Chapter 21

The cats’ chatter drifted past Isaac’s ears, muffled by the chaos. Hidessa? The name rang a distant, warning bell. Before he could consult the mental archives of his memory, the appendages surging endlessly from the earth revealed their true form.

Yes, he remembered it now.

An ancient text, long ago.

A magical beast with a torso as thick as an ancient oak, crowned with nine human-like heads and twenty-seven tails, each thicker than a python.

A monstrous serpent that lurked in the subterranean dark, extending its tentacle-like tails to drag prey into the abyss.

Hidessa.

“This is insane—!”

Before the curse could leave his lips, Isaac was forced to fling himself away from three of the massive tails lashing in unison. One lapse in concentration meant being crushed by limbs harder than iron clubs or flayed by strands sharper than tempered blades; his head would be severed before he could blink. He could hardly fathom that a Hidessa—a beast said to have eradicated an entire village when it first manifested over a century ago—was currently tearing the forest apart before his eyes.

As for the deranged magician who had so flippantly discarded the taboo against summoning such calamities—

“Who the hell are you?!”

The magician at least retained enough survival instinct to fear discovery, shouting at Isaac with a mask of distorted rage. All the while, he remained safely ensconced behind a shimmering barrier, shielded from the carnage—a position that only fueled Isaac’s hatred.

Just let me survive this. I’ll file a formal complaint with the Magicians’ Guild so fierce it’ll burn their headquarters down! …But can I even survive?

「What is there to worry about? In any case, the middle head is compromised, so Hidessa cannot avoid its end.」

「Well, yes, but it is so thoroughly enraged that before it expires, it could easily drag him to the afterlife, could it not?」

「True enough. …By the way, I hear Hidessa meat is quite succulent.」

「They say if you grill it to medium-well, the juices are divine.」

「Then let us spectate and prepare the rice cak—」

“When is it going to die?!”

Grinding his teeth at the trio of cats, who sat primly behind the magician’s barrier, drooling as they chatted, Isaac bellowed, clutching at the only thread of hope. Whatever this beast was, it was dying, right?

「Hmm? Difficult to say. Once the middle head is incapacitated, it usually perishes within three hours. You, watch the back of your head—」

Their casual tone was so infuriatingly detached that Isaac faltered, missing his timing to dodge by a razor-thin margin.

WHACK

A club-like tail smashed into the back of his head with sickening force, sending his consciousness spinning into the void for a fleeting second. On pure instinct, he drew his sword and slashed blindly. A jarring impact shuddered through his arm, followed by the metallic stench of gore. One tail had been severed, slithering away into the dark.

「That’s it, well done, boy! Dear, hurry and spark a fire. We have meat, plenty of meat!」

Spurred by the cats’ feline cheers, Isaac regained his equilibrium and swung at another lunging appendage, though this time he sliced only empty air.

Still, something was deeply wrong.

A magical beast of this stature, capable of slaughtering a village, shouldn’t be struggling against mere defensive skirmishes. Isaac glanced around in bewilderment, and a sight froze him in place.

It was incomprehensible.

The nine heads and twenty-odd tails sprouting from the writhing colossus were all lunging with ferocity toward a single point.

In the center of that nightmare stood the prince.

One monster head had clamped onto each of his limbs, with another sunk into his waist, tearing through muscle and sinew. The wounds left by those jagged teeth were deep enough to expose bone, gushing rivers of crimson. The heads burrowed greedily into his flesh, and it appeared as if the prince’s body would be swallowed whole by the beast in the next breath.

:…”

So that was why the beast ignored him.

Nearly every ounce of its lethal focus was directed at the prince.

If he meant to survive, this was his window. He could likely evade a few tails, slip through the chaos, and vanish into the treeline until the Hidessa breathed its final gasp. Yes, that was the logical, sound choice. One life or two made little difference against such a monstrosity. And if, by some divine twist of irony, the prince perished… then all of Isaac’s problems would vanish in a puff of smoke.

The new-moon oath.

The accursed tinderbox.

Run. Hurry, Isaac. Do not look back.

His mind screamed the command, his heart hammering against his ribs until his vision blurred at the edges.

Yes. Run.

“…Damn it all.”

But the very instant the sickening crunch of bone reached his ears, Isaac knew his fate. He had known, deep down, that he would grip his sword and plunge into that nest of writhing horrors.

And at the exact moment Isaac kicked off the earth and charged—

Their eyes met.

The prince’s gaze, which had been drifting with vacuous indifference, suddenly snapped toward Isaac.

The moment those languid, hollow eyes locked onto him, Isaac flinched. He stared into those terrifyingly vibrant blue irises, and he felt a cold shudder of prey discovering it had been marked by a predator.

The opening was exactly what the tail had been fishing for, and it struck the back of his head with sickening precision.

“Urgh! …Ugh, you absolute bundle of snakes!”

Isaac shook his head to scatter the mounting numbness, glared at the tail whistling through the air toward him once more, and swung his sword the instant it entered his reach. The appendage that had nearly grazed his nose was severed cleanly away, spraying a fountain of viscera.

As the remaining length of the tail whipped through the air—seemingly furious at having been caught off guard—it lunged again.

Isaac dodged, his momentum carrying him toward the prince. Only then did the prince withdraw his gaze from Isaac, shifting his focus to the colossal monster head currently gnawing at his own waist. He gripped the massive skull as if it were nothing more than a stubborn nuisance.

RIP

With the grating sound of tough hide yielding, the monster head clutched in the prince’s hand tore away from its body.

“…”

Isaac stared in astonishment at a display of raw, bestial strength that his mind refused to process, even as he witnessed it firsthand. Before his eyes, the prince tossed the massive head aside. He drew his own blade from his waist, the steel sticky with clinging gore, and began to butcher the creature without a single shift in his expression.

The prince’s swordsmanship possessed not a single wasted motion, methodically shearing away the monster’s remaining heads and tails. He swung with indifferent grace, as if entirely immune to the sharp teeth tearing savagely into his own flesh, and at times, he simply ripped the monster apart with his bare hands.

Steam rose in dense coils from the magical beast’s blood coating his frame.

The stench of iron and rot was suffocating.

At the center of the carnage, the prince slaughtered the creature without a trace of haste.

Each time one of the nine heads or twenty-six tails was hewn or torn away, the human-like heads let out wretched, shrill screams. The chilling chorus of hell grew only more agonizing as the count of heads dwindled.

At last, only one remained.

When every head and tail had been severed and only the central visage persisted, the prince’s entire body was drenched in the magical beast’s blood. The viscous fluid dripping from him resembled thick, black mud.

The middle head, its eyes clouded by a pale film, rolled those orbs sluggishly. It was already teetering on the edge of extinction. The prince studied the puncture wound piercing the center of its crown and lifted one eyebrow faintly.

“It makes sense that its agility and power were so stunted… It was already suffering from a fatal wound.”

Murmuring to himself, the prince swung his sword in a fluid arc. The magical beast’s final head was bisected and tumbled to the earth. With a thunderous thud, the massive carcass collapsed, sprawling across the soil.

An uncanny, suffocating silence reclaimed the forest.

Isaac stood rigid, his gaze locked onto the surreal spectacle. The enormous, cooling corpse, the prince standing amidst it all, coated in mud-like blood, and the forest quiet as a tomb—none of it felt real. It was as if he had been pulled into some alien, distorted world.

But his stunned paralysis proved fleeting.

“Hidessa. I had hoped to find some actual amusement for the first time in ages,” the prince remarked, clicking his tongue in annoyance. His eyes, fixed on the empty air, brimmed with boredom. “Are you the one responsible for turning such rare entertainment into something this dull?”

As those indifferent words fell, Isaac’s spine bristled on instinct. Reflex alone propelled his sword upward, and he barely intercepted the cold chill descending toward his skull.

CLANG

A metallic shriek rang out, and the wrist gripping his sword went instantly numb.

A single inch above the crown of his head, the prince’s blackened blade had halted against Isaac’s steel.

Thick, mud-like blood splattered onto Isaac’s forehead.

Only a heartbeat later did the realization dawn that he had nearly been cleaved in two, and his expression crumbled into horror.

“…Hmm.”

The prince murmured as if surprised his strike had been deflected, and a fresh wave of terror surged down Isaac’s spine. Immediately afterward, the prince swung again, this time with even clearer, deadlier intent.

CLANG

CLANG

Isaac barely deflected the prince’s blade twice, purely because he lacked the time to evade. His mind sharpened with the frantic clarity of a man doused in ice water. Not only his wrist, but his entire frame pulsed with numbing fatigue.

With just those two exchanges, Isaac understood the truth with crystalline clarity.

This man exists on an entirely different level than I do. He is a predator I could never hope to defy.

Indeed, even as the prince stood before him, slowly raising his sword again, Isaac found himself unable to retreat a single step. Within the depths of his overwhelming helplessness, he watched the prince descend. Isaac summoned every scrap of his waning strength and barely parried the falling blade.

SLICE

“…”

Isaac stared in hollow shock at the hilt remaining in his palm, then at the severed blade falling to his feet, barely registering the white-hot pain of his wrist bending at an unnatural angle. A sword forged of iron had been sheared in two as if it were nothing more than straw.

Is this the true ceiling of his power?

“Adequate for practice, I suppose, but hardly enough to challenge Hidessa.”

The prince’s murmur brushed dimly past Isaac’s ears.

As Isaac peered into those blue eyes now fixed upon him, they suddenly overlapped with the gaze he had encountered moments earlier—the same look that had dismissed him as nothing more than a strange, insignificant insect when he had rushed to save the prince from Hidessa’s coils.

That was when it happened.

“Kh—”

Isaac emitted a ragged breath and clutched at his throat. His airway had abruptly sealed shut. An invisible force was strangling the life out of him.

“Who are you?”

A hoarse voice echoed from behind.