Darkness induces tension.
When a field of view is hard to secure, the body stiffens naturally.
Things you would not normally be conscious of are taken in more keenly.
Step by step, it accumulates as fatigue.
And these were men who had joined the subjugation since morning and taken no proper rest.
They were men who had beaten back brutal training as apprentice knights of the Blante clan, so they followed Ethan without a sound of complaint, and it was a forced march all the same.
Rough ground, a dark field of view, and above all the fact that they were going to find a Black Ogre made them tense as it was possible to be.
Ethan, by contrast, walked with a light step.
— The distance to the thing is short now. The bad news is...... it is not asleep. Have you a plan?
"Yes. I have a plan. Though there is something to test first."
Ethan looked behind him.
The subjugation party's faces were complicated.
Zeal, excitement, tension, resentment, doubt.
They were following Ethan with expressions in every shade.
A chance at raising their station, and high honor.
Both things hard for men carrying a swollen dream of knighthood to let pass.
And even so, the doubt and the resentment and the worry in one corner of their chests crept up.
Ethan's standing was exactly that much.
Deceived into following by the sweet fruit in front of them, and awkwardly short of certainty.
Because Ethan was not a Master, nor a strong candidate for heir.
The feeling was: is it all right to trust a man who was an irredeemable wastrel until very recently?
It was not that Ethan failed to understand it, and he had no particular wish to resolve it before moving on either.
He had achieved his set objective in coming here, in any case.
The Dead Tree.
Standing he could frankly do without.
He was going to the Academy regardless.
There were ways to come into windfalls here too, and the best of them was to tear them off from beside the protagonist.
'That's the surest method. And in the end he's the one I have to face.'
Ethan knew about the mastermind who appears throughout the novel.
To hold and shake the whole board, you have to get into the middle of the board.
The Black Ogre was only a footing stone laid for that.
'And I've no intention of trailing the protagonist.'
The title the protagonist earned before coming to the Academy was 'Ogre Slayer'.
Various names followed as time went on, and even the one earned early was enough to draw attention.
Ethan, by contrast, was a greedy pig and an irredeemable wastrel once you set aside the name Blante.
Positions in contrast on every count.
Which is why he had become the offering who envied the protagonist, obstructed him, and made him stand out all the more.
But this time it was reversed.
'I go first.'
He had no intention of taking on every nuisance along with it, and no intention of staking his neck on fame.
But he had no intention of settling for an extra either.
Ryu Tae-sin had always been the lead, and the champion.
Wealth and glory.
He had not lived for them, and he had no intention of letting them slip either.
'I'm not taking the ones who doubt me.'
Ethan looked at the apprentice knights following behind him.
***
"It really has vanished?"
"Yes. You need not worry. The odds of them earning any merit in this subjugation are extremely sli......"
"Be quiet a moment."
Karon screwed up his face and stared into the burning firewood.
If what he had just been told was all of it, Ethan had certainly made a mistake.
Karon was young and emotional, and he was not merely stupid.
Going out on hunts from a young age, he knew the mountain range to some degree.
'It's true that the side Ethan went isn't where monsters turn up.'
The regular subjugation was an annual standing event held just before a monster wave, to control numbers in advance.
Which naturally meant the force moved mainly through the dense areas where monsters appeared in numbers.
Karon had been at the head of the subjugation force.
He had volunteered for it himself, to work off the stress and the anger he had taken on.
He had met nothing but humiliation lately, and Karon's talent was real.
To release the resentment piled up in him, Karon swung his sword like a madman.
It was a sight steeped in frenzy enough to frighten the other soldiers.
His anger had certainly worked itself out, and even so one corner of his chest sat heavy.
'Is that really all there is to it?'
Ethan had changed, and nobody knew that better than Karon.
He thought one must not relax or look down on him.
But looking at how things were going, everyone was dismissing Ethan and sneering at him.
'It's so frustrating I could lose my mind.'
Something was catching at him and there was no particular evidence for it.
He had nothing but a hunch.
Every circumstance said Ethan had blundered and misjudged.
So why was his chest this heavy?
'Just imagining it?'
If Ethan's standing shrank again over this business, it was a good thing for Karon.
Crrrk.
Karon's leg jittered.
The day had closed, and the mountain at night was dangerous.
Chasing Ethan's party now was out of the question.
"We sleep for now."
They had been killing monsters all day, so of course the fatigue had built up.
His body was heavy as water-soaked cotton. One side of his heart was heavy too, and in the present situation doing anything about it was difficult.
***
Ethan's stride stopped.
Naturally, the party members following behind him stopped too.
'It's just up ahead.'
He felt a fierce presence.
A savage feral nature, an overwhelming presence.
It felt as though the gamy stink reached even this far.
Ethan found the sensation familiar somehow.
'Because of Hugo?'
When the man had turned werewolf there had been a gamy stink like this.
Ethan looked at Hugo.
Hugo's expression was rigid, and the tension was plain in every part of him.
His breath quickened and his pupils widened.
'He knows it instinctively, by the look of it.'
The arrival of a threatening predator.
Ethan put a smile at his mouth.
"It's up ahead, isn't it?"
Ethan asked it in a voice small enough for only Pheon to hear.
— Yes...... it is up ahead. By the look of its state, it is not in a good mood. An outsider has come into its ground.
That did not mean Ethan's party alone.
The regular subjugation.
The distance was fairly far, and there was no chance something of a Black Ogre's grade had failed to notice.
Of course it would be irritated and under strain.
But the Black Ogre was clever.
It could not carelessly attack an army of humans, and one with strong men posted here and there in it at that.
Because it would know that attacking meant being hunted itself.
And in that foul mood, humans had come near the territory it held.
That the Black Ogre did not welcome it was only natural.
Ethan looked behind him.
Nade's eyes narrowed.
'He has noticed, of course.'
Nade was watching Ethan from one step away.
It was the expression of a man saying he would watch what came next. Ethan looked at him, snorted a laugh, and rolled his head.
'Watch closely.'
Because this time too he was going to surprise him.
***
Grrrr.
A sound of thunder.
That was what they thought.
In darkness, sound is quick on its feet.
Rough breathing stopped.
The party members could tell without seeing.
Ah, so this is an Ogre.
A Black Ogre, at that.
Only now did it begin to feel real.
An opponent on a different plane from the small fry they had met so far.
A true monster.
The monster among monsters.
The apex predator.
Members with weaker nerve began to shake at the legs.
Even clenching their teeth and fighting to keep hold of reason, legs shaking like aspen leaves would not easily obey.
It was a fear carved into the instincts.
Run.
Get as far from that thing as possible.
A deer meeting a lion runs.
Because that is the order of nature and the obvious way of it.
They felt fear.
This was not a matter to be settled by strength of mind.
It was the first time in their lives any of them had met killing intent this suffocating.
'We are hunting this?'
Impossible.
It could not be done in the first place.
This was a thing you needed a Master, at minimum, to handle.
"W-we have to run."
One party member whose mind was breaking spoke up.
"Th-this is insane."
"I-I'm going too."
A few turned their backs.
'Stupid bastards.'
Gato spat a curse inwardly.
The day was dark and the road was rough.
Scatter here and survival could not be guaranteed.
Having come this far, sink or swim, they had to bunch and fight.
Lose here and it was annihilation anyway.
Because it was a question of living or dying, a convenient assumption like running was of no use whatsoever.
'But I cannot feel any odds.'
Gato set his teeth.
It was a presence overwhelming enough to make breathing hard. He could not bring himself to think they could win.
But Ethan and Hugo were different.
Steam seemed to be coming off Hugo's body.
He had already settled into a combat posture, fur standing up and pupils narrowed.
He was in a state to enter a fight at any instant.
Ethan, by contrast, was as calm as ever.
He seemed to feel nothing like fear. There was even a small smile hung at his mouth.
'Madmen.'
Gato closed his fist.
He was an elite with a promising future.
And what in the world was he doing now.
He was worse than the wastrel young master, worse than a mere servant.
The fact made him feel as foul as it was possible to feel.
Gato drew the sword at his waist.
His comrades around him looked at him.
It was dark, and only his comrades' eyes were visible.
Their eyes were full of fright.
He could hear what they were saying without a word.
'Have you lost your mind?'
Yes. He had.
Gato stepped forward.
Only now did he come to stand level with Ethan and Hugo.
— There is one more usable fellow.
Pheon looked at Gato with an expression of mild surprise.
Ethan snorted a laugh and thought to himself.
'My thoughts exactly.'
It was time to begin the hunt in earnest.
***
GRRRNG!
The Black Ogre was in a very poor humor.
He had been alone from the moment he was born.
But he felt no loneliness.
Because he knew his own strength.
Everything around him was nothing but his prey and his toys.
This mountain range was a territory that was as good as his playground.
Sleep when sleepy, eat when hungry.
These simple acts were only natural to him.
There was no hesitation in the Black Ogre's conduct, and no reservation.
And then recently, uninvited guests had come.
The Black Ogre had naturally moved to kill the things that trespassed into his territory, and their numbers were not small.
And they were strong.
The number of strong humans was not large, and the Black Ogre could tell.
Do not be seen.
Having judged so, he had hidden himself in the deep places of the mountain.
It was a sensation he had never felt.
That he, always the predator, should go to ground.
The Black Ogre's humor was irritated by the fact.
And then, again.
Humans had come all the way to where he was.
Things not worth a mouthful.
Fury rose. He wanted to beat them to a pulp then and there.
Grrrk.
He caught a smell.
One was the gamy stink of a beast, and one was a threatening smell.
But the smell of the strong one carried this time was very faint.
The smell was faint because Nade was concealing his presence as far as he could, and the Black Ogre had no way of knowing that.
The Black Ogre rose.
Dense trees stood around him, and set against the Black Ogre's bulk they looked slight.
The Black Ogre cast his gaze out.
Darkness was no obstacle.
The place where the insolent prey stood came into view at a glance.