A gryphon's wings are a shield.
"With a mediocre arrow you can't pierce them. And because the wingbeats don't rest, you can't find a gap either."
This was the testimony of a member of the Red Cloak Order of Knights.
"A javelin thrown with at least quasi-knight-level strength—that's why we set that as the minimum condition."
At Cypress's one line, the Red Cloak Order did their jobs instead of showing emotion. They said what was needed. They faithfully answered what Enkrid asked.
"No soldiers died because they got hooked by those bastards. Though there were some whose heads got cracked by the stones they dropped."
This was a soldier's answer.
He tracked the traces of dead soldiers and grasped the unfavorable points they had paid so far. He drew the course of the fight, imagined it, and inferred it. It was prediction, not review.
"Excellent."
Luagarne showed satisfaction. Think and move before you fight—that was what Luagarne emphasized.
Except for the time he spent eating, sleeping, and training, Enkrid asked and asked without end.
Sleep was enough to serve as rest, so in the remaining time he wore out his feet, canvassing the inside of the camp.
It goes without saying that knowing even some small thing is more advantageous than fighting knowing nothing.
That's why you collect and gather information before the battle starts.
"Uh, I've never seen them just whoosh—go shooting off. They flap and circle above. Do they ever just stop in place? Yes, uh, they did. They keep circling over your head and keep throwing things."
Even a soldier without a gift of gab was fine. Enkrid also took in the lessons of the Mad Order of Knights—Rem included—cleanly and well.
Compared to back then, the words of a soldier whose talk was a bit clumsy were like a well-written primer.
"Why does this feel weirdly unpleasant."
Rem, who was watching, muttered at his side, and Enkrid looked at Temares and shook his head. The Dragonkin, who had just been about to speak Enkrid's insides aloud, shut his mouth.
'They're not on the agile side.'
If they were, not only this battlefield—they'd have gone around and harassed the rear long ago.
'Even just cutting the supply line…'
Just by periodically raiding the supply line a day's ride by horse from here, the Southern Front would be finished.
Even a knight cannot fight without eating.
'They aren't creatures that fly long distances.'
Why go around the obvious easy road? There is only one reason. Because they can't.
There were many who had seen the gryphons shoot upward when arrows or javelins were thrown.
He gathered the information and drew the picture in his head. He added lines to the picture and added color, and it was distinctly clearer than before.
In the end, the help of the Red Cloak Order of Knights was great. After hearing the several attempts the Order had made to take down gryphons, he understood.
'They're adept at vertical movement, and their wings are a means of defense in themselves. Left and right aren't empty. If you go underneath, you have to break through a lion's claws.'
Some in the Red Cloak Order saw their bellies as a weak point and threw javelins, and the gryphons knocked them away with their claws.
They weren't fools either. Even if the Mad Order had not come, they would have found some way to break through.
"If javelins didn't work, we considered airdropping a trebuchet and riding it ourselves to catch them."
No, were they fools?
That was something a knight said. It was one thing to launch your body on a trebuchet, but how were you planning to handle the landing?
"I thought if I did a breakfall somehow it would work out."
You can't know the result without trying it—Enkrid liked that line very much. But there are also times when the result is so obvious it's like grabbing heated iron and getting your hand burned. Of course, if you have to grab heated iron—if you must no matter what—then you do it, but he judged that was not a saying to apply to this matter.
"I told you several times—if you fall, you die."
This was something Aurelia said. Naturally, it meant he hadn't gotten permission from the Order's leadership, Aurelia included.
As always, Enkrid did his utmost not to stop in today.
Everything was part of that. It was the conclusion he drew with the information he had gotten that way. This was not a fight to drag out.
'If the enemy is even a little disadvantaged, they'll pull back.'
Then time drags. With a single fight, crush the enemy's morale and make it so they don't even think of using gryphons. That was Enkrid's goal.
If the fight drags on—
"The guy right next to me got skewered by an icicle spear and died, but, well, this is a battlefield. Their scrolls aren't just of one kind."
More of our own—soldiers, people—would die than now. A soldier who goes to a battlefield dies. It's obvious. Not everyone can live. Yes, it's an all-too-obvious principle—but if you can avoid it, isn't it only right to strive to do so?
The eyes of the speaking soldier kept trembling. Enkrid knew that too. He did not take the soldier's sacrifice as a matter of course.
The day before the gryphons lifted, Cypress came over amid the evening glow.
"Do you know what the best stratagem for us to win was?"
"Make every soldier bait and strike the enemy's main force."
Instead of the Order of Knights volunteering to be the army's shield, they would be the spearpoint and charge.
Fight while watching soldiers die to gryphons.
It was the second worst to meet while avoiding the worst. The worst was to hold on as is and greet the enemy exhausted.
Enkrid glimpsed the enemy's intent.
Sap their strength with gryphons, then pour in soldiers to drain them again, and then fight. Use the soldiers' blood to drain the knights' strength. A simple strategy, but efficient.
"A way of fighting with no romance."
When he pierced through and said it—
"I think so too. Petty little men."
Cypress let out a hearty laugh.
***
He launched himself off Odd-Eye. The wind tore his cheeks. The cloak slapped onto his back and reduced air resistance.
'Explode.'
Shake out the sword that pours out everything he has.
His Will became a current of water and pushed Will. Just before he swung the sword, Enkrid snatched it and arrested it.
'Waiting.'
Watching Edin Molsen, he learned waiting and compression. It was close to revisiting what he already knew, but learned was learned. On the way here, he turned that knack over and over, and grasped it. Now was when he needed it.
As he dropped from Odd-Eye, he turned half a turn. He gathered the rotational force and swung the sword. When? He caught the very moment it met the enemy's spearhead.
Because the wind was fierce, it was hard to secure his view; beyond the slitted eyes he saw the spearhead suddenly shoot up.
Enkrid detonated the compressed force. Will moved following his Will. The blow, loaded with falling force and weight, smacked the spearhead.
Bang!
With a thunderclap, the shaft sprang aside.
Time stretched and he saw the other's face. Inside the helm that covered brow and facial line, the emotion in the wide eyes was bewilderment.
The man let go of the spear. It was an instantaneous judgment. If he held on, his grip would burst or his arm muscles would twist. He abandoned one weapon. Instead, with the other hand he thrust the sword.
Enkrid, having clubbed the spearhead with Dawn, used that force to spin his whole body once.
From the body rotating in midair, Dawn's blade leapt out, shedding blue light. Laden with rotational force, Dawn struck the other's blade.
Bang!
The second thunderclap. At the same time, Simlak's sword split into nine pieces and whipped like a lash.
Naturally, his weapons were engraved weapons as well. Spear, sword, even axe—his Will dwelt in all three.
On the spear was inscribed a spell that returned to its owner even if thrown; in the axe was packed a flame that seared the wound the moment it cut. Lastly, the sword's name was Segmentation.
If the owner wished, it was a blade that divided its body into pieces and, like a snake, seized anywhere and ripped and smashed.
'I've won!'
He'd been startled by the audacity of jumping off the horse, but in the end it was his victory. Simlak believed so.
As the blade Enkrid had clubbed with Dawn transformed and tried to coil around his leg, Enkrid drew and bit down with Penna.
It was a blade that had once broken in two and had been hammered back together in flame by a fairy smith.
"Uhp."
He vividly recalled the scene of that emotionless fairy smith exclaiming in shock at the broken Penna.
Impurities wedged themselves into the stretched-out thinking. Idle thoughts. He let them go and discarded them, then with the blade that that fairy smith had tempered with total focus, he nullified the enemy's attack.
Takagagak!
Sparks scattered savagely. Though not an engraved weapon, Penna was a treasure of the fairy race. It had broken once, but breaking it again would not be easy. Thus Enkrid's foot touched the gryphon's back. It was after two sword strikes and one defense.
"Crazy!"
Simlak's feet were fixed in the saddle. Therefore he could not stand. He twisted his waist and looked at Enkrid.
"Thanks for the compliment."
With those words, Dawn split his helm. Even as he spoke, his hands and feet did not stop, so Simlak's "crazy," Enkrid's reply, and the blade splitting his head looked like they happened at the same time.
Thunk, Crack.
Dawn's blue-white blade split helm and head. Of the three weapons Simlak had, he could not even use the axe. A dead man cannot swing a weapon.
Skreeech!
When the weight increased, the gryphon let out a shriek. As Enkrid reclaimed the sword that had split the head, the crazed gryphon shook its body left and right.
It was a worse situation than keeping balance on a rocking ship. As Enkrid bent his knees, lowered his posture, and barely tried to balance, another Gryphon Rider rushed in from the side.
"Thanks for coming."
Keeping his knees bent, Enkrid gathered Will in his feet, used the gryphon's spine as ground, and stomped to leap. Moving like that, he didn't forget to recover Penna. For the moment, Penna had the enemy's sword entangled in it, so it looked like a mace tightly wound with some steel thorn, but he had no need to swing the mace that Penna had become right now.
Thump, Crack.
Gwek.
The gryphon underfoot stopped flapping and screamed. Its spine was broken—what remained for it was only a fall. Enkrid shifted straight onto the other Gryphon Rider.
It was a mistake to come at him meaning to peck him with the beak, deciding to target him.
"Dammit!"
The soldier hastily twisted his waist, drew a short sword, and thrust. Enkrid was a knight. He could pull off feats that looked impossible to ordinary people.
He sheathed Dawn and pinched the short sword with two fingers. The opponent was just a soldier who, if things went wrong, was resolved to become a gryphon's emergency rations—he was no knight.
"This is a battlefield. Don't hold a grudge."
Saying so, Enkrid shoved the sword he held between his fingers aside, and with one hand he took the soldier's neck and snapped it. To the eye, it wasn't a process of taking and snapping—it just looked like he tapped and passed by.
Crack.
His neck went limp, and pink froth flowed from nose and mouth. Drops of blood dragged through the froth, but the wind scattered it all.
The third one, after the second, wasn't that far either.
That would be so on the ground. But this was in the sky. Regardless of distance, without considerable daring, it was hard to just bound across. It was a height that prodded humankind's primal fear.
In this respect, Enkrid already had a technique he had experienced and mastered several times, so he felt no fear.
'Heart of a Beast.'
It was the art that had kept him from closing his eyes when he saw a flying sword tip—now it made him fly like a madman in the sky.
Enkrid jumped again. This time it was farther than before.
Crunch, Pop!
Using the gryphon's back as a springboard and kicking hard, this time its backbone didn't just break—its back hide burst.
Thanks to the dead gryphon under his feet, Enkrid shot like an arrow and double-rode with the third rider. The knack of twisting his body in midair to catch balance as he landed hardly looked human. Particularly to the enemy, it would have looked even more inhuman.
A knight is a calamity. The meaning of those words had cause to drive into their hearts.
"Got a seat? Even if not, it can't be helped. I'm already on."
"Wha—wha—huh? Eh?"
The soldier was so flustered he couldn't string words together. Enkrid clenched a fist and chopped near the crown of his head.
Tong!
The shock transmitted inside the helm turned the soldier's brain to mush. His pupils spun, and blood-tears streamed within, but the wind snatched them away.
Enkrid sought the next target. Then a lump of flame flew at his eyes.
Fwoosh.
They judged it better to throw a scroll bundle than to close in.
'A spell has a flow.'
A spell cast directly by a mage can change in real time, but a scroll cannot.
For Enkrid, cutting magic embodied by scrolls was easier.
He gripped the hilt of Dawn, which was in the scabbard, and loaded it with Will. He drew the sword, scored a vertical line, and put it back. Every motion was nothing if not swift.
Hooang!
Wind rose following the cut. The fireball split in two before Enkrid and veered to his left and right, exploding a while later.
Boom, Boom.
Between the two sounds, the reaper with blue eyes chased the next target.
"Shit, run!"
Someone shouted. They weren't knights. There was no way they would obey because someone said so. Even so, their hearts connected.
All of them must have decided to flee, because they yanked hard on the reins connected to the gryphon's mouth.
A few failed to control them. The gryphon, as if bothered by the thing on its back, flapped and then canted its body to the side.
"Aaaaagh, no!"
One of the soldier's feet slipped from the stirrup. Dangling in midair, the soldier's face came before the gryphon's beak.
Without hesitation the gryphon pecked the man's head. Crunch! The wind snatched and scattered brain, blood, flesh, and bone fragments. The blood and bits of flesh that the wind didn't take went into the gryphon's mouth.
Enkrid measured the distance and jumped again.
This time he picked a spot too far. It didn't seem he could possibly reach. The soldier who had tugged the reins felt relief.
That crazy bastard will fall and die now.
The soldier's hope was not fulfilled.
Flutter-r-r-r!
Behind Enkrid, the dark-green cloak stretched and caught the wind. He flew, gliding. In that way, he faced the next Gryphon Rider.
"Nice to meet you. I won't ask your name."
The one line he gave them was mourning for a soldier dragged into a fight. His knee crushed the soldier's face.
Thud.
A crushed eyeball went inward and then popped out. Enkrid swung Penna, now a clanking mace, at the gryphon's neck. Crack-crunch, torn and scratched and clumped with flesh, the monster's neck was severed in a dirty shape, and it fell. As Enkrid's body pitched, he shouted.
"Now!"
Fwaak.
The winged horse that shed blue vapor—Pegasus—had come under him before he knew it.
Enkrid jumped from atop the dead gryphon's body and sat onto Odd-Eye. Thump, it was a fall with weight, but Odd-Eye bore it easily. There were still more gryphons left. He did not intend to leave a single one. It was with that resolve that he had risen into the sky.