It was an arrow with white feathers.
My mind froze. That very instant, there was a sudden noise. The twang of a bowstring! I raised my shield and deflected the arrow flying this way.
Arrows coming from the front are essentially points. It’s very difficult to knock them away with a spear. While shielding the most vulnerable areas of my body, I expanded my conjured light and looked in their direction.
At the end of my line of sight... frowning with a serious look on his face... was a silver-haired half-elf with an arrow nocked on the bow in his hand.
Behind him stood about ten more men in slightly dirty clothes, armed with basic clubs and spears. There was no doubt.
“Menel...”
Menel’s settlement? A disaster was going to befall him? I had to rush in and save him? How foolish had I been...
Menel—Meneldor wasn’t going to be a victim of the tragedy I’d witnessed.
He was the perpetrator.
My brain couldn’t keep up. Why was Menel... We’d shared laughs and smiles together, hadn’t we...?
“Go. Secure the village,” Menel ordered. “I’ll deal with him.”
The men behind him started to scatter.
“Wai—” I tried to move to stop them when another arrow flew my way. If I dodged it, its course would take it right into the two behind me. I deflected it with my shield.
“I said not to follow me... Seriously, brother...” Some kind of emotion flashed in Menel’s eyes, but it disappeared in an instant. “Die.”
The feat I saw in the next moment was incredible. He fired three arrows—aimed at my face, arm, and leg—in a single, fluid, uninterrupted motion.
My mind was still a muddle, but my body, trained by Blood, reacted to Menel’s amazing attack with precision. While using my shield to knock away the arrows coming at my arm and face, I pulled my leg back and turned my body sideways, dodging the final arrow.
“Ah... ah...” The wordless gasps of the two behind me began to turn into screams. They had finally started to understand the situation. “Everyone! Wake up! Wake up!”
“WE’RE UNDER ATTACK!! Bring weapons! Hide the women and children!”
“Tch!” The screams seeming to put him under pressure, Menel fired more arrows at me. Every one of them was brutally accurate. I was certain that if I hadn’t had a shield, I’d already have several arrows sprouting out of my body. And to think I’d considered not bringing it at all; as it turned out, this thing was saving my life.
As I advanced while keeping up my defense, Menel retreated, keeping the same distance between us.
If this was his ideal separation, then... I’d close that distance!
“Acceleratio!” An explosion of speed—
“‘Gnomes, gnomes, slip underfoot!’” Menel shouted at almost the same time. The ground suddenly wriggled all over, trying to take my legs out from under me.
In all likelihood this was Slip, a spell that made use of gnomes, the earth elementals. I was still accelerating; if my foot got caught, my momentum would likely cause a fracture.
I could see Menel grinning with satisfaction. He’d used that elemental power at the absolutely perfect moment, and I had no immediate strategy for dealing with this kind of thing. And since I had no strategy—
“SSEHHH—HNG!!” I slammed my foot down with all my strength. There was a thunderous noise. The ground shook powerfully, and the gnomes stopped their work as if frightened into stillness.
“What?!” Menel gaped at me. So did the men trying to attack the village. Even the men who had come out with weapons, intending to fight back, were staring at me with eyes wide open.
They were all evidently unaware—that if you got ripped, you could solve pretty much everything by force!
“Fig!” Menel backed off further, cursing.
After shooting arrows at me in quick succession, he slung his bow over his shoulder and started throwing knives at me. They came at me in an arc—maybe he had a special way of throwing them, or maybe the knives themselves had some trick to their design—curving towards me from the left and right. The ones that were safe to avoid, I dodged by turning my body; those that weren’t, I deflected with my shield. I pressed even closer. Shields really were convenient. I was glad I’d brought one.
Menel looked like he had finally resigned himself to face me. He held his hatchet ready to strike, and then—
“‘Salamander! Scorch him!’”
From behind, Fire Breath bellowed towards me out of the flames of the middle-aged man’s lantern. Without turning around, I stuck out my spear and thrust it into the flames, dispersing them.
I’d pretty much seen that coming.
“No way.” Menel looked stupefied.
His feint was positively straightforward compared to the god of undeath’s lack of scruples and the tricks Gus and Blood had pulled on me when they got serious.
As Menel stood there, I closed the distance.
“You’re feckin’ strong...” he said with a bitter smile on his face.
I rammed the handle of my spear into his solar plexus.
I heard the air being forced out of his lungs, and he fell to his knees. His diaphragm was spasming and he couldn’t control his breathing. He wouldn’t be able to move properly for a while. In the meantime, I incanted the Word of Web-making to restrain him.
I looked towards the village. There was no battle; everyone had just been watching our fight in amazement. I counted myself very lucky.
I decided to capture the rest of the raiders before anyone got hurt.
The outcome: nobody died.
After striking down Menel, I managed to neutralize the rest of his ten-strong band of raiders with relative ease by using the Words of Sleep and Paralysis. Somehow or another, a terrible raid had been avoided, and although there were a few people injured, I had no trouble healing them with my benediction.
Because of this, I received a great deal of thanks from the people of the village as “a passing kind-hearted holy warrior”—but by the time the sun had started to rise on the village square at its outskirts, my face was showing nothing but displeasure.
In the center of the square was something like a small shrine, where a pile of irregularly shaped stones had been stacked. It was a shrine dedicated to the good gods. I could imagine that it had been created by piling up stones that villagers had unearthed while cultivating the fields and didn’t know what else to do with. In that sense, it was probably also a monument to their agricultural efforts.
If the custom here was the same as what Gus had taught me, important discussions were often held before the gods in small settlements like this, sometimes while making oaths to them. Even in my previous world, there were many regions that held assemblies and important votes before their god. In this world, however, where the gods could exert their influence upon reality, this custom carried even greater significance.
At this very moment, in this square with its shrine, the men of the village were holding a debate concerning how to deal with the village’s assailants, who had been paralyzed and tied up.
“For the hundredth time—”
“Hang the ruddy buggers! End of discussion!”
“Listen to what I say to you!”
“First off—Hey! I said, first off—”
“They just suddenly came and attacked us!”
“Look, that ain’t what’s important here!”
What a mess. In fact, it looked like everyone was just shouting at each other.
This was awful.