I wouldn’t hit the front guard by mistake.
I was just repeating the same words and the same characters in a routine fashion, so there was no delay or hesitation between each one. On the contrary, the more I repeated this, the faster I became.
Several arrows hit in succession. The hydra’s remaining heads screeched loudly in anger. One of the outside heads swept towards the three at the front like a whip, trying to knock them away. It was Ghelreis that braced for it with his large shield. With his short yet sturdy, barrel-like body, he held the shield at an angle. Viewed from the side, his body and the shield formed a shape like an upside-down letter “y.”
Sparks scattered everywhere as the hydra’s sharp, hard scales scraped across the huge shield. Ghelreis wasn’t blocking it; he was deflecting it upwards. The other two crouched down behind him, and the hydra’s swipe sliced through air.
Ghelreis roared. A powerful strike from his mace slammed into the hydra’s open body. Hydras had a strong ability to regenerate, but their internal organs couldn’t handle powerful impacts. The hydra recoiled, and attempted to fight back with several of its heads, but Ghelreis refused to move from the spot, as if he were rooted to the earth. In addition to his dwarven physique, his Sword-smasher armor set probably had some kind of magical effect to help him hold his ground.
“Now, young master!”
“Right!”
As the hydra’s attention was on Ghelreis, Al charged forward. He held his halberd of immense strength behind him, then swung it diagonally upwards, crashing it into one of the hydra’s heads. There was a sickeningly loud sound of shattering bone and scattering flesh. The result was less a slash wound and more a violent rupture. The head bent dramatically backwards, half-torn off.
Al yelled out as he pulled the long handle of his weapon back towards him and unleashed another strike. This time, the head was torn away completely.
Unlike Reystov’s clean severing, the cross section left by Al’s attack was a mess, as if a giant had used all his strength to rip the hydra’s head away from its body.
While feeling a little disturbed, I cast another fire arrow. I heard a sigh behind me from Menel. “Well, looks like I’m not gonna be needed anymore,” he grumbled. “Whatever. Didn’t want to waste arrows anyway.”
It was already clear which side had the edge.
While protecting Al from the hydra’s attacks, Ghelreis dealt steady blows to the hydra to make things harder for it and weaken it a little. Al secured a position where he was well protected by Ghelreis and could afford to take large swings.
He sent another of the hydra’s heads flying. And whenever there was a spare moment, there was a brilliant flash from Reystov’s sword out of nowhere.
Reystov was so good at hopping in and out of range that I kind of wanted to watch and learn. As for me, my only job was to watch them and repeatedly shoot guided fire arrows.
“Hey, you alright?” Menel was giving encouragement to the elf, who seemed to have been wounded, as he kept watch over the area. It looked as if he was just kicking back while the rest of us fought, but deliberately not getting involved with the fight and keeping a look out was an important job in itself.
In a pressing situation like battle, it’s only natural to want to join in and help if you have the ability, but if too many people get involved at once, it increases the risk of friendly fire and collateral damage. It’s an valuable decision to choose to stand by so that your allies don’t have to be concerned about additional enemies joining the fray and can concentrate on the battle before them. I wanted to believe that nothing would be crazy enough to jump into the middle of a hydra battle, but this was a dark region where people had never ventured. There was no way of knowing what might be lurking here.
“Sagitta Flammeum! ” The three at the front continued to deal severe blows to the hydra, and each time, I delivered a flaming arrow to the wound site to increase the damage.
It wasn’t long after that that all the hydra’s heads were severed. It sank into the bog without even giving up a final scream.
“D-Did we kill it?!”
“Remain on your guard. Hydra venom is so deadly that even most miracles cannot cure it.”
“Yeah. Snakes like this can struggle wildly even after all the heads are cut off sometimes.”
“E-Even once all the heads are cut off?”
“Yeah. Won’t help anyone to let it spite you just before it dies.”
After checking that the three at the front were on their guard, I turned to look at what was going on behind me. “Menel.”
“Will, need you right now. She’s bitten!”
I hurriedly ran through the bog over to them and had a look at the elf Menel was holding in his arms. Her frayed blonde hair was covered in mud, and her violet eyes were hazed over and unfocused. Although she was wearing plain travelers’ clothing that was covered in mud, she was clearly very beautiful. She had a well-defined nose bridge and slender jaw line, and looked to me like the perfect example of a female elf in every aspect. If we’d met under normal circumstances, I might have been a little stunned. If she wasn’t twitching and drooling from deadly poison like she was right now!
“Stay with me!” No wonder Menel hadn’t let her out of his arms! No wonder he hadn’t been fighting! Panicking, I started to pray for the Miracle of Antidote.
“There’s… no hope…” The elf extended a quivering hand to stop me. “It’s hydra… poison…”
I grumbled. This wasn’t good. Not just the Miracle of Antidote, but any prayer with the power to heal could fail to have an effect if the target rejected it.
That was because the good gods didn’t want their healing to be used for torture or extending life when it wasn’t desired. There were many ways for an inventive person to put the ability to cure poison or heal wounds to evil use.
It had to be difficult for her to even speak right now, yet she still turned down treatment, preferring to die without fruitless attempts to cling onto life. Elves really were dignified.
As I was wondering how I could convince her, Menel took her hand and lowered it. “Don’t speak.”
“No… You must… North… village of… others…”
“Ugh! Dammit, accept the treatment, wood-kin!”
“Wood…kin…?” The elf’s eyes, which were starting to lose their focus, opened wide and took in Menel. She met the direct gaze of his jade eyes.
“This is no ordinary priest,” he said. “Friend of the forest, you will survive.
Accept this miracle.” His tone was final. “Pray.”
The elf was barely conscious now, but as Menel spoke those words to her while holding her hand, I was certain, although it was very slight, that I saw her nod her head.
And so, I offered a prayer to my god.
God, if you may, please heal this noble elf.
The prayer became a miracle, and the miracle became a faint light that shone down upon her body. Very soon after, the unconscious elven woman’s breathing slowly started returning to normal.
Chapter 2
We made sure that the hydra was definitely dead and that the female elf had been healed. Then I handed my gear to Al, pulled the elf’s arms up, crouched down, and lifted her over my shoulders. It was like the fireman’s carry that firemen and lifeguards in my previous world used for transporting people in need of rescue. It made a person easy to lift and fast to move around with.
We had to move immediately. We’d fought a rowdy battle and gotten blood everywhere. Already we could hear the raspy screeching of monstrous birds circling the cloudy sky overhead in search of carrion. If we didn’t leave this place as soon as possible, we were guaranteed to encounter new enemies drawn here by the smell of blood.