Encrid reacted, and Dunbachel and Rem moved. Arrows kept slicing through the black night sky. Several torch stands toppled. Every part of the scene took shape like a painting in Encrid's mind.

In that desperate moment, his instincts shone cold and clear. The blade of intuition cleaved the darkness.

'I'll save half.'

Some of the hostages bound to the poles were already on the verge of death. The giant spiders seemed to have no intention of keeping them alive. They meant only to break their opponents' morale.

Monsters could think of something like this? Astonishing, but this was no time to dwell on it. What mattered was how many he could save.

He would not save them all. Beneath a stone shining bluish white, a giant spider extended a raised, pointed leg. It was long and sharp enough to pass for a spear.

'Exactly half.'

He could throw something and kill one, but that would not save anyone. His Will activated. The predictions of Eyes That See One Step Ahead expanded, revealing part of the future—a future glimpsed in the realm of intuition. Even so, there was nothing he could change.

Meanwhile, Rem and Dunbachel killed two spiders. Axe and curved sword split the monsters' heads. Encrid reached another and thrust Spark into it.

He sprang forward, following with a swift stab that punched a hole through the monster's head. He pulled the blade free and immediately tensed his legs again. Was he supposed to give up simply because he had seen a future that would not change?

Encrid did not. Whether he could succeed or not, he tried to move on to the next.

There were nine poles in all. Even if he ran to them, the hostages would die. That was the picture painted on the canvas of the future he had seen. Still, he would not stop.

Then silver light cleaved the canvas.

RRRIP!

It tore forward and sliced clean through a spider's leg as it stabbed toward a hostage. Encrid halted the foot he had been about to launch himself from. He forgot even to breathe.

Had he thought he had seen a knight's sword? He had been mistaken.

What did it mean to cut down a thousand alone? Why were knights called calamities?

The Mercenary King thrust his spear at incomprehensible angles. Ragna's thunderbolt struck with incomprehensible force. Sinar's sword took incomprehensible forms.

And now this. Oara moved with incomprehensible speed, using her sword as a brush to change the picture on that canvas.

She had been farther away than Encrid, yet now she was everywhere. Six hostage poles remained—the six he had failed to reach—and there were six Oaras.

A miracle wrought by brutal speed unfolded before his eyes. If a single sword stroke had sent a shiver through him before, now ecstasy filled his entire body.

This was what he wanted to do. This was what he wanted to see. This was a knight.

Oara of the Scarlet Cloak Knight Order set her sword in motion and began rampaging among the monsters. Her blade became a rain called calamity, pouring down upon the spiders.

"Not bad."

Rem's admiration reached him, followed by Dunbachel's awed "Ah."

Encrid's eyes were busy following Oara's sword.

"Hahaha!"

Oara laughed aloud. With a single ordinary longsword, she killed spider after spider whose heads alone were the size of a human.

It was a succession of simple movements. Just as she had taught him.

["You don't need fancy swordplay."]

He could almost hear her words.

She stabbed, cut, cleaved, and struck. That was enough. As she laughed, her sword grew fiercer, her kicks struck like maces, and she moved faster still.

One spider opened its mouth and spat a ball of silk larger than its own head. Oara cut that too.

With a sharp snap, tiny spiderlings burst from the split mass of silk. Well over a hundred seemed to rain down directly above her head, each only the size of a finger.

That posed no problem either. Though he could not see it, Encrid imagined Oara had snorted.

For an instant, her sword bloomed—a flower of afterimages formed from dozens of stabs.

THWIP-THWIP-THWIP-THWIP!

A dozen spiderlings died at once. She had accomplished it with her sword.

Encrid had been watching, but little time had passed. The battlefield had transformed in a moment. The hostages' appearance and Oara's display of a knight's power had all occurred within a few breaths.

Only then did Oara lower her sword, draw a deep breath, and shout.

"All troops! Back to positiooon!"

At her words, Encrid gathered the hostages one by one and threw them back. Rem caught them and passed them to the rear.

"Fuck, Oa!"

Rowena's man shouted as he hoisted a hostage onto his back. It was Rowena. The other soldiers each shouldered someone and began running back.

"Close the gate!"

Encrid glanced behind him. He saw Milio and several other soldiers lying dead. Milio might have lived if he had reacted to Encrid's earlier warning, but he had thrown himself forward to protect his subordinate.

There could have been no calculation behind it. It must have been pure instinct, his body moving on its own. All Encrid could feel was regret.

Milio could no longer dream. His dream of taking Oara as his bride was over. The dead could not share a life with the living.

Rowena, however, had survived.

"Don't die. I'm here."

The soldier carrying her shouted over and over as he ran.

Do flowers bloom even in the Demonic Realm? There was a saying like that in the city. People lived here. People loved here. These were the things Oara wanted to protect.

"Captain, are you just going to watch?"

Rem's question came as things changed. Monsters were crawling out in numbers on an entirely different scale from what they had seen atop the wall. There were horrifyingly many.

And that was not all. A pitch-black shadow sprang out before Oara and brought down a sword. Encrid's eyes caught it.

Not one sword, but several. The strikes were so fast they left dozens of afterimages.

CLANG-CLANG-CLANG-CLANG!

Oara's sword moved, knocking them all aside. She answered every single blow with a counterattack and even worked in a stab. But the attacker retreated out of its reach.

Encrid could see her opponent now. It had an unusual shape: a monstrous eight-legged spider standing on two legs, the others hanging like arms.

"A variant," Luagarne said, drawing her whip.

The spider monster wielding eight swords had a face resembling a human's. Pale skin, insect eyes divided into dozens of facets where its eyes should be. A single round hole served as its nose. It had no mouth.

Its eight legs held eight pure-white blades. No—they were bound and woven together. The legs themselves were blades.

"Well, Jerix, you bastard. Is that your new lover you've brought?"

Oara spoke with a smile. She smiled even when nothing was to her liking. That was Oara, the smiling knight.

"Master!"

Roman shouted as he sprang out from behind Oara.

"Fucking monsters."

The short-haired blonde stepped forward on the other side, while the four squires withdrew.

At that moment, arrows began flying from within the gray forest again. They had not even recovered Milio's body yet.

Encrid raised his shield to block them. The others parried or blocked as they saw fit. No arrows flew toward Oara and the proto knights. Oara's standoff with the bipedal, eight-armed spider simply continued.

'A knight-level monster.'

Why was a world without monsters an impossible dream even when knights existed? Because, of course, there were creatures capable of facing knights. This was one of them.

The eight-legged monster's red eyes gleamed in dozens of facets.

KIK!

To Encrid, it sounded like laughter.

"Having fun with another bitch?"

Oara kept up the jokes. Her nerve was extraordinary.

The spider with eight bladed arms radiated a dizzying pressure simply by existing, but Oara paid it no mind. She raised her sword, and the spider stepped aside.

An owlbear emerged from behind it. It had an owl's head, a bear's body, and two abnormally large hands. When it clenched its fists, it looked as though two boulders hung from its arms. Its puffed feathers made its body and fists look larger still.

"Well, now. That one looks like trouble too," Rem said.

Encrid felt the same. The sight of it made him reel. It also set his heart racing. This was a powerful monster, clearly no half-measure.

"You lot really mean business, don't you?" Oara said.

The two monsters charged. The knight's sword clashed with their weapons. Speed beyond all limits drew long, flame-like trails through the air. The trails overlapped, painting a scattering of light.

CLANG-CLANG-CLANG! CRASH! CRASH!

Explosive reports punctuated the clash. The two proto knights could only watch for an opening to intervene. They could not carelessly join in. It was two against one, and Oara could hardly be said to be overwhelming them.

Nor was that the end of it.

RAT-A-TAT-TAT!

There were monsters firing arrows. More monsters began crawling out from the depths of the Demonic Realm. A wave. The tide that the knight Oara had held at bay was crashing over Thousand Brick.

Oara drove the two monsters back a little with a broad horizontal sweep and shouted.

"Enkie, Aesia, protect the city!"

She would handle the rest of the fight herself. The two proto knights guarding her fell in behind her. Aesia was nowhere to be seen; she had already gone to deal with the arrow-firing monsters.

"What a pain."

Rem drew his axe. Looking at the oncoming horde, this was not a number he could deal with using sling shots.

Encrid drew his swords too. Aker in his right hand, Spark in his left.

Would Oara be driven back? It did not look that way. She deftly deflected both the spider's eight bladed arms and the owlbear's fists.

'What if it were me?'

He could never manage it so easily. The two monsters covered each other's openings with great skill. How could he break through that?

'Ragna's Black Thunderbolt.'

That would do it. Could his White Thunderbolt accomplish something similar? No. He knew it the moment he looked.

Encrid turned his eyes from Oara's battle. While she fought, he had his own work to do.

KIRRRIK.

Grotesque cries mingled with the rapid clatter of legs scuttling across the ground. The spiders approaching through the darkness were horrifying to behold.

Encrid decided to bring his sword down on that horror.

THUD! CRACK!

Aker fell in a straight vertical stroke, splitting the head of a spider that reached his solar plexus. Rem helped beside him, his axe doing much the same work.

Luagarne surveyed the situation.

"We only need to hold out."

Dunbachel looked visibly relieved at that.

Encrid heard the soldiers shouting. Even as the flying arrows claimed lives, they accepted it as a matter of course.

"Oa!"

Roman had told him the night before. That cry was the "Oa" in Oara.

These were the people the knight Oara protected. This city, imbued with her convictions, belonged to them. If she fought for them, they too would fight for her. And they fought for the city.

After cutting down four monsters in succession, Encrid briefly glanced ahead. He was simply following a feeling—intuition. It was as though someone had told him to look forward.

There, within the forest, a monster unlike the spiders walked out. It came between the gray trees of the Demonic Realm, treading the black earth.

"Jerix, you've really come prepared."

Oara spoke upon seeing it, in a brief opening she had made by blocking and parrying the arachne's and the owlbear's attacks. The two unusual monsters also withdrew a little and paused.

"Were you after me, by any chance?" she asked.

The Ghoul was hardly going to answer. And Oara smiled.

Encrid did not grasp the whole situation, but he knew one thing. They were at a disadvantage.

Jerix. The ex-husband. The monster currently sustaining that Demonic Realm. The monster Oara wanted to kill more than any other.

Kill it, and the Demonic Realm would lose its power. She had said the Realm was essentially an enormous colony. Yet it had come out. It was staking everything on this battle.

Enough coincidences made an inevitability. Oara's countless incursions into the Demonic Realm. A monster that knew how to think. Twin Red Moons. The number of monsters gathered.

From the monsters' perspective, there was only one way to end the threat. Kill Oara. All those coincidences had created this day.

Finally, Encrid's gaze settled on the Ghoul. Blue skin, a split mouth, a hole without a nose bridge, and pitch-black eyes without pupils.

Both arms hung at its sides, nails half a handspan long extending from their ends. The skin on its arms looked unusually hard. It was as though it carried swords.

Encrid noticed its stance. Its gait was different, and it looked ready to use both arms like blades. Worse, poison clung to the tips of those nails, poison that could afflict even a knight with the merest graze.

Unlike its skin, the nails were dark, as though coated in soot. Black as if they were drinking in the light of the Twin Red Moons. In short, its stance looked as though it had learned swordsmanship.

"The Demonic Realm makes monsters evolve," Luagarne said.

Encrid could not fully understand why, but with the result before his eyes, he could guess what had happened.

A Ghoul had been born in the Demonic Realm. It had observed humans, challenged them, and barely survived. Had Oara said she had let Jerix escape three times?

Each time, it had grown stronger. Each time, it had grown more cunning. This was where it had led.

'A monster that evolves.'

A monster that trained and honed itself.

The corners of the Ghoul's mouth twisted upward. It had even stolen Oara's smile.

GUUUUU!

It burst into laughter. That was how it sounded to Encrid.