"I love you."
Those words of love—no mere surface pleasantry—rang out like the sound of the world being painted over anew.
"......"
In truth, there was no actual sound.
The sound of something cracking. Something being smashed to pieces. Something torn apart. Something shattered. Something cleaved open. Something crushed flat. Something broken to splinters. Something split apart. Something carved through. Something cast down. Something— "I love you, I love you, I love you."
Again, there was no actual sound.
And yet the love offered from that black shadow was so overwhelming—one could almost hear the sound of everything being lost—that it constituted nothing less than an act of invasion against the soul at the very center of this world.
A world where everything was being swallowed whole.
A world where all things plunged, and kept plunging, into a darkness whose nature and depth were utterly unknowable.
The soul was made to understand that in that abyss—seemingly infinite in its depth—everything precious and everything else alike had dissolved into nothing.
And yet— Was it weakness that made one refuse to admit it? —No. It was kindness.
Was it weakness that made one unable to give up? —No. It was kindness.
Was it weakness that made one unable to refuse that love? —No. It was kindness.
"I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you."
Against the love that kept whispering, one raised a voice of refusal with every ounce of strength.
But one knew. One realized, even then, that even that full-strength refusal hadn't been complete.
"I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you."
One caught a glimpse of possibility within it.
Even if the first, second, and third places in that person's heart were already filled, one still glimpsed it.
One did not want to empathize with that cowardly, wretched yearning that sought to exploit it.
The destination of such self-serving feelings was always— "I love you. I love you. —Love me."
—See? It had come to that.
"Love me. Love me. Love me. Love me. Love me, love me, love me, love me—love me."
One had known it would come to this.
It was as clear as day. Clearer than fire. Easier than twisting a baby's wrist. Easier than squashing a tomato, easier than opening closed eyelids, easier than drawing a breath and letting it go.
One had known it would come to this.
Because it wasn't for the other person's sake. Because it was for one's own.
If one didn't have to consider the other person—if one could fill one's mind and heart entirely with oneself—then it was inevitable.
And that was the most embarrassing thing of all. Enough to make one's face burn.
"—I hate you."
One thought one's heart would freeze solid.
"I will never love you. Never."
One thought one might die—as though those words had been spoken not by someone else, but by oneself.
But even that near-death terror, compared to what waited beyond, was—incomparably, immeasurably—sweeter.
Because— "Petra's... handkerchief...?"
One was seized with the certainty—as though a noose had been cinched around one's neck—that the moment had finally come.
△▼△▼△▼△ —A welcoming party of roughly five hundred.
That was the troublesome formation
Of course, the moment they'd left Flam alive, it was a foregone conclusion that Aldebaran's betrayal would reach Reinhard and he would come running. Equally obvious was that the same information would flow to Felt and the Council of Wise Men.
To eliminate those foreseen obstacles, Aldebaran had used his greatest asset—himself—as a decoy, all in an effort to clear his path.
And that plan had been completely undone by the unexpected initiative of a girl he'd underestimated.
"Goddamn it. There are way too many star players in this world that make me look like a joke."
"Don't screw around! This is serious!"
Aldebaran shrugged and grumbled—but Heinzel wasn't yelling at him. He was yelling at Yae.
His fury at Yae's proposed human sacrifice strategy had simply, miraculously, coincided with Aldebaran's muttering.
In any case— "Old man's right—no time for jokes. Let's figure this way out."
Aldebaran tightened his jaw inside his helm and pushed aside his lament for this absurd world. He turned to his two companions and began the war council.
Heinzel, green-faced. Yae, wearing an unreadable smirk. And Aldebaran, talentless—these three, and the hand they'd been dealt after using their strongest piece as a decoy.
"Bit of a thin lineup, but they don't have their best crew either."
"Figure out a way? How? First off, who are we even—"
"Our enemy numbers roughly five hundred. They don't look like knights or guards, but they're hardened fighters. And the one in charge is definitely Lady Felt."
"Five hundred, huh? That's... something."
Yae pressed a finger to her lips. Her admiration was probably directed at how quickly they'd gathered that many.
Aldebaran completely agreed. Without playing near-perfect moves and following near-perfect strategy, they couldn't have assembled this situation in the first place.
"Wait, wait, wait! Five hundred!? And they're not even soldiers? How the hell— First of all, how did you even get that information—"
"Stow it, old man. How I know the enemy count doesn't matter. What matters is that it's true. Besides—you agreed from the start, right? 'If you want the Dragon's Blood, you won't go against my lead.'"
"Guh..."
"A man who can't keep his word doesn't get liked, you know."
Heinzel, reminded of this, fell silent—though he made no effort to hide his discontent.
Heinzel's situation was like a horse running with a carrot dangling in front of his face. The difference was that Heinzel's craving could only be satisfied by that specific carrot.
And so Heinzel couldn't defy the one holding it.
"Well, even if Heinzel shuts up, what then? Five hundred is a lot to deal with."
"Come on, you're the finest shinobi the Volachian Empire ever produced. Can't you do something?"
"Even if you call me the finest, I still botched my assassination, you know? Besides, mowing down a hundred or a thousand on a battlefield isn't a shinobi's job. I'm not the Blue Lightning."
"Yeah, fair enough."
At the mention of the "Blue Lightning"—Cecilus—whom Yae discussed in the same breath as tall tales and fables, Aldebaran had, in fact, spent a brief stretch of time alongside him.
His abilities were, as Yae suggested, on the same incomprehensible tier as Reinhard's—one of those outliers who defied all reason.
With power like that, one could probably cut through even a thousand enemies head-on. But Aldebaran had, regrettably, let go of such lofty ambitions back in his teenage years.
Therefore— "Realistically, walking out into five hundred hostiles waiting for us would be stupid. We're in the woods—let's use that. Circle around without being spotted."
From the tone of the suggestion, playing it safe and lying low was a non-starter. But if the enemy had pinpointed their exact position, they would have launched a surprise attack through Gladiel already.
Since they hadn't, the enemy knew they were in the forest—but nothing more.
In that case, with the right maneuvering, they might be able to split the five hundred even further— "Oh, Al. We might have a problem."
Just as Aldebaran formulated a plan and was about to move, Yae tugged gently at his sleeve.
He turned to find her staring intently toward the direction where Felt's forces waited, a look of wariness in her eyes.
She said— "Their movements are picking up speed."
Following Yae's gaze, Aldebaran saw the same thing—logs wrapped in white smoke, tossed one after another into the forest.
△▼△▼△▼△ "Well, I wasn't exactly expecting them to come out, but still."
Felt stood in the center of the formation deployed across the plain, glaring at the forest where the enemy lurked.
Calling them "the enemy" outright—admitting that the helm-wearing bastard was the enemy—still gave her a moment's hesitation. Al wasn't a rampaging friend or comrade, nor was he someone particularly close.
More importantly, to keep the assembled troops' morale high, calling him "the enemy" was more useful.
And so Felt declared, without hesitation, that the helm-wearing bastard—Al—was the enemy.
And that enemy was inside the forest they'd surrounded.
"So we're sure about this, right? Otherwise, I'm gonna look like an idiot, shouting greetings into an empty forest."
"Ha ha ha! Hold your ground, Golden Lion! Indeed, my ability only covers one eye's worth—but at this range, if you've narrowed it down this much, even unwanted sights will come into view!"
The one who responded to Felt, speaking with a somewhat peculiar accent, was a man named
The Scales had a custom of tattooing a set of scales somewhere on their body as proof of loyalty to the organization. Manfred, however, had gone overboard with his proof of devotion. He'd tattooed his shaved head, his face, his neck, even his eyeballs—and probably everything under his clothes as well.
And his peculiarity wasn't just skin-deep. It extended to his very being.
"—Blessing of Farsight."
Manfred's left eye—the only untattooed eyeball in his visible range—rolled in its socket as he fixed his stare on the forest.
The eye currently in that socket had, until recently, been a tattooed eyeball. The reason it was no longer there was simple: the eye now in its place belonged to someone else.
The eye Manfred currently wore had belonged to a man who was once his subordinate— "As expected, someone else's blessing doesn't sit quite right. But—I saw them."
"That's gotta be convenient but also super creepy. How does it work?"
"I don't mind straightforward talk. —But the method of acquiring blessings is a secret of the Scales."
Without touching on the method itself, Manfred confirmed the enemy's presence in the forest.
For Felt, who had previously suffered under that very Blessing of Farsight, there was no room for doubt about the intelligence it provided.
"If they won't come out..."
"Then we'll have to give them a reason to."
Old
The grand strategist, who had devised a plan to maximize the effectiveness of Manfred's incomplete Blessing of Farsight, had already prepared his next move against an enemy holed up in the forest.
It was— "Pyrox wood doesn't burn easily and produces a great deal of smoke. Even with water, it keeps belching it out. This tactic is tailor-made for the occasion."
Old Rom's proposal was simple and elegant: smoke Al out.
Led by the muscle-bound
"The smoke doesn't merely impair vision. There's a psychological burden too, but the worst of it comes when you breathe it in."
"Coughing your lungs out is the worst, huh."
"Indeed—a taste of hell. And besides—"
Old Rom squinted as he spoke.
There, Canbary and his wife—
The wind didn't blast the trees aside. Instead, it slipped gently between them, creating channels—paths for the smoke—to spread throughout the forest.
"To my knowledge, there's no shortage of people who can ignore poison or grievous wounds. But I've never once met anyone who could calmly endure the torment of being smoked out in a life that had gone on needlessly long."
Old Rom spoke in a low voice, watching the progress of his plan unfold with satisfaction.
Felt listened with pleasure—while also reflecting, once again, that her foster parent possessed a frankly terrifying depth of knowledge.
Felt didn't know what Old Rom had done in his past.
But she knew it wasn't something one could boast about, and that Old Rom himself harbored bitter feelings about it.
And so, until Old Rom chose to speak of his own accord, Felt wouldn't ask.
She wouldn't ask—and she would only say this: "Well? —My Old Rom's something else, isn't he?"
△▼△▼△▼△ "—Smoke."
Watching the thrown logs billowing white smoke as they slowly crept through the forest, Aldebaran clicked his tongue at the enemy's aggravating adaptability.
Being surrounded by large numbers was bad enough. This was a fresh layer of worst piled on top.
"They—they set it on fire! They're trying to smoke us to death!"
"Calm yourself. A fire attack would make it harder to confirm bodies, and they could get caught in it themselves. It's a foolish, low-level ploy."
"What if they've gone and done exactly that!? They're slum brats! Those people don't think about consequences!"
"Oh, honestly, Al!"
"I know! Old man, shut up for a second!"
The encroaching smoke was burning through Aldebaran's dwindling reserves of calm. He silenced Heinzel's panic by force.
Heinzel couldn't defy Aldebaran—not with the Dragon's Blood on the line. That said, in a life-or-death crisis, treating his panic like mere complaints or objections was probably uncalled for.
"—I agree with Yae. This isn't a fire attack—it's a smoke attack. Problem is, smoke is impossible to endure. Yae, what about you?"
"Whether I can endure the smoke? No way, no way. I've trained against poisons and torture countermeasures, but breathing in smoke and tearing up and coughing—no amount of training helps with that."
"Right. So our only option is to outrun the smoke."
To avoid being smoked to death, there was only one conclusion.
The problem was that this was exactly what the enemy wanted. —Of course, whether it was fire or smoke, fleeing from immediate danger was basic human instinct.
And the unnatural wind accompanying the smoke, driving them ever deeper—there was no touching that unseen hunter— "I figured five hundred couldn't surround the whole forest, but...!"
The smoke meant to choke them out, and the wind to guide it.
With just those two tools, even a small group like Aldebaran's—or a much larger force—could be driven precisely where the enemy wanted them.
Felt had completed the encirclement of a forest too large for even five hundred to surround.
"Or rather, the real problem is their brain. Son of a bitch—she's really done it."
He hissed in frustration, and Aldebaran conjured a mental map of the world.
Their destination was far, far to the west—they'd already spent a day resting and traveling, reducing their limit from seven days to six.
They couldn't afford to get bogged down by Felt here and dragged into a prolonged battle.
"Al!"
"—! Yae, call out the wind's direction! Old man, follow Yae's lead and charge straight ahead! Cut down anything in the way!"
"G-got it."
"You're too quiet!"
"GOT IT!!"
Heinzel, cowed by Aldebaran's sharp commands, yelled back with reckless abandon.
Following Yae's directions, Heinzel drew his sword and carved a path forward—literally. As Aldebaran pursued that sturdy back, he continued to think.
Moving in a big way meant the territory would need resetting. But updating the matrix meant losing the path back to before this smoke operation was launched.
At the very least, when Aldebaran had left the forest of his own volition, Felt hadn't executed the smoke strategy. Of course, that would have meant a head-on clash with five hundred.
"Which is the lesser evil?"
—In the end, Aldebaran's victory was guaranteed.
Not even the Sword Saint,
Aldebaran's victory was absolute. The question was what else he sought beyond mere victory.
To fulfill those purposes beyond victory—which path offered a higher probability?
"If you go alone, Heinzel will die, you know?"
"—Right. Let's move!"
The deliberation lasted only a heartbeat. Aldebaran nodded at Yae's words and broke into a run.
At the same instant, he updated the matrix—redefined the next starting point, and discarded all attachment to the possibilities he'd left behind without a backward glance.
Life was a series of choices. That wasn't unique to Aldebaran—it applied to everyone.
And most choices were made in an instant, with the unchosen path never given a second thought. But that was fine. Aldebaran, too, tried to do the same, as much as possible.
What to have for breakfast tomorrow. Which foot to put a sock on first.
He treated those trivial choices and the life-or-death decisions of battle as being on equal footing. There was no point clinging to the path not taken.
Aldebaran, like Natsuki Subaru, simply had more chances than most to cling to a choice. —If one couldn't accept that, one would remain stuck forever.
"Heinzel, the footing's rough—go right. Take down that big tree too."
"Easier said than done! You damn—"
"Whoa, amazing! As expected—nothing you can't handle, except living things!"
Heinzel gritted his teeth, annoyed at being mocked despite having followed instructions perfectly. As Aldebaran tracked his profile, he could see the smoke growing denser—the wind was beginning to funnel it, closing in around them.
In other words— "—An ambush is close."
△▼△▼△▼△ —Racinus, leading the ambush squad, positioned at the forest's exit.
Honestly, he wanted to scream that he'd been given a role with far too great a burden.
Just the fact that his life had intersected with the Sword Saint, the Divine Dragon, the
"Goddamn it... where the hell did my life go so sideways?"
He raked his fingers through his hair, letting the endless stream of weak thoughts soak all the way down to his feet as he irritably trampled the weeds beneath his boots.
It was mindless venting. But these weeds, stubbornly resilient even under Racinus's grinding boot, merely bent their stems softly—never crushed, never torn. They pushed back against his sole, asserting their vitality.
A persistence that could only be called weeds to the weeds—and seeing that, Racinus felt he could imagine a number of familiar faces lined up there. He sighed.
When he looked up, he realized he'd wandered far from where he'd started.
But blown by the wind, scattering their seeds, rooting wherever they landed—weeds were weeds. No matter how the color of their leaves or the thickness of their stems shifted, weeds never turned into trees or flowers.
"Is that it? No matter where I go, I can only live the way I always have?"
He hadn't been told by anyone, but it felt like everyone had told him. Racinus clicked his tongue. But this time, unlike before, there was no sullen, cantankerous edge to it.
What remained was simply the considerable burden that had been thrust upon him—and the resolve to see it through.
And with a kind of recklessness settled in place— "Hey! Movement!"
The one who called out was one of the roughnecks deployed alongside Racinus on the plain.
A man from
Strange bedfellows, to be sure, but among people well-versed in violence, they were reliable.
At their reaction, Racinus too turned his gaze to the forest.
If the plan went well, the helmeted bastard and his companions, driven out by the smoke, would burst from there. Racinus and the others' job was to overwhelm them with sheer numbers— "—oh."
The next instant, what burst from the forest was not the helmeted bastard. It was a cannonball.
—No, that wasn't quite right either. It was a massive log, hurled with the force of a cannonball, spinning vertically as it bore down on Racinus's position.
"————"
The trunk was thicker than Gaston's torso, over ten meters long. That homely projectile of a log was headed straight for the center of their formation.
Seeing it bearing down, the roughnecks shouted and scrambled to flee.
But— "—El Goa!"
A deep boom echoed across the sky, and a crimson flower of fire bloomed against the blue.
It shattered the incoming log to pieces, transforming what should have been a devastating blow into fragments that merely stung when they struck.
And the one who did it was Racinus, who had pointed his finger skyward.
"Don't you piss yourselves! This is exactly when pissing yourselves means you lose! You guys get told that all the damn time!"
He bellowed at the ones who'd frozen in fear, then drew the knife at his hip. Pointing its blade toward the forest, he turned to look around at those nearby.
Honestly, his brooding had left his authority as field commander in a sorry state. Here and now, he'd wipe that away.
"After what you just saw, it should be clear—we drew the winning card! That helmeted bastard's about to come bursting out of there any second. You don't have time to—"
Before he could finish the word "relax."
"Hey!!" A shout went up, and the roughnecks' attention veered away from him again. Grinding his teeth in irritation, Racinus bulged his four-eyed glare and looked ahead.
Coming one after another—more of the same, or even larger—were logs hurtling toward them like cannonballs.
"You son of a—!!"
Crimson fire bloomed in the sky immediately after his curse—and the ones that got through sent sections of the formation flying.
Amid the shock waves, roughnecks were blown away left and right. Racinus clicked his tongue and leveled his knife at the forest once more.
The situation was changing by the second. If they kept getting resupplied with logs like this, it would be Racinus's side getting the worst of it.
"—Move out! Don't fall behind!!"
He screamed with enough force to invert his voice and charged forward with a battle cry.
In doing so, he stoked morale—not his own, but everyone else's.
It was a common truth: in any brawl among roughnecks, getting hit first was fatal.
Strangely enough, the instant someone was struck, even the most violent person's strength dropped. The idea that bleeding and suffering made you stronger was just a myth—in reality, every blow taken made a person weaker.
It worked the same way on a psychological level. Right now, Racinus and his crew had been struck first in an unexpected way. They had to overwrite that weakened state with momentum.
And— "Ooooooh!! Keep going!!!"
Bloodthirsty types were simple. Racinus's raw, emotional shout was all it took to set them off.
With a roar, they chased after Racinus as he led the charge—weapons drawn, closing on the forest. Closing, closing, closing. Feeling them at his back, Racinus supported the charge with one more display— "—Al Goa!"
He thrust his hand skyward, and the incantation tore from his throat in a voice that could have coughed up blood.
In an instant, above Racinus's head there appeared a colossal, colossal fireball—a fire-attribute magic of the Goa type, whose power ascended from unmarked to El, to Ul, and finally to Al at its peak.
If one knew even a little about magic, this was common knowledge—but the very fact that Racinus had managed to cast it and produce such a massive conflagration was a considerable feat.
The roughnecks' morale visibly surged, and Racinus fanned the flames by raising the fireball high into the sky, deliberately lofting it on high.
Naturally, aiming for it, the next volley of logs surged from the forest toward the fireball—intent on striking it down no matter how many they sacrificed.
"You idiots."
Racinus stuck out his tongue, its tip adorned with a color ring, and mocked their wasted effort.
In rapid-fire succession, logs were launched from the forest—but most were wasted shots. Because on the very first volley, the Al Goa—a Goa spell simply stretched flat and dressed up to look impressive—had already been shattered, and the remainder merely gouged empty trenches in the plain.
All of it was calculated: waste the enemy's projectiles on a decoy fireball, minimizing the damage raining down on Racinus and the roughnecks.
The gambit paid off, and Racinus and the roughnecks burst into the forest in a single rush.
"The initial volley took a few out, but...!"
Even so, thanks to Racinus's support, the fifty-man squad of roughnecks entered almost completely unscathed.
And then— "Oh dear, Heinzel got impatient and let them through, didn't he~"
At the sound of that sweet, languid female voice, Racinus's feet stopped.
His whole body was gripped by a bad premonition, and he'd been about to halt—no, that wasn't quite right. His body was seized by that premonition, yes, but he hadn't stopped of his own volition.
He had simply, suddenly, lost all freedom of movement. And not just Racinus.
The fifty roughnecks who had charged into the forest alongside him—all of them, at once.
And the one who had done it— "Even if I'm better at fighting multiple opponents than single ones, there are limits, honestly."
The red-haired woman said this while peering down at them from between the trees.
She was dressed in a maid outfit with somewhat louche stylings, a slender figure gazing at the immobilized men—men writhing in confusion and rage—from midair.
She was at tree height, but not using the trunks or branches as footing. She stood on empty air, looking down at the frozen Racinus with a gentle smile.
Straining his eyes—only his neck and eyeballs still moved—Racinus understood.
"I can only bind about a hundred at once, give or take, you see~"
This woman with the outrageous martial skill—and, worse, a truly wicked personality—was attached to the very helmeted bastard they were supposed to bring down.
△▼△▼△▼△ —The fallen tree cannon, powered by the trees Heinzel had cut down.
To make that work with the absurd mana drain of the Divine Dragon, they had needed to employ a brand of desperate improvisation that put making fried rice from whatever was on hand to shame.
"Really, Al, you're so rough with me. Cruel is bad enough, but cruel on top of using me is just—"
With Yae's constant grumbling serving as reluctant support, the trees Heinzel had felled were suspended in midair, their launching platforms prepared.
And for the actual launches, Aldebaran deployed the full extent of his scientific knowledge— "Old man, when I give the signal, pull back with everything you've got. Everything."
"I've got problems with more than just that woman—your attitude too, Aldebaran...!"
"Come on—Dragon's Blood, Dragon's Blood."
"—! Just give me the damn signal already!"
In the end, applying scientific knowledge required equipment investment, and Aldebaran relied on Heinzel's arm strength—the man was so furious at the shabby treatment that veins bulged at his temples.
Driven by smoke and funneled into the enemy's trap, they had been pushed through the forest. —Naturally, elite forces would be waiting outside, ready to clash with them head-on.
They had to thin those ranks, even if only by a little.
"Old man!"
At the signal, Heinzel gritted his teeth and poured everything into his arms.
The muscles in both limbs bulged enormously—achieving a feat of raw strength in a domain Aldebaran could never reach, even as he bemoaned his lack of talent in sobriety—and the fallen tree cannon was unleashed.
First a single test log, then two, three more. If that made the enemy back off, wonderful. If not— "Hold them in place—"
—he planned to smash their faces in.
But— "Oh my, Heinzel, getting scared of a little fireball... are you a beast?"
The instant a massive, massive fireball bloomed in the sky—visible even from outside the forest—Heinzel had panicked. Without waiting for Aldebaran's signal, he launched the fallen tree cannon prematurely.
As a result, the majority of the enemy survived, and they had been overrun in the forest.
For this, Heinzel was being needled by Yae at every turn.
He had only himself to blame. —After all, she had been the one to clean up every bit of his mess.
The fifty or so enemy soldiers who had broken through had been held in place by Yae alone. —By the web of weapons she had strung from the five fingers of both hands, spread across the entire surrounding area.
It was— "—Thread, you say?"
Gasping in pain, the man who had realized what was restraining him—a familiar punk. One of the punkish followers who tagged along with Felt. Racinus.
At Racinus's words, Yae, floating in the air, let out an admiring "Oh my."
"How perceptive! Of course, it's not just ordinary weaving thread. It's what you'd call shinobi technique. Though I've never seen anyone else who can use it, really."
Yae gazed down at the men from her lofty position in the air.
She appeared to have nothing to stand on, but in truth, she had proper footing—the very threads she had strung through the forest, her signature steel-wire technique.
"The so-called 'thread user'... one of my personal favorites among all the romantic weapon archetypes."
"Oh my~ How rare! Did Al just compliment me? Will swords rain from the sky tomorrow?"
"Don't worry—by the end I was going to say I like the weapon, but not the user."
Yae stuck out her tongue at that response. Without commenting on her attitude, Aldebaran too looked down at the enemy below—using the trees Yae's threads had lifted him to, he surveyed the scene.
Even straining his eyes, he could barely make out Yae's steel threads. Strung so densely they resembled spider silk, they had completely immobilized Racinus and his men.
Tying down anything and manipulating it with dexterity—that was Yae's true specialty.
The steel threads weren't only used to seal enemy movement. As with the fallen tree cannon moments ago, she could tie them to felled logs to keep them aloft, then spin and launch them by pulling the thread.
Wrapping countless threads around Heinzel's arms and driving him forward like a draft horse had been part of that same mechanism.
In any case, the fallen tree cannon had dealt less damage than its visual impact suggested. Most of the enemy had gotten through intact. If that number had charged in freely, without Yae, it would have been an extremely rough situation for Aldebaran.
"Things get exponentially harder the moment it stops being a one-on-one fight. I'm not great with numbers."
Back at the
His victory was never in question—but the number of attempts required could easily have jumped by an order of magnitude.
Even in that fight, he'd goaded Garfiel to keep it from becoming a two-on-one, steering things toward a one-on-one within that space.
In a one-on-one, Aldebaran could find a winning line even against Reinhard.
But the more opponents he faced, the more astronomical the number of attempts needed to find that winning line became.
And so Yae—who excelled at fighting multiple opponents—was an invaluable asset in Aldebaran's stead.
Her abilities offered further value as well.
"So, what do we do with these guys? ...Kill them all?"
Before Aldebaran could explain just how invaluable, it was Heinzel who voiced the question.
Unlike Aldebaran and Yae, who had escaped to the air on threads, Heinzel was still on the ground. He looked at Racinus and the others ensnared in the steel threads, his expression bitter.
Heinzel's blade went dull against skilled opponents—but his bitter look here likely stemmed from something other than timidity.
Shaking his head at that timidity, Aldebaran said— "Nah, no need to kill 'em. In fact, it's smarter to keep them alive with injuries. A dead man can't be used, but a living one needs medical attention. That means the enemy has to split their forces."
"Is that right. Yeah... yeah, that makes sense. I was thinking the same thing."
"Oh my, the two uncles understand each other so well. Yae-chan feels left out~"
Heinzel's relief at Aldebaran's answer was plain to see. That said, the fact that he hadn't voiced the question himself was probably Yae's own form of mercy.
In truth, reducing the enemy's combat power was a necessity for Aldebaran's side. To do that, they had to play smarter than simply taking lives indiscriminately.
So— "Heh."
"What? Feeling relieved about being spared, punk?"
"Relieved, my ass, drunkard. ...Seriously, aside from the hair and the eyes—every other part looks just like that guy, doesn't it?"
"————"
The punk—no, Racinus—bared his teeth in a grin and glared at Heinzel. It wasn't the ferocity of his gaze that silenced Heinzel, but the content of his words.
Reading the situation, Aldebaran decided not to let the conversation continue. He leaned out from among the threads wrapped around the trees— "And you too, helmeted bastard!"
"Oh."
"You and this drunkard both—slackin' off. Better toughen up, you dumbasses."
At those bitter words—thin on substance, off the mark—Aldebaran was caught off guard.
But he quickly realized that Racinus's eyes did not belong to a man who wasted words. And the instant he realized that, he understood the target of Racinus's gambit was his own surprise.
And it was too late. The price of that delay was paid immediately.
"—My, you're as dull as a pig."
That casual remark arrived at the same instant as the cannonball-like fist of the "Pig King" itself—crashing into Aldebaran, punching through the gap in his awareness, flattening him in a single blow.