“A-a troll!”

The words the warrior crushed to death a moment earlier had been trying to say now came from the mouths of those around him.

As the troll raised its bloodstained wooden club and rolled its eyes, a nearby warrior muttered,

“It’s huge...”

Was it perhaps three meters tall? Its bones were abnormally thick even for its build, and its overwhelming mass of muscle and the hair covering its entire body gave it a terrifying presence. Even the weapon it carried was a club in name only. A log would have been a more accurate description.

[□■□■□■□■-!]

Belying its silence until moments ago, the troll let out a thunderous roar to intimidate the humans around it. Several people with poorer balance toppled over, feeling as though heaven and earth had turned upside down.

“Whoa!”

“Th-the ground’s rising!”

Rolling its enormous eyes, the troll spotted a vulnerable human and charged, swinging its club. Just as it was about to crush a man still struggling to regain his senses, something darted in front of it.

“Get back!”

A knight who had been relatively close swung his two-handed longsword, cutting halfway through the creature’s immensely thick right arm. While the troll let out a piercing scream, the man who had nearly died scrambled away.

“D-damn it! I almost died!”

“Get a grip!”

“Attack!”

Gradually recovering their wits, the expedition members surrounded the troll and attacked.

The assortment of blades thrusting at it from every direction did little more than nick and tear its tough hair and hide, but the troll screamed in mingled rage and pain. The lord of the forest was not accustomed to being hurt.

At last, the troll vented its anger by swinging its club at the most threatening target—the knight who had just cut its arm.

“Ugh!”

BOOM!

The knight raised his longsword to catch the club and was driven back nearly a meter by the thunderous impact.

But that was all. The longsword, impossibly slender beside the club, neither broke nor cracked. It was a superhuman defense, utterly impossible under normal circumstances, made possible only by the intervention of a mysterious power.

Bewildered by how little purchase the blow had found, the troll paused to examine its club. Meanwhile, the other knight thrust his longsword from behind. Unlike the other attacks, the knight’s blade once again pierced the tough hair and hide, slicing into its flank deeply enough to reach its entrails.

Choking and gasping, the troll pushed its spilling entrails back inside with one hand while swinging its club wildly with the other. Awkward as its movements were, the approaching warriors recoiled in alarm at the deafening sound of the weapon tearing through the air. It was fortunate they were handpicked, exceptional warriors. Ordinary men would surely have failed to dodge and been reduced to bloody pulp.

The next several exchanges followed much the same pattern. Whenever the troll swung its club like a mad thing, one of the two knights stepped forward to block while the other delivered a powerful blow. The rest of the expedition kept distracting it with a relentless stream of minor wounds. Each wound healed shortly after it appeared, but every time one did, vast reserves of fat were consumed, leaving the creature ever thinner.

Shan had been quietly observing from behind. Just as he finished learning the troll’s movements and prepared to join in, the creature did something surprising: shielding its face with its club and hand, it broke through a thinner part of the encirclement. Two nearby warriors buried a sword and an axe in its legs with all their strength, but could not stop it. As befitted its size, the troll was slow to get moving, but once it built momentum, it was far faster than a human.

Rushing after their quarry, the others realized in horror that the Altoan boy they had brought for his night vision stood directly in its path.

“Oh no...”

“Get out of the way!”

Kov, the middle-aged swordsman who privately felt a kinship with Shan as a fellow Altoan, shouted the warning. Rather than flee, however, Shan released his horse’s reins and sent it away with a light slap on the rump. Then he leveled his recently purchased long spear.

‘Let’s see.’

Watching the fight from behind had given him a complete understanding of the creature’s overall physical abilities and patterns of behavior.

One step, two steps, three... now.

Matching his timing to the troll’s footfalls, Shan leaped the instant it swung its club as though swatting aside a nuisance. Even as that horrifying mass of violence swept beneath his feet, his green eyes did not waver. He drove his spear into its eye with his full weight behind it, feeling the point punch through something tough and sticky. The heavy resistance was different from piercing a thick tree trunk or stone.

[□■□□□■----!]

As the troll screamed in agony and swung its club again, Shan planted both feet against the spear he had just driven in and kicked off. The club narrowly skimmed past his back, carrying enough force to tear flesh and crush bone with even a glancing blow.

“What?!”

“How in the world...!”

The shocking feat performed by a young boy who looked no older than his early to mid-teens brought the pursuing warriors to a momentary halt. Such a maneuver would have been dangerous even if rehearsed with a partner. To think someone would dare attempt it in actual combat, against a monster no less—and succeed.

In contrast to their reactions, Shan clicked his tongue, dissatisfied with the result.

‘Even that won’t kill it in one hit.’

Despite putting his entire weight behind the thrust, he had failed to pierce the eyelid that had instinctively snapped shut and the eyeball beneath it deeply enough to reach the brain. Should he have kicked the end of the shaft after driving it in, forcing it farther? Roden had been right: he needed to build up his body and spirit and obtain better equipment.

While he lamented the missed opportunity, the troll ripped out the spear together with its impaled eye, flung them away, and roared as it ran off into the forest. The knight behind them issued a sharp command.

“Everyone, after it!”

Once they had found it, the next task was to pursue it relentlessly until it was dead.

Seeing them run off, the hunter who had taken refuge at the rear shouted urgently,

“Be careful! It’s clever!”

A monster’s intelligence generally depended on its species, but there was considerable variation between individuals too. This troll was clearly an exceptionally intelligent member of its kind. Ordinary trolls would never think to hide in a tree, let their enemies pass, and ambush them.

While everyone chased the troll, Shan retrieved his spear, pulled off the impaled eye and discarded it, then caught the reins of the horse he had sent to safety and mounted.

“Let’s go.”

The forest was quite dense, but he rode skillfully through it. His exceptional reflexes let him dodge branches reaching toward his head or knock them aside with his spear. Before long, he caught up with the expedition members running hard after the troll.

Seeing Shan riding up from behind, the Altoan swordsman Kov shouted between labored breaths,

“You really, meant it, when you said, you could fight!”

Shan answered with a sheepish look, then urged his horse onward and passed them.

The knights and squires were nowhere in sight, presumably having mounted to speed up the pursuit. After about a minute riding through the forest at a moderate pace, he spotted the two knights and their two squires, their horses snorting with apparent exhaustion. Catching a troll on horseback might have been possible on open plains, but evidently not in rough woodland. Unlike Shan’s mount, their horses also wore barding and carried heavy knights.

“Did you lose it?”

“... Yes.”

One knight bristled at Shan’s question, but the other restrained him with a hand and answered.

“It fled without so much as looking back. That’s no ordinary troll. As the hunter said, it’s extremely clever.”

Its behavior certainly did not fit the usual pattern. Large monsters might avoid a threatening opponent, but once blood was drawn, their tempers exploded and they charged in without a thought for the consequences. Before long, the warriors who had left their horses behind and the hunter arrived, bringing the expedition back together. Even amid all this, the hunter had remembered to cut off a lock of the blond warrior’s hair as a keepsake after his death in the first attack.

“What do we do now?”

“For now, I’ll keep following its tracks, but I doubt it will attack unless it has a very good reason.”

The hunter answered the knight politely. As he said, now that such an intelligent creature had learned it was outmatched, there was little chance it would willingly enter an unfavorable fight. All the more so because the characteristic roar of large monsters lost much of its potency once people grew accustomed to it.

A warrior listening nearby sighed.

“This is going to be a tedious chase...”

“You knew it would come to this.”

No one had expected the troll hunt to be over in half a day. If they had, Shan would never have been included for his night vision. Still, there was a world of difference between a quarry that was difficult to find but could be killed once found, and one they had to chase until it was exhausted before they could finish it. Sensing that the job had become considerably harder, several expedition members sighed.

* * *

As expected, the expedition followed the troll’s tracks until sunset without catching up to it. The hunter surveyed their darkening surroundings and pointed.

“We should stay here tonight.”

He had indicated a cave of suitable depth. With the sides and rear enclosed, they only needed to defend one direction, making it an ideal location with an enemy that might attack in the night.

“As for the night watch...”

The knights and the other expedition members glanced at Shan, then looked away. Strictly speaking, since they had brought him as a night scout, he ought to stay awake all night watching their surroundings. After the skill he had displayed that afternoon, however, no one could easily say so. To put it bluntly, aside from the two knights, hadn’t he done the most damage to the troll?

After a brief deliberation, one of the knights made his decision.

“You there, Altoan!”

“Yes?”

“You’ll be exempt from watch duty, along with us.”

“Sir Katra!”

Realizing that “us” meant the knights, the other knight cried out in shock. How could he treat a mere Altoan as their equal, whatever the circumstances?

The knight addressed as Sir Katra ignored that reaction and replied,

“We need skilled warriors to fight that creature. Those who can’t help with that should at least stand watch so we can preserve our strength.”

“Even so...”

“If you have an alternative, I’ll hear it, Sir Soros.”

Faced with Katra’s firm declaration, Soros muttered under his breath but argued no further. Shan had thought them equally arrogant when he first saw them, but it seemed Katra held the upper hand between the two. And just like that, Shan found himself exempt from watch duty.

“Damn it. What a miserable lot...”

“If you don’t like it, try putting out a troll’s eye yourself.”

The expedition members were warriors of some reputation, and they resented being called useless, but none dared argue with a knight. Hadn’t they watched those two trade blows with that terrifying troll just that afternoon? Likewise, none dared take their frustration out on Shan. The man who had initially scorned him for being Altoan now lowered his eyes, unable even to meet his gaze.

Only Kov, the Altoan swordsman who had been friendly from the start, clapped Shan on the shoulder without hesitation.

“Good for you, Shan.”

“Everyone else is giving me time to recover my strength. I’ll have to work that much harder.”

“Good lad.”

Kov chuckled briefly, then gave the sword at Shan’s waist a curious look.

“Could you draw that sword for me?”

“This one?”

Puzzled, Shan nevertheless obediently drew the bandit captain’s sword. His first piece of spoils, it had rusted after months of neglect following its acquisition, but proper care under Roden’s guidance had restored it to a fairly respectable appearance. Kov studied it in silence, then murmured, “Oh...” and nodded as though something had clicked.

“I thought that hilt looked familiar. Just as I suspected... The emblem’s been removed, but that’s a sword used by officers of the Steel Lion Legion. Where did you get it? Surely those bastards haven’t started accepting Altoans.”

“The Steel Lion Legion?”

“Never heard of them? They’re a long-established mercenary company from the Kingdom of Ajun in the north. I hear they operate out of several mercenary villages and only accept warriors trained from childhood.”

Puzzled by Shan’s utter lack of recognition, Kov explained slowly. For good measure, he proudly displayed the twisted, dark-red scar on his left arm, saying he had nearly lost the arm fighting them.

“The Steel Lion Legion...”

“If you took that sword from them in battle, you’d best be careful. Mercenaries may have an unwritten rule against pursuing grudges from past battles, but rules only exist because there are people who break them.”

One of the things Shan had long wondered about was the identity of the bandits who had destroyed several villages, including his home, Willow Village. He had thought this sword—the only quality weapon among all the cheap ones—might offer a clue, but even Roden had been unable to identify anything from it. He had never imagined this middle-aged Altoan mercenary would recognize it at once. Resolving to tell Roden when he returned, Shan repeated the name in his mind again and again so he would not forget it.

* * *

“Aaaaaagh!”

In the utter stillness of the night, with everyone asleep, Shan’s eyes snapped open at a horrific scream from outside the cave. He evidently had not imagined it: the other expedition members around him were also rising and hurriedly grabbing their weapons.

“Wh-what is it?”

“An attack?!”

The two men on watch beside the fire at the cave entrance looked bewildered. The elderly hunter stepped forward first.

“What happened?”

“Th-the knight went outside alone for a moment...”

Shan whipped his head around and realized that one of the people in the dark cave was missing: Sir Soros, the knight who complained about everything.

The remaining knight, Sir Katra, had already donned his armor with his squire’s help and strode out.

“Why did Sir Soros go out alone?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Perhaps he went to relieve himself?”

The man who dared raise such an unclean subject in connection with a knight bowed his head under Katra’s sharp glare. Embarrassingly for Katra, however, when they found Sir Soros’s corpse shortly afterward, his trousers and underclothes were down below his knees.

“Ugh.”

“It grabbed him and tore him clean in two...”

The knight’s gruesome remains, revealed in the torchlight, left everyone struggling for words. To step out to relieve himself, only to be seized and torn to death by a lurking troll? For knights who wished to end their lives in glorious battle, it was truly the worst death imaginable.

While Sir Soros’s squire sobbed and struggled to gather his lord’s remains, one expedition member glanced around and spoke, his face deathly pale.

“I came here to relieve myself earlier...”

“Me too. We were lucky.”

Just as they said, the excrement of those who had come before lay scattered nearby. This was the closest clearing that offered privacy, not far from the cave. Everyone shuddered at the thought that, with worse luck, they might have died in the knight’s place.

But the hunter shook his head, contradicting them.

“It wasn’t luck. That creature was after the knight from the start.”

He pointed to the ground beyond the bushes where the knight had been killed. Judging by the deeply flattened grass, the troll had crouched there before attacking him from behind.

“From the tracks around here, it’s been hiding here at least since we chose this campsite several hours ago. It waited until a face it recognized came out.”

Considering the troll’s size and heavy footfalls, it had moved as stealthily as a rat. As its first ambush had also shown, this creature was unusually patient and cunning for a troll.

While the others analyzed Soros’s death, Shan scanned the surroundings with his exceptional night vision and found their enemy.

“Over there. The troll’s watching us from a distance.”

“What?”

“That bastard!”

The expedition members stared where Shan pointed, their eyes filled with anger and fear, but none dared charge out. Attacking a troll in pitch darkness with only a torch to rely on was recklessness, not courage. Of course, they could easily kill it if it charged stupidly like other trolls, but this one would undoubtedly flee again, then ambush them once they were scattered in the dark.

After a long silence, Sir Katra spoke with a note of lament.

“We’ll gather Sir Soros’s remains and continue resting here tonight. Altoan, I regret going back on my word, but you’ll have to stand watch until dawn.”

“Yes, sir.”

With one knight gone and the troll known to be lurking outside, there was no choice. The expedition members forced their eyes shut, terrified that the troll might strike from the darkness at any moment.

Shan spent the rest of the night at the cave entrance, staring down the troll as it watched them. Two eyes stared back at him; apparently it had already regenerated the one it had lost. Only a few dozen minutes before dawn did it quietly slip away.

The next morning, they held a meeting amid exhaustion and despair.

“Why don’t we head back for now?”

“He’s right. This is beyond what we can handle.”

“I’ve never even heard stories of a troll that cunning.”

Most of the expedition had already lost heart. It was only natural: one of the two knights who formed the core of their fighting strength was dead. But the sole remaining knight, Sir Katra, shook his head firmly.

“No. Returning like this would stain Sir Soros’s honor. We must kill the creature to make his death a glorious fall in battle.”

Sir Soros’s bereaved squire nodded fervently.

Several expedition members grumbled inwardly, ‘Damn it, he died taking a shit. Glorious battle, my ass.’

In any case, with their leader refusing to withdraw, they now had to work out how to kill it. Their lives were at stake, so they proposed all manner of ideas, but none were usable. That was hardly surprising. If they had had a good solution, they would have used it the day before.

By the time the long argument had left everyone exhausted and their lips sore, Shan raised his hand.

“I have an idea.”

“What is it?”

Unlike those whose expressions said that, fighting skills aside, a mere child had no business offering an opinion, Sir Katra listened seriously.

“First, may I ask something? Is your warhorse slower than the troll, sir?”

The question came from seeing them fail to catch it during the previous day’s pursuit. The knight hesitated briefly, then shook his head.

“No. On open plains, certainly not, and even in the forest it’s a little faster at a full gallop. I only failed to catch it because riding like that could injure its legs.”

“I thought that might be it. Then why don’t we lure it onto the plains and attack together? In the forest, it’ll just run away again.”

“I believe we’ve yet to work out how to lure it.”

“The troll won’t attack until its opponents are weaker than it is, so we just have to make ourselves look weaker. By splitting into two groups, for example.”

[Head out onto the nearby plains and split into two groups.

The groups move far enough apart to remain in sight of each other, but unable to provide immediate support.

When the troll attacks one group, the other rushes over to join them and kill it.

If it tries to flee into the forest, the riders on warhorses actively block its escape and drive it back onto the plains.]

Every member of the expedition met Shan’s proposal with a look that said, “You think that would work?” Why had no one voiced that simple idea until now? Because one of their two knights was already dead. The sole remaining knight could hardly split himself in two to protect both groups.

Sir Katra asked dubiously,

“... Don’t tell me you intend to take responsibility for one of the groups yourself?”

“I do.”

“That’s reckless.”

Shan might have landed a blow on the troll with an astonishing feat, but fighting it head-on was an entirely different matter. A warrior unable to wield spirit proficiently could neither deal a fatal wound to a troll nor block its attacks.

Shan calmly met the doubtful looks.

“I can certainly hold out.”

He might lack offensive power, but he could dodge the troll’s attacks as many times as necessary.

Faced with Shan’s confidence, Sir Katra agreed for the time being, albeit reluctantly. The problem was deciding who would join Shan when they split up. Naturally, none of the expedition members wanted a position that offered such an enormous chance of death. Nor could the knight force them with an order. The harshest punishment he could impose was summary execution, and death by his sword was no different from being crushed by a troll while obeying a suicidal command.

Shan’s solution settled this disagreement just as easily.

“Then I’ll just do it alone.”

A short time later, the troll-hunting expedition headed toward the broad plain they had spotted during the pursuit. They had split into eleven warriors including Sir Katra, and a group of three: Shan, Kov, and Sir Soros’s squire.

Riding the dead knight Sir Soros’s borrowed warhorse, Shan turned toward Kov, who followed on Shan’s own mount. His awkward posture suggested he was not particularly accustomed to riding.

“You really didn’t have to come along.”

“Well, I couldn’t leave two children on their own...”

Despite his hearty reply, fear and doubt were written all over his face. Ignoring the squire’s sulky expression at being lumped in as a child, Shan grinned at Kov and patted his shoulder.

“If it looks dangerous, get behind me. We’re the same people. We should help each other.”

Realizing that Shan had repeated his own words back to him, Kov gave a faint smile. The small joke seemed to help ease his tension a little.

They spent a few minutes crossing the plains and talking like that. Then Shan’s roving gaze settled in one direction.

“It’s here.”

A shaggy brown monster burst out of the forest and charged toward them at full speed. Shan tightened his grip on his spear, his mind heating with anticipation of a thrilling fight.