Chapter 4

 A Killer First Meeting

To think I’d suddenly get kidnapped by a griffin—do even magical beasts have an eye for good looks?

It was so utterly absurd that my brain went blank for a moment.

‘Actually, if I really wanted to, I could kill this griffin right now.’

I raised one hand. Visualizing the shape of a sword in my mind, I gathered mana, and in less than a second, a small blade made entirely of mana formed in my hand. It was an aura blade.

It was a sword aura that could never be produced unless one was an advanced Swordmaster.

Even though my body had changed, Serapiel’s powers still remained intact.

‘However, since Eshaphe’s body has never undergone any training, I can’t fully unleash Serapiel’s strength. If I overdo it, this body will suffer severe damage.’

Having some power was better than having none at all, but a slightly ominous premonition brushed across my mind.

‘Don’t tell me I’m going to spend all my time killing magical beasts without any romance? Are those keywords just false advertising?’

You really couldn’t trust the world you transmigrated into.

I clicked my tongue once and made the mana sword vanish.

What good would it do to kill the griffin right here, only to plummet from the stratosphere? If I fell in this body, I’d die.

I didn’t possess the ability to fly.

Naturally, I couldn’t use mana to protect my body either. If I deployed enough vast mana to survive a fall from this height, Eshaphe’s body would die from a mana overload.

“Tsk…”

Since it had come to this, I had no choice.

I raised both hands and firmly grabbed the griffin’s ankles. The griffin squeezed its talons tightly as if annoyed, but I tightly bound its claws with mana to prevent my shoulders from being pierced.

Thank goodness no one would be seeing my mana way up here in the sky. I didn’t want to expose my swordsmanship, let alone my mana.

The griffin flinched and thrashed about in panic.

It seemed to have finally realized what kind of extraordinary being it had just kidnapped, and terror had set in.

“Hey, birdbrain. Stay still.”

I tightened my grip on the magical beast’s ankles. Twisting my hands slightly to the left, I forced a change in direction.

“Screeeech-! It’s—!”

The griffin struggled against the body movement forced upon it against its will, but it was futile.

Even though I was merely suppressing its feet and ankles with mana, the griffin’s entire body fell completely under my control.

‘Since things turned out this way, I’m riding this griffin instead of a carriage!’

There’s an old saying about a blessing in disguise.

Getting kidnapped by a griffin meant I had basically acquired a brand-new mount.

Though rather than riding it, I was dangling from its claws like a toy from a crane machine, but six of one, half a dozen of the other.

‘At this rate, I’m going to arrive in the North in a three-second flat.’

The griffin flapped its wings, hurtling northward. It felt like flying right across a map.

‘By the way, where am I supposed to get off? What if we’ve already passed the Bexborn Ducal Estate? I’ve never seen the place before, so I have no idea what it looks like.’

Just then, far off in the distance, a castle came into view that looked majestic and sharp at a glance. Its exterior was overwhelmingly imposing.

It was a structure so vast and lofty that it commanded attention even from the dizzying troposphere. I had never seen anything like it in my entire life.

Propelled by the beast’s powerful wingbeats, the castle rapidly closed in.

“Screeech!”

Suddenly, the griffin let out another strangled squawk. At the exact same time, my body plummeted into a steep nosedive. My dress flipped completely upside down.

‘W-What the!’

Come to think of it, did I just hear something whizzing through the air a moment ago?

As I fell, I jerked my head upward. A single dagger was deeply embedded in the griffin’s neck.

I was utterly dumbfounded.

‘Dammit, who threw a knife into my personal bird?’

“A griffin! It’s a griffin, Your Excellency!”

The Northern Bexborn Ducal Castle.

With the imposing castle—resembling a pitch-black hell fortress—looming in the background, Arkas reined in his black horse.

He was crossing a wide, rolling hill of a dark mountain leading toward the ducal castle. Following closely behind him were Ulrich Parne, the vice-commander and administrative adjutant, along with the Bexborn knights.

Northerners naturally possessed larger physical builds compared to people from other parts of the empire. Among them, the knights were exceptionally tall and heavily built.

Seeing those knights clad in plate pauldrons, greaves, and magnificent dark cloaks, they almost looked like an entirely different race.

At their forefront, Grand Duke Arkas Bexborn belonged to the tallest tier, yet his face was as pale and striking as the Snow Emperor. At the same time, he possessed razor-sharp features that suited his ruthless offensive prowess quite well.

Beneath his freely tousled silver hair, jet-black eyes honed to absolute perfection like sword blades emitted a chilling light.

The ruler of the northern region of the Taelion Empire, and the strongest individual gifted with the most immense power among all past heads of the Bexborn ducal house.

His legendary exploits had long made the imperial family wary of him.

[Arkas Bexborn awakens his aura at the tender age of three! Rewriting history with an unprecedented milestone in the empire.]

[Arkas Bexborn promoted to the youngest Swordmaster in history at eight years old!]

Before him, even the mightiest warriors were nothing more than ordinary mortals.

The moment Arkas, possessing such overwhelming power, ascended to the position of head of the house, the long-standing delicate balance between the imperial family and the North was shattered.

“Weren’t griffins supposedly driven to extinction over a decade ago?”

“How on earth did they show up again when we wiped out every last one of them?”

“T-That pesky little mosquito-like thing!”

Far in the distance, a single griffin was flying toward them.

Thirteen years ago, the Bexborn knights led by Arkas had exterminated every last griffin.

Historically, griffins harbored a deep-seated fear among northerners because they would prey on humans when their habitats lacked food. Of course, they weren’t the only magical beasts of that sort.

However, because their habitats were notoriously difficult to pinpoint and scattered across numerous locations, all previous heads of the Bexborn ducal house had failed to eradicate them entirely.

Arkas was the one who pulled off that impossible feat.

The North, serving as the head of the Taelion Empire, was vast and boundless. Unexplored regions vastly outnumbered the places touched by human footsteps.

Despite those circumstances, Arkas successfully tracked down all dozens of griffin habitats by the age of eleven.

With monstrous tactical genius, he wiped out the griffins that used to turn the skies into their lawless playground.

He smashed every single egg and extinguished the very life inside their hearts.

Ever since then, Arkas had grown terrifyingly stronger day by day, boasting martial might and strategic intellect that surpassed all past household heads.

Yet now, thirteen years later, a griffin was appearing again?

Arkas himself was the least pleased about it.

As it was, he was already being forced into a marriage with a bride chosen purely by the Emperor’s whims, and now misfortune was piling upon misfortune.

His hawk-like vision tracked the griffin.

“It’s caught prey.”

The griffin was clutching a human in its talons.

Judging by the way the layers of a dress were fluttering mercilessly, it was a woman.

“H-Hey! It’s a person!”

As the distance closed slightly, the other knights also recognized that a human was being carried.

“What should we do, Your Excellency?”

Arkas raised his head, observing the direction from which the griffin was flying and the flow of the wind.

If he killed the griffin recklessly, the woman was bound to suffer.

“Fall back, all of you. She’ll be crashing right down here in a second.”

“Pardon?”

Waiting for the right gust of wind, Arkas infused a small, long blade with his aura. He hurled it with all his might toward the griffin.

The blade coated in blue aura sliced through the sky faster than an arrow and drove straight into the griffin’s neck. Exactly as intended.

Before long, caught in the fierce northern winds, the griffin went into a wild, uncontrolled nosedive. In an instant, it closed in right below the hill where Arkas and the knights stood.

“Your Excellency!”

Arkas spurred his horse to leap upward, heading straight down the dark mountain slope. Since no specific orders were given, the knights could only stand frozen with their jaws dropped.

Calling it a hill was an understatement; considering the nearly vertical incline, it was practically a cliff. To charge down that slope without a shred of hesitation—truly, it was super-human.

The roaring sound of the wind whipped up by the griffin’s wings battered their eardrums. The woman dangled loosely, battered by the violent gale.

Was she already dead, perhaps?

They were moments away from colliding directly with the mountain slope. At that exact instant, Arkas launched himself through the air. Cutting the griffin’s ankles with his sword, he scooped the woman up into his arms.

Thud!

Plummeting onto the rocky terrain, the two of them tumbled over and over while tightly embraced. Clatter-clatter, rocks shattered and sprayed from the bedrock, and the griffin’s talons that had been clutching the woman’s shoulders were torn away.

Just as it felt like the mountain side was about to be painted in blood, Arkas drove his sword downward. Only after kicking up friction and sliding back slightly did their momentum finally come to a halt.