Chapter Volume 3, 6: Kidnapping Incident?

Volume 3, Chapter 6: Kidnapping Incident⑤

「…Man, that’s amazing. To think that you can swing such a giant sword with ease. I assume that inside that armor is an extremely famous swordsman. I understand, you’re a great person befitting of your great swordcraft.」

Forben covered his face and gave seemingly empty praise.

「That’s why, what will you do in this situation?!」

The cane in Forben’s hand was pointing toward Altie, who was trembling in fear as she hugged her father.

「KAKAKAKA! YOU’RE WAY TOO NAIVE! Woopsie, don’t you dare move. Throw away your sword, NOW!」

Forben ordered Lambert.

Lambert dropped his greatsword to the ground.

Forben seemed to be elated upon seeing that.

「KAKAKAKAKAKAKA! NOW OUR POSITIONS HAVE REVERSE— HO!」

Lambert instantly closed in toward Forben, who was clearly letting his guard down upon seeing the former abandon his sword. He unleashed a powerful roundhouse kick without holding back.

The force behind Lambert’s kick sent Forben flying backward in a perfect “く” posture.

It was only natural since the kick that struck Forben’s abdomen was Lambert’s superhuman strength with the weight of his super heavy armor and momentum from his instant dash added in it.

「F-FORBEN-SAMA!」

「H-HE DEFEATED FORBEN-SAMA! JUST WHAT KIND OF A MONSTER IS HE?!」

The two remaining soldiers were trying to escape for their dear lives.

But they couldn’t escape from Lambert’s superhuman speed.

Lambert easily caught up to them in mere seconds and sent a hand chop to the base of their neck with his Organ gauntlet’s covered hand, incapacitating them.

The two soldiers got knocked out immediately and fell right there.

He knocked them out by stopping the blood flow in the base of their necks for an instant.

「Great, still alive.」

Lambert spoke to himself as he looked at the result of his job.

Lambert was really bad when it came to holding back and meticulous jobs, it wasn’t just once or twice he accidentally sent his target’s head flying in the form of mincemeat when he only wanted to knock them out.

「That was dangerous. Are you two okay?」

Lambert turned around and asked Altie and her father who were looking at him with dumbfounded looks on their faces.

Altie’s father was sitting dumbfoundedly on the ground with his mouth wide open. He felt as if the reality which happened before him was a mere dream.

The same could be said for Altie; she was also staring dumbfoundedly at the ghastly spectacle before her.

The spectacle of bissecting humans right in front of a young girl was an extreme stimulus unbefitting of a girl of her age.

「T-Thank you very much, Knight-sama…」

Altie expressed her gratitude with a stuttering voice with such a ghastly scene still in her field of vision.

At that moment, her father snapped out of his daze and bowed repeatedly toward Lambert.

「Thank you, thank you very much! I don’t know what was going to happen if they took Altie…! But… If Viscount-sama ever hears about this matter, he’s going to target you and the people around this area…」

The man muttered with a feeble voice.

And then, when he noticed Lambert’s line of sight, he raised his head in a hurry while waving his hands.

「N-No! You’re mistaken! I definitely have no intention to blame you, Knight-sama! There’s no way I can bring myself to blame you after you saved the most important thing in my life from them!」

The man was desperately trying to fix his mistake which almost sounded like blaming the savior of his daughter.

Lambert just stood in silence since it was apparently impossible to read his expression or what he felt from the movement of his body. The father recalled the horror he experienced from Lambert before the soldiers barged in. Seeing a side figure of Lambert alone was enough to send chills running down his spine.

「No, please don’t misunderstand, I’m not angry at you. Moreover… uhm?」

Lambert stopped his sentence midway, tilting his helmet.

Suddenly, he felt that someone was eyeing him.

Forben raised his trembling hand and pointed the cane in his hand toward Lambert.

Blood flowed down from the crack on his mask.

He was still alive, albeit barely after receiving Lambert’s kick.

「Uhm, I was sure that last attack had already pulverized your internal organs, but… you can still move even in that state, huh.」

「Fu, fufu… you lost, because you were looking down on us, the sorcerer of 『Devil’s Piper』! O’ Earth, Smash him!」

Forben unleashed his sorcery as he vomited blood.

The ground around Forben rose, forming bullets which then flew toward Lambert who was standing quite far away from Forben.

Those bullets definitely wouldn’t miss their targets.

For a while after that, an eerie creaking sound resounded in the area.

In the next moment, huge cracks appeared in the wall behind.

The earth bullets pierced through the wall of the old house.

「Muh…」

The wall that couldn’t withstand the weight of the roof any longer then crumbled down, raining down on top of Lambert, Altie, and her father.

It wasn’t that strange for the house to crumble down so easily since the majority of the houses in the slums looked like they would fall apart with the slightest touch.

Altie’s father quickly hugged his daughter, using his back to shield his daughter from the wreckage.

「P… PAPA!」

But the debris fell mercilessly on top of Lambert and the pair of father and daughter.

When the thundering sound had finally receded, Forben—who was already put in half-death state by Lambert’s attack—managed to stand back with such great difficulties.

「Ka, kaka… Serves you right. The viscount’s unconscious soldier ended up squashed to death too, but oh well. Losing one or two of those idiots isn’t a big deal. But the damage to my internal organs is no joke. Well, let’s go back to Tetomburgh for now and ask Ruruck-sama to replace it with artificial internal organs…」

Originally, Forben was suffering from a deadly illness, and the reason why he survived until now was that one of his useless internal organs was replaced with a strong artificial internal organ made by the current experiment of the Eight Wisemen.

As a result, he managed to survive—albeit barely—from Lambert’s attack.

「But that man, just who in the world is he…? He’s way too sloppy to be an investigator from the royal capital… Though I’m glad that I could use that rundown house to kill him…」

Forben looked at the spectacle before him.

There was a mountain of rubble in the cloud of dust. And then, there was the figure of a tall man standing up as he pushed that rubble aside.

The pair of father and daughter who should’ve been crushed to death by the rubble also survived, standing unscathed in front of Lambert.

「E-EH?!」

Lambert just stood calmly in there, catching the falling rubble as if they were pieces of paper.

He wasn’t simply protecting the pair of father and daughter with his huge frame.

With his physical strength, falling rubble wasn’t a big deal for him.

And there was also the extreme durability of his armor.

The reason he didn’t come out immediately was to protect the pair of father and daughter from the falling rubble.

「I-IMPOSSIBLE!」

Forben turned around as if trying to escape from Lambert while cursing the latter.

Lambert leapt from where he stood to go after Forben, unleashing a horizontal strike with his swordhand toward Forben’s neck.

Forben’s body spun uncontrollably in the air upon receiving Lambert’s strike. It only stopped after he landed on the ground with his forehead.

「『Devil’s Piper』 huh. What you said managed to pique my interest. Look, my important source of information was squashed to death because of your attack. So I’ll have you vomit everything you know about your organization.」

「K-Knight-sama, that person is already…」

「Muh…」

Lambert, who snapped out upon hearing Altie’s father’s voice, then quickly gripped Forben by his shoulder and raised him up.

Apparantly, his strike just now was too powerful and ended up crushing Forben’s head, turning it into literal pieces of meat.

Lambert was really bad when it came to holding back.

Ignoring what he did with his body in midair, the force of his acceleration and the weight of his armor combined with his superhuman strength would still result in an extremely terrifying attack, despite holding back.

Even though he was already holding back quite a lot, it seemed to be almost impossible for Lambert.

「…」

Lambert lowered Forben’s corpse in silence and placed it politely on the ground.

「K-Knight-sama, that’s…」

Altie’s father tried to speak to Lambert.

Although his guts were telling him that he shouldn’t speak to him upon seeing Lambert’s seemingly depressed figure, he still fell into silence when he tried to strike a conversation with Lambert.

After all, from the very beginning, Lambert’s very existence was something beyond his understanding in so many ways.

That was why finding a way to console Lambert wasn’t a simple matter for Altie’s father.

「…It’s okay. I just need to get the information from the next soldier.」

Lambert nodded as he spoke.

「Next… soldier? Are you going to fight the viscount-sama’s soldiers again?!」