Bait

Though it was a country manor, it had once been the residence of a noble.

That also meant it could not be brought down by ordinary magic or explosions.

‘With an explosion this powerful….’

It seemed impossible for either Regent Ferda or that demon to have survived.

And yet the commander ran toward the collapsed manor.

Regent Ferda must not die.

At least until he knew what would happen because of his death, he could not let him die.

Amid the rubble and thick clouds of dust, he saw a single silhouette standing tall.

Could it be the demon?

The commander drew his sword and released his aura.

But astonishingly, the silhouette belonged to a man he knew.

Ferda Valdrova.

The man stood proudly in the middle of the rubble.

“Regent, are you all right?”

The captain of the knight company came running over.

Ferda threw mana spheres at them.

They exploded precisely beneath their feet.

Bang!

“Gah! What are you doing?”

“Don’t come.”

It was Ferda’s warning.

Ferda’s gaze remained fixed relentlessly on a single spot.

“He’s not dead yet.”

Not dead?

A moment later, just as he had said, something writhed and rose from the rubble.

It was precisely along the path the company commander had been running.

“I was going to take a few more with me… but you saw right through meee.”

“Even while dying, you haven’t lost that beggar’s accent.”

“I see…. I never thought you were a lowlife, but you’re quite a formidable opponent, aren’t you?”

He tried to rise on his mangled legs, but repeatedly faltered.

That meant the healing power unique to demons was not working.

“That strange light… it’s so powerful that even my healing isn’t working. I’m definitely going to die like this, huh?”

He raised his claws and smiled unpleasantly.

“So, couldn’t I take you with me as my companion?”

“I already have a companion.”

“Lucky you. That pretty tyrant Highness of yours, was it? I wish I were a woman too….”

The remaining life of the male demon was fading away.

He squeezed out his last breath to speak.

“Honey, could you tell me what you did to me? Think of it as a gift to me on my way to the Void.”

“Do I look like I’d be that stupid?”

“Hehe, you’re not an easy man to deal with to the very end.”

Eventually, he fell to his knees.

“Then shall I tell you a secret instead?”

“No need.”

“My purpose was only to wait for you to come here.”

Ferda let him continue speaking.

At the same time, he began chanting a spell, preparing to end the demon’s life.

Blue lightning formed from blue mana leaped from his hand.

“But ultimately, you’re not my objective.”

Ferda’s incantation stopped.

“What do you mean?”

The man chuckled as he answered.

“I mean I intend to lure out someone else, not you. Someone smaller and more fragile than you… that adorable little creature.”

Small, fragile, adorable creature.

Only one person came to mind for Ferda.

She was the only one alone in a situation like this.

‘Luri.’

* * *

Luri Silverwind.

As an heir to Silverwind’s bloodline, she was the fastest warrior and bore the title Nightmare of the Frost Giant.

To her, beast-type monsters were nothing more than child’s play.

Unlike the other knights, Luri did not wait for the monsters to arrive.

Instead, she chose to intercept them midway along their route and kill them all.

Twenty beast-type monsters and thirty Meltid.

It took her only one minute to deal with them.

‘I’ve gotten quite rusty.’

Luri objectively evaluated her performance.

Back when she had been commander of the Special Mobile Brigade Silverwing, she would have wiped out this many troops in under thirty seconds.

‘Have I become too enamored with peace?’

They said peace was a poison that made swords rust.

Unlike her days with Silverwing, when she had to swing her ax even in her sleep, she had had no need to use force since becoming Valdrova’s attendant.

Naturally, even constant training could not prevent her from growing rusty.

‘Even if I can’t return to my prime, I need to train more and restore myself to how I was.’

There was more to protect now.

Having made that resolve, she turned her head.

It was the route the monsters had been taking—the site where the attack had been scheduled.

The monsters had been stopped, so the place was safe now.

‘Still, I need to see what the village is like.’

Luri spread her wings and flew there.

Her concern that she should see it with her own eyes became reality.

The state of the village was strange.

‘Quiet.’

With hearing sharp enough to make even the sounds of insects clear, she sensed no human breathing.

It meant the village had already been dead before she arrived.

It was then.

A presence suddenly appeared within Luri’s keen senses.

Before her mind could recognize it, her body reacted.

Luri threw her ax at the spot.

The massive ax flew in a straight line, tracing a huge circle.

But befitting a powerful man who had appeared without warning, his response was no simple matter.

The ax, flying along a vicious trajectory, entered an ominously torn space and was swallowed whole.

The figure of a man could be glimpsed through the rift blocking her view.

“We’ve met before, haven’t we?”

A man in gray robes stood beneath the sun high overhead.

The sunlight was brilliant, casting a deep shadow, yet even that darkness could not conceal his startlingly white face.

“I’ll return your ax.”

No sooner did he gesture than Luri felt a chill at the back of her head.

The ax she had thrown at the man was now aimed at the back of her head.

Her body nimbly kicked off the ground and spun through a great somersault.

At the same time, she caught the spinning ax handle.

She braced herself, checked her rotational momentum, and landed on the ground.

At the same time, she spoke the name given to that being.

“You’re Gokma.”

He was the man responsible for the sudden monster disturbance in Hestia Village.

“I expected as much, but were you also responsible for the sudden appearance of the colossal monsters?”

“Of course. Summoning twelve at once was a little difficult, but it was manageable.”

Gokma smiled faintly.

Even if it had been difficult for him then, a month had passed, so he should have fully recovered by now.

She must never assume he had grown weaker.

‘How strong is that man?’

Luri gauged his abilities.

She roughly knew that he was a mage who manipulated space.

‘He’s the powerhouse who even Tower Master Erika suffered against.’

Although looking down on other dragons’ Spawn was in a Dragon Spawn’s nature, she did not underestimate him.

He had displayed superiority even in battles between mages, and the nature of spatial magic meant that Luri, a warrior, was bound to be at a disadvantage.

However, Luri was a descendant of Silverwind.

‘If force alone won’t work….’

Silverwind was the Aspect of Steel and Wind.

‘Then I’ll overwhelm him with even greater force.’

She simply had to strike from beyond the range in which he could react.

Her pupils narrowed sharply.

“Tormenta!”

When she called a high-ranking wind spirit, pure-white wind coiled around her feet.

And then,

She vanished with the wind.

“Oh?”

Gokma exclaimed in admiration.

She had vanished as though she had used teleportation magic, but it had been achieved through pure speed.

“At this speed, I’ll match it with a corresponding speed.”

Gokma moved his fingers.

He spread apart the space around him, blocking her path.

At the same time, he twisted the surrounding space, creating lethal explosions.

Bang! Papapapang!

As the air twisted around them, the invisible silhouette became outlined and its trajectory was revealed.

She was not merely fast.

Her body changed direction freely, as though inertia itself had been erased.

With dazzling movements, she escaped the distortion.

Luri persistently targeted Gokma’s blind spots.

“As expected, you’re skilled enough to earn Silverwind’s favoritism.”

Though Gokma sounded as if he were acknowledging her, Luri did not take it as a compliment.

‘He’s predicting everything.’

Though he appeared to expose openings, he was constantly filling his blind spots and using them as traps.

It meant that even though she was moving at absolute speed, Gokma still held the advantage.

‘One hit.’

It felt as though one hit would change everything, but she could not land that one hit.

“Let’s end this pointless foreplay.”

All the space Gokma had spread apart contracted.

Luri’s ax aimed for Gokma’s body, but the torn space swallowed him first.

Did he disappear?

No, he had merely widened the distance between them.

She sensed Gokma’s presence nearby.

She turned her gaze.

It was the tightly closed village storehouse.

Luri threw her ax.

She aimed for the storehouse’s support beams rather than the center where the energy was spreading.

Kra-kra-kraack!

The vicious force of the ax brought down the pillars inside.

Naturally, an attack like that could not inflict any meaningful damage.

It merely destroyed the space that had blocked their range of movement and field of vision, leaving them in an area no different from the open plain.

The falling planks did not even touch Gokma’s head, dropping as if swept aside by a round barrier.

Now.

Like the seasoned warrior she was, Luri once again sought an opportunity to cut off his escape.

He neither fled nor tore open space.

Instead, he put something in front of him.

If it was merely a hostage, she intended to cut through both of them.

That misplaced mercy would only invite greater disaster was a lesson she had learned as a warrior of Silverwing.

Luri raised her ax high.

Gokma calmly asked her,

“What do you think this is?”

Whoosh!

The ax’s wind pressure burst forth.

Luri’s ax stopped in front of Gokma.

Even though it had reached him, even though she had a chance to cut him down, she could not.

It was because she had seen what he had placed in front of him.

“Ah….”

A cry escaped Luri’s lips.

She could not believe her eyes.

Standing before him was a brown-haired boy who looked about seven years old.

“……No.”

Luri denied what she was seeing.

The boy opened his mouth and let out a desperate cry.

-S-Sister…

The voice pierced Luri’s ears.

The ax of the girl called the Nightmare of the Frost Giant began to tremble.

She took a step back.

The boy’s eyes glistened with tears as he made a choked sound.

-Please save meee….

“No, you….”

You’re already dead.

You died a very long time ago.

You were lodged in a memory so distant that I can’t even remember your name.

There was no way you could be here in reality.

-Please don’t let go… Please… just this once….

Though her mind knew that it was fake,

she could not deny it.

“Ahh….”

Thud.

Luri dropped her ax.

She reached out and tried to embrace the approaching boy.

As though she would never let that figure go again.

She moved forward to envelop it.

Pshk!

But the figure shattered.

A spear that had flown from behind her pierced the boy’s head like a skewer and carried him away.

The spear that pierced the boy’s head was a throwing spear made of silver and steel.

Luri knew what that spear was.

Only one person wielded it.

Before she could even recall the name of that being, a figure flew toward the spear.

Massive wings more than five times the size of the silhouette descended through the sky, touched down on the spear, and dragged it across the ground.

Kra-ga-ga-gang!!!

The figure of the boy Luri knew shattered into particles in an instant and vanished completely.

A cloud of sand and dust obscured the space before Gokma.

The silver spear advanced through the dust toward Gokma.

But in the place where Gokma’s figure should have been, the space was already closing.

The battle ended just like that.

Luri stood there blankly, and the enormous silver wings retracted into his body.

Goz Silverwind.

The man closest to Silverwind, who now sought to become the next dragon by taking its essence.

He had come.

“What were you doing?”

He asked Luri in a cynical tone.

“Dropping your weapon with an enemy in front of you. Were you planning to commit suicide?”

“I, I….”

Luri could not answer.

Instead, she quietly looked down at the figure of the boy he had brutally killed.

Human blood and Dragon Spawn blood were both red.

But that was green.

In other words, it had never been human in the first place, and what Luri had sensed was an illusion.

Yet the shock left her unable to move.

“Why did you hesitate?”

“……”

“Don’t make me ask twice. I don’t know what I might do if I have to look at your pathetic face any longer.”

Luri opened her mouth with difficulty.

“……This is Imperial territory.”

Rather than answering him, she said that.

She meant that, as a trespasser, he had no legitimate reason to be there.

Goz snorted and answered.

“I know. Do you think I would have set foot on this land for no reason?”

“Then that means….”

“The Emperor formally requested my help. In exchange for settling part of the debt attached to the name Silverwind.”

That meant he had legitimate grounds to set foot on this land.

Disgust toward the Empire surged within her, but that was not important right now.

She was facing Goz one-on-one.

That terrifying man stood before her, backed even by Silverwind’s authority.

“You never did answer my question.”

“……”

When she remained silent again, Goz sighed.

“Fine, then. What would I gain from knowing what you think?”

He glanced at Luri over his shoulder.

“I expect nothing from you, now that you’ve grown so feeble you can hardly even be called a warrior.”

His gaze was filled with contempt.

It felt as though it pierced straight through Luri’s heart.

It was unbearably painful.

“For one who has abandoned a warrior’s heart, even an honorable death is too good.”

He pulled out his spear and walked forward.

“You won’t need to fear me anymore. I won’t come looking for you after this. Return to that castle and live your life. Even if you change your mind and come back, the North will no longer be your home.”

Goz left those words behind and disappeared.

Luri lowered her head.

Her two fists trembled, drenched in resentment.

She stood alone in the hollowed-out village.

Just as she had on that day.