"Kukuku!"
The Greater Imp let out a vibrating rumble that wasn't a shriek, but a laugh. The sound was like wet stones grinding together.
It tossed the "toothpick" aside and reached down with a hand the size of Seven's torso.
Instead of a killing blow, the monster's massive fingers closed around Seven's head, lifting him off the ground like a ragdoll. His legs dangled uselessly, his boots kicking in the air.
"Small... meat."
It slammed Seven back down into the dirt, only to pick him up and toss him against a heavy shelf.
He felt his consciousness flickering as he screamed in pain, the wooden arrow piercing his chest had broken, leaving the sharp jagged end inside.
The monster was playing with its food, it wanted to watch the "soft meat" struggle until the light left his eyes.
"Scream. More... scream."
It reached down to pin Seven shoulders to the ground, its claws sinking into the flesh right next to the arrow.
His mouth opened in a silent cry, but his lungs were too choked with smoke to even make a sound. In fact, the heat of the surrounding fire was becoming a funeral pyre.
At least, until…
SWOOSH~
…the air changed.
A sudden chill wind just swept through the burning tent, and the roaring flames didn't just flicker; they died. The inferno was extinguished in an instant, replaced by a fine, shimmering frost that coated the blackened wood.
The Greater Imp froze.
It sensed a predator, one far higher on the food chain than itself. Thus, it let go of Seven and turned its massive head toward the higher predator's location, its yellow eyes wide with sudden terror.
Flash!
A line of blinding white light cut suddenly flashed.
Shing!
The sound came a second later. It was the kind of sound that resonated through the very marrow of Seven's bones.
In that same moment, the Greater Imp didn't even have time to shriek and simply split in half, divided in two perfectly symmetrical halves, collapsing to the left and right.
To put it simply, that sudden white light earlier was a vertical sword slash, so clean and impossibly fast.
Step, step.
Coming out of the forest was a tall figure, holding a long and elegant blade that hummed with a faint blue light.
Her hair possessed a spectral whiteness, outshining the winter sky. When she turned her gaze toward Seven, it was as if the deepest currents of the Atlantic had been distilled into two gems of the highest quality.
"You're a mess, my little brother," the woman said as she sheathed her sword back into a scabbard with the design of snowflakes. "You really got yourself skewered by common pests."
He recognized her.
It was the same person whom his death would act as a stepping stone for her character development in the novel, the one who was supposed to arrive after he died.
His oldest sibling.
The sword prodigy of the Hart family and ultimate weapon, a woman who lived purely for the sword.
Eden Hart.
'I won…'
The gamble was insane, but as Seven lay in the dirt, watching the two halves of the Greater Imp slide apart, he knew he had won.
Truth be told, every step he had taken toward the training camp was calculated.
In the original novel, Eden Hart, the eldest and most terrifying of his siblings, always descended from her secluded meditation at the mountain's peak, which was nearer here than the manor itself (his supposed to be his scene of death).
'It worked…'
Even if the culprit of his death had changed due to the butterfly effect of his actions, the timing of Eden's arrival was a fixed point in the world's narrative.
— Eden Hart arrived when the sun sat high enough to strike the mountain's shoulder, witnessing the lifeless body of her little brother whom she favored the most.
He had bet his life on that one line of text, and the proof was standing over him at this moment.
"Late..."
Seven managed to murmur. If only she had arrived a little sooner, then he might've not suffered this much of an amount of pain.
"You're... late, sister."
- – – 777 – – -
At the same time, in the village.
The chaos in the village had finally begun to subside. What had started as a frantic "imp stampede" was now just a cleanup operation.
The village square, usually filled with the scent of baked bread and pine, was choked with the acrid stench of monster blood.
Edward Harper leaned heavily against the stone rim of the central well, his breathing coming in heavy, wearing his silver trimmed armor.
At his feet lay a pile of imps, their spindly limbs twisted in weird angles.
"Is that the last of them?" Edward asked, wiping a streak of black filth from his forehead.
"The village is clear, sir!" a knight shouted, pulling his sword from the throat of a twitching imp. "They were weak, but there were so many... it was like they were driven here by something."
Despite the overwhelming numbers of imps, the casualties among the villagers were miraculously low— in fact, none at all!
The imps had been more interested in causing a ruckus like tearing down market stalls and screeching the walls.
Edward looked toward the mountain peak, his eyes narrowing as the mid-morning sun finally struck the western shoulder of the range.
He walked towards the old man casually farming his potatoes, as if it was the last thing he'd do even if the world is ending.
"We are the platoon meant to guard the youngest."
Edward snapped, his sword trembling in a grip tightened by sudden realization. He turned to face his commander, given that he had the right to question the order as a deputy commander.
"Why send all of us here for a mere horde of scavenger imps? Half of us could have handled this rabble, and the rest could have been handled by you alone, leaving the rest of us where we belong: guarding the manor."
The platoon commander, Aizen, didn't answer immediately
He simply looked back toward the manor which stood on the hill. From this distance, it looked like a fortress.
"What are you talking about? I'm just a potato farmer," Aizen replied, shrugging with nonchalance. "Why would you expect an old man digging in the dirt to take care of half of the horde?"
He turned back to his farmland, prodding a potato with the tip of his spade to ensure it was ready to harvest.
"Besides," Aizen added. "If the youngest is as fragile as you think, then a potato that can't handle a bit of frost just rots in the ground."