Ghouls.
Monsters that wear the shape of a rotted, festering human and crave the blood of the living.
I was tied to those bastards by a tiresome, cursed history.
It was when I was passing through a certain gorge.
In that unusually dark and dry space, Plibentorinus I let out a pitiful cry.
I lit a campfire, and Plibentorinus I lay down contentedly.
That was the losing move.
Drawn by the warmth and the light, those bastards gathered in from every direction.
Kill one and two more climbed over the corpse; cut down two and ten came charging.
It was as though a scene of hell had been set down in reality.
While his flesh was torn away, the one thing Plibentorinus I could do was let out a scream that burst up from the depths of his soul.
I too had a hard time against their overwhelming numbers.
Before hundreds, thousands of ghouls, the Undying was nothing more than ideal prey to solve a food shortage.
In the end I killed them all and made it out of the gorge, but for those few days I could not tell where my own limbs were attached.
Judging from that experience, I learned a few new facts.
Ghouls like dark, dry places.
Ghouls are drawn to light.
If you have noticed these facts, it is already too late.
"Kallen."
"Y-yes?"
"Get on Formel. Hurry."
"What about the baggage we unpacked?"
Formel, too, seemed to sense that something out of the ordinary was happening; his spines stood fully on end.
"If that blanket is worth more than your life, then take it."
Kallen went white, took the hand I held out, and climbed onto Formel.
The cries the bastards let out had already filled the forest.
An unpleasant sound like scraping iron, coming from torn vocal cords.
Formel began to run.
The campfire's heat fled in an instant, and all I could feel was the chill settled over the forest and a scant few sounds.
The sound of dry earth underfoot, the sound of Kallen drawing frantic breaths, and the cries that froze the whole body.
No. That was not right.
There was one more.
———THUD-THUD-THUD-THUD!
The footfalls of a ghoul running alongside us with ferocious force.
"Gah!"
Kallen spotted the thing that kept vanishing and reappearing beyond the huge ancient trees, and sucked in a breath.
The ghoul twisted its whole body grotesquely and yet ran like a person.
It was a sight at which a faint-hearted man might not merely have fainted but died outright.
- SHRIEEEEEK!
The bastard cried out.
There was clear meaning in that cry. A shout of primal instinct: to tear flesh and to suck blood.
Was that a signal?
The more ancient trees we passed, the more shadows appeared beyond them.
We were running through the middle of a sea made of flesh.
Once you are caught in their grip, it makes no difference whether you are the Undying or a descendant of dragons.
Impartial malice.
Ghouls hate everything that lives.
Their explosive speed was at an astonishing level.
Soon some of them caught up to Formel and lunged in from the flank.
I twisted at the waist and swung my sword with all my strength.
———SHUNK!
The ghoul, cut in half, spun away scattering murky blood.
Sticky fluid soaked my whole body.
- KRAAAAAA!
Formel roared long and chewed whole the ones leaping in from the front.
He couldn't bring himself to swallow them, spitting them out and drooling, so they must have tasted truly awful.
Several hours of pushing through waves of flesh, Formel taking the front and I the left and right.
By the time the rotten stench no longer bothered me.
"Sir knight!"
Kallen's shout snapped me back to my senses.
I had been cutting them down mechanically, my thoughts stopped as well.
"The ones chasing us have thinned out."
As Kallen said, the ghouls sprinting alongside us had grown sparse.
Now that I looked, the surroundings seemed to have changed from a moment ago as well.
What had changed was not the sight of the dark forest but the smell.
Until a moment ago it had reeked of rotting corpses; now it was closer to the smell of blood.
'Is there some territory here?'
They caught the smell of blood, and promptly gave us up.
Which meant the disadvantage of setting foot in this place outweighed the gain of tearing us apart.
'Avoiding the smell of blood? Ghouls?'
Was it not as absurd as a beast avoiding raw meat?
There was definitely something here.
But I didn't know what.
'Formel. Raise your speed.'
Then we get out of here as fast as possible.
Fast enough that there would be no need to find out what that something was.
———BOOM!
The sound of Formel's massive body striking the ground rang through the forest.
The ghoul cries that had continued here and there could no longer be heard.
Formel let out a hot breath.
He had already been moving quite fast, so this seemed to be his limit even when he pushed harder.
"Sir knight, there are corpses."
Bodies sprawled here and there came into my rapidly passing field of view.
All of them were ghouls'.
"Not a single beast."
Only then did I realize what about the primeval forest had felt so alien.
There was not a single fallen fruit on the ground, so there were no small beasts; there were no animal carcasses, so there was no nourishment for the trees to grow.
In short, every ancient tree here was already dead.
Why had I not noticed sooner?
A forest that should always be humid from transpiration was abnormally dry, and cool as well.
This forest was a dead forest.
It was a cursed land where everything, moving and unmoving alike, had lost the vitality of life long ago.
"Sir knight, do ghouls ever bite into other ghouls?"
"Why do you ask?"
"If there's no food chain, then how on earth did these corpses come about?"
Kallen's observation contained a valid problem.
The presence of corpses meant there was something that had made them corpses.
What, exactly?
In this land of death with neither prey nor predator, just what sort of existence had turned moving corpses into unmoving ones?
The question was answered before long.
Because a ghoul violent enough to look as though it could tear Formel apart barehanded came charging with a monstrous scream.
Formel used an ancient tree ahead as a foothold and changed direction as though rebounding off it.
With a CRACK—, the ancient tree snapped from the recoil.
"Wh-what, what is that thing?!"
"I don't know either!"
Can that truly be called a ghoul?
A rotted, festering giant of a height close to the ancient trees.
If an ordinary ghoul took the shape of a human, that thing had the shape of a troll.
What is that?
No, what is a ghoul?
We define a ghoul as 'the corpse of a creature revived by an incomprehensible power.'
It is only that such corpses are overwhelmingly human, so the human form became the byword for a ghoul.
I had never once heard that a troll could become a ghoul.
But was the reverse not the same?
"This is no ordinary matter."
There was nothing I could know right now.
But this much was certain.
If it was something I, having lived for centuries, was meeting for the first time, then it was by no means ordinary.
"Kallen. How large is this primeval forest?"
"Well, we'd have to run a full day."
Since Formel's stamina had to be considered, escaping by running was not an option I could choose.
And judging by the way it ran, the bastard did not look likely to tire and fall away.
'I have to make a decision.'
If we clashed with it, I might be fine, but there was no telling what would become of Kallen and Formel.
"Kallen, do you see that large ancient tree over there?"
"Ah, yes. I see it."
"I'm going to bring Formel to a stop near it. The instant I do, run back the way we came. Don't look back."
Formel's true worth lay not in his hard scales or his powerful bite, but in the strength of his legs.
No matter how fast he was moving, he could stop and accelerate at will.
I intended to use that to put Kallen as far from here as possible.
The troll ghoul swept a hand as though swatting a fly, and Formel twisted his body and evaded it.
- KRAAAAA!
Formel kicked powerfully off the ground.
At the same time the ghoul, too, hurled itself forward with a monstrous scream.
'Now.'
Formel drove all four feet into the ground.
The dirt surged up high and a hazy dust scattered.
From top speed to a full stop, Formel skidded a mere five meters or so.
The ghoul, by contrast, was flung onward and slammed into an ancient tree.
———CRASH!
Unable to bear the bastard's weight, the ancient tree shattered noisily.
Even then its speed had not fully bled off, and it flew a long way forward.
Without taking my eyes off the collapsing tree, I climbed down from Formel.
Kallen was already running off behind us.
"Formel."
Formel glared at the place the ghoul had vanished, red light flashing in his eyes.
Perhaps because the air was cool, Formel's breath was unusually white.
"I'm counting on you."
A monstrous scream that scraped at the soul reached me.
Beyond the wreckage of the ancient tree, a dim shape raised itself.
The bastard's figure, cutting through the dark and searing itself into my eyes, was like a reaper of death.
But.
How trifling a thing is death to the Undying?
And so the bastard's grotesque shriek could not touch my soul.
Formel, too, let out a low, long cry.
It was a sound that did not fall short of the ghoul's scream ringing through the forest.
With that as the mark, Formel bolted.
Leg strength that could stop in an instant.
That meant leg strength that could accelerate in an instant.
At a speed even I would have struggled to react to, Formel collided with the ghoul.
The ghoul's massive body staggered.
Formel did not miss the chance and bit into the ghoul's waist.
The ghoul flailed both arms in resistance, but Formel, teeth sunk in, clung on doggedly.
Watching it, I slipped in between the braced Formel and the thrashing ghoul.
At the same time I drove my sword into the heel of its right foot.
As I carved at it like butchering meat, an enormous chunk of flesh came away whole.
Merely cutting away flesh could not bring the bastard to its knees.
'......I hope the Order's gauntlets are of fine make.'
So I would shatter the bone.
I turned the longsword upside down and gripped the flat of the blade with both hands.
Then, as though hammering, I struck the fully exposed bone with the longsword's crossguard.
With a CRACK—, a clear fissure ran through its bone.
I repeated it again and again.
Blood seeped from both my hands, but the crack in its bone widened just as much.
At last the right leg, unable to bear its weight, gave way.
The ghoul began toppling backward with a shriek.
"Formel!"
Formel, who had been waiting, quickly took me lightly in his jaws and sprang clear.
Inside Formel's mouth was the foul smell of corpses.
———BOOM!
The ghoul went fully down.
An ancient tree caught by its thrashing snapped under a blind punch.
It couldn't easily rise now.
It might sound like a grievous, fatal wound, but I had only just disabled one leg.
The ghoul was still exercising impartial, overwhelming violence on everything within reach of both arms.
'Alone, I'd have had a considerably harder time.'
Formel, part of his scales torn away, pushed his head toward me.
Avoiding his wounds, I scratched his head carefully.
- GRRK
"Formel, let's go."
Formel did not answer.
He only blinked his big red eyes.