'Sly barbarian bastard.'
Ragna grumbled. Before flying into the sky, Enkrid had consulted with Luagarne and set a simple guideline for action.
"Do as you like, but at least one of you must never leave Crang's side."
That was an order. Which meant if someone left this position, someone else had to guard it.
Ragna had been a step slower than Rem. That barbarian bastard had vacated his post the moment the captain took off. Including the beastman, Pel and Lawford had followed after him.
All of them were faster than Ragna.
The others had cleared out even before Rem left. That part had been led by Luagarne.
She had spoken right before Enkrid mounted Odd-Eye.
"The time has come to pay a price once more, Temares."
"So I'll take that as meaning my martial strength is needed if I want to stay here."
Temares spoke while staring up at Enkrid flying through the sky.
"Rectum est!"
Luagarne even used some of the ancient tongue. It was a word meaning a correct, proper answer. Temares was a Dragonkin who had lived in the old days, so he still found the ancient tongue more familiar. He had lived since before the Empire had unified the continent's language. Understanding the ancient word, Temares nodded.
He looked like the type who would never listen no matter what you did, but he unexpectedly accepted the request easily. You could call it one of a Dragonkin's charms.
Of course, all of this was his effort to remain by the existence called Enkrid's side.
Luagarne, who had seen through this principle, persuaded the Dragonkin and shoved him into the allied camp. To be precise, she put him by Audin and Teresa's side. While they were manifesting divinity, Audin and Teresa were half defenseless.
A human was substituting for a sacred relic.
If people in the holy city of Legion had seen this, there would have been crowds weeping and praying, calling it the miracle of God. Noah, who was now the Pope of Legion, would also have his eyes round with surprise if he saw it.
It was the very reason the entire Wandering Priest Order had poured out joint prayers like that and streamed with tears.
For these reasons, only Ragna and Luagarne remained by the king's side. Luagarne, being a Frog, was busy surveying the battlefield, so in terms of the guard role Enkrid wanted, only Ragna was left.
He watched those who were fighting and also snuck a glance at the captain soaring in the sky. He was in a moderately drowsy state. The enemy was far, allies were near, and there was no sense of threat.
You could say it was the perfect moment to let your guard down.
It happened in that situation. Galluto of the Amethyst Order tried an assassination by sending gryphons.
"Do we really need something like that?"
Right before the fight started, Elma, a knight whose battle-lust had flared, had asked the question, and Galluto had easily given his answer.
"It's a chance to end the fight easily. There's no reason to let it pass."
They didn't even have to kill. Even if they only inflicted a critical wound on the knight called Cypress, their side would seize a very advantageous high ground.
Even if they aimed not at him but at a commander, it was the same. Those people were already exhausted, weary, and shaken in spirit.
If the ambush succeeded, their minds would collapse in an instant. Galluto knew the principle by which an army fell apart.
So he had hounded the monster handler and sent out a pack of gnolls that hid their presence.
Just because someone was a handler didn't mean they handled every monster. They only trained and used certain kinds. Among them, these five gnolls were rare, hard-to-domesticate specimens. They had treasured and treasured them.
"Send them."
The knight's command was a cold blade. The kind of blade that would cut off a handler's neck if things displeased him.
'Damn it.'
The handler suppressed his irritation and obeyed the order. The ones that moved out were five gnolls in total.
The five monsters read the wind's direction and found a position where the wind blew toward them. Then they made a wide detour around the battlefield and approached their target.
They were monsters overflowing with a hunter's talent. It was only natural. In the Demon-lands, they lived under the god they served while calling themselves hunters.
Just when all the soldiers were cheering toward the sky and the front, they dug into that gap. They also knew how to strike when their targets were off guard. For monsters, they had learned a great deal of human strategy.
In that sense, half of Galluto's intention did land. Originally, he had been aiming for the gnoll pack to seep in when people were startled by the gryphons and the main army's numbers and fell into confusion.
The situation was the reverse, but the result was similar.
Right now, the Naurillian army, drunk on victory, had shown an opening. The ones with striped bodies bared their claws.
Swish.
Ragna had been staring blankly ahead, cursing Rem in his head, when he broke off and turned his head. He had felt this presence once before. It was thanks to the monster that had come for his back on the way here that he hadn't lost his horse.
His reaction wasn't bad.
'It's not just one.'
The skill at hiding their presence was no ordinary thing. They were more skilled than the monster that had attacked him earlier. The moment he recognized them, he grasped Sunrise's hilt in his hand.
The next one to feel a bad omen was the captain of the Royal Guard.
No matter how the situation turned, he had never taken his gaze off the king's surroundings or lost his focus. The words he had heard before leaving, from Marquis Marcus, had made him that way.
"You can't not understand what it means for the king to step out personally. Think that if you can't protect him, no one can."
Enkrid of the Mad Order of Knights, Cypress of the Red Cloaks—neither was the king's guard. The owner of the ash-gray helmet had not forgotten that.
'I am the guard.'
If things went badly, he would throw his body. Under no circumstances was he allowed to get agitated or surprised.
Because he had kept the rules he had set for himself, he did not even let out a single quick breath as he watched the wind of the battlefield change.
You could call it the price of composure.
That was how, despite not being on the level of a knight, he became the next to read the presence after Ragna. And before these two, Cypress's mouth opened first.
"Lien."
He spoke and pulled his granddaughter toward him with his left hand, pushing her in front of his chest. The enemy was behind them. Whatever was leaping from back there, he would not allow it to pass over his back, so this was the safest place.
Aurelia did not show surprise and simply entrusted her body to the hand of her grandfather and master. It had happened many times until now, so she was used to it.
Lien, the knight of the Red Cloaks whose name had been called, was already standing between two gnolls that had taken the rear in the blink of an eye. Even Ragna had missed when and how he had moved.
Lien placed his hands on the shoulders of the two monsters. To anyone else, it would have looked like he was putting his arms around their shoulders.
"Busy? Even if you're busy, let's have a quick talk."
Ragna and the captain of the Royal Guard had only "reacted." Cypress had already taken action, and the result was that the knight called Lien was standing between the gnolls.
Grrrk!
When the gnolls whose shoulders were grabbed tried to swing their arms at the same time, Lien was first to put strength into both hands.
Crack crack.
It was brute strength you could compare to Audin or Rem. He broke the gnolls' shoulder blades just like that.
The muscles under the straps of their layered leather armor bulged. At the same time, his forearms thickened to a degree visible to the eye.
Kraaah!
The gnolls screamed. After shattering both monsters' shoulder blades, Lien pulled his hands back and snapped his fists out to either side.
Thunk!
The gnolls' skulls shattered under his two fists punching out at the same time. Every motion flowed as naturally as water and at just the right speed.
You could say it was that sweet spot where he was faster than the enemy but not overexerting himself.
The knight called Lien wore thin iron gauntlets. Not just the gauntlets; he wore iron greaves on his shins as well.
Besides that, he favored armor with light leather layered on. He was dressed like that now too. This was his basic armament.
After crushing the skulls of the two gnolls, he advanced toward the third.
He hunched his body low, nearly scraping the ground, and approached like a snake. The monster thrust down with its left hand. Lien twisted his spine at an unnatural angle to evade it. It was as if he had become some kind of mollusk. He seized and embraced the gnoll's knee.
It was like watching a snake snatch its prey.
The knee he had grabbed twisted in the reverse direction.
Crack crack!
Kraaagh!
While the gnoll's scream rang out, Lien climbed up the monster's body again, smacked its chin upward with his palm, then hooked his right arm around from its flank to its back and placed his left hand on the monster's right hip. Then he put strength into both hands and pushed, twisting the opponent's spine.
Crack, crunch.
The sound of bones twisting echoed.
Kraaah!
At the same time, the gnoll's scream burst out again.
Ragna watched and swung Sunrise. He swung toward the one that had been lying flat, holding its breath and waiting for an opening. Sunrise slashed that gnoll's head.
He hadn't even looked, but the gnoll's skull was split vertically, cleanly.
The last one was taken by Ingis. His expression was the same indifferent one as always. When the gnoll bared its claws and stabbed, he linked the motion of knocking it aside with a cutting motion and separated the charging monster's upper and lower body.
Strength, speed, technique—the three had ripened together. A true genius trained by a proper knight order had no particular specialty. There was no need.
It was a superb blow in which offense and defense were one.
Even so, Ragna's gaze was fixed on the one called Lien. That side left the deeper impression.
'Eilkaraz-style martial art.'
Up to now, he had seen and learned all sorts of techniques while crossing blades with Enkrid. It was one of those. Enkrid had said it was the specialty of the scout captain named Finn.
If only for a moment, he had glimpsed Lien's true skill. Was he easy prey? Not at all. He was a fighter whose victory or defeat would be hard to judge.
"An ambush, huh."
Crang was matter-of-fact. Whether they had aimed for him or something else, if he were going to flinch over something like this, he wouldn't have made it this far.
"The fight's wrapping up."
Crang spoke and took a step forward. As Ragna slid Sunrise back into its scabbard, he asked Cypress a question.
"How did you know first?"
His wording had no manners. The man he was speaking to was a knight and a noble, someone who had accomplished deeds worthy of respect.
Some among the Red Cloak Order, like Ferdinand, who held deep respect for their master, briefly made a face and then smoothed it out.
Their master didn't care about his tone and gave his answer, so there was no reason for them to step in.
"Is it really all right to ask me to tell you my personal secret technique like that?"
Cypress returned the words smoothly. Ragna thought for a moment, then replied.
"Guess not."
"Then why ask?"
Curiosity glimmered in Cypress's eyes. In terms of pure talent alone, this man stood out the most.
Ragna Zaun.
A genius from the northern Zaun family. As far as swordsmanship went, he possessed talent on a level Cypress had never seen before. There was laziness and drowsiness in him, but he had the talent to make up for it.
"The captain answers whenever I ask, so I got into the habit."
To Cypress, that sounded truly interesting.
'He answers anything if you ask?'
It meant they were used to freely teaching and learning each other's techniques.
'Even if they're rivals in sparring and competition? Even if the relationships are bad?'
There was no way they kindly taught each other their techniques. You could tell just by watching. It was the discernment of someone who had led a knight order for long years. He knew they weren't that soft. And yet for words like that to come out—
'There must be someone who held the center axis for them.'
That madman called Enkrid. He had learned from everyone and taught what he learned to everyone. He had repeated that.
Endlessly, ceaselessly, without getting tired.
Hadn't he watched him train before they even started fighting? It had been training so vicious, so mad, it went beyond diligence.
'On top of that, the others must have shown their techniques without especially hiding them.'
Even if they didn't formally teach them, they could roughly retrace and study the principles on their own just by watching with their eyes.
They had been doing that all along. That was the very reason that, on this battlefield now, the result had come out like this.
'Pooled to the point of madness.'
Even without treating one another as enemies, they had influenced each other and grown.
Weren't they terrifying bastards, to a dizzying degree?
The Red Cloak Order had received their master's teachings in a top-down form, so even though there was a sense of competition among themselves, they weren't on that level. The two knight orders were different in approach.
'Interesting.'
It was a light impression.
Cypress did not show his minor inner thoughts. He was good at hiding what lay inside him. There was a reason he had led a knight order this long. Wasn't it Temares who had said he was a human whose inner self could not be read?
He gave his answer to the question. Calling it a "secret technique" he had been saving had been a joke.
"Experience. I've been fighting the south for decades. I predicted their behavior."
With simple prediction alone, it would have been impossible to respond as he had earlier. But the basic premise was correct.
Cypress had grasped a part of the southern forces' behavioral patterns. Based on that, he had predicted their moves and kept his senses open and sharp the whole time as he waited.
This too was a technique close to acrobatics. Ragna nodded a couple of times.
On the surface, he looked like someone who would topple with a single slash.
'He's not an easy opponent.'
Ragna thought so as he looked at Cypress.
He was sly enough to fool even instinct and hide his true ability.
"I'll go on ahead."
That was Crang's line. He stepped forward without so much as a glance for the dead gnolls. The battlefield had reached a lull, but the air was still hot.
"Ooooh!"
The soldiers' cheers had killing intent mixed into them. Wasn't it time to settle what they had suffered until now?
In Crang's eyes, he could still see Pel up ahead, repeatedly showing off his feats of dodging arrows.
"Hoo, keep shooting. Shoot more."
Not just arrows—javelins too, and some soldiers even threw their shields. Pel blocked and dodged all of it.
His actions mercilessly shaved away, broke, and crushed the enemy's morale.