Magic Scavenger Part 1 Chapter 11

 Chapter 11: Sword in the Night Wind

"There we go..."

Night fell with the tense atmosphere still hanging in the air and the battlefield-scavenger kids drifted off to sleep.

Maybe it was just a feeling but they were sitting closer together than usual. Normally they kept a certain distance from each other so no one could steal their shares in the confusion. But with everything that had happened earlier, that clearly wasn't a priority tonight. Maybe because of today's trouble, none of what the battlefield scavengers had picked up was being collected except for the obviously valuable stuff: jewels, ornaments, things like that. And that, in turn, made it clear to the kids just how tense things really were.

Roa, who always slept near Kanata anyway, was even closer than usual tonight.

Maybe it was because she'd been in real danger on the battlefield today, feeling shaken but she was sleeping right beside him.

Kanata, meanwhile, was wrapped up in the new sleeping bag he'd bought in town, copying the patterns off today's Rubbish onto his stone, same as always.

If anything, Kanata was in an even better mood than usual, something soft in his expression.

"Mm..."

He had no idea how the other kids felt about it but Kanata was happy.

Uval, looking every bit the captain as he raged about a spell fired at his own men. Griare's stern, worried face. The mercenaries who'd stuck close by, as if looking out for the battlefield scavengers too.

Mercenaries and battlefield scavengers were a relationship built on mutual benefit. But the way everyone got angry or worried on each other's behalf... wasn't that just like a big family? That's what he thought.

In that tense atmosphere, he couldn't bring himself to actually say it out loud but Kanata was happy just to have felt that there were people out there who'd get angry and worried for his and Roa's safety.

...Because he already knew there was no one left to love him unconditionally anymore.

"Huh... this... it's the same..."

As he copied the Rubbish's pattern onto the stone with charcoal like always, Kanata noticed something.

Part of the pattern from the Rubbish he'd picked up today matched what he'd copied down on the night he burned his sleeping bag.

In other words, the same spell had been used again today.

(I don't get the letters, but... this piece that looks like part of a circle, too... this bit and this bit match...)

The same fire attribute. The same pattern written inside the Rubbish.

No matter how many mages out there were good with fire, would the actual spell they used really overlap like this?

As Kanata sat there wondering about it, comparing the pieces of Rubbish side by side, footsteps sounded nearby.

Maybe it was one of the watchmen, Kanata thought, and he quietly poked his head halfway out of the sleeping bag he'd been curled up in.

—Just then, at the exact same moment as a sound of sand, the campfire went out.

"!!"

And then the darkness wrapped around Kanata grew thicker.

He figured maybe, on top of the campfire dying, the moon had gone and hidden behind a cloud too but no, the moon just kept right on lighting up the night sky, bold as ever.

It finally hit Kanata that what was blocking the moonlight shining down on him was somebody's shadow.

"Enemy attack!!!!"

"Tch...!"

Screaming loud enough to tear his throat raw, Kanata lunged straight for the legs of whoever was reaching a hand toward Roa beside him.

Whoever it was that Kanata had suddenly latched onto by the leg lost their balance and went down. Judging by the build, it wasn't one of the battlefield-scavenger kids. Judging by the leg he'd grabbed, this was a grown man.

At Kanata's shout and the thud of the man falling on his backside, the battlefield-scavenger kids started stirring awake with bleary eyes but they weren't alert enough yet to run.

"...If you'd just stayed asleep like a good boy."

"Ngh, guh...!"

Kanata clung to the leg of the man trying to get back up, doing everything he could to buy time.

Buy a little time and today's watchman would probably come running soon enough but the man's strength was far beyond anything Kanata had imagined.

With leg strength surely reinforced by mana, he raised the leg Kanata was clinging to, ready to slam him into the ground.

"S-「Select」!!"

Using the same mana control he'd practiced today, Kanata reinforced his whole body.

Kanata's body was slammed into the ground with full force but maybe thanks to the mana spread through him, he came away with nothing worse than pain. He did have to let go of the leg though.

The ground he'd been slammed into filled his vision and Kanata, wincing through the pain, felt a chill run through him at the sight of the dent it had left.

"Kanata...?"

"Roa, wake up!!"

"Eh... kyaaaaaa!!"

The man drew a dagger, eyeing Kanata warily.

Something about Kanata standing there normally even after a hit like that seemed to strike him as wrong and his attention wasn't on the other kids at all.

"I see. An apprentice magic swordsman mixed in among them, huh... how careless of me."

Seeing the mana spread through Kanata's body, the man seemed to convince himself of something and narrowed his focus onto Kanata. He'd probably judged him an obstacle to the job at hand.

A closer look showed him head to toe in black. Under the clothes, probably something like chain mail.

It was exactly the kind of gear built for blending into the night and Kanata backed away slowly, relying on the glint of the dagger the man had drawn to track him.

The instant Kanata glanced back over his shoulder, the man closed the distance.

"But you're just a kid when it comes down to it!"

Both of them had mana running through their bodies alike but the gap in physical ability between an adult and a child was what decided things. That, and the fact that Kanata, a battlefield scavenger, had zero experience fighting an adult with mana spread through his own body.

While the man had room to spare, Kanata was up against an adult's mana-enhanced physicality for the first time in his life and no matter how desperately he moved his legs, the man closed the gap again almost instantly.

"Waaaaaah!!"

"Good instincts. But you're young. Give it a few more years and we might've been an even match."

Kanata tried to put some distance between them, throwing pieces of Rubbish at the man but the man closed in without any urgency at all and raised the dagger overhead.

"Well done, Kanata."

"Gugh!?"

In that instant—a shadow tore past like a sudden gust of wind.

A fist hit harder than a charging bull straight into the man's solar plexus and he dropped the dagger.

Kanata immediately dove for the dagger and snatched it up before the man could reach it.

"G-Griare, Vice-Captain...!"

"You bought us good time, Kanata. Well done."

Her orange hair, lit up by the moonlight, swayed like flame right in front of him.

The first to react to Kanata's shout and come running: Vice-Captain Griare.

She must have rushed straight over because the only thing on her was the sword at her hip. She hadn't even put on her armor.

"You. Who do you answer to."

"Cough... Cough! ...!"

Still coughing, the man pulled a handkerchief out from inside his clothes and threw it straight at Griare.

"I'm cha... lengin' you...!"

"I see. So you've decided there's no getting through this cleanly, is that it. Figures, from someone who'd attack children in the night. A duel challenge, gambling on our good faith to honor it, is that it.

...Fine. I'll accept it. I'm a warrior too, in my own small way."

Griare reached out and touched the thrown handkerchief.

That was the opening the man had been aiming for and he moved.

Griare, crouched down a little to pick up the handkerchief, was wide open and completely defenseless.

This isn't cowardice, the man shouted inside his own head, like he was making excuses to himself.

The instant Griare touched the handkerchief, the duel was accepted, that was all. He was only aiming for the moment it started, he told himself, and reached his hand toward her.

"Wh-what?"

But without a sound, that hand vanished into the darkness.

The hand that should have been at the end of his arm had gone flying off somewhere and there was nothing left of it to grab Griare's head or neck with.

"You're the kind of scum who attacks children in the night. Figured you'd try something like that."

Only Kanata caught the single flash of steel gleaming through the night dark, which was gone in an instant.

Griare was a magic swordsman who fought through mana-reinforced strength, a mercenary who fought day and night.

Compared to the sheer unfairness of the battlefield, something on this scale didn't even register as being caught off guard.

"Knowing proper dueling etiquette means you're a decent enough knight, I'd think."

"Ugh, gyaaaaah!!"

"You chose the wrong path."

That voice didn't sound anything like someone who blends into the night, maybe because Griare's provocation had gotten under his skin.

Griare spun aside to dodge the man as he charged in, half out of desperation and struck him across the neck with the hilt of her sword.

The momentum sent him sliding across the ground like he was collapsing and he didn't move again after that.

Blood oozed thick from the arm she'd cut.

"Now then, let's get that bleeding stopped. I've got some questions for you, after all."

Griare wrapped the handkerchief she'd picked up tightly around the man's arm.

Watching the whole smooth and unhesitating sequence, Kanata could only stare with his jaw slack, completely dumbfounded.