The knights of the ducal House Arbenia were pushing through the forest in pursuit. The sun was already high overhead, yet they had found no useful traces.

Perhaps that was only natural. They had no information at all to aid their pursuit.

They had not seen the intruder’s face, let alone their build or silhouette. As though a ghost had come and gone, not a single clue to the intruder’s identity remained at the villa. All they could do was assume it had been a skilled Ranger or someone of comparable ability.

That assumption offered little comfort. A Ranger skilled enough to conceal their presence from knights would be exceedingly difficult to catch if they were determined to escape. Their only consolation was that their quarry had a hostage with injured ankles in tow.

'They can’t have gone far.'

Palaizen, a knight of the ducal house, walked deeper into the forest. Anyone heading to Cambria, the City of Opportunity, would have to pass through it. Going around would take a great deal of time.

Their quarry was probably trying to escape to Cambria, making it likely they would slip through this route or force their way past. That was why Palaizen and several other knights were scouring every inch of the forest.

'The commander has gone ahead through the forest with the First Pursuit Squad. If he gets ahead of the fugitive and blocks the route...'

His own role was to find traces and cut off any retreat. Palaizen had not forgotten his task.

Even with the sun high overhead, the dense vegetation kept the forest dim. He walked through its gloom.

Palaizen flinched and abruptly stopped.

Narrowing his eyes, he looked around. He had sensed no human presence, but his sharply honed instincts were warning him that something was nearby. It was not a judgment grounded in rational evidence, but the cry of an animal instinct.

Yet there was nothing to see. Vegetation swayed in the breeze. Fallen leaves rustled, and birds called. Had his instincts been wrong? Well, they were hardly right all that often. Just as that thought crossed his mind, a shadow fell over his head.

His eyes flew wide, and he snapped his head up, reaching for the sword at his waist. But as he was about to draw it, he saw something.

'... Cloth?'

A robe was fluttering overhead, as though someone had flung it off. The instant it stole his attention, the sound of someone kicking off the ground rang in Palaizen’s ears.

THUD!

“...!”

Palaizen turned toward the sound, but it was already far too late. His diverted gaze and delayed response had left a fatal opening.

By the time he tried to draw his sword, Najin was already right in front of him.

Najin thrust both hands forward—his left toward Palaizen’s face, his right toward the sword being drawn from his waist. Both reached their targets almost simultaneously.

THWACK! CLANG!

Najin’s left hand seized Palaizen’s face, covering his eyes. His right struck the half-drawn sword and drove it back into its scabbard. An ambush. Blinded eyes. A sword that would not come free. Yet even in this situation, Palaizen reacted.

He was a well-trained knight.

Palaizen drew up his mana and tried to shake off the assailant gripping his face. It was the best decision he could make, but from the moment he had allowed the ambush and lost his sight, the situation had been far from ideal.

CRACK!

An impact struck his leg. He heard his armor crumple. The grip on his head felt strong enough to crush it. Pain, noise, the sensation of his body tipping over.

Then came another sound.

THUD!

A dull impact against the back of his head.

Palaizen’s body briefly convulsed, but the blows did not stop. With his vision still blocked, something struck his temple again and again. Repeated impacts shook his head.

CRACK! CRACK! CRACK...

The hand he reached forward was knocked aside, and the leg he tried to kick was pinned to the ground, apparently beneath a foot. Their reaction speeds were different. Their physical abilities were different. In the pitch-black darkness of his vision, his assailant struck his temple over and over.

“Ghh...!”

No matter how well trained a knight he was, he could not withstand blows concentrated on his temple. As he tried to groan, whatever had been striking his temple slammed into his jaw. His mouth snapped shut, cutting off his cry.

He briefly lost consciousness.

But even that did not last long.

“...!”

Sparks burst across his blackened vision. Pain raced up his spine and rattled his brain, jolting Palaizen awake. He wanted to scream, but something seemed to be stuffed into his mouth, and no sound came out. Something covered his eyes, leaving him unable to understand what was happening.

At last, the presence disappeared. With hands that barely obeyed him, Palaizen pulled away whatever covered his face and spat out the cloth in his mouth.

“This is fucking insane...”

Then he saw his utterly ruined greaves and his ankles twisted at unnatural angles. He could not move. He groaned at the sharp ache in his ankles.

“Anyone! Is anyone there?!” he shouted.

No answer came. No—that was not quite true. There were sounds in response. The crack of blows striking something, and muffled screams.

Then came a crunch.

CRUNCH!

The chilling sound echoed through the forest.

At the sounds coming from far away, Palaizen gritted his teeth and dragged himself along the ground with his palms. Noises rang out from every direction.

After crawling for a long time, he reached the source of one sound and found a knight slammed against a tree, his plate armor completely caved in. Crawling a little farther, he found another sprawled on the ground, foaming at the mouth, and one more clutching his ankles and screaming.

Four knights had been dispatched to this forest, including Palaizen.

All four had their ankles smashed.

Palaizen turned deathly pale. Four knights had been defeated one by one without putting up any meaningful resistance. They had been subdued, then had their ankles shattered. Their assailant could easily have killed them, but had chosen not to.

“What the hell...?”

His skin crawled.

Alongside fear came confusion. None of the four knights, Palaizen included, could understand why they had lost or how they had been subdued.

They had not been defeated by someone of an overwhelmingly superior rank. It felt as though they had been toyed with from beginning to end. Something had diverted their sight, they had been ambushed and allowed the first strike, and the openings created by that strike had been exploited to trample them utterly. They could not comprehend that sequence of events.

Reaction speed beyond that of a Sword Expert. Eyes that read actions and foresaw the next move. The control to summon mana in an instant. And the split-second judgment to act without hesitation.

Possessing all of those qualities, Najin already had no equal within his own rank. All the more so in a forest with so many places to hide. Of course, the knights of the ducal house had no way of knowing that.

2.

Dieta stared at Najin in disbelief.

“So you’re saying you went and smashed up four knights?”

“Yes. They were searching the route to Cambria.”

“Why bother...? We’re not going that way.”

“That’s exactly why.”

Najin kept abruptly announcing that he needed to go somewhere, vanishing in a flash, then returning. And when he came back, he said he had beaten up knights somewhere far away.

“They can’t be certain of our destination, can they? For now, they’ll assume we’re most likely returning to Cambria.”

“I suppose... they would?”

“What’s more, they don’t know where we are or what I look like. It’s frustrating for anyone trying to chase us. It’s not as though I left any tracks.”

So he had decided to confuse them even more, Najin explained.

“If knights searching for traces are attacked in a forest they thought we’d already passed through, what will they think? Are we nearby? Are we this close? Surely we must be escaping in this direction?”

They would have all sorts of thoughts. Each of those guesses would gain some basis. Or they might suspect the whole thing was a diversion... but none of it would be certain.

“They won’t be able to make a sound judgment. And it weakens the pursuit force, so it’s an effective strategy.”

“Wait. Hold on.”

Dieta interrupted him.

“To do that... you’d have to meet quite a few conditions.”

She murmured as she counted them off on her fingers. He had to leave no traces, avoid giving away his advantage by letting the knights see his face or build, and even possess the ability to cover the distance back here quickly.

Every single condition was absurd. Yet Najin merely tilted his head when he heard them.

“Isn’t all that a given?”

“Whaaat...?”

“That’s what I did, so don’t worry.”

He was calmly telling her that he had carried out the attacks while meeting every one of those conditions. Dieta let out a disbelieving breath. What on earth was this man?

Of course, Najin found nothing strange about it. Had he not evaded that notorious Order’s covert operatives for days and killed more than ten of them? If he were alone, he was confident the knights would never catch him.

He had only resorted to this because Dieta was with him, and he needed to buy time and take regular breaks.

“Anyway, setting that aside.”

Najin glanced at Dieta’s ankles. With her seated on a suitable boulder, he carefully unwound the bandages around them. Each time his fingers brushed her skin, she gave a little shudder.

“Does it hurt?”

“A-a little.”

Dieta’s face was oddly flushed.

Thinking he should be more careful, Najin slowly removed the bandages. The weeping wounds on her ankles came into view.

“Bear with it for a moment.”

He wiped the fluid from the wounds with a clean cloth and laid potion-soaked gauze over them. Dieta flinched, bowed her head, and gripped his clothing tightly. It was quite painful.

Still, it had to be done. If he could not heal the injuries, he at least had to keep them from getting worse.

After replacing the bandages with clean ones, Najin stood. Dieta rubbed her face with her sleeve, then looked up at him with the corners of her eyes slightly reddened.

“It really does hurt a bit.”

“It’s no wonder. You should get proper treatment as soon as possible, but...”

“Then they’d catch us. It’s all right. I can still bear it.”

Dieta gave a faint smile. Najin watched her in silence, then let out a short breath.

“It’s not much of a revenge, but...”

“Pardon?”

“I did smash the knights’ ankles.”

Concerned that killing the ducal house’s knights would complicate matters later, Najin had settled on breaking their ankles. Injuries of that severity could be healed afterward.

“I could have smashed their knees instead, but since I was doing it anyway, I thought ankles might be better.”

Najin glanced at Dieta’s ankles. One of the knights he had attacked might have helped sever the tendons in them. Thinking of that, he felt a slight pang of regret that he had not twisted their ankles a little farther.

Dieta blinked several times as she looked at him. Then, as though she had finally understood what he meant, she covered her mouth and laughed.

“Thank you. That’s some comfort.”

“You don’t look particularly comforted.”

“Well, honestly, I gain nothing from them ending up in the same state as me, so it doesn’t feel especially satisfying.”

Dieta looked at him with a smile.

“But you did it for me, so that does make me a little happy.”

“Does it?”

“Yes. It feels nice.”

Smiling brightly, Dieta reached her arms toward him.

“Shall we go, then?”

She was gradually growing accustomed to traveling on Najin’s back. She had been embarrassed at first, but now she had learned to enjoy the ride on his rather solid back.

Settling snugly against him and wrapping her arms around his, Dieta called out with laughter in her voice.

“Off we go!”

“You seem oddly pleased.”

“This whole moonlit escape is more fun than I expected. I feel a little bad saying that when I’m relying on you, but I can’t help enjoying myself.”

“It is broad daylight now.”

“Let’s not fuss over the little things.”

Najin chuckled and played along. Her bright expression now was far better to see than the one she had worn at the villa, when she had looked half dead.

With Dieta on his back, Najin began to run.

3.

Four knights had been defeated—and found with their ankles smashed. Traces had been discovered, but they were scattered. There was no way to determine a direction. It looked as though the traces had been left deliberately.

Reports kept arriving. With each one, Griffin, commander of the ducal House Arbenia’s knights, frowned.

“Just what the hell is this bastard?”

He could not track their direction. The fugitive was a master at erasing tracks. Just when Griffin thought he had worked out their likely route, traces would appear somewhere completely unexpected. They were even attacking his knights.

He could not fathom what they were thinking. This was clearly not someone who had done this only once or twice.

But what baffled him most was how the four knights had been subdued. They claimed they had been picked off individually in the forest, yet not one of them had seen their assailant.

They had been ambushed. Their vision had been blocked. Something had been thrown over their faces, and they had been beaten unconscious. When they woke, their ankles were smashed...

What kind of absurd testimony was that?

These were not some rabble. They were knights—knights who had reached Sword Expert. House Arbenia was not a martial house, so its knights were not of an exceptionally high standard, but it was still a ducal house.

That meant they were above average.

How could knights like that be defeated so helplessly? Was the assailant truly a Sword Seeker? It would take at least a Sword Seeker to subdue them so cleanly.

“Kaufman Theosis.”

Was it really that bastard?

Suspecting the adventurer city’s most renowned Ranger, Griffin clicked his tongue. No. If it were him, he would have shot through the knights’ ankles from a distance.

“Whew...”

More and more pursuit squads were joining the hunt. If he deployed any more troops, word would begin leaking outside, and suspicions would arise. His head throbbing, Griffin lit his tobacco.

They had already lost enough time. He could not allow himself to be toyed with any longer. As he considered what to do, a sound rang out.

COO!

A carrier pigeon landed beside Griffin with a cry. He unfolded the letter attached to it. Duke Osman had written it himself.

“...”

He read the letter in silence. When he finished, he murmured, “I see.”

「The comital House Ostrum.」

「The comital House Kloefsch.」

「The marquisal House Trevache.」

Three possible destinations. The letter included a map marking the roads leading to them and the places the fugitives would pass through along the way. Osman had seen through the exact same plan Dieta had devised, allowing him to narrow down the destinations.

Focus on the routes to those three places, not Cambria. That was Osman’s message.

Griffin reorganized the pursuit squads and finished preparing to leave. After issuing his orders, he mounted his warhorse and rode toward the most likely route.

Commander Griffin was heading for the marquisal House Trevache.