Thud!
Thwack!
Bam!
A tragic sound echoed through the air.
Those watching from behind furrowed their brows, unable to carelessly lay their eyes on their king.
The overwhelming brutality of the battle continued unabated.
Guh!
Lord Raizer swung his sword desperately, attempting to create distance, but the fact that it was in a prison corridor played to his disadvantage.
There was no place to escape, and widening the gap wasn’t easy either.
Of course, even if it weren’t a prison, the overall state of the combat wouldn’t change much.
Before I knew it, my fist had struck Raizer’s jaw from below. He clenched his teeth and tried to hold on, but no matter how strong his jaw was, it couldn’t compare to the incoming fist.
Guh!
Eventually, for the first time, Raizer gasped and took a step back. He looked at me with disbelief in his eyes.
“There’s not enough words to describe your elusive movements. It’s as if…”
“It’s like time has stopped, right?”
“……”
He harbored suspicions but didn’t voice them. When I spoke the words he had kept buried, he bared his teeth and snorted.
“Are you seriously telling me that you can stop time?”
“You think there’s any other explanation, don’t you? Well, even if that’s not it, just ask the guards behind us, and you’ll find out easily.”
I was only stopping the Beast King in battle; the guards and his advisors would undoubtedly feel something strange about Raizer’s movements.
A beastman with antlers hurriedly approached and whispered, but perhaps because we were in a prison, his voice rang loud and clear.
“When that man started to move, the Beast King suddenly halted his movements. It was… truly as though time had stopped.”
“……!”
I thought I had already approached him, but did others only see him charging toward me?
Raizer placed a hand on his forehead, as if feeling dizzy. Perhaps because it was underground, his huge size made the air feel scarce.
‘……Hmm?’
Seeing him like that, my smug smile slowly faded. I felt something was off. When I had directly experienced time stopping, it was during my battle with the Priestess of Time at the royal palace.
After that, I hadn’t been affected by her powers as she had lost all her strength.
‘Thinking about it, something feels weird…’
It was the same when I stopped time while entering the beastmen’s city and tumbled the thugs waiting at the entrance.
Inside that frozen time, they all lost consciousness. Their awareness could be viewed as being in a state where time had stopped. It made sense, but…
‘But I wasn’t like that?’
When fighting the Priestess of Time, I remained fully aware even when time stopped. I clearly realized that I had halted and contemplated my next actions, looking for ways to respond.
This time, on the contrary, I began to feel confused.
What was going on?
The abilities that the Priestess of Time and I wielded were the same. Rather, I would say her prowess at present was far superior to mine.
However,
But what’s different?
Confusion began to escalate.
I was filled with doubts about the abilities I possessed, and a strong feeling grew that something was terribly wrong.
Yet, for now, I couldn’t grasp anything.
Graaah!
The Beast King rushed in with a roar. The fierce will behind him said that as the king sustaining a nation, he couldn’t possibly lose to a mere human.
I’ve said it multiple times.
The ability to halt time in close combat can be called absolute.
The mere fact that I could face that formidable Beast King with only my fists was evidence of that.
Thud! Thwack!
With that swinging stance, I drove my fist into Raizer’s abdomen once more. He spat out a mouthful and swayed unsteadily but managed to hold his ground.
Gah, ugh.
It was natural for the pain to be amplified since he was punched while charging in. Even thoroughly overwhelmed, Raizer didn’t falter in his resolve to wield his sword.
“I am the king of beastmen! Do you think I’ll kneel for something mere trickery!”
“……”
His spirit and momentum were excellent. No matter how many times I seemed to hit him, he looked like he wouldn’t bend his will and would keep charging forward.
“Alright.”
I drew the sword I had previously sheathed. I figured it was about time to start using my abilities, as limits were beginning to show.
Rather than suffering defeat from an overwhelming power I didn’t understand, I felt the necessity to directly land some straightforward power onto my own skin.
Taking a stance, I charged in first this time.
Boom!
The swords clashed.
For the first time, Raizer had his eyes on my movements and hesitated momentarily, but thinking of it as an opportunity, he exerted strength into the hand holding his sword.
“You wish to face me with swords, huh?”
The Beast King Raizer was strong.
There was a reason he sat on the throne among the beastmen who revered strength. When merely comparing combat prowess, he could certainly stand alongside Eris, the Guardian of Yggdrasil.
But these two were of different kinds.
Eris was, quite literally, a guardian.
She protected, while Raizer broke through.
Indeed, within the continent, these two were among the strongest. That is, if excluding the Forest of the Demon Realm.
Beep!
The swords cried out. In terms of strength, Raizer predicted his superiority and engaged in a head-on battle, but seeing me not faltering invoked his surprise.
Now that he understood my capabilities fully, he involuntarily gulped as the tension rose.
“If I had been an ordinary academy student, I might have struggled in this duel.”
Until now, I had only grown physically, and the sensibilities drilled into me by the Sherpas raised in the Forest of the Demon Realm had stagnated.
If I had fought Raizer in that state, I wouldn’t have lost, but I would have struggled.
However, recalling the beings I faced before stepping into the land of beastmen, Raizer actually felt easier than those.
The archmage with a staggering obsession and desire for strength, Tyrant Sharcarl.
The zealot who wouldn’t die even if he were killed, the Priestess of Time.
And Kurika, celebrated till now as the first king of beastmen, revered as the Overlord of the Forest of the Demon Realm.
By now, my senses had honed to a sharpness comparable to my time as a Sherpa.
Crash! Crash! Crash!
The heavy swords continued on. Raizer twisted and turned his body, doing everything he could to find even a slight opening.
But ultimately, my sword pierced through the prideful majesty of the Beast King.
Guh!
Thud.
“Y-Your Majesty!”
“It’s no good!”
In this land, the heaviest being staggered back and ultimately fell. Everyone who saw his form knew how much significance it held.
“So? Are you starting to feel like recognizing it now?”
A king of a nation, defeated by a boy merely attending an academy.
*
Outside the palace, Kurika and Sen waited on the building’s rooftop, munching on skewers.
At first, they were in a tense state, ready to rush out at a moment’s notice, but as time passed, they decided to regain strength and bought some skewers from a nearby stall.
“Hmm, isn’t the meat tough?”
“A little. But it’s delicious.”
“Probably because they prepared it to match the teeth of beastmen.”
While talking, Kurika pulled scissors from his bag. It was a considerate gesture to recommend cutting it into pieces if it was too tough to eat.
As Sen took the scissors and snipped the meat, she slyly asked him, “Was he really the king?”
Ahem.
Although it wasn’t something he particularly wanted to discuss, seeing Sen looking at him with sparkling eyes made Kurika exhale a sigh. It felt reminiscent of a grandfather sharing tales with his granddaughter.
“At the time, I had no intention of establishing a kingdom. Beastmen had a much stronger tendency to act individually compared to other races, and it was just a matter of uniting them.”
“Ah, I learned this at the academy. In the past, beastmen were treated no differently than magical beasts, and Emperor Calios united the races to save the beastmen. The concept of beastmen was created during that time, right?”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
Sen recalled that Kurika, who was right next to her, was nothing less than the savior of the entire beastman race.
“Wow, it’s the person from the textbook I read!”
“Humans teach their history of beastmen too?”
“Around that level, yeah.”
There was a vague feeling about learning his past from a faraway land, not even being a beastman.
“But why did you leave?”
“Straightforward, huh?”
Kurika glanced at Sen. She had a small frame, pure white hair, and the visible marks of having had drugs injected into her wrists and neck.
On the surface, she looked like a beautiful girl, like a lily, but Kurika, having lived through many years, recognized that she harbored many wounds deep within.
Feeling an inexplicable sorrow, he slowly opened his mouth.
“I performed many deeds for the beastmen. Not only protecting them or defeating their enemies but also contributing to changing policies and societal views on beastmen.”
In fact, even the textbook at the academy dismissed the entire golden era of beastmen as the reign of Emperor Calios.
The subsequent kings and the Current King Raizer were deemed excellent kings, but none could emerge from Calios’s shadow.
With a subtle smile, Kurika continued, “I was ready to sacrifice my whole being for them, yet they thought differently.”
“Excuse me?”
“They displayed a willingness to sacrifice everything for me. Believing I would fulfill their wishes.”
It was bittersweet.
He had fought to protect those who had been unjustly oppressed and offered them a proper life.
But as it turned out, once the beastmen began to live stable lives under rules and protection, they wanted to take a step further.
Revenge.
The sight of them dedicating everything to the emperor, solely desiring revenge, seemed not so different upon reflection from when the Priestess of Time burned everything to serve the Goddess.
“If I were present, the beastmen would have raised their voices, declaring to conquer the continent forever. That’s why I left them.”
“……”
Thus, worries bound to the past began to resurface one by one, but they couldn’t continue.
Kurika’s ears perked up.
As he subtly turned his gaze toward the city’s outskirts, he spotted an army holding weapons approaching from beyond the horizon.
