum to spring up onto a streetlamp.

Hmm. What to do about that? Ram it with the motor carriage?

No. He’d just jump out of the way. Besides, crashing into it would hurt me. A losing proposition.

All right. Decision made. I got out of the motor carriage and approached cautiously. Then I reached out with my left hand and produced a card.

Three of diamonds. Horn bow.

I bent the card slightly with my thumb and little finger, gently cradling its body with the three fingers between them. Holding it that way, I fed in mana for alchemical transmutation.

The card grew, retaining its curve. Soft as a new shoot at first, it gradually stiffened as it grew, until it was so rigid that even drawing it would be difficult.

Unaware that I was aiming a bow at him, the Third addressed Peto.

“Just you wait. Next time, I’ll come when you’re unprepared.”

“Sorry, but I didn’t exactly come prepared for a fight this time, either. My whole life has been one unexpected incident after another.”

“Like the baby your wife wound up having?”

Oops. That slipped out.

Well, that didn’t really matter.

Why should I care how much of a stir it had caused when the widow turned up pregnant just a week after the funeral, and Peto, his morals called into question, handed in his resignation and ran?

What mattered was whether I could hit that thing. That was all.

I had transformed the bow into a card with an arrow already drawn back as far as a windlass could pull it. The moment the transmutation finished, it would regain its full elasticity and fire.

I had already zeroed it in. As long as I took the right stance, that single shot was guaranteed to hit and kill.

Really, it was more a pre-cocked crossbow than a horn bow, but it was shaped like a horn bow, at least.

“If you have no talent, you’d better prepare thoroughly.”

With my aim set, I muttered those words and completed the transmutation. For an instant, it felt as though a gigantic wall were pushing my left arm away.

TWANG.

The sound of something pulled taut.

‘An arrow? But a mere arrow can be stopped with bullet-repelling energy...’

Right. That damned bullet-repelling energy. Even an arrow drawn back with a windlass wouldn’t do much damage.

Against bullet-repelling energy, arrows and bullets were less effective than if they’d been fired underwater.

But I wasn’t aiming at your body.

I was aiming at the streetlamp.

The arrow pierced the neck of the streetlamp.

The soft alchemical steel used in the Military State’s infrastructure could withstand shaking, more or less, but it was vulnerable to sharp objects such as arrows. Broken through the middle, the streetlamp began to topple helplessly.

Bullet-repelling energy or not, Mother Earth pulled everyone down equally. Suddenly deprived of his support, the Third could not defy that law either.

And an angry horse awaited him below. As if it had been waiting for this very moment, the lion horse planted its forehooves in the ground and spun around. Its powerful hind legs took aim at the Third.

“No—!”

He hastily twisted in midair to dodge, but Peto’s whip came flying at just the right moment. Wrapped in the whip, his body stalled in the air.

The horse’s rear hooves slammed into him.

The crunch sounded more like a sculpture breaking. Struck by an impact beyond what he could withstand, the Third went flying.

Unlike an arrow, a horse’s backward kick couldn’t be stopped with bullet-repelling energy.

Off flew the Third Penumbra, his eyes rolled back in his head.

That should be one fewer of these Penumbras, or whatever they were. Yes, there were far too many of these small fry.

Having watched a man get kicked by a horse from a front-row seat, Peto muttered dazedly,

“... You little shit. It was the marriage that wasn’t planned. Don’t say things like that in front of my kid.”

“Let me meet her before you tell me that. Since we’re on the subject, shall we go visit?”

“No. Don’t come. I care about my daughter, you know...”

Its purpose fulfilled, the card slowly returned to its original form. Only the number three remained on it; the diamond shapes that had formed a vertical line down its face were gone.

As I calmly chatted away, the carriage door opened.