Sacrifices were inevitable in war. There was no helping it. Just as in chess, one sacrificed a knight to take a bishop, a bishop to take a rook, and a rook to take a queen. Victory without sacrifice was always a distant prospect.

That was why Pin had undertaken this mission prepared to sacrifice herself. That was her role in this battle. Or rather, she had believed it was, and had taken it for granted.

'If a passing Bard made a story out of this, what would I be?'

Many soldiers died, but our side won the battle. Would she be one of the dead soldiers contained within that single sentence?

A better storyteller might describe the ranger unit's exploits in greater detail, but one thing was certain: Pin had accepted her own death. Sacrifice was inevitable. Someone had to take on that role, and it was simply her turn.

She had steeled herself with those thoughts, recognizing that this was the end, when...

'Hm?'

For a moment, she was speechless. Pin merely blinked. She would still have reacted if an attack came her way. Her training was ingrained in her body. But her mind had certainly frozen.

What was this? Something impossible by everything she knew had just happened.

Was this a dream? No, it wasn't. The pain from her assorted wounds made her acutely aware that this was real. Thanks to the blade that had cut her shoulder, blood streamed down her arm. It stung and burned. There was no shortage of reality here.

Then what was this bastard? Her gaze naturally went to Jaxon. So did every one of her subordinates'. At some point, the Fairies they had been fighting had disappeared, and a member of the lunatic unit stood in their place.

'Reinforcements?'

The thought that he was only one man never crossed her mind. The question was whether any of this made sense.

These were the Penn-Hanil Mountains. Covering half a day's journey at a full sprint should have caused a commotion to match. There would have been hordes of monsters and demonic beasts chasing the runner, drooling after him like lovesick fools.

And that wasn't all. The faint killing intent the Fairies had been giving off had vanished completely. Unless they had suddenly fallen in love with peace and harmony, made amends, and quietly withdrawn, they were clearly all off having a chat with the reaper.

'He killed them all in that little time?'

The same enemies they had barely been able to handle? And Pin hadn't even known it was happening.

Leaving aside his ability to kill all those Fairies, what made no sense was that he had done all of it without a trace of his presence. It should have been loud, chaotic, and messy. That was normal. By Pin's reckoning, by the limits of her abilities, it was.

Yet this man had appeared out of nowhere, as if he had dropped from the sky or sprung from the earth, and quietly taken care of everything. He had simply appeared and immediately cleared the area.

One thing after another had happened beyond Pin's awareness. She had swung her sword well past the point of gasping for breath, until her arms and legs shook, and now she had stopped.

If only she had kept moving, she would have had no time to think. With her body still, her eyes took in visual information, and her mind began thinking about what they showed her.

Pin felt a profound dissonance. Even so, she overcame it. A well-trained soldier did what needed doing, whatever the circumstances. Otherwise, how could anyone lead a charge knowing full well they would die?

After years of training—specifically, Audin's and Sinar's hellish training—Pin's mind accepted reality as it was and worked out what the situation required.

'So is this a bad thing?'

Of course not.

"Enemy leader carries a bow. The Fairies used unfamiliar fighting methods. I judge that this isn't their entire force."

Pin delivered the necessary report. Jaxon gave no answer. He simply stood there in silence. His breathing was too faint to hear, and his gaze was directed forward, yet she had the strange feeling he was looking at her—even though all she could see was the back of his head.

* * *

["I'd like none of our people to die."]

Encrid had said it, and Jaxon hadn't thought granting that wish would be difficult. If it proved impossible, so be it, but he could try. It was possible, too, if a small elite force decided the outcome instead of an all-out battle.

Fighting only the necessary battles at the necessary moments, rather than fighting indiscriminately, could minimize friendly casualties. In theory, at least. Still, refusing to sacrifice even a single person did seem a little excessive.

["In a war?"]

It was such a shameless goal that he couldn't help questioning it.

["Yeah. If we can't, we can't."]

Encrid's reply had been casual. But the determination behind that casual tone surely wasn't.

In short, he wanted none of his allies to die in a war. How insane was that? Yet he said he would do it. Even without Jaxon, Encrid would try. The determination behind his words was plain.

'He got this far by doing one insane thing after another, after all.'

To Encrid, this would be no different. Jaxon had decided to play along, though it felt rather strange for someone who specialized in killing to go out and save lives. But hadn't he decided to live that way and overhauled Georg’s Dagger for precisely that reason?

["Can't I be greedy? Can't we win without getting anyone killed? Why? Why not?"]

Encrid had said that before they marched out. In a mischievous mood, he kept repeating the question with a teasing smirk. Jaxon hadn't answered aloud, merely shaking his head. Inwardly, he had already agreed.

["How about the Crazy-in-the-Head Knight? Seems like a fitting nickname."]

For the first time in ages, the barbarian beside him had said something he actually liked. In any case, Jaxon was now doing as Encrid wished.

Upon spotting the Moonlight Fairies, he had gotten behind them and personally killed every last one. Now he was searching for the archer who had vanished the moment he began his work.

The opponent seemed first-rate at concealing their presence, at least. Jaxon couldn't hear any breathing or sense anything at all, so he had deliberately revealed himself. Otherwise, the allied rangers who had been scouting would be in danger.

'A spell?'

No. Like his own, it was purely a skill honed through practice. Jaxon deliberately let a little more of his presence slip.

This was his first time working this way, but unfamiliar didn't mean clumsy. Revealing himself to protect someone—he had used bait to turn the tables and kill his target before, but this was a first.

Pin spoke in the meantime. Jaxon heard her, but gave no response. He had already assessed all of that long ago.

He wasn't someone who fought by rough instinct like the barbarian. Nor was he a directionless fool who charged ahead regardless of whether he got lost. Nor some dependent soul who spent every day calling on his god.

'And certainly not someone who charges in blindly because he wants to protect something.'

He had listened on his way here, worked out what was happening from the sounds, and secured the best position from which to fight. The Moonlight Fairies had been targeting his allies, so he had struck from behind before revealing himself. This was the most advantageous position for achieving his objective: protecting Pin and the ranger unit.

"Nobody move," Jaxon said.

Pin and the scouts obeyed, even breathing carefully. If necessary, he would have told them to stop breathing altogether, but there should be no need to go that far.

His opponent, the archer, wasn't quite a knight. But a troublesome opponent all the same. There was also something familiar about them.

Was it because most people who developed their talents as hunters were alike? No. This was different.

'Hawk's Claw?'

The name surfaced in Jaxon's mind. When had that been? The battlefield where the Captain had been kicked by a Frog? There had been an archer by that name then.

Was this the same one? No. This one was a cut above. His intuition told him so.

Jaxon didn't know it, but Hawk's Claw had long since crossed the black river after meeting Rem's axe. The woman now hiding even from Jaxon's senses had been Hawk's Claw's teacher.

She was also a half-Fairy: half the blood in her veins was Fairy blood, though her appearance was entirely human. She had hidden herself by awakening the talent ingrained in her blood, in her instincts.

None of that was anything Jaxon needed to know. Whatever her method, the opponent was hiding, and he simply had to find her.

That was how assassination worked. All it took was sticking a piece of steel into someone's body, but actually finding that someone could be a headache.

Well, if the target was a Frog, a single stab wouldn't finish the job. They were a safety-first race who wore heart guards even to bed. Really, since Frogs were sensitive to the very word "heart," that was only natural.

Unless the target was a Frog, what was the greatest headache in an assassination commission? Finding someone who had hidden themselves away. Some dug holes and hid like moles. Others slept in a different room of their mansion every night.

Georg’s Dagger excelled at gathering intelligence and sometimes pieced it together to locate a target. But when this sort of thing happened, Jaxon made up for the gaps with his own abilities.

He did it through his innate talent, which had once prompted the previous Master, who called himself Jaxon's teacher, to say:

["Fuck, that's cheating."]

It wasn't quite cheating. That was a word to reserve for someone like his Captain.

'Unending Will?'

Fighting with something like that was cheating. Had Pell been the only one shocked by Encrid's awakening? Jaxon had been spurred on, too. Perhaps that was why he had agreed to the absurd demand to keep every ally alive.

'If a man can become a knight even when heaven turns its back and talent abandons him...'

["Why can't we keep every last one of our people alive on the battlefield?"]

Encrid's words lingered in his ears.

Small thoughts overlapped, ideas coalesced, and determination took shape. That was Will. Born with keen senses, Jaxon had always found Will to be something he could feel.

The Fairy Sinar understood Will in terms of spiritual essence, and Rem accepted it as part of shamanic power. To Jaxon, it was simply something he sensed. Just because something was invisible didn't mean it wasn't there.

Jaxon visualized his senses and imbued them with determination. He contracted the wide circle spread around him, deepening its color.

Some used Will to deliver sword strokes that could sever anything. Others wielded it to send out formless blades. Jaxon had no knack for such things. Instead, his talent had taught him how to imbue his five senses with Will.

Sunlight filtering through the pointed leaves overhead. Deep, black shade. Shadows lighter than that shade. Scents carried through the air. The direction of the wind.

The five senses merged, opening his Sixth Sense. With Will layered over his sensory arts, Jaxon perceived everything within the circle he had visualized. The anxiety of his allies behind him. The presence of the archer in that tree, already nocking and loosing an arrow.

TWANG.

He heard the sound first, though the bow was clearly too far away for its string to be audible. Then the arrow came, transformed into a streak of light.

It was aimed at Pin, not Jaxon. Even now, the archer was thinking tactically. She intended to exploit the opening created by targeting Pin.

Jaxon caught Pin's wrist and pulled her aside.

The arrow thudded into the dirt, sending a nearby stone flying. The stone tapped back onto the ground. In the brief instant that Pin, dragged by the wrist, felt the force pulling her disappear, Jaxon vanished again.

Like a wisp of smoke snuffed out, he slipped beyond her awareness. At the same moment, the archer lost him too.

* * *

Aterose's mother had been a Fairy, and her father a human. The man who was her father had abandoned both her and her mother, but fortunately, Fairy society had accepted her.

Fairy society had needed change around that time, which had also given her the fortunate chance to help establish a Moonlight Fairy combat unit. After various experiences had given her power, she set herself a goal.

'I'll kill my father.'

Every man who sowed his seed carelessly was her enemy. After killing her father, she set an even greater goal: kill those who fathered bastards.

To that end, she had borrowed Aspen's strength, tracked down her father, and killed him. In the process, she had sworn several oaths and formed a combat unit with some of the Moonlight Fairies.

When part of that Fairy unit was struck down, Aterose immediately hid herself and took up her bow. Then she shot an arrow at the woman she presumed to be the commander among the survivors.

'An opening.'

She had wanted an opening in the defenses of that terrifying monster who had suddenly appeared. But she saw nothing of the sort.

When her whistling arrow missed its target, Aterose concealed her presence again. She entrusted herself to the shade and shadows that had protected her since childhood, only to feel a blade touching her back.

Reflexively, she twisted and tried to strike with her bow, but the blade plunged between her vertebrae first. Her opponent specialized in killing. Having spent years killing men who fathered bastards, Aterose recognized that all too well.

Every death had a story. This half-Fairy who had sided with Aspen had one, too. But death was simply the end.

And so died a half-Fairy who had once branded men who fathered bastards her enemies and devoted herself to killing them. It was no occasion for sentiment.

'Was she bait?'

The moment he killed the archer, Jaxon felt eyes on him. His senses told him this wasn't over. Farther off, he sensed presences similar to those of the Fairies he had just killed. There were three times as many as before. Dozens of Fairy swordsmen.

'I doubt she was just bait.'

Seeing their own side fall, they had changed their response, turning the archer he had just killed into bait. To kill her, Jaxon had revealed his position again, along with a portion of his abilities.

Jaxon bent his wrist, loosening the joint. That had been a decent warm-up. Now he would put some real effort into it.

The Fairy swordsmen didn't charge. Instead, they began spreading out in groups, movements that looked to Jaxon like a coordinated formation.

Whose handiwork had turned an archer who hadn't been bait into bait in an instant? The Fairy swordsmen's movements had accomplished it, which meant they had a competent commander.

Jaxon had detected that commander and pinpointed his location, but judged that rushing straight in would be difficult. Ranks of Fairy swordsmen stood in layers before him.

In other words, the time had come for real effort. The enemy seemed to regard Jaxon as no more than a skilled fighter who could strike from hiding. Naturally, they were mistaken.