The leisurely journey, spent watching clouds drift by and feeling half like they were on holiday, was over. The Giants' appearance had changed the mood.

Encrid shifted his blade left and right, watching the Giant's reaction. His opponent remained impassive, blinking like an ox in a show of simple innocence.

"What... you doing? Playing with sword?"

The Giant cocked its head, playing dumb. Even its speech was clumsy. Encrid wasn't fooled by that tilt of its head.

Look at this bastard.

Even as it spoke, he clearly saw it subtly move its hand to its waist. A perfect position to block his sword.

Meanwhile, the Giant began swinging the club in its right hand through the air. It whooshed around, throwing wind against his face. Urging wind or not, the pressure from that club made his eyes sting.

Encrid narrowed his eyes to protect them, thinking two things at once.

Getting hit by that wouldn't end with just a broken bone.

Could it help with his striking-method training?

As he thought, he adjusted his grip, positioned the sword tip at belly level, and shifted his feet.

"Want help?"

Dunbachel asked. She seemed less interested in helping than in venting her frustration after several days of beatings from Rem.

"I'm fine."

Encrid declined.

The Giant's presence was extraordinary. Unusual, too. In short, this was an opponent he didn't want to miss out on.

As his skills improved, certain desires sometimes rose within Encrid. There was pleasure to be found in fighting itself. Lose himself in it, though, and he would become a killing machine.

Of course, that would never happen to him. He had a dream.

Still, did he really need to live denying himself all such pleasures? Obviously not. That was why he wouldn't yield his opponent to someone else or let it go.

A fragment of the exhilaration he'd felt fighting the Ghoul grew within him, bringing something akin to pleasure.

Was his opponent dangerous?

Regardless of skill, a hit from a club like that would crush some part of him, proto knight or not.

'If I can't deflect it, I might die.'

Danger was always present in a fight with live blades. That was part of the pleasure.

Luagarne flicked her dangling whip back and forth. The Giant's gaze didn't move, but Encrid knew it was already watching everything.

His intuition warned him. It was playing dumb, but it wasn't stupid. Feigned dullness was merely a tactic.

"What are you looking at?"

Encrid met the Giant's eyes as he asked. Their gazes locked.

The blue eyes were steadfast and direct, like jewels shining with starlight. Encrid's eyes.

The Giant's were like dull sand. Like a heap of dry, crumbly earth. Deep brown.

Though they constantly pretended innocence and stupidity, they couldn't entirely conceal the intelligence within. Eyes that fairly reeked of guile, perhaps.

The Giant's eyes shifted a few times. Encrid tried to glimpse its thoughts, but failed. He couldn't tell. Naturally. He had no supernatural ability to read minds.

One thing, however, was certain.

It wasn't going to simply back off.

Just as he thought that, the Giant brought its whirling club to a halt.

"Aren't you afraid?"

Its voice had become several times gentler than before. It sounded distinctly coaxing, even a little friendly.

Quite a talented Giant, changing its tone to lure its opponent into lowering his guard.

"Leave just one behind, and I'll let the rest live."

The Giant spoke again, lying without so much as a flicker of shame.

Throughout its speech, Encrid watched only its eyes. He began to feel a little sorry toward Krais.

'Similar, but different.'

What was the biggest difference?

The presence of deceit.

The Giant bastard's eyes looked as though it enjoyed toying with and deceiving others through countless lies. It reeked of petty, low, contemptible malice. Sadistic delight? There seemed to be a rank smell to it.

In fact, the Giant that had eaten human flesh did give off a pungent odor.

"Would you?"

Encrid let his narrowed eyes open as he asked.

"I would. I swear upon my name, Bannatur."

The Giant spoke without shifting its stance. Not even a fingertip moved.

"All right."

Encrid answered without the slightest change in his own stance.

Their mouths and bodies seemed to be acting independently. Whatever they said, neither relaxed their guard.

The Giant Bannatur realized its opponent hadn't been fooled.

"You mocking me?"

The Giant suddenly flew into a rage and leaned forward, pretending to lunge.

Watching it, Encrid thought of the Valen Mercenary Sword Technique. That was exactly how the Giant was acting. The methods of humiliation and deception differed, but the tactics pursued the same end.

This was no different.

It kicked off the ground with a bang as if charging straight in, then stopped midway and calmly brought down its club.

KABOOOOM!

The noise tore at his ears. Though the swing was all show, full of caution rather than full commitment, it still carried air-rending superhuman strength.

A Giant was a Giant for a reason.

In any case, it remained calm.

So did Encrid. Whether it talked about eating him or letting him live, he stayed composed.

The heart of the beast. The equanimity forged through it brought him calm and kept him from losing his composure.

Aker, which had been pointed forward, shot diagonally upward. Sword met club. Aker's blade pressed against the club at an oblique angle.

He pushed the blade along it as though planing wood. The spikes on the dark-brown club snapped off in a rattling succession.

The Giant shifted its weight onto its right foot and kicked with its left. The wind pressure of the kick sent the spikes Aker had sheared off flying at Encrid like projectiles.

He turned smoothly aside to evade them. As he did, he transferred Aker from his shaving stroke to his left hand and struck down at the Giant's shin.

THWACK!

The blade struck something like a warmer wrapped around the Giant's shin, but he didn't feel flesh parting. He did, however, distinctly feel it cutting through something hard.

"Agh!"

The Giant screamed. Even then, Encrid watched only its eyes. They hadn't changed.

Calm.

As it screamed, the Giant thrust its hand forward. An attack disguised as pain. Its spread fingers suggested it believed it could break anything it caught.

And it probably could. A Giant's superhuman strength was a weapon in itself. This was a race that crushed rocks with bare hands.

It had put something inside the layers of cloth to protect its shin. From the outside it looked like a fur leg warmer, but it was nothing of the sort.

A deception.

It hadn't screamed from pain, either. It was pretending to hurt.

Another deception.

It reached out with its empty hand rather than the one holding the club. The intention to grab and crush was unmistakable.

Just let me catch you. I've lost my head, and I'm coming for you. Once I catch you, I'll crush you!

That intent was plain, but this, too, was a deception.

Encrid perceived everything in discrete moments and reacted at once.

The Giant took the sword strike to its shin, screamed, and reached out. Amid those movements, the club with its broken spikes swooped down from overhead.

There was none of the earlier booming roar. The swing was compact and fast. Before, it had deliberately swung to catch as much air resistance as possible. This time, it angled the club obliquely.

'Whew.'

Encrid exhaled briefly, then held his breath.

'Concentrate on a Single Point.'

Time in which everything slowed.

His senses perceived everything around him, feeding him the situation. He moved on the strength of the vitality boiling throughout his body: Will.

His right hand straightened and struck like a blade, while Aker rose in his left. At the same time, he stepped forward and stamped on the Giant's foot.

THWACK! CRUNCH! CRACK!

The edge of his hand broke the Giant's wrist, and his foot shattered the bones of its instep. Aker pierced the very center of the club and split it apart.

The club cracked open, raining pieces of wood down over his head.

"Gaaaaagh!"

Only then did the Giant let out a genuine scream.

This was real.

Encrid drew Aker back from the thrust and retreated. Refusing to give up, the Giant dropped its club and swung a fist.

WHOOSH!

A punch that would have inflicted a critical wound with a single hit cut through empty air.

"Shit."

The Giant was angry.

That, too, was real.

Encrid looked at the tears welling in the corners of its eyes.

Those were real as well.

He was satisfied.

* * *

While Encrid toyed with one Giant, Rem killed the other two. His fight hadn't lasted long.

At first they tested their weapon skills at medium range. Then Rem closed in on the Giants. Robbed of their reach, the two lashed out with hands and feet, but he knocked and shoved those aside, carving new mouths into their bellies with his axes.

One died with its guts spilling from its open belly. The other held on for a while with a hand axe buried in its head before dying. Purple blood spattered the ground.

Seeing a Giant keep attacking for so long with an axe lodged in its head certainly proved their extraordinary vitality. Even so, nothing could live with all its guts spilled out and its skull split completely open.

The three Giants had been unlucky. Of all opponents, they had run into monsters like these.

"What are you lot?"

Rem approached after his brutal fight and asked. Only the Giant whose wrist Encrid had broken and whose instep he'd crushed remained alive, so naturally the question was directed at it.

It blinked, seeming to mull over his question.

"Why are things like you here? You don't live here."

Rem asked again. Bannatur blinked.

"Urgh, it hurts. Why ask me that?"

Playing dumb again.

Encrid wasn't the only one who recognized it. Rem didn't bother saying anything. He drew a dagger and placed it beneath the Giant's eye.

Luagarne bound its arms, using her whip as a rope.

Even so, getting as close as Rem had was dangerous. But because it was Rem, it was fine. He wasn't someone who would fall for that kind of bullshit.

In fact, while aiming at the eye of the kneeling Giant, whose eyes were still slightly higher than his own, Rem planted a foot on its thigh. At the first sign of trouble, that foot would break its thighbone.

"I'll start with your eyes. Unless you've got somewhere else in mind? I can start by cutting off the balls between your legs, but I'll get around to those sooner or later anyway. Oh, and I can keep you alive for at least two days."

Jaxon was probably a master torturer. He'd certainly given that impression several times.

And Rem? He would do it if necessary. Even if he wasn't a master, all his experience cutting people to death would have deepened his understanding of anatomy.

Being a Giant didn't make this one a monster with four hearts. It was still a humanoid, after all.

"Wait. If I talk, will you let me live?"

How to put it? Encrid found this situation strange. He hadn't seen many Giants, but they weren't called red-blooded demonic beasts for nothing.

A species born for battle. A mad fighting instinct that wouldn't let them retreat even when they knew they would lose.

That was a Giant. Or so he'd understood until now.

The Giants he'd seen on battlefields in his mercenary days had truly been like unstoppable war chariots. He could still vividly see one charging a platoon armed with crossbows, bleeding all over.

["Hahahaha! See? All you have to do is push through!"]

The mad Giant had mocked the others while carrying out a tactic only it could pull off.

Of course, just as not all humans or all Frogs were alike, not all Giants would be the same. But wasn't this taking things a little too far?

One damaged hand and one damaged foot, and it was already rolling over? A Giant? Its wrists were bound with a whip, but it could still put up plenty of resistance if it wanted.

Yet here it was.

Rem pushed his dagger farther beneath the Giant's eye. Purple blood spurted out. Holding it there, he spoke.

"I'll give you a clean death."

No lies. Typical Rem.

"Bad humans."

The Giant answered.

Were these creatures whose brains worked well enough, but whose language skills had regressed?

Its speech was still clumsy. The deep voice boomed as though from inside a cave; even a little slurring made it difficult to understand. Listening now made that clear.

"Damn it. Don't keep promises... what good land? Bullshit."

Something like that. Even this was pieced together from the surrounding words. It was hard to understand even half of it.

"All according to God's will."

Suddenly saying that, the Giant tried to ram its head onto Rem's dagger. Naturally, Rem wasn't about to let that happen. He withdrew the blade and punched its cheekbone with the fist holding the hilt.

THWACK!

The blow snapped its head back. Luagarne tensed her arms. Veins bulged along the Frog's smooth forearms.

"That hurts!"

The Giant shouted.

"What, you thought I hit you to make you feel good?"

As he spoke, Rem spun the dagger in his hand, pointed the blade forward again, and stabbed the Giant's eye. There wasn't a moment's hesitation in his knifework.

THUNK!

"Gaaaaagh!"

Another scream. Another genuine one.

That was enough to make the Giant surrender.

"This is our land now. Told us to make it so."

"Who?"

"The great prophet."

Even listening, there was very little they could make sense of. After a few more questions, they reached the point where there seemed to be nothing more to ask.

THUNK!

Rem slit the Giant's throat with his dagger. Blood spurted out, a deep purple close to violet.

"I've no idea what's going on. Looks like I'll have to go farther to find out," Rem said.

"You'd best not follow."

As Rem spoke again, Encrid remembered how Rem had responded when he'd told him to head into the Demonic Realm without explanation.

He had spoken, and Rem had followed.