Chapter 20:
Jesters’ Chains and One Fatal Hit
A GIANT STAKE flew out from the forest at devastating speed.
What was it? Was it…a giant stone arrow? It would be more accurate to call it a battering ram.
At two meters long and fifty centimeters in diameter, it wasn’t anything like my Earth Spear. It was bigger than a telephone pole. At that horrifying size, you might as well have called it a missile.
Had it been fired by that unidentified heavy-class golem hiding in the forest?
My thoughts accelerated at unbelievable speed. A heavy-class golem… An “arrow” that could be deployed in a castle siege… That guy was a “crossbow golem”!
The crossbow golem was the military-grade, heavy-class golem capable of shooting described in my book.
But there was no way, right? How could it shoot from such a distance?
I had fallen through a gaping hole in my spotty knowledge of golems. I had assumed the hidden heavy-class golem would attack with a melee assault. After all, the book said that crossbow golems had short range and low accuracy. To me, that had implied a single crossbow golem alone was of hardly any use; only an army of them could be effectively deployed in siege tactics. I had never imagined one could be used from a distance like a sniper, and had ruled out such a possibility from the very beginning, especially after dismissing spells for their likewise limited range.
Yet this unexpected stone arrow was coming right at me.
If the golem had fired a normal-sized stone arrow, I could’ve used my sorcery-controlled Earth Battle-Axe to knock it down. But this missile was far too large.
Furthermore, my NTR was useless. This giant stone didn’t give me that necessary feeling of activation potential. It had been the same with the Fire and Wind spells earlier. It was rapidly becoming clear to me that NTR was only really applicable to Earth spells and opposing sorcery; it was otherwise ineffective.
The giant stone arrow hurtled ever closer. The reason I couldn’t sense the possibility of NTR meant, in short, that this arrow was neither an Earth spell nor a sorcerous attack. It was simply and completely physical.
I could probably have dodged. Activating my sorcery had improved not only my sensory ability, but my physical reaction time. But that wasn’t a real option. Behind me were a child and two elderly men. Based on this arrow’s diameter and path, Mr. Chotos and the old wagon driver were bound to be caught up in the attack.
The vile trajectory was so clear that I wanted to avert my gaze. I could likely save tiny Teru, if barely, but Mr. Chotos’s upper torso and the grandpa’s chest would be destroyed, killing them instantly.
I could never allow this—not ever.
But what exactly could I do? Time flowed as if in slow motion. I was thinking fast, but I didn’t have forever. Goosebumps broke out over my body and unease clenched my heart. I thought I would vomit blood.
The arrow loomed. No good, no good, I was no good. No matter how I racked my brain, I couldn’t come up with an escape.
I flipped open my robe and raised the jet-black battle-axe in my right hand so the gleaming black blade intersected the arrow’s trajectory. This was useless. I was going to die.
And with my death, I’ll curse you, you damn criminals!
“Damn iiiit!” With a furious roar, I brought the battle-axe down on the stone missile.
The air rumbled. Violent vibrations shook the atmosphere and rattled my eardrums. A terrifying roar tore through the meadow like a clap of thunder.
A great cracking sound followed. Thousands upon thousands of stone fragments hurtled into the forest as if something had exploded.
I resolved myself for pain and death, but it never came. The reason? The golem’s enormous stone arrow had, with incredible ease, been reduced to pebbles and dust.
One after another, the arrow’s splintered pieces thudded down on the ground. As if it had been slammed down by a remarkably weighty object, the arrow-end of this tragically destroyed spear gouged into the earth by my feet.
With my mouth agape, I stared at the black battle-axe in my hand. It glinted, absolutely spotless.
Huh? You serious? It worked…?
“WHAT?!” Everyone around me, ally and enemy alike, joined in a dumbfounded shout.
Only Teru cheered in joy.
That wasn’t my concern right now. The enemy’s crossbow golem wielder was skilled indeed—they were still hiding in the forest.
When would a second shot come? How long did it take to reload? What did the description in the illustrated guidebook say again? I desperately tried to remember.
I believed the crossbow golem was categorized as one of the heavy-class golems with the lowest defense. Its image in the guidebook indicated poor proficiency in close-quarters combat, which factored into its design. It was generally only equipped with armor at the chest and around its legs. In fact, the only reason for its size was to increase stability when shooting. Additionally, the most powerful feature of the crossbow golem was, as its name implied, its crossbow. Its right arm from the elbow downward was built as a ballista that could fire a stone arrow powerful enough to penetrate a castle wall—
“Ah, right! I just need to cut off his arm.”
I raised the jet-black battle-axe once more. I had recklessly imbued a fairly large amount of mana into this homemade Earth Battle-Axe because I was an amateur who didn’t know how to control himself. This golem was likely considerably dense and extremely heavy. That didn’t matter to me. The only thing I cared about was something I could remotely control at will—the reliable weapon I now hefted in my right hand.
“Go!” I threw the battle-axe toward the forest.
It twirled through the air as lightly as a thrown hand axe, a wicked, pure-black wheel of destruction. It hurtled through the forest, cutting down every tree in its path. Any obstruction before this fearsome, super-dense weapon proved absolutely meaningless.
The rotating black blade flew as if it were being sucked toward the heavy-class golem’s shadow—until it severed the golem’s thick right arm at its base. The severed ballista was swallowed by the whirlwind left in the axe’s wake and subsequently destroyed, its fragments scattered.
“All right, strike!” I shouted.
But I couldn’t lose focus. If I grew careless and cut off its mana supply, my Earth Battle-Axe would crumble and return to earth. Not only would this expose that the battle-axe had been created by a spell, the destruction of the axe would also deactivate my sorcery, thus extinguishing my heightened senses.
I maintained the supply of mana and guided the devilish black battle-axe in a circular path, returning it to me like a boomerang. I carefully decelerated the returning arc and caught it out of the air.
“All right, then, there we go.” With that skillful maneuver, I covered up my use of sorcery. Um…I did cover it up, right? It was fine, right? No, my acting was flawless. I definitely tricked everyone. I just decided that now.
After coming to this decision, I wiped the sweat off my brow with my free hand. “Phew.”
I was awfully exhausted. This wasn’t stamina or mana fatigue; I was mentally drained. I guess I really wasn’t fit to throw an axe.
Unlike how I had rotated the Earth Spear like a flying drill, Earth Battle-Axe had to rotate like a frisbee, so its trajectory couldn’t be stabilized. With a spear, I could manage fine control, and speed came naturally. The axe had a wider scope for destruction and seemed flashy, but a spear was much stronger in terms of penetration capability. My adorable Earth Spear had faced defeat in its debut fight, but that was just because its opponent, the ancient Earth Dragon, had been a total monster.
Or should I say that not only was controlling the battle-axe’s trajectory difficult, but its collision detection was shoddy at best, which was why I’d ended up mowing down so many innocent trees—and even dragging the nearby golem wielder into the whirlwind along with all that broken foliage.
Luckily, he got off with only a blow to the head, which had knocked him out. But that simple mistake could have become a tragic accident. Any more reckless axe-throwing was out of the question. The senseless damage it wrought was far too serious. Any attempt to defeat one person would inevitably result in over ten unrelated casualties. It was barbaric. Much too barbaric. This axe was a weapon of mass destruction, and therefore was the antithesis of my cultured approach to life.
As a peace-loving soul, I think I should limit myself to using this axe for defensive purposes.
I stared at my friend, the axe, gripped in my hand. It was a new war buddy, along with Gol and that good ol’ spear… Augh! I really couldn’t get past my concerns about the dangers my friend the axe might pose in the future.
The entire field remained silent. Everyone else was frozen, dumbfounded, and slack-jawed.
At this moment, one of the defeated spellcasters said with the blank face of a dead man, “A nightmare…”
Amidst the motionless adults, only young Teru’s cheers continued to echo.