Rei furrowed his brows slightly as he passed right by the fleeing adventurers.
It wasn't that he had any particular thoughts about them.
It was because the speed at which he kicked off the sand was overwhelmingly slower than usual.
Thinking back, ever since coming to Gauche—or more accurately, to the Felis Desert—the battle with the Sand Serpent that Rei had first fought was decided the moment he unleashed the Twilight Spear from Set's back.
The Sand Bandits he fought after the Sand Serpent had also been rendered unable to move by Set's roar using King's Intimidation before the battle even began, and that fight had taken place on the deck of the Sand Ship.
And with the Coconut Crab he had just fought, all Rei did was jump off Set at the start to draw the crab's attention.
It had been a while since he fought properly in the desert, and it was difficult.
I knew this, but it catches my feet more than I expected. I can't build up speed.
Watching the Sand Lizardmen rapidly closing the distance, Rei felt a flicker of dissatisfaction inwardly.
However, the speed Rei considered slow was more than fast enough for the adventurers—and for the Sand Lizardmen, whose distance from Rei was rapidly shrinking.
A speed that felt slow to Rei was a speed that seemed more than fast to everyone else.
"Kishaah!"
The lead Sand Lizardman let out a cry of alarm upon seeing an existence of a completely different nature from the adventurers it had been pursuing charging straight toward it.
It couldn't distinguish human faces, naturally, but it could still judge by size and by number.
Above all, the Sand Lizardmen had clearly seen something fall in their path just seconds ago.
They hadn't been able to identify what it was, but now that it had appeared before their eyes, they fully understood what they were dealing with.
"Kishaah!"
The lead Sand Lizardman thrust the three-pronged spear—the trident it held—toward Rei, who was charging directly at them.
Given the speed at which Rei was approaching, it was an attack made with the conviction that the trident's tip would pierce his body.
Being small meant there was less to bite into. That was what the Sand Lizardman thought—but in the next instant, its head was crushed, and its consciousness sank into darkness.
"Huh."
The strike from the Twilight Spear, unleashed while evading the trident's blow, easily crushed the head of the lead Sand Lizardman.
After delivering that strike, Rei used the Sleipnir boots to kick the air and kill his momentum, landing on the sand.
He was now positioned squarely between the Sand Lizardmen and the four fleeing adventurers.
Looking at the Twilight Spear in his hand, Rei murmured with admiration.
He had experienced using it as a thrown weapon during the test at the Gilm Guild and in the battle against the Sand Serpent.
But setting aside practice use, this was the first time he had wielded it directly in hand as a spear to fight an enemy.
That was why he wore a slightly surprised expression at how effortlessly he had taken down the Sand Lizardman with that single strike just now.
"Come on, what's wrong? You guys want to attack them, right? Then you can't do anything unless you take me down, you know?"
It was unlikely that the Sand Lizardmen fully understood Rei's words as he murmured while holding the Twilight Spear at the ready.
But they recognized that Rei was unmistakably their enemy.
"Kishaaaaaaaaaaaa!"
"Kisha, gyagyagyagyaga!"
"Gyashaaaaaa!"
Each one cried out and pointed the tips of their weapons toward Rei.
"Tridents for these guys too, huh? What, is this weapon standard for them?"
Facing the three-pronged spears directed at him, Rei voiced his question, but since they didn't share a language to begin with, the Sand Lizardmen had no way of answering.
By coincidence, both Rei and the Sand Lizardmen now faced each other with spears as their weapons.
The four-person adventurer party, watching this exchange, exchanged wordless glances to discuss whether they could flee while they had the chance, but ultimately decided to stay and watch.
They still didn't know what kind of person Rei was, but there was no doubt he had come to help them.
If Rei hadn't been human, they might have fled.
Even though he wore a hood and his face was hidden, Rei was clearly speaking a language they could understand.
It was only natural to feel a far greater sense of kinship compared to the Sand Lizardmen, with whom they couldn't communicate at all.
Besides, if the argument was that Rei's face couldn't be confirmed because he wore a hood, the same was true for the four adventurers.
Traveling through the desert, they covered their heads with turbans to block even a little sunlight—and to prevent their bodies' moisture from evaporating, keeping their faces exposed to the outside air as little as possible.
Since he had come to rescue them, he must without a doubt be a skilled adventurer and a master of the spear.
The four adventurers thought of Rei in such terms, which was exactly why they froze at the words that came out of his mouth the next moment.
"What's wrong? Come on. I'm a beginner with the spear. If I were throwing it, that'd be one thing, but wielding it directly in hand like this, I'm definitely—"
"Hey, wait, what!?"
It was precisely because they thought Rei was an overwhelmingly powerful figure that they had entrusted their lives to him.
In that situation, being told that Rei could only handle the spear at a beginner's level naturally filled the men with anxiety.
"Don't worry. I may be a beginner with the spear, but it's not like I'm a beginner with long weapons."
Judging that Rei had his back turned while calling out to the four adventurers, the Sand Lizardmen all moved into action at once.
Intent on not letting Rei notice, they charged toward him silently, tridents in hand.
"Hey, wait! Behind you! Behind you!"
"I know—!"
Nodding at the words of the man who appeared to be the leader of the four, Rei turned to face the attacking Sand Lizardmen.
At the same time, he used that motion to sweep the Twilight Spear in a horizontal arc.
What followed was a series of sharp metallic sounds ringing through the air.
The source of those sounds was, naturally, the Twilight Spear in Rei's hands.
But what was astonishing was how effortlessly that sequence of movements deflected every single attack from the Sand Lizardmen's tridents.
Tch. If it were the Death Scythe, I could've knocked them all right out of their hands.
Even so, Rei clicked his tongue in dissatisfaction and glanced at the Sand Lizardmen who had tried to catch him off guard.
When Rei or Set wielded the Death Scythe, it felt extremely light—as light as a piece of dead wood—but in reality, it weighed about one hundred kilograms.
An object of that weight being swung as casually as a dried branch, combined with Rei's physical strength and magical power—naturally, taking such a strike would make it no surprise if most weapons were destroyed.
The Twilight Spear, however, was different.
While it was a top-tier Magic Item, it didn't have any particular weight-related properties.
It would be different if he infused it with magical power, but since he currently viewed the Sand Lizardmen as practice partners for the spear, he hadn't done any such thing.
"Well, in that case, I just need to get used to fighting with the spear... right!"
He swiftly brought the swept spear back to his side and thrust it forward.
The twisting of his body chain-linked from the foot planted in the sand, through his waist, back, arm, and wrist—the resulting thrust was by no means something that looked like a beginner's strike.
At the very least, in the eyes of the four adventurers, it looked like nothing other than a strike from a seasoned warrior.
In particular, among the four, there was one person who carried a spear, and that person's eyes widened considerably at Rei's strike.
"So sharp... what a piercing strike that is."
Though most of their face was hidden like the others, anyone could tell from the voice that it was a woman.
From the woman's perspective, Rei's strike—perhaps because he wasn't accustomed to handling the spear—had enough visible flaws that she could point out areas for correction.
But even so, Rei's strike was undeniably a powerful one, and because of that, the astonishment was heavy in the woman's murmured words.
What Rei was doing was unleashing a strike equal to—no, greater than—what the woman could produce by making full use of her years of training, relying purely on his physical abilities and his instinct for moving his body.
It was by no means something the woman could comprehend... or wanted to comprehend.
Without knowing he was being watched in such a way, Rei thrust the Twilight Spear into the gap between the three prongs of a Sand Lizardman's trident, and the moment he saw it land, he forcefully flipped the Twilight Spear upward.
Having a tip that split into three prongs meant a wider attack range than a normal spear.
But at the same time, for someone with a certain level of skill or physical ability, it meant they could even thrust their own weapon into the forked section and entangle it.
Indeed, Rei's strike with the Twilight Spear had just proven that.
"Kisha!?"
The Sand Lizardman, looking as though it couldn't understand what had just happened, let out a cry—but that was a significant opening.
"Hah!"
Rei would never let such an opening escape. Following the motion of flipping the trident upward, he swiftly brought the spear back and thrust again.
The Twilight Spear, released in a straight line, easily struck the Sand Lizardman's head and pierced right through it.
A different sensation from when he used the Death Scythe to tear through flesh and bone.
There was a similar sensation when using the Death Scythe's butt cap like a spear, but the fact that this time it was the Twilight Spear must have made the difference.
"Kishaaaaaa!"
Seeing their companion suddenly killed, the other Sand Lizardmen grew agitated and, whether out of anger or not, uniformly let out threatening cries while thrusting their tridents.
"Whoa!"
Understanding that movement on the desert sand was inevitably sluggish, Rei leapt up to evade the trident strikes.
But despite having their attack evaded, the Sand Lizardmen showed no particular panic as they each pulled their tridents back.
It was because they understood. Once you jumped into the air, you could barely move.
That their attack had been evaded was unexpected for the Sand Lizardmen as well, but they judged that, as a result, they could now defeat Rei.
The Sand Lizardmen's reasoning was by no means wrong.
In fact, if Rei had been an ordinary human, their aim would have been perfectly on target.
But the Sand Lizardmen's sole and greatest miscalculation was that Rei was someone to whom the word "ordinary" absolutely did not apply.
In particular, the fact that he could move through the air using the Sleipnir boots could be called a complete miscalculation.
Still in mid-jump, Rei activated the Sleipnir boots and kicked the air.
The attacks unleashed by the Sand Lizardmen, expecting him to come falling down, were all evaded with that single motion.
And what Rei did next was kick the air to his side, again using the Sleipnir boots.
That attack, timed to coincide with the Sand Lizardmen's motion of pulling their tridents back, was something they could do nothing about once someone slipped inside their reach—precisely because it was a long-shafted weapon.
In terms of being at close range, Rei holding the Twilight Spear was in the same boat, but there was a difference in readiness between the Sand Lizardmen, who had someone suddenly close the distance on them, and Rei, who had deliberately done so.
Using the butt cap of the Twilight Spear, Rei swept the legs of the nearest Sand Lizardman and sent it tumbling.
To the Sand Lizardman that had fallen backward onto the sand, Rei delivered an upward scooping strike to its jaw with the butt cap.
That strike was fatal for the Sand Lizardman, which had its tongue sticking out.
With its sharp teeth, the Sand Lizardman ended up biting off its own tongue.
"Kishaaaaaaaaaaaa! Gyah!"
Seeing the Sand Lizardman that had bitten through its own tongue writhing in pain, Rei forcefully stomped on its neck with the foot wearing the Sleipnir boot.
The sensation of the neck bone breaking traveled up through his leg, but unlike the spear, this was a sensation he was by no means unaccustomed to.
Without so much as glancing at the Sand Lizardman whose life had been taken by a shattered neck, Rei surveyed his surroundings.
At this point, the Sand Lizardmen finally judged that Rei was no ordinary person and all attempted to flee at once, but...
"Fools."
Fixing his gaze on the Sand Lizardmen fleeing with their backs turned, Rei murmured softly.
Switching from his previous spear grip to a throwing grip, he infused it with magical power and released the Twilight Spear.
...Not a single Sand Lizardman managed to escape, and their corpses were left strewn across the desert sand.