Chapter 14: Chapter 14
“T-Troll!”
The words the crushed warrior had tried to say earlier came out of the mouths of the people nearby.
As the troll raised its blood-stained wooden club and rolled its eyes madly, a warrior standing nearby muttered.
“It’s huge…”
Its height was likely around three meters.
Thanks to a frame abnormally thick even for its massive size, an overwhelming muscle mass, and hair covering its entire body, an immense sense of pressure radiated from it.
Calling the weapon it held a club was generous; it was more accurate to describe it as a full-sized log.
[□■□■□■□■-!]
As if its silence up until a moment ago had been a lie, the troll roared thunderously to threaten the surrounding humans.
At the sensation of heaven and earth turning upside down, several people with a poor sense of balance tumbled to the ground.
“Whoa!”
“T-The ground is rising.”
Rolling its large eyes, the troll spotted a human in a vulnerable state, rushed forward, and swung its club.
Just as the body of the dazed warrior was about to be crushed, something abruptly shot in front of the troll.
“Fall back!”
A knight standing relatively close swung his two-handed longsword, slicing halfway through the monster’s extraordinarily thick right arm.
While the troll let out an ear-splitting shriek, the man who had almost died hastily scrambled backward.
“D-Damn it! I almost died!”
“Pull yourself together!”
“Attack!”
Regaining their senses step by step, the subjugation squad members surrounded the troll and launched their attacks.
The various bladed weapons thrusting from all directions only slightly cut and tore through its tough fur and hide, yet the troll screamed in a mix of rage and pain.
As the lord of the forest, the beast was unused to being injured.
Soon, to express its rage, the troll swung its club at the most threatening target… the knight who had just cut its arm.
“Ugh!”
Raising his longsword to block the club, the knight was pushed back nearly a meter with a booming crash.
But that was all; the longsword, endlessly thin compared to the massive club, neither broke nor cracked.
A transcendental defensive capability made possible only by the intervention of a mysterious power, something normally utterly impossible.
While the bewildered troll looked over its club at the lack of impact, the other knight thrust his longsword from behind.
Unlike the other attacks, the knight’s longsword once again pierced the tough fur and hide, slicing through its flank to inflict a wound reaching its internal organs.
Gaggling, the troll shoved its spilling entrails back in with one hand while swinging its club wildly with the other.
Even though the movement was awkwardly unsteady, a wind-ripping roar burst forth, causing the approaching warriors to fall back in terror.
It was fortunate they were elite warriors handpicked for the job; ordinary men would surely have failed to dodge and been turned into bloody paste.
The next few exchanges proceeded similarly.
Whenever the troll swung its club like mad, one of the two knights stepped up to absorb the attack while the other dealt a powerful blow, and the subjugation squad members continuously inflicted minor wounds to distract it.
Every wound healed shortly after it was inflicted, but each time, the massive fat on its body was rapidly drained, causing its frame to grow visibly gaunt.
Just as Shan, who had been quietly observing from behind, was about to join the fray after completely mastering the troll’s movements, the monster surprisingly covered its face with its club and hand and broke through the relatively thin side of the encirclement.
Two nearby warriors drove their sword and axe into its legs with all their might, but they could not stop the creature.
As expected of its massive size, the troll lacked agility, but once it started moving and built up momentum, its speed was far faster than a human’s.
The men hurriedly chasing after the prey were horrified to realize that the young Altoan boy, brought along for his good night vision, happened to be directly in its path.
“Oh no…”
“Get out of the way!”
Kob, the middle-aged swordsman who harbored an inner sense of kinship simply because they were fellow Altoans, shouted out, but instead of running away, Shan dropped the horse’s reins and lightly patted its rump to send it back.
Then, he aimed forward the long spear he had recently bought.
‘Let’s see.’
By observing its fight from behind earlier, he had already grasped the monster’s overall physical abilities and behavioral patterns.
One step, two steps, three steps… now.
Matching the rhythm of the troll’s footsteps, Shan leaped the moment the monster swung its club as if bothered.
Even as a terrifying mass of violence passed beneath his feet, his green eyes did not flinch in the slightest.
In that state, as he put all his body weight into thrusting the spear into its eye, he felt a sensation of penetrating through something tough yet sticky.
It was a heavy sensation, entirely different from piercing a thick tree or stone.
[□■□□□■!]
To dodge the club swung once more alongside a desperate scream, Shan kicked off the embedded spear with both feet and leaped away.
The club, which narrowly grazed his back, carried enough force to tear flesh and crush bones even with the slightest touch.
“What!?”
“How on earth…!”
At the shocking skill displayed by a young boy who looked to be in his early to mid-teens at most, the warriors momentarily froze in their tracks.
To think someone had dared to attempt, and succeed at, such a dangerous technique in real combat against a monster, something that would have been risky even with prior coordination.
Contrary to their reactions, Shan clicked his tongue in dissatisfaction as he looked at the result he had just achieved.
‘Even this isn’t enough to kill it in one blow.’
Despite thrusting with all his body weight, it failed to reach the brain, stopped by the instinctively closed eyelid and the eyeball inside.
Should he have kicked the end of the shaft after embedding the spear to drive it deeper?
It turned out Roden was right when he said Shan needed to build up his body and spirit and acquire better equipment.
While he was feeling regretful, the troll yanked out the spear along with its pierced eye, threw it aside, roared, and bolted into one side of the forest.
The knight in the back commanded in a sharp voice.
“Everyone, pursue it!”
Once discovered, the next thing to do was to relentlessly chase and eliminate it.
Seeing the pursuing men, the hunter who had taken shelter in the rear hurriedly called out.
“Be careful, that one is smart!”
The intelligence of monsters generally varied by species, but individual differences were also considerable; that troll just now was clearly a remarkably clever individual among its kind.
Ordinary trolls would never entertain the thought of hiding atop a tree to let enemies pass before ambushing them.
While everyone gave chase to the troll, Shan picked up his spear, plucked off the troll’s eye stuck to it, grabbed the reins of his horse that he had temporarily evacuated, and mounted it.
“Let’s go.”
Though they were inside a fairly dense forest, Shan maneuvered his horse adeptly.
He avoided tree branches aiming for his head with his superior reflexes or knocked them aside with his spear.
Before long, he was able to catch up with the subjugation squad members who were running hard after the troll.
Seeing Shan riding up from behind on horseback, Kob, the Altoan swordsman, caught his rough breath and called out.
“You weren’t kidding… when you said… you were confident in your skills!”
Shan answered with an embarrassed expression instead of words, then urged his horse forward to overtake them.
The knights and squires were nowhere to be seen, likely having mounted their horses to speed up the chase.
Riding through the forest at a moderate pace for about a minute.
The figures of two knights and two squires came into view, their horses snorting as if exhausted.
It seemed that catching up to a troll on horseback in a rugged forest was difficult, whatever might be the case on an open plain.
All the more so since, unlike Shan’s horse, theirs were barded in armor and carrying heavy knights.
“Did you lose it?”
“…Yes.”
At Shan’s question, one of the knights looked flared up, but the other restrained him with a hand gesture and replied.
“It ran away without even looking back. It’s no ordinary troll. Just as the hunter said, it’s extremely clever.”
It was certainly behavior uncharacteristic of their usual nature.
For large monsters were creatures that, even if they avoided a target that seemed threatening, would explode with rage and charge recklessly once blood was spilled.
Shortly after, the warriors who hadn’t brought horses and the hunter caught up, bringing the entire subjugation squad together.
Amidst all this, the hunter had not forgotten to cut off a lock of hair from the blond warrior who had been killed in the initial attack to keep as a keepsake.
“What should we do from here?”
“First, we will continue tracking its footprints, though it likely won’t attack easily.”
The hunter answered the knight’s question politely.
As he said, having once realized its numerical and tactical disadvantage, there was no chance such a clever beast would invite an unfavorable fight.
Even more so considering that the peculiar roar of large monsters drastically lost its overwhelming effect once one grew accustomed to it.
Hearing this from the side, a warrior let out a sigh.
“This is going to be a tedious chase…”
“You knew it would turn out like this from the start.”
In the first place, no one had expected a troll hunt to wrap up quickly in half a day.
Had that been the case, Shan would never have been included just for his good night vision.
However, it was one thing to hunt a monster immediately once found despite the initial difficulty of locating it, and entirely another to chase a fleeing beast until it was exhausted to kill it.
Sensing that things were not going to be easy, several squad members sighed.
*
As expected, the subjugation squad followed the troll’s tracks until sunset that day without managing to reach it.
Looking around the darkening surroundings, the hunter pointed in one direction.
“It would be best to stay here for tonight.”
The place he indicated was a cave of decent depth.
With its sides and back blocked, they only needed to defend one entrance, making it the optimal spot in a situation where an enemy might launch a night attack.
“Then as for night watch…”
The expedition members, including the knights, glanced at Shan before quickly looking away.
By rule, Shan, who had been brought along as a night scout, should stay awake all night to watch the surroundings.
However, given the skill he had shown during the day, no one could easily say such a thing.
Bluntly speaking, wasn’t he the combat force that had dealt the greatest damage to the troll here, excluding the two knights?
After a moment of deliberation, one of the two knights reached a decision.
“Hey, Altoan!”
“Yes.”
“You are excluded from night watch along with us.”
“Sir Katra!”
Realizing that the ‘us’ he referred to meant the knights, the other knight shouted in surprise.
No matter what, to treat a mere Altoan as their equal!
The knight called Sir Katra replied without minding his reaction.
“To deal with that beast, we need the strength of a skilled warrior. It’s better for the useless ones to stand night watch and conserve our main fighting strength.”
“Even so…”
“I’ll hear it if you have an alternative, Sir Soros.”
At Sir Katra’s firm declaration, Soros grumbled under his breath but did not press further.
Shan had thought they were equally arrogant when he first saw them, but it seemed Katra held the upper hand between the two.
And so, Shan was smoothly exempted from night watch.
“Damn it, how miserable…”
“If you’re sore about it, why don’t you try stabbing a troll’s eye too?”
The squad members, who were somewhat reputable warriors in their own right, found being called useless offensive, but none dared to argue against a knight.
Hadn’t they just seen those two trading blows with that fearsome troll earlier today?
Similarly, none dared to take out their frustration on Shan either.
The man who had initially looked down on Shan for being an Altoan now couldn’t even meet his gaze and kept his eyes lowered.
Out of everyone, only Kob, the Altoan swordsman who had acted friendly from the start, casually patted Shan’s shoulder.
“That worked out well, Shan.”
“Since it gives the others time to replenish their strength, I should work that much harder.”
“What an admirable thing to say.”
After chuckling briefly, Kob showed a peculiar glint in his eyes as he looked at the sword at Shan’s waist.
“By any chance, could I draw that sword?”
“This one?”
Though puzzled, Shan obediently drew the bandit leader’s sword.
This blade, his first trophy, had rusted after being neglected for several months after acquiring it, but following Roden’s advice, it now possessed a quite respectable appearance after proper care.
Watching it intently, Kob nodded as if realizing something with a soft ‘Ho…’.
“I thought the hilt shape looked familiar, and sure enough… Though the emblem has been erased, this is a blade used by leaders of the Steel Lion Corps. Where did you get it? Surely they wouldn’t take an Altoan as a member.”
“The Steel Lion Corps?”
“Is it your first time hearing of them? It’s a venerable mercenary unit from the Ajun Kingdom in the north. I heard they use a few mercenary villages as strongholds and only accept warriors trained since childhood as members.”
As Shan showed a complete lack of knowledge, Kob explained slowly in curiosity.
Proudly showing off the dark red, twisted scar on his left arm, adding that he had almost lost that arm fighting them in the past, was a bonus.
“The Steel Lion Corps…”
“If you captured it by fighting them, you’d better be careful. Not holding grudges over past fights is an unwritten law among mercenaries, but all rules exist because there are bastards who break them.”
One of the things Shan had been curious about for a long time was the true identity of the bandit group that had destroyed several villages, including Willow Village where he used to live.
He had thought this weapon, the only high-quality one unlike the other cheap arms, might serve as a clue, but even Roden couldn’t point out anything upon seeing it; to think this middle-aged Altoan mercenary would recognize it right away.
Thinking that he should tell Roden when he returned, Shan engraved the name in his mind multiple times so as not to forget it.
*
“AAAAAGH!”
In the quiet night when everyone was asleep, Shan snapped his eyes open at a horrific scream echoing outside the cave.
As if they had not misheard, the other squad members around him also hastily grabbed their weapons and got up.
“W-What is it?”
“Is it an attack?!”
At the cave entrance, the two sentries standing beside the campfire showed flustered expressions on their faces.
The old hunter stepped forward first and asked.
“What happened?”
“T-The knight went outside alone for a moment…”
Hearing those words, Shan whipped his head around and realized that one of the people inside the dark cave was missing.
Sir Soros, the knight who complained a lot.
The other remaining knight, Sir Katra, quickly walked out, having donned his armor with the help of his squire in the meantime.
“Why did Sir Soros go out alone?”
“I do not know either.”
“Perhaps he went to answer nature’s call.”
Someone brought up a vulgar topic about the knight, only to lower his head at Sir Katra’s sharp gaze.
However, embarrassingly for the pressure he exerted, Sir Soros’s body, discovered shortly after, had his trousers and underwear pulled down below his knees.
“Ugh.”
“It grabbed him and tore him cleanly into two halves…”
Under the light of the torches, no one could easily speak at the gruesome sight of the knight.
To meet an end where he went out for a moment to relieve himself, only to be caught and torn to death by a hiding troll?
For knights who wished to adorn their ends with honorable battle, it was truly the worst possible death.
While Sir Soros’s squire wailed and struggled to somehow retrieve his master’s body, one of the squad members looked around and said with a pale face.
“This is the spot where I came to relieve myself earlier too…”
“Me too. We were lucky.”
Just as he said, the excrement of others who had relieved themselves earlier was scattered around the area.
This was because this was the closest open area near the cave that blocked line of sight.
Everyone felt a chill at the thought that, had their luck been worse, they would have been sacrificed instead of that knight.
Then, the hunter shook his head, refuting their words.
“It wasn’t luck. This beast was targeting the knight from the beginning.”
The place he pointed to was the ground beyond the thicket where the knight was killed.
Judging by the deeply flattened grass, it appeared the troll had crouched here and ambushed the knight from behind.
“Judging by the footprint traces around here, it had been hiding here for at least several hours since we chose this place as our campsite. It waited until a familiar face came out.”
Considering the troll’s massive size and footsteps, it had literally moved covertly like a rat.
Both the first ambush and this one showed that this creature was unnaturally patient and cunning for a troll.
While the others analyzed Soros’s death, Shan scanned the surroundings with his uniquely bright night vision and located the opponent.
“Over there, the troll is watching us from a distance.”
“What?”
“That bastard!”
The squad members looked in the direction Shan pointed with eyes mixed with rage and fear, but none dared to rush out.
Relying on a single torch to attack a troll in pitch darkness was not courage, but recklessness.
Of course, if it charged stupidly like other trolls, they would more than have enough to kill it, but that beast would surely flee again and try to ambush them once they scattered in the dark.
After a long silence, Sir Katra spoke as if lamenting.
“We will recover Sir Soros’s body and continue resting here tonight. Altoan, I regret changing my words, but you will have to stand night watch until daybreak.”
“Yes.”
Now that one knight was gone and they knew a troll was lurking outside, it was unavoidable.
The squad members forced their eyes shut in fear of the troll that might swoop in from the darkness at any moment.
Until morning came that day, Shan engaged in a staring contest with the troll looking this way from the cave entrance.
Whether it had already regenerated the lost eyeball, two eyes were looking this way.
The monster quietly vanished somewhere only dozens of minutes before dawn broke.
The next morning, a meeting was held amidst exhaustion and frustration.
“How about we fall back for now?”
“That’s right. This isn’t at a level we can handle.”
“I’ve never even heard stories of a troll so cunning.”
Most of the squad members were already broken in morale.
It was only natural, given that one of the two knights, their greatest combat force, had died.
However, Sir Katra, the sole remaining knight, firmly shook his head in opposition.
“No. Returning like this would tarnish Sir Soros’s honor. To make his death an honorable death in battle, we must capture that beast.”
Sir Soros’s squire, having lost his master, nodded zealously.
At this, a few of the squad members complained only in their minds, ‘Damn it, dying while taking a dump is an honorable death my ass.’
In any case, since the commander refused, it was time to ponder how to capture it.
Since their lives were on the line, all sorts of ideas were brought up, but none were useful.
That was only natural; if there had been a good method, they would have used it the day before in the first place.
Around the time people’s lips grew chapped from the fatigue of arguing after talking for a long while, Shan raised his hand.
“I have a good idea.”
“What is it?”
Unlike the others who wore expressions asking what opinion a mere kid could have just because he fought well, Sir Katra listened to Shan’s words with a serious expression.
“Before that, there’s something I’d like to ask. Is your warhorse slower than the troll by any chance, Sir Knight?”
A question stemming from the fact that they ultimately failed to catch the troll during yesterday’s chase.
The knight hesitated briefly before shaking his head.
“No, on an open plain it goes without saying, and even in the forest at full sprint it is slightly faster. However, if I did that, its legs might be damaged, so I simply couldn’t give chase.”
“I thought so. Then how about luring the beast out to the plains and attacking it together? In the forest, it will just run away like before.”
“I believe we haven’t reached a conclusion on how to lure it so far.”
“Since the troll will never attack unless the enemy becomes weaker than itself, we just need to make ourselves look weaker. Like splitting our group in two.”
[Head out to the nearby plain while splitting the group into two.]
The two groups move apart to a distance where they can see each other, but cannot immediately provide support.
When the troll begins attacking one group, the other group rushes over to join and subjugates the beast.
If it tries to flee into the forest, those on warhorses actively block its escape and drive it onto the plain.]
At Shan’s opinion, every single member of the squad wore an expression asking ‘Would that even work?’.
What was the reason no one had voiced that simple idea until now?
It was precisely because one of the two knights was already dead.
Since the sole remaining knight could not split into two to protect both sides.
Sir Katra asked with a half-doubting expression.
“…Don’t tell me you intend to take responsibility for one of the two groups?”
“Yes.”
“That’s reckless.”
Even if Shan had landed a blow on the troll with surprising skill, fighting it head-on was an entirely different story.
A warrior who could not skillfully manipulate spirit could neither deal a critical blow to a troll nor absorb a troll’s attack.
Shan met the doubt-filled gazes with an indifferent expression.
“Holding out is well within my capability.”
Though his attack power was lacking, he could dodge a troll’s attacks any number of times.
At Shan’s confidence, Sir Katra agreed for now, albeit with a reluctant expression.
However, the problem was which members would be attached to Shan when the group split into two.
Naturally, none of the squad members wanted to stand in a position where the likelihood of dying was enormously high.
This could not be forced even by a knight’s command.
The harshest punishment he could issue was summary execution, but dying by a knight’s blade or being crushed to death by a troll while executing a suicidal order was the exact same death.
This conflict of opinions was also simply resolved by the method Shan offered.
“Then I’ll just do it alone.”
A moment later, the troll subjugation squad headed toward the wide plain they had spotted during the chase.
The squad was divided into eleven warriors including Sir Katra, and a group of three: Shan, Kob, and Sir Soros’s squire.
Borrowing and riding the warhorse of the dead knight, Sir Soros, Shan turned his gaze toward Kob, who was following on his own horse.
His posture was awkward, as if he were not very accustomed to riding.
“You didn’t have to follow me…”
“Still, how could I leave just two kids behind…”
Contrary to his hearty answer, signs of fear and disbelief were evident on his face.
Ignoring the squire, who wore a sulky expression at being treated like a kid as well, Shan grinned at Kob and patted his shoulder.
“If it looks dangerous, come behind me. Fellow Altoans should help each other out.”
Realizing that Shan was returning the exact words he had spoken first, a faint smile appeared on Kob’s face.
The small joke seemed to help relieve the tension at least a bit.
Walking through the plain area while chatting like that for a few minutes.
Looking around the surroundings, Shan’s gaze directed toward one side.
“It’s here.”
Bursting out of the forest, a brown, hairy monster was charging at full speed.
As he tightened his grip on the spear, Shan’s brain heated up in anticipation of a thrilling battle.