"Hey, Rei! The plan was to capture the commander as unharmed as possible, right?! Why did you suddenly blow off his right hand?!"
"He can still talk, so there's no problem, is there?"
Emerging from the forest, Rei and Ryutas walked along while arguing like this.
...Rather than running, they deliberately advanced at a slow pace.
Naturally, doing such a thing would alert Rajaras and those around him to their presence.
To be precise, if one included Ielo perched on Rei's left shoulder and Byune following behind them, it would be more appropriate to call them three people and one creature.
The guards originally assigned as Ryutas's escorts were nowhere to be seen.
They had been sent to the cave where Vihera was stationed to explain the situation.
The guards naturally resisted leaving Ryutas's side, but the words that came from Ryutas's mouth—"There is nowhere safer than beside Rei"—contained not a single element they could deny.
Indeed, for the guards who had witnessed Rei's power with their own eyes, they could accept the claim that being beside Rei was safer even if they were in the very middle of a battlefield.
Upon hearing this, Rei tried to say something... but ultimately just sighed and, without saying anything further, decided to head toward the location they had extracted from the soldier alongside Ryutas.
Namely, the command post outside the forest.
Though he never expected them to have set up such a blatantly conspicuous, neat tent, and at first he even suspected it might be a trap.
Then, wondering what possessed them, there was some important-looking fellow holding a longsword, so he judged that man must be the bigwig and threw a disposable spear at him.
...The reason it was a disposable spear rather than the Twilight Spear was largely because he disliked the idea of that noble's blood staining the Twilight Spear.
At any rate, for that reason, Rei and Ryutas had now emerged from the forest and were advancing toward the tent.
Naturally, in such a situation, the escort soldiers would quickly prepare for a counterattack...
(Too slow.)
A suspicious person... no, the person presumed to be an important figure had already been attacked, so there would be nothing strange about Rei and Ryutas being recognized as enemies.
However, the escort soldiers were noticeably slow to act.
At the very least, it was a slowness for which a soldier of the Kingdom of Mireana would not be surprised to receive a rebuke from their superior officer.
(It might be unavoidable for a small country like Reblurina, though.)
In the first place, they rarely even had opportunities for combat.
No matter how much training they accumulated, having no combat experience—or only shallow experience—was fatal.
...However, the soldiers had their side of the story too.
They had been made to stand outside the tent in the midsummer heat, under sunlight so intensely direct it felt relentless.
On top of that, the one they were protecting was a textbook useless noble like Rajaras.
Their stamina was depleted by the heat, and their motivation had been significantly eroded by Rajaras's behavior.
In such conditions, demanding that they move swiftly was unreasonable.
Nevertheless, since they had been stationed here as escort soldiers, protecting Rajaras was a mandatory action.
Even if the Rajaras in question had his right shoulder pierced by something—specifically, the spear Rei threw—and his right arm blown off somewhere by the impact.
"Who goes there! Come any closer and you'll be treated as enemies."
"...So if I don't come any closer, I'm not an enemy?"
Rei asked this, suddenly struck by curiosity at the escort soldier's warning words.
The one who spoke also stopped moving, apparently not expecting such a reply.
He had been fully convinced that Rei would ignore his words and attack.
But because Rei actually stopped his feet right there, the soldier found himself unsure of what to do.
Given that Rajaras had suffered the severe injury of losing his right hand, being stopped there was honestly a problem for them as well.
"Th-That's..."
He was at a loss for words.
He did not know what to say from here.
If he could somehow steer the conversation in a friendly direction, perhaps they wouldn't end up in a killing match.
The soldier who had been speaking with Rei suddenly thought as much.
That was by no means wrong.
No, rather, if one considered it from the perspective of damage, it could be called the best option.
At the very least, it was the best choice for the soldiers.
However, that was only the best option for the soldiers.
For anyone else... for the nobles present here, a commoner had harmed a noble.
There was no noble here who could tolerate that.
"You damn commoner!"
The first to charge at Rei was one of Rajaras's Flunkies.
In his hand, he gripped a rapier, presumably drawn from the scabbard at his waist.
However, the thrust delivered by that noble—who was fat, if not as much as Rajaras—had only enough sharpness that anyone, not just Rei... even a lower-ranked Low-Rank Adventurer in Gilm, could easily dodge.
Indeed, Rei avoided the thrust with room to spare.
An attack from someone who had suddenly appeared and appeared to be an amateur at fighting.
For a moment, Rei was at a slight loss for how to react.
This was an opponent with so little power that if Rei wanted to kill him, he could do so more easily than breathing.
The reason Rei hesitated even slightly before such an existence was largely because the action was so unexpected.
In the first place, despite having witnessed the sight of Rajaras's right shoulder pierced and his right arm blown off, Rei had absolutely no idea why this noble was so full of confidence.
But somehow misinterpreting Rei's bewilderment, the noble floated a confident smile with his rapier in hand... no, a smile more appropriately described as overconfidence, and opened his mouth.
"Hah, to dodge my rapier, you've got some skill for a commoner. But... don't think you can keep dodging my thrusts that earned me the name Lightning forever!"
Along with those words, the noble thrust his rapier at Rei once more.
However, Rei stopped his movements for an instant upon seeing that thrust.
It was naturally not because the rapier's thrust was as fast as lightning, just as the man had claimed...
"Lightning?"
He muttered, and swung Death Scythe.
The next moment, the man's right arm was flying through the air, still gripping the rapier.
At the tip of that spinning right arm, the man's body was naturally not there.
That meant the man's arm from the right shoulder onward had been severed by Death Scythe.
"You call that speed lightning? At least produce speed matching one of my strikes before you call yourself Lightning."
"Wha... huh..."
The swing of Death Scythe, delivered swiftly—at a speed that was coincidentally like the lightning the man had claimed for himself—was so sharp that the man did not even notice the pain of his arm being severed.
However, upon hearing Rei's mutter and... above all, seeing his own right arm fall to the ground, he could not help but understand what situation he was in.
And upon understanding his current state, the pain of his severed arm naturally... and rapidly welled up.
"Ah... aaah... aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"
While screaming, the Noble Man pressed his left hand against his right shoulder.
But what should have been there was nowhere to be found.
Naturally. The right arm that should have been there was rolling on the ground.
"It hurts, it hurts, it hurts... aaaaaah! My arm, my arm... my right arm aaaaaaaaaah..."
From the Noble Man's mouth poured a lamentation that could only be called despair.
But that despair was natural.
Reblurina was among the smallest of the small nations among the Kingdom of Mireana's vassal states.
Being such a small nation, let alone obtaining a potion that could reattach a severed right arm, procuring a prosthetic Magic Item hand convincing enough to be mistaken for the real thing was difficult.
No, if one were among the higher-ranking nobles within Reblurina, perhaps something could be managed, but unfortunately, those present were merely a viscount who would be faster to count from the bottom among nobles, and his Flunkies.
Whether such individuals could acquire a sophisticated Magic Item prosthetic... was all but impossible.
"Damn it, do you think you can get away with doing something like this to me, a noble?!"
While pressing his right shoulder with his left hand, the man shouted.
Tears from his eyes, snot from his nose, drool from his mouth... spewing fluids from every part of his face while screaming, that appearance was something that could in no way be accepted as belonging to a noble.
"Well, let me see. In the first place, did you really think you could attack me and not get counterattacked? ...With a thrust that slow, it wasn't lightning—it was more like a worm crawling."
At Rei's words, the noble glared at Rei while receiving a potion from the escort soldiers and applying it to his right shoulder.
That it was a potion with a relatively high effect was likely because it was one held by the soldiers stationed here as guards for the nobles.
While it could not reattach a severed arm, it apparently had the effect of stopping the bleeding and alleviating the pain to some degree.
The Noble Man, described as having crawled like a worm, turned bright red and tried to say something.
But apparently finding it ridiculous to humor such a noble, Rei pointed the tip of the Twilight Spear he held in his right hand at him, and the Noble Man—perhaps recalling the intense pain he had felt for the first time in his life—opened his mouth no further.
"Now then, I'll need you all to spill quite a bit of information."
Rei's gaze was directed not at the two nobles who had also lost their right arms, but at the other nobles who were still intact.
Before Rei, who had severed a right arm as casually as mowing weeds, not even treating nobles as nobles, they turned pale and could say nothing.
They were nobles.
Commoners, no better than dust, should never be able to harm them.
Thinking this, and having in fact lived that way until today, Rei was an existence hopelessly eerie to these men.
The nobles and escort soldiers who could say nothing.
Looking at them, Rei opened his mouth.
"Reblurina and Jaya are working together, aren't they? So why did things turn out like this?"
"D-Don't be ridiculous! Jaya is a criminal organization! Why would Reblurina need to join hands with such an organization!"
At Rei's words, one of Rajaras's Flunkies shouted.
Though he felt intense fear toward Rei's existence... and harbored the thought that he didn't know what might be done to him, as a noble of Reblurina, he could not honestly acknowledge Rei's words.
"...Oh."
At the noble's words, Rei murmured quietly.
At that murmur, Rajaras's Flunky who had voiced words of accusation toward Rei felt a momentary flash of fear.
The fear came from thinking—could he be attacked too?—but Rei had not expressed his irritation in words.
(It's understandable that there are nobles who don't know the country's upper echelons are connected to Jaya. But... if you're going to launch an attack against Jaya, wouldn't you normally dispatch someone who knows the circumstances? Or did they think precisely because they don't know, they could command an annihilation battle?)
Someone connected to Jaya, even if ordered to annihilate them, might show leniency for some reason.
But if they knew nothing of the relationship between Reblurina and Jaya, they would have no reason to show any such leniency.
The possibility that someone who intended to sever ties with Jaya had made such a decision was something Rei could understand as well.
Though, the relationship between the two had become something close to an open secret.
Those who didn't know about it... which meant they could only prepare someone like Rajaras.
(That being the case, then it's actually possible that the very incompetence of the person commanding the unit could cause the operation to fail.)
In fact, they themselves had cornered Rajaras and the others like this... Rei turned his gaze toward those present, holding Death Scythe and the Twilight Spear.
When Rei looked at them anew, the man who had told Rei not to be ridiculous also averted his gaze.
He had probably been able to shout at Rei while riding the momentum, but once that momentum settled, he could say nothing more.
The escort soldiers too, judging that anything they said could bring about the worst possible result, remained silent.
The soldiers returning from the forest—who could well have caused a commotion upon seeing Rei—had been knocked unconscious by the escort soldiers to prevent them from making noise.
"Now then... what should we do with them? Should we kill them all?"
Rei turned toward Ryutas and asked this.