Chapter 32: Knight's Journey -5-

"So you're telling me to hold back. It seems I've been underestimated quite badly."

Along with Tristan's cold, sunken voice, the wind in the valley rose sharply.

He took his hand off the sword hilt at his waist and, with a smooth motion, drew out the massive bow slung across his back: Failnaught.

With his helmet removed, his red hair scattered in the wind, and in his characteristically sorrowful eyes there gleamed the sharp fighting spirit of a warrior.

He was still young enough to retain the boyishness of his late teens, about my age, but the quality of the Mana pouring from him was nothing like that of ordinary knights.

"All of you, capture Uther's heir alive."

As soon as Tristan gave the short command, the dozens of elite knights blocking the bridge raised swords and spears with a unified shout and charged at us.

"Kahahaha! How dare a bunch of mere human brats act so bold!"

The first to step forward against the charging knights was Oda Nobunaga. Letting out her usual hearty laugh, she stretched a hand into the air.

Taat!

The moment her red cloak flared, dozens of matchlocks thrust their muzzles out from empty space all at once.

"My muskets never miss!"

Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat!!

Deafening gunfire shook the valley. But instead of piercing the knights' bodies, the bullets struck only the blades of the swords and the shafts of the spears in their hands with perfect precision.

"Hk!"

"My sword...!"

As steel weapons shattered and flew apart, the knights at the front halted in confusion.

Nobunaga did not miss that fleeting opening and drew the Japanese sword at her waist.

With crimson flames wrapping around the blade, she leaped into the middle of the knights' formation like a tiger and, with that flaming sword, struck their knees and solar plexuses in rapid succession, dropping more than ten of them to the ground in an instant.

"Y-you monstrous women...! Hold the formation... guh!"

The adjutant trying to issue orders never finished his sentence.

On the opposite side of the formation Nobunaga had torn through, Penthesilea was unleashing a savage assault with beastlike bloodlust pouring from her. She had not even drawn her massive chained iron ball. Only her bare hands.

Puh-uck!! Crunch!

Every time her heavy fist tore through the air, the thick steel armor the knights prided themselves on crumpled like paper with an ugly sound.

"Kyaaagh!"

"Help...!"

Shields split in two from a single kick, and charging spearmen were seized in her rough grip and flung away like dry leaves.

Since the goal was capture, she only barely refrained from taking their lives, but it was still an utterly overwhelming one-sided trampling.

"......!"

Watching his elite knights collapse like autumn leaves in the blink of an eye, Tristan's eyes, standing in the rear, flickered sharply.

He quickly plucked Failnaught's string.

Ting! Tiriing~!

A beautiful yet deadly harp melody. The sound soon became arrows of sound, slicing through the air as they shot toward Penthesilea.

"What an irritating noise!"

Penthesilea crossed her arms to defend herself, but the invisible arrows of sound and the sharp threads of Magical Energy grazed her arms and thighs, spraying fresh blood.

"Tch..."

They were shallow wounds, but Penthesilea frowned at the ranged attack that had pierced through her defenses.

No matter how young Tristan still was, Failnaught itself was a divine construct forged by fairies. Its power was not something even a Heroic Spirit could simply ignore.

Tristan stepped backward, trying to widen the distance and pluck the string again in succession.

But Penthesilea reacted a beat faster. She pulled out the massive chained iron ball at her waist and hurled it at Tristan with ferocious rotational force.

Swoooosh!

"Dangerous."

Tristan twisted aside by a hair's breadth and dodged the heavy iron ball flying at him. Then he immediately drew Failnaught's string to counterattack.

But the iron ball he had dodged was not a simple thrown weapon.

The instant it missed, Penthesilea kicked off the ground while gripping the end of the chain and leaped at a speed close to the speed of sound.

In the instant her body brushed past Tristan's side, the heavy chain connected to the iron ball coiled around his entire body like a snake.

"Ah...!"

Under the chain's tremendous tension, Tristan dropped Failnaught and tried to struggle free, and at that exact moment—

Bang!

A single gunshot rang out through the air.

A Magical Energy bullet fired from Nobunaga's matchlock pierced straight through the top of Tristan's right foot and lodged in the ground.

"Khk...!"

The top of the foot was one of the body's worst weak points, packed with nerves. With it pierced through, all strength left Tristan's leg completely, and he collapsed to his knees on the spot.

Cold sweat formed on his forehead, gone pale from pain.

"Kahahahat! It's the basics of battle. Hurt the top of the foot and the body can't put any strength into itself!"

Blowing away the smoke from her matchlock with her mouth, Nobunaga grinned leisurely.

Thus Tristan, hailed as Cornwall's finest knight, was subdued in a mere three minutes, almost absurdly easily.

Of course, though he possessed genius-level talent, the greatest reasons for his defeat were that he was still an inexperienced teenager lacking real battlefield experience, and that his opponents were heroes worth an army each.

I walked over slowly and stopped in front of the kneeling Tristan.

"Don't take it too hard. It's not that you're weak. My people are just unusually strong."

I signaled to Penthesilea with my eyes, and had her remove the chain binding him.

"You... why are you not taking my head?"

Suppressing the pain in his foot, Tristan asked in a voice mixed with humiliation.

With a faint smirk, I lightly patted his shoulder.

"Tell King Mark this. If I ever have business in Tintagel later, I'll come find him myself, so he should stop irritating me by nipping at my heels like this. I'm already busy enough trying to unify Britain. I don't want to waste my strength on some local king."

Leaving behind the blankly seated Tristan and the groaning elite knights, I led my group calmly across the bridge.

"Arthur, he looked like a knight with quite remarkable talent. Are you sure you don't want to recruit him?"

Walking beside me, Merlin asked with visible regret. For her, someone who loved gathering the Knights of the Round Table, he was the sort of talent worth coveting.

"No, Tristan won't do. That guy is stubborn and rigid to the core. He'll never be the first to betray his uncle, King Mark, who raised him. Even if I dragged him in by force, all I'd do is make him suffer."

When I shook my head, Artoria, walking beside me, added with a slight smile,

"Even so, those sorrowful eyes of his when he aimed his bow at an enemy... he did seem very full of chivalry, and I rather liked him. I hope we meet again someday."

Leaving behind that brief encounter with Tristan, our group continued onward, climbing through the rugged mountain ranges of Wales.

Just as Merlin had predicted, diplomacy in the Kingdom of Brycheiniog in southern Wales went rather smoothly.

King Anulav trembled before my show of force and the legitimacy of Pendragon blood, and readily promised friendly relations, offering us precious food and furs from the mountainous region.

But the farther north we went, the less easy things became.

King Carados of the Kingdom of Estrangore openly showed hostility, denouncing me as Uther's bastard, and we had to fight several small skirmishes near the border.

King Brandegoris of the Kingdom of Strangore was also a thoroughly extravagant and arrogant man.

Boasting of his golden palace, he treated us like country bumpkins and busied himself flaunting his wealth without giving us so much as a single grain of wheat.

Of course, I did not grow angry over every little bit of noise like that. They were nothing more than petty lords who would one day kneel beneath my feet anyway.

And as for being a bastard, well, that part was true too. If you really think about it, we should have been bastards, but our mad father made us legitimate instead.

After marching for several days through one disturbance after another, large and small—

At last, we arrived at the border of the great Kingdom of Gore in northwestern Wales, a natural fortress surrounded by marshland and a massive river system.

Before the enormous gates of the Kingdom of Gore, shrouded in thick fog.

There lingered a strangely familiar presence, yet one with chillingly cold and vast Mana.

"......"

As the fog slowly parted, the silhouette of a woman waiting for us with the castle gate at her back came into view.

"So... you finally crawled your way here."

The most powerful witch in Britain, and Uther Pendragon's eldest daughter.

Our half-sister, Morgan le Fay, was looking down at us.

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