It was an innocent voice, like that of a child showing off a treasure to a friend.
“Hear this! And take pride! Calldawn, that legendary sword of many generations, stole one eye from the foul dragon that has lived since the time of the gods!”
As the god spoke of Al’s ancestors with the greatest pride, Al’s quivering hand tightened into a fist. “I–Is that the truth?”
“It certainly is. I acknowledge it here: his heroism was spectacular and satisfying to the extreme!”
Al’s voice choked with emotion. “Th-Thank you… Thank you…”
The raven that was the Herald of the god of undeath watched over Al warmly.
From this scene alone, it would have been hard to think of him as an evil god.
But it was also a fact that this was a god whose sympathy led him to produce a great number of undead, corrupting the laws of life and death and each time bringing about disaster.
“William, warrior of the flame, one day you may be able to surpass even Aurvangr’s glorious accomplishments and sever the head of Valacirca. But now is not that time. Avoid battle. Bide your time and train.”
His words seemed to be genuine words of concern for me.
“Even if there are victims, as hard as this may be for you to accept.”
I hesitated over how to respond. The next moment, I felt a crawling sensation run up my spine.
“Listen, the dragon slumbers lightly now.”
An underground rumbling echoed around the burial chamber.
rrrrrRRRRR…
The ground shook. I could hear a roar that seemed to echo from the very depths of the earth.
rrrrrrrrRRRRRR…
It was a terrifying sound that seemed to hold a tight grip on my soul. My hands were shaking. When on earth was the last time I felt fear from the roar of a living creature?
rrrrrrrrrrrRRRRRRRRRR…
After that last roar, significantly longer than the others, the noise and the shaking both stopped abruptly.
“The dragon has demonstrated his power. To him, it was probably nothing more than rolling over in his sleep on the brink of wakefulness. But even so, I suggest you return to your territory quickly, or things are going to get out of hand.”
The god of undeath’s raven looked displeased.
— The fire of dark disaster shall catch in the mountains of rust. That fireshall spread, and this land may all be consumed.
— The dragon is coming. The dragon is coming! The dragon is coming!
Valacirca! Calamity’s sickle descends upon you!
Those ominous words once again crossed my mind.
Al let out a wild yell. His weighty battle axe swung horizontally straight into the face of the crazed giant lizard, breaking bone and scattering skin and flesh.
“Hmm, another four are approaching from west-northwest. What now?”
Stagnate’s Herald-raven croaked loudly from up in the air.
Not bothering to answer him, I swung around my sling as one of the lizards sprang out of a bush to the west-northwest and landed a direct hit on its head. A red flower blossomed. I hardly looked at it. I swung around the next stone. Two more lizards leaped out one after the other. I picked one of the two and buried the stone between its eyes.
The other drew closer. Al blocked with a shield as it tried to bite him and, summoning an instant of courage, he faced it from the front and smashed his axe down into its head.
His first battle had turned out nothing like I’d been expecting. Still, he was moving pretty well.
The last one of the four came at him, too. He fended it off with the movements that had been ingrained into him by training, making panicked yelps all the while, and finally crushed it with the axe. The giant lizard kept fighting wildly until it was completely dead.
“Do you understand now? That is a dragon roar.”
It was the kind of terror only a ruler could wield, and it had the power to strike panic into the hearts of all creatures great and small. Gus had once told me that this was the reason outstanding heroes were needed to slay a dragon. It made sense. If a dragon could inspire this kind of panic just by roaring, then it wouldn’t matter how many average soldiers you assembled; they would only serve to accelerate the chaos.
After that dragon roar, we escaped from the burial chamber with dirt falling in pieces from the ceiling to be immediately confronted by beasts that had lost their minds to the dragon’s howling.
The god of undeath’s Herald-raven was yet to leave and seemed to be enjoying himself as he flew at my side. In fact, it had even gotten to the point that he was giving me helpful information about the beasts that were coming. I was thankful for that, but the sense that this could be a calculated move was making me unable to feel happy about it. What was I supposed to call this emotion?
“Ah, hello. Northwest. Some more bad news is coming this way.”
I could hear the ground rumbling at regular intervals and the sound of trees cracking. Those were not the sounds a four-legged creature made as it moved…
“It’s a forest giant. That will give even you a bit of a hard time.”
Accompanied by the dreadful sound of living trees being torn apart, a giant appeared who was over three meters tall and wearing fur. He had a club in his hand and was foaming at the mouth. He was clearly deranged with panic. As soon as Al saw it, he bent back with a cry of horror and surprise.
“It looks like it wasn’t prepared for Valacirca’s howling. What now, hero?”
The Herald-raven looked down at me from the sky, with a genuine, irritating pleasure in his red eyes.
Forest giants lived deep in the woods and were generally mild-mannered, although it depended on the personality of the individual and the clan. They were also relatively small as giants went.
“Are you going to kill it?”
“Of course not.”
“Then you will stop it? That? How?”
“Don’t you know?”
Blood shouted inside my head.
“Get ripped, and you can solve pretty much everything by force!”
I tossed my sling aside and sprinted towards the giant.
Bellowing angrily and foaming at the mouth, the forest giant swung his club in a horizontal arc towards me. It was a very bulky club, as if a section had just been cut out of a tree trunk. I stopped dead, folded my arms up compactly, held my shield in position with both hands and my left shoulder, and took the hit head-on. There was a powerful impact. I pressed my feet down hard, and they gouged out a trail in the ground as I was pushed backwards a little.
“This is… nothing!” I pushed back.
Despite his loss of control, the forest giant seemed startled by the unexpected feeling of resistance. Hastily pulling back his club, he then released a flurry of blows with surprisingly limber movements of his arm. I took them all on my shield. A normal shield would have broken into pieces already from the impact, but I had carved layer upon layer of Signs into this one over the past two years.
It wouldn’t break easily. As I sustained all the giant’s fierce blows, I gradually closed the gap between us.
With a loud roar, the giant finally switched to a two-handed stance and brought the club down as if to crack my head in half. It was a frontal attack that took advantage of his great height and superior body weight. As the club came down, I thought about how impressive it was that he’d had the judgment to use this particular move while in a mad frenzy.