At the mist-shrouded edge of the Muir Forest, a gigantic beast as large as a hill, a gleaming golden prophet-branch growing from its head, was chasing a wounded knight at its feet.
The brown-haired, black-eyed shepherd girl recognized him. The poor guy who’d somehow been talked into playing live target practice by the trainee knights was none other than her good buddy from Eide Village, Gally.
Because Gally was calling out to her, the beast instantly shifted its attention and locked onto her instead.
Leif cursed under her breath, raised her blade, and in that instant ran through the button inputs in her head… then translated them one by one into real movements.
Thankfully, this body was far better than the one that had been fattened on junk food and hollowed out by sleepless gaming. Her jump, strength, and agility weren’t bad at all—otherwise there was no way she could pull off some of these trickier moves.
Leif let out a shout to bolster her own courage. While the beast was still partly within the forest, she ran a few steps toward it instead of away, and yelled back over her shoulder to Natiaveda:
“What are you standing there for? Get into the bushes and hide!”
Natiaveda, who had found absolutely no bushes: “…”
The beast clearly hadn’t expected that this seemingly frail little shepherd girl not only didn’t collapse in terror, but charged it with a look of grim resolve. For an instant, its massive body actually stalled in surprise, but it quickly came back to its senses—this girl was so small she wouldn’t even fill one crack between the rocks on its body.
Leif sprang off one tree, used the momentum to land on another, then jumped several more times until she finally stood at a point that, relative to the beast, counted as a higher vantage.
She narrowed her eyes, searching the beast’s surface of foliage and stone until she spotted a small patch where soft skin showed through. Then she tightened her grip on the blade and, timing it as the beast thundered beneath the tree, leapt down.
Her blade came down in a clean arc and bit right into that exposed skin.
It looked thick-skinned and rock-hard, but that was just an illusion created by the stones on its body. The flesh protected by plants and soil was actually as soft as tofu. Once you found a spot not hidden behind the stone plates, it was easy to sink the machete in deep.
Leif landed on the beast’s shoulder and effortlessly yanked her blade back out of the wound. Murky green blood spurted from the gash, splattering the shepherd girl’s leather boots.
Before the pained beast could buck and fling her into the air, Leif had already launched herself to another tree.
The monster twisted its bulky body, searching, but before it could find her, several more cuts opened on its neck—at the very same spot. This time, the beast was finally enraged; eerie green light flared in its eyes.
Aaron and the others were naturally displeased that the beast they’d gone to such trouble to lure out was being poached by some crazy woman. He kicked the trembling bumpkin they’d sent out as bait—Gally, who was still squatting on the ground shivering—and cursed.
“You dog-born bastard, why the hell did you hand the beast over to that crazy bitch?”
“I didn’t want to, it was just too scary…”
Gally wiped the blood off his face and scrambled to his feet. The honest, simple boy was scared out of his wits by now, muttering,
“Right… Leif… Leif…”
He turned to the group of trainee knights beside him, whose expressions were already sour, and pleaded,
“Please… please go save her. I’m begging you…”
The shepherd girl’s body was small, but her movements were sharp and agile. She slashed and hacked nonstop, spinning and leaping, and every time she brushed past death by a hair, she always managed to twist away at some bizarre angle.
The beast’s body was gradually covered in wounds, thick green blood soaking into the ground. It looked like if it landed just one solid hit on her, it would shatter her little body to pieces—but in reality, Leif dodged so quickly that she was slowly gaining the upper hand.
“To be honest, that girl’s pretty damn good,” one trainee knight muttered.
“Good, my ass!”
Aaron spat viciously onto the ground as he glared at Leif.
“She’s ruining everything, that stinking bitch!”
His gaze slid over to Natiaveda. He rubbed his chin, eyes turning lecherous as some idea clearly took shape in his mind.
Natiaveda had tried and failed again to find any bushes, so she settled for a medium-height tree. She stood beneath it, watching the battle while enjoying the shade, her attention fixed on where Leif was fighting.
Suddenly, the lady-in-waiting felt a sneaky presence appear behind her. From the cheap perfume clinging to him from the brothels in town, she immediately recognized the knight most fond of courting death.
Natiaveda sighed softly. Inwardly, she thought that this was the worst batch of knights she’d ever seen, and she couldn’t even be bothered to move.
The man came closer, rubbing his fingers together. His muddy gray eyes slid over her white robes, lingering on the royal white-lily emblem embroidered there. He hesitated for a moment.
But Aaron couldn’t overcome his restless urge to distinguish himself, nor the temptation of the beauty right in front of him. He licked his dry lips, eyes glued to the curve of the lady-in-waiting’s chest.
“Hey! You fucking lunatic, I’ve got your friend!”
Aaron shouted at Leif.
“Stop right there!”
Leif was just jumping down from a half-shattered tree, aiming a charge at the beast’s flank. She was momentarily distracted by the shout, but her hands never stopped moving.
That strike still landed exactly where she’d predicted.
After that, she sprang back to another tree and looked over her shoulder.
Aaron had his arm clamped around Natiaveda’s throat. The pale, delicate lady-in-waiting looked about ready to faint.
Figures. Just as she’d expected, Leif thought. Bringing a girl with zero combat ability really was asking for trouble. She should have insisted the queen assign this lady-in-waiting to stay as far away from her as possible.
She knew Natiaveda hadn’t meant to cause this, but Leif still felt that long-lost, helpless frustration of being dragged down by a teammate—one who hadn’t dodged properly and ended up ruining everyone’s run. The sort of mistake that made her want to slap a “useless piglet” label right across the girl’s face.
Unfortunately, this wasn’t a real game where you could ignore how many times your teammates died.
“What are you idiots standing around for? She pulled back, didn’t she? Push the attack!”
Aaron yelled at the group of trainee knights.
Yet as the blood-soaked girl came charging at him with her machete, murderous intent rolling off her in waves, he instinctively stepped back a few paces, barking in a show of false bravado,
“I’ve got your friend! What can you do to me?”
He hooked his arm tighter around the lady-in-waiting’s neck, savoring the softness of her body as he greedily inhaled the faint fragrance from her pale flaxen hair.
Then, all at once, blinding pain shot through his wrist.
Natiaveda twisted her arm back and crushed the bones in his hand.
Crunch. Muscles and tendons below the elbow snapped clean.
The trainee knight looked down and realized his filthy hand was now just dangling uselessly in his sleeve like some hairy little rag. His mouth opened in a scream—
Natiaveda calmly dislocated his jaw.
Leif followed with a strike using the sheathed blade, smashing Aaron to the ground. As expected, the lady-in-waiting, her pretty face drained of color, burst into tears and threw herself into Leif’s arms.
“Miss Knight, that was so dangerous… I almost fainted from fear… It’s all thanks to you that I was saved, sob sob…”
Aaron lay on the ground clutching his ruined arm, his face twisted in agony.
“… ”
He swore he had never, in his entire life, seen women this vicious and this shameless.
Leif patted Natiaveda’s back in a soothing rhythm, then turned her head to look at the beast, which she’d already sliced down to little more than a few ragged strips of bloody hide.
With deep regret but firm resolve, she thought:
For the prophet branch, and for her sash and honor… in a bit she might have to do something a little disgraceful—sit back and reap the fisherman’s profit, snatching the spoils of war from these trainee knights.
Decision made, the shepherd girl simply sat down with the lady-in-waiting beside her. She listened absently to Natiaveda’s dainty sobbing while frowning at the beast.
Then something unexpected happened.
Under the combined assault of the many trainee knights, the heavily wounded beast’s strength wasn’t being suppressed. In fact, it was visibly rising—most obviously, its speed.
At its current speed, Leif felt that even she would only be able to dodge by relying on clever footwork and feints. As for these trainee knights, who had clearly decided on a head-on strategy… no, to be precise, had no strategy at all…
“The guardian beast’s strength changes with the strength and number of those who challenge it,” Natiaveda said softly, one hand still pressed to her chest, as if she’d heard Leif’s unspoken doubts. “But these poor trainee knights most likely have no idea.”
Leif suddenly felt that the lady-in-waiting had dragged her down in exactly the right way—if Natiaveda hadn’t been forced out of the fight, Leif would have had to handle a beast that was growing stronger while also brawling with the trainee knights. That would have been far harder to manage.
Midway through the battle, the trainee knights finally started leaning on their one advantage: numbers. They spread out to divide the beast’s attention, and gradually realized that with this stone-plated monster, trying to find a fatal point and one-shot it was nearly impossible. All they could do was look for minor openings, chip away at its blood bit by bit, and drag it into a battle of attrition.
The situation began to stabilize.
“So there are monsters with mechanics like this, huh?” Leif asked.
“Yes. The prophet beast was born from this land itself. Its true body is inorganic; almost all of its power comes from the life that grows upon it,” Natiaveda replied. “So no matter how many people go in over the years, no matter how many powerful challengers they bring, they always find that their opponent has only grown stronger.”
At that moment, Aaron, eyes red with fury, raised his one good hand and made a vulgar gesture at the prophet beast.
“If the challengers get too strong, won’t the prophet beast mutate into some kind of ultimate monster?” Leif said.
“Mmm, you’re not wrong,” Natiaveda said. “And perhaps because of the properties triggered by the prophet tree, the prophet beast has a very peculiar temper. For example, physical attacks alone rarely enrage it—but if it’s subjected to verbal insults or obscene gestures, the prophet giant is, oddly enough, extremely sensitive to those…”
She lowered her voice.
“There are records in unofficial histories of expedition teams trying to rile their members up by badmouthing the prophet beast. They all ended up dying particularly miserable deaths…”
“Hold up,” Leif cut in. “Why does that monster look like it’s charging right at us…”
With the trainee knight corps’ attacks added in, the prophet giant’s speed had become frightening.
Still leaning her head against Leif’s chest and putting on an excellent performance of frailty, Natiaveda realized the prophet giant would reach them in a matter of heartbeats—far too soon for her to keep up the act and still not resist.
Leif’s expression tightened. She shoved the lady-in-waiting behind her without the slightest gentleness.
“Hide properly,” she said coldly.
Then she rose, bracing the machete, black eyes wide and focused.
Using her leap skill, she sprang onto the nearest tree—only to feel the trunk begin to shudder violently beneath her feet.
The prophet giant, whose moss-green body had moments ago merely looked battered, suddenly flared with a blinding golden light. In the next moment, all the moss on its body peeled away, and the beast tore up another stretch of land from the ground, fusing it into its own body.
All that was left in the earth was a deep pit—and the tree Leif had just jumped onto happened to be one of those growing from the ripped-up chunk of soil now incorporated into the beast.
Branches that had been perfectly normal seconds before twisted into tentacles, coiling around Leif and trying to turn her into nourishment for the tree.
She was crushed tightly against the trunk—its texture now like an over-salted slab of cured meat. Countless fine branches slithered like snakes, biting into her flesh. Her breath was fading. Teetering on the edge of death, she thought of Grandma Samantha, of how she’d boasted in front of the villagers that she’d return as a knight, of how she still hadn’t seen Lily give birth to little rams and ewes. She could almost picture Lily being abused by a new owner after she was gone…
And she thought of that damned dragon she still hadn’t chopped to death!
Suddenly, the pressure around her vanished.
The lady-in-waiting in white robes—Natiaveda—caught her in her arms. Her voice was low as she said,
“My apologies, Miss Knight. I couldn’t find any good bushes to hide in… so I’ll have to stand and fight at your side instead.”
