The massive ordot was rapidly approaching, so Cyne unsheathed his black sword. Once he had readied his stance, all he could do was wait for the beast. As the distance between the two decreased, however, something felt off to Cyne. The ordot was running not toward him but instead toward the partner he had vowed to protect, who was calmly checking the contents of her bag behind him and on his right. Was it even the time to do this?

"I'm your opponent, asshole!"

Cyne positioned himself in the creature's line of sight, and it tilted its head to keep its view on what was behind this new obstacle of flesh. This gesture might have seemed cute under different circumstances like, for instance, if it wasn't an immense and creepy creature running while balancing its body from left to right.

The seasoned adventurer wasn't sure of what to do. At this rate, the ordot wouldn't brake to fight him. If he was unable to stop it in its tracks, it would tackle him as if he were never here.

Resolved to take on the ordot, Cyne looked back one more time.

"Iris. Be ready to run if I tell you so."

"Alright. Then, be ready to clear the way if I tell you so."

"Again, don't join the fight... You'll be a hassle more than anything."

Before Iris could retort anything, Cyne returned to the ordot. It was there.

He lowered his center of gravity and slashed at its right leg before circling the enormous beast's body. His goal had been to sever its leg, but he only was able to create a shallow injury. Nonetheless, the gigantic creature shrieked with a high pitch and fell to the ground.

"That's what you get when you don't pay attention to your enemies."

The ordot slowly got to its feet, its gaze now focused squarely on Cyne.

(What? He couldn't even cut a tendon or two with his blade? How tough is that thing...? Could I even do anything to it?)

For dozens of seconds, Iris could only watch as Cyne danced around the ordot with efficiency. Despite her rudimentary swordsmanship, Iris could see the skill that set Cyne apart.

Every lunge of the ordot's massive, scarred arms was met with a skillful dodge and a swift counterattack. Cyne's blade traced arcs in the air, each one leaving a painful wound on the beast's coarse hide. Though his weapon couldn't deeply penetrate the ordot's thickened skin, the creature's pain-filled grunts and the dark blood staining its body were clear indications of the damage being inflicted.

Cyne seemed to play with the ordot, each twirl and sidestep bringing him closer to the beast's weak spots. Iris noted something akin to a rhythm in this fight as the savage beast’s ferocious swipes balanced against Cyne's calculated footwork and slashes.

Then, in a sudden change, Cyne shifted his stance. His feet splayed out wide, his sword held firmly in both hands. Iris could imagine he was about to strike.

With a sudden burst of speed that caught the massive ordot off guard, Cyne rocketed himself forward. He sliced through the ordot's defense and emerged on the other side. For a moment, they silently stood back to back, neither of them moving, as if time itself had paused to catch its breath.

Just as Iris' expression was becoming a mix of anticipation and confusion, at last, the ordot wobbled. Its massive knee buckled, and the beast collapsed onto the dusty ground. Its fall was as though a towering fortress had crumbled. Probably in a panic, it produced its highest shriek yet.

(Eeeh... What was that dramatic pause for...? More like, why the heck is that thing playing along with this edgy theatrics?)

"Huh. Eight strikes to make its leg give in. Am I getting rusty or what?"

(Come on, don't say that when you look so proud of yourself!)

Cyne slowly approached the ordot now that he had incapacitated it. Although it thrashed on the ground by agitating its massive arms, the fight was already decided. In just a few seconds, he had made both its arms unusable, leaving its neck exposed and vulnerable. He wasted no time and made his sword come down in a sharp arc, ending the fight.

Cyne stood victorious, with his sword now stained with the ordot's dark blood in his right hand and holding the beast's head in his left. In the end, it was not brute strength but precision and strategy that prevailed.

"Ugh... Get rid of that thing already... It's disgraceful."

"What are you on about? If that ordot massacred and ate all the other wirants, we might as well show that head as proof. Also, don't become an adventurer if you plan to remain graceful. What the hell?"

"Y-you might be right... Sorry."

Just then, several cries were heard far away. They sounded a lot like the ones from the ordot Cyne had just defeated.

"Y-you don't mean...?"

"Yeah. That shit must have called for them before I killed it..."

In the distance, enormous silhouettes began to emerge.

"Two, no, three of them? We're so done..."

"They're still far. Can't we just get out of these woods?"

At that, Cyne looked at Iris in realization.

"You're right. Run with all your might toward that nearby village."

"... You're coming too. I doubt you can manage to fight three of those things at the same time."

"I'm not saying I'll win. I'll definitely die right here."

"Then, come-"

"Listen, Iris. I'm not as quick as you and I'm exhausted from that last fight. Ordots are not only fast, but they also have incredible endurance. The only thing I can do is buy you enough time to escape."

"... I think you're trying too much to sound cool."

"Heh. It's true that I'll be glad if you report to the Guild that I died valiantly by protecting you from four ordots."

"Don't you want to use me as bait and escape? The ordot from before seemed interested in me, after all."

"What the hell are you saying? I might be brutally murdered, but your fate would be much worse if you were the one they caught. Now, go."

"I see, I see. You're a decent man."

Cyne watched Iris distancing herself from him and picking up her bag. This was his cue to face the approaching beasts.

[https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1099093161634189313/1115159336935772160/SPOILER_Cyne.png]

"Let's see how many I can take down with me."

"See? I maintain that you're trying to be cool."

"... Iris? Why did you come back here?! Get the hell out already if you want to retain enough advance!"

Her expression was unreadable. She was utterly stoic as if she weren't even afraid. Cyne couldn't tell if she was excessively overconfident or a complete moron who didn't understand the situation she was in. Probably both.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

"I'm not going anywhere. Running away and letting a fellow adventurer die on my first mission would immediately destroy my reputation."

"That's infinitely better than what awaits you, dumbass!"

"I'll take responsibility."

"You're stupid! Dammit!!"

Cyne was at a complete loss about what to do. There was no point fighting those beasts anymore. His goal had been to buy her time, but now it was useless. He knew he couldn't kill them all. To him, the best course of action might be... to kill Iris. After all, killing the female members of a party that was losing a fight against ordots wasn't unheard of. When this happened, though, it was because the women in question explicitly asked their comrades beforehand to do it in such a case. The only female member in his former party was such a woman.

Right now, however, this stupid girl was talking about taking responsibility. Did that mean that she didn't want him to kill her?

Cyne couldn't think straight and noticed with a delay that the three giants had closed the distance even faster than the one before and were just a few meters from him.

"Ah..."

It probably meant that the one he fought wasn't even an adult ordot. He couldn't be sure since he had never actually fought one before.

Before he was rejected from his party, he was always in the rear while the strongest fighter, Jin, fought with his spear.

He could only laugh at himself for thinking he was a big deal not even two minutes ago.

"Cyne! Move to your left!"

In a daze, while he was reminiscing blindly following orders from the stronger members of his party, Cyne instinctively did as he was told and sidestepped.

A second later, a rumbling sound erupted right beside him. It came from the three ordots who were about to crush him with their arms, but it didn't sound anything like their unbearable shrieks. It was like thunder had struck right at the position they were in.

At the same time, the three colossi fell and slid across the grass a small distance. It was as if they all suddenly lost their strength and continued their route with only their inertia.

"W-what...?"

Now that he looked at them, they were... punctured. They had been entirely fine just before, and they were now covered with holes. One had had its lungs and heart blown away, while another had been fatally injured in the liver and was agonizing on the ground. As for the last one, a part of its head had simply disappeared. That was for the lethal injuries. Other than those parts, there were several other holes here and there.

Something sudden had done this.

His right ear rang, and it had happened just after a feminine voice told him to clear the way.

"... Don't tell me..."

Cyne turned to see Iris hurriedly emptying a collection of rocks from her bag, as though trying to erase any evidence. She froze when she saw him look her way in her peripherical vision.

"You... Did you do that?"

"I-I can explain..."

"Then do so. I'm listening."

"O-oh. I was scared, so... I suppose the adrenaline made me more powerful than usual?"

"Adre-what? Are you saying you pulverized those ordots just by throwing pebbles in fear? How stupid do you think I am?"

"... Fine. I used magic."

"Magic...? Wasn't your magic all about obscuring your face?"

"Uh... It's kind of complicated."

"Launching such a powerful attack... That must have emptied your mana pool. I have a mana potion in my backpack over there, so sit here and wait for me."

"I didn't use that much, so I'm alright. I spent more earlier by running non-stop for so long."

"Running? That was magic too? Just what is your magic type?"

(Eh? Crap! Shut up, me!)

"... Nevermind that. Anyway, now we have four heads to show at the nearby village! Isn't that a success?"

"Well, yeah. There might be more of them nearby, including females and children. Let's get out of there quickly and report to the village guards."

A minute later, Cyne had cut the heads of two of the ordots... and what remained of the last one.

"You overdid it with that ordot. And that was just minutes after you said I was disgraceful for cleanly cutting a head..."

"I-I am bad at throwing things accurately, okay? I just made up for it with numbers by throwing a bunch of rocks."

"... Does that mean you could have thrown one of them at me by mistake?"

"..."

"Please, deny it."

"... My aim is not that bad... I think?"

"Don't ask me!"

***

Now minutes away from the nearby village, Cyne was struggling under the weight of four massive ordot's heads in his bag, not to mention the three heads belonging to dead wirants they'd found outside the woods which he was holding in his hands.

This time, Iris had judged it smart to hide the fact that she could carry that fifty-kilogram bag with her magic.

She was silently matching her speed to Cyne's, thinking about what she had done while repeatedly opening and closing her right hand. It was the first time she had killed a living being with her magic. It had been much too easy. She merely needed to envelop each rock with dense mana, make it follow the projectiles, and activate on contact with the ordots. That changed them into weapons of destruction several times stronger than a bullet by giving them extreme speed, delivering in turn an extreme amount of kinetic energy. Or was it the other way around?

In any case, although the whole procedure had cost her about a fifth of her mana pool in one go, it had been awfully simple to put into action. Most likely, the corresponding spell encased several steps that Iris would have messed up if she didn't have that assistance from her element. While she could speculate on what some of those steps were, in the end, the whole thing remained a black box. That was because of the uncertainty inherent to the most fundamental bricks she combined into more complex spells. A few things felt off, but she didn't have the courage to look at what was truly inside those boxes.

Anyhow, Iris didn't feel half bad even after taking these lives. While talking about exhilaration might be a bit too much, she felt thrilled. It might have mostly been because of the cocktail of neurotransmitters that helped her take action against those orc-like creatures, but she was also glad to have gotten rid of such violent and dangerous beings that were lurking so close to a human settlement.

(I may have overdone it this time, but it's still a satisfactory first step toward becoming a hero! Anyway, it's almost mandatory for heroes to accidentally display too much power in front of people.)

Iris was pleased to match the image she envisioned, yet she failed to realize she was essentially mirroring what she criticized Cyne for. It might have been that her aversion toward his bravado unconsciously reflected that unladylike part of herself she disliked.

"Ah. It seems there really is a guard at the village's entrance. You're fast so take the paperwork, run over there, and explain in detail what happened. I'll join you soon enough."

"..."

"What's that face for...?"

"Can I carry the bag instead?"

"Stop joking around. I'm not Melis, and I won't do the talking for you. You're on that probation thing, so you might as well start gaining experience."

"F-fine! It's not like I can't do it or anything!"

Iris pulled the Guild's paper from Cyne's backpack, her expression as somber as if she were heading to a funeral. From her face, somehow, this ordeal seemed several orders of magnitude more intimidating than facing three ordots. As he wondered just where that little girl capable of one-shotting such tough opponents came from, Cyne heaved a long and weary sigh.