Chapter 33: Three-Headed Terror and the Blue-Blooded Duelists

Trichitas, born of the collateral line of the Helicion family, stared at the gigantic creature awkwardly crawling out of the pond ahead.

Three horned serpentine heads, a turtle’s torso and legs, two long tails. 

Total length including the tails is about ten meters. A monster in every sense of the word.

In ordinary circumstances, even a noble would have been terrified at the sight.

Yet ever since hearing Anplus’s explanation before departure, Trichitas had begun feeling a sense of incongruity about these monsters.

The heads are disproportionately large compared to the neck. 

A turtle’s shell is for defense, not offense. 

There’s no reason for a creature with a shell to have such long necks and tails, nor for spikes to grow all the way to its flanks. 

With that bulk and those tiny webbed feet, it can’t even swim properly.

He calmly reasoned.

Having three heads is strange too.

Beasts sometimes use their jaws like hands, but three heads are more of a vulnerability to protect. 

I can’t even tell which head controls the body.

Unfortunately, Anplus’s hypothesis seemed correct.

That thing was crudely stitched together to intimidate its opponents. 

It is not one of the ancient creatures our ancestors exterminated.

Having reached that conviction, the collateral-line mage made a suggestion to the direct-line knight.

“Anplus. Can you take it down without damaging the bones?”

It was neither a request nor an order—just a suggestion.

He chose his words carefully so it would sound that way.

He too possessed fairly thick blue blood and had walked the elite path thanks to his powerful lightning attribute.

Before he was even fifty, he had earned the right to have a private audience with the family head.

That was how much of a textbook noble he was.

A noble who lived by the common sense that blue blood meant nobility and mage.

To him, being both noble and knight was a contradiction.

Even though Anplus was direct lineage—one he should serve with his life—he could not bring himself to speak formally.

Yet the feats Anplus had shown were clearly no less than those of a mage.

He could not belittle him at will.

That was why he had to phrase it as a suggestion.

“That thing? The necks alone look over three meters long.”

Trichitas looked at Anplus.

There was no sign of difficulty or refusal.

Instead, faint gray eyes gleamed with fighting spirit and challenge as he analyzed the monster.

The pureblood knight nodded and drew his sword.

In that short moment, he seemed to have formulated his own countermeasures and plan—his expression calm.

Even though he already knew the answer, Trichitas provoked once more.

“If you can’t, there’s no helping it.”

“Who said I can’t? I was just curious. Why do you want it dead with the bones intact?”

“I was planning to present the skeleton to the family head. You’ve been in his office many times; you can imagine how much he would like it.”

The monster that had crawled out of the pond began walking, crushing the bushes.

Kung. Each time its four thick, pillar-like legs moved, the ground shook.

Adding the length of its legs to the height of its raised necks, it could look down even on the giant lizardman Anplus had killed last night.

Shreds of human clothing were caught between the gleaming teeth in its mouths.

Anplus frowned at the sight.

For a mere monster to have taken the precious lives of our house…

“Won’t he dislike that it’s fake? The bones of a magically created monster aren’t much different from a model made of apatite.”

His voice was so calm it almost sounded like bravado.

“It is still the skeleton of a once-living creature. Even if it is an artificial lifeform, it carries the symbolism of imitating the ancient ones. It should catch his eye.”

“One-third.”

“What?”

“Write in my alchemy recommendation that I get one-third instead of one-quarter from the successor period.”

“So you even know math? You’re aware one-third is larger.”

“Trichitas. Did you think I was an idiot?”

Anplus frowned and lowered his stance as if about to charge.

“I’ll try not to damage a single bone. It’s much bigger than yesterday’s lizardmen, but it’s still just one. It should be manageable. Don’t use magic on it. If you miss, you’ll hit me too. Electricity is hard to block anyway.”

The monster was now ten meters away.

If it simply stretched its necks, it looked like it could swallow both Anplus and Trichitas whole.

Trichitas didn’t even glance at the monster; he was too busy interpreting what he had just heard.

He thinks he can normally block electricity? 

That night when he knocked me down wasn’t just luck? He can freely wield that kind of power?

Of course, Anplus could not yet wield it completely at will.

Anplus, unaware of Trichitas’s thoughts, stared at the ferocious maws covered in scales and horns.

“Ōt!”

He kicked the ground, leaving a deep footprint in the soft, wet soil.

His tall, lean figure shot forward at a speed hard to follow with the eyes.

The three-headed monster turtle extended its left head like a spring.

It tried to swallow the charging Anplus in one bite.

Anplus switched to a reverse grip and measured the distance.

He was someone who, from his very first real battle, had fought while gauging the reach of a flowery knight’s sword and arm with his eyes.

As the maw drew near, he stomped hard with his left foot and twisted his body.

Kaang! The jaws snapped shut exactly one handspan away from his cuirass.

Close enough that he could reach out and pat its head.

Instead of patting it, Anplus brought his sword to the back of the monster’s jaw.

Seogeok! He slashed upward with all his strength through the muscles and thick blood vessels connecting neck and jaw.

A knight’s sword with a thick blade was specialized for thrusting rather than cutting, and the creature’s hide was tougher than ten layers of cow leather, yet his hands were still fast and precise.

“Shiiiiiiiik~!”

The monster writhed its left neck and groaned.

Bundles of muscle protruded between the torn scales and hide, blood spraying everywhere.

Trichitas’s mouth unknowingly fell open.

How did he know exactly how far the neck would extend? 

A miscalculation would have meant instant death.

Judging distance that precisely in a split second was beyond his common sense.

It would be more believable to claim he was a spatial mage who had mastered the sword.

The second maw came down like a mace.

Anplus divided his heartbeat into four counts and stared at the maw and long neck.

The moment the distance was right for a thrust, he kicked the ground.

He lunged forward as if falling.

The sword thrust skyward pierced exactly between hard scales, penetrating the tough hide cleanly.

The monster’s head moved vertically; Anplus and his sword moved horizontally.

The sword, the link connecting those two axes, did what a sword does best.

From behind the lower jaw to the esophagus, the second head was slit long and limp.

Not a crack in the bone, yet a fatal strike.

He dodged the gushing blood, the remnants of corpses in the esophagus, and the falling giant neck, then looked at the third head.

Even if left alone, it would die of blood loss soon, but he preferred certainty.

The third head tried to retract its neck between the shell plates at the death of the other two.

Yet there was no space inside a turtle shell for such a long serpentine neck.

“Come out.”

Anplus gripped his sword tighter, anger clear on his face.

It took another ten minutes for the man-eating monster to die of exsanguination.

***

Trichitas poked the limp monster’s neck with his dagger.

The scales were as hard as steel and interlocked like bricks; even the dagger tip wouldn’t go in.

“If I hadn’t asked you to keep the bones intact, how would you have handled it?”

Anplus answered immediately.

“Wouldn’t have been much different. I would have measured the distance and cut the neck the moment it reached its limit.”

“The neck?”

A neck as thick as an ancient tree, covered in steel-like scales, filled with tough hide, muscle, and hard bone.

Saying he would cut that was not something one said lightly.

Trichitas examined the cross-section Anplus had sliced.

Knight swords that often strike cuirasses aren’t particularly sharp. Yet this is like it was cut with a razor.

As someone from a collateral line, he knew well how rumors spread.

A swordsman who cut a giant tree in one stroke, an old man who used magic without blue blood, a bull that breathed fire, a ship that moved on its own.

All turned out to be insignificant once the truth was known.

“Let’s leave the corpse and go deeper. An island that produced something like this must have something.”

“You really have to say the obvious at length.”

“Do you have to talk like that?”

Yet that knight—the one with his hair tied back and gray eyes shining—was different.

He cut magic itself and killed monsters made in imitation of ancient creatures.

With the feats shown today alone, he had surpassed the protagonists of those rumors.

The two walked inland for about ten minutes.

The ground of the island, not far above water level, was muddy, the bushes thick.

A sound like breathing came from afar.

“Anplus. Be careful.”

“I know.”

***

I was not particularly wary of lizardmen.

Their scales were hard and their claws sharp, but compared to the mages I had faced—willingly or not—they were nothing.

They were neither an existential threat like fire or lightning, nor invisible like wind, nor semi-permanent like earth, nor versatile like ice.

If the fight was with sword and body, I was confident against anyone.

Especially against monsters that relied only on their physical form.

But it was a different story if the monster used knight swordsmanship.

The lizardman sword-wielder had perfect low stance and forward-angled blade.

“Kiiiiiik!”

It charged with monstrous leg strength, fangs gleaming viciously.

I answered the charge with a charge of my own.

The moment we collided, its sword glanced off my cuirass and slid away, while mine stabbed deep into its thigh.

The instant I felt the heavy vibration of bone splintering, I tried to ram its belly with my forehead and left shoulder to topple it.

That was when its second and third arms reached out and seized me.

At that moment I understood why the mage who created them had given them four arms.

With its fourth hand, it drew a dagger from its waist.

“Damn it!”

I cursed and tried to shove it away, but its grip tangled around me like hooks.

“!”

Gritting my teeth, I yanked it toward me, fell backward, and rolled once.

Our entangled bodies lost balance; panic flashed in its vertically slit eyes, and for an instant its grip loosened.

Seizing that moment, I kicked its stomach hard and broke free.

“You used your head well.”

I swung my sword and took its head.

“Trichitas! Be careful and follow me. We’re breaking through.”

“Who’s telling whom to follow?”

“I’m the knight! The mage stays behind me and covers!”

“Covering is the knight’s job. Don’t you know the protagonist of the battlefield is the mage!”

Trichitas retorted after frying one with lightning.

Kiruk, kadeuk, shiiiik, tadak tadak.

Unpleasant sounds rang out.

Lizardmen large and small rushed from all directions.

The big ones were three meters, the small ones more than two heads shorter than a human.

Some had ten eyes, some two heads, some five arms, some no tail and humanoid, some five tails.

We couldn’t let them swarm us, so I kicked the ground first.

A giant lizardman over 2.5 meters tall lowered its stance and charged at me.

The dagger at its waist was clearly visible.

“Shiiiik!”

Da.

That was all.

Instead of meeting charge with charge, I brushed past its side.

A brief opening—then true strike.

Seogeok. With that sound, the lizardman’s upper body parted from its lower.

“Kiruk!”

I split the forehead of one charging head-on, then cut the waist of one sliding across the ground.

Every single one tried to cling to me.

“At this point it’s not interference with reclamation—it’s an invasion.”

“I think so too.”

For once—perhaps the first time—our opinions aligned.

Blue light flashed behind me.

Yellow lightning blinked, and over a dozen lizardmen charging from the left rolled on the ground.

Yet some rose again, orange sparks crackling on their scales where the lightning had passed.

One of them lunged and stabbed its dagger into Trichitas’s side.

“You monster bastard!”

Trichitas roared in fury and gathered blue light.

Lightning so bright it blinded in broad daylight flashed, turning that lizardman into charcoal.

“Save your mana!”

I beheaded a three-meter giant swinging a massive sword and ran to Trichitas.

“Did it go deep?”

“It seems to hope so.”

“Looks like you’re still fine.”

“I’ll recover quickly since I’m unharmed. But the situation isn’t great. Like yesterday, some of them resist lightning too well.”

“Shiiiiiiiik!”

A red-scaled lizardman with six arms swung hooked claws as it charged.

Blue light blazed in its yellow eyes.

“!”

I severed its arms and jaw with a true strike.

“Trichitas. Conserve mana and focus only on harassment. I’ll do the killing. Let’s put that rock we saw on the way in at our backs.”

“Fight more here? We know there’s a main camp—wouldn’t retreating be better? We’re heavily outnumbered.”

“Have you rowed the boat? These things swim well. The two laborers are probably already eaten. And their numbers can’t be infinite. If we keep killing, someone has to come out, right?”

At the word “someone,” Trichitas narrowed his eyes.

He muttered to himself.

“To think I have to listen to a guy who can’t even use magic… and that he’s right. How humiliating.”

“If it’s a mutter, make it quiet enough that I can’t hear!”

Da.

***

Once we put the rock to our backs and fought, it became much easier.

Trichitas’s magic was excellent even just for harassment.

I easily cut down the ones that stiffened after being struck by lightning.

I didn’t even need true strikes.

Kiik! Shiik… kiik. Kik.

Gradually the lizardmen began eyeing each other and hesitating to charge.

Then the eyes of one lizardman flashed deep blue.

“Kiiiiik!”

Starting with it, the surrounding lizardmen’s eyes also turned blue.

Green, red, yellow, brown pupils all dyed blue—it was both grotesque and mystical.

Trichitas spoke in a low voice.

“Anplus. To the right.”

On the hill to the right stood a white-haired man.

The bushes were thick and the distance considerable, so his expression wasn’t clear, but his face was clearly twisted.

Blue light shone vividly in both his raised hands—he was casting magic.

“Found you.”

I knew it.

The moment I saw him, I charged straight through the lizardmen.

Caught off guard, claws and weapons came a beat late.

The man’s face twisted even further.