Flames, drifting ash, and the reek of blood and screams.

Philog narrowed his one remaining eye at a battlefield so familiar it felt like home.

Not because the conscience he had left behind in his mother's womb had suddenly come back to life.

'Two dead in a place like this. Stupid bastards.'

Considering that a mere fifteen or sixteen men had slaughtered nearly ten times their number, those were remarkably light losses. But they were no ordinary band of thieves, which made it pathetic.

As he clicked his tongue, his second-in-command spoke up.

"Captain."

"What?"

"Shouldn't we give the men a little leeway this time? They aren't showing it, but there's a lot of discontent."

A mercenary's war was normally far removed from this sort of one-sided massacre.

Raiding villages was, above all, about securing supplies and money and satisfying primal urges.

This battle, however, offered no opportunity for any of those.

"I told you. If anyone finds out we're the ones who attacked this place, we'll hang. No exceptions. Search everyone's belongings afterward. If anyone took anything, make them throw it away."

"... Understood."

"And tell them to be patient. Once we're back, they'll get rewards to make up for what they couldn't help themselves to here."

Philog's employer had demanded that they erase several villages in the kingdom's northeast without leaving a trace.

It was an utterly impossible request for ordinary mercenaries—in other words, thugs who had picked up a weapon and headed for the capital because they hated farming.

Gather enough of them to destroy a village this size, and their movements alone would set tongues wagging everywhere. One wrong move, and a village militia might even drive them off.

A job like this called for genuine professionals like Philog and his men, raised in a mercenary village and taught weapons and military discipline almost as soon as they could walk.

In truth, even he did not know exactly why the job had to be handled this way.

Negotiating directly with employers was the village chief's role. He was merely a captain carrying out orders.

If he had to guess, it was probably some scheme to sow discord among the high and mighty.

His musings were brief. Philog spotted someone bursting out of a barn in the village center.

A small boy with shaggy black hair, dressed in shabby, heavily patched clothes.

Holding a short curved sword, the boy glanced around, then ran toward a gap in the mercenaries' encirclement.

But naturally, the places they had left unguarded were blocked by terrain or other obstacles—

"What?"

The mercenaries stared, eyes wide with shock, as the boy cleared a wall over two meters high in a single leap.

Children might weigh less than adults, but surely no one other than a trained acrobat could move like that.

Of course, that did not mean the boy would escape alive.

Several archers were already stationed outside the village to shoot down precisely such fugitives.

Yet as though mocking that expectation, the boy merely glanced over and swung his sword, knocking aside an arrow flying toward him.

As if to prove it was no fluke, he did it three times while running toward the source of the arrows.

Shortly after he entered the woods, screams rang out one after another, presumably from the archers.

"That's fucking insane..."

"What the hell is that brat!?"

"Am I seeing things?"

Every mercenary stood dumbstruck at the sight of some country boy performing a feat that not only seasoned mercenaries, but even most knights would never dare attempt.

Philog recovered first and barked an order.

"What are you standing around for? After him, now! Check whether the archers are still alive! The rest of us will finish up here and follow!"

"Yes, sir!"

Several of the more lightly equipped mercenaries hurried off after the boy.

* * *

"Hah, hah."

Somewhere in the dark woods, Shan finally stopped to catch his breath after running until the village was out of sight.

He had never had trouble controlling his body before, yet now his heart pounded with such intense excitement and fear that it felt ready to leap out of his mouth.

'I did it...'

The instant the arrows came flying from the village outskirts, Shan had felt as though time had stopped.

In that sluggish world, only the arrows hurtling toward him moved quickly.

His sword moved heavily, as though submerged in water, but knocking the arrows aside one by one had been even easier than he expected.

Though deflecting the last one, fired from less than ten paces away, had been a close call.

Once he reached them, disposing of the three archers hiding in the woods had been simpler than his first kill.

Their will to fight broken by the unknown creature approaching while batting aside their arrows, every archer had turned to flee. And Shan, like a hunting cat, had torn into the backs of his fleeing enemies' necks one by one.

Sitting on a stump that made a fairly good seat, Shan massaged his trembling legs.

Those men had explicitly ordered that not a single villager be left alive. They would not want any survivors.

He could surely escape with his life if he simply kept running, but Shan decided to fight them.

It was not for any sentimental reason, like avenging the villagers.

Having spent his entire life as prey, the boy was enjoying himself immensely. For the first time, he was the predator stalking his quarry, tearing flesh with teeth and claws he had never known he possessed.

'When will they get here?'

He had fled into the woods rather than confront them immediately because he had judged it too dangerous to attack them on the spot.

Floundering fools they might be, but there had been more than fifteen enemies, and only one of him.

Here, however, things were different.

This dense forest of sturdy willows, which gave Willow Village its name, admitted little moonlight.

Here, he was confident he could crush fifteen blind men relying on feeble torches.

These cursed eyes could see through pitch-black darkness as clearly as broad daylight.

He made a few quick preparations, then sat quietly waiting. How many minutes had passed?

Amid a commotion, he saw lights approaching in the distance.

"Ugh, why are there so many roots..."

"Quiet. Voices carry a long way in woods like these."

There were roughly sixteen or seventeen bandits.

He had thought they were taking a while. Apparently, everyone from the village had come after him.

Then again, after seeing how helplessly the three archers had fallen, they could hardly fail to realize that he was a stronger fighter than expected—and skilled at nighttime ambushes.

Watching silently from the darkness, Shan nocked an arrow as his enemies came within range.

'Let's see.'

He had never properly learned to shoot a bow.

A skill that could provide a decent living was an asset, after all, not something to pass on to a lowly Altoan slave.

But simply imitating the movements of the archers he had just seen was enough to make him a reasonably serviceable bowman.

Techniques like accurately predicting and hitting a fast-moving target were still beyond him. But a few practice shots while he waited had been enough to learn to hit men walking toward him so slowly.

He spread his feet slightly for balance, straightened his back, extended his left arm with the bow, and put his weight into his right arm as he drew with all his strength—

TWANG!

The arrow flew with the snap of the string and buried itself in the chest of a torch-bearing bandit at the front.

"Urgh!"

"Arrows!"

"The brat's shooting with the gear he stole from us!"

As the startled bandits pulled out their shields, Shan fired the arrows he had planted in the ground beforehand, one after another.

Two shots. Three. Four.

Two of those struck shields, while one hit a knee.

'Not as good as I expected.'

Perhaps because this bow was much bigger than the village hunter's bow he had seen before, every shot left his forearm and fingers stinging.

The arrows did fly correspondingly faster and harder, though.

Afraid that shooting any more would leave him without the strength to swing a blade, Shan tossed the bow aside and faced the charging bandits.

"You cursed Altoan brat..."

"I'll kill you!"

Huge men a head or two taller than him were charging with weapons drawn. An ordinary person's legs might well have buckled, their bladder giving way in terror.

But Shan kept his eyes wide open, gauging their speed and formation.

Then—

'Now.'

CRASH!

A single kick sent a large tree beside him toppling onto the charging bandits.

It was a primitive trap he had prepared earlier, cutting halfway through the trunk when he had a moment to spare.

Doing so had ruined the sword he had taken from his first kill, but the archers' daggers left him with plenty of weapons.

If he did run short, he could simply kill these men and take theirs.

"Urgh!"

"H-help lift this off me!"

"Damn it—"

Their formation fell apart, just as expected.

Shan thrust through the fallen tree's branches and leaves, burying his dagger in the neck of an enemy on the other side.

Seeing their companion fall without so much as a scream, the bandits shouted urgently.

"There! Behind the branches!"

"I can't see him! Bring a torch over!"

Naturally, he had no reason to fight them in the light.

Men wielding spears, two-handed axes, or swords and shields could hardly carry torches as well. They had only three or four torches among them.

Moving through the shadows cast by the flickering flames, Shan slashed an enemy with his dagger while taking a hatchet from a dead man's belt and hurling it into another man's chest.

His hands performed different actions simultaneously without the slightest loss of coordination, as though two people were controlling one body.

The mercenaries responded quickly, moving to surround him and thrusting with their spears.

As though hunting a large beast rather than a person.

But Shan immediately scrambled up a nearby tree and leaped from tree to tree, easily escaping their encirclement.

He was not only painfully thin, but lighter than other people even for his build, allowing him to move almost like a monkey.

"What?"

"What kind of fucking..."

The bandits stared blankly, reduced quite literally to dogs that had chased a monkey up a tree.

Shan jumped down from a tree and hid in the darkness, grinning at the sight.

The sensation of his blade slicing flesh and crushing bone. The chill of an edge passing beside his face. Eyes looking at him with fear instead of their usual contempt.

He had never imagined that being the strong one, free to inflict violence to his heart's content, could be so much fun.

Now he thought he understood why the villagers had been so eager to torment him.

What followed was more of the same.

He attacked, they surrounded him, and he broke through by climbing nearby trees or kicking them over.

Over the course of those battles, Shan learned a great many things.

That thrusting a torch in front of their eyes temporarily ruined their night vision, leaving them effectively blind.

That if he timed his movements to their blinks, they could not follow him at all.

That once a full-force swing threw them off balance, even a light kick could knock them down.

And even that when stabbing someone in the torso, it was best to turn the blade sideways to slip between the ribs.

Having only ever slit the throats of dead animals, the boy had initially been forced to aim for the neck alone. In that brief span, he became a seasoned killer capable of targeting every vulnerable point on a human body.

By the time more than ten men were dead, the surviving bandits had lost the will to fight and began fleeing with terrified cries.

"P-please, spare me..."

"Run! He's a demon! He's not human!"

"Desertion is punishable by death! Attack! He's only one brat!"

The one-eyed captain roared and even cut down one of the fleeing men himself, but that could not stop the others from breaking ranks.

In darkness so absolute they could not see a step ahead without a torch, a monster with flashing green eyes was hunting them down one by one. Terror of that creature had uprooted even the discipline drilled into their bones.

At last, realizing he was alone, the captain faced the eyes quietly approaching him and asked,

"You...what the hell are you?"

"Shan."

Caught off guard by the question, Shan hesitated briefly before answering.

He had no desire to introduce himself as a lowly Altoan slave from Willow Village, and he did not know how else to define himself.

Apparently dissatisfied with that simple answer, the bandit captain twisted his face and charged with a shout.

His movements were far faster and more disciplined than those of the first bandit Shan had killed.

But to Shan, he was not much different—just another floundering man.

In fact, with one eye missing and only half the field of vision everyone else had, he was even worse.

Shan ducked the moment the captain blinked. Unable to see him, the captain assumed he had moved to the left, on the side of his eye patch, and swung his sword.

But a spear thrust in from the right, piercing his leather armor, sliding between his ribs, and tearing through his innards.

"Grrk, ghk."

Shan quietly looked down at the one-eyed bandit, who had died spilling blood from his mouth, then threw aside the spear and picked up the man's sword.

Its grip, wrapped in leather that might have been pigskin or cowhide, was just long enough for one adult hand.

The blade was a little longer than an arm, with a deep groove down the middle.

Blood and grease clung to it from however many people it had cut down, but it was neither bent nor chipped. It seemed far better than the other bandits' weapons.

Unlike the things he had hastily picked up to fight with, this was truly the first possession he had won for himself in his life.

"Heh."

Shan let out a satisfied chuckle, only for his legs to give way and send him sprawling to the ground.

Driven beyond its limits by sheer excitement, his body had finally declared that it could do no more.