13 (26)

The newly made main road linking the duchy to Gedria stretched onward. Empty plains spread out to both the left and the right. The wind was blowing, but it was quite dry. It was proof that they were gradually approaching Pantalist. Louis moved with a simpler force than expected. Each time the horses stepped on the dry ground, the earth shook.

Louis could have gone by carriage, but that was not Louis’s style. The one riding in the narrow carriage behind Louis was Oren, disciple of Euclid.

Since she had come to the duchy and was setting out again without even a full day of rest, at least this much consideration had to be shown. The reason Louis was moving with only a small group was purely to move at maximum speed. As for the soldiers, they could arrive and rest. But Louis had no particular need to do that.

Louis lifted his gaze and looked at the sky. The sun was blazing down mercilessly, enough to make the dry wind understandable. Despite the grueling march, Louis was perfectly fine, to the point that even his backside was not sore. Just when boredom was slowly beginning to creep in from the monotonous road, Louis’s eyes narrowed. Something had caught on his senses. The direction required them to deviate briefly from the route they were currently taking. They could move, or not move. A faint smell of blood.

“Your Grace, this is….”

“Yes. I smell blood from the right.”

A brief silence. Cold weapons were drawn. Alert formation. They naturally began trying to form up around Louis, but Louis spoke.

“Fools. It’s not here. We need to go farther.”

Those Louis had brought were all soldiers and swordsmen of some caliber. But there were levels to everything. Louis’s instinct now was to the point of surpassing Ferdinand.

“Are there private dwellings around here?”

“I understand there are some scattered here and there. Slash-and-burn settler units. The territory’s people who committed serious crimes and could not remain in the cities are scattered around the outskirts of Pantalist.”

“They’re being plundered.”

The System recognized it. If it was like this, points might come out of it. Louis turned direction.

“We’ll stop and deal with this for a moment before going.”

Not long after leaving the proper route and crossing the dry land, they reached the target area. There was hardly any need to call it arrival; the situation was a complete mess. The slash-and-burn settler village was larger than expected, but several houses were ablaze and burning fiercely, and the long wooden palisade that had served as a fence had collapsed in a tangled ruin. Quite a few corpses were hanging in front of that palisade.

They were all men, though there were a few boys mixed in. Flesh was strewn everywhere, as if they had only recently been torn apart, and intestines had been ripped out and were rolling here and there. Rather than being cut by swords, it was the cruel handiwork of ripping and crushing. As Louis briefly looked at the pool of blood formed by pieces of entrails, the System gave a ding.

“They’ve been mutilated badly. Soldiers! Form up around His Grace!”

While the formation was being set, Louis said,

“They’re Green Skins.”

“You mean orcs? Then we should change formations.”

“No, we go in as is. There are humans mixed in too.”

While the formation was being completed, a woman suddenly burst out from beyond the broken palisade. She was a woman carrying a child on her back, and the one coming after her was a bandit. The bandit was wearing a leather overgarment of barbarian make. Hanging from a chain was a hand axe, and it seemed that he had been in the middle of doing something and then gave chase, because what was below swung loose. In truth, the fleeing woman was also almost naked.

Unfortunately, the bandit was quick and was catching up to the woman in an instant. Louis snatched the shaft from the soldier beside him. When he hurled the spearshaft with force, the bandit finally discovered Louis and the soldiers, but while he was crushing the woman beneath him and unable to decide what to do, the spear struck him directly in the head.

Red blood fell over the mother and child like wine. Perhaps the woman had lost her senses, because she stared blankly for a moment, then frantically pushed away the bandit, whose breath had already been cut off, with her feet, and started to run toward Louis, only to see his attire, recoil backward, and then flee. She had seen the clothing. For slash-and-burn settlers, it was common sense that if they were caught, they would be dragged away to suffering and prison. Watching the woman’s back grow distant as she carried the child away without even a word of thanks, Louis said,

“Suppress them.”

When they climbed onto the palisade, the village spread out below in a broad, disordered expanse, visible at a glance. Men carrying off women over their shoulders, others stuffing bundles with valuables and iron, and while men and old people were being impaled on skewer-like stakes, the livestock belonged to the orcs. Chickens, ducks, pigs, one or two horses, and so on.

The soldiers murmured among themselves. It was understandable, since an alliance between bandits and orcs was extremely rare. But it was not entirely impossible. Some orcs were bound to be intelligent, and they had enough cunning to cooperate with humans and gain something from it. Was there not even an orc nation far off at the western edge?

‘Hmm. There are rather a lot of them.’

A brief silence. Louis opened his mouth.

“Wipe them out.”

Shouts erupted here and there. The orcs and bandits sent signals to one another. Roughly speaking, the meaning was to stop plundering and fight the regular troops. In any case, the numbers were about three times greater, so Louis and the soldiers were surrounded by them as if waves were crashing in. Mana rose from Louis’s body. It was his first real battle after remaking his body. His first strike was against a human. The man took Louis’s longsword head-on, and his face split apart just like that. After a brief scream, perhaps because it was such a shocking sight, the bandits froze amid a spray of blood.

“D-Damn it. He’s an armed knight.”

Because Louis’s attire was simple, they did not seem to realize he was the duke, and the best the bandits could think of was that he held a position like some armed knight.

“Kill him, fuck. We’ve got the numbers.”

“You gonna let those orc bastards take all the credit? Can’t you hear our share getting smaller? Charge!”

Louis punched the face of the large-built bandit who had shouted that. Crack. The sound of his nasal bone shattering was vivid. Somehow, even after taking that hit, the man staggered and showed his back. When Louis slashed diagonally with his longsword, the spine and backbone split cleanly apart. The man who had been alive just moments ago was twitching on the ground in convulsions.

A cold silence fell again. The bandits wavered. In an instant, they realized he was an opponent they could not defeat.

“D-Damn it. Wh-What the hell is this bastard?”

“Shit. We need Gray Axe. Where the hell is that orc bastard? Call him, now!”

Crude armor and crude weapons. The bandits, holding all kinds of things from skewers to spears to rusted swords to hooks, were drenched in cold sweat and unable to approach Louis. When Louis took a step forward, the bandits retreated three steps as if ripples had spread through water. All they could do was keep spitting out curses.

Just then, a heavy thudding sound rang out three times, and a shadow fell over them. Louis narrowed his eyes and looked up at it. It was enormous. It was obviously no ordinary orc, and Louis knew that this was the leader among the orcs here. It looked to be around three meters tall, and its whole body was covered in ironclad muscles.

Both hands held a grotesque hammer that looked capable of crushing iron. Since it had slaughtered things just moments ago, bits of flesh were wedged in the gaps of that grotesque hammer, and blood was running down it. If it brushed even an ordinary soldier, his insides would be smashed to pieces.

“H-He’s here. K-Kill him. Tell him to kill that armed bastard. If that guy’s gone, we can wipe them all out.”

“Look at the swords and weapons those bastards are wearing, they’re insanely expensive.”

“There’s a pretty woman too!”

“A woman?”

“Where?”

When the gray orc appeared, color returned to the bandits’ faces. As if that were not enough, they also saw Oren casting defensive magic.

“Human……. strong. But I am stronger. I will crush that face.”

The gray orc’s muscles tightened one after another, and in an instant it drove its hammer at Louis. An explosive sound burst out. The bare ground had exploded apart. Dust burst thickly up from the dry land, and when the dust began to settle, the bandits murmured.

“Wh-What…. Is he dead?”

“H-He must be dead. Gray Axe did a full swing. I’ve never seen anyone dodge that strike.”

As the dust settled, the orc spoke in a trembling voice.

“H-Human…….”

The bandits’ eyes flipped wide. What was rolling on the ground were the orc’s thick two arms. The hammer was already embedded vertically in the ground, and the two arms, contracted from that last strike, were still tightly gripping the hammer’s handle. Right before the orc, whose arms had been cleanly severed at the wrists, stood Louis. After slitting the orc’s throat, Louis said,

“How disappointing.”