Fifty gryphons were one of the monster tamer's trump weapons.
The High Pontiff had built a new army not only as an order of knights, but in several different forms. One of them was the gryphon unit.
As he sent them out, the High Pontiff thought,
'How did they stop it?'
The more you knew your opponent, the more advantageous a fight became. He hadn't sent the unit while calling it a "greeting" for no reason.
A unit calculated and trained so that even knight-level strength wouldn't be able to deal with it easily had collapsed far too simply.
Traces and reports weren't enough. He wanted to see with his own eyes how the dagger he'd sent had been blocked.
'That the force I sent would get handled wasn't outside my expectations.'
What lay outside the High Pontiff's expectations was how easily it happened.
With a single winged horse?
So the High Pontiff was curious about the "how."
You can say, "With one sword, he cut down a thousand soldiers," and anyone can repeat that. But if you ask how that happened, the methods become varied.
That was why he was curious.
And his wish was granted. One winged horse rising into the sky showed him what he wanted to see.
***
"There is no enemy on the path our High Pontiff takes as he departs. I proclaim to the disloyal, the impure, the ignorant who would dare block his way—kneel at once and lower your heads!"
After the High Pontiff's trumpeter shouted at the top of his lungs, he blew his horn. It was a horn that narrowed where you held it and flared wide at the end.
Bwaaaaaah!
A blast rang out, loud as a Frog knight's frog-cry.
Even before that, his voice had been something else. It was nearly as loud as the horn itself.
'That's what you call born with it, I guess.'
From the sky, Enkrid heard the voice below. To the horn's call, the gryphon flock began to surge in.
There were a lot of them.
"Don't overdo it. Betrothed."
Right before he mounted up and flew, Shinar said that. With a fairy's particular sharpness, she read Enkrid's condition easily.
He was tired.
He hadn't been able to rest his back against a bed even once, moving like a storm without pause.
"I've gotten more used to it than I expected, so I'm fine."
Enkrid answered like that.
"Well, if it doesn't work out, leave it to me. I'm gonna throw a few to warm up anyway, so I can catch them all."
Rem spoke while gripping his sling handle instead of his axe.
Enkrid had done all sorts of things riding One-Eye. He'd fought gryphons, flown, and flown again.
And along the way, he'd realized a few things, so a reply like this came out naturally.
"I think it'll be fine."
"What will be fine?"
That was Ragna.
"That the two of us—me and One-Eye—are enough."
Enkrid proved it immediately.
One-Eye, which had been sprinting across the ground and then risen into the sky, charged straight into the gryphon unit.
Steel-like feathers were weapons in and of themselves. The beak stabbing forward was threatening, too, and the soldier riding on top thrust with a spear honed through training.
In the middle of that, he saw one holding a crossbow, but he figured it was meaningless in aerial combat.
With something coming in at high speed, how were you supposed to hit it?
Enkrid thought that—
and then corrected himself right away.
'So that's how you do it.'
The enemy wasn't stupid. If it couldn't work, there was no reason to ride a gryphon while holding a crossbow.
Their crossbowmen weren't alone; they moved in groups of ten. Just like that, they poured bolts into a fixed zone.
They weren't chasing a target and firing accurately.
They were firing to occupy space.
'Should I call it space-occupation fire?'
These bastards had trained everything.
Even so, it wasn't threatening. With Dawn alone, Enkrid could knock every quarrel out of the air. And right now, there wasn't even a need to do that.
The moment the crossbows fired, One-Eye changed its wing angle and rode the wind. By feel alone, Enkrid understood what One-Eye had done.
'Riding the wind.'
It set its wings level with the wind. Feeling the flow of air, it cut through while riding that flow.
As a result, One-Eye's speed spiked in an instant.
High-speed flight.
Enkrid felt his organs shove again, so he swallowed his breath in chunks, tightened his abs, and endured.
After that, it was as if One-Eye was speaking to him.
'Stretch your sword.'
It wasn't actually speaking. Its intent simply came through clearly.
When One-Eye tilted its body to the side, it made the perfect posture to hold something in the right hand and swing.
Enkrid followed that intent.
He gripped his sword, put strength into it, and cut.
A gryphon's neck and one soldier's neck caught in that arc.
'This feels like I'm hitting scarecrows.'
Everything was being guided by the friend between his legs. Enkrid was merely becoming the one sword that friend didn't have.
One-Eye shot higher, then drove through a nearby cloud as if piercing it.
The gryphon flock chased after.
The speed difference was obvious.
No—the difference in flying skill was blatant.
Until now, One-Eye had kept flying. And as it did, it kept learning and awakening to how to fly, over and over again.
It had experienced long-distance flight and short-distance flight, and even combat situations.
If Ragna existed among knights, then among horses, One-Eye showed the same kind of aspect as Ragna.
'Even without anyone teaching it.'
It learned on its own.
To One-Eye, flapping its wings was that kind of thing.
Enkrid entrusted everything to One-Eye, and faithfully followed its intent.
When it was time to extend the sword, he extended the sword. When it needed a fist, he swung it as is.
Then he planted his body with both legs and raised his sword over his head.
A gryphon caught on that blade and split in half.
Weight slammed into both arms, but he had a knight's strength. This was nothing.
The blade became a guillotine splitting a monster whole in the sky. Blood, bone, and chunks of flesh poured down from above.
How many times had his insides surged like that?
One-Eye moved like a fish that had found water, and the gryphons became fish hauled onto land.
One-Eye folded one wing and whipped its body around.
Enkrid swung at the timing.
With that, One-Eye and Enkrid combined into a flying shredder.
Kwaddeuk!
Skulls and beaks caught on the sword, ground up and severed. The ones caught wrong had their neck bones snapped.
One-Eye spread its wings again to regain balance, surged upward, then folded both wings and dropped straight down.
This was no different from sprinting through the sky as if it were ground.
No—it allowed movement that was even more three-dimensional.
"You're all gonna die like dogs."
Enkrid said it, stealing a brief moment of leeway.
The soldiers heard him, too.
He'd loaded his words with Will, so of course they did.
But none of them reacted.
As he flew, Enkrid looked into the soldiers' eyes.
'No focus.'
Whether they were drugged or some trick had been used, they charged after losing all reason.
'So this is the southern way.'
It wasn't a pleasant sight.
A soldier who takes the field accepts death. You could say they accept both the resolve to kill and the resolve to die.
But these men weren't resolved—something had intoxicated them.
The High Pontiff had formed an army that didn't know fear.
It wasn't a pretty thing to look at.
'Oppression.'
The High Pontiff used coercion and oppression as weapons. The meaning of those words sank deep into his chest.
In an instant, nineteen gryphons died.
It hadn't even been long since the fight began, but the outcome had already tilted.
Even so, they never considered retreat. In the end, One-Eye dropped every gryphon.
"Uaaagh!"
A soldier falling from the sky, even with unfocused eyes, followed instinct and screamed and turned into a crushed tomato.
That was the height they were fighting at.
Was there only one or two such soldiers?
Of the fifty gryphons, not a single one survived, and half the soldiers fell to their deaths.
Aaaah, uaaagh—those screams rang out one after another.
As he fought, Enkrid scanned the enemy lines.
There was no momentum reacting to his fight at all.
No—there was one killing intent he could feel.
A knight's killing intent was like a refined blade: ordered, shaped, something constructed.
But the killing intent now—
'It feels more primal than that.'
Thicker and denser than a wild beast's.
And yet, calling it a monster's felt off. There was a strange sense of control to it.
By instinct alone, Enkrid caught the presence of something odd among them.
***
"As expected."
The High Pontiff watched the gryphon unit get swatted out of the air like summer flies, but he wasn't flustered.
Hadn't he already expected it?
Instead, he thought of the king of Naurillia.
'A sly bastard.'
A man whose true nature didn't show even to his own eyes. It had been a long time since he'd seen someone hide his inside so well.
'Just like I prepared the gryphon flock, you must have prepared that horse, too. What a truly sly young king.'
He was wrong. There wasn't a single person who knew One-Eye was a pegasus.
Enkrid didn't know, either.
It had happened by accident.
But the High Pontiff made plans. And from that vantage point, he judged others the same way.
'Show me what else you've hidden.'
With that thought, the High Pontiff made a small gesture.
At the light motion, two aides approached his side.
"Prepare my children as well."
"Yes, Your Majesty."
"Tell the order of knights, too. Tell them the enemy will have prepared all sorts of means."
The aide answered and moved swiftly.
Soon, by his will, the Final Order of Knights began to step onto the front.
***
The monster tamer clenched his teeth hard as the gryphons he'd prepared died in heaps, and swore revenge.
'Damn pegasus.'
Fine.
He still had a trump weapon he'd prepared.
Next to a knight whose entire body was hidden under helmet and armor, he whispered low.
The figure wrapped in full plate was also a member of the order of knights.
"You will kill that bastard for sure."
The tamer said, patting the back of the armor.
It was an expression of familiarity.
-Grrk.
A phlegmy sound came from inside the helmet.
That was the answer the helmet's owner spat out.
Baerlich wanted to call out Cypress right now and fight him, but there was no way the other side would humor it.
'He'll step out after he's pulled himself together a bit, right?'
He acted like he'd charge in blindly because he had resolve, but Cypress used his head more than you'd think.
Baerlich knew that bastard didn't enjoy taking on a fight he was at a disadvantage in.
So it wasn't hard to read his pattern.
'They'll send out someone at vice-captain level, right? Should I play along accordingly?'
As he was thinking, someone else spoke first.
"I will go first."
It was the one with only a thin sword hanging at his waist.
His voice was quiet, and his manner was silent.
"Lien may come out."
They knew the Red Cloak order of knights guarding the front line inside and out. Hadn't they faced each other and fought over and over?
The knight who stepped forward nodded.
Even that nod was slow and calm.
He was someone who seemed to add the element of composure to every action he took.
"It doesn't matter."
He had no eyebrows and no hair.
Of everything he carried, only the sword looked like it was made of iron, and he didn't even properly wear a common gambeson.
Armor made by weaving scale after scale from a snake that had become a demon beast, and a slender sword.
That was all he seemed to have.
"Then."
With silent permission granted, the southern knight stepped out.
His gait remained modest and quiet.
Right beside the path he passed, one soldier who'd been riding a gryphon crawled on the ground with a broken leg.
Somehow he hadn't died.
The knight passed right by him, and after he passed, the soldier stopped moving.
Blood gurgled out from the soldier's throat.
A throat that had been fine now had a hole in it before anyone knew it.
Boots made specially from very thin leather moved as if they would brush the ground.
The southern knight who stepped forward opened his mouth.
"Who among you is the fastest?"
With the words, he raised his hand so his palm faced the sky, and crooked his fingers.
"Come out."