"Well, I don't care what you're trying to do right now — just hand over the warhorse quickly!"
"Heh… hehe… I was just borrowing it temporarily from Raphinia. I was going to…"
The archer wore a strained smile on his face, when suddenly his expression shifted. "Look over there!"
Without waiting for Leylin to turn around, he flicked his right hand upward. Three compact sleeve darts shot straight out, aimed directly at Leylin's face.
"Hyah!"
After loosing the darts, the archer didn't spare Leylin so much as another glance. He lashed the warhorse beneath him with all his might and tried to bolt on the spot.
He had seen it clearly — there wasn't a single wound on Leylin's body. The man was in far better shape than he was.
The ability to break through the ogres' encirclement completely unscathed was not something he could hope to match right now. The archer therefore chose to flee without hesitation.
"Pretty sharp decision-making. But unfortunately, it won't do you any good…"
A magic missile shot from Leylin's hand, tracing an uncanny trajectory as it knocked the darts aside. Without losing momentum, it continued on to strike the archer squarely in the back.
Crack!
The man was thrown violently from the horse, a horrifying concave wound gouged into his back.
"You… you're a mage!" The archer struggled weakly, desperation blazing in his eyes. His hands clawed at the air like chicken talons, his body writhing in what looked like a death throe. A few seconds later, all movement ceased.
"Neigh…"
Nick, the warhorse now bereft of its master, stopped running as well. It ambled over to the nearby grass and began grazing contentedly.
"From this moment on, I'm your new master!"
Leylin stepped forward, grabbed Nick's reins, and climbed atop the horse without ceremony, claiming it as his own.
Nick offered no protest whatsoever. Sure enough, this was a warhorse with no principles to speak of. Then again, with its simple little brain that barely had any circuits to begin with, it probably couldn't comprehend such lofty concepts anyway.
Leylin squeezed his legs together, and the black warhorse immediately transformed into a bolt of lightning, galloping across the ground.
As a mount for a Knight, it was naturally far more impressive than any ordinary horse. Leylin was quite pleased with it.
The distance from the previous battlefield wasn't great, and from time to time, lucky — or perhaps unlucky — survivors who had escaped the ogres' pursuit appeared nearby. As for their cries for help, Leylin chose to turn a blind eye.
Even when merchants waved gleaming gold cro in front of him, they held little appeal.
After all, the entire fortune of these petty merchants combined probably wouldn't match what Leylin spent on a single experiment. Why bother courting unnecessary trouble?
However, as they passed through a patch of low forest, something unexpected happened.
The gentle Nick suddenly grew violent, charging madly into the undergrowth.
"This kind of change… could it be…"
Though he could have forcibly reined the horse in, Leylin merely gave the reins a few casual tugs before giving up on the idea.
For him, if something was easy enough to do, he might as well do it — and perhaps nudge his alignment a little in the process, however effective that might turn out to be.
After pushing through a thick curtain of black thorns, a gruesome scene unfolded before Leylin's eyes.
A carriage lay toppled on its side, its horses long gone, and beside it huddled the Hera sisters, clinging to each other and trembling.
Several terrifying ogres had them completely encircled, undisguised greed burning in their eyes.
Rafinia gripped her Knight's sword with both hands. Her armor was riddled with dents, hung with scraps of flesh and streaks of blood — clearly the result of multiple brutal encounters.
The young Knight now bore a deep wound on her thigh, the white of bone faintly visible, forcing her to grit her teeth so hard that glistening tears welled at the edges of her eyes. Yet her face remained resolute.
Without her protection, the Hera sisters would have long since become ogre food.
A brief moment of deduction was all Leylin needed to piece together a rough outline of their ordeal.
They had likely been separated from the main group during the chaos, fled in random directions, cut down a fair number of enemies thanks to Rafinia, and ended up here.
"Still, if they came this direction by anything other than sheer accident, then Hera's intelligence might be greater than I previously estimated…"
As for the three ogres currently besieging them, they were ordinary brutes — no shamans among them.
For the heavily wounded Rafinia, the other party might have been a tremendous threat, but to Raylin, they didn't amount to anything at all.
"Yo! Good day, lovely ladies!"
At that moment, Raylin showed not the slightest awareness of being an uninvited guest. Instead, he greeted the group with a leisurely wave, as natural and casual as a chance encounter during an afternoon stroll.
"Nick!" Rafinia's eyes sparked the moment she spotted the black warhorse. "And Lei! You damn thief — if you hadn't stolen my partner, how could I have ended up like this?!"
Raylin had long since developed an immunity to the Knight girl's outbursts. Hearing her words, he merely rolled his eyes and automatically filtered out everything she said.
"Roaaarrr…"
The moment the ogres saw Raylin appear, their simple brains registered no complex thought — they charged straight at him.
"I lost my longsword earlier, what a pity…"
Raylin slapped the warhorse's flank, and Nick let out a piercing whinny, executing a leap he could never have managed on any normal day — soaring over the ogres' heads and landing right beside Rafinia.
"Give me the sword!"
Rafinia's expression initially held some reluctance, but for reasons she couldn't understand, the sight of Raylin's calm face filled her with a trace of fear, and she obediently handed over the longsword.
"Strange… why do I…"
But before Rafinia could think the matter through, her lips parted slightly, her face flooding with astonishment and disbelief.
"Not bad!" Raylin gave the Knight's sword a few experimental swings. As a high-ranking Knight, Rafinia's equipment was top-tier — whether the warhorse or the longsword, the materials were far superior to the refined steel longsword he'd been faking it with before.
A blinding burst of battle qi erupted from Raylin's hands.
[Combat Technique — Battle Qi Enhancement!]
[Combat Technique — Charge!!]
[Combat Technique — Cross Slash!!!]
Raylin's figure instantly blurred into a streak of darkness, his longsword wreathed in razor-sharp battle qi as he launched a charge at the three brutes.
The glow of the Cross Slash swept through, and three hideous heads went flying. It was only after the massive ogre bodies crashed to the ground that Rafinia still couldn't quite believe what she had witnessed.
"I can accept that he can channel battle qi, but these advanced combat techniques and his refined fighting skills — he's even better than several of my instructors..."
Rafinia stared blankly, so dazed that she didn't even reach out when Raylin handed the longsword back to her.
The combat techniques Raylin had displayed were already on par with the strongest warrior she had ever encountered — a high-ranking Holy Knight.
"Thank you!"
At that moment, Hera also stood up while cradling her younger sister, her gaze toward Raylin brimming with gratitude.
If not for Rafinia and Raylin, she and her sister would most likely have ended up as dried meat stored away by the ogres, with no chance of survival.
As for Raylin's sudden "disappearance" earlier, the woman rationally chose not to press the matter.
Because the situation remained extremely dangerous. With Rafinia severely wounded, all of them needed Raylin's protection.
It wouldn't even require any ill intent from Raylin — if he simply abandoned the three women, their fate would be dire.
Therefore, Hera immediately said, "To express our gratitude to Mr. Raylin, once we reach town, I will increase the commission for this job. I'll make sure you're satisfied!"
She deliberately lowered her own position in the wording, which earned a subtle nod from Raylin.
"Wait... if the commission is being raised, then poor old Bam deserves a share too!"
Just then, the carriage nearby completely fell apart, and a dwarf with a broken leg tumbled out like a ball.
"It was total chaos when we broke through earlier. Thankfully Rafinia was protecting us, and then we ran into Mr. Bam..."
Hera explained to Raylin with a bitter smile, while Raylin merely shrugged, somewhat speechless at the dwarf's incredible luck. Perhaps the god of fortune really was watching over him?
After a brief rest, and considering they were still in a danger zone, Raylin's group set off again immediately.
However, the previous carriage was no longer usable. Raylin had no choice but to step in, converting the carriage wreckage into a flat cart. Hera's sisters and Rafinia were squeezed together on it, along with the dwarf Bam. As for Nick, the warhorse from before, he was now demoted with infinite regret to a common draft horse, struggling to pull the severely overloaded cart forward at a sluggish pace.
"You guys didn't see it — a full three ogres lunged at old Bam, and every single one of them had a mouth as big as my head..."
From atop the cart, old Bam's spirited boasting rang out from time to time. Rafinia shifted forward a little and looked at Raylin.
"When are you going to give Nick back to me?"
"Bring the ransom! Don't forget, this war horse is a spoil of war I claimed from that archer, protected by kingdom law. If you want your war horse back, you'll have to go find that archer…"
Raylin declared this from atop Nick's back with a perfectly straight face, the very picture of a bandit's self-awareness.
"Damn it! That archer's corpse has probably already ended up in an ogre's stomach!"
Rafinia grumbled, occasionally spitting out words like "bandit" and "thief," but in the end, still bristling with resentment, she tossed a gold card to Raylin.
"This is everything I have saved. There's nothing more…"
"Not bad…" Raylin glanced at the number displayed on it and let out a satisfied whistle. "Deal! She's yours!"
Afterward, Rafinia discovered with chagrin that due to her injuries, she still couldn't ride Nick, and everything remained exactly the same as before.