A sudden jolt rocked the wagon, violently throwing around everyone inside, sending them tumbling and colliding against each other.

“Uwah...?! You old geezer! What’s going on?!” Noburu shouted at the teamster as he stumbled about struggling to pick himself up from the floor. “Oy, did you fall asleep on the wheel? Oy!”

“Is everything okay out there?” Mahiro was about to look outside when something struck the wagon at a high velocity, piercing through the grey canvas enveloping it.

…Huh?

A jolt of pain shot through Keisuke’s left shoulder. At first, the sharp and burning sensation didn’t register in his brain the instant it happened. It was only when he looked down and saw an iron stick ripping through his flesh, fresh with blood, that his arm went ablaze.

Keisuke screamed, and a wild commotion ensued. The passengers broke into a panic as strange, loud noises began to rise outside like a tide.

“…Whoa, whoa!” Noburo stammered, wide-eyed. “Wait a minute. The hell? That’s an arrow…right? Why is there an arrow—?”

“Gnolls...!” The teamster interrupted Noburu with a long, hoary rasp. “Everyone, be careful!”

The wagon’s canvas ripped open and before them appeared some beast-like creature. It had the head of what Keisuke could only describe as a hyena; greenish-grey skin; a dirty yellow mane; and dark fur scattered with black spots. It glared at every one of them inside the wagon with beady black eyes. Then it roared, and the sound was gruff and fearsome and sent shivers down the length of all of their spines.

There was a shrill scream from one of the girls. The beast reacted violently, pulling her by the hair and dragging her out of the wagon. More of the creatures stood outside, barking things in a language that consisted of nothing but guttural bays and growls. Everyone in the wagon was dragged into the night, and upon further observation, Keisuke noticed that although the beasts had the heads of hyenas, their bodies were almost humanoid, and they stood at about seven feet in height. There were several of them, and they were all armed with various types of weapons: axes, curved longswords, and bows.

It was clear. They’d been ambushed.

The wagon’s wheels were broken, and they were surrounded on all fronts. The creatures appeared seemingly out of nowhere, under the cover of darkness. They were hostile and aggressive and cared for them not. The pulsating pain in Keisuke’s left shoulder was indubitable proof of that.

The hyena-like beastmen howled and cackled. They issued incomprehensible commands at them, forcing everyone into a line on the ground. One could almost taste the distress in the air at the sight of the beasts. The entire group of thirteen was shaken, quivering within their qualm. They all had this feeling that none of what was happening should have been real. That none of it should have existed within their realm of possibilities. And yet it was and did. Their lives were at stake, and that was the current reality they faced. They all realised that much instantly.

“...Oh, man. Oh, man. Oh, maaaan. W-what are these things…? Why are they attacking us?” Noburu was on the ground along with the rest of them. He had his back pressed against the wagon, perhaps trying to make himself small. “Th-they are attacking us, right? This… What is this…?”

“You,” Delinquent whispered menacingly at him, “stop talking before you get us killed.”

“Stop talking…? B-but—”

“If you don’t, I’ll kill you myself.” Delinquent gave him a serious look with a dark edge to it, and Noburu decided to swallow whatever words he had with a strained gulp.

“I only see six of them,” Glasses said in a hushed tone. He must’ve been counting the beasts the moment they were forced outside.

“And they’re all armed,” added another boy with swarthy skin. “Could there be more hidden somewhere?”

“I doubt it. There’d be no reason for them to hide at this point."

Are we going to die here? was what Keisuke was thinking. His mind was a mess of panic and dread. He was struggling to get a hold of himself, and apparently, that was the same for Noburu, who looked like he wanted to say something but thought better of provoking Delinquent again. The timid girl also looked like she was having a difficult time. She was battling to keep her breathing under control but couldn’t manage to calm herself down. She must’ve been terrified.

No… Keisuke was sure that they were all terrified.

“Heh,” Delinquent’s lip curled into a sinister smirk. “I don’t know about you people, but I’m not planning on dying to some mutts. If you feel the same, follow my lead, or else stay out of my way.”

“Do you have a plan?”

Delinquent didn’t reply to Glasses. He was carefully scrutinising the beastmen around them. There was no way they were going to do something—Keisuke found the mere thought of that absurd. Their attackers looked savage and wild. Not to mention they had the means to kill all of them in an instant, and they had no way of defending themselves.

“How’s your shoulder?” Mahiro leaned in to ask him.

“I-it’s fine,” Keisuke said, but that was far from the truth. He could barely move his arm without triggering excruciating pain. And he did not even want to attempt to remove the arrow. He was aware that would do more harm than good, especially since he wouldn’t know what to do afterwards.

“L-leave us alone, ye dogs!” the teamster shouted at the beastmen. “We've done nothing to ye! Yer threatening the peace of Altear!”

One of the beasts snarled at the old man. Saying nothing, it kicked him so hard everyone could hear the breaking of ribs on impact. It continued mercilessly stomping on the old man, crunching and cracking sounding underfoot until it looked like he could move no longer. The other beasts were cackling, amused by this horrific display.

When it was done, it spat on the teamster’s body and left him there in anguish, bruised and battered, although what happened next caught—not only it—but everyone else by surprise. The old man suddenly sprung forth off the ground with defiant vigour and threw himself at the beastman's legs. The beast let out an unexpected whine of pain. It looked like the old man had stuck a knife in its foot and was plunging the blade deeper into the wound, twisting and turning it.

The beast snarled and kicked the teamster off, then stomped on him again. It was even more enraged now, striking with greater force and deadlier intent. They all watched as the teamster was brutalised before them. Keisuke wanted to help, but any words of intervention caught in his dry throat. He got the feeling that he would be next if he did say anything. He was sure that feeling was mutual for everyone. So, all they did was watch without daring to utter a single word.

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The beastman then grabbed the old man’s bloodied head and raised its curved longsword to the sky. It roared something harsh and throaty, and then with one sure stroke, the blade came flickering down.

Keisuke heard a gasp.

When he looked, the old man's head had been cut from his shoulders.

At first, there was no reaction from any of the onlookers. They were all in complete, stumped silence. Around them, the beastmen were chanting and howling as the teamster’s head was raised to the sky for all to see like some sort of trophy. Even Keisuke refused to believe what he had just witnessed. But no matter how many times he blinked, the scene before him did not change. They had just witnessed a man be killed. The proof was in the headless carcass lying on the ground and the river of blood sinking into the soil, turned black as sin by the moonlight.

“No!” A scream from one of the girls pierced into the night, and she tried to run away as fast as her legs would take her.

A beast quickly grabbed her by her flaxen hair before she could get more than a couple of steps away and threw her to the ground. It began tearing at the girl’s clothes and stripping her naked. The girl's wails hung in the air like a cruel threnody as she desperately struggled beneath the beastman’s heavy clutches.

“Stop it! Get off! Get off! Stop, please!”

Noburu stood up without a moment’s hesitation at the sight of this assault. “Let her go!” he demanded, his voice resolute even in the face of such danger. He was admirably brave in this situation. Or was it just plain stupidity? Keisuke didn’t know the difference in this instance.

One of the creatures regarded Noburu as though he were nothing short of an insect, and it treated him no less like one. It walked up and grabbed the boy by his face and ferociously slammed him into the ground. Noburu could barely offer little resistance to the sheer power of the beast as he was knocked out cold.

As the commotion continued to rise and stir, Keisuke noticed some of the other passengers stirring like ghosts in the shadows. Delinquent was slowly sneaking up behind one of the beastmen, and the other boys were following his lead.

At that same moment, Student Council President suddenly rose to her feet. “That’s enough!” she yelled out for all to hear. The beasts all turned their attention to her. She stood her ground even as the centre of attention, unbent and unwavering, but Keisuke noticed how she crossed her arms to try and conceal the fact that her body was trembling. “Leave those girls alone. Now.”

The beastmen were not impressed by that. One of them grabbed Student Council President by the neck and ran its long and slimy tongue across the girl’s face. The sensation alone must’ve been overwhelmingly revolting and intolerable, yet the girl barely flinched, her face a stone mask.

What the beastmen had failed to realise, however, was that it was all a ruse. In the very next instant, Delinquent appeared with a giant rock in his hands and smashed it against the beastman's head. The creature stumbled forward awkwardly but managed to stay on its feet, though it was disoriented. Immediately after, Delinquent wrapped his arms around the creature’s waist and, with a mighty yell and incredible strength, managed to raise it off the ground and flip it over his head.

That tall and burly creature must have weighed over one hundred kilograms, and Delinquent lifted it with barely any struggle at all. Keisuke was astonished by that raw display of power.

The boy with dark skin quickly acted on Delinquent’s attack and moved to disarm the fallen beastman of its axe. He managed to get a hold of it, but the weapon seemed too heavy for him to wield, so he could only drag it along the ground.

The rest of the beasts reacted violently to this blatant act of boldness, and the situation only escalated from there. One of them charged towards Delinquent with a roar but suddenly lost its footing and crashed into the dirt like a pillar of stone. It was tripped over by the boy with silver hair, who had been hiding in the blackness until then but now showed himself, and the look on his face made Keisuke think that he was somehow finding all of this amusing.

“Kerguh!” The beastmen howled and cried in their crude animal jargon and began relentlessly attacking everyone as they all tried to run for their lives or fend them off as best as they could. Meanwhile, Keisuke could only spectate, completely immobile and petrified for his life. He looked down at his shoulder where the arrow was still lodged through. Slowly, he tried pulling it out, but just like he thought the pain proved to be too unbearable for him to see it through.

During the midst of all the turmoil, a girl was walking around casually—carefree almost. She had long, ashen hair and feline-like eyes. She and the boy with similar coloured hair looked almost completely identical. They had to have been twins, Keisuke thought as he watched the girl with curiosity.

No one noticed her as she strolled, not even the beastmen. It was as if she were completely invisible, moving silently, gliding through the disarray like a phantom. Something about the way she moved was oddly captivating. Keisuke could not take his eyes off of her, as though he’d been placed under a spell. The girl came to a stop behind one of the beasts and released a silver object from the sleeve of her jacket into her hand.

It was the teamster’s knife. When had she gotten her hands on that? Keisuke didn’t see her anywhere near the old man's body. He didn’t recall seeing her moving at all. Had she somehow retrieved it without anybody picking up on her at all? It was the only explanation but seemed so unlikely. But that was undoubtedly the same knife, stained with blood from the teamster’s previous usage of it, and she was planning on using it again now.

With deft and clinical precision, the ashen-haired girl stuck the blade into one of the beastman's Achilles tendons and ripped it open to the calf.

“—Guarghh!” The beast, now crippled, yelped and stumbled to a knee. One of its comrades witnessed this and sent itself headlong at the girl with its giant axe in hand, ready to carve her open like a butcher would its meat.

“Watch out!” Keisuke warned her, but it looked like she didn’t even need his help. She must have seen the beastman coming even sooner than he did because as soon as it lunged at her, the girl swayed to the side and avoided the attack effortlessly. She then ran the blade in her hand against the creature’s abdomen before flipping away to put in some distance. The beast touched the gash in its torso, almost surprised to see blood seeping out of it. It must’ve not been expecting to get hurt. It then turned to the girl, howled viciously, and began to barrel at her once more. The girl simply crouched low, twirled the knife in her hand, and calmly prepared herself for combat against something that was over twice her weight and size.

And that was when another arrow left its bow from behind all of them.

It whistled like a tune through the air and struck the beast the ashen-haired girl was fighting in the nape, killing it nearly instantly. It was dead in what felt like the blink of an eye.

Keisuke heard footsteps in the nearby distance. Based on how loud and deep they were, he doubted that they were human. They sounded like horses galloping, heading in their direction, and they were getting closer and closer by the second. Everyone turned their attention to the source of this sound, and soon they saw a group of people riding towards them.

One more arrow flew past and, with precise accuracy, struck its target in the throat. Just like that, another beastmen was killed. Before any of them could realise what was happening, the newcomers were there.

The rider at the forefront of them all was a man with fiery red hair and intense eyes that were fixed on the beastmen. He leapt gracefully off his horse and toward one of them, wielding a longsword that rippled like water in the moonlight. The creature could barely react in time as the man hacked it down at blinding speed.

The rest of the beastmen were attacked by the other riders who followed suit. One of them, a woman on a grey horse, charged into them fearlessly. She chanted something in an obscure tongue and ice crackled and formed at the tip of the long stick she was holding and struck a beastman, riddling it with a mess of frozen shards.

The other four riders ran the remaining creatures down while Keisuke and everyone else watched this all unfold, both amazed and terrified at the same time. Before they knew it, all of the beastmen were disposed of, and the entire incident was over just as quickly as it had begun. The strangers that came to their aid were all that remained. Or had they even come to help them?

Keisuke gulped.

They were all human, so maybe that was a good sign. The man who’d rode in first cleaned the blood from his sword and then turned to everyone. He was tall, maybe one-hundred and eighty centimetres or so. And was dressed rather peculiarly.

Is that…armour?

It looked skin-tight, but Keisuke was certain that it wasn’t made from any elastic fabric. It was as hard as any metal. The hue of it was black as a shadow, with patterns of a dim, orange substance flowing throughout the set like something half-alive. Whoever this man was, he looked very dangerous.

But any fear Keisuke might have had disappeared with the smile he gave them. “My name is Ren,” he said. “Is everyone all right?”