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The silence that had weighed on the drawbridge shattered with the nervous snorting of the baron’s horse, as if mourning its master’s impending doom.
The baron, still in his saddle, jabbed a finger at me with a face red as a boiled octopus.
“You, you…!”
“Spare me. Just send in those three behind you—X, Y, and Z. They look like Blaster-level Steel Body knights. What are you saving them for, soup stock?”
The baron bellowed in rage.
“Fine! Even if I fail to capture the angel, I’ll tear you apart! Marf! Boild! Barefin! Rip him limb from limb!”
“…Yes, my lord.”
The three spread out in a fan formation, keeping their distance. I frowned.
I’d lumped them together as X, Y, and Z, but the truth was, I already knew who they were.
They were the captains of the three knightly orders under the barony.
They neither shouted nor charged. They simply stood ten meters away, slicing the air with casual swings of their swords.
But even that was enough to make things troublesome.
Shhhhhh! Pop-pop-pop!!
Like a bullet hell shooter, blades of aura rained down.
“Well, damn.”
I weaved left and right, dodging. But on such a narrow drawbridge, evading purely with footwork was impossible.
So I started parrying them with my sword.
Clang-clang-clang-clang!!
As I deflected every aura blade while stepping across the bridge, I caught the surprise flashing in Y and Z’s eyes.
A non–Steel Body warrior doing this with nothing but a real sword? Unthinkable.
That’s when X—Captain Marf Cabin of the First Order—stepped forward. If Y and Z were lower Blaster level, then he was mid-level aiming for high. A seasoned fighter, fit for glory anywhere.
Why someone like him was rotting in a backwater barony, I couldn’t say. But he wouldn’t be as easy as the others.
And sure enough.
When he swung his sword in a diagonal arc, a blade of aura shot out, filling the bridge with its mirrored trajectory.
Kwooooom!!
Too fast to dodge, I had no choice but to meet it head-on. I slashed upward, the impact jolting through my hand and into my whole body.
“—!!”
Screech!
The drawbridge’s planks cracked as I skidded back nearly five meters. Even as I absorbed the impact, another wave followed.
A surge of mana—not quite dense enough to be aura, but overwhelming all the same—crashed down like a tidal wave.
“Oooh…”
This was bad. With nothing but swordplay, I had no real counter. Sure, I could throw myself into the moat, but if I’d wanted to run, I wouldn’t have staged a Zhang Fei reenactment here.
So… I’d have to redirect it.
Tilting my body, I angled the flat of my blade toward the wave.
Swaaaaaaah!!
“—!!”
Like magic, the torrent slid harmlessly aside.
X, Y, and Z gaped at me.
“My god.”
“…Unbelievable.”
For the first time since the fight began, Marf spoke.
“…Impossible. How did you do that? With just a plain sword, without mana…?”
What a stupid question. You just do it. What’s there to explain?
“Curious, are you?”
“…I am.”
I steadied myself and crooked a finger.
“I’ll tell you—if you answer one thing for me.”
“…Ask.”
“You sure you should be wasting time here?”
“…What?”
“If you three captains are out here, along with the others I already dealt with… who’s left to guard your baron?”
Their eyes widened as realization struck.
“No—!”
They spun around in horror.
And saw her.
A blue-haired girl had slipped right to the baron’s side. She plucked off an earring with a smile.
“Hi there. And bye.”
Kwooooom!!!
The cat perched on her shoulder exploded into a massive tiger, over five meters tall. In one bite, it swallowed the baron’s horse whole.
Frozen, X, Y, and Z turned back—just in time to see me grinning wickedly.
“…I never said I came alone.”
Crack! Crunch! Rip!!
They say when something completely unexpected happens, people stop thinking.
Snap! Crunch! Crack!!
And watching their baron being chewed like a dog toy in the jaws of a monster five meters tall certainly qualified.
“Wha—what…?”
“M-my lord…?”
“M-monster…?”
Soldiers and knights alike stood dumbstruck.
What broke the spell was the beautiful girl’s voice as she pounded angrily on the beast’s back.
“Ebi! Bad! I told you not to eat that human’s head! Not yet! Do you want to end up like Chunsik? Hm!?”
Hosik growled back, eyes full of protest, and stuck out his tongue. With that, the baron—drenched in slobber—slid halfway out of the beast’s mouth.
“…Oh?”
Seemed the tiger had only eaten the horse cleanly and tucked the baron away like candy in its cheek.
“Ghhhk! Help—help me!!”
Miraculously, the baron was still conscious, thrashing and shrieking.
“Wh-what are you doing?! Save me! Now!!”
“Yes, that’s right! Save the baron!!”
His nearby knights, finally snapping out of their daze, raised their swords and rushed the tiger.
Sh-sh-sh-shing!!!
At least twenty knights ignited their auras at once. But even faced with such a threatening number, Hosik didn’t flinch—he actually snorted, almost laughing.
And then—
Slrp. Slrp. Slrp.
“Hrk!! Y-you cur! Spit out the baron at once!!”
Like a toddler proudly showing off candy in their mouth, Hosik stuck out his tongue halfway and loudly sucked on the baron. With each slurp, the baron’s condition grew more miserable.
Slrp.
His armor vanished.
Slrp.
His surcoat disappeared.
Slrp.
His undergarments shredded.
Slrp.
Even his body hair stripped away, leaving him bare as the day he was born.
And Hosik didn’t stop there. He began the one act so vile, even I had to blink in disbelief.
With a tongue like sandpaper, Hosik started meticulously scraping away the one thing the baron cherished more than his own children—his half-remaining hair.
Lick.
Rippp!!
Lick—slaaash.
Rrrrippp…!!
Each stroke tore a neat highway into the baron’s scalp, five centimeters wide.
“GYAAAAHHH!!”
The baron, who had survived even being gnawed on by a tiger by sheer stubbornness, finally foamed at the mouth when faced with this particular horror.
“…Wow.”
Now that was intimidation. One more wrong move, and Hosik would peel him alive.
The baron’s soldiers and knights couldn’t bear to watch. Their horrified cries echoed.
“How could any beast be so cruel…!”
“Stop this, you monster!!”
“Spawn of hell, fiend incarnate!!”
“Even Inquisitors wouldn’t stoop to this…!”
“To live bald like that—it’s worse than death…!”
…Okay, hold on. Who said that last one?
Even if baldness is a curse from the heavens, that doesn’t mean every bald man deserves to be declared legally dead.
Even those racist zealots who treated bald men like monsters never went so far as to deny their right to live.
Anyway. While they were paralyzed, torn between saving the baron and shielding their eyes, I stepped forward again.
“Now then, let’s leave the baron like that for a while… and since I’ve come this far, I’ve got a proposal for you knights.”
The younger ones bristled, rage boiling. But Marf Cabin, the First Order captain—the same man who’d bothered me earlier with his mana waves—calmed them with a single gesture.
“Let’s hear it. It’s not like we have much choice. But before that, allow me one question. Will you answer?”
“Mm? Go ahead.”
I could tell he was just buying time, but I let him talk anyway.
“…What is your purpose in all this?”
I let out a dry laugh.
“You really don’t know?”
“I know the barony is rotten to its core. But still, almost no one ever moves to overthrow an entire domain. You—an outsider with no ties—why go this far?”
“Isn’t it obvious? If something’s rotten and I’ve got the ability to fix it, then it’s basic decency to do so.”
The captain glanced upward at Yuribel, who radiated moonlike brilliance in the distance, and sighed.
“…‘If you’ve got the ability.’ Arrogant words… but seeing that, I can’t deny them.”
“Well, I think that answers your question. Now then—shall I give you my proposal?”
“Sorry. But before that… there’s one thing I’d like to try.”
“…What thing?”
“This.”
His face unreadable, the captain raised his hand. In response, voices rang out from the rear in unison.
“““Improved Inferno!!”””
Kwooooom!!!
“Kyaaaaaaah!!”
Flames roared skyward, a tornado of fire engulfing Shia.
In my ear, Yuribel’s sing-song voice explained.
[Inferno. That’s a fifth-tier spell.]
[The one casting is that lady over there, a 5th-circle mage. The man beside her is a 4th-circle, boosting the chant and somatics to increase its power. That’s why the trigger was ‘Improved Inferno’ instead of just ‘Inferno.’]
[Casting together like that takes practice… seems they’ve been training as a pair for a while.]
‘So that’s what they were stalling for.’
I brushed away the searing heat rolling off from nearly fifty meters away and fixed my gaze on the two mages straining to channel the firestorm.
They’d clearly decided Hosik was too tough to handle, so they were targeting his master instead—Shia. Kill the tamer, and the beast would falter.
[Tactically, it’s a sound move. Monster handlers come in two kinds: summoners and tamers. If the master dies, the monster either gets unsummoned or goes berserk. It’s a gamble, but one worth trying.]
‘You must be bored, huh?’
[What do you expect? All I can do is sit here glowing like a fluorescent lamp. Want me to pitch in?]
‘No. Stay there and shine. When I give the signal, just do what you’re told.’
[Roger, roger.]
“Kyaaaah~~~!!”
“Kyaaaaah~~!!”
“Kyaaaah~!!”
Meanwhile, the knights and soldiers grinned at Shia’s screams, convinced the spell had worked.
But their faces soon twisted.
Because that single scream didn’t end.
It went on for nearly thirty seconds.
Even an idiot could tell something was wrong by now.
“Wh-what is this?”
“Why… why isn’t she dead!?”
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