I drew my sword, tightened the straps of my cuirass, and dashed out of the camp.
I passed the panicked laborers rushing inward and slipped past the outermost tents.
It was only a few dozen steps from the edge of the camp to the marsh.
Puseok.
Jilgeok.
My sturdy boots sank little by little into the mud.
“Kieeeeeeeeeeeeee~!”
The monster howled.
Beneath the brilliantly shining moonlight, I took in the creature’s full appearance.
“No wonder the laborers called them demons.”
It walked on two legs like a human, but its entire body was covered in sharp scales.
The scales covering its belly were small and smooth, while those on its back and forearms were jagged like basalt and sharp as razor blades.
Its webbed hands ended in vicious claws, and it had four such arms in total.
They’re just like the lizardmen I saw in games in my previous life.
Only their size was unexpectedly not that enormous.
Just one head taller than me.
Of course, that was still massive, but to someone who had been imagining four-meter-tall monsters from old movies, it almost looked cute.
“An uninvited guest, I see. If you had at least wiped the mud off before coming, I wouldn’t have pointed my sword first.”
I leveled my blade straight at it and spoke.
The four-armed lizardman narrowed its sinister eyes and lowered its stance.
“Is that how you greet people?”
It let out a karrrruk laugh, pupils flashing.
At the same time, its webbed feet kicked the ground.
Peok! The earth caved in, and chunks of mud fell from its body.
True to a monster, its speed was explosive.
Taat! I likewise hurled myself toward it.
The first strike is always a charge!
I lowered my chin almost to my knee, gripped the sword with both hands, and thrust forward.
Four hideous arms reached to seize me.
Instead of forcibly dodging sideways, I crouched even lower and charged like a boar.
Kadeuk! Its claws scraped across the smooth backplate of my cuirass with a screech.
At the moment of impact, I lightly closed my eyes to keep mud or blood from splashing in.
I was certain, calm enough to be called leisurely.
It went in perfectly.
Kwajik! The sound of planks shattering rang out.
Feeling the recoil travel up my wrists, I poured even more strength into it.
Tough.
The monster’s scales, muscles, and bones were several times stronger than a human’s.
It was as though it wore thin armor.
Even the laborers’ red blood would never have pierced those scales even if they had weapons.
The creature screamed and convulsed.
The embedded sword vibrated burururu.
I opened my eyes, yanked the blade free from its thigh, and simultaneously rammed my left shoulder into its pelvis.
Da.
Kung.
The massive body toppled to the ground like a rotten log.
I reversed my grip on the freshly drawn sword and aimed at its throat.
The golden pupils of the scaled monster contracted sharply.
Fear?
This kind of monster is feeling fear?
I was momentarily taken aback, but I did not hesitate and brought the sword down.
The small scales on its neck split like cheese, and the tip met the cervical vertebrae.
The blade dug deeper, crushing the sturdy bones as if they were sugar cubes, and buried itself into the ground.
Tougher than expected, yet it took less strength than expected.
Standing atop the monster, I stopped thinking and surveyed the surroundings.
Before I knew it, over a dozen lizardmen that had crawled up from the marsh were staring at me.
Dozens of eyes glinted eerily under the moonlight.
But I knew a light far more brilliant than those eyes.
“Looks like we have quite a few uninvited guests tonight.”
I pointed my sword at them.
Moonlight settled on the dark, rippling wave-pattern of the steel.
***
Trichitas leaped atop the wall erected by the earth mages.
His long blue hair, not fully tied, spilled down his back as he surveyed the entire camp.
The wall itself is excellent.
It instantly surrounded the camp in a crescent shape.
A frontal breach won’t be easy.
He turned his head and looked past Anplus toward the marsh.
Ripples spread across the moonlit water’s surface, and large and small monsters began revealing themselves one by one.
The small ones were human-sized, while the large ones approached three meters.
He let out a deep sigh and gathered mana into his left hand.
Blue light shone brilliantly in the darkness, drawing the attention of every monster, big and small.
Without hesitation, Trichitas unleashed his lightning.
The instant the blue light turned yellow, it became a long line of radiance.
Beonjjeok! Yellow and white light illuminated the night, and the three-meter giant shuddered.
Cheolpeong. Hearing the splash, Trichitas leisurely searched for his next target.
Electricity ignored the enemy’s hide and muscle entirely.
No matter how strong the muscles and tendons, nothing could endure the pain of burning nerves.
Even Anplus, who somehow managed to scatter lightning with his sword, had been injured by the aftershock.
He definitely should have been.
“!”
Seeing the giant rise again from the darkness, Trichitas doubted his own eyes.
“A mistake? That’s not like me.”
Straightening his uniform with renewed focus, Trichitas sparked lightning once more.
The moment it struck, orange threads of light flashed from head to toe across the giant’s body.
The giant soon stiffened like a log and collapsed into the marsh.
The smaller ones beside it fell as well.
“Kreureu—”
Yet barely a minute later, the giant stiffly raised its body again.
Trichitas let out a low groan.
My lightning isn’t working?
What the hell is this? Is another lightning mage nearby interfering?
Then I should be able to see blue light in this darkness.
Nightmarish thoughts spread through his mind.
Da.
Da.
Are they really demons?
It didn’t take long for reason to turn to fear.
And it didn’t take long for that fear to scatter again.
Chyalpak. A fishy liquid splattered against his cheek.
From experience, he recognized the metallic smell as blood.
Who? Anplus?!
Far beyond the 2.4-meter wall, a single knight was rampaging in front of the marsh.
Anplus had just swung his sword wide, and a lizardman was on its knees.
Though it was a kneeling posture very different from what one usually imagined.
The creature’s lower body had no upper body attached.
“Ha!”
With a thunderous kiai, Anplus kicked the ground.
The soft earth caved deeply, and his body shot forward more than ten meters in an instant.
A nearly three-meter-tall giant lizardman swung its long arms tipped with blade-like claws in every direction.
Yet Anplus evaded those arms a beat faster and closed in.
The moment the two crossed, Trichitas sucked in a breath.
“What…?”
Anplus’s body seemed to freeze for an instant, then his sword moved as if teleporting.
Seogeok.
The blade that had definitely been in front of the lizardman’s stomach was suddenly behind its back.
Pusyuk! Blood sprayed with the sound, and the monster’s upper and lower body separated.
It was not a soft, meat-filled torso like beef.
It was a body packed with armor-like hide, copper-wire muscles, and rebar-like bones.
That body was sliced apart as cleanly as if it had always been separate.
Trichitas watched the scene as if possessed.
Anplus raised his mantle with his left arm to block the fountain of blood and leaped toward the next opponent.
He didn’t seem to move his feet much, yet somehow he had already crossed dozens of meters.
A lizardman charging from the marsh swung short spears gripped in each hand.
Since that one was as tall as the wall, even its “short” spears were over two meters long.
They use weapons?
Shocked, Trichitas began gathering electricity again.
But Anplus immediately engaged it.
If he fired lightning now, it would be drawn to Anplus’s cuirass and sword.
Trichitas calmed his anxious heart, and soon realized there was no need for anxiety at all.
Anplus moved as if he already knew where all four spears would come from.
Da.
When he ducked, a spear flew over his head; when he twisted left, a spear shot from the right.
The timing was perfect, as if they had rehearsed together.
“Kreuk?”
There were even moments when Anplus dodged too quickly, leaving the lizardman flustered as it re-aimed its spears.
The lizardman wore an expression that seemed to ask, How did it know?
Anplus gave a bitter smile and deflected the spear blades with his gauntlet.
From the shoulder movement, I figured it would come from the upper right.
If it hadn’t pretended to know, I could have ended it just now.
Hae!
The moment the creature tried to swing its four spears in a complex pattern, he boldly stepped forward.
He drove his sword into its lower jaw.
The blade pierced through the crown of its head, and the monster collapsed to the ground.
Trichitas’s jaw dropped.
What the hell is he?
No matter how much he trained his body, no matter how good his eyes are, that kind of reflex is impossible.
His feet staggered on the wall as if about to fall.
It’s not a common attribute; maybe he was born with a rare spatial attribute and is using it unconsciously without knowing?
No. Even then, he couldn’t hide the blue mana glow when using magic.
Trichitas felt slight vertigo before a sight that denied everything he knew.
Reminding himself that monsters were coming, he regained his senses and looked down at the battlefield.
“!”
Feeling something unusual, he shouted without caring whether spies from other families were watching.
“Fall back while fighting!”
The lizardmen were moving strangely.
The human-sized smaller ones crawled along the ground, circling toward the wall, while the giant ones charged straight at Anplus.
If they weren’t careful, the camp could be attacked first and then surrounded.
There’s no way they could come up with a plan like this.
He glimpsed Anplus nodding slightly.
At that moment, Trichitas instantly gathered eighty percent of the mana he could handle.
In noble society, being able to control more than thirty percent of one’s total mana at once was already considered excellent control.
It was monstrous control for his age.
“Let’s see if my lightning works on you lot too!”
He shouted toward the human-sized smaller ones.
***
I suddenly closed my eyes and retreated as the world turned bright as midday.
Everywhere I looked was filled with blue, yellow, and white light.
After about ten seconds that felt like being inside a drawing, I regained my senses.
“You could have at least warned me!”
When I turned around, the group of lizardmen that had been crawling beside the wall had turned to ash.
I’ll have to watch my rear more carefully from now on.
Biting my lip, I readjusted my grip on the sword.
The lizardman was also blinking in surprise at the sudden flash, just like me.
The difference was that this one stood nearly three meters tall.
I had to crane my neck to look up at it.
How am I supposed to beat that?
My arms wouldn’t even reach its thighs.
Every sword technique I had learned until now was meant for opponents of human size or similar proportions.
Even fighting the human-sized lizardmen earlier, adapting to their four arms had been hard enough.
There was no way I knew how to fight a three-meter monster.
Moreover, it had a long tail covered in iron-hard spikes.
Just thinking about dodging that while closing in made my head spin.
“You’re tonight’s final uninvited guest.”
Still, I raised my head and declared confidently.
The master of the land had no reason to cower before a guest.
Especially an uninvited one.
“I’ve decided that’s how it is.”
Drawn by an instinctive feeling, I leveled my sword and charged.
Four arms with long claws, a tail like a spiked whip—compared to Seongbaek’s sword, they were all hopelessly slow.
“Kaaaaaaaaak—!”
The monster roared in refusal.
Kuuung! Its spiked tail slammed down like a mace, sweeping a wide arc and flinging mud everywhere.
I kicked off the ground and vaulted over the tail.
As I passed its side, a movement Dande had once shown me long ago flashed through my mind.
I executed a mid-air roll and hurled myself behind its pillar-like leg.
The tendon at the ankle—what was called the Achilles tendon in my previous life—came into view.
The tendon was as thick as two palms put together, covered densely with scales thicker than a shield.
I swung without hesitation.
There was no resistance from my fingertips, toes, elbows, shoulders—anywhere on my body.
Each time the sword that smoothly cut through the scales was pushed back by recoil, force entered at the exact angle to cancel it.
It definitely felt like I was cutting, yet it didn’t feel like I was the one doing the cutting.
After piercing the scales, I drew the blade long to slice the muscle; after cutting the muscle, I pushed short to sever the tendon.
All of this happened within the span of a single blink.
Chwaaak! and Ttak! sounds came half a beat late.
“Kieeeeeeeeeeeeek!”
A scream like thunder.
I blocked the spraying blood with my mantle and stepped back.
The gigantic lizardman reached toward me with all four arms.
Its face twisted beyond recognition, blue light flickering in its golden eyes, mouth full of teeth.
I leisurely retreated another ten steps.
Kuuung!
The monster whose tendon had been severed collapsed like a rotten tree.
Only one ankle was ruined, so its thick arms and jaws still held terrifying power.
But I was a knight of Intezeruto.
“Here I come, monster who returned from time.”
I charged toward the four clawed arms and the ferocious maw.
And I drove my sword straight into its eyeball.