Dawn had only just begun to break.
Rhoen stood at the entrance to the camp, casually weighing a two-handed axe in his hand.
He had dug it out of the camp’s armory.
It was crude work from a blacksmith—the edge wasn’t particularly sharp, and the haft was wrapped in old blackened cloth.
The entire weapon radiated a brutally practical design.
Rhoen swung it through the air a few times with one hand, testing its balance.
It felt just right.
Leaning beside it was an oak shield, its rim reinforced with iron.
Several old sword and axe marks scarred its face.
He slipped it onto his left arm, gave it a couple of test lifts, and decided it would do.
Karl approached, leading a horse.
After glancing at Rhoen’s outfit, he hesitated.
“If you’ve got something to say, then say it,” Rhoen said.
“Your Highness…
you’re really going out like that?”
Rhoen looked down at himself.
No breastplate.
No mail.
Just a thick leather cuirass stripped from a bandit’s corpse.
It barely fit over his massive frame, and one of the seams under the arm had already split.
There simply wasn’t any armor in the camp that he could wear.
By the standards of this continent’s equipment, his build was simply too large.
“If it doesn’t fit, it doesn’t fit.” Rhoen shrugged helplessly.
“Let’s go.”
Karl said nothing more.
He mounted his horse while five cavalrymen and two archers stood ready behind him.
Everyone else remained in the camp to keep watch.
The horses’ hooves splashed through the muddy road as the party followed the river north from the southern side of the camp.
Mist rolled across the water, while wild grass along both banks rustled in the wind.
Rhoen rode in the center of the formation.
Even mounted on the largest warhorse in the camp—the one that had originally belonged to the bandit chief—his legs still nearly reached the ground.
Karl rode behind him, with the cavalry spread out on both flanks.
This was their first proactive reconnaissance of this unfamiliar land.
…
The river curved around a bend, revealing a shallow ford ahead.
Rhoen raised a hand, bringing the party to a halt.
His eyes remained fixed on the water.
Something was wrong.
Unnatural ripples spread across its surface.
“Your Highness?” Karl asked quietly.
Rhoen didn’t answer.
He raised his shield before his chest, held the axe across his body, and dismounted.
Two grayish-blue figures burst from the muddy shallows.
They were fast—faster than ordinary humans.
The instant they broke through the surface, Rhoen’s eyes had already gauged the distance.
Roughly nine and a half paces.
Thanks to Erwin’s introductory lessons on local knowledge, the Oxenfurt scholar specializing in the Conjunction of the Spheres had already given the soldiers a basic understanding of the creatures commonly found in Velen.
As a result, none of them panicked at the sight of the drowners.
Their bodies resembled emaciated humans, but their skin looked like bloated corpses that had soaked in water for weeks, stretched tightly over their skeletons so that the outlines of their ribs were plainly visible.
Sparse scales along their backs glistened with water.
The webbing between their fingers made their claws appear broader and blunter, like four rusted skinning knives.
Their stench reached them before their appearance truly registered—a sickening rot, like corpses left to bake on a battlefield for three days.
“Protect His Highness!”
Karl’s shout exploded from behind him.
All five cataphracts drew their swords almost simultaneously, the scrape of steel leaving its scabbard merging into a brief metallic hiss.
The three men in the front rank immediately stepped in front of Rhoen, lowering their sword points toward the drowners’ chests and bellies—a textbook anti-charge formation, executed with disciplined precision.
Karl dismounted even faster than his own men.
The moment his boots splashed into the mud, his longsword was already out of its scabbard as he prepared to rush forward.
Rhoen raised his left hand.
The gesture was unmistakable.
“Stand down.”
Karl stopped in his tracks, muddy water splashing against his greaves.
“Your Highness!”
“There’s no need.”
Rhoen’s voice remained calm.
He never looked back, his eyes fixed on the two drowners.
“We need information to judge the dangers we’ll be facing in the future.”
Karl opened his mouth, wanting to argue—about duty, about safety, about how a crown prince should never face monsters alone.
Rhoen merely turned his head and glanced at him.
Karl swallowed his words.
He stepped back and signaled his men to hold their positions.
The cavalry kept their swords drawn but advanced no farther, while the archers rested their fingers on their bowstrings, ready to fire at a moment’s notice.
The first drowner lunged.
Its attack was brutally straightforward.
There was no probing, no feint.
Its entire body leaped forward as it slashed diagonally with its right claw, aiming directly for Rhoen’s face.
Rhoen raised his shield to block.
The claw crashed against the shield’s surface, and the impact traveled straight up his arm.
His mind instinctively completed its assessment.
About thirty percent weaker than the bandit chief’s full-strength blow—but significantly faster.
From the moment it launched to the instant it struck, an untrained civilian would have had little chance of reacting.
Rhoen sidestepped the second swipe and held the axe across his chest, carefully observing the monster’s attack pattern.
The drowner attacked in a simple sequence: two slashes, then a bite.
Right claw.
Left claw.
Then it lowered its head to tear into its prey.
A fixed pattern, as though it had been hardwired into its instincts.
If the first two strikes connected, the chances of the third attack landing were extremely high.
The second drowner didn’t join the assault.
Instead, it circled to the side, lingering at the edge of Rhoen’s peripheral vision behind him.
Its eyes remained locked on the back of his neck as a low growl rumbled from its throat.
It had a brain.
It was waiting for its partner to create an opening.
The first drowner lunged again.
Leading with its right claw once more.
Something’s wrong.
Its left shoulder was lower than before.
It was already coiling its body for the follow-up bite.
Rhoen caught that subtle detail.
This time, instead of blocking with his shield, he drove it precisely into the hollow of the creature’s left shoulder.
The impact knocked the drowner back two steps, throwing it briefly off balance.
At that exact moment, the second drowner moved.
There was almost no warning.
No roar.
It exploded diagonally out of Rhoen’s rear flank, aiming straight for the back of his neck.
Karl’s hand was already raised.
His mouth opened, the command frozen in his throat.
The archers already had their arrowheads trained on the drowner’s skull.
Their bowstrings were drawn halfway, fingers ready to release—
“Don’t shoot!”
Rhoen’s voice rang out from the front.
Even as he shouted, his body was already moving.
Combat instincts had been carved into his bones.
Every threat triggered an almost unconscious prediction.
His right foot stepped back as he twisted his body.
His shield swept sideways, smashing into the drowner’s ribs and interrupting its attack.
Then he sprang upward onto the ball of his foot.
His knee nearly reached his chest, like a bowstring drawn to its limit, before his kick exploded into the drowner’s chest.
Power surged from his thigh into his foot, driving every ounce of force into the monster’s emaciated torso.
Crack!!
The drowner’s breastbone snapped as cleanly as a dry branch underfoot.
Its body crashed heavily into the shallows, muddy water spraying everywhere.
It struggled to prop itself up with its forelimbs, trying to stand, only to collapse again.
Its chest had visibly caved in, and every breath came out as a ragged wheeze, like air escaping a broken bellows.
Karl slowly lowered his hand.
The archers returned their arrows to their quivers.
“Again.”
Rhoen calmly turned to face the remaining drowner.
It showed no fear at its companion’s fall.
It simply didn’t possess that emotion.
With a savage screech, it lashed out with both claws at once.
Rhoen didn’t dodge.
Instead, he raised the heavy battle axe overhead.
Like a blacksmith bringing down a forging hammer, he smashed it down with all his strength.
The monster’s skull was hard.
Rhoen didn’t care.
If there was one thing he never lacked, it was strength.
Boom!
It sounded like a sledgehammer smashing apart a waterlogged hardwood plank—a deep, brutal crack.
The drowner’s head simply vanished.
Fragments of bone and blood erupted under the blow, bursting into a crimson mist that spread through the air.
The monster’s body collapsed like a sack of wet sand.
Rhoen remained where he stood, taking two slow breaths.
Not from exhaustion.
His stamina was so overwhelming that a fight of this level required virtually no recovery.
What he felt was merely the hollow sensation left behind as the adrenaline ebbed away.
Rhoen lowered his eyes to the axe blade.
“Faster than an ordinary human.
Fragile ribcage.
Possesses basic hunting intelligence.
Knows how to coordinate.”
He flicked the blood from the axe, mounted his horse in one smooth motion, and said, “Let’s keep moving.”
The party set off once more.
Behind them, in the shallow ford, the two drowner corpses slowly sank into the murky river.