Ecstasy surged from the speed of the gallop. His brain felt electrified. For a moment he forgot everything and sank into it.
"Fun."
After cutting down the first one and passing through, Odd-Eye executed a maneuver no ordinary rider would even dare attempt—and did it as if nothing.
He met the wind with his left wing, used that force to cant his body and twist right. At the same time, he struck the ground with his left hind hoof.
Every motion was as deft as Rem throwing an axe.
Enkrid shifted his center of gravity to match Odd-Eye's movements. Their hands and feet fit snugly as one. Isn't a mount only complete when the rider helps?
Thus the two became of one mind and changed direction. If the first strike was a blade that sliced the tail end, this time it was a spearhead cleaving the enemy's center.
Dawn in his right hand, Penna in his left. It had been a while since he'd gripped twin blades.
The monster pack gaped their maws. Were they shouting something?
He couldn't hear it. Enkrid charged. The muscles of both forearms twitched and swelled. Odd-Eye's pace was fast even for a knight. If he relaxed even a little, both arms would snap like rotten branches.
"That's part of why it's delightful."
With stretched, high-speed thought he gathered the surrounding information. He slipped straight into the monsters. The swords in both hands cut, slashed, ripped, and burst everything that caught on them.
***
Fweeeet.
Rem whistled. Fights like that were hard to come by, even to witness.
"Wings sprouted?"
Lawford, seeing Odd-Eye, exclaimed. The others were similarly surprised, but the surprise was brief.
After that came the scene of Enkrid fighting as one with his mount.
Ragna opened his sleepy eyes. Audin, as always, wore a faint smile and called upon the Lord.
"Bless, and bless again."
Teresa murmured with a lilt. She recalled the knight of God spoken of in the holy war.
When the army of demons barred the way, there was a knight who rode the horse given by God and charged.
Bang! Boom!
Each time a report burst, black blood and "centaur pieces" flew into the sky.
With every stride Enkrid took—no, wherever Odd-Eye tore through—air split and circular shockwaves popped.
Though they stood a fair distance away, the rip-rip of sundered air thumped in their ears in succession.
"He's exhilarated."
Temares said.
The distance was too great to read his mind, but at this level you could tell just by looking.
"Looks head-spinning to me."
Pel muttered. He put himself in Enkrid's place. Could you move properly at that speed? To swing, thrust, and break through like that—what would you need?
"Your instantaneous judgment has to be fast."
And the body must be sturdy.
On top of that, you'd have to mobilize all five senses to receive and recognize the surrounding information in real time.
"High-speed cognition."
Pel had that too. He was a knight as well. Only, if told to do it like Enkrid—
"…Only effort is the answer."
Pel muttered. Without realizing it, his honest insides popped out. Lawford too found the same scene striking. His view differed from Pel's. He didn't put himself in Enkrid's place. Instead, he drew the situation as if looking down from above.
"If you don't need to strike a weak point, you just split the place that forms the core."
If you have enough force, that works. From a strategic standpoint, yes.
"No, without being that extreme, you can still burrow into the proper spot."
Enkrid broke through the very center of the centaur pack and struck the head of the largest centaur at the front. The thing resisted. It drew out something long and swung it.
Too far to see clearly, but the result was visible. Enkrid brushed past—and another monster burst.
"If that weren't an engraved weapon, the sword wouldn't have endured."
So Lawford judged.
You'd feel that much rebound when you swung. It's natural if you swing a sword while sprinting like that. Even with a lance charge, if the point of impact wavers, it's common for the attacker's arm to break or ribs to crack. Of course, for a knight, whose strength has left humanity behind, the situation differs.
"As expected, because he's kept his body trained."
Audin murmured.
Would Audin fail to see what Lawford saw? He felt satisfied at having passed on what he had to Enkrid.
"From Heart of Beast to now—it's been long."
At that, Rem folded his arms and added words. He, too, felt a pride akin to that of the bear beastmen—and at the same time judged that he, more than anyone, had contributed most to the Captain's skill.
"If he couldn't keep his focus, he would've been unhorsed."
Ragna put in a word as well. He toyed with his sword's grip as he spoke.
Their eyes didn't meet, but the momentum of the three changed. Their fighting spirits traded back and forth.
"All three insist their own claim is right. Each plans to smack the other two if they get cheeky. The three are of one mind."
The Dragonkin added commentary. Those words only made the three's momentum more ferocious.
"What's of one mind? Hm?"
"Comparing you two and me is ill-mannered. Learn manners too, Dragonkin."
"Lizard-brother, the Lord wishes to converse with you."
The Dragonkin nodded. He only said, "Indeed." He had no belligerence. No jealousy. His race rarely showed emotion.
Thus he simply accepted, matter-of-factly, the killing intent the three sent his way.
There were no words from Luagarne, who had been restraining him. She only rolled her eyes again and again. Whether they fought or not, now was the time to take Enkrid's performance into her eyes. For her, nothing else mattered now.
"Indeed."
Shinar added only a small murmur of admiration. Without Enkrid, she rarely tossed jokes. Naturally, whether the three fought or not, she had no interest. Same with what the Dragonkin said. Wasn't now the time to take it in? So it was that one Frog and one fairy became spectators.
Dunbakel was among those most astonished by the wings. She had been driven from the village where she lived, but spent her childhood in the world of the beastmen.
"When a monster's blood is mixed, it becomes a beastman."
And if the hand of God touches it, it becomes a divine beast.
"Child of Creamhalt."
Creamhalt is the god of the beastmen. Symbol of struggle and of propagation, who helps all things to revive.
Thus some human or other-race scholars call Creamhalt a god of spring, but to beastmen he is the only god, so such words are meaningless.
He watches the four seasons; the sky and the earth, the rising sun and the moon that lights the night—these are all other faces of Creamhalt.
A divine beast is a child that inherits the divinity Creamhalt scattered. That was beastman common sense as she knew it. And a divine beast is legend. So this was her first time seeing one with her own eyes.
"A horse that flies the sky—you've inherited Pegasus's blood."
The Dragonkin, looking at the three who in the end did not draw their weapons, spoke. Having lived cut off from the present, it was no different from having leapt straight over from the past.
A being that appears on the continent only in legend was not so unfamiliar to the Dragonkin.
He'd even kept company with one once.
Of course, seeing wings sprout all of a sudden was a first even for him. A normal Pegasus would have borne wings since youth.
With bang-bang-like reports, the centaur pack was all shredded and blown apart, and it didn't take that long before the fight was over.
In the middle, one peeled out of the pack to flee, but Odd-Eye, in mid-run, sprang—and half flew through the sky.
Catching the wind on his wings in midair, he showed something like a glide. He flashed up and then dove from above to below.
Enkrid, from the air, drove down and cut the last remaining centaur's head on the diagonal.
Left alone, they were ones that would have rampaged across this stretch of land like a festering wound.
In a way, though not quite natural enemies, they were a tricky foe for the party to take here and now—but a single horse and a single knight cleared them.
Odd-Eye folded his wings and, with Enkrid riding him, returned. Pinkish steam rose from Odd-Eye's back when he got back. From the heat pouring off his body, sweat and blood evaporated. Enkrid was similar. He too sent up steam from his body and said,
"Too fast."
And then added,
"That's how fun it was."
It was a sense of speed hard to experience in a human body. Frankly, even with the body of a decent knight it would be a strain.
He'd somehow managed to swing his swords.
Enkrid repeated to himself inside.
"How did I pull that off?"
Half-drunk on it, he "just" did it. Naturally, it was the time of experience and training stacked before that made it possible. He knew that well enough.
Prrrrk.
Odd-Eye shook himself left and right. It sounded like "get down." Enkrid tapped Odd-Eye's head with his left hand, set his hand on his back, and slid off to the side as if rolling.
His thighs quivered. He'd braced too hard to keep from slipping. He'd endured because he'd kept his body trained till now.
"Otherwise I would've fallen long ago."
Frrrruff.
Odd-Eye's excitement had not subsided. He had, because of the hump that had formed on his back, endured pain all this time. A wild horse who overcame the blood of monsters felt release.
The world seemed entirely his, and he brimmed with enough strength to do anything. A clogged channel burst open, a snarled knot came loose.
"Run more?"
Before the Dragonkin even spoke, Enkrid read that heart. Their communion had been deep before, but now it felt as if their hearts simply connected.
Odd-Eye looked at Enkrid. Their eyes met—one red, one blue.
"Do as you please. I won't stop you."
Enkrid did not treat Odd-Eye as a beast. This horse was a friend and a member of the Order. Odd-Eye slammed the ground as if delighted.
With popping reports, he tore off to one side. Building speed as he ran, he became a single line and cut the horizon. Buoyed by the speed of the winged horse running beneath the sunlit sky, he took to the air.
Flap—the sound seemed to reach them. In truth, he had already opened a distance where they could no longer hear.
Odd-Eye flew up into the sky. Enkrid too, riding up there earlier, had for a moment experienced hovering in the air, and it was a wondrous sight indeed. Odd-Eye had already become a dot and vanished from view.
"Amusing."
Rem ended the situation in a single word.
Temares and Dunbakel yammered at Enkrid about how he was Creamhalt's child, how he was blessed, how that was Pegasus. Enkrid answered plainly.
"Odd-Eye is Odd-Eye."
The Dragonkin found this man even more interesting.
"Is it all right to let him disappear like that?"
"I think he'll come back, but if that's what Odd-Eye wants."
He wouldn't stop him. This applied to everyone. An answer just as striking as ever.
An ordinary human would not act with that sincerity. The Dragonkin knew that too.
"You're saying now that even if I bugger off to the West you won't come looking again."
Ragna said.
"And you—go on back to Zaun, bury your face in your mommy's chest, and have a cry."
Naturally, Rem didn't back down and shot back.
"You might as well return to the Red Cloak Order, no? Since we're headed South anyway."
He must have learned by watching those two.
Pel picked a fight with Lawford. Lawford stroked his mount's mane and answered,
"Words of a yokel who herds sheep on the wilds—I can barely hear you."
"…Yokel? Who, me?"
Once Pel had bested Lawford with words. Now Lawford held the edge. Situations change at any time.
The air among them quietly heated up. If you wanted a reason—
"Showed me something fun, Enki."
Luagarne's murmur was the answer. The fight Enkrid had shown had heated their blood. The only ones still calm were the Dragonkin, the fairy, and the Frog.
The party moved on. Though they hurled savage words, they did not trade blows.
"Let's go."
The brief happening was over. Monsters and the like—if you travel this land, running into them easily is only natural.
It was only in this area that such things felt rare, thanks to the Border Guard's Safe Road.
A day passed, and dark clouds began to gather overhead. Odd-Eye did not return, and whether because of something Enkrid had shown, or because it was simply their nature, everyone's blood had yet to cool.
As if to speak for that still-hot blood, Dunbakel said,
"If only monsters would come pouring out from somewhere."
Compared to the East, the continent was peaceful. All the more so, the Border Guard's influence had reduced both monsters and bandits.
Whether a god had granted her wish—
"In the West they say words take root."
Rem, who'd been trading barbs with Ragna since morning and felt his energy deflate, picked up her words. He too was bored.
"Why do words take root?"
Dunbakel asked back.
"It's a saying, you stupid beastman."
Rem drew his axe. Ahead, a pack of monsters came barreling toward them. What formed the core?
Human-faced dogs. Between them he saw a pack of wolf beastmen—no, these were not ordinary beastmen.
"They're big."
Ragna dismounted as he spoke. He toyed for a moment with the thought of sending his mount in like Odd-Eye in a charge—but that was a death sentence for the horse. So he wouldn't.
"Not beastmen but monsters. Dire wolves."
Luagarne said. She had much experience facing monsters and beastmen alike. The Dragonkin did not step into the fight, became a spectator, and stopped. For whatever reason, Enkrid stopped beside him.
"Fiancé. You look deep in thought."
Thanks to Odd-Eye's sudden flight, he and Shinar were sharing a single mount, with Shinar in front.
Seated before him, Shinar felt Enkrid's deliberation. She was a fairy—in sensitivity, likely the keenest of her race.
"That sword."
As the onrushing monsters were mere background, she spared them no thought.
Those with heated blood would of their own accord go racing out to greet them.
Enkrid, looking at Shinar's right hip, said,
"How long have you used it?"
Shinar stroked her scabbard. To her, a sword was a close friend. It had never once betrayed her, and never would.
"Over four hundred years."
Shinar, recalling the day she first received the sword, realized she'd misspoken.
"Not four hundred—forty years."
Saying it had been over forty years was no lie. She'd said it was "over forty."
Four hundred forty, or fifty—there was no lie in saying it was over forty.
Enkrid let Shinar's slip go in one ear and out the other.
"Communion."
He sank into a single thought. Communion with Odd-Eye had given him a puzzle. Enkrid set his hand on Dawn's grip.
An engraved weapon is part of a knight. And so, though it is lifeless metal, they commune.
"It has been over forty years, Fiancé. I correct my words. Forget what I said before."
At his side, Shinar asserted again.