Ragna walked without making any effort to hide himself. His pace was the same as always. It was neither fast nor slow, and he didn't care whether anyone saw him or not. Since the place he was walking through was enemy territory, it was only natural that some of the enemy soldiers would notice him.
"Hey, what are you?"
One soldier in the formed ranks asked, turning only his head. They had just finished preparing to charge.
"I'm passing by."
Such a calm answer came back to the soldier's question. It wasn't a lie. And it was far too confident. At that force, the soldier blinked.
Is he one of ours? An arrangement the High Pontiff prepared? He's not a commander, though?
Thoughts like that flickered through his head.
A commander would stand out just from their clothing and shoulder insignia, so it didn't seem like that.
"Can we just leave him alone?"
The soldier asked the comrade beside him.
"No idea."
Would the soldier next to him have anything to say?
He'd only had similar thoughts. Can we really leave that alone? That was all he thought.
In the meantime, Ragna strolled in. No one stopped him.
This was already an army in formation. The soldiers, tense with discipline, stayed in place and only turned their heads and eyes to look.
Even so, it was just one person. No one imagined a knight would suddenly walk in here.
Why would a knight be here? It was hard to imagine. It was a reasonable way of thinking. Ragna was the strange one.
"Hey, what unit are you from? Didn't you hear to form up? And what's with that sorry excuse for gear?"
It was the rear even among the vanguard. An officer spotted him and asked. He couldn't leave formation, so he only turned his head and shouted between the soldiers.
Aside from his cloak, there was nothing on Ragna that clearly showed the emblem of Naurillia or Border Guard. And that cloak was lying obediently against his back, showing nothing.
Even within the High Pontiff's army, they didn't all know each other inside and out. There were plenty of allies walking around in armor or clothing you'd never seen before.
Sometimes monsters became allies, and even now they kept their distance from the giant army and lived separately.
To them, seeing an ally dressed in unfamiliar gear wasn't an awkward situation. It was just that, in a tense moment like this, someone leisurely walking around in the rear stood out.
"What's wrong with my gear?"
He answered indifferently as he kept walking. The officer who'd asked shut his mouth. Ragna, padding along, stopped in front of a creature that looked like it had been carved from gray stone.
'Big.'
It was huge. Big enough that even Audin would look small standing next to it.
'Even a typical giant…'
It was three times larger than an ordinary giant. Up close, he had to tilt his head back just to see its face.
Brrrooo—.
A lump of metal hung from the end of its long, drooping trunk. That, by itself, was a siege weapon. Every time it lifted a foot, it felt like an earthquake. At this size, that made sense. As big as it was, it was just as heavy.
"Hey, you'll get hurt. Get out of there."
The voice came from above. An elephant rider looked down and tossed out the words.
"What's that?"
"A guy who wandered in alone and got lost, isn't he?"
"Hah, what kind of idiot like that exists in this world?"
There were five riders total. Three held spears, and the other two held shields large enough to cover their bodies. All of them also wore a sword at their waist. Just from the worn grip peeking out, Ragna could tell how often they swung those swords in daily life.
'People used to fighting.'
They weren't the kind who just sat up there watching. They were a military unit that executed tactics with years of experience. Even from what he'd seen so far, it wasn't hard to guess how they fought.
Two blocked while three threw javelins to keep the enemy in check. The swords were there for when something fast tried to climb up the elephant's legs.
Of course, Ragna didn't care about any of that. He naturally ignored what was in plain sight and, in his mind, gripped his sword.
'Can I take the head in one stroke?'
It was pretty high. Still, if he jumped, he could reach it.
'With just my right hand?'
Or both hands? How tough was it? Was it really as hard as stone, like it looked? How much strength would he need?
It was a creature he'd never seen in his life. At a glance, that gray hide didn't look like hide—it looked like a shell. It had the look of something tougher than the skin of most monsters.
'How many are there?'
Ragna only took in the ones nearby. Right now, there were three close enough. For a moment, he imagined an infantry unit facing them. With just these three, the infantry would be too busy running around in panic.
The future could change, but some things were obvious.
Like now.
'If you leave it, it becomes a headache.'
That's how Ragna recognized it. A troublesome, obstructive existence that would harm allies.
As Ragna watched, two of them lifted their feet.
Thud, thud.
With every step, the ground trembled and dirt sprayed up to chest height. If they were ordered to charge, it would truly be an earthquake-like rush. Ragna made a decision.
'Both hands.'
Sunrise's hilt was long enough to clasp with both hands. A method more reasonable than trying to take the head in one clean stroke came to him. Then he simply did it.
A few soldiers glanced at him. One rider furrowed his brow.
"Hey, did you really get lost? Get the hell out of the way."
Isn't he the one blocking the road? If they delayed any longer, curses would start pouring out of a superior's mouth. He'd decided to ignore him and move on.
It happened at the same time he made that decision.
Ragna spread his feet and set his stance. The cloak, reacting to his will and movement, caught the wind and fluttered.
Flap—!
The dark-green cloak unfurled, blocking some of the dust, and revealed the emblem drawn on his back.
A stepped pattern drawn with a few lines—the symbol of a city that represented fortress walls.
A few low-ranking officers from Rihinstetten recognized it. The elephant rider was the same rank as those low-ranking officers. And all of them, before this battle, had been made to memorize a handful of crests through instruction.
They were familiar with the royal emblem of Naurillia and the symbol of the Red Cloak Order of Knights, but the point was to recognize enemies likely to join this battlefield.
They'd learned it with their eyes and memorized it, and it was the crest they'd first seen before stepping out onto the battlefield.
The steps symbolized fortress walls. The owner of that crest was Border Guard, Naurillia's fortress city.
"Enemy?"
As the rider muttered, Ragna did the most important and necessary thing first—among what he had already drawn in his head.
"I'm not lost. I'm passing by."
It was the same answer he'd given the soldier who'd first asked what he was. Hadn't someone just asked if he was lost?
Ragna truly thought he was just passing by. While doing so, he was simply swinging his sword at what annoyed him.
Shing—.
Most of the soldiers didn't even hear the sound of the greatsword, Sunrise, being drawn. That was how fast it was.
Ragna drew and cut sideways. From above, the riders saw a small whirlwind. He hadn't even exhaled once or blinked once, and suddenly a dark-green whirlwind swept in. A calamity that sucked everything in and hurled it away had appeared in front of their eyes as if it had been put together on the spot.
Ragna felt as if the cloak, riding the wind, was pushing his back.
His target was the elephant's leg.
'Cut.'
The harmony of the Will of Severance and the talent he'd honed for years—one swing severed the elephant's leg.
Along the blade that passed straight through with a clean hiss, a line formed across the gray "brick." The enormous living weapon was tough.
But it wasn't as tough as he expected.
After swinging, Ragna smoothly bled off the remaining force by drawing the sword through.
Then the scream erupted.
GRAAAOOOOO!
Pain came to everyone equally. If your leg gets cut off, it hurts. The elephant screamed and tilted to one side.
'Even if I only use half my strength…'
One cut told him its hardness. The neck would be softer than the leg. Just like humans and other thinking beings, beasts were much the same.
Ragna moved his feet, aiming at the elephant's neck as it fell—no, as it tilted.
He jumped forward and swung the sword vertically. If someone with an eye for it had been watching, they would have admired the trajectory he drew.
But right now, there was no one nearby who could look at his sword and admire it.
He drove under the collapsing gray bulk and, with the sword he snapped through, cut the nape. Then he slipped out to the side as the cutting motion continued. Every movement was unbelievably swift.
"Waaah!"
One rider screamed in shock.
"Fu—! Hey, you—! This—! Hey!"
A few soldiers who'd been watching with their mouths half open shouted in surprise. This was right before the charge. Even if the formation broke, shouldn't they kill that bastard first?
Several soldiers thought the same, but when people are too shocked, their reactions slow down.
Like this.
Everyone stood there with their mouths open, spitting curses or blurting out nonsense.
"Kill him!"
One officer reacted remarkably fast. Even when everyone was stunned, he alone showed quick judgment. You could call him excellent material. Whatever Ragna was, he defined him as an enemy.
They should have done that from the start, but the way that bastard appeared here—and how calmly he walked and answered—everything invited carelessness.
Five soldiers under that officer responded and burst out of formation, drawing swords as they ran.
All five were skilled. Every one of them was a Horseshoe Infantry soldier that Rihinstetten prided itself on.
Of course, no matter how skilled they were, they weren't a knight's opponent. Ragna ran toward his next target and cut all five throats.
The officer felt the process was like a lie.
He hadn't seen anything. He hadn't even heard anything.
Something just flashed, and five throats floated up into the air. What on earth—what kind of act—could make that possible?
A knight was a disaster, and among disasters, a calamity monstrous enough to be called a monster even by other knights had dropped into the center of the unit.
Maybe it would have been better if a meteor had fallen into the middle of the unit instead.
GRAAAOO!
Another elephant swung its trunk. Ragna, who'd just cut down the five and was running, recognized a wall that blocked his entire front.
He gauged the wall's thickness and increased his speed.
BOOM!
The ground he stepped on burst, leaving a deep imprint. If his boots weren't made by weaving together the hide of a demonic beast, the sole would have blown out from that single burst of acceleration.
Ragna avoided the strike as-is. Just accelerating and driving inside was enough.
CRASH!
The blunt metal lump on the tip of the trunk smashed the spot where he'd been. A crater twice as large and wide as Ragna's footprint opened up.
Is it a burdensome force to block? To an ordinary soldier, yes. To Ragna, Audin's punches were more threatening.
Since he'd increased speed, he raised the sword and swung.
A downward cut.
Even recognizing a portion of the know-how embedded in that simple motion was enough to call him a knight.
WHAM!
As the movement tore through sound, the shell that protected its organs beneath the gray skin split in half.
Ragna slid under the elephant's feet and drew a long line with his sword. A trick he'd learned from Oara's connecting sword, and had been using usefully ever since.
In the process of swinging, the feet replaced the arms, and the sword's trajectory drew a line far longer and larger than a swing made from standing still.
That was the essence of the swordsmanship Oara had developed.
And so, the second elephant's belly split left and right. Innards and blood poured out in a rush and soaked the ground. A vile stench began to spread around.
Ragna immediately turned toward the third mass, and the rider atop it waved both hands and shouted something. Ragna didn't bother focusing to listen. Even without that, he understood the meaning of what they were saying.
The elephant—once like a gray boulder—hesitated and backed away. The rider, terrified, made a stupid choice to save their own life.
From what had just happened, anyone could tell.
Ragna was vastly faster than an elephant.
So running away would only be stupidity.
He was about to prove that speed again. He had just taken another step—
Ragna didn't ignore the warning of his instincts. His whole body prickled, and a dread ran through him like the feeling he got when that Rem bastard secretly threw an axe from behind.
His senses awakened, and his Will reacted. Before he could even think, his body moved and performed the motion.
With the step still unfinished, Ragna stamped down and raised Sunrise at a slant, cutting upward.
With a loud thud, the sound of striking the ground rang out. Dust surged up to chest height, like when an elephant stomped.
To someone who didn't know, it would look like he was cutting empty air. But to someone who had reached the domain of a knight—someone who perceived what lay an inch ahead—it was a natural motion.
CLANG!
At the same time Sunrise went out, a hexagonal club struck the greatsword.
Ragna twisted his torso and arm muscles in an instant and let the force flow off. If he hadn't, his hand would have gone quite numb.
The owner of the club that had struck Sunrise wasn't satisfied with a single attack. He lowered his stance, then swung the club so it became level with the ground.
If he stayed still, his ankles would shatter. Ragna gripped Sunrise in a reverse hold and drove it into the ground.
KWAANG!
This blow didn't allow room to mix in any technique to let the force flow off. So he planted it into the ground to share the opponent's strength with the earth.
The club smashing into Sunrise sent an explosive roar spreading outward. A shockwave of invisible force swept the area.
"Ah!"
A few soldiers standing closest clutched their ears. Blood streamed down. Some of them even shook, hands and feet trembling.
"What are you? Where did something like you come from? How did you get in here?"
The one who swung the club asked. Ragna repeated the answer he'd given before, one more time.
"I'm passing by."