If You Cheat, Just Don’t Tell Me - Chapter 20

—Just wait, Freya. I’ll be there soon.

I run. Run. Run.

Riding my bike, cutting through the wind. Riding without a care for roads or people—it feels damn good deep down. If the situation weren’t like this, I’d want to enjoy this ride even more.

“You bastards! Not a single one of you dies, got it?!”

“Right!”

We’ve taken every group combat tool from the union and strapped them to our bikes. Besides just speed, being able to carry more gear than horses or people without slowing down is another obvious advantage of these bikes.

The scale of the demonic invasion stampede I saw when I arrived after speeding here was massive. There’s no way we could handle this alone. Hundreds… no, maybe even over a thousand monsters. With just us riding a few dozen bikes, we can’t fight them head-on.

…But we’re not the only ones fighting. The patrol squads and adventurers from the neighboring town have naturally come out to protect the city. Our job is to reduce their burden, not to defeat the demonic invasion.

So of course, we’re not stupid enough to charge straight into the middle of the monster horde.

“Prepare the blast bombs! Ride past the monsters’ flank and throw them!”

I pull an oval sphere from the gear strapped to my bike. It has a pin on top. Pull that out, give it a hard impact, and the mana inside reacts with the gunpowder to cause an explosion. The downside is that instead of power, it makes a loud noise and has that distinct gunpowder smell that tends to draw monsters after use. But with these many monsters gathered, there’s no need to worry about that drawback.

“Half of you, follow me! The other half, go with Alta!”

Monsters of all sizes are swarming and surging forward. We split left and right, accelerating away from the front of the horde. I take the right, Alta the left.

I can’t see Alta on the other side after we split. That’s how many monsters there are.

No worries. Alta will handle it just fine. I trust her that much.

“None of you are gonna take a hit from these monsters now, right!?”

“Of course not!” “How long do you think we’ve been riding these things?!” “Ouch! That one grazed me! Just grazed, I said!” “We’ve got an idiot here!”

As we get closer, the monsters with ranged attacks start firing. Some kind of breath, mana bullets, thorn-like things.

We dodge them by leaning our bikes and changing course. For us, dodging monster attacks while riding is just second nature. Well, seems like there are some close calls.

“Idiot! Watch it!”

I shout a warning. I don’t want anyone to die. If you fall off your bike near a horde like this, it means certain death.

We speed past the monsters’ flank. I pull the pin from the blast bomb in my hand.

“Everyone ready?! Let ’em have it!”

Dozens of blast bombs are thrown into the monster horde. Without waiting to see the explosions, we keep racing past the flank.

Behind us, a chain of BANG! sounds rip through the air, like the sky itself is tearing apart. I can also hear the squelch of something soft—flesh, probably.

After passing the flank, we meet up with Alta and the others who’ve done the same from the opposite side.

“How’d it go, Alta?”

“Who knows! Probably blew a few away, right?!”

“Hope so! Alright, everyone! We’re turning back!”

I lean my bike hard, knees nearly scraping the ground, and swing around. The monster horde coming back into view doesn’t seem any smaller, but their advance looks slower than before.

“Looks like it’s working, huh?”

“Wanna do it again?”

“I’d like to say yes but even if their speeds dropped, the monsters are getting more agitated. Look, some are just attacking wildly. Must’ve hit something. If there are more like that all over, getting close next time might not end well.”

“So what do we do, Dicca?”

“Slow ’em down and target the big one. See that huge monster toward the back of the horde?”

I point so Alta can see. At the rear of the monster horde, closer to us now, there’s one much larger than the rest. A monster with a horse-like quadruped lower body and an ugly, humanoid upper body.

It’s easily three times the size of a human.

“That’s probably the leader of this horde.”

“Based on?”

“Instinct!”

It’s just because it’s the biggest and has the most mana, but given monsters’ instinct to follow the strong, I’m probably not wrong.

“You guys circle around to the front and throw bottles of flash bombs and machine oil tied together at their feet. That should cause enough confusion to slow ’em down a bit.”

“Dicca, what about you?”

“I’ll hang back and target that big bastard from here. If we take it down, the rest might scatter.”

“…Can you do it?”

“Of course, I can. I’ve got the blood of the Sword Saint and the Sage, after all.”

That’s just bravado. What does having that blood even mean? What has it ever done for me? For a talentless guy like me.

Still, it’s convenient to throw out as a reason to others. Not that it’ll work on Alta.

“…If something happens to you, we’re screwed. Both us Steel Whirlwind and Freya-chan. Don’t do anything reckless.”

“Mind your own business, I know what I’m doing. Besides, if we don’t take that thing down, we won’t get the full reward.”

After that exchange, Alta speeds off with the others besides me, probably relaying my orders to the rest.

Our main role is to reduce the burden of dealing with the demonic invasion but to get the full reward the union offered, we need to take down the horde’s leader. So, I can’t let anyone else have that big one.

“Alright then… Well, if I’m gonna marry someone like Freya, I’ve gotta be able to take down something like that to be worthy, right?”

I mutter that little joke to myself after everyone’s gone.

…Taking on the leader of a monster horde is too much for me. I know that. I have no talent. My magic, sword, and spear skills are just a bit better than average.

The failure born between the Sword Saint and the Sage. That’s me. There’s no way I can handle a monster that big. No reason I’d want to. If this were a little while ago, I’d have run away by now.

But right now, I don’t even think about running. I don’t feel any cowardly urge to flee.

Whether I can do it or not doesn’t matter. I have to. If I don’t do this here, I can’t face Freya. It’s just my own selfish feeling, but that’s how it is.

So just wait. I’ll take that thing down quick, pay off your family’s debt. About marrying me, you can think it over again properly then.

Up ahead in the monster horde, a fierce light flashes. The monsters’ advance falters, and my target is held up too.

—Just wait, Freya. I’ll be there soon.