Celestial Fire (4)

“But I thought you were going to come crashing down from the sky on that hippogriff.”

“Exactly. What’s that bastard doing, hanging back and only pushing us forward?”

“Maybe he’s trying to wear us down.”

The other knights were dissatisfied with Azadine. No matter how diligently Azadine explained the hippogriff’s limitations, he could not completely dispel their suspicions.

‘These bastards? If I hadn’t driven them forward, they’d have just stood back there sucking their fingers and watching from the rear… And I’ve taken down the most enemies out of all of them. You idiots.’

Azadine let out a sigh as he listened to their complaints.

He had sent the knights charging ahead while he fired arrows from behind, maintaining offensive superiority at the right place and the right time.

But that was the kind of achievement you could only recognize if you watched from the rear with a broad view of the battlefield.

Most knights only remembered the fighting they themselves had done and thought Azadine had been loafing around in the back.

“Fine. This time, I’ll charge first. But because of the hippogriff’s flight characteristics, it’ll be a bit different from what you’re imagining.”

“Sir Azadine will charge first? Good. Then this time, I’ll yield the vanguard to you.”

Aramis ignored the other knights whether they slandered Azadine or not and replied with a radiant smile. Judging by the look of him, he seemed drunk on the achievements he had just earned and the glory of battle.

“Right. I’ll rake through them once at the start, and when I rake through them the second time, that’s when you charge in too. Understood?”

“Understood.”

“Then.”

Azadine mounted the hippogriff and headed toward the village.

Before that, he first tried to send out Arael’s Voice to survey the situation in the village, but the magic spread throughout the forest interfered with Arael’s Voice.

‘Because of the Bri’s magic, Arael’s Voice isn’t functioning properly. Their weapons are savage, but the looting itself is extremely systematic. The force backing these bastards must be even larger. If I let my guard down, this could get ugly.’

Azadine raised the hippogriff’s altitude himself and surveyed the village with his own eyes.

The firefighting must have ended, because only weak white smoke was drifting up from the village. It seemed the Bri had diligently extinguished the flames on the food warehouse and then started looting.

‘Their discipline is solid. Good. Then….’

Azadine guided the hippogriff toward the rear of the village, toward the escape route, and began gliding down from there.

As the altitude dropped, speed built up. Then the Bri, who had been in the middle of looting, spotted Azadine.

“Kieeek?!”

“Kwoar!”

The Bri communicated among themselves in incomprehensible shrieks.

But before they could respond, Azadine swooped in from the road at the back of the village, kicked the Bri twice in rapid succession with the hippogriff’s hind legs, and then pulled back up again.

At the same time, Azadine fired arrows from atop the hippogriff and brought the Bri down.

Thanks to the arrows he had received from Aramis’s soldiers, he could completely fill his quiver even with ordinary steel arrows. Azadine generously distributed the arrows he had received among the Bri.

‘Good! The first assault was fine….’

Azadine tried to gain altitude for a second assault. But at that moment, pure-white spiderwebs suddenly shot up from below and wrapped around Azadine and the hippogriff.

“Ugh?!”

The webs had flown in from an unexpectedly high place.

They had not been cast by a spellcaster on the ground, but had instead been fired from the top of a tree planted at the entrance to the village.

Startled, Azadine hurriedly drew his ceramite longsword and cut through the webbing, but the hippogriff lost its balance.

“Damn it! Firewinter!”

Azadine leaped off the hippogriff and swung the ceramite longsword, severing all the webs.

Fortunately, because the ceramite longsword had the property of igniting on its own, it melted the webs merely by coming near them.

The hippogriff barely freed itself from the web’s restraint and flew back upward, avoiding the disgrace of crashing into the ground.

But the problem was that Azadine had landed on the ground. The Bri charged at Azadine, leading with the horns growing from their heads.

“What?”

Azadine raised the ceramite longsword to block between the incoming horns, then twisted it sharply. The neck of the Bri soldier, who had rammed in without thinking, twisted, and his feet lifted off the ground.

Azadine threw aside the charging Bri soldier and, the moment he fell to the ground, kicked him away with a heavy boot.

Another Bri soldier stabbed at him with a spear made by tying cleavers together, but Azadine knocked aside the crude shaft with his forearm and thrust the ceramite longsword into the Bri’s lower abdomen.

-Thud! Thud! Slash!

The Bri soldiers who had rushed in so ferociously were being dealt with one by one by Azadine’s attacks.

At that point, the Bri also realized that Azadine was no easy opponent and could not charge recklessly. They had rushed in intending to finish off a fallen knight, but instead of being injured, he was cutting down their comrades one by one with a single blow each.

‘Ah, damn it. What the hell are those bastards doing?’

Even though Azadine had fallen right into the middle of the enemy lines, there was no sign at all from Aramis’s side.

‘I did tell them to come in after I made two assault runs, but by now they should be coming in, shouldn’t they?’

As Azadine was thinking that, a huge boulder suddenly came flying toward his head. It weighed at least over twenty stone, far too large for an ordinary human to throw.

A mass of rock that ought to have been launched by a catapult came hurtling toward Azadine at savage speed.

Azadine simply ducked down and easily avoided the boulder. Then the one who had thrown it appeared.

“Gwooooo.”

It was a giant with deer antlers sprouting from its head.

It belonged to a race of giants called hill giants, but unusually, its pupils were vertical, deer antlers grew from its head, and hooves had sprouted from its legs.

“You. You’ve come back again!”

A young woman’s voice came from the Bri giant. More precisely, it came from the club the Bri giant was holding.

This Bri giant had ripped out a living tree and was swinging it as a club, and fused into that tree was the naked body of a young woman.

It was the dryad shaman Azadine had encountered in the forest a little earlier.

“No, wait. Why are you like that when I haven’t seen you for such a short time?”

“Did you not damage my avatar with your arrow?! Thanks to that, I’m in this state!”

“Really?”

At that moment, Azadine threw a dagger. The Bri giant was startled and reflexively raised the club to block it.

But that club was the tree the dryad had fused with, and the dagger Azadine had thrown stabbed right into the dryad’s stomach, where it protruded from the tree.

“Urk?!”

“You’re the only one here who can understand human speech, so I’ll tell you this: fusing yourself into a club swung by a giant is not a very wise thing to do. Just how stupid do you have to be to do something like that?”

“You bastard!”

As the dryad let out a furious shriek, the Bri began to surround Azadine from all sides.

But none of them charged in recklessly. They merely formed an encirclement at a distance beyond the reach of Azadine’s attacks.

“Hoo. Good. Then….”

Azadine tightened his grip on the ceramite longsword, Aurelia Dawn, and prepared to enter the melee.

It was then.

“Charge!”

Crossing the bridge of the village, Aramis and the knights began charging toward the Bri.

“What?!”

The Bri who had gathered to surround Azadine ended up exposing their backs as a result.

‘Oh, charging together with his subordinate knights. This time, that was fairly good command. The timing’s good too.’

Azadine gave high marks to Aramis’s decision to boldly plunge in to rescue him.

“Are you all right, Sir Azadine?! Charging into the heart of the enemy lines—reckless!”

“…….”

For an instant, Azadine nearly got angry.

‘Compared to what you did earlier, mine was a far more sensible charge! Who are you talking to like that?’

“But do not worry! I came to rescue you!”

When he had been surrounded by the Bri soldiers a moment earlier, Azadine had not been in danger at all. But Aramis seemed to think that he had entered to rescue Azadine in a crisis situation.

To those who did not know Azadine’s true ability, it would not have looked strange at all to think Aramis was Azadine’s savior.

Azadine ended up owing his life unfairly, and even if he shouted now that this much had been nothing at all, there was no one around who would listen.

‘No, before that, why is this irritating me so much? I should just thank him for helping me.’

Even Azadine found it hard to understand why he felt such a sense of rivalry.

Regardless of what Azadine felt, Aramis cut down Bri soldiers as he approached Azadine’s side.

“You seem startled after falling from your mount. Are you hurt anywhere?”

“I’m fine. Thanks for the help, Sir Aramis.”

“Think nothing of it. Are we not brothers of the same Rescue Knights Order?!”

“…….”

Before he had to see anything even more disgusting, Azadine nocked an arrow and shot it clean through the Bri giant’s eyeball. With a heavy wet tearing sound, the Bri giant toppled backward from that single strike.

“Huh?”

“No, this is a bit….”

The other knights wore troubled expressions.

Slaying a giant was one of the classic feats that always appeared in knightly tales of valor, so they were all seized by the desire to bring down the Bri giant and heighten their fame.

Of course, since the other knights had no real confidence that they could defeat a giant, they had intended to leave that glory to Sir Aramis of the Celestial Fire Knights.

But unexpectedly, Azadine had killed the giant instead.

‘No, this bastard took the tastiest part….’

‘He’s not even a hunter, and he’s a knight….’

‘Exactly. Isn’t taking down a giant with a bow a bit cowardly?’

In knightly tales of valor, bringing down a giant became a great feat because it required astonishing swordsmanship and tactics to defeat one in close combat.

Of course, that was also because they knew little about bows.

No matter how many arrows one fired, without enough penetration power, even if one hit a giant’s eyeball, the arrow would never reach the brain.

Eyeballs were tougher and more resilient than one might think, and in the case of a giant’s eyeball, even a perfectly placed arrow would not immediately rob it of sight. Even if another archer besides Azadine were lucky enough to hit a giant in the eye, there was no way they could bring it down in a single blow.

However, from the perspective of the knights, who had already been competing inwardly for merit, Azadine’s action felt so brazen that it put them in a foul mood.