The uneasy, unpleasant vibration traveling up through the hilt of the sword buried in the dirt made Isaac mumble without realizing it. Whatever had been pierced by his blade beneath the earth and was writhing wildly…… it was not a worm. It felt much bigger…… a snake…..? No, a python? ……No, no. It was much, much larger than anything like that……

“——”

Jumping back in a sudden, violent leap was an animalistic survival instinct acting faster than logic. In that exact fraction of a second, something thick and black shot up from the ground like a whip, slashing through the empty air right where Isaac had just been standing with a loud *WHOOSH.*

The whip, having struck empty air, writhed furiously and continued to slither out of the ground. Finding himself thrown right into the open space between the wizard and the Prince, Isaac thought, ‘Oh, I am screwed,’ but he didn’t even have time to look at them. He was too busy frantically dodging the whip that relentlessly lashed at him. The two men, who had looked at Isaac in surprise, quickly threw themselves out of the way as more whips suddenly began shooting up from the ground all around them.

「He stabbed it. He actually stabbed it.」

「He stabbed the middle head dead-on.」

「Hidessa is furious now.」

The chattering voices from the sidelines brushed past Isaac’s ears. ‘Hidessa. What was a Hidessa again?’ Before his brain could even flip through its mental dictionary, the endless flurry of whips bursting from the earth finally revealed their full form.

‘Right. That’s what it was.’ He had read about it in a book once. A body as thick as an ancient tree trunk, nine heads resembling human faces, and twenty-seven tails thicker than pythons. The demon snake ‘Hidessa’—a monster that hid beneath the earth and extended its tentacle-like tails to snatch prey from the surface.

“This crazy……!”

Before he could even finish the curse, Isaac had to throw himself out of the way, desperately dodging three or four tails whipping at him simultaneously. If he dropped his guard for even a second, he’d be wrapped up by a tail harder than a steel club and sharper than a blade, and his head would go flying.

He couldn’t believe a Hidessa – a monster that had supposedly wiped out an entire village the last time it appeared in the human realm over a century ago – was right in front of him. And that lunatic wizard, who had casually broken the ultimate taboo of summoning a demon beast for his own selfish desires……

“Who are you?!”

Apparently retaining enough sanity to realize he couldn’t be caught doing this, the wizard yelled at Isaac with a murderous expression. It was even more infuriating to see him sitting comfortably inside a small, personal barrier, protecting himself from Hidessa’s attacks.

‘If I survive this, I swear to the gods I’m filing a formal complaint with the Wizard’s Guild!’ …… But would he even survive?

「What’s he so worried about? He stabbed the middle head anyway, so Hidessa is doomed to die.」

「Yeah, but it’s completely enraged now. Don’t you think it could drag at least one person down to hell with it before it kicks the bucket?」

「That’s true…… By the way, I hear Hidessa meat is quite delicious?」

「If you grill it medium-well, the juices are absolutely phenomenal.」

「Then we shall sit back, enjoy the show, and reap the rewa—」

“When exactly is it going to die?!”

Grinding his teeth at the three cats sitting neatly in a row behind the wizard’s barrier, chattering away peacefully and practically drooling, Isaac shouted, clinging to the last shred of hope in their conversation. Regardless of the details, they were saying this monster was going to die soon, right?

「Hm? Well, once the middle head is destroyed, it usually dies within three hours even if you leave it alone. Hey, hey, watch your back——」

The voice was so infuriatingly casual that Isaac was completely thrown off and missed the timing to dodge by a fraction of a second. *Smack—!* A club-like tail slammed brutally into the back of his head, sending his vision spinning. Acting purely on reflex, Isaac drew his sword and swung blindly. With a heavy, satisfying resistance, the stench of blood hit the air. One of the tails was severed and fell a short distance away.

「Oho, well done my boy! Hey, hurry up and start a fire! Meat, we’ve got meat!」 At the sound of the cats’ excited cheering, Isaac snapped back to his senses just in time to swing his sword at another incoming tail, though this time he only cut through empty air.

‘But this is strange,’ Isaac thought. ‘A monster terrifying enough to wipe out an entire village shouldn’t be this weak.’ Glancing around in confusion, Isaac’s eyes landed on a certain sight.

It was an unbelievable scene.

The massive monster’s nine heads and two dozen tails were all thrashing wildly, launching a relentless, frenzied attack toward a single spot. And standing right in the center of that horrifying maelstrom was the Prince.

One on each arm, one on each leg, and another biting into his waist—the monster’s heads were tearing into the Prince. His flesh ripped by razor-sharp teeth, blood poured freely from wounds so deep the bone was visible. The monster’s heads gnawed hungrily, digging deeper into his wounds. It looked as though a single human body would be swallowed whole by the massive beast in seconds.

“——”

‘So that’s why I was only dealing with one or two tails. It’s focusing almost all of its attacks on the Prince.’

If he was going to run, now was the time.

If he ran now, he might actually make it. He could probably dodge one or two stray tails. Even though they were trapped inside a barrier, as long as he got out of the monster’s immediate attack range, he could probably avoid it until Hidessa bled out.

‘Yes, that’s the smart thing to do.’ Against a monster like this, the presence of one extra person made absolutely no difference. Furthermore… right. If he was lucky, and the Prince died…… ‘Yes—then all my problems disappear.’ The oath on the new moon, that damn tinderbox, everything.

‘Run. Run right now, Isaac. Don’t even look back.’

Isaac’s mind was screaming at him. His heart was pounding so hard he felt dizzy. ‘Yes, run. Hurry.’

“——Dammit.”

But the moment he heard the sickening *crrr-crack* of bone from the Prince’s torso, which was tightly bound by Hidessa’s thick tails, Isaac already knew what he was going to do. He knew he was going to grip his sword and charge directly into that snake-pit of thrashing heads and tails.

And the exact second Isaac kicked off the ground and charged forward—their eyes met.

The Prince’s eyes, which had been drifting aimlessly through the air, suddenly turned toward Isaac. The moment those lethargic eyes focused sharply on him, locking onto him with a terrifyingly deep blue, Isaac flinched involuntarily. It felt exactly like a hiding prey suddenly being spotted by a predator—and in that split second of hesitation, a tail whipped around and struck him squarely in the back of the head again.

“Ugh!! ……Ugh, you overgrown pile of snakes!”

Isaac, shaking his head to clear the stinging pain, glared at the incoming tail and swung his sword the second it entered his range. The tail that had whipped right up to his nose was severed cleanly, spraying blood.

Dodging the remaining stump of the wildly thrashing tail as it whipped through the air like a tantrum, Isaac ran toward the Prince.

Only then did the Prince pull his gaze away from Isaac and look down at the monster’s head latched onto his body. Reaching down, he casually grabbed the massive head biting into his waist. And then—

*CRACK.*

With the horrifying sound of thick hide tearing, the monster’s head clutched in the Prince’s hand was completely severed from its body.

“——”

Standing completely dumbfounded by a display of monstrous strength he couldn’t believe even as he watched it, Isaac saw the Prince casually toss the massive head aside. Then, the Prince drew his sword from his waist. Gripping the blade, already sticky with blood, he began his slaughter—without a single change in expression.

With movements devoid of any wasted effort, his sword severed the monster’s heads and tails one by one. As if he couldn’t even feel the pain of the razor-sharp teeth tearing into him even more fiercely, he swung his sword, and occasionally, simply ripped the monster apart with his bare hands.

Thick, hot steam rose from the monster’s blood drenching his body. The stench of blood was overwhelming. And right in the center of it all, moving without a trace of panic or haste, he slaughtered the demon beast.

Every time one of the nine heads and twenty-six tails was severed or torn off, the human-like faces let out horrifying, ear-piercing shrieks. The spine-chilling, hellish screams only grew more desperate and agonizing as their numbers dwindled.

Finally, the end.

When every head and tail had been severed from the body, leaving only the central head remaining, the Prince’s entire body was caked in the beast’s blood. The thick blood dripping from his form looked exactly like black mud.

The central head, rolling its cloudy, white-filmed eyes sluggishly, was already half-dead. The Prince, looking down at the hole pierced perfectly through the center of its crown, raised an eyebrow.

“I wondered why its movements were so sluggish and its spirit broken…… It had already taken a fatal blow?”

While muttering this, the Prince swung his sword. The monster’s last remaining head was severed and fell to the ground. *Bam.* The massive, heavy body collapsed and rolled onto the earth. All that was left in the aftermath was an eerie, suffocating silence.

Isaac stood perfectly still, staring at the surreal scene.

The massive corpse of the demon beast, the Prince standing before it drenched in mud-like blood, the dead-silent forest—none of it felt real. It felt like he had slipped into some bizarre, alternate dimension.

But his dumbfounded daze did not last long.

“Hidessa, I thought a Hidessa would finally offer a bit of entertainment, but,”

The Prince clicked his tongue. The gaze staring into the empty air was filled with profound boredom.

“Was it you who ruined my rare moment of amusement?”

The moment those emotionless words fell, Isaac’s spine went rigid on pure instinct. Simultaneously, he reflexively raised his sword to block a chilling, deadly strike aimed directly at his head.

*Claaang—!* The cold ring of metal echoed, sending a violent shock up the wrist holding the sword.

One inch above the crown of his head. The Prince’s dark, blood-stained blade was stopped solely by Isaac’s sword. Thick, mud-like blood dripped from the blade, *drip, drip,* onto Isaac’s forehead. Realizing a split second too late that his head had been inches away from being cleaved in two, Isaac’s face drained of color. But in that exact moment—

“…… Hmm.”

Hearing the Prince mutter in unexpected surprise at being blocked, Isaac’s blood ran completely cold. It was because the Prince immediately swung his sword again—this time with a much clearer, unmistakable intent to attack.

*Clang!* *—Clang!* Isaac barely managed to block the Prince’s strikes twice more, and only because he hadn’t even had the time to try and dodge. It felt like a bucket of freezing water had been dumped over him; his senses sharpened to a razor’s edge. Not just his wrist, but his entire body throbbed with pain from the sheer force of the blows.

In just those two strikes, Isaac realized something with terrifying clarity.

This man was an entirely different class of existence from himself. There was absolutely no way he could win. In fact, even though the Prince was slowly raising his sword right in front of him again, Isaac couldn’t take a single step backward.

Overwhelmed by a suffocating sense of helplessness, Isaac watched the Prince swing his sword down. Squeezing out every last ounce of his strength, Isaac barely managed to raise his sword to block it, but,

*Shhk.*

“——”

Not even registering the blinding pain of his wrist being wrenched back, Isaac stared blankly at the hilt remaining in his hand, and then at the upper half of his blade falling to the ground at his feet. The solid steel sword had been cleanly sliced in half, exactly like a bundle of straw.

‘Is this the power of this man?’

“Not bad, but certainly not enough to take down a Hidessa,” 

The Prince murmured, his voice brushing faintly past Isaac’s ears. Looking into the Prince’s piercing blue eyes, Isaac suddenly recalled the look the Prince had given him earlier. The look he had given Isaac when he charged toward the Hidessa holding him captive—the look of someone watching a bizarre, slightly amusing insect.

It was then.

“Ghk.” Isaac let out a choked gasp and grabbed his throat. He suddenly couldn’t breathe. Something invisible was strangling him.

“Who are you?”

A hoarse voice echoed from behind him. Isaac, gripping his throat, turned to see Volkan stepping forward from a few paces away. Belatedly, Isaac noticed a dark, wispy smoke extending from the wizard’s hand, wrapping tightly around his neck.….. ‘Dammit.’

“Who are you? What were you doing here?!”

The voice, dripping with blatant hostility and suspicion, contained an unmistakable murderous intent. The wizard had absolutely no intention of letting him leave alive. And understandably so. Isaac had just witnessed things the wizard absolutely could not let anyone else know.

“—Royal Palace… Guard… I came… looking for Lord Kyan,”

Isaac choked out the answer in gasps, but just as he expected, the grip crushing his throat didn’t loosen; it tightened, suffocating him further. He could see a reddish, murderous glint flashing in Volkan’s eyes.

“How did you get in here? Who let you in?!”

A flicker of anxiety bled into Volkan’s hoarse voice. A barrier had been erected here. Which meant, if this guard had entered, there had to be someone backing him—someone with magical power at least equal to his own. Knowing exactly what conclusion the wizard was jumping to, Isaac managed to say:

“…… Got lost…… wandering around…… purely by coincidence……”

Even as he spoke the absolute truth, Isaac knew the bastard wouldn’t believe him. But it wasn’t like he could say: ‘Actually, a very high-ranking official in the Wizard’s Guild has suspected you for a long time and ordered me to tail you. And wow, looks like his suspicions were right on the money!’—which was exactly what the wizard was imagining in his paranoid mind. Damn it all.

Sure enough, Volkan didn’t look like he believed a single word Isaac said. Under Volkan’s bloodshot, glaring stare, the smoke wrapping around Isaac’s neck turned pitch-black and squeezed tighter.

“Hmph, who do you think you’re fooling?! Tell me who sent you right this instant!”

His airway was completely crushed. His face grew burning hot, and his vision began to warp and blur. Clawing at his throat did nothing; he couldn’t grasp the smoke strangling him.

“I swear…… no…… one……”

Even his stuttered pleas failed to make it past his crushed throat, dying on the tip of his tongue. Glaring at Isaac with a terrifying scowl, Volkan eventually snorted and muttered chillingly:

“So you refuse to speak. Fine, it matters not who sent you. Because you will never be able to relay a single word to anyone anyway.”

The moment Volkan finished speaking, the smoke around Isaac’s neck turned scalding hot, like a ring of fire. Simultaneously, a clear, sharp killing intent spiked. He was going to kill him. Right now.

Blood rushing to his head, his vision turning completely black, Isaac could faintly see Volkan chanting a spell. ‘I can’t just stay like this. I have to do something—’

“Did you say your name was Volkan?”

It was then. The lethargic, casual voice drifted over.

Instantly, the smoke strangling Isaac seemed to loosen just a fraction. Volkan turned his eyes to the Prince, who had suddenly spoken to him, and quickly bowed his head.

“Yes, that is correct. I am Volkan.”

His response, filled with slightly exaggerated politeness and a faint trace of expectation, would become the very last words he ever spoke in this world.

*—Swish.*

Without a single warning, without a smallest sign, the Prince swung his sword, and Volkan’s head fell to the floor with a dull *thud* right in front of Isaac’s eyes.

The severed head rolled across the dirt and came to a stop, still bearing a subservient, hopeful smile—as though it had never realized what had happened. Isaac didn’t even notice the black smoke strangling him disappear.

“If you intended to propose a transaction to me, you should have at least known better than to carelessly snatch away the prey my blade was already pointing at.”

With a face just as emotionless as his casual mutter, the Prince flicked his sword twice to clear the blood. Looking at the blade, already caked with blood and grease, Isaac thought blankly: ‘Ah, right. Now that I think about it, that sword was flying at my head just a minute ago. Was it my turn now?’

Having just witnessed a man’s head get cleanly chopped off without any warning right in front of his eyes, half of Isaac’s soul had already left his body. He mumbled internally, ‘Mom, I guess this really is the end,’ but even as he obediently sat there waiting for his neck to be sliced, the Prince’s sword never came.

The Prince had seemingly lost all interest in Isaac entirely. Looking at the demon beast’s corpse with an expression that simply said, ‘It’s a shame something actually worth hunting vanished so quickly,’ he sheathed his dark, bloodstained sword. Looking off into the distant sky as if nothing had happened, his gaze was exactly as lethargic and bored as usual.

With the wizard dead and the barrier broken, the sounds of the forest—which had been entirely dead silent just moments ago—rushed back in. The chirping of birds, the rustling of animals, and from far away, the sound of people approaching.

The Prince whistled sharply. It was a call to his horse, which must have been wandering around near the edge of the barrier looking for its master. Hearing the sharp command, the sound of galloping hooves quickly approached from the distance. Alongside it, the frantic noise of people rushing toward them grew louder.

‘…… I guess I lived.’

Isaac, feeling like he was alive but not really living, leaned heavily on his broken sword like a cane and stood up, his shoulders sagging. He firmly decided to completely ignore the three cats, who were happily munching on pieces of the snake’s tail like they had struck gold, meowing, 「Medium-well~ Medium-well~」to themselves.

“Your Highness!”

“Prince Kyan!”

A step behind the horse that had rushed to its master, the search party burst onto the scene. While deeply relieved to have found the Prince, they were absolutely horrified by his appearance – drenched in blood from head to toe – and the gruesome sight of the massive demon beast’s corpse, alongside the headless body of the wizard. Whether from the sheer horror of the scene or the suffocating stench of blood filling the forest, two or three people immediately vomited.

“Isaac! We wondered where you disappeared to, and you were here all along! …… What on earth happened here?!”

Chico, spotting Isaac a moment later, rushed over. Too terrified to even speak loudly, he asked in a panicked whisper. Isaac felt like he had aged a hundred years, he didn’t even have the energy to speak, simply shaking his head slowly in exhaustion. The others clearly wanted to interrogate Isaac about the bizarre situation as well, but with the Prince, who had undoubtedly orchestrated this entire massacre, standing right there, no one dared to ask questions, merely exchanging nervous glances.

‘We thought we were just going to be dragging back hunted deer, what kind of disaster is this? Why is there a demon beast this close to the royal palace? What on earth are we supposed to do with this horrifying carcass no one has ever seen before? Wait, looking closely, isn’t the dead guy a court wizard? Considering he was killed by a sword, it’s a 99% chance the Prince killed him, and now the Court Wizard’s Guild is going to throw an absolute fit, what do we do?’

While the guards and servants were drowning in their own respective panics based on their positions, the Prince simply mounted his horse as if nothing had happened.

“P-Prince Kyan, where are you…”

“Returning to the palace.”

Answering curtly, the Prince pulled the reins and turned his horse toward the palace.

The Prince’s servants scrambled to follow him, while the other guards, deeply relieved that they no longer had to comb the forest, began preparing to clean up the scene. Isaac, letting out a long sigh, pushed off his sword to help his colleagues.

It was then.

“You.”

The casual, emotionless voice hitting the back of his head made Isaac freeze mid-step. Hesitantly turning around, he saw the Prince sitting on his horse, staring intently at him, lost in thought. Isaac’s heart plummeted when he locked eyes with those deep blue pupils.

“…… Yes?”

“Have I seen you somewhere before?”

“…… …… …… As a guard, I have seen you from a distance on numerous occasions, Your Highness, but to my knowledge, you have never looked at me personally…… I do occasionally stand guard at the Blue Shadow Palace, so perhaps you happened to notice me by chance……”

A million thoughts exploded in Isaac’s brain simultaneously, and a cold sweat broke out down his spine. As Isaac answered with his head bowed, the Prince stared at him piercingly, looking slightly suspicious, but apparently unable to pinpoint the memory, he eventually turned his head away. He gave the reins a light flick, and his horse, which had been highly agitated by the stench of blood this whole time, kicked off the ground, eager to leave.

With the crisp sound of galloping hooves, the Prince’s figure vanished into the distance in the blink of an eye. Even after he left, Isaac remained frozen solid for a long time, only collapsing limply to the ground when a colleague tapped him on the shoulder and asked, “Hey, what the hell actually happened here?”

“Hey, what is this, what the hell happened here?” Only after the Prince was gone did the tension finally break, and people stopped what they were doing to swarm around Isaac. Looking exactly like a wilted cabbage left too long in a salt jar, Isaac sat sprawled on the ground and closed his eyes. ‘Arghh, I don’t want to think about anything.’ Right now, all he wanted to do was pull a blanket over his head and sleep for a hundred years.

Surrounded by people looking ready to grab him by the collar and shake every detail out of him, Isaac simply prayed desperately for this nightmare of a day to end and for a peaceful tomorrow to arrive.