The first among the men to rush toward Rei's group was, naturally, the one standing closest.
It was the same man who had been carrying on a one-sided conversation with Rei moments ago.
Longsword in hand, he closed the distance and swung it down with all his might.
The strike contained no technique or experience—just a brute downward swing.
Nor did it possess above-average speed. If anything, it was exceedingly slow.
Naturally, Rei had no intention of taking such a blow silently. He sidestepped it effortlessly and drove a counter into the man's face.
He held back, intending not to kill with a single strike so he could interrogate them later.
Even so, the punch carried enough force to fracture bone, and the man went flying—but the instant Rei landed another counter on the next attacker and sent him sprawling, the scene that met his eyes made them go wide.
The first man he had punched was climbing back to his feet, completely unfazed.
Rei had held back, yes, but not to the degree that the man could get right back up—let alone charge at him again without a moment's hesitation.
(What?)
Harboring that question, Rei dodged the third attacker—a man wielding a club—seized his elbow, and crushed the joint.
"GUOOOOOH!"
Even with his elbow shattered, the man showed no sign of caring. He swung at Rei with his left hand, the one still intact.
Rei dodged and snatched the club still hanging in midair... but in the next instant, he swung it in front of his body as a makeshift shield.
A heartbeat later, a spear thrust straight toward Rei, piercing through the club wielder's torso from behind.
This too was an attack utterly devoid of finesse, but for a spear to still feel sharp immediately after piercing through a human body—the wielder would have to be close to first-class.
In any case, Rei was startled that the man had ruthlessly used his own comrade as a shield and discarded his ally's life without a second thought. But while the spear could pierce a human body, it couldn't pierce the club Rei held, and its momentum stopped cold.
And yet... despite being impaled, the man actually wore a smile as he swung his still-functional left fist down at Rei.
A spear through the torso—specifically, the solar plexus—was an unmistakably fatal wound.
And yet the man kept attacking as if he felt no pain whatsoever.
If anything, Rei's eyes caught him trying to clench his right hand, which had been shattered and should have been completely useless.
(I see. In other words, these guys don't feel pain at all. No—it's not just that. Their minds are gone too.)
Rei had been caught off guard at first, but now that he understood what kind of opponents these were, there were any number of ways to deal with them.
He forcefully swung the club with the spearhead still embedded in it.
Naturally, the man whose solar plexus had been pierced was dragged along by the spear's movement and lost his balance.
"Rah!"
With a sharp twist of his wrist, Rei wrenched the club and dislodged the spearhead, then brought the club down hard on the fallen man's left knee.
Just as it had been futile when the man tried to attack with his shattered right arm, these men were insensitive to pain—no, they didn't feel it at all.
But not feeling pain was different from being able to move. Even if they wanted to, they couldn't.
If a shattered elbow healed instantly and they came back swinging, dealing with them would become troublesome indeed.
But these opponents showed no such signs. Destroy them physically, and they stopped moving.
Once he understood that, handling the rest was no longer difficult.
Rei worked through them methodically—the man with the spear, the first one whose nose he'd broken—using the club to dispatch each in turn.
By the time he felled the fifth, not a single man was left standing.
Rei had only taken down five—barely half the attackers—yet the battle was over because Set and Bluitt had been dispatching the rest.
The attackers had paid no attention whatsoever to Set or Bluitt, charging straight at Rei and Rei alone, which made it easy for the two of them to bring the men down.
"Still... they came straight for you the entire time. Seriously creepy bastards. Were they on some kind of drug?"
"Bluitt's probably right. Or if not drugs, they might have been controlled by some kind of Magic Item or spell."
Some were unconscious. Others were still awake but unable to move properly, their limb joints shattered. And some were dead.
Surveying them, Rei muttered.
Without such an explanation, the situation was far too bizarre.
Shattered joints, yet no pain, no slowdown—just relentless, ceaseless attacks aimed at Rei.
It was undeniably abnormal.
"...What a pain. At first I thought I was the one being targeted, but finding out it was you instead doesn't sit right either. And look at this mess. We can't just leave things as they are. There are even a few we ended up killing."
Initially, Bluitt had figured that knocking the attackers out—or breaking a bone or two to kill their fighting spirit—would send them fleeing.
That was what he'd expected. But several men were now dead, and the rest didn't just have one or two broken bones—they had the joints of their limbs shattered or snapped to render them immobile. Leaving things as they were was no longer an option.
At the very least, he needed to fetch the Guards and explain the situation.
What a hassle, Bluitt thought, scratching his head.
"Sorry for dragging you into something weird. Originally, I was supposed to be the one helping you out."
When he'd first spotted these men, Rei had assumed their target was Bluitt—not himself or Set.
After all, anyone attending this festival had likely seen the mock battle, and even those who hadn't would have heard the outcome.
Rei couldn't imagine anyone picking a fight with such an opponent using only ten or so men. No—since they'd genuinely come to kill, "challenge to battle" was probably the more accurate term. Regardless, Rei couldn't see anyone doing such a thing.
Let alone challenging someone accompanied by Set. By any normal reasoning, that was nothing short of suicide.
"Ah, well, don't worry about it. Normally, no one would expect them to be after you. Anyway, before I go call the Guards, let me ask—do you have any idea why these guys would be after you?"
"If you're asking whether I have a suspicion, I definitely do."
Rei knew full well that he was by no means popular with the nobles.
What's more, among the nobles watching today's mock battle, there had been Gaiska, glaring at him with a gaze full of hatred.
But even so, Rei couldn't imagine that Gaiska believed these men could accomplish anything against him.
(In that case, the most suspicious one is... this gaze, after all.)
A gaze with no killing intent or malice—one that inspired nothing but a sense of wrongness.
He was still feeling it even now, so it was easy to surmise that its owner was the mastermind behind this incident.
That said, the question of what possible purpose there was in making these men attack him still remained.
(Maybe they just wanted to see how I fight? No, that doesn't hold up either. If they only wanted to observe my combat, the mock battle would've been more than enough.)
The difference in combat technique between the mock battle opponents and these men was obvious without a second thought.
If the goal was purely to observe Rei's fighting skills, the mock battle would have yielded far more valuable data.
The fact that they had gone out of their way to bring opponents who weren't particularly skilled meant there had to be a reason.
(The difference from the mock battle... difference? Mock battle? Wait—could it be?)
The phrase "mock battle" sparked a certain possibility in Rei's mind.
Fundamentally, a mock battle was, as the name suggested, a mock battle—nothing more than a simulation of real combat.
In other words, it was predicated on not killing the opponent.
What's more, the mock battle Rei had participated in was hosted by Liberte. At such an event, an accidental death was one thing, but deliberately killing an opponent would smear Liberte's name beyond repair.
Rei himself had no particular desire to kill people for the fun of it.
That was why the mock battle had ended as just a mock battle... but in that sense, he may not have fully satisfied the owner of that gaze.
And so—whether he liked it or not, could he reliably kill an opponent when the opportunity arose?
To confirm precisely that, someone had controlled these men and sent them to attack Rei's group.
Viewed in that light, Rei couldn't say he was entirely unable to understand their reasoning.
"Hey, Rei. What's wrong? Did you think of something?"
Bluitt's voice pulled Rei from his thoughts, where he'd been studying the bodies and the men who could no longer move.
Rei snapped back to himself and shook his head as if to say it was nothing.
What he'd come up with was merely speculation, and more importantly, he felt reluctant to drag Bluitt any deeper into this affair.
As his handling of the attackers had demonstrated, Bluitt possessed considerable strength.
But "considerable" was all it was—not the overwhelming, peerless power held by Rei, Elena, Vihera, Marina, and others of their caliber.
To put it bluntly, his strength still fell within the realm of ordinary humans.
And the owner of that gaze— Rei had sensed it repeatedly—was, without a doubt, an existence far closer to Rei's group than to Bluitt.
He had no definitive proof, but he was certain of it.
"I was just thinking that these guys really must have been on some kind of drug."
"...Probably."
Unlike typical nobles, Bluitt had experienced common city life firsthand.
Because of that, he had a fair understanding of so-called dangerous drugs—which, in Rei's perception, were close to narcotics.
He also knew that such substances could serve legitimate purposes depending on how they were used.
But seeing people who appeared to have lost all reason under a drug's influence wasn't something Bluitt welcomed either.
Reading something in Bluitt's expression, Rei spoke up again.
"Sorry, but could you go call the Guards? The people who were stationed here already scattered... and more importantly, you shouldn't be looking at this scene any longer than necessary, right?"
"...Hmph. I'll accept the second reason, but the first is fair enough. No matter how deranged they are, leaving these guys as they are probably isn't wise."
Though clearly somewhat displeased, Bluitt conceded the point.
In truth, Bluitt had fought on battlefields before. While he had no desire to witness such sights, it wasn't enough to make him queasy.
"Then I'm counting on you."
At Rei's repeated insistence, Bluitt turned and departed, looking less than thrilled.
Ultimately, since someone needed to fetch the Guards and Knights, he must have decided it fell to him.
More to the point, if they just left things as they were, even the ones still alive might not survive.
Besides, if he stayed here, he couldn't be confident he'd be able to handle whatever came next.
(If it was only guys like these, it wouldn't have been a problem... But from the look on Rei's face, there's probably something here I wouldn't be able to deal with.)
With that thought, Bluitt set off to summon the Guards and Knights.
"Guruu?"
Is it okay? Set purred questioningly. Rei nodded—there was no problem.
If Bluitt had stayed and gotten drawn into what was about to happen, he probably wouldn't have been able to handle it. That was what Rei had been thinking.
After Bluitt's figure had faded well into the distance, Rei listened to the groans of the men scattered across the ground, then spoke.
"Now then. How about you come out? Just watching endlessly gets boring, doesn't it?"
Rei called out into the empty air... and when he looked again, a single man was standing in the direction of that gaze.