Chapter 22

Palato raised one of the javelins he had saved and aimed at the bizarre beast in front of him.

It wasn’t his favorite magic-enhanced javelin, and it wasn’t his main hand, but all of that didn’t matter to him.

Because he was a knight who was trained to throw javelins skillfully even though he couldn’t handle a sword skillfully with his left hand.

“Haap!”

Palato’s javelin pierced through the tentacles of the wriggling beast and penetrated inside.

The beast squirmed for a while, and the javelin, which had lost its strong momentum, was sucked into the tentacles.

Before Palato could understand what that meant, something was shot back from the hole where the javelin had been stuck in.

“Kuaghhh!”

That something flew in and hit one of the soldiers right next to Palato.

It was not easy to recognize that it was a fragment of the half-melted javelin. 

Blood vessels were stained black from where the fragments lodged, and the soldier was complaining of terrible pain.

“Ugh, it hurts… It hurts so much… Save me…”

The body of the soldier, who was longing for life and reaching out to Palato next to him, lost its strength and drooped.

‘If I fire a projectile weapon, he will shoot it back loaded with poison!’

Palato didn’t know if he could properly throw a magic javelin while riding a jin, but in the current situation, he calculated that it would be difficult to land a clear blow with a close-range weapon.

Palato immediately brandished his sword and fend off some of the flying javelin fragments.

The Vine Beast who approached while shooting javelin shards, finally reached the bottom of the wall and began to slowly climb up.

Palato could see the other dead beast’s corpse, which had fallen below the wall, melt with a hissing sound whenever it touched the black tentacles.

“Don’t approach him! He’s poisonous!”

At that time, the squires next to him picked up a torch and threw it at the climbing beast.

It may have been an act of hoping that light and fire were incompatible with an enemy in the shape of darkness, but the torch was vainly eaten through the tentacles and disappeared.

The flames did not weaken the beast, but rather stimulated it, and the tentacles began to wiggle more ferociously.

The brave squire who threw the torch was pierced by the tentacle attack, swung back and forth, and was thrown away.

The speed of the tentacles that stabbed in an instant was just as vicious as any knight’s strike.

Next to Palato, another squire who took a few steps back unknowingly, shouted in a shocked voice.

“Sir Palato! The wall is melting!”

Hearing those words, Palato saw that the body of the Vine Beast was slowly going down.

Instead of climbing up the barrier, the Vine Beast was coming across while melting the wall, making a hole.

‘Not like this.’ 

Palato gritted his teeth and looked around.

A beast so powerful that several well-armed knights had to cooperate in order to deal with it, and the other beasts tried to enter through the wall opened by the beast.

This wall could no longer be maintained.

All he could do was issue an order to retreat.

To give the order to retreat, Palato took a deep breath.

“Re- reinforcements! Reinforcements are coming!”

When he was about to open his mouth, he turned around and saw fully armed squires and soldiers running towards him.

And one knight on a Jin from afar stopped in front of Palato after jumping off several roofs in a row.

It was Arsene who ran from one end of the wall to the other.

Arsene offered Palato his exclusive weapons: a bundle of javelins and a sword.

“Sir Palato, here you are.”

“You worked hard.”

Palato took the javelin and fixed it so that it could be drawn with his left hand.

“On my way, I delivered weapons to the other knights. In addition, the knights’ armor and carts loaded with Jin are coming down separately, so the situation will soon improve.”

“That’s good, then…”

Palato’s gaze reached the black figure crawling towards the village after the wall had completely melted.

Other nearby squires and around Vine Beast were unable to rush, it seems that they were intimidated by the beast’s overwhelming presence. The Vine Beast continued to advance without any resistance, even though it was slow.

“The question is how to deal with him.”

* * *

“Come out!”

“The beast is coming this way. Get out of here!”

“Hold on! Let me take this and…”

“Shut up and get out of here quickly!”

The soldiers dragged out all the residents who were in the house in the direction of the Vine Beast closing in and sent them to the lord’s manor.

There were some who were trying to drag time to save their things, but most of them were suppressed with just a few hits of soldiers’ hands.

In a situation where they had already lost many colleagues, there was no room left for patience in the soldiers.

“It’s coming! Back off!”

The Vine Beast who entered the residential area stretched out its tentacles in all directions.

The tentacles that stretched out began to contaminate the buildings they touched, whether they were made of wood or stone.

The building began to corrode with a gut-wrenching disgusting smell even with one breath.

Palato was on the roof with another knight and looking down at the beast, atop his Jin which had been brought by the soldiers in carts.

“It’s the first time I’ve ever seen such a terrible thing.”

“What’s its weakness? Does it look weak to fire?”

“No. I just saw someone try it, and he just destroyed the torch like he was eating it. Rather, it only provoked him.”

“A javelin?”

“He took it and shot it back with poison. I don’t know what would happen if it was a magic weapon…”

“It’s a tough opponent.”

The knight who answered that way patted his helmet as if frustrated.

“If I fight it head-on, I have a feeling that it will be difficult with just me alone.”

The man talking to Palato was Ramun, considered to be the best knight in the territory.

He was the one in charge of the lord’s escort tonight, but he had come down to the village a little while ago under the lord’s order as it was an emergency.

However, this beast he saw for the first time in his life, did not take any action against the Vine Beast.

“If even you are having a hard time, it means that one or two people wouldn’t be enough.”

Palato frowned and groaned in agony since Ramun’s intuition could not be dismissed as a simple feeling, 

Even at this moment, the Vine Beast was advancing while eroding all the buildings he passed by with an unidentified corrosive poison.

The loss of the building was fatal in Beluan estate, where building materials were not very common, aside from the fact that the beast direction was lord’s manor.

“Since it melts metal, tying it with something like a chain wouldn’t work. It’s difficult.”

“It seems that we have no choice but to attack by cutting off the edge first.”

“Then, let’s start right away. Knights!”

When Ramun shouted loudly, all the knights on the roof of a nearby building looked at him.

Armed with armor and Jin, which the reinforcements had brought by the carts, they were full of courage and confidence, unlike a moment ago when they were powerless.

“Siege and attack it! Don’t rush in, just cut off the tentacles!”

With Ramun’s instructions, the knights all at once drove their camp and began to attack the vines.

The beast had neither eyes nor ears, but it sharply stretched out its tentacles and swung it as if it had sensed that a knight was approaching nearby.

However, unlike squires and soldiers who had to be helpless, the knight was able to fully recognize such an attack and counterattack.

Tentacles began to be cut from all sides with a rattling sound.

Unfortunately, losing a tentacle was not a fatal injury for the Vine Beast, and the tentacles continued to appear and regenerate from within.

In addition to that, even the body fluid that was not known whether it was blood or something from the cut tentacles contained powerful poison, so the knights had to flee in fright.

Fortunately, the poison was not fatal enough to pierce knight’s armor.

In the midst of this, Ramun was in the most dangerous place as he faced the Vine Beast head-on, as if his reputation as the best knight in the territory was not an illusion.

Although the beast was pushing back with its overwhelming mass, the knights skillfully slashed and cut all the flying tentacles as if they could see the beast’s next move.

However, not all knights were able to compete with the beast skillfully.

A while ago, a careless knight was hit by a tentacle and bounced off into the distance.

‘Keuk!’

The moment he cut off one of the tentacles, the fluid splattered into his eye, and Arsene hurriedly lowered his head to avoid the fluid from entering his eye.

The armor could block it, but there was no guarantee that even a knight wouldn’t be blind if even a bit of poison that could corrode buildings got into his eyes.

It was a dangerous situation that would not be strange even if he died at any time, sharing a battle with the tentacles that continued to attack at the level of a knight.

Arsene, who lowered his head like that, saw a strange sight in his eyes.

‘Huh?’

One of the tentacles, which had been cut off, touched the dark-purple liquid and melted away.

When he traced back where the liquid came from, he saw a wooden barrel lying around, gurgling out.

“…wine!”

Arsene quickly lifted the barrel to prevent the wine from leaking out, and climbed to the roof of the building right next to it.

After he stood on the roof, he threw a barrel of wine with all his might toward the beast’s head.

The moment the beast struck the unidentified object that came to him with his tentacles, the barrel was smashed and the wine inside soaked the tentacles of the beast.

The wine began to melt the tentacles of the demon with fierce momentum.

■■■■■■■■■■■■■—!

As if it was a creature that could not make a sound until now, the Vine Beast, who had been mechanically advancing and killing repeatedly, screamed for the first time and twisted its tentacles in all directions.

Everyone could feel that the demonic beast was complaining of great pain, to the extent that the building collapsed after the beast rubbed his body on it like he was trying to wipe the wine.

“Just what was that!?”

“What’s going on!”

“Wine is his weakness! Bring wine and sprinkle it on!”

“What? Wine? No, what is that…”

The knights just looked at Arsene with a blank look as if he were talking nonsense.

There were many weaknesses of a beast, but even veterans had never heard of alcohol being one of them.

“You just saw it for yourself! That guy’s weakness is…”

“Squires and the soldiers, gather barrels of wine quickly! Hurry up!”

Palato, who fully trusted Arsene, immediately gave instructions to the soldiers around him.

As it was a festival site, there were still barrels of alcohol that had not been emptied.

The knights, who received the barrel, climbed up the roof with half doubt and threw it at the Vine Beast.

The squires and soldiers did not have the strength to throw a barrel full of alcohol from afar, and if they tried to throw it from close, they would be attacked by the tentacles, so the knights were the only ones who could throw the barrel at the beast.

It didn’t take long for the method to prove to be a ridiculously effective way to attack the beast.

An intelligent being would be able to recognize that harmful liquids were pouring out whenever it hit something flying toward him, but the Vine Beast instinctively spit out the flying liquid and hit the flying barrel.

The beast screamed, roared, screamed repeatedly that could be interpreted as anything, and frantically slammed his body into a nearby building and rubbed his body.

Several buildings collapsed, and the screams of those unable to evacuate were sometimes heard, but the knights, convinced that this method would work, continued to throw the barrel without hesitation.

Just when they thought that they had mobilized all the barrels nearby, the Vine Beast finally laid down on the ground with a groan that seemed to denote its end.

“We’ve done it!”

“We killed it!”

The knights who brought 4m long spears used to hunt large beasts pierced the inside of the melted tentacles.

After the tentacles of the beast, which had stopped moving, were struck with objects such as swords and axes, a huge brain-like object inside was in a state of being half-bruised spilling grayish-white liquid.

It was too shabby for it to be the end of the demonic beasts who stirred the territory with a force that seemed impossible to stop, covered in alcohol.

Two knights complained about the dead beast’s corpse.

“Oh my God, I’ve never seen such a terrible monster in my life.”

“It’s fortunate that we fought it within the territory, and if we met it outside, the only answer would have been to run away.”

“How about the wall?”

“It’s been a while since that side has done their job. Our side was the problem.”

Perhaps it was because he threw the barrel most eagerly, Arsene was half-clinging to Jin, feeling exhausted from all over her body.

Another knight who drove toward him talked to him.

When he took off his helmet, he saw the face of a man in his thirties with thin eyes and a hooked nose.

It was Ramun.

“It was a very creative idea, Sir Arsene.”

At Ramun’s hard and dry praise, Arsene barely raised his body and bowed his head to greet him.

Normally, he would have treated him with more courtesy, but it was difficult because he was on the brink of exhaustion.

Fortunately, Ramun also did not point out whether he was obsessed with courtesy or not.

“Mere strength in battle is a trivial matter. The true strongest are those who, like you, can always pierce the enemy in novel and effective ways.”

It was a tone that didn’t sound like a compliment at all, but the content was a compliment that surprised anyone who knew the usual Ramun.

Ramun was known for being very stingy with compliments.

Arsene forced saliva to wet his parched throat and opened his mouth.

“…Praise . Sir Ramun.”

“Let me keep an eye on you.”

As Ramun, who left a lasting impression with a meaningful tone, which did not seem to contain only favor, passed by, other people looked at Arsene and began to whisper.

Knights and squires also did not forget who was the first to propose the method.

“It was amazing! The beast is half as good as we have defeated it!”

“I salute you, Sir Arsene.”

Amid the pouring praise and cheers, Arsene smiled faintly and looked up at the sky.

Over the mountain range, the sun was shining faintly.

A hymn about the ‘Barrel Knight’ who stabbed the weakness of a mighty beast resounded in the middle of a collapsed town.