They could see a crowd of people gathered next to a rice paddy on the opposite side of the river that flowed through the center of the village.
By the time they reached the crowd, the commotion had already died down, but they could hear villagers muttering to each other that they had shown up again. Homura and the other girls worked their way through the crowd, trying not to look at the smattering of women dressed in school PE swimsuits.
“What happened?”
The villagers’ eyes were all directed toward the young man the girls had met earlier at the gate. He was holding a katana, which was stained red, as if he had just cut some creature down moments before. Some creature that was currently lying at his feet.
“Is that…a monstrous beast?”
A strangely shaped creature covered in brown fur was lying faceup on the ground. There was a deep gash across its shoulders, as if from a katana slash.
The creature was lying perfectly still, apparently dead.
“Does it matter?” the gateman asked, puzzled. “These things started showing up a little while ago, but it’s impossible to tell what they are. They move like a human, which would seem to suggest demonkind, but they rampage like beasts, which would seem to suggest they are monstrous beasts as well.”
The man could only cock his head, unsure.
“We’ve tried to speak to them, but it’s always useless. They’re clearly not intelligent.”
“What strange monsters.”
The man was right. The creature’s head was shaped like a horse’s, but midway, its body morphed into an ungainly shape that looked capable of walking on two legs. It was about the size of a small human, but its frame was packed with incongruously sturdy muscles. In place of hooves, its hands and feet ended in well-formed fingers and toes.
There was no way to distinguish whether the creature was a beast or a demon. Psycho moved closer and began examining it, fascinated. She confirmed there was no heartbeat and it wasn’t breathing before slowly inspecting every inch of it, from the top of its head to the tips of its toes.
The villagers watched from a distance, forming a circle around her. A moment later, Psycho had finished her inspection. She placed a hand on her chin and began to conjecture.
“Based on physical characteristics…,” Psycho muttered, her eyebrows furrowing together in distaste, “the creature was likely female. A…a woman?”
While small, two slight mounds were visible on its chest. Considering its stature, it was probably still young.
“This horse-woman has to be a demon. Its features are too close to human for it to be a beast.”
That made sense. But it was so close to the line that Homura could have just as easily believed it was a monstrous beast. Like the gateman said, the creature resembled both.
“I didn’t know there were demons like this. I thought all demons were more human in appearance.”
Homura thought back to the Sharktooth Tribe. The Sharktooth demons had basically looked like humans with some shark characteristics, but the monster lying before them now was something else entirely.
From a distance it could have been mistaken for a horse, but its other features, such as its fingers and the position of its breasts, were uncannily human.
“If it wasn’t intelligent, though, killing it was probably the right thing to do. I doubt we would have been able to get any information from it.” Psycho stood up and spoke to the man who had killed the monster. “Do they always come from that direction?”
The village man answered, “Come to think of it, yes. They always come from the east…”
Glancing toward the east, they could see several areas where the wall had been repaired. There was also a new spot that had been freshly destroyed.
If these creatures were just showing up sporadically to rampage, unlike the Sharktooth Tribe, it seemed unlikely that they had any real goal in mind. If they were even capable of having goals at their level of intelligence.
Either way, if they all came from the same direction, that had to be where their den was.
“Speaking of which, are there any settlements to the east?”
“It’s fairly far, but there is one, supposedly. But even if you wanted to go to their aid, you would need to head back to Galdorssia first and—”
“No, that isn’t why I was asking. I just wanted to know whether there were any settlements there or not.”
Judging by the man’s use of the word supposedly, any village out that way was too far for regular interaction. The demons’ den was almost certainly somewhere to the east, and there was a human settlement in that direction as well. But apparently Psycho wasn’t curious about what had happened to the settlement, only whether it was there or not.
“Why did you want to know?” Homura asked, curious.
“Don’t worry about it. That isn’t something we should talk about here.”
“If…you say so.”
Isn’t something we should talk about here. What did that mean? Whatever it meant, it sounded like Psycho was onto something. Homura had no idea what that might be, though, so she just kept her mouth shut and let Psycho do her thing.
“Anyway, we’ve got a lot to report. We should probably hurry back to Galdorssia,” Psycho said, turning to face them again as she thrust her hands into her slightly grimy lab coat.
What happened next took everyone by surprise.
There was no way for Psycho to react in time.
One of the creature’s powerful, misshapen arms rose into the air, poised to crush Psycho’s skull. The monster, which they’d thought was dead, had gotten back onto its feet suddenly and was lunging toward her.
The arm swung downward, moving too fast for most of them to see.
“Psycho, get down!” Jin shouted, reaching for the katana she had just received from the headman.
“Huh…?”
It was too late. Partly because the victim of the coming attack didn’t even understand what was happening. Psycho’s death seemed inevitable.
But…those fears never came to pass. Instead of making contact with Psycho’s head, the creature’s meaty arm was sent flying in a random direction.
“Huh…?!”
Psycho uttered a deflated little grunt as she turned toward the monster once more. The monster, meanwhile, crumpled to the ground like a marionette whose strings had just been cut. A spray of blood had erupted from the thing at some point, splattering red across Psycho’s lab coat.
“Huh? What just happened?”
It had all occurred too fast. Psycho stood there slack-jawed, unable to grasp what she was seeing. The answer, however, soon became clear. Someone was standing beside the monster now. Someone who hadn’t been there a moment ago. He was flicking the blood from Jin’s broken ebony blade.
“Hmph… It’s sharp, yes, but brittle. Excellent for work like this, but it wouldn’t do for larger opponents. I wouldn’t rely much on that malefic sword, either, if I were you. That is, if you’re interested in what an old man has to say,” the village headman said, addressing Jin.
It was he who had just cut down the monster. While everyone else held their breath, he was the only one who seemed relaxed.
A lightning-fast slash from an aging soldier. It had happened too fast for anything but the aftermath to be seen. They were all caught with their pants down, and Jin was the only one who still had the wherewithal to respond.
“How did you know this was a malefic sword…?”
Jin had never mentioned the fact. And she obviously wasn’t about to unsheathe it and show him.
“I got eyes, don’t I? I’ve seen my fill of those damned things.” The headman did not explain himself further, but they caught a glimpse of profound bitterness on his face. “I suspect you came looking for a normal katana because of how difficult that thing is to use.”
“You’re correct.”
The karma attached to such dark blades cast deep shadows upon those who came into contact with them.
“There’s something else I should say…”
The headman’s face twisted in further anguish.
“Someone…bring me a stretcher! Oh, my back! I shouldn’t have moved so fast!”
The old man fell over, crying in pain. He was soon loaded onto a stretcher.
“I’m not sure if we should be thankful or worried…,” Homura said as she watched them carry away the poor old man who had just saved Psycho’s life.
“Well, he definitely saved my ass. Without him I would have been dead…”
Maybe it was still the adrenaline speaking, but for once, Psycho wasn’t trying to play it cool.
Psycho had been very careful. She had confirmed the creature was dead before beginning her inspection. It seemed unlikely that she had been mistaken. But this was a world where magic existed. Anything could happen. Maybe the thing had come back to life. Or maybe it had been dead but had moved anyway.
Whatever had happened, it was extraordinary. And Homura was worried there could be more of it on the way.
“It feels like something bad is coming.”
The Dark Lord’s shadow always seemed to loom behind these incidents. First Guadhari Village, then Aurerich. Over and over again, the Dark Lord had been the one pulling the strings. It was no wonder Homura was worried something bad was coming. But the truth was that something bad was already there.
“Don’t look now, but I think that something just arrived,” Proto said, pointing toward the wall to the east in disgust.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me…”
It was a swarm of horse-people. They were pouring in through the hole in the wall.
“▪▪▪▪▪▪▪—!!”