Right, I did want to meet one of you. If not a single one of you had been left and you'd all gone to the battlefield, I would've been disappointed."
Pustis was sincere. He wanted to properly cross blades with them. Hadn't he heard, until his ears rang, of what they had done?
'A flower blooming in the mud.'
A diamond hidden among rocks.
It was a story the entire Mud Order of Knights loved.
The narrative structure was the same as the tale of a beggar in rags succeeding through effort and luck—it felt as if it were talking about them.
They too had started from the bottom and risen to the highest positions.
Pustis saw them—the Mad Order of Knights—as similar to the Mud Order.
'From common soldiers to knights.'
From the days when they'd been called troublemakers to where they stood now, countless things must have happened.
Half of it was a sense of kinship, the other half was competitive spirit. On top of that, if you added that the ones who should own that narrative should be the Mud Order alone, there was even a desire to erase the existence of these others. Whatever the mix, his feelings were genuine.
"Can you hear a bit now?"
Just as he said, Jaxon's hearing was beginning to return.
"Do you need some time to rest, by any chance?"
Behind Pustis, a soldier sank into the swamp and screamed, but it was as if it had nothing to do with him.
His ease was real. He didn't care in the slightest that some of his soldiers were dying. Jaxon retrieved the two daggers he had thrown and dropped to the ground earlier. In the middle of that, he deliberately showed an opening, but the opponent didn't move.
Pustis waited, only rolling his wrists a few times. Before fighting, he loosened himself so his body wouldn't stiffen. The way he twisted his joints from the ankles up looked like a movement so habitual it had been carved into him.
He was adept at fighting knights. Moderately tense, moderately excited. He was a born fighter, and his experience was thick.
"If you're going to wait anyway, let's fight tomorrow morning. Let's call it a day and go back for now."
Jaxon said it nonchalantly. As if it were only natural that Pustis should agree.
"...Huh? Wow, you're something."
Pustis was at a loss for words for a moment, then spoke. To his ears, it was a brilliant answer.
How could Jaxon not have been influenced by Enkrid.
Borrowing a bit of Enkrid's way of speaking, he put a hairline crack in the opponent's composure. Of course, that crack disappeared quickly. Pustis immediately acknowledged Jaxon.
Judging he couldn't win with words, he nodded. Thick experience gave him the tolerance to accept all kinds of situations. Just like the man standing in front of him now.
"I can't go that far."
The man answered with a laugh.
Judgment, attitude, action—everything about him was outstanding. He was a proper knight.
Jaxon cast his gaze past him. The presence of the man standing before his eyes was not small.
But something even more dizzying in terms of danger pricked at him. It was a sense that belonged to the realm of instinct and intuition.
Through many years of experience, he'd gained the knack of telling apart the formless sense of crisis that intuition picked up.
Pustis had just helped kill a mage. His attitude had been like swatting a bothersome insect. Why? Because he had room to spare. Because the variables magic brought didn't matter to him.
'Because he thinks he can do without magic and that it only gets in the way.'
Or because he didn't get along with them to begin with.
The reasons could be many. He couldn't know all of them, but one thing was certain. The enemy was sure of victory.
"How many came?"
Jaxon asked. Even without a subject, the meaning got across.
Spelled out, the question became: "How many knights are there?"
"Five."
The Mud Order's total was seven. Two of them had been transferred under the High Pontiff, so it meant they had all come.
"We only have to hit the Border Guard. That's all our role is in this war."
His tone said this much wasn't even classified. At Pustis's words, Jaxon asked back:
"What about the front line Sir Cypress is holding?"
"Mm, there's one thing you lot are most mistaken about."
Naturally, Jaxon waited for his next words. Up to now, Pustis had been talking so freely because he was aiming for Jaxon's lapse in vigilance.
For knights, five steps was the same as right in front of the nose. Especially for Pustis, whose specialties were charges and rushes.
Boom—
The air compressed and then burst. Dirt on the ground fountained up, and before the sound, the flail—a mace with three lumps of iron attached to a bar—smashed Jaxon's head.
There was no brain matter, shattered bone, popped eyeballs, or blood.
Pustis's flail only split Jaxon's afterimage. Among the Mad Order of Knights, Jaxon was the most sensitive.
The moment Pustis made up his mind, Jaxon predicted it and leapt to the side. Of all the Mad Order, Jaxon was the one least likely to be caught by a surprise attack.
"That's my afterimage."
Jaxon said calmly, both arms holding daggers hanging down.
Was the opponent the only one used to fighting knights? He wasn't. Jaxon spent his time with crazy bastards who constantly aimed for him and forced head-on fights. For him, dodging attacks like this was everyday life.
Clatter.
The flail chains struck each other, leaving noise. Returning to the exact same stance as before swinging the weapon, Pustis spoke.
"You dodged that."
Hit while speaking. It was a technique found in Valen-style mercenary swordsmanship.
In the south, phantom-sword-line techniques had been famous for generations. Naturally, there were many who had mastered Valen-style mercenary swordsmanship.
"What mistake?"
Jaxon's tone was calm. Pustis lifted the corners of his mouth. This bastard had room to spare, didn't he? Even after hearing there were five, he wasn't the least bit afraid? Was he trusting the mage behind him?
Mental acceleration was something any knight did. Pustis settled his thoughts at once and spoke.
"That our one knight order is enough to face your whole kingdom."
If the number of knights was what symbolized military might, then Pustis's words were right.
At that, Jaxon counted in his head. It didn't take long. Even leaving out the talented one who had joined recently, including himself, they were ten.
"Do you know the number of knights in the Mad Order?"
"What?"
"We're ten."
And you're five.
He didn't even need to finish the sentence for the meaning to come across.
"But right now, you're alone, aren't you?"
Pustis's words were also true. Still smiling, he once more scraped the dirt up with his toe.
Fwoosh—the scattered dirt obscured Jaxon's vision. The end of the flail flew in from Jaxon's left. When Jaxon dodged that, Pustis would bring his toes up from below in a kick.
Every movement would pile on in succession, not giving him even a breath.
Jaxon moved exactly as Pustis expected. That was fine. It was effective to deviate from predictions only as much as needed, at the necessary moment.
Also, when it came to killing someone, a single instant's opening was enough.
That truth didn't change even facing an opponent head-on. It was just that what Jaxon had overlooked was the very existence of the Mud Order.
Right after he slipped outside the arc of the flail and the follow-up kick, Jaxon felt a sting in his left flank.
Intuition smacked his head like a lightning strike. Jaxon drove his left elbow down.
Crack!
His elbow hit something hard. The opponent had twisted an arm and blocked with something like a vambrace, then withdrawn.
"...Ohho."
A black shadow that had stabbed toward his waist slid in and retreated. Jaxon's eyes caught the figure as it pulled back. So short that the head didn't even reach his chest. Long ears like a fairy's, flushed cheeks like a dwarf's.
Long white brows drooped to the left and right, the outer corners of the eyes slanted down, and together with the beard the face was full of wrinkles. The exclamation came from that little monster's mouth.
"You blocked that. But you didn't block all of it, did you?"
Jaxon didn't let out so much as a groan. He simply identified what had grazed his flank as it passed by.
'A needle. No, an awl.'
A dwarf with a fairy's ears. The figure naturally hid its hands behind its back. Jaxon didn't see the weapon held there, but guessing it wasn't hard.
Not for Jaxon. The sleeves were wide, and inside them there would be a vambrace-type tool that had blocked his elbow, and on top of that all kinds of other weapons lined up. He didn't have to see them to know. He was the same, after all.
In other words, he was facing one of his own kind.
At the same time as blood beaded and dripped from the spot where the awl had pierced, Jaxon felt numbness at the wound.
"Ah, I don't owe you an apology, right? I said I'd wait, didn't say I'd fight alone. The Mud Order never spares means and methods to win, wherever we are. That's our vow."
It was Pustis's voice. The sneering tone was enough to make you want to tear his mouth off. Even so, Jaxon didn't get agitated.
Why is my flank going numb? The question brought its own answer.
'Poison.'
A kind he was experiencing for the first time. A composite toxin made by mixing poisons from plants, minerals, and animals.
'And it's something brewed in his own way.'
It wasn't in any normal category. Jaxon had trained to resist poison from childhood. So he had resistance to most poisons, but—
"Mine's a little special. Young friend."
The dwarf said. And it was true.
Dizziness came along with a ringing in his ears. Symptoms of poisoning.
"Phew."
Jaxon let out a small breath.
"How about it? Should I join in too?"
Yet another knight stepped in. This one wore two swords crossed on the back. The blades were shorter than longswords, but the arms were long like a monkey's. The two swords on the back had hilts that stuck up past the outside of the shoulders for easy drawing.
"Yeah, join in. If I'd been alone, I might have gone down. His skill isn't ordinary."
Pustis said. He was a man who acknowledged the enemy's ability more than anyone, and who was willing to swallow degradation if that's what it took to live.
Seen as a whole, the Rihinstetten knight orders split into two branches. One that carried on tradition, and one that raised knights through a new method. The Mud Order belonged to the former, and Pustis's attitude was a trait that came from that. They fought to survive, and had passed down that kind of skill, technique, and mindset from generation to generation.
That was why the traits of each southern knight order were so distinct. Aside from the Mud Order, the other orders all clung to their own ways.
"If Venom hadn't stabbed him, that one would've thrown something at me or pulled out some weapon outside my expectations. Or maybe not. Either way, he would've done something."
Pustis continued. Jaxon didn't bother inserting himself into their conversation. Instead, he took one look at all three.
If he were free to fall back from where he stood now, he was full of confidence he could kill those three. If he took his time, kept his distance, and fought them in the way he liked, meeting them at the moment of his choosing, it wouldn't be hard.
So if he retreated for now and promised himself a later encounter, it was doable. Things would be several times easier than now.
"Once someone gets past you, there's a mage, right? Our objective is the mage. Step aside."
Pustis the Observer—that was his nickname. It was this kind of observational power and insight that gave him an exceptional eye for gauging an opponent's skill.
He saw through Jaxon's way of fighting, his habits.
'He's mastered assassination techniques.'
In his own knight order, Venom fought like this. The dwarf fairy who had just stabbed with an awl was named Venom, and thinking of Venom's way of fighting made it easy to imagine the opponent's.
From that, it was easy to infer why this man was accepting a disadvantage to hold his ground here.
"If you move aside, it's easier for everyone. We'll be glad to get rid of the mage, and you'll be glad to live."
Jaxon laughed again.
The truly funny thing was that at a moment like this, he could understand Enkrid's heart.
Fighting because there was someone at his back. That was how Enkrid fought.
A fight not for earning crona through killing, but a fight to protect someone.
Five years ago, it would have been hard to imagine.
"Cut the chatter and come at me."
As he spoke, Jaxon twirled the two daggers in his grip and shifted them into reverse holds. One hand looked empty, but the shape of the fingers holding something invisible meant that hand was gripping a weapon. While they were talking, he had already wiped down the Invisible Blade, so it couldn't be seen.
Jaxon was calm. That attitude didn't change. Facing three knights head-on was not the kind of fight he enjoyed, and it meant fighting with a disadvantage, but what could he do.
'If you have to do it.'
You do it.
Just as Enkrid had done, he would simply do it himself.
'I'll take all three with me.'
If things went bad, he would make those three his traveling companions to the grave. Jaxon's eyes rarely showed emotion, but today was different. Today, there was fervor in them. His eyes were not as they usually were.
"Until I die, you're not even getting a look at our mage. And if that woman sees your body, she'll gouge your eyeballs out."
"This bastard's mouth is still alive, huh?"
While the words passed back and forth, the dwarf called Venom blurred and vanished from sight, and the newly arrived knight drew both swords. Facing them head-on, Pustis spun the flail over his head.
Kwoooom, kwoooom. The sound of the mace ripping the air was deafening.