As the number of victims kept rising, the centaurs fell into confusion. Just moments ago they had been looting and trampling the village, but now they were trembling in fear. They looked around wildly, convinced the culprit had to be nearby, desperate to find whoever had done this to their comrades.
But unlike his subordinates, the centaur chief, though just as confused and enraged, forced himself to stay as calm as possible and assess the situation as the leader of the herd. He organized everything that had happened so far in his mind.
Something unknown was attacking them. Three had already died, and each corpse had been left in a hideous state, yet there was no sign of the one responsible—not even a shadow.
"Hm? A shadow...?"
At that moment, the centaur chief realized something was wrong. Shadow. It was the shadows. He concluded that the invisible enemy was using their shadows to kill them like this, and then he saw one of the other centaurs' shadows begin to warp in a grotesque way.
"H-hey...! Your arms...!?"
"Huh? What's wrong with my ar—w-what, whatwhatwhatwhatwhatwhat is thiiiiiis!?"
But it was already too late. The centaur whose shadow had changed watched both his arms stretch impossibly far out to either side. At the same time his shadow's arms elongated in those unnatural directions, his real arms were finally torn straight off his body.
"A, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!"
He screamed and thrashed, trying to break free, but once both arms were completely ripped away, blood burst from the stumps in a violent spray.
It gushed out like a fountain. The centaur's eyes rolled back from the shock, and he collapsed to the ground. There was no need to check. He was dead. The sight of the centaur who had died with both arms torn off finally pushed the others past the limit of their confusion and into full panic.
They could only fidget and flail in place. At this point, they were no longer capable of rational thought. The centaur chief tried to speak and restore order, but just then a pebble came flying from somewhere and struck another centaur in the head.
"Wh-who was that!? Who threw a rock at me!?"
Blinded by rage, that centaur charged at another centaur standing in the direction the stone had come from and swung his sword. The one he struck had his neck cut through, and his headless body dropped to the ground.
Blood poured from the severed neck and soaked the earth. The other centaurs surrounded the one who had cut down his own comrade. They glared at him, furious enough to lose their minds.
"What the hell are you doing!? You cut down one of our own! Are you insane!?"
"Sh-shut up!!! That bastard threw the rock at me first!!!"
"Ow!!! Who was it this time!? Who threw that rock at me!?"
"Th-this is...!"
From there, it became pure chaos. Another stone suddenly flew in from somewhere else, and the centaur it hit, worked into a frenzy, swung his axe toward the direction it had come from.
The one on the receiving end had no intention of dying, so he blocked the axe with a club and struck back. What began with a single stone thrown from nowhere turned into a complete internal collapse among the centaurs. In their panic, unable to trust one another and shaking with fear, they reached the point where they were killing each other.
The centaur chief had gone half-mad and could not say a word. He could only stand there, his mind hanging by a thread, and watch his subordinates butcher one another. Time passed, and in the end, the only centaur left alive was the chief himself, the one who had led the herd. The rest, unable to trust each other, had all swung their blades at one another and now lay on the ground as cold corpses.
Looking at the bodies of his men, the centaur chief let out a hollow laugh. But right then, a human suddenly appeared before him. The figure had emerged like smoke, and the chief recoiled in shock, though he could not even be sure whether it was truly human.
A grotesque stone mask hid the face, and a dark brown cloak covered the entire body. The suspicious figure that had suddenly revealed itself in front of him pointed a finger at him.
"Now you're the only one left."
"...Y-you...? Was it you!?"
From what the masked stranger said, and from the way he had appeared out of nowhere, the centaur chief realized that this masked figure was the one behind everything.
The moment he understood that, despair and emptiness were replaced by hatred and fury, and that rage gave him strength. He picked up the sword he had dropped and shouted at the loathsome masked figure.
"You did this!? To my men!? I'll kill you and carve you up into meat!!!"
"You don't have the right to say that. You lot—creatures lower than livestock—don't deserve to live through today."
The masked stranger's identity was unknown, but from behind the mask shaped like the face of a rough, long-bearded man came a voice that was delicate like a girl's, yet spirited like a boy's.
No matter what kind of face lay behind that mask, the centaur chief did not care about something so trivial. He swore he would kill the masked figure who had avenged himself on his comrades. His sword slashed at the masked stranger's neck, but only then did the chief realize something was wrong.
He had definitely cut the figure standing right in front of him, and yet he had felt no sensation at all of slicing through anything.
"N-no...?"
When he came to his senses, the masked stranger had vanished. It had been right in front of him, yet it had disappeared like a mirage.
But the instant the masked stranger disappeared, the centaur chief finally felt his own body growing sluggish.
"Wh-where are you!? Where are you!?"
"...Here."
The centaur chief turned his stiffening neck toward the place the voice had come from, and saw something unbelievable.
Right beneath him, on top of his own shadow, the masked stranger was leisurely tugging and stabbing at his shadow here and there as if playing with a toy.
And every time the stranger toyed with his shadow, the centaur chief saw his own body twist strangely or swell out of shape. Now that the same fate had finally come for him, he struggled in terror.
"N-no...! M-my shadow...!"
"That's right. As you can see... this is my own technique for dealing with things that aren't human. Now that I've thoroughly ruined your shadow... you're... this."
Drawing a finger across his own throat, the masked stranger passed judgment on the centaur chief: death. It was effectively a death sentence. As he watched his body twist and bloat more and more, tears born of pure fear finally spilled from the centaur chief's eyes.
"S-save me...!"
"The villagers you were slaughtering probably said the same thing. I refuse."
"N-no...!"
With those words as the end, the centaur chief's body twisted up like a rope, then exploded like a bursting water balloon. Blood and chunks of flesh sprayed across the ground, and the horse half of the last remaining centaur fell with a heavy thud.
With the centaur chief meeting the same gruesome end as his men, the masked stranger who had hidden within the shadows as if his business were done—Iskios—stepped out into the sunlight. Looking at the mountain of centaur corpses, he let out a sigh.
"...The smell of blood is insane..."
When Iskios arrived at the village and saw the herd of centaurs, he had used their fear against them to make them destroy themselves, saving himself the trouble.
And above all, there was the shadow technique. It was a power he had created by pouring everything he had into devising a way to land a real blow on beings that were not human, but this was the first time even Iskios had ever used it in actual combat.
He interfered with the shadows of inhuman beings and inflicted damage on the shadows themselves. A shadow was also one's own reflected form in this world, the image of oneself cast behind. Iskios used that to twist a target's body or make it burst apart.
Thinking that everything he had to do here was finished, Iskios got to his feet to leave, since he had no more business in this village. But there was still one thing left that stopped him in his tracks.
"E-excuse me...!"
The voice calling to him from behind belonged to Pele, the only son of the man who served as this village's headman. Breathing hard, he had only just managed to catch up to where Iskios was.