“You little brat!!”
Batil, his face dyed a dark black with rage, swung his axe down. I parried the flat of the blade with a knife-handed strike, using it as a fulcrum to spin my body around—turning my evasion into an attack.
“Guoh!?”
I struck Batil’s flank with my elbow, right beside him.
Batil, taken aback by my sudden counterattack, immediately launched a kick.
I blocked it with my right leg, and with my left leg barely touching the ground, I slid like a flowing stream, striking Batil’s jaw with a palm strike.
“Bugyo!”
Stopping my sliding foot, I closed the distance with a single step, my palm strike digging into Batil’s side.
Batil’s face, which had been recoiling in shock, contorted in astonishment as my palm struck his side. I deflected the sweeping blade he desperately swung with an upward motion, striking his heart area with my elbow.
I wasn’t sure if the small blade I held could pierce Batil’s tough muscles and reach his internal organs. That’s why I used palm strikes to directly inflict internal damage.
“Ugaaaaaaaah!!”
Batil, ignoring the attacks he was receiving, simultaneously slammed down the axes he held in both hands.
I deflected the axes to the left and right, using my Black Dagger and Knife, and then drove my knee into Batil’s nose as he charged in, sending him flying.
Damage accumulated inside Batil. In just a few seconds of exchanging blows, the fatigue that had been building up in Batil, who had so much stamina, erupted, and he could only manage attacks that could be parried with a blade.
But his eyes weren’t dead yet. I could tell that Batil’s fighting spirit hadn’t waned, even though he was losing his composure in anger, so I readied my blade to whittle him down further.
But at that moment—
“That’s enough, both of you!!”
An old man’s voice echoed across the desert, and before I knew it, a dozen or so new beastmen had appeared at the edge of the battlefield.
Most of the beastmen were Rank 3 or lower, but I could sense a combat power of nearly 1000 from the two beastmen flanking the small old man in the center.
The wolf-like old man, whose eyes and mouth were covered in pure white fur, glared at me, then shifted his gaze to Batil, who was panting with his face contorted.
“Elder…”
“Batil… you’ve been acting quite arbitrarily. If you were acting on a request, that would be one thing, but killing people on your own is troublesome. Don’t lay a hand on that girl.”
“What are you saying, Elder?!”
“That one has already caught the eye of Jilgun. That’s not the only reason, but she’s a troublesome one to mess with.”
“…”
I observed them warily, still holding my weapons.
The beastmen’s elder? Jilgun, the Rank 4 old dwarf from the Adventurer’s Guild? What does this old man know?
“I don’t care about that! My pack was killed! I can’t just let her go back alive!!”
“…Even if it means leaving the Munza Society’s ‘pack’?”
“–Of course!!”
He would even give up his position for the sake of his pride and honor.
The pack must be important to beastmen. Batil’s expression changed for a moment when he was told that he would be banished from the massive pack if he continued, but the face he turned to me, his pride winning out, was somehow bright.
“…Use that ‘power,’ little girl.”
“…”
Batil readied his axe again and spat out the words.
Is he talking about the Iron Rose?
“The power that killed the Tooth Brothers. Are you kidding me, holding back against me? I’m the ‘chief’ of these guys. There’s no way I can lose to some girl! Get serious!!”
“…You’re asking for a lot.”
I glanced at the elder for a moment, still holding my blade, and the elder grinned and tacitly approved of Batil’s actions.
How is the Hoglos Company, which is the Adventurer’s Guild, involved? They say it’s troublesome, but they’re cutting Batil off to see my power, and I don’t like them either.
But Batil, I’ll respond to your pride.
“Understood. I’ll kill you with everything I’ve got. Batil, you put your life on the line with your next strike too.”
“Hah, cocky little brat.”
He snorted and said that, but Batil showed a stance that abandoned defense with full Body Enhancement.
Responding to that, I put away the knife in my left hand and drew back the Dagger in my right hand.
“…Aren’t you going to use it?”
“That’s my weapon. I decide when to use my weapons.”
“Hah, that’s right. Then–”
Batil similarly twisted his body, pulling back his right arm, and leaped forward in one go, using the spring of his entire body.
“If I kill you before you use it, I win!!”
He swung his axe high, slamming it down from directly above in an instant.
“–Raging–!!”
The one-handed axe Combat Art, Raging. Like Critical Edge for daggers, it’s a powerful Combat Art that can kill with a direct hit.
Just before the Combat Art was unleashed, I released the Pendulum from my left hand, and aimed the drawn-back Dagger at the approaching Batil, unleashing a Combat Art with all my might as well.
“–Cyclone–“
“–!?”
Batil’s eyes widened at the Combat Art I unleashed.
Cyclone is a magic-based, area-of-effect Combat Art with little power. Even if I used the same one-hit-kill Combat Art, it would only result in a mutual kill, and the area-of-effect Cyclone wouldn’t be able to reduce the power of Raging even if it slightly deflected it.
But that’s enough.
We both unleashed our Combat Arts, and our bodies stiffened for an instant due to the impact. But the weight of the Ball-Shaped Pendulum I had released shifted my unmoving body just slightly to the side.
“Guoh!”
Fresh blood splattered from my right shoulder, and Batil, who had been unable to evade the area-of-effect Combat Art and had taken it to his upper body, groaned, his vision obscured by his own blood spray.
“–Iron Rose–“
My pinkish-gold hair turned to scorched Ash-Covered iron, and with my left leg, which had broken free from its stiffness a moment earlier, I kicked off the ground, leaping over Batil’s head, wrapping the Pendulum’s thread around his neck, and snapping Batil’s neck in one go, back to back, with all my body weight and momentum.
Gukin…!
“…Tch.”
“…”
From the last breath that leaked out as the thread loosened, I thought I heard a click of the tongue.
I detached the Pendulum’s thread from Batil, who collapsed with his neck snapped, and a scream-like groan leaked from the beastmen who were watching my solitary figure.
“…Are you still coming?”
I directed an intimidating gaze around me, and when I turned my blade to the elder, his guards all readied their weapons at once.
“Stop it. You are no match for her. Batil, you fool… So, it is you after all… Ash-Covered Princess.”
“…”
My eyebrow twitched slightly at the “renowned name” I heard in a foreign land that shouldn’t have known about it. The elder, convinced by my reaction, slightly parted his lips in a smile.
“So, it is you after all. I heard about you from Jilgun, and I thought it couldn’t be… but I was convinced by the Ash-Covered iron hair I saw earlier.”
What does that old dwarf know too…?
“Who are you?”
The beastmen around me returned killing intent to the Intimidation I exuded, and the old man laughed gleefully.
“I am Kushum, the western elder of the Munza Society. I heard that Batil was trying to kidnap an Adventurer that Jilgun had his eye on. I came to stop him because we weren’t planning on confronting the Hoglos Company yet, let alone handing her over to the Killri Company… but it seems she was an even more dangerous girl than that. Ash-Covered Princess.”
“Where did you hear that?”
“Ho ho ho, the Underworld has its own rumors. The story of a madman who single-handedly crushed the Assassin Guild and was feared in the Underworld is bound to be a topic of conversation among merchants.”
“I see.”
At that moment, as I quietly resolved to “kill” him, a huge Killing Intent and Intimidation erupted from Kushum, and the weak-willed beastmen nearly lost consciousness and knelt down.
I naturally deflected that Killing Intent and returned a cold Killing Intent, and Kushum suddenly bared his fangs and laughed, erasing his own Intimidation.
“Did you see that, everyone? This is the Ash-Covered Princess. Shall we get down to business now? Girl, how about we agree to leave each other alone? I won’t tell you to take care of every last one of my subordinates. In return, you’ll supply the Hoglos Company with medicine instead of the Killri Company. That way, Jilgun, who had his eye on you first, will save face.”
“E-Elder…”
The guard beastmen couldn’t help but interject at the proposal that one of the elders of the Munza Society, one of the four powers that controlled this town, was backing down on his own, and Kushum glared at those young beastmen.
“Fools, can’t you tell even after experiencing her killing intent? This girl, at her age, emits the same killing intent as I do. Killing intent comes from the number of people you’ve killed and the number of hellish situations you’ve been through. Don’t tell me you don’t understand what that means.”
Kushum’s words instilled a slight fear in the eyes of the beastmen who had been about to criticize me. …Or perhaps they were afraid of Kushum.
It’s a last resort, but I would definitely do it. Kushum correctly understood that through a calculation of profit and loss.
“Understood.”
“Yeah, this settles it. See you again, little miss.”
“…………”
Kushum abandoned Batil, not only seeing through my identity but also avoiding hostility with me, and at the same time using me as a piece for the Hoglos Company.
I don’t know if Elena is also known, but after seeing Kushum and the others off, I became more wary of the Munza Society… no, the four organizations that control this town.
But—two days later, I heard rumors that the Munza Society was attacked by the Leesan Syndicate, and Kushum had died.
The desert town is also starting to move.
The story of the Ash-Covered Princess is quite famous, though limited to the underworld.
There’s no way rumors wouldn’t spread about a good-looking girl crushing the Assassin Guild and killing a bunch of thieves.
Now, for the next chapter, I think I’ll talk about the people moving behind the scenes.
Like my master and other things.