Behind the Orc hut, they prepared to launch a surprise attack on a man who seemed to be resting, taking care not to alert him. Sunyi drew her bow to its limit while taking aim at the target.

(In the end, his only real strength is that tamed Griffon of his. Even with a drawn bow aimed right at him, he can’t even sense the bloodlust. Really, Al worries too much.)

Ready to loose an arrow at any moment, she turned her gaze toward Seryl, who was stationed on the roof of the building opposite.

Catching Sunyi’s glance, Seryl gave a small nod. Al and Murgas signalled that they were ready as well.

(Rookie, you’ve only got yourself to blame for flaunting a rare magic item you don’t deserve. We’ll gladly sell off that item box to set ourselves up for life……right now!)

Holding her breath, she steadied her aim and released the heavy arrow. The arrow cut sharply through the air, flying straight toward the target resting peacefully. As the arrow struck his body, Rei collapsed to the ground without a sound.

「Now, attack!」

Seryl’s voice echoed at the exact same time. At her command, Al and Murgas charged out from the darkness with their bastard sword and dagger drawn. Seryl leapt down from the roof as well, holding her long sword and shield at the ready.

Watching her three companions charge, Sunyi quickly notched another arrow to her bow just in case.

The moment the arrow was fired from a distance, Rei’s sharp eyes had caught its exact trajectory.

Though he had considered dodging it or cutting it down with the Death Scythe if it flew toward his head, the arrow was instead aimed squarely at his torso. They had likely decided that a shot to the centre of mass would be easier to land. Although the arrow striking his right flank was effortlessly deflected by the Dragon Robe, he deliberately collapsed to the ground.

A moment later, he heard Seryl’s voice echoing from the rooftop opposite, followed by the sounds of two people charging toward him. Including Seryl, the footsteps of three people were closing in fast.

(According to the information from Hobbes and Elk, Dark Night’s Star is a party of four: an archer in the rearguard, two warriors on the front line, and a scout acting as a thief. In this situation, the archer is the most troublesome since she attacks from a distance. Fortunately, her bow lacks the power to pierce the Dragon Robe. The next most troublesome opponent is the thief, since he can hide in the darkness and stage surprise attacks.)

Listening closely to the three sets of approaching footsteps, he tracked the thief’s exact position.

The equipment they carried created an unmistakable difference in the weight and cadence of their footsteps between heavily equipped warriors and a lightly armoured thief.

(To the left, is it?)

Seryl was leading from the front. Judging from the heavy footsteps and slower pace, the other heavily equipped warrior of Dark Night’s Star, Al, was closing in from the right. Rei tightened his grip on the Death Scythe, which he had held loosely as he fell.

Given the clear difference in speed between a heavily equipped warrior and an agile thief, the first to reach him was Murgas, the party’s thief, clad in light leather armour.

「Murgas, how does it look? Did Sunyi’s arrow finish him off?」

Seryl’s voice echoed from slightly further back as her heavy footsteps drew closer.

「Wait a moment, Big Sis. I’ll check the body now.」

Rei smiled coldly to himself as the light footsteps drew near.

Under normal circumstances, the safest way to check if an opponent was truly dead or merely playing possum would be to toss a stone or a throwing knife at the body to gauge a reaction. In fact, had Murgas hurled a stone or blade straight at his head, Rei would not have been able to retaliate immediately. Yet perhaps Murgas carried no throwing weapons, or perhaps he found such caution too troublesome, for he simply walked right up to Rei. And then……

(Now!)

Judging that Murgas had stepped within striking range, Rei moved with blinding speed. Gripping the Death Scythe lying beside him, he swept it outward from the ground. Because he attacked without channelling any magic power, Murgas failed to sense the strike. The massive blade cut through flesh effortlessly and sheared through bone with slight resistance, slicing off both of Murgas’s ankles in a single stroke.

「……Eh? Ah, ah, aah……Gyaaaah! My legs! My feet are gone! Aaaagh!」

For a stunned moment, Murgas could not fathom what had happened. Staring in disbelief at the gruesome sight, he collapsed heavily to the dirt, unable to stand without his feet. A second later, agonizing pain washed over him, and he shrieked at the top of his lungs.

「Tch, the bastard is still alive! Al, move in! It’s just a dying thrash anyway! Sunyi, cover us!」

Seryl had assumed that the only valuable magic item Rei carried was his item box, the Misty Ring. As for the Dragon Robe he wore, not even the whole of the Mireana Kingdom……no, not even all of Elgin held a defensive magic item of such extraordinary quality. She naturally assumed that his strike against Murgas was nothing more than a desperate death struggle after suffering a fatal wound from Sunyi’s arrow.

Her mistaken assumption was not entirely unreasonable. The Dragon Robe was an ancient artifact created by Zephyr’s organisation. Its absolute concealment had been bestowed by Esta Nord, the greatest alchemist of that bygone era. Ordinary folk could never perceive its true worth. Out here on the frontier, it was impossible for a mere C-rank adventurer to see through its magical camouflage.

With that thought in the back of his mind, Rei sprang up smoothly, riding the momentum of the sweep that had severed Murgas’s ankles. Stepping toward Murgas, who was writhing and wailing on the ground, he swung the Death Scythe in an upward arc, cleanly cleaving the thief in two.

「Gah……!」

Murgas let out a wet gasp as his internal organs spilled out onto the dirt, the light swiftly fading from his terrified eyes. Glancing at the severed feet still clad in leather shoes lying nearby, a faint, cold smile crossed Rei’s face.

(I don’t feel any guilt or hesitation, even after killing a person. Well, given the circumstances, I’m glad I don’t.)

「Murgas!? Tch, the bastard is completely fine even though the arrow hit him! Al, we finish him together!」
「Big Sis!? We need to retreat!」
「Don’t be an idiot! The fight has already started! Now that it’s come to this, we have to kill this rookie! If he gets away and reports us, the guild will slap a bounty on our heads. Steel yourself!」
「……Damn it, fine!」

Timing their attacks together, the two frontliners swung their swords from the left and right. Rei recognized that Seryl, the veteran leader of Dark Night’s Star, was by far the more dangerous of the two, and chose to target Al first to thin their numbers. Using the shaft of the Death Scythe, he scooped up some of Murgas’s scattered entrails and flicked them straight at Al’s face.

「Tch!」

Al was swinging his bastard sword from the side, but with his vision suddenly obscured by flying viscera, he reflexively flinched to dodge.

「Fool! Don’t lose focus!」

Seryl’s sharp warning came far too late. A bastard sword’s destructive power stemmed from its weight, but that same weight made it difficult to adjust quickly once swung, especially when an opponent stepped inside its guard, as Rei had just done.

As Al swung clumsily, a sudden gust of wind swept past him. Turning his gaze, he saw that the small, robed figure of Rei was no longer where he had been standing an instant earlier.

「Al, guard your chest!」

Seryl thrust her long sword forward to intercept Rei while shouting a warning, but she was too late. Looking like the weapon of the Grim Reaper itself, the massive scythe was already slashing down with terrifying speed.

(Damn it, Big Sis won’t make it. My sword’s too slow to block……to die in a pathetic place like this!)

Faced with certain death, Al’s mind raced. He questioned what his life had amounted to, bitterly regretting letting Seryl talk him into attacking Rei……

「Idiot, don’t give up!」

The desperate shout snapped him back to reality.

「……What?」

It was baffling. He had been on the very brink of death, yet he was still breathing. Doubting his own senses, he looked down and saw several arrows buried deep in the ground right where Rei and his scythe had been standing a moment before.

Seeing the arrows and recalling that shout, he realised it had been Sunyi.

「Are you alright?」

Seryl stepped forward, raising her long sword in a defensive stance to keep Rei at bay. Looking around, Al finally realised he was still alive.

「Big Sis, this guy’s absurdly strong. That Griffon isn’t just for show.」
「Seems that way. Tch, isn’t this rookie supposed to be G-rank? Who could have guessed he’d be this dangerous?」

Listening to the two veterans exchange words, a cold smile crossed Rei’s face.

「Absurdly strong, am I? That’s right. It isn’t much to brag about, but I take pride in being able to bring down a C-rank monster single-handedly.」

He swung the heavy Death Scythe with a sharp whoosh toward the pair before him, never losing sight of the archer, Sunyi, in the distance.

Taking her arrow earlier had been part of his calculations. That he had dodged her follow-up volley proved his physical abilities were closer to those of a monster. Any normal person would have been impaled without fail.

(That coordination took me by surprise. Al was clearly being used as a decoy. When I brought the Death Scythe down, her attack landed the moment my swing was committed. Even so, he reacted the instant she told him not to give up. ……I see. Trust, is it?)

Following the briefing for the subjugation request, Rei had assumed Dark Night’s Star was merely a ragtag band of greedy thugs. Yet even if they acted out of self-interest, a bond of trust clearly existed between them. He understood that now.

(Even so, I can’t afford to let them kill me. Their fates were sealed the moment they launched this cowardly ambush.)

Drenched in cold sweat, Al watched Rei warily. Beside him, Seryl was just as tense. In the distance, Sunyi kept her bowstring drawn, ready to fire the instant an opening appeared.

Holding the centre of the Death Scythe with both hands, Rei spun it in a whooshing arc to keep the vanguard at bay. His fluid movements resembled a dance as he formulated a plan against Dark Night’s Star.

(In this situation, the most dangerous opponent isn’t either of these close-combat fighters, but Sunyi providing lethal support from afar.)

Brandishing the Death Scythe, Rei glanced toward Sunyi. Perched atop the roof of an Orc hut, normal melee attacks could not reach her. Even if he tried casting high-tier fire magic, Seryl and Al would never give him time to chant an incantation. Under normal circumstances, there was no simple way to reach her. For an ordinary person, that was……but Rei was anything but ordinary.

Harnessing the centrifugal force of the heavy scythe, Rei used its shaft to dig into the ground, hurling dirt and stones toward the pair before him. In the same motion, he leaped backward.

A heartbeat later, he activated the effect of the Shoes of Sleipnir, watching calmly as arrows peppered the spot where he had stood an instant earlier.

Rei soared to the peak of his leap, using the Shoes of Sleipnir to kick off empty air and rise even higher before beginning his descent.

Just then, another volley flew toward his feet. Had the Shoes of Sleipnir not allowed him to step on the air and shift his trajectory, those arrows might have found their mark. Instead, the ancient magic item completely shattered Sunyi’s calculations.

Seeing her volley miss, Sunyi frantically reached for another arrow in her quiver……

「Too bad for you.」

Rei was already right before her eyes, bringing the Death Scythe down with ferocious power.

「!?」

Before a cry could leave her mouth, the mana-imbued Death Scythe cleaved diagonally through Sunyi from her shoulder to her waist. The two halves of her body slid apart, blood and organs splashing violently across the roof.

「Sunyi!?」

Seryl and Al screamed her name in agony from the ground, but the light had already vanished from her eyes.

「You bastard! What did you do to Sunyi!?」

Al roared in fury, but Rei merely looked down at him and Seryl with cold, dispassionate eyes.

「What? It’s fine for you to ambush and kill me, but a tragedy when I kill you in self-defence? Is it really that terrible that your prey fights back? Or do you honestly believe you’re the only ones with the right to kill?」
「Shut up! Get down here! I’ll butcher you with my sword just like you did to Murgas and Sunyi!」

Al barked with rage, but Rei had no intention of descending.

「What, can you only pick off a thief and an archer from a distance? Are you too scared to face someone in close quarters? If you’re a man, come down here and fight fair!」
「Kuku. Fair and square, is it? You launch a four-on-one ambush in the dead of night, and now you have the nerve to ask for a fair fight? The hypocrisy is so rich I can’t help but laugh. Setting aside your lack of talent as adventurers, you’d make fantastic comedians.」
「Stop messing around!」
「Very well. Jokes aside, let me correct your mistake. I’m not a warrior at all. To put it clearly……I’m a Magic Warrior.」
「……What?」

Ignoring Al’s dumbfounded response, Rei calmly began an incantation.

『Flame, thou who exist only within my domain and nowhere else. In exchange for thy fleeting life, offer up the magic power within my domain and sublimate thy existence in a single moment.』

As Rei began the quiet chant, a glowing scarlet line of mana etched itself across the dirt, enclosing the area where Al and Seryl stood.

「Tch!」

Sensing the lethal danger radiating from the glowing line, Seryl threw herself backward to escape the boundary. Yet Al, lacking Seryl’s rank and experience, failed to react with the same split-second judgment. Seeing two companions slaughtered before his eyes had sent the blood rushing to his head, dulling his sense of danger.

Had he maintained his usual cautious cowardice, he might have sensed the encroaching death. But that was mere speculation. Al was already encircled by the crimson line, and his fate was sealed.

『Dancing Wild Flame』

The incantation completed, the spell activated with terrifying force. A bright, translucent red dome materialized over the encircled ground. Al’s face twisted in horror as he realised the danger he was in……countless glowing lizards suddenly appeared out of thin air within the dome. There were too many to count. An instant later, they began exploding into violent flames. One lizard burst into fire, and the flames triggered the next in a chain reaction of expanding explosions. In moments, the interior of the dome became a raging inferno. The scorching light was so blinding that one could scarcely look upon it. Without even time to scream, Al was reduced to ash.

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