Chapter 37 : Days in the Free City of Loren (13)

Chapter 37: Days in the Free City of Loren (13)

“Rooaaar!”

The enraged Yeti pounded its chest and hammered the ground.

Hunger and mockery had made it raw-nerved, and its fury reached a peak.

“…Damn it. I can’t believe my end is going to be garbage like this!”

“Don’t jinx it, you maniac!”

“Crap! I should’ve listened to Shatien sooner. Ugh.”

Miles and Hudson bickered as they dropped into ready stances.

They had brimmed with confidence when they shoved it into the trap, but seeing the murderous Yeti up close with their own eyes crushed their spirits.

‘It’s bigger than I thought.’

Shatien studied the Yeti and thought.

The brute stood over two meters tall.

Even compared to the large-for-a-mercenary Miles, its head sat a good three higher.

Its sharply jutting claws felt keen and threatening, like short daggers.

-Shing.

Shatien drew his sword.

“Miles! Hudson. You mustn't run. The moment you turn your back, a bastard like that will charge in.”

Miles and Hudson drew their weapons too.

“I know! I know, damn it.”

“W-We can win, right?”

“Get a grip, Hudson! We have to do it first. Miles. Forget… the commission for now. If we get stupid for a bit of hide, we all die.”

“Damn it!”

Miles answered with a rich curse.

-Grrrr. Grnk.

The Yeti blew out snorts at them, as if to say, try it if you dare.

What made humans frightening was numbers.

With only three of them, the Yeti felt confident, glittering metal in their hands or not.

‘This is going to be hell.’

Shatien swallowed dryly as he watched it.

His muscles went taut with tension.

His master had belittled the Yeti as hardly a monster, but now that he faced it himself, it was no easy foe.

Look at it.

That menacing frame.

If they slipped for an instant, their limbs would be smashed.

And in that instant—

“Roooaaar!”

The Yeti bellowed, and Shatien’s mysterious sense flared a warning.

“Miles!”

-Boom!

Almost before he finished shouting, the Yeti smashed the ground where Miles had stood.

The earth bucked like a heavy iron ball had slammed into it.

“Holy shit!”

Thanks to Shatien, Miles was fine.

He had dodged by a hair.

That didn’t mean he was safe. He was still in the Yeti’s reach.

“Grrr!”

The Yeti swept its arm again with a huge swing.

Air tore, and the strike skimmed past Miles once more.

With the initiative stolen, he struggled to regain his bearings.

He needed a brief opening, any opening.

“Uaaagh!”

And Hudson was the one to create it.

Standing right beside Miles, he bravely charged the Yeti’s leg.

-Splat!

“What the hell? It didn’t work!”

Hudson cried out in dismay.

His swinging blade failed to cut and skated over the Yeti’s hide.

Its pelt was tougher and thicker than he had imagined.

Even so, it wasn’t as if it did no damage.

“Kruaaagh!”

The Yeti screamed in pain and swept its arm.

The problem was that the blow landed squarely on Hudson.

-Smash!

With a sick rip, Hudson tumbled back several meters.

“Hudson!”

“I-I am o… Kugh.”

He tried to rise and collapsed. At a glance, his leg looked broken.

“You! Your opponent is me.”

To save Hudson, Shatien rushed the Yeti.

Its raw strength was daunting, but he had undergone special training under his master, and the result had been very good indeed.

-Clang!

-Cl-Clang!

-Clang, clang, clang!

Shatien met the Yeti’s rapid strikes head on.

He even countered several times, his blade slicing the pelt here and there to score wounds.

Thrusts that came from outside its vision proved especially effective.

The Yeti took those hits helplessly.

“Roooaaar!”

When the situation didn’t go its way, the Yeti howled in rage.

It looked ready to try a trick to break out.

Sure enough—

-Ziiiing!

His sense screamed a warning.

-Fwhaaah!

The Yeti, monstrous as it was, scooped dirt from the ground and flung it toward Shatien’s face.

“Kgh!”

It was a cunning attack.

Thanks to his preparation, he kept the grit out of his eyes, but he lost spacing.

The Yeti rolled its body and opened the distance.

“Die, you bastard!”

Having caught his breath, Miles swung his signature battle-axe in a savage arc.

He aimed for the Yeti’s skull.

-Crunch. Thunk. Thud.

Yet, absurdly, the blade failed to pierce the hide of the Yeti’s hand.

It bit through fur and outer skin, but the axe head ended up caught in that massive palm.

“?!”

Miles gasped and yanked with both hands, but the Yeti’s strength was far greater.

“Rargh!”

“U-Uhhhh! Aghh!”

Such was the difference in power that when the Yeti hurled the axe, Miles flew backward with it.

-Crash. Clatter.

He lost his grip on the haft and tumbled across the ground.

“Ghk.”

The blow tore away a portion of the chain mail Shatien had just bought him. The red spreading beneath showed the cut was deeper than it looked.

“Damn it.”

Two down in short order.

If he fell too, it would be a catastrophe.

Shatien raised his sword with more caution and closed in.

The Yeti, however, didn’t seem eager to tangle with him.

It may have been a monster that acts on instinct alone, but it was able to judge if their opponent was weak or not.

Shatien was a hard prey to hunt. A glance aside offered easier prey aplenty.

“Grrrrr!”

Decision made, the Yeti whirled.

“Mmp, mmph. Mmmph!”

The bandit tied to a tree stood right there.

The Yeti bounded over, seized him one-handed, and squeezed.

-Crack. Crack. Craaack!

Skull crunching.

Red blood splashed across the dirt.

The bandit’s bones gave under the Yeti’s grip and his whole body turned soft. The Yeti gulped him down in one mouthful, then rumbled in satisfaction.

“You bastard!”

Shatien grimaced.

The man had been bait, a vicious brigand who deserved death anyway, yet seeing him go into a monster’s maw was a different matter.

It was subtly revolting.

“Take this!”

Feeding on that disgust, Shatien kicked off the ground.

He shot toward the Yeti like an arrow.

“Grnk!”

Startled, the Yeti flung aside the remaining bandit and slashed its claws.

-Ting. Ting!

Sparks leapt in a chain.

For all their hardness, the Yeti’s claws still belonged to a living creature.

As Shatien calmed his breath and let his mysterious sense guide him, he unleashed the space-cleaving sword stroke his master had once shown him.

-Slice!

The Yeti’s five hard claws sheared off in one blow.

Its eyes went wide.

Shatien didn’t stop there.

Smack! He carried that force forward and unleashed rapid strikes.

Shraaa!

A double-direction chain using rebound carved a great wound across its arm.

“Gwaaaah!”

Blood fountained from a gash so deep the bone showed.

But a Yeti was a monster, a mid-tier beast that carved out its range through struggle.

Even with its claws gone and one arm sliced open, it didn’t tuck its tail.

It swung the uninjured hand at Shatien.

‘Tch!’

He twisted his blade to block, but the impact was vicious.

Even after he corrected his stance, his body rocked and jolted.

“Grrrrrr!”

True to a monster that had survived long, the Yeti was different.

It realized the last blow had rattled Shatien.

At close range, trusting its massive body, it swept its arm again and again, as if to answer his earlier strike.

-Clang!

-Crack!

He blocked those blows, but the sword wasn’t in a good state anymore.

Repeated impacts had put a fracture in it.

Shatien realized he needed to end the fight quickly.

If the blade broke, it would be a disaster.

He couldn’t face that brute barehanded after all.

His will began to fill his sword.

-Vmmm!

Isn’t will expressed through the blade, or so he was told?

He hadn’t reached the realm for complete manifestation, but his bloodline carried a mystery.

His sense guided him, letting him pour intent into the steel.

-Shweeek!

“Gwaaaaaaah!”

The Yeti tried a sly monster’s tactic, using its already injured arm to block and counter.

But it could only scream in the end.

The blade that held Shatien’s will parted its hide far more easily and lopped the arm clean off.

-Swoosh!

Thanks to that, the disrupted swing scraped over Shatien’s head.

“Grrrk.”

Shock spread over the Yeti’s face.

The motion was too wide, and the opening was just as large.

And Shatien—

“Hyaaaaa!”

—was not a mercenary who missed such a gap.

Crunch.

Crackle.

Angling down from above, the sword cleaved mercilessly through the Yeti’s body.

Tough hide and coarse fur, then dense muscle, then bone splitting, all of it ran up the blade to his fingertips.

If he kept pushing, he could see the end of this accursed fight.

However, the gods seemed to love the Yeti equally.

-Scree!

Midway through the Yeti’s body, along with an ill-omened sound—

-Clang!

—his sword stopped and snapped.

“Damn it?!”

The very thing he feared happened.

It had felt shaky, and now it shattered.

But what was done was done.

Shatien sprang back in a hurried retreat.

“Rooaaar!”

Half-cleaved, the Yeti writhed in agony.

It grabbed at the embedded longsword, only to cut its fingers. It panted harshly and looked to end it somehow.

If it finished that damned human, the rest would be easy.

“Grk… grrk.”

Gurgling blood, its tattered body lurched at Shatien.

Its intent to kill him showed plainly.

That massive bulk shot toward Shatien before he could dodge.

It was truly a hair-trigger moment.

“Catch! Shatien.”

But fate didn’t decree his death.

Hudson limped in and hurled a sword.

Slowed by its mortal wounds, the Yeti arrived a breath too late.

And the result of that was,

-Thunk!

Shatien’s blade punched through the Yeti’s chest.

It was the one-strike, sure-kill thrust he had learned from the old man.

“Gwaaargh!”

It pierced the Yeti’s heart.

Fwoosh.

Hot blood jetted along the path of the blade and drenched Shatien.

With a heavy thump, the Yeti crashed to the ground.

“Khak! Kgh… kh.”

Soaked in hot blood, Shatien sagged to the floor and panted.

Above him, the sky had gone a dim gray without his noticing.

Yes.

They had won. They had brought down that monstrous Yeti.

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