Drowners

Dawn had barely broken.

Ron stood at the camp gate, weighing a two-handed axe in his hand.

He had dug it out of the camp armory. It was crude work from the blacksmith's shop, its edge not quite sharp enough, its haft wrapped in old blackened cloth. The whole axe exuded a brutally practical style. Ron held it in one hand and swung it through the air a few times, testing its balance. It was just right.

An oak shield leaned beside him, its edges bound in iron, several old cuts from blades and axes marking its face. He hung it on his left arm and weighed it twice. It would do.

Karl led a horse over, glanced at Ron's outfit, and seemed to hesitate.

"Say it if you have something to say," Ron said.

"Your Highness... you're going out like this?"

Ron looked down at himself. No breastplate, no chainmail—only a thick leather cuirass stripped from a bandit's corpse, barely large enough to fit him, with torn seams beneath the arms.

There simply wasn't any armor in the camp that he could wear. His build was far too large for the standard equipment of this continent.

"If it doesn't fit, it doesn't fit." Ron shrugged helplessly. "Let's go."

Karl said nothing more and mounted his horse. Behind him, five cavalrymen and two archers were already prepared to depart. The rest remained behind to guard the camp.

Hooves crossed the muddy road as the group followed the river south of the camp northward. Mist rolled across the water, while the wild grass along both banks rustled in the wind.

Ron rode in the middle of the formation. Though he was mounted on the camp's largest warhorse, once belonging to the bandit chief, his legs still nearly touched the ground. Karl rode behind him, with cavalry spread out on either side.

This was their first time actively scouting this unfamiliar land.

The river bent ahead, revealing a stretch of shallows.

Ron raised a hand, and the group stopped. He stared at the water—something was wrong. Unnatural ripples spread across its surface.

"Your Highness?" Karl asked quietly.

Ron did not answer. He raised his shield before his chest, held his axe across his side, and dismounted.

Two gray-blue figures burst from the muddy shallows.

They were fast. Faster than ordinary people. The instant they broke the surface, Ron's pupils measured the distance—about six and a half paces.

Thanks to the basic lessons taught by Erwin, the scholar from the direction of the Conjunction of the Spheres, the soldiers already knew something about Velen's common creatures. Thus, they did not panic at the sight of drowners.

The drowners were built like emaciated men, but their skin resembled that of floating corpses soaked for weeks, stretched tight over their bones, their ribs faintly visible beneath it.

Sparse scales along their backs reflected the water's gleam. The webbing between their fingers made their claws look wider and blunter, like four rusted skinning knives.

The smell arrived before the sight: rotting silt, bloated dead fish, and an indescribable stench of decay—like human and horse corpses left baking together on a battlefield for three days in midsummer.

"Protect His Highness!"

Karl's voice exploded from behind him. The five armored cavalrymen drew their swords almost at the same instant, the scrape of iron leaving scabbards merging into a short metallic shriek.

The three in front had already moved before Ron, their sword tips lowered toward the drowners' chests and bellies—a standard countercharge stance, disciplined and practiced.

Karl dismounted even faster than his men. The moment his boots sank into the mud, his longsword was already out, and he was about to charge forward.

Ron raised his left hand.

An unmistakable gesture: stop.

"Fall back."

Karl halted abruptly, muddy water splashing across his greaves. "Your Highness!"

"No need."

Ron's tone was calm, as if he were merely commenting on the pleasant weather. He did not even turn around, his eyes fixed on the two drowners, his pupils narrowing slightly—not from fear, but with a hunter's focus as he measured his prey.

"We need intelligence to judge the dangers we'll face in the future."

Karl opened his mouth. He wanted to say something—about duty, safety, and how a crown prince should not face monsters alone—but Ron tilted his head and gave him a look.

Karl swallowed his words, stepped back, and raised his right fist in a signal to hold position. The cavalrymen did not sheathe their swords, but neither did they advance. The archers set their fingers to their bowstrings, waiting on guard.

The first drowner pounced.

Its attack was simple—no probing, no feint. Its entire body leaped forward, its right claw slashing diagonally from upper left to lower right, aimed at Ron's face.

Ron raised his shield.

The claws struck the oak shield, leaving four white marks. The impact traveled up his arm, and he automatically assessed its strength—it was thirty percent weaker than the bandit chief's full-force heavy sword blow, but faster. From the moment it launched to the moment it hit, an untrained civilian would have found it difficult to deal with.

Ron twisted aside from the second strike and held his axe across his chest.

He observed the monster's attacks.

The drowner attacked in a rhythm of two swipes and a bite: right claw, left claw, then it lowered its head to tear with its teeth. It was a fixed pattern, like a program written into instinct. But it was not stupidity. It was efficiency. If the first two strikes landed, the odds of the third bite connecting were high.

The second drowner did not pounce.

It circled to the side.

Its path formed an arc, always staying at the edge of Ron's peripheral vision behind and beside him. Its center of gravity was low, its eyes locked on the back of his neck, a deep gurgling growl issuing from its throat.

This thing had a brain. It was waiting for its companion to create an opening.

The first drowner pounced again, once more leading with its right claw.

No!

Its left shoulder was lower than before. It was gathering strength in advance for a bite. Ron's pupils caught that detail. This time, instead of blocking with the shield, he drove it downward, the shield's rim striking precisely into the hollow of its left shoulder.

He had not struck with the shield's face, but its edge. The impact area was smaller, the force greater.

The drowner staggered back two steps, briefly losing its balance.

In that instant—

The second drowner moved.

Its launch came with almost no warning—no gathering of strength, no roar. The sound of its hind legs pushing off the ground was perfectly masked by the first drowner's splash into the water. It sprang diagonally from Ron's rear flank, targeting the back of his neck. Not a slash, but a thrust.

Karl's hand was already rising, his mouth open, the first syllable caught in his throat.

The archer saw it too. His arrowhead was already aimed at the drowner's skull, the bowstring half-drawn, his fingers about to release...

"Don't shoot!"

Ron's voice came from ahead, clear and steady, without a trace of panic.

Even as he shouted, his body moved.

It was not hearing, but perception—the instinct for battle carved into his bones, an unconscious prediction of every direction from which danger could come on the battlefield.

Ron stepped back with his right foot, twisting his body as the shield on his left arm swept sideways.

The shield struck the drowner's ribs like a door, forcibly breaking its forward trajectory.

The drowner's claws swept past above his left shoulder.

Then Ron sprang onto his toes, his knee nearly touching his chest like a fully drawn bowstring, before lashing out with a savage kick.

His sole slammed into the drowner's chest, power traveling from his thigh to his foot before pouring entirely into the monster's frail torso.

Crack!!

The drowner's breastbone snapped as crisply as a dry branch underfoot. Its entire body flew backward in a short arc before crashing heavily into the shallows, spraying mud and water.

It struggled to brace itself on its foreclaws, trying to rise, only to collapse again. Its chest was visibly caved in, and its breathing had become a wheezing hiss like a broken bellows.

Karl slowly lowered his hand. The archers returned their arrows to their quivers.

"Continue."

Ron calmly turned to face the remaining drowner.

This drowner did not fear its fallen companion. It did not possess such an emotion. Roaring, it lashed out with both claws in a pure, enraged assault.

Ron did not retreat.

He gripped the heavy battleaxe.

He did not slash. The axe blade was ineffective against the drowner's wet, tough skin.

He raised the axe over his head and brought it down with all his strength, like a blacksmith swinging a forging hammer.

The monster's skull was hard, but Ron did not care. Strength was what he lacked least.

Thud!

Like an iron hammer smashing soaked hardwood, the sound was dull and heavy. The drowner's entire head vanished, shattered bone and blood exploding apart beneath the blow into a thin crimson mist that drifted through the air and clung to Ron's leather armor.

The drowner's body collapsed like a sack of wet sand. Muddy water splashed over its corpse, then fell back onto the surface.

Ron remained where he was.

He took two breaths, not from exhaustion. His stamina meant he barely needed any recovery after a battle of this level. It was the hollow feeling after the adrenaline faded, like the lingering tremor of a bowstring after it had been released.

He looked down at the blood on his axe.

"Faster than ordinary humans," he said. His voice was quiet, as if speaking to himself, but loud enough for Karl to hear.

"Fragile breastbone structure. Basic hunting intelligence. They know how to cooperate."

He shook the blood from his axe and mounted his horse.

"Keep moving."

The group set out again. Behind them, the corpses of the two drowners slowly sank into the murky river water.