The name of the man who became a lycanthrope was Ronald.
Even as a human, Ronald was a deviant who took pleasure in killing and dismembering people.
"It's fun."
Moreover, he didn't deny that he enjoyed what he did.
So it was only natural that it would end this way. Ronald was hunted by bounty hunters and cornered to the brink of death. It was then that he met Count Molsen and received the power of a beast.
Ronald considered that to be his stroke of luck.
The power of the beast surged through his arms and legs. His pounding heart pumped blood throughout his body.
He was overflowing with strength. So much that he had to do something—tear someone apart, devour their insides, drink their blood, and crush their bones between his teeth.
His desires surged and boiled over, and it showed in his eyes.
"Kuhuhuhuuu!"
His laughter mixed with a howl.
Unable to hold back, he let out a crazed scream. Ahead of him, a group of soldiers stood, pretending not to be terrified.
In front of them stood a hulking figure, raising an arm and stretching it backward.
It looked tough, but it didn't matter. With his sharp fangs, he could tear through anything.
He would chew them to pieces.
And once he got into the city, he would hunt down the terrified, hiding children, picking out young girls to kill and feast on.
"Kihit!"
As he swallowed his anticipation and raised his claws to charge, something happened.
Whoosh.
A gust of wind struck his face. It was too fast for him to react. Ronald's strength had doubled, and his speed had increased, but to Audin, it was all the same.
Bang!
It was as if two speeding carriages had collided.
In the midst of the lycanthropes' howls, a deafening crash echoed. Ronald's head shattered into fragments, scattering everywhere.
Audin stood with his left hand open, like a blade, and his right hand stretched out, frozen in the motion of a punch.
From the spiked leather gauntlet on his right hand, dark red liquid dripped.
The reason he usually used a club was to avoid using his fists.
But now, things had changed.
"If we can't stop them, it's the end."
Hadn't Krais said that?
Behind him, everyone in the city of the Border Guard would be dead.
There was no reason to show mercy.
Their enemies were a degenerate group of humans who had chosen to live as beasts.
The Lord had said, if a human forsakes their humanity, the only place for them is by the Lord's side.
Seek forgiveness at the Lord's side.
Be judged at the Lord's side.
Those were the words written in the holy scripture.
"My left hand is a blade, and my right hand is a rock."
Audin muttered. He moved from his frozen stance and continued speaking as if in a chant.
"My Father has commanded me not to place mercy in either hand."
The pack of lycanthropes, drunk on their bloodlust, charged forward, having forgotten fear. They had lost their human reason.
Even though their leader had been smashed into a bloody pulp, they were too consumed by their beastly instincts to register it.
Audin moved forward to block their path.
Each step he took struck the ground like the march of an unstoppable war machine, breaking through whatever stood in his way.
He advanced, unwavering.
"Once they were human..."
He prayed as he slashed down with his left hand. His left hand was a blade. As his hand cut diagonally, the lycanthrope wearing an eyepatch had its head severed along the path of his strike.
Blood sprayed out. Even though it was dead, the momentum of its charge carried it forward, collapsing onto Audin.
Audin pivoted slightly on his left foot, dodging the headless lycanthrope, which skidded across the ground.
Bang!
Before the body had even come to a halt, there was another loud crash.
Audin's right hand had struck the chest of the lycanthrope that was charging behind the first one.
Where his fist had hit, a mixture of innards, bones, and flesh exploded outward in a radial pattern.
A gaping hole, impossible to believe was made by a human fist, remained where his punch had landed.
"Now that they have become beasts, let their sins be known and judged."
Before Audin finished his prayer, his left hand slashed three times, and his right hand struck four times.
In that moment, parts of three lycanthropes' bodies were severed, and four others were crushed.
As he completed his prayer, a husky voice joined him from his left.
"Forgiveness and judgment belong to the Lord."
It was Teresa, holding her shield horizontally as she continued the prayer.
She pulled her left hand back and then thrust it forward.
Her shield flew through the air with a 'whoosh'. It wasn't faster than an arrow, but for a large shield that covered half of Teresa's body, it moved with astonishing speed.
The edge of the shield sliced through the waist of the lycanthrope standing in front.
With its sharpened edge combined with Teresa's strength, the shield was as deadly as any sword.
As she pulled the cord attached to the shield, it flew back into Teresa's hand with a 'thump'.
During that time, another lycanthrope had charged at her from the side, but even while retrieving her shield, Teresa slammed the flat of her sword into the top of the creature's head.
Clang!
The strength of the half-blood Giant exploded onto the lycanthrope's head.
With a crushing sound, the skull shattered, and severed tongues and broken teeth flew out, soaked in red. From the pulverized head, dark red blood gushed out like a stream.
Several people, including the new Commander in charge of the Turtle Heavy Infantry, witnessed this.
Even though they knew what to expect, they were still shocked.
Is that... human?
It was the first time they'd seen Audin fight with full force.
Could a human really do that with just their hands?
The gauntlets on both his hands had burst and broken, but that didn't stop him from swinging his right fist and left hand.
He was like a living crusher. The lycanthrope pack that had been charging was shredded in an instant. They were sliced, crushed, and smashed, as if they had become moving chunks of meat. Beside him, Teresa moved with her shield and sword.
A group of fifty lycanthropes would have been a significant threat to most cities.
But that menace was torn apart, broken, and shattered by the hands of just two people.
One of the Reserve Unit Commanders, who had been watching, shook his head from side to side and shouted loudly.
"All units, charge forward!"
Attack when the tide of battle turns in your favor.
It was a command that had come from above. The messenger, a Big-Eyes, had emphasized it to the point of almost making their ears bleed.
"Whatever you see, don't be surprised. Just keep moving forward without breaking formation."
"What if the enemy retreats?"
"Maintain the formation. That's the key. We can chase them afterward!"
Krais, that madman, had way too much to say. But despite his constant talking, the Commander adhered to the orders.
After all, everything had been approved by Lord Graham.
More importantly, this was about defending the city they had all grown up in.
Most of the soldiers at the frontlines were people for whom the Border Guard was both their home and their livelihood.
Krais had deliberately sent out only those individuals.
The troops advanced steadily without breaking formation. It was a testament to their excellent training.
Naturally, the Commander leading Count Molsen's forces noticed this.
What kind of battle starts with punches and ends with a charge, without a single arrow fired?
'What is this?'
This was far outside the realm of his understanding.
The man sent by the Count wasn't a brilliant Commander, but he was competent enough to do his job.
Here, he made the best choice he could.
"Retreat! Fall back!"
Their prepared strategy had crumbled, so they needed to regroup. He pulled his forces back and fled.
Exactly as Krais had intended.
That was as far as it would go. Pressing harder to deal a fatal blow? No chance.
Only a fraction of the forces Count Molsen had prepared had come here.
So all they needed to do was buy time.
As he watched the retreating enemy, Krais thought to himself.
'You need to understand what's going on, right?'
Had the Count already taken over the Royal Palace?
That couldn't be it. If that were the case, there would be no need to attack the Border Guard. This was more of a sudden raid.
'If I had taken the Royal Palace, I'd demand their oath of loyalty first.'
Doing so while surrounding them would make it an even more efficient proposal.
The best offer is the one that leaves the other party with no choices.
But the enemy hadn't done that.
'So this is retaliation.'
Who was the target of this retaliation?
There was no need for deep thinking here.
Who in the city could be connected to the Count?
Lord Graham?
He had merely gritted his teeth and declared that he would defend the city.
But Krais had intuition, and a feeling.
'Could it be that the Commander is involved?'
It was a small doubt, but one he was almost certain of.
In this world, there's no such thing as absolutes, so he couldn't be entirely sure, but the probability was quite high.
'This is going to be a headache.'
It was clear, just by looking at the situation: civil war, a conflict. And what had the Count sent as his force?
Fifty lycanthropes.
Humans suddenly transformed into wolves. If you didn't feel like you were about to wet yourself at the sight, you weren't human.
That's why, by Krais' standards, a few people, including Encrid, weren't human.
They were monsters.
He figured that if they saw a pack like this, rather than being scared, they'd probably get excited and charge right in.
If not that, they'd simply kill anyone who bothered to attack them out of annoyance.
In any case, the Count had revealed a dangerous force.
Why would he do that? Because this wasn't his trump card.
In other words:
'This isn't the end of it.'
Krais had seen people turn from human to beast before, during his encounters with the Black Blade Bandits. He knew.
The force itself was practically a declaration that Count Molsen was behind all this.
'And the Count's forces are well-trained, too.'
Even if they weren't exactly shoulder-to-shoulder with the lycanthropes, they had charged together without hesitation. Shouldn't that have caused some shock? But despite everything, they retreated calmly. Their formation hadn't fallen apart. It looked like they had been prepared for this kind of moment.
Since Krais didn't know what they had hidden behind their forces, he held off on the pursuit.
No, they must not be chased.
His mind knew it, and so did his heart.
Fortunately, the enemy troops retreated smoothly.
"Giant siblings!"
Someone called out the nickname for Audin and Teresa.
Audin was quietly shaking the blood from his hands and removing his broken gauntlets.
Considering what he had accomplished with his fists, the only damage to his hands were a few scratches.
In front of the two, there were more than forty-nine dead lycanthropes.
The remaining dozen or so had managed to run past them but were stopped by the newly formed spear and shield unit.
They didn't panic.
They used their spears to maintain distance and hid behind their shields.
It was a tactic in which the entire platoon moved as one.
It was a small-scale battle formation commonly used by the mercenary kings of the Eastern Continent, and it had been introduced by the recently recruited mercenary Commander.
In this way, the platoon, like a hedgehog, calmly pierced and killed the lycanthropes one by one.
While they weren't as powerful as Audin or Teresa, there were plenty of individuals capable of taking down a single lycanthrope on their own.
Victory was inevitable.
Krais expected that after this battle, the strength of the Border Guard would become well-known.
'Whether it's Aspen or anyone else, they'll be analyzing our forces.'
There was no way to block all the eyes and ears watching them, so it wouldn't take long for news to spread that the Border Guard was no easy target.
Would that help in this situation?
'Of course, it will.'
It's obvious that having power is better than not having it.
Krais let out a sigh of relief and then began to prepare for what was next.
'The Count's real target is the Royal Palace.'
It would be ideal for Count Molsen to take over the Border Guard, but now that they had shown him that it wouldn't be easy, predicting that his next move would be toward the Royal Palace was as simple as taking candy from a child.
Therefore, preparations for that must be made here as well.
Krais explained all of this to Graham.
Graham nodded.
"I will send the fastest bird to the Royal Palace."
After a battle that started and ended so quickly, Krais had a gut feeling that a brutal civil war was on the horizon.
He didn't know Count Molsen completely, but if it were him in the Count's position—
'I wouldn't have acted without certainty.'
The Count had made his move because he believed he could win.
For him, poking at the Border Guard was probably just a light test.
"Seriously, what is our Captain up to now?"
Krais muttered to himself, unusually curious about what his Captain was doing.
* * *
"What... is this?"
He had fallen asleep, and now he was awake. Encrid stared at an unfamiliar object placed on the boat in front of him. It was a table. And a chair.
The ferry seemed twice as large as before.
"I thought we could have a little chat, you and I."
There were two chairs. The ferryman, seated across from him, spoke as he pulled back his hood.
Beneath it, Encrid saw gray, cracked skin like a barren wasteland and violet eyes, just as before.
There was no lamp in sight. Instead, the ferryman's two eyes glowed with the same light that the lamp once did.