Celestial Fire (1)

“But since the hunter Kal’s knife went with them too, they will not end up as wolf feed, will they?”

“That fellow caught everything with traps. You boys look at a knife and start saying he seems fit to become some kind of knight, but that is only because you have never seen a real knight, let alone a proper Cell Sword. Hm?”

Digan suddenly felt a chilling cold and flinched in surprise.

From the forest watching the yard where they were working, a human arm stretched out from between the trees. It was the dazzlingly pale arm of a woman, as though it had never once seen sunlight.

“Wh-what?”

Seeing that Duns had noticed it too, it was no illusion visible only to Digan. A beautiful woman had suddenly emerged from the forest, wearing a seductive smile and beckoning to them.

“A-a dryad! Father! Did you see that? A dryad….”

“R-run.”

Digan grabbed up his work axe and ordered his son.

“What?”

For an instant, Duns even had such an absurd suspicion.

‘No way, does Father want to keep the dryad all to himself?’

But Digan’s face was pale, utterly drained of blood. It was obvious that he was terrified.

“That is no dryad! Son! If a gold bar fell in the middle of the market square, would no one go and pick it up? It is the same thing. There is no way a beautiful woman would suddenly and conveniently extend a hand of temptation to us!”

“B-but dryads are different from humans, aren’t they?”

“Fairies have eyes too! They like handsome men and beautiful women as well, you fool! That is no dryad!”

At Digan’s shout, the dryad burst into laughter.

“You are clever, human. Though you are an ignorant peasant who never learned even a single line of letters, you possess the wisdom of the unschooled.”

At that moment, from both sides of the dryad, beast-like monsters tore through the mist and appeared.

The monsters were a race of beast-type fiends called the Bri, creatures with the horns and legs of mountain goats. They came charging in, wielding weapons made by tying deer antlers to clubs.

“Eek!”

Duns saw it clearly. Decorated upon the Bri’s horns were human heads and limbs, and among them was an arm bearing a familiar bracelet.

It was hunter Kal’s arm. He always boasted about the jade bracelet his girlfriend had given him, so Duns recognized it at a glance even from afar.

Most of the youths who had entered the forest had been torn apart by those Bri, and their severed limbs hung like ornaments, desecrating even the dignity of their corpses.

And before long, he and his father would likely join that line as well.

But before the Bri’s violence could crash down upon them, an arrow flew in with the sound of tearing wind.

The arrow struck straight into a Bri warrior’s knee, and with such tremendous force that it did not merely embed itself there, but gouged the knee open entirely. The knee, blown through with a gaping hole, could not bear the weight of the charging Bri warrior, and buckled.

The startled Bri warriors turned, and there stood a man wearing a bird mask over his face.

“You have a truly wise father.”

He praised Digan and loosed another arrow.

He shot the Bri closest to the father and son, so that the Bri warriors could not approach Digan and Duns.

The savage armor of interwoven wooden boards and bones worn by the Bri warriors could not stop the arrows the man shot.

“That bow…?”

“Could he be one of the Messenger Clan from the Chadra Plateau?”

Looking at the man who had appeared before them, Digan and Duns thought of the rumored Messenger Clan.

“Oh? So you know of me?”

The man who had rescued Digan and Duns was Azadine, who had been on his way to Saint Mallory. He had come down to check because something in the forest seemed to be moving, and by chance had ended up rescuing the father and son.

‘This is not very good.’

Azadine felt troubled by the rumors that had spread even beyond the Chadra Plateau.

Since he was now regarded as a traitor even among the Messenger Clan, it was not a very good sign that his actions were on people’s lips.

Words without feet travel a thousand li.

No matter how powerful a ruler might be, rumors could not be stopped. Much less in his case, when his actions so far had been so extraordinary, they must already have spread at great speed.

“Gwoooork!”

The Bri grew enraged that Azadine was ignoring them and speaking with the farmers. The Bri at the front came toward Azadine, whirling a deer-antler axe.

It was likely doing that so that, if Azadine shot an arrow, it could bat it aside and rush in.

“Ha, you think you can knock away my arrows?”

Azadine’s pride was stung by the Bri warrior’s blatant behavior. The Aragasa took pride in their bows, so when someone so openly tried to swat aside one of their arrows, it became difficult to resist the urge to put an arrow straight through that opening.

But Azadine glanced over his quiver.

He did not have many arrows in it. He had not come out to fight, so he had not prepared many arrows.

“This will not do.”

Azadine put away his bow and whistled.

At once, a giant shadow fell over the Bri warrior. Firewinter swooped down from the sky and pounced upon the Bri warrior.

Firewinter tightly pinned the Bri warrior’s body with its forelegs. The Bri warrior resisted desperately, but it could not stand against the hippogriff’s raw strength.

—Crunch!

Firewinter, who had been hungry, ravenously bit into the Bri warrior’s torso and devoured it alive.

Horribly enough, the Bri warrior’s nerves were still alive, so its limbs convulsed violently and it screamed in agony.

“This is a race I have never seen before… but since they have deer or goat heads, they probably are not poisonous, right?”

Azadine removed his mask.

His purple eyes, inherited from his elder sister Arael, flared for a moment like flames even in the dark shade of the forest.

Using the sight with which he perceived magic, Azadine picked up the severed arm of the Bri warrior and examined it.

He was checking whether there was any magic or toxin in the flesh that would cause trouble if eaten.

“There does not seem to be any magical contamination.”

The Bri could not understand the human words Azadine was speaking, but they could tell what he was thinking as he examined the corpse of their comrade.

‘Wow, even if he had cursed them out with every foul word imaginable, it would not have been this irritating.’

Duns found himself following Azadine’s figure with his eyes as he unintentionally provoked the Bri. The Bri seemed to think the same as Duns, for at last the dryad could bear it no longer and opened her mouth.

“You… do not think you will leave here alive!”

At that moment, spiderwebs were cast over the forest canopy, sealing off the sky.

“Hmm?”

They had spun webs overhead to block the route of escape, so that the hippogriff could not flee by flying into the air.

The Bri were making it clear that they had no intention whatsoever of letting either Azadine or the hippogriff leave alive.

“What is this? Do you think you can handle us?”

Azadine was amazed at the Bri’s conduct, underestimating both him and the hippogriff.

Of course, considering sheer numbers, the Bri warriors were more numerous. Even just those visible right now numbered more than ten. There would be reinforcements in the forest as well, so if they truly committed themselves and came all at once, even a hippogriff’s life would be in danger.

‘They do not seem to be undead, yet they can still rush in without caring that their lives are precious? A curious race indeed.’

If these had been human soldiers, the moment they saw a hippogriff tearing a man apart with its claws and eating him alive before their eyes, their morale would have collapsed instantly.

No matter how much a commander pressed them, none could have charged in bravely. The first to rush in would be the first to be torn to pieces and die, so who would disregard his own life and attack?

Azadine did not know enough about the Bri to understand why they were acting this way.

“Die.”

At the dryad’s sharp command, the Bri warriors rushed in all at once. Firewinter too went wild, striking down the charging Bri warriors.

Its enormous mass, that overwhelming violence of the wild, was truly dreadful, and any ordinary living creature would have shrunk back, increasing the damage still further.

But the Bri warriors, disregarding even death itself, kept hurling themselves at Firewinter, and in an instant an encirclement took shape.

The Bri warriors thrust out obsidian spears and deer-antler halberds, trying to butcher the hippogriff.

“You are enemies, but you deserve praise!”

But a sword blazing with golden flames danced in circles around the hippogriff. Azadine had seized the saddle strap of the hippogriff and hurled his body out, knocking away the weapons flying toward it.

It was easier said than done; he was moving while hanging onto a rampaging monster of one hundred and twenty stone, roughly 762 kilograms.

Like a nomad displaying feats of horsemanship (and the Aragasa truly were a nomadic people), Azadine stayed pressed close beside Firewinter and blocked the attacks of the Bri warriors who rushed in, aiming for openings. Man and beast were one, sweeping through them together, and the Bri’s blood and flesh scattered in every direction.

“Kuh, you are quite capable, human child. But… we are the hunters, and you are the prey!”

The dryad raised her staff.

At once, two great bears with deer antlers upon their heads burst from the forest. The Bri warriors cheered and opened a path for them.

Even Firewinter, Azadine’s hippogriff, which had been slaughtering the Bri, flinched at the sudden appearance of the two bears.

Unlike the smaller Bri, the bears were huge, nearly matching its own size, and seemed threatening.

“Khkhkh!”

The being wearing the form of a dryad let out a sinister laugh.

—Thud!

Azadine drew his bow again and shot an arrow straight through a vital point of one of the antlered bears. It pierced through the skull via the eye and bored all the way into the brain. The bear struck by the arrow screamed and collapsed.

“…….”

While the Bri stood there bewildered, Azadine fired yet another arrow.

This arrow skimmed low along the ground, then suddenly sprang upward, piercing through the bear’s jaw and gouging its brain. It too died instantly.

“Well? Have you any more tricks?”

Still hanging from the hippogriff, Azadine looked calmly at the dryad.

“Y-you. The hunt has already begun. When the ancient old gods return, you all will—”

But the dryad was unable to continue speaking. Azadine’s third arrow had torn through her temple from the side.

“Kraaaah!”

Fortunately, the dryad did not die instantly. But with half her face ripped apart, her eye and mouth split away from each other, she could no longer keep her balance and flailed wildly.

“Grrrr.”

The Bri warriors who had known no fear when throwing themselves at the hippogriff were now utterly cowed by Azadine’s bowsmanship.

In that interval, Azadine made the hippogriff run along the ground and shouted as he stretched out a hand to the farmer and his son:

“Pull the arrows out of the bears and recover them! They’re Blue-Steel Arrows!”