Ch.39Tamer and Lizardman (1)

After chasing the fleeing Lizardman for several minutes, a figure mounted on a white tiger appeared, disrupting my vision. The cats moved so quickly that even my lightning-enhanced legs couldn’t keep up.

Of course, I could have easily caught up if I’d simply plowed through the trees, but…

Having received blessings from the World Tree and hospitality from the elves, I couldn’t bring myself to destroy their home. So I chased after them while carefully avoiding the trees, wrapping lightning around my hands to strike.

Thunder—!

The lightning flowing through my hands responded to my will, instantly flying toward the lion and tiger.

However, somehow these creatures made targeting difficult by running erratically, moving before my lightning could even activate.

Whether they had danger prediction abilities or it was the power of their newly joined companion, I couldn’t tell. My lightning kept missing.

What’s more, whenever I slowed down even slightly, they would slow down too, giving me the distinct impression they were using themselves as bait to lure me somewhere.

Hmm…

So I stopped completely, and sure enough, they stopped running and simply walked. As if taunting me that I could catch them now, they swished their tails while walking, which only fueled my anger.

It seemed they really were trying to lure me. Look at them now. As if suggesting I’d miss my chance if I didn’t chase them, they kept looking back at me with smug confidence.

Seeing this, I placed my hand on the ground and aimed my horns at them. Though they fled when they saw me in a position ready to charge… when they didn’t hear me following, they looked back again.

Then they split in opposite directions, each urging their mounts forward.

The lion went right, the tiger left. The Lizardman and the human riding the tiger fled frantically as if they’d die if they didn’t escape immediately.

Crackle—!!!!

But I had already completed my preparations and aimed at the lion. The lightning gathered between my horns was raging, ready to burst forth and annihilate my enemy the moment it was released.

The wild lightning scorched the ground and burned the grass, even scarring the trees. Judging that I had gathered enough power, I released the compressed lightning toward the Lizardman I had been targeting.

BOOM—!!!!!!!

The lightning instantly reached the Lizardman riding the lion, engulfing them. This time even the lion couldn’t predict it and took a direct hit from my fury. The Lizardman riding it must have suffered severe damage too.

But when the black lightning dissipated, there stood a Lizardman with black scales, pointing a spear at me. And from that spear, high-voltage lightning identical to what I had just fired came straight back at me.

BOOM—!!!!!!!

The intense lightning struck me directly, and the tremendous impact knocked me off balance.

Since attacks made of electricity couldn’t really hurt me much, it didn’t cause pain, but to absorb my attack and reflect it right back!

It seemed to be the creature’s unique trait—black lightning was emanating from its body, now covered in black scales.

The creature laughed at me with its lizard face as I fell, then disappeared from my sight. As if it no longer needed to lure me, it taunted me and left.

I followed after them to see what impressive trap they had prepared.

* * * * *

“Do you think the taunt will work on that creature?”

The Lizardman and the Tamer, who had briefly separated to avoid the lightning shot by the Minotaur, met again.

Though depressed about losing his white lion beast that he had raised, he accepted that it had fulfilled its role before dying.

“Don’t know. If it doesn’t come, we’ll just withdraw. If it does come, we’ll join with the Sword Masters and hunt it down.”

“That’s right. Anyway, I’ll run at maximum speed now, so hold on tight. That monster might come charging with fire in its eyes.”

As they were running at top speed on the white tiger…

The Lizardman’s taunt must have worked, because the Minotaur was charging toward them with the sound of thunder.

“It took the bait perfectly! I hope the commander has prepared properly!”

As the Minotaur drew closer, the thunder in the Tamer’s ears grew louder, and the Minotaur’s shadow began to appear.

Aah…

Aaah…

Screams echoed from the location where the human encampment and trap for the Minotaur should have been.

* * * * *

“Advance! For His Majesty the Emperor! Today we break through this place!”

Sword Master Lakan was displaying his might against the elves with aura surrounding his sword. There were ten such Sword Masters like him.

With all ten Sword Masters deployed on this battlefield, the elves were being pushed back helplessly.

“Hahaha! Look! The elves are retreating without putting up proper resistance! This is the blessing of His Majesty the Emperor!”

One of the Sword Masters burst into maniacal laughter as he watched the elves retreating faster than usual. They had been stuck here for a month due to elven resistance.

Now that they were pushing back the elves with full force, how satisfying it was!

Just as he was thinking they only needed to push these creatures back and retrieve their target…

“Argh!!!”

A Sword Master who had been charging next to him lost his life. Upon checking, he found the man had died with a hole punched through his chest. For an ordinary person, it would have been instant death, but it was merely a fatal wound for a Sword Master.

At the sudden death of his comrade, Lakan began to survey his surroundings cautiously.

Something was moving in the forest. As his vigilance peaked at the ghostlike movement…

Whoosh—!!!

With the sound of an arrow, a projectile appeared before Lakan’s eyes.

“Kuh—!!”

BOOM—!!!

With an unnatural explosion as the aura-wrapped sword and arrow collided, Lakan’s body was pushed far backward.

For the sound of the arrow to be heard after the arrow itself—it must be some magical treatment or skill. Deciding to first cut down the dense trees around him, he extended his aura to create a sword about 4 meters long. Spinning his body, he released the aura.

“Catastrophe!”

The aura responded to his call, sending fragments in all directions and beginning to devastate everything. True to its meaning of “great disaster,” when his rotation ended, everything around him had disappeared.

Satisfied, he was catching his breath when…

“Ah—I’m going to get scolded by the captain again. I left things alone wanting to have some fun, and look what happened. That’s not right. You should treasure nature.”

An elf revealed himself in the distance. He wore silver armor with a sword at his waist and a bow tied to his back.

“You, did you kill Kaim?”

“Kaim? Oh, the one who died from an arrow just now? Yes. I sent him off with one shot, so he must have died satisfied.”

With those words, Lakan approached the elf and swung his sword.

Clang—!!!

But even his sword was blocked by the elf. Green aura flowed through the elf’s pure white sword, easily blocking the milky aura that wrapped Lakan’s blade.

“A Sword Master…!”

He had thought the elf was simply an archer since he killed his comrade Kaim with a bow, but this elf seemed capable of both. Moreover, he was at the same level as a Sword Master.

Thinking he couldn’t retreat or he’d be sniped by the bow, Lakan continued swinging his sword.

“Hmm! Not bad for a human who lives barely 100 years. Hey, how old are you? About 40? 50? Oh, my child is 60, and I wish he was as good as you.”

“Shut up!”

In an instant, he extended the length of the aura surrounding his blade to target the elf… but even this didn’t reach the elf.

“Yes! Suddenly extending your aura like this is pretty good too. Humans are indeed creative. Is this how you do it?”

With those words, the green aura that had been matching the milky aura attacked Lakan. The instantly extended aura sliced through Lakan’s shoulder, and the elf detonated the aura.

BOOM—!!!

“AAAAARGH-!!!!!”

The sight revealed after the aura that had sliced through his shoulder exploded was shocking.

Lakan’s right arm was rolling on the ground with the shoulder gone, and the right side of his face had also disappeared. His brain was exposed, and his neck bones were visible—a gruesome sight.

Nevertheless, Lakan was still alive. Perhaps Sword Masters don’t die from such injuries, as wounds that would have meant instant death for an ordinary person were merely critical injuries for him.

“I am… His Majesty’s… sword! I cannot… lose to mere… elves!”

Thunk—!

“Oh my, is that so? But with injuries like that, you should just die now.”

A single arrow pierced through his body, destroying his heart. Even as a Sword Master, he couldn’t withstand this, and his body fell backward as he breathed his last.

And such scenes were happening throughout what the humans called Entrance 1, as screams filled the air.

“Hmm—, hmhmhm~.”

Only the humming of a single elf, the sound of collecting severed heads, and the screams of humans echoed through this forest.

* * * * *

At the location selected to lure the Minotaur into a trap, there was no one.

Just corpses, corpses, corpses. Everything in sight was nothing but corpses. Soldiers, knights, and mages lay on the ground with lifeless eyes.

There were so many corpses that this place, where trees had been cut down to widen the entrance, was filled with blood, covered by bodies.

“Hm? Captain. There’s a person and a Lizardman over there.”

The figures there noticed them and whispered among themselves. Long ears, silver armor, armed with swords. And trees engraved near their hearts… They were undoubtedly the Elven Knights the commander had mentioned.

These were the guardians of the World Tree’s core, a group that was never supposed to come out…

“Oh? It’s really them. Want to play with them a bit?”

“Come on, we’ve already had our fun. Should we let the youngest ones handle this?”

In front of these chattering figures were ten heads neatly arranged.

The Tamer, recognizing those familiar faces, unconsciously enhanced his vision with mana, and what he saw was… the heads of the Sword Masters, the final bastion of this place.

One Sword Master’s face was half blown away, making it difficult to identify him properly, but it was probably Lord Lakan, the leader of the Sword Masters who had come here.

Except for Lakan, the others seemed to have been unable to put up proper resistance, as the cut surfaces of their necks were all clean.

“Youngster, want to play with those? You guys haven’t had much fun yet.”

The elf displayed confidence as if he could defeat them alone. Wondering what the source of this confidence was, the Tamer looked around.

There were only human corpses; no elf corpses were visible.

Not a single one.

There should have been 1,000 Expert Knights, 30,000 soldiers, and even a Magic Corps advancing here. Had they all been annihilated?

The unbelievable reality that these mere hundred elves had killed all the skilled fighters and massacred the regular soldiers…

As the Tamer unconsciously backed his white tiger away, he heard someone snorting behind him.

Puff—!!!!

Feeling a breeze above his head as he rode the white tiger, he instinctively looked back…

The Minotaur, its fur turned red with anger, was looking down at him.