by Hyougetsu
Twenty-odd corpses littered the area around the town hall. I thought we’d gotten more, but it turned out they were so large killing them took some time.
“They sure gave up easy,” the elder Garney brother spat as he kicked a corpse out of the way. I just shrugged in response.
“They’re probably just trying to hunt carefully.”
Carnivores like fang lizards preferred to hunt prey that didn’t pose much of a threat to them. Since if they were injured, they’d be unable to hunt and thus starve. Herbivores, on the other hand, just needed to survive so they fought without holding anything back.
“All squads, report any casualties or damage to the wall that you’ve found! If you’re injured, come to me right away!”
A few werewolves ambled over to my rooftop. Their wounds were light, but even light wounds were deadly when poison became involved.
“Sorry, I got bit while I was kicking one.”
“Yeah, one got my fist when I was punching it...”
If you’re fighting barehanded, it’s bound to happen. I smiled at the wounded werewolves and opened up my spell book.
“Don’t worry. Healing magic’s my specialty.”
I wasn’t sure what kind of poison the fang lizards possessed, but my guess was it was either a neurotoxin or a blood-infecting poison.
“Alright, let’s get you all treated before the poison’s had a chance to spread. Line up, all of you.”
I cast a purification spell on each of them in turn. It’d be nice if the fang lizards gave up after this, but...
That night, the werewolf on watch came to me just as I was about to doze off.
“Veight, get up!”
“Hwuh?”
I lifted myself off the town hall’s wooden floor, where I’d been sleeping. Unlike most werewolves, who were instantly alert after waking up, it took me a while to become fully conscious. I wonder if that’s because I was a human before? I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and lumbered to my feet. The werewolf pushed me along in a hurry.
“Sorry, but there’s no time. Monza and the others aren’t doing well.”
“What!?”
That jolted me awake. I sprinted over to the corner of the town hall where Monza and a few others were groaning in pain. Sweat drenched their clothes.
“Monza, Justin, Yuuzu...”
All three of them were werewolves I’d treated this afternoon. Don’t tell me even magic can’t cure this poison? What kind of poison is this effective even against werewolves anyway!? I shook my head. This wasn’t the time to be shocked.
“Oi, get a hold of yourself!”
I knelt next to Monza and placed a hand on her sweaty forehead. As I’d feared, she was burning up.
“This is strange... it’s not poison.”
In fact, it looked more like a bacterial infection. Maybe this has nothing to do with the fang lizard’s poison. But just then, I remembered something. Back on earth, I’d read about how the Komodo dragon had been thought for a long time to be non-poisonous. Those bit by the Komodo dragon weakened and died, but people had thought that was because the bites caused bacterial infections. They’d discovered the truth later, of course, but it was possible that really was the case with these fang lizards.
“Wait just one minute!”
I ran outside to where we’d stacked the lizard corpses and pulled one out. I held a torch close to its face, examining its fangs.
“Oi, Veight! Hurry up and heal them!”
“I need to investigate these fangs to find out how!”
I examined the lizard’s fangs from every angle, but I couldn’t find any venom glands. These fang lizards were nontoxic.
“I know what’s causing this!”
I hurried back inside and flipped through my spell book. Purification magic wouldn’t help here. What I needed was magic to cure diseases.
“Veight, how much longer is this gonna take!?”
“I’m ready now! Shut up so I can concentrate!”
I fixed a mental image of calm waves in my mind to help me control the flow of my mana. Then I touched the nape of Monza’s neck and chanted, “Guardian within, grant this soul the strength to resist this unseen rot.”
I then touched her armpit and repeated the procedure, and again on her stomach. I was pouring my mana into her lymph nodes basically. I did the same for the other two werewolves, and after a while, their breathing steadied. Their temperature dropped as well, and they stopped sweating as much.
“They should be fine now.”
The gathered werewolves breathed a sigh of relief and smiled at me.
“Thank you so much, Veight!”
“You’re amazing, you know that!”
“No wonder the Great Sage made you her disciple!”
Embarrassed, I shook my head and quieted everyone down.
“Shh. We need to let Monza and the others rest until morning.”
“Oh yeah...”
They nodded, but I could tell my earlier display of magic had them excited still. It did feel good to be praised, but honestly, I’d only been able to do it because I had knowledge from my past life. It wasn’t really my achievement. That aside, using so much magic had tired me out.
“I’m going back to sleep. If anything else happens, wake me up.”
“You got it.”
“Thanks again.”
“You can leave lookout duty to me.”
I nodded my comrades, then nodded off.
I was woken early the next morning when someone raised the alarm.
“The lizards are back!”
I figured as much. I stepped outside and spotted fang lizards skulking in the shadows of nearby buildings. Damn, they’re persistent. They’d probably pulled back to wait for their infections to kill Monza and the others. Considering how fast the infection had spread, they probably would have died already if not for my healing. If that was the case though, it meant these guys were spiteful.
In an attempt to raise morale, I shouted, “They lost a fifth of their number after yesterday’s fight! But we’re all just fine!”
We weren’t exactly fine though. Yesterday’s fight had tired us out, and we didn’t have enough food or water. I thought it would have been fine if we just held out until the demon army arrived, but it turned out werewolves weren’t suited to siege defense. That being said, there were too many lizards for us to fight them in a direct battle.
This time, none of the lizards got caught on the spikes when they charged. They were learning.
“Man, these fuckers stink!”
The younger Garney brother frowned as he transformed.
“Let’s end it today, Veight! I’m tired of holding up in this building!”
“You know we can’t do that...”
However, it was true this style of combat didn’t suit us werewolves at all. We were aggressors, not defenders. Ah well, guess we’ll just have to go on the offensive today.
“Jerrick, you and your squad fire as many bolts as you can into the lizards in the back! Aim for the ones who aren’t moving!”
“You got it, boss! Let’s get ‘em, guys!”
“Yeah!”
“I’m gonna shoot down ten today!”
Ten, huh... You guys haven’t been hitting that often, plus it’s hard to land a fatal blow with arrows. I guess archery’s only effective en masse. Still, if Jerrick and his men were able to get 10 with their crossbows, and we’d already killed 20 yesterday, that left about 70. Meaning that if each squad was able to kill around 5, we’d be able to mop them all up. I knew how to heal their bites now too, so it was possible we could win this.
“All squads, make sure you stay in formation! Protect your squadmates!”
“Yes, sir!”
Since werewolves hunted in packs to begin with, figuring out this new squad formation hadn’t been hard for them. We definitely had a good chance to win this now. Just as I thought that, I heard a scream from Fahn’s squad.
“The wall!”
“Veight, the wall’s breaking!”
What!? The moment I turned around, the barricade gave an ominous creak.
“Wha— Uwaaah!”
The werewolves on that section of the wall jumped back. One of the planks I’d used to board up the space between pillars caved inward, and a few fang lizards spilled into the gap. Jerrick looked grim as he loaded another bolt.
“If only we had sturdier walls...”
I wished we had them too, but complaining about it wasn’t going to get us anywhere.
“Slaine, Vodd, take your squads and back up opening number four! Someone close the town hall’s doors!”
As I barked out orders, I desperately tried to think of a spell that could turn this situation around. However, all I could cast was buff spells. I had nothing which could slow enemies down, or defeat them outright. I debated jumping off the roof and joining the fray myself, but Jerrick stopped me before I could take a single step.
“Don’t you dare leap off, boss. There’s no one else who can heal except you.”
“...Alright.”
Now that the lizards had made it into the barricade, the stench of garbage was overwhelming. Hmm, yeah. On second thought, it does smell more like garbage than oil. Though I was certain it smelled like oil yesterday when they started to retreat... Whatever, now’s not the time to be worrying about how they smell. I need to figure out how to kill them.
Fortunately, they’d only broken one section of the wall so far. The reserve squads were reinforcing that side now, so they were holding up for the moment.
“Bring it, you scaled freaks!”
“I won’t lose to you, brother!”
It certainly helped that those two moronic brothers had strength to spare. However, the situation quickly took another turn for the worse.
“Veight, they’re about to break through this wall, too!”
“We need backup!”
Another section of the wall shattered and the fang lizards tried pushed their way in. I hurriedly sent a reserve squad to their assistance as well.
“Monza, can you handle it!?”
“Yeah, just leave it to me!”
She’d only just recovered from her infection, but I was so low on spare troops that I had no choice but to send her. If it was just us fighters I could have ordered a retreat to give us time to regroup, but there were kids and old people here too. We’d struggled together to survive in this harsh forest devoid of amenities like convenience stores and internet. Like hell I was going to let any of them die here.
“All squads, retreat to the town hall! Abandon your posts!”
At that, the werewolves fighting on the walls that hadn’t been breached shouted, “Are you sure, Veight!?”
“We’re still good here!”
I responded immediately, “Yes, if you keep fighting you’ll be surrounded by the lizards invading from the other sides! Get back here now!”
There was only value in protecting the barricade if it was intact. We’d already shaved the lizards down to half their original number. On top of that, we still had no casualties. These walls had served their purpose.
“We’ll have our final showdown in front of the town hall! Kill them all there!”
“Understood!”
The moment the werewolves abandoned their posts, the fang lizards started flooding in. Because of how big each one was, it was quite an intimidating sight to see 50 of them in one place. As they fought, old man Vodd shouted, “Don’t grapple with them! They’ll tear your arms off!”
Fang lizards had formidable biting power. A transformed werewolf could shrug off hits from a human sword or spear, but a fang lizard’s bite was another matter altogether. And if someone got their arm ripped off, that wasn’t something I could heal. Maybe Master could, though.
“Don’t panic, just focus on protecting your squadmates!”
Since fang lizards had as much destructive power as we did, we needed to be careful. One of the werewolves leapt back and growled, “Goddamn, this is getting tough...”
Because of how low to the ground the lizards were, we could only really hit them with kicks. But if they managed to wrap their jaws around someone’s foot, they could drag one of us to the ground easily. However, if we wanted to get them with a punch we needed to crouch down. And that carried its own risks. The fang lizards’ body type made them hard to deal with. The older Garney brother glanced back at me.
“It’s hard to punch and kick these guys... Oi, Veight, are you sure we can’t wrestle these scaled bastards?”
“Try it if you want. You’ll die.”
I could tell the lizards were just waiting for an opening. The moment one werewolf slipped up, I knew the whole horde would gang up on them. If Garney or anyone else tried to wrestle with one, the others would swarm him right away.
“Yeah, this really is annoying...”
Even Fahn was getting irritated. Werewolves specialized in hunting human-sized prey, so they didn’t have as many options when it came to attacking creatures that stayed low to the ground. It hadn’t been much of a problem when they’d been ganging up on trapped lizards, but now they were having trouble landing hits. Slowly but surely, the fang lizards began to constrict their encirclement.
It was hard to believe they were just dumb reptiles. At the very least, I was certain their movements were being coordinated by a single leader. Similar to how an ant colony moved with one will. To make matters worse, the stench was becoming unbearable. It was doubly painful because of how acute our sense of smell was.
Wait. That smell is laced with mana... Most monsters could use mana in some way or another, usually in relation to their unique characteristics. And it appeared these lizards diffused mana through scent. Wouldn’t they normally imbue their fangs with mana? They’re called fang lizards and all. My musings were interrupted by Fahn’s warning shout.
“Here they come!”
Crap, I don’t have enough time to think.
“All squads, get into defensive formation!”
Each squad put two people forward, and two people in the back. Those in the front were meant to handle offense, while the back row kept the front safe.
“Take them down!”
Until I could come up with a plan, all I could do was order everyone to fight. What can I do to help? There’s gotta be something. As I was now, I didn’t have the mana to cast strengthening magic on everyone. Even if I did, it wouldn’t be very effective with this many people, and it’d take too long.
God, that stench though. Why would they bother to lace it with mana? There’s no point... Wait. If there’s no point, then they wouldn’t be doing it. Meaning there is a reason. And that reason is most likely...
“I’ve got it!” I turned to my men and shouted, “I’ll handle this!”
“Veight!?” Fahn, who was in the middle of a duel with a lizard, looked up at me in shock. “What are you saying!?”
“She’s right, Veight. If you die here...”
I ignored everyone’s complaints.
“The moment I give the signal, I want all of you to charge, got it!?”
Without waiting for a reply, I leapt into the crowd of fang lizards. This was our only chance. Victory or defeat would be decided in a single moment. The moment I landed, I unleashed a howl with all my strength.
Soul Shaker: It was a spell I’d created, and one only a werewolf mage could use.
Mana-filled shock waves of sound thundered across the battlefield. Most humans would faint just from hearing the sound alone. However, I wasn’t even sure these lizards had ears. The auditory component of my spell may not have been much use against the lizards, but that wasn’t where Soul Shaker’s true worth lay anyway.
Monza, who’d lowered herself into a stance seconds before, just stood there dumbly.
“H-Huh?”
I waved to her from my spot within the fang lizard horde.
“Now it’s over.”
The fang lizards had been gripped by
fear. On top of that, the odor they’d been emitting had disappeared. To be more accurate, I’d blown it away. I picked up a nearby lizard by the tail and swung it down like a living club. Its skull slammed into that of another, and both died instantly. I kicked their corpses away and grinned.
“These bastards had laced that stench with mana to communicate. Kind of like how we use our howls. That’s how they were able to coordinate so well.”
“Uhh... okay?”
Monza blinked a few times, still clearly confused.
These lizards weren’t truly social creatures, but eusocial creatures like ants or bees. I’d read about how there were mammals like naked mole rats that happened to be eusocial, so I supposed it wasn’t that surprising to find reptiles like that as well. After all, this was a totally different world. And just as how ants and bees used pheromones to communicate, these lizards used those disgusting smells to relay commands. At least that was what I had assumed when I’d noticed the smell was purposely pungent and had mana mixed into it. Seeing as I was still alive, my guess had been accurate.
In retrospect, if I’d been wrong I would probably be dead by now. I should be more careful in the future. As I heaved a sigh of relief I picked up another lizard and smashed it against the ground.
“My howl has the power to override any mana floating nearby and control it freely. That’s why these guys’ smell vanished, and they can’t exchange information anymore. Even though their comrades are all right next to each other, they can’t communicate, and it’s confusing them.”
“...I see.” Monza finally understood what was going on, and nodded. She then smiled and made a fist. “Aha, in that case, we can slaughter them all we want! Follow me, guys!”
“Yeaaaah!”
“We’re getting on the action too!”
“Kill those scaled freaks!”
All 56 werewolves charged at once. In minutes, the remaining fang lizards had been wiped out.