Chapter 4: Counterattack

“I didn’t hear anything about this, Seligman!”

There were still injured adventurers and corpses lying in the riverbed from Gaius Beldarus’s assault.

A middle-aged man with one eye and a scar running from his forehead to his jaw was yelling, enraged, at the knight who now commanded their main force. “You never said anything about the Black fucking Rose of Igris being here!” The man commanded one of the most skilled parties registered with the guild and was normally a calm, quiet person, so seeing him with so little composure was more than a little shocking to Seligman.

“This is a highly political issue. And in the first place, did you really think there would be such a vast bounty involved if it was any old bandit?!” The young knight refuted the man’s complaints with a bitter expression on his face. His tone was harsher than it needed to be, but he was shaken by having instantly lost a colleague and several soldiers, as well as irritated at their opponent having taken the initiative against them.

“Well, you’re right about that! It had better be vast! I was there, with the Allies, in the Five Year War, and I fought against that monster! Get a good look at this scar! He gave me this!”

“Ha! Well, that’s perfect! You get your chance at revenge, fifteen years later!”

“Are you an idiot?! Haven’t you heard the name ‘Slayer of Fifty’?! I was... The whole squad I was in was...”

“That’s even more reason, then. Fifty? We’ve still got almost a hundred and fifty men closing in on him. That’s three times fifty. Use your head!” Seligman used this argument as an opportunity to get a good grip on the current situation himself. “In fact, if you let him get away now, you might never get another opportunity for revenge.”

“I...”

“Now, go. Corner him, take his head, and bring it back here. It’ll make you some good money, and you’ll have your revenge, too. You’ll even become known as the man who took down the Black Rose of Igris. But if you let him get away now, all you’ll be left with is the fact that you were too scared to face him.”

The adventurer lowered his one eye to the ground and debated for a moment, but eventually he clucked his tongue and swore, gathering his party members and heading into the forest after Gaius.

Seligman watched him go and told himself: That’s right. I should think of this as good luck.

Gaius had appeared not before the guildmaster, but him. And with the death of his colleague, this was an opportunity for him to monopolize all the credit.

Seligman, the young knight who took down the Black Rose of Igris, who had fallen to being a lowly bandit. Regardless of what really happened, that was what the truth would be.

That’s right. Luck is on my side. I won’t get another chance like this.

He made himself think crass thoughts to shake off the shock of earlier. It wasn’t an admirable attitude, but it was necessary to encourage himself.

＊

“In the bush on the left there! One hiding!”

Gaius lifted his battleaxe up and threw it in response to the elder’s warning. The axe was chipped in places and starting to warp from smashing through several adventurers’ defenses, but it still succeeded in flipping through the air and slashing into the bush, drawing a short scream from the assassin hiding inside.

“Good work, old-timer!”

“Trying to ambush a kobold in the forest! Laughable! Behind you, to the right! It’s an archer!”

The Kobold King turned around and saw a bowman and crossbowman taking aim beyond some trees. “Claudette!” Before he even shouted, his golem horse got in front of him and knelt down. Gaius slid down behind the golem, and in the next instant: Whoosh! Fwoosh! Whap! Thud! Several projectiles sliced through the air above him or punctured Claudette’s body. The hardest impact to the golem’s body likely came from a crossbow bolt. These weapons packed more than enough punch to pierce infantrymen’s armor when there was no arrow-repelling magic on the battlefield, but the stones Gaius had added to Claudette’s clay and dirt body had prevented any bolts from piercing through her. This was a technique he had learned from his experience in battle.

“Oh, how dreadful! How dreadful!”

“Keep your head inside, please!”

Gaius used this opportunity to remove one of the weapons tied to Claudette’s flank, then he heard...

Rou...

...the sound of magical elements being refined, the distinct “chanting” of a sorcerer gathering energy to cast a magic spell. Two of them, actually, from the strange distortion of the sounds.

“Hey, lug! We’re cornered!”

While the two old men were running around trying to avoid their enemies, they’d been led into a crossfire the adventurers had been preparing. When he caught on, Gaius muttered “pretty impressive,” and took off running, a fresh headsman’s axe in his hand to replace the one he’d thrown into the bushes.

...aaa...eee...

When the sorcerers’ chanting finished, one magic bolt went off and missed the sprinting Gaius. He blocked the other with the wide blade of the headsman’s axe. The torrent of magical energy caused a third of the blade to shatter, and a fragment of metal nicked Gaius on the chin. The mass of iron was of course still large enough to smash skulls with, so when Gaius reached the sorcerers chanting for a second spell, he swung at one magic user with enough strength to splatter the sorcerer’s grey matter. The war pick in his other hand, its blade bent from Gaius’s rough handling, cracked into the neighboring sorcerer’s cheekbone, piercing his skull and ending their spells.

“Did you get ’em?!”

“Yep, moving on!”

Normally, he’d reunite with Claudette to replace his failing weapon, but he had no time to do so now. Crossbows took a long time to reload, but they were accurate and powerful. He had to disable the crossbowmen before they could have another chance to fire. He took off again without even taking time to catch his breath and zig-zagged through the trees to the area the earlier shots had been fired from.

The crossbowmen weren’t reloaded yet, just like he’d thought, but the archers were already loosing their next arrows. Reluctant to get any closer to them, all Gaius could do was move sideways through the trees. On top of that, there were some master archers with the adventurers who were able to aim and shoot faster than Gaius expected. He’d abandoned Claudette, who could act as his shield, and she was too far away to reach now. Loaded down with weapons and rocks as she was, she couldn’t keep up with her master’s top speed.

Stab. An arrow suddenly protruded from the leather around Gaius’s gut.

“Ugh?!”

“Hey, big guy!” The elder had been muttering something to himself, but he popped his head out of the rucksack at this.

“I’m all right, old-timer. The plate underneath stopped it.” Only Gaius’s armor, which was much thicker than a normal coat of plate, could have done that. The angle it hit at was good, too. But his good luck wouldn’t continue forever, and he couldn’t keep dodging forever, either. Plus, a crossbow bolt would definitely pierce his armor.

“Please put your head back inside. That’s not safe.”

“Just charge in, you dunderhead! I can stop them!”

His declaration seemed like it had to be a joke. He’d given no reason for Gaius to believe him, and nothing about the old kobold suggested he could back up that claim. Nevertheless, Gaius immediately responded, “Understood. I’m counting on you,” and sprung out from his hiding place, bursting forth in attack. He roared as his feet pounded the ground. Gaius didn’t doubt his partner for one second.

“Grwoooooooh!”

The archers flinched at his unexpected charge, but quickly took aim. The crossbowmen gave up on reloading and drew their close-range weapons, which was a smart decision. But at that same moment...

“Wind spirits! Answer my plea!” With the old kobold’s cry, a fierce gust assaulted the bowmen. The gust blew up a torrent of fallen leaves and pelted the archers with dirt.

“Ubh?!”

“Ack!”

“My eyes!”

It was just wind, just dust; it couldn’t hurt them. But it bought more than enough time for the mad beast rushing towards them to sink his claws into them.

The first man fell, the point of the war pick buried in his skull. The broken axe crashed into the side of the second’s head. Abandoning the damaged pick, Gaius grabbed the sword hand of one of the crossbowmen and dragged the man’s arm to plunge his blade into an archer’s throat, wielding the sword and the man as one weapon. A temporary accomplice to end the third man’s life, the crossbowman then became the fourth victim when Gaius buried his axe in the man’s face. Another crossbowman watched all this, slack-jawed, until Gaius caved that jaw in with a gauntleted blow, making him the fifth to die. The poor man next to him had gotten so much dust in his eyes that he immediately became the sixth as an axe smashed into him before he even regained his vision. The redheaded woman set to be the next in line dodged Gaius’s slash by a hair’s breadth and tossed her bow down, scrambling to run away. Gaius’s axe lodged into the trunk of a tree, and the rest of the archers gained a chance to flee as well. Shff. Gaius picked up a bow and arrow from one of the corpses and shot one of the fleeing adventurers. Seven...and the last. The rest had escaped behind trees, out of his line of fire.

Most of them had abandoned their weapons to flee as fast as they could. It was unlikely that he would again be the target of a fusillade any time soon.

Gaius panted to catch his breath as he pulled his axe from the tree, but the blade was even more chipped, its wooden handle broken in the middle. It wouldn’t survive another attack. Same with his war pick.

“Good work, old-timer. They don’t call you the Kingdom’s best shaman for nothing.”

“Well, the spirits have their own matters to attend to. Keep in mind that I can’t use that trick whenever I want.”

“I understand.” Gaius heeded the elder’s warning. Claudette finally caught up to them and trotted next to Gaius. He took his large sword, the as-yet-unused faussar, off the golem’s back. “How’s our strategy coming along?”

“Things appear to be going well for the attack team. And the little miss has messaged you to begin getting ready.”

“Guess we’ve gotta head back to the river, then.”

“Guess so. Well, you got another fight in you?”

“Indeed!” Shouldering his faussar, Gaius set off in that direction.

＊

Now facing three tree-eating lizards and one bugbear, the adventurers that had been lured deep into the forest were completely in a panic. Some fell to attacks from the beasts, others stood and faced them, and were slaughtered for it. Some began to retreat whether or not they’d been ordered to, and some ran off randomly into the forest and fell into kobold traps in their terror. As more and more of them fell victim to these horrors, the adventurers quickly broke away from the area Wyatt hoped to command them in and lost all semblance of a cohesive group.

Amid all that...

“Nrrah!” Zuuuum. The patterns along the length of the Scarlet Plate lit up as Wyatt activated it for a second time, lopping off the head of a tree-eating lizard with his Sword Eater. The magic crests engraved in the armor temporarily enhanced his strength, giving him the power to hack through the beast’s neck.

“Gaaaaah!” Wyatt screamed once more. This time his shout was not part of his attack, but a reaction to the pain the strengthening had on his body as the spells channeled power through his joints, muscles, and bones. The burden the impossible movements had on his body tormented him. The pain would cause a normal person to collapse or writhe in misery. The fact that Wyatt did nothing but shout in reaction was proof of his mental and physical fortitude. ...This isn’t something I can use more than a few times.

He sheathed his sword and looked around, catching his breath. In the time he had been fighting that one magic beast, the adventurers had scattered every which way. The knight Ashcroft was nowhere to be seen either.

“Guildmaster!”

Wyatt turned at the voice. A sorceress was running toward him.

“Oh, thank goodness! I don’t know where anyone went!” She must have been anxious, separated from her party. She was out of breath, running as fast as she could toward him until a spiked ball fell from the trees above her and impacted the top of her head.

“Tss...” Wyatt couldn’t help the hiss that escaped his lips as she toppled forward. The impact had caved in her skull and the thorns had pierced her skin. She didn’t move an inch after falling to the ground; her death had likely been instantaneous. The wretched sight reminded Wyatt that the area he was in was too dangerous to run through blindly. He wished he could run around and gather up his scattered companions. They had to defeat the beasts, regain control over the panicked adventurers, and reorganize themselves properly. But if he wasn’t careful, he’d fall victim to one of those traps.

“Could this be any more vexing...” Even his irritation was likely part of the enemy’s plan.

Taking a deep breath to get his emotions under control, Wyatt kicked Cyril, who was crouched down next to a tree and shivering, and motioned for him to stand up. I’ll get my allies together. We’ll defeat these beasts. We’ll head straight for the village, watching out for traps. Slowly but surely. He simplified the situation, put everything in order, and confirmed it with himself. Wyatt had always used this technique to calm himself when things got out of hand. He’d survived the Five Year War by doing so. He would get through this in much the same way, and he’d continue to do so in the future..

“...All right.” He put the still-shackled Cyril in front of him as a trap detector and shield and slowly began to take action to get himself out of this situation.

＊

The second and third kobold squads found themselves chasing after a small group of humans. They’d gone after a group that had escaped from the magic beasts but was stuck now, not knowing where the traps around them hid.

Of course, it wasn’t coincidence that they’d found this group. Sashalia had selected a target for them to attack based on information her spirit messenger scouts had sent her about where the nearby traps were set and the distance between groups of adventurers.

“Hah! Rah!”

“Yaaah! Yah!”

“Hoh! Toh!”

Their shouts and appearances were adorable on their own, but both sides were fighting for their lives in this battle. The spears, crafted by the blacksmith in Ryburgh, stabbed out at the adventurers’ legs and bottoms. They were almost like hunters, driving their prey into position.

“Ah?!”

“Oh! He fell!”

“This one fell!”

“No! Nooo! Aaaaaah?!” One man tripped on a tree root, while others succumbed to their wounds and were rendered unable to run any farther. One by one, the spears took them down.

One adventurer, who had let others flee before him to act as bait, fell into a pit trap and let out a reverberating scream as he was impaled on the spikes below. Needless to say, this was all according to the kobolds’ plans.

“Did we get ’em all?”

“The ones lying there and there are still alive.”

“Finish off the sorcer’ and leave the other one be. We’ve gotta move.”

“Orders from the miss. Squad two’s moving on.”

“Gotcha.”

“Squad three’s that way. Be seeing you.”

The kobolds plunged their spears into the groaning sorcerer at their feet, then hurried on to their next mission.

＊

One adventuring party had luckily managed to mostly reunite under their leader Maureen, a swordswoman. Considering that the best most of the other groups could do was scatter and run for their lives, the fact that this group had stuck together while seeking safety marked them as a decently skilled and lucky bunch.

Having escaped the magical beast ambush, the party regrouped and set about finding some other adventurers to meet up with. They proceeded to strike at and pat the ground around them, avoiding any grass, bushes, or piles of fallen leaves. Even with all their precautions, they just barely managed to evade two traps. After some time, they finally met up with another group.

“Hey, if it isn’t Aubrey’s crew.”

“I see you made it out alive too, Maureen. You’ve got the devil’s luck.” A young man with close-cropped hair, Aubrey, gave a relieved sigh and smiled wryly. The restraint he showed in not running up to the other group on sight explained how his group had made it this far.

“I’ll settle for your glum mug. Frankly, I’m happy to see anybody right now.”

“Same here.”

There was nothing wrong with having a larger group if they were going up against those magical beasts or even fighting kobolds. Both parties agreed to band together and face the forest.

“We can’t find Anton, and we don’t know where the traps are, so we can’t go looking for him. What about you guys?”

“We’re still down Philander and Sylvester.”

“You seen the guildmaster? Hell, I’d even take Ashcroft and his baby face right now.”

“Nope. Not since everybody split during the chaos.”

The leaders faced each other and reported their current statuses. Then they looked around, confirming their situations, and sighed together as if following a script.

“...We should just continue on to the village. We were supposed to be pretty close already, right?”

“Yeah, should be.” Right when Maureen nodded, the bugbear gave a great roar in the distance and the whole group froze reflexively. They glanced around nervously, but the monster wasn’t anywhere near them.

Aubrey sighed yet again. “...Maybe we should just go on ahead and attack the village on our own.”

“Just us?”

“It’s like the guildmaster said: they only dragged us into the forest to protect their village. If we start setting fire to it, the kobolds’ll lose their cool and have to come face us themselves.”

Maureen debated the suggestion for a moment, but she turned toward the direction she’d come from and squinted, then took a breath and agreed with Aubrey. “That’s probably a good idea. Even if we head back, we can barely move with all the traps, and we can hardly fight magic beasts with footing like that. It’d probably help our guys more to hit the dogs’ den and draw them out of the forest.”

The two party leaders had enough experience to regain their calm and decide how to proceed. They had a nimble member of their parties climb up a thick, tall tree nearby and gauge the direction and distance to the plain they would find the village in. They knew about the twin mountains from Cyril’s information, so they were able to determine the location of the village fairly easily.

“Yep, that should be right.”

“Okay, let’s go.”

They quickly began to move toward the village. The group, now eleven strong, kept an eye out for traps, evading three more. They then immediately triggered one, but escaped with nothing more than a scare, arriving at a narrow path between the trees soon after.

“It got a lot more walkable all of a sudden.”

“Look, all the trees are stumps. Guess the dogs were gathering lumber here.”

They looked around and spotted some piles of logs as well. The kobolds must have been temporarily storing them here.

“In which case, there should be a path for them to carry it all back to the village. If we can follow that, we’re golden.”

Everyone nodded at Maureen’s words before catching a sound none of them expected to hear.

Rou...aaa...eee...

“An incantation?! Is there a sorcerer nearby?”

“Tyaah!” Bzzzap! There was a sound like lightning crashing through the air as something impacted Maureen’s head. It was a torrent of magical energy. The energy hit the side of her head and dispersed around it with enough force to knock her unconscious instantly.

“Wh-What was that?!”

Rou...

They could hardly take in the situation, but it was clear enough that it was an enemy attack and that a second shot was coming. The adventurers looked around and dove for cover behind the logs.

Aaa...eee...

Everyone hid behind piles of logs, and there was no second attack. Since they’d lost their target, their enemy had likely paused their incantation before finishing casting their spell. One astute adventurer estimated the enemy’s position from the angle Maureen had been hit from and the areas they were under cover from, then popped his head out to take a look and read the situation.

Bzzzap! Right when he ducked back down, magical energy burst into the logs, splintering off a chunk of wood.

“The dogs have a barricade that way, and they’re shooting magic bolts from behind it... they’ve got staves!”

Their assumptions were all wrong. The kobolds they had been picturing were primitive, savage monsters, barely able to hold spears. They had never imagined that the beasts would be able to use magic weapons developed by humans.

“Damn it, they swiped those from the last battle.”

“Right, the humans with them must have taught ’em how they work!”

Even as they spoke, the next shot slammed into the logs. They all reflexively ducked their heads down. The small arrows the kobolds used with their little bows wouldn’t kill them even if they were hit by a few of them, and their minimal armor would probably deflect them anyway. But that wasn’t the case for the magic bolts these staves shot. Those would bore holes in the adventurers regardless of the physical size of the shooters.

“Calm down and aim better.”

“Sorry, Red Eye.”

“I’m tired from using all my magic. Switch with me. I’m gonna cool the staff in water before it gets too hot, too.”

The adventurers could hear the kobolds conversing from somewhere out of sight. They could hear them preparing another shot, too. The kobolds clearly understood how the magic staves worked.

“Hey, how’s Maureen?”

“She hasn’t moved at all! I dunno!”

“We can’t just sit here. I’ll go around and attack them from behind!” An axeman leapt out. Moving quickly, he avoided a magic bolt shot at him and successfully dove into the bushes on the other side of the path between the trees.

“That guy’s got guts.” Aubrey gave an impressed whistle.

The axeman would be protected by the trees as he approached and he would probably be able to destroy the kobold’s defensive encampment. However...

“Agh! Aaah!” The axeman’s anguished cries sounded from the bushes, telling his companions that he must have triggered some trap.

“Dammit! There are traps on the side of the path?!”

“Look closer! There are nets over there!”

“Goddammit! The barricade, the logs, they were waiting to ambush us here from the beginning!”

...An ambush. As soon as that word was uttered, doubt surfaced in Aubrey’s mind. They’d probably cut the trees down here to create an area with no obstacles for their staff shooting. That made sense. And by planting traps on either side of the path, they could keep the adventurers wary of launching counterattacks against them. “...Why would they leave lumber we could hide behind...?” He gasped and looked up to see another group of kobolds with staves up in the branches of a thick tree. Right when Aubrey opened his mouth to swear, the kobolds began chanting.

Bzzzap! Aubrey hurriedly stood and a magic bolt from Red Eye’s staff squad stabbed into his neck. The short-haired leader toppled to the side without so much as a sound.

Next, a spur of magic stabbed deep into another adventurer’s thigh. The man screamed in shock as the attack pierced him down to the bone, a scream of pain quickly following.

...The adventurers had been lured straight into a kill zone the kobolds had prepared for them. As a result, three more of the originally eleven-strong group were shot dead and two dropped out of the fight after falling into traps as they fled. The only two adventurers remaining were left to scurry back to the area where the magical beasts were still rampaging.

＊

“You figured out how to spot the traps?” asked a younger adventurer with spiky hair.

“Yeah,” came the female hunter’s subdued reply. “Look...see those fallen leaves?”

The adventurer looked at a pile of brown leaves. It took him a moment to notice a twig standing up in them, with a small flag fashioned out of bark rope tied to it. “Huh, didn’t notice those.”

“If you don’t know about them...you have to really look closely...to see them.”

The man gave an impressed grunt and was about to step closer to get a better look, but the hunter quickly grabbed his sleeve.

“Earlier...when the dogs were running...they avoided the spots...with these flags.”

“I get it. They didn’t fall for any of their own traps ’cause they made markers for them.”

The hunter nodded again. “Plus...there shouldn’t be so many leaves...at the bottom of this kind of tree. I think they brought leaves from somewhere else...to hide the traps. There were a few other areas...like this, too.”

“You’re smart!” The young man’s eyes sparkled with true admiration.

“I’m in the forest a lot,” the hunter muttered, scratching her nose and brushing a strand of hair out of her face, embarrassed. “So...we just have to avoid these flags...too. It’s easy...once you realize what they’re doing.” She avoided the marker and went through some other trees. “If we follow their example...we won’t fall for the—waaah?!” An unmarked arrow trap triggered, shooting her in the left thigh. “Oww...oww...”

“Are you stupid?! You didn’t figure it out at all!”

“Ugh... So what are those flags...?”

Naturally, the flags were another ruse from the Kobold Army. Based on Gaius’s experience, they’d set all manner of misleading markers on the traps. The kobolds were able to keep track of the traps because of the command center’s management and because they had marked them with scents that only they could distinguish. Their complex web of traps was not something an intruder could easily negotiate.

＊

Four of the five members of a different party had managed to escape together. They stopped running once the magical beasts were no longer in sight and crouched down in some bushes at the orders of their leader, a man with a scar on his face.

“Hey Boss, isn’t it gonna be hard for the others to find us in a place like this?”

“That’s fine. It’s better for us if they don’t.”

“What do you mean?” A bowman with curly chestnut-colored hair wrangled into a ponytail asked the scarred man.

“We’re gonna pretend we got lost in the forest and retreat back to the entrance.”

“Why?! They killed Lionel! We can’t just leave!”

Lionel had been the party’s main frontline fighter, a brawny man with a falchion and a round shield. When he’d been struck by the bugbear a short time ago, his head had snapped around to face behind him and that had been that. They hadn’t had time to retrieve his body, of course.

“That’s why we’re getting out of here. We’ve all got clear roles, right? That goes for whether we’re escorting a caravan against bandits, lending our strength in some conflict, slaying magical beasts, or fighting other parties, right? Well, our party can’t function anymore.”

The bowman groaned and swallowed his retort. Just as his leader had said, when the party was acting together, Lionel had always drawn the attention of their enemies so that their archers and sorcerers could handle the offense. There was no denying that their party couldn’t exert their full force now.

“It’s too bad what happened to him, but if we stay here, we’re all gonna get wiped out. And I have no intention of dying or letting you guys die either.”

“...We got it, Boss.” The other two nodded along with the archer.

Their leader’s decision could be called heartless, but it was likely the right choice if he wanted his team to survive. And “his team” didn’t include the other adventurers of the guild, or Wyatt and his knights. They were more like people in the same business who sometimes worked together, but nothing more than that.

...And so, this party would return alive, save one unfortunate victim. The same thing was happening with other adventuring groups; several parties were leaving the battlefield with most of their fighting power intact.

＊

It was possible for the kobold squads to lure the enemy into traps and trick them, but when that was difficult, someone needed to fight them directly. Darke’s attack team existed to pick off small groups when that was necessary.

“Here we go!” With that laidback shout and a depraved smirk, Darke stabbed her curved blade into an adventurer’s neck. The adventurer tried to put up some last feeble resistance even as he coughed up blood, but the black-clad swordswoman anticipated it and dodged back, silencing her target with one last blow. Nearby, Rain Grass and Blue Gale were coordinating with their teammates to finish off the other two adventurers, racking up their own achievements in battle.

In this latest series of fights, one more member of the attack team had been injured, so their number had dwindled to about half of what they’d started with. However, they still possessed the spirit and strength to take down adventurers who were broken up into small groups.

“Sheesh. They work you pretty hard back in the Public Safety Bureau, but that’s nothing compared to the treatment you get in the Kobold Kingdom. I’ve gotta update all my records. My average time-to-kill has gone way down since I was fighting bandits out on missions for the public safety bureau. His Majesty the King is gonna owe me a hefty bonus for all the work I’ve done after this! He’ll pay me with his body!” She shook the blood off her sword and gave her croaking, frog-like laugh. Her expression was the same as it always was, so it was hard to tell how serious she was being.

“Information from our scouts. There’s another group, more than ten, heading this way,” Darke’s spirit messenger reported, looking nervous.

“Ten might be a bit much, Darke,” one of the warriors with her warned.

“So they’ve managed to put that many people together. I agree, I don’t think I want to face that many head-on either.”

“What shall we do, Captain?!” the spirit messenger quailed.

“Well, don’t panic. Our beloved Lady Denan will surely come to our rescue.” There was a flippant smile on her pale face as always.

“Orders from the Command Center. ‘Retreat to the northeast and lead them to the hidden depths.’”

“There. See?”

“Ah... That spot...” Rain Grass responded in a low voice, wiping adventurer blood off his face.

“There...?”

“I don’t really want to go there...”

The kobolds all nodded, revulsion on their faces. They couldn’t help feeling some amount of sympathy, even for their enemies.

＊

As they headed through a thick grove of trees, the adventurers ran smack into a group of dogs, who panicked at the sight of the humans.

“Aaah!”

“What are they doing here?!”

The kobolds screamed and ran away from the humans coming from the trees, some of them even throwing their spears down in terror.

Fundamentally, there’s an unbridgeable gap in the fighting strength of a human and a kobold. It’s impossible for a small group of kobolds to fight a large group of adventurers head-on and win. Their earlier skirmish in the riverbed had proved that.

“Don’t let ’em get away!”

“Hell no! I’m skinning those fucking mutts!”

“That blue one’s mine! That thing killed my partner!”

The adventurers rushed after them, burning with a desire for vengeance and unwilling to let this opportunity slide. It wasn’t just about the money anymore. The adventurers had been terrorized by these primitive, inferior beastmen, and their rage wouldn’t be quelled with anything less than the gruesome deaths of the little monsters.

“Wait! Wait for me!”

“Are you stupid?! Get up!”

A panicked kobold tripped, spurring on the sadistic adventurers even more. The ground must have been muddy from the rain a few days ago. The sludge would be hard to run through, but it would be a simple matter to catch up to their prey and finish them off. ...But it was more than just hard to walk through. By the time the humans realized that, quite a few of them had already entered the area. The ground was covered with fallen leaves and thick weeds, and it wasn’t until they were deep into this part of the forest that they realized that this wasn’t just an ordinary layer of mud. The adventurer in front suddenly sank up to his stomach in the muck, and the one behind him crashed into him. It was then that they finally realized that they’d charged into a swamp.

“Stop! S-Stay back! Stay out! It’s a swamp pit!” The second man screamed as he sunk halfway in, just like the man in front of him.

The humans piling into the area tried to turn around and get out, but about half of them failed in their attempts to escape as more and more came in from behind. Meanwhile, the kobolds who’d entered the swamp before them had all scrambled out to the other shore, as other kobolds hidden in the trees tossed ropes out to their kin.

“Urp... Somebody, help me up.”

“Hey, wait a second, my foot’s stuck!”

“Let go of me, dumbass!”

“Well, what am I supposed to do?!”

“Seriously, can someone help me up? I’m kind of in trouble here.”

“Uhh, you’ve got like four leeches on your arm, dude.”

“Wha...Yaaaaaah!”

“Somebody... Somebody help me up...”

Those who just had their feet stuck were not so bad off, but the ones who’d rushed in first were stuck deep and were in danger of being completely consumed by the sludge.

One of the adventurers must have had experience with this sort of situation. “Shut up! Stop moving! You’ll just sink faster if you struggle!” The scrawny man at the back of the pack hadn’t fallen into the swamp. He set about helping the stuck adventurers with four other people who had lagged behind or had escaped on their own. They quickly got ropes out of their packs and tied them to thick trees with sturdy root systems, affixing them firmly with tight knots. ...That was the moment the black swordswoman hiding in the thicket attacked.

First, she stabbed a man who’d just knotted a rope, then flashed her sword wide to the side, slashing a woman in the stomach on the way. There was a young man in chainmail about to throw a rope into the swamp; with both his hands occupied, he was powerless as Darke shoulder-checked him, throwing him into the sludge himself. The other two fell to kobold attacks by sword and axe, one falling into the swamp and one to the ground. Then, the final blow...

“Captain! What shall we do with the remaining humans?!” Blue Gale asked, breathing heavily.

“Leave ’em. They’ll sink,” Darke answered, wiping the blood off her face with one of the corpse’s cloaks.

Behind her came a cry: “We’re sorry! We’ll leave you alone! Please... Please help us!”

“Come on! We’ll never come to the forest again! You can’t just leave us here!”

“We’ll do anything! We were just hired by the guild! It’s not like we chose to come here! Right?!”

The stuck adventurers begged for their lives, slowly sinking deeper all the while, their screams growing more desperate.

“These impudent maggots... They dare beg me for their lives? Why would I waste a precious opportunity to be of use to him?”

Blue Gale recoiled in fear, smelling something dark and fiery coming from his captain’s soul, but...

“...However. I suppose I could save you later, if you swear to never do any harm to the Kobold Kingdom.” Darke twirled her fingers, narrowing her eyes and laughing with a crooked smile on her face. “How lucky for you~! Her Excellency, our general, is just the cutest little thing, so compassionate and hardworking and always thinking of the future. Oh, but her cuteness is the most important thing, of course.”

The adventurers all held their breath, listening to Darke’s words as she swayed on the spot and looked down at them.

“L-Later...? Like, when?” A man on all fours in the mud asked weakly.

“Well, after the fighting’s over, of course. As long as you stay still, you’ll probably be all right. If you’re lucky, that is.” Darke turned her back to the pleading adventurers. During all this, the kobolds who’d acted as bait and crossed the swamp had come back around to this side. “Okay! Time to get going!”

“Yes, ma’am!”

“Okay.”

“Sure thing.”

The attack squad pumped their fists into the air, tails wagging. They took the opportunity to replace their weapons with new ones from a stock hidden in the hollow of a nearby tree and set off, Darke leading the way.

Just one flax-colored kobold remained, staring at the adventurers stuck in the swamp.

“What is it, Rain Grass?”

“Hm? Oh... just...” The kobold warrior responded in a much more subdued tone than usual. “Something I have to do...”

He picked up a spear one of the decoy kobolds had dropped and turned to one of the adventurers who was stuck up to his thighs in the swamp. “Hey, long time no see. I’ve been I’d see you again.”

“H...Huh? W-Wait a second. We don’t want to fight anymore...” The man’s cheek twitched with panic as Rain Grass aimed and threw the spear as hard as he could. “Wai—”

Right as he shouted, the man with long blond hair fell back into the swamp with Rain Grass’s spear sticking straight up out of his eye, but the blow wasn’t enough to kill him instantly. Now trapped by the thick, heavy mud, the man was unable to stand upright and slowly began sinking down into the muck, screaming. “Help! Help me! No! I don’t want...gbbbbh!” The mud entered his mouth, then his windpipe. His gruesome, wordless moans continued for a short time until his face sank completely beneath the surface, leaving behind only a few bubbles and his spasming, clutching hands, which soon stopped moving and fell down under the surface. All the adventurers around him could do was watch.

“I’m done. Sorry for the wait. Okay, let’s go.”

“Hmm.” Darke didn’t ask him his reasons. She didn’t admonish him either. She could guess the reason he’d done what he did.

The flax-colored kobold realized Darke was being considerate and quietly explained himself as he walked past his comrade. “He was one of the ones who came to our old village. I remember him very well.” The kobold warrior gave a quiet, forlorn whine. “But now...I’ve gotten justice for Fog’s husband.”

＊

The spirit messenger with the attack squad was receiving a new order from the Command Center. “Message from Command. Two adventurers are being attacked by one of the bugbears. We’ll have to pass by them on our way to our next objective.”

“Ooh, how frightful. Careful not to draw the bear’s attention, everyone.” Darke shivered exaggeratedly.

“Haha, eh, if he comes our way, we’ll just pelt him with this, right in the nose!” The kobold patted a leather pouch at his waist. The bag was stuffed with white flowers that only bloomed in this season that gave off a unique scent. The beasts didn’t like the smell, so the kobolds had been using the flowers as a bugbear repellent for a long time. Recently, they’d even been used to disguise the smell of a certain king’s feet.

“Just as reported! Over there, the bugbear is...huh?!”

Blue Gale gasped, and he wasn’t alone in his astonishment. The attack team looked beyond the trees and saw, just as they’d been told, a bugbear attacking two humans. There was an overwhelming difference between the strength of a human and that of a magical beast. The humans, then, naturally should be ripped apart by the bugbear’s claws and falling prey to its fangs. However...

“Nnrraaah!” With a shout, a man in red armor actually caught the bugbear’s massive paw in one hand as it swiped at him and pushed its arm aside. He took up his sword in both hands and swung it, slicing through the bugbear’s thick fur and driving the blade into the beast’s neck. “Ogwaaah!” The man shouted in pain as patterns drawn over his armor began to light up. A few seconds later, the bugbear’s head had been completely severed from its body. The beast’s body thudded to the ground and the man leaned on his sword like a cane, holding himself up.

“No frickin’ way... That guy caught the bear’s arm.”

“Quiet, Rain Grass. We’re withdrawing.”

“Hm? O-Oh. Yeah.”

But they were too late. The man in the red armor looked around as he was catching his breath, and his eyes landed squarely on the attack squad. He picked up his sword again and gave them a glare that made them shudder even at the distance between them, and then suddenly he was charging.

“Well, this fellow’s certainly trouble,” Darke muttered with a cluck of her tongue. It was Wyatt, guildmaster of the Ryburgh Adventurers’ Guild; the one man Gaius had warned her not to cross swords with.