Chapter 82 : Chapter 82
“Oaaaah!”
The ogre stepped into the center of the stable and swung the wyvern carcass in a wide arc.
Crack, crack, crack!
The wyvern’s body smashed through several wooden pillars on the left side of the stable. A section of the ceiling collapsed, burying the wyvern in debris.
Pinned by the wreckage, the wyvern in its grasp refused to budge. The ogre tilted its head, uncomprehending.
“Oh?”
The monstrous strength to shatter several wooden pillars in a single swing.
The dim-wittedness to stare at the pinned wyvern and not understand why it was stuck.
In an instant, Duce understood the kind of monster the ogre was and asked Sevha, “Do you know how to hunt it?”
“A major blood vessel runs just beneath an ogre's skin. A deep enough cut will kill it instantly.”
“How deep?”
“One shot should do it. Yes, one shot from a ballista.”
Just as Duce was about to scream, And where is the ballista?! The ogre finally realized why the wyvern wasn’t moving and let out a triumphant roar.
It ripped the wyvern from the debris.
“Duce, draw the ogre’s attention. Just do that, and I’ll handle the rest.”
“How am I supposed to do that?!”
As the ogre began to advance, Sevha said, “I hope your dodging has improved.”
He grabbed Duce by the scruff of his neck and hurled him at the ogre's feet.
Duce tumbled and rolled, coming to a stop against the ogre’s toes.
He stared up blankly, only to find the ogre staring down at him with the same vacant expression.
“Sev—!”
The ogre's rage erupted. “OAAAAAH!”
The ogre raised its foot to stomp Duce into the ground.
Duce frantically rolled aside to evade the blow.
At that same moment, Sevha fired his bow, lodging an arrow below the ogre’s left breast.
The ogre looked at Sevha with annoyance, as if bothered by a tickle, and tried to move forward again.
“Duce! Draw its attention!”
“How in the—!”
With a sense of grim resignation, Duce brought his dual swords down on the ogre’s foot.
The ogre let out an irritated roar, the sting finally registering.
It began stomping wildly at Duce.
Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud!
Duce rolled and dodged with all his might, slashing at the ogre’s legs and feet as he moved.
While Duce held its attention, Sevha kept firing.
His arrows struck again and again, clustering around the first.
THUDTHUDTHUDTHUDTHUDTHUD…!
The ogre, its patience worn thin by its failure to crush Duce, finally unleashed a massive kick.
Duce barely dodged the blow, sinking his dual swords into the ogre’s instep.
He was flung into the air, following the arc of the kick. The swords were ripped from the ogre’s foot, and he began to fall.
As Duce plummeted toward the ground, arrows shot by Sevha whizzed perilously close to him.
They landed near the others already embedded in the ogre’s flesh.
The moment Duce hit the ground, the ogre raised the wyvern high.
Duce threw himself backward, and the wyvern carcass slammed down where he had been a second before.
“Get up, Duce!” Sevha cried.
Duce roared and scrambled to his feet.
An arrow from Sevha’s bow grazed Duce's face and buried itself below the ogre's left breast.
Dozens of arrows now bristled from that one spot, forming a large circle.
“Duce! Stop the ogre, just for a moment!”
Hearing Sevha’s shout, Duce wanted to scream that it was impossible.
But he knew he had to do it. He clenched his jaw, forcing the words down.
Then he recalled how he, a man with neither strength nor skill, might stop the ogre, if only for an instant.
An image of what the ogre had done earlier came to mind.
Just as he remembered, the ogre was upon him.
Duce let out a roar of his own.
He planted his feet and swung his dual swords from right to left.
The ogre blocked the attack and, to finish Duce once and for all, swung the wyvern in a wide arc from right to left.
And then,
“Well done, Duce.”
The wyvern carcass smashed through the wooden pillars on the right side of the stable. Another portion of the ceiling collapsed, burying the wyvern in debris.
The ogre froze.
“Kill it, Sevha.”
Sevha sprinted past Duce, leaped onto the debris pinning the wyvern, and vaulted into the air.
He kicked off the ogre’s forearm and jumped higher still.
Soaring before the ogre’s eyes, Sevha raised his legs high.
CRUNCH!
He fell, kicking down on the cluster of arrows embedded in the ogre's left breast. The force drove the shafts deeper, tearing the wound wide open before ripping them out all at once.
Just after Sevha’s feet touched the ground, a torrent of blood erupted from where the arrows had been.
The ogre saw Sevha through the gushing fountain of its own life.
Sevha wasn't even looking at it. He was walking toward Duce.
Thud.
The ogre’s head grew hazy. It dropped the wyvern and staggered.
Thud.
It tried to pursue Sevha, but its strength drained away, and it fell to its knees. From there, it pitched forward onto its face.
Thud.
With its last ounce of strength, the ogre lifted its head and saw Sevha and Duce raising a handaxe and dual swords.
“Oh.”
Before the ogre’s surprise could register, Sevha’s handaxe and Duce’s dual swords crushed its head.
CRASH!
As the ogre’s ruined head slammed into the ground, the entire stable shuddered.
“It’s about to collapse. Let’s go,” Sevha said.
“Agreed. And those children need tending to.”
Sevha and Duce took the two children who had been behind them and left the stable.
“There are few left! Hunt them all down!”
Outside, the Hunters of Anse, the Tusks, and the Blanc Knights were helping the Ornament Knights finish off the last of the monsters.
Duce felt a wave of relief seeing that the battle was almost over.
But the corpses strewn across the ranch were a stark reminder that it was too soon to feel safe.
“Sevha. We have to kill the dragon. Do you know how?”
“I do. But we don’t have enough soldiers. And I have no way of gathering more.”
“Do you think I do?”
“Yes, you do.”
Sevha looked at Duce with grave eyes and told him the real reason he had sought him out.
“Gather volunteer soldiers, Duce Barsh.”
Sevha had no talent for persuading the nobles from the Great Hunt, so he had turned to the commoners—the very people being attacked by the dragon and its horde.
But to them, he was only the Frenzied Blanc, a fearsome rumor. They had no reason to follow him over the established authority of Barsh or the other Four Knights.
That was why he needed Duce. A descendant of the Knight King could serve as the figurehead to rally them.
“Even a Hunchback Prince is still a prince?”
“Yes. With the name Barsh, you’ll be able to gather more commoners than I ever could.”
Sevha was right.
But Duce could not bring himself to nod. He knew exactly what Sevha’s proposal meant.
“Are you telling me… to send the innocent to their deaths?”
As Duce spoke, the stable finally collapsed. The sound drew the eyes of the refugees toward him and Sevha.
“You know what they are! You call them volunteer soldiers, but they’ll be nothing but meat shields!”
This was different from conscripting commoners to fight the Tusk invaders. There was no time to train. The enemy was far stronger.
It was a death sentence.
“We have no other choice,” Sevha uttered coldly.
Duce raised his voice, pointing at the refugees, “Do you think you can convince them with those words? Do you think they’ll listen to that and agree to die?”
The refugees, having overheard the conversation, realized the two men intended to make them fight the dragon.
Not wanting to die a dog’s death, they averted their eyes, lowered their heads, and pretended not to see.
But then, the two children Sevha and Duce had saved ran forward.
“I’ll do it. Because… I want to become a knight.”
“Me too.”
Duce couldn't bear the thought of the children being slaughtered.
He immediately roared, “Don’t be ridiculous! Fighting a dragon isn’t how you become a knight! It's how you die a dog’s death!”
The two children met his gaze, refusing to back down.
“Please, just…! What are you doing? Stop these children…!”
Duce started to yell at the refugees to intervene.
But when he saw them still looking away, their heads bowed, the words he wanted to say changed.
“What… are you doing? What have you been doing this entire time!”
Duce’s roar startled the refugees, and they looked up at him.
His face was twisted in terrible fury.
“You don’t save the children! You don’t stop them when they say they’ll die! Why in the world are you able-bodied people still sitting there?!”
He could not contain his rage at these people, who possessed the healthy bodies he had been denied his entire life yet did nothing but sit.
“A child and a hunchback are struggling to become knights, so why are you able-bodied cowards just sitting there?!”
As Duce’s fury raged on, one of the refugees spoke up cautiously.
“We can’t become knights…”
Duce’s reply rose beyond a shout, beyond a roar, beyond even a bellow.
“Anyone in this world can be a knight!”
His words were the exact opposite of the speeches Sevha had heard from Barsh.
“A knight is one who protects and serves!”
Duce stabbed his dual swords into the ground and straightened his stooped back as much as he could.
“A knight needs no steel armor, no warhorse, no lance! All that is needed…!”
And then Duce cried out the truth of the knight he had dreamed of his entire life.
“Is the will to protect and serve!”
A silence fell as Duce stood there with the face of a lion. The silence deepened, as if the last of the monsters had finally been slain.
Only then did Duce see it.
The refugees were trembling.
Trembling in fear of the lion-faced man roaring before them and in fear of the thought that they might have to fight a dragon.
Only then did Duce understand.
He knew what he had to say to them.
He knew what he, Duce Barsh, had to do.
“Yes. You must be afraid. I know fear can paralyze a man, yet I only blamed you.”
Duce had always played the fool on life’s stage. He spoke as if delivering a monologue.
“But people of Jershu, look at me. Look at this hideous body of mine. Despite the lack of an able body, I still dream of knighthood.”
He let the tension go from his back, hunching over once more as if pleading with them.
“You who are able-bodied can also dream of becoming knights!”
Behind Duce, the dawn broke over the ruins of the stable, and light surged forth.
“Carry chivalry in your hearts! Aspire to be the knights from the stories your parents told you! Use those dreams and that aspiration to overcome your fear! If you do that…!”
Duce wrenched his twin swords from the ground.
Dropping to his knees, he pressed his forehead to the earth.
“Then Duce Barsh swears this oath!”
Kneeling before the refugees, head bowed, he raised his blades in offering.
“I will defend knighthood, and live for its honor!”
It was the Oath of the First Knight King.
But it was a different oath.
An oath sworn not to a select few of knightly status but to all who held chivalry in their hearts.
“I will protect those who dream of protecting! I will serve those who devote themselves to service!”
It was the oath of Duce Barsh alone.
When his oath ended, silence returned.
Then he felt the warmth of a hand on his shoulder and heard Sevha's voice.
“Rise, Duce Barsh.”
Duce twisted his neck to look up.
The two children were kneeling on one knee as if for a knightly investiture, holding up their father’s sword, which they had entrusted to Duce.
And behind them…
“The investiture can’t proceed if everyone is kneeling,” said Sevha.
The refugees were also on one knee, their faces filled with resolve as they looked at Duce.
He understood what their actions meant.
So Duce placed their father’s sword back into the children’s waiting palms and stood. He raised one of his own swords toward the refugees.
His hunched back made him stumble, but Sevha’s firm grip on his shoulder steadied him.
Borrowing Sevha's strength, Duce raised the blade higher.
And he called the children and the refugees by a different name.
“My knights!”
Duce roared like a lion.
“The time has come! The time to roar back at the dragon and the tyrant! To roar at a Jershu ruled by might and arrogance! So roar!”
Let the judgment of justice begin.
Take your seats in the Hall of Just Judgment!