Chapter 377: A Pony Or A Centaur?
Luca’s ears perked up.
’Who in the world...?’
It was not a voice he recognized. Not one of the centaurs he had already sent tumbling to the earth.
This one was different—sharp, mocking, and carrying the unmistakable weight of someone who had absolutely no respect for authority, tradition, or the feelings of others.
Meanwhile, hearing this voice, the expressions of the centaurs shifted from battle-readiness to something far more complicated.
Embarrassment. Unease. The particular kind of dread one feels when an annoying younger sibling shows up at the worst possible moment.
Curious, Luca slowly turned his head toward the source.
The formation split cleanly down the middle, revealing a figure at the very back whose silhouette made Luca’s brain grind to a halt like a carriage wheel caught in mud.
’What in the world...?’
He had to rub his eyes. Actually rub them. Because what he was seeing simply could not be real.
Standing at the back of the ranks was a centaur. At least, she was technically a centaur. She had the torso of a woman and the body of a horse.
But that was where the resemblance to the others ended, because this was not a horse.
This was a pony!
She was half the size of every other centaur present! Half!
Where Sigrid towered like a monument carved by the gods themselves, this newcomer barely reached Sigrid’s shoulder—and that was only if Sigrid lowered herself.
The equine half of her body was compact and almost absurdly small, with short, sturdy legs that looked like they could carry her across a meadow but certainly not through a battlefield.
She was, for all intents and purposes, a centaur scaled down to the size of a child’s drawing come to life.
But her face—her face was anything but childish.
Short, tousled silver-white hair swept across her forehead in messy strands that looked like she had run her fingers through them one too many times.
Beneath those locks, a pair of sapphire-blue eyes gleamed with an intelligence that bordered on predatory, sharp and calculating, as if she was already three steps ahead of everyone in the clearing and had been for some time.
Her fair skin bore the occasional smudge of charcoal that traced along her cheekbones and across the bridge of her nose in patterns that suggested she had been working with fire and metal not long ago.
A weathered leather blacksmith’s apron hung over her shoulders, stained and marked with the signs of honest labor.
And beneath it, a simple white blouse stretched across a figure that was, much to Luca’s surprise, surprisingly well-endowed despite her petite frame.
She was beautiful. There was no denying that.
Despite the soot, the dirty apron, and the fact that she looked like she had rolled out of a forge and decided to grace the battlefield with her presence—she was every bit as striking as Sigrid herself.
But none of that compared to the expression on her face.
Her chin was raised at an angle that could only be described as haughty.
Her lips curled into a faint, knowing smirk that suggested she had already concluded, without a shadow of a doubt, that everyone here was several rungs below her on the ladder of intellect
—
The centaurs, however, were not impressed.
"Mavis?!" One of them shouted, a younger centaur with a long braid and wide eyes. "What are you doing here?! Your sister told you—"
"I know what my sister told me." Mavis interrupted, her voice smooth as silk. "But since when have I ever listened to what my sister tells me?"
Another centaur, older and with a stern face that spoke of years of discipline, stepped forward.
"Mavis, please. Just go back. This isn’t—this isn’t a place for you."
"Not a place for me?" Mavis raised an eyebrow. "Last I checked, this was a training ground for centaurs. And I am, in fact, a centaur."
"So unless you’ve all decided to revoke my membership without telling me—"
"You know what I mean." The older centaur said through gritted teeth.
"Yeah, Mavis." Another voice chimed in, a younger centaur with freckles across her nose. "Just go stay with the others. It’s safer. Please don’t cause any trouble!"
At this, Mavis let out a laugh. It was the laugh of someone who had heard the same tired arguments a thousand times and had grown spectacularly bored of them.
"Oh, I see. So now I’m the one who causes trouble?"
She trotted forward on her short pony legs, her hooves clicking against the packed earth in a rhythm that somehow felt more intimidating than the thundering charge of the warriors who had come before her.
"Let me get this straight. I’m the one causing trouble?"
"Not the bunch of you who came here to gang up on a single man and got your asses handed to you?"
"Not the ones who let my sister get humiliated in front of everyone? No, no, I’m the problem?"
The centaurs fell silent.
A few of them looked at the ground. Others stared at their swords as if the weapons might offer some escape from the verbal onslaught.
Mavis’s grin widened.
"That’s what I thought! You can bark at me all you want, but the truth is, none of you have the right to say a single word to me!"
She looked around the gathering, her gaze landing on one centaur after another.
"Because if you had actually done something—if you had managed to land even a single scratch on the hero—then maybe, maybe you’d have some ground to stand on. But you didn’t. So here we are."
She turned to Luca, and for a moment, their eyes met. He saw something flicker in those sapphire depths—curiosity, perhaps, or appraisal.
She was studying him the way a craftsman studies a piece of metal before deciding how to shape it.
Then she went back to her tirade.
"What about you, Eleanor?" Mavis pointed at a centaur with a particularly downcast expression.
"When you came to my workshop this morning, you asked me to sharpen your sword as much as possible. You said, and I quote, ’Today I’ll defeat the hero and my name will go down in history.’ You were so confident."
Eleanor’s face went red. "S-Shut up, Mavis!"
"Shut up? Is that all you have to say?" Mavis laughed. "Because from what I saw, you lasted exactly one second. One! I counted. The Hero slammed your sword away before you even got into stance. You didn’t even have time to swing."
"Tell me, is that how you plan to make history? By being the fastest centaur to ever lose a fight?"
"I said shut up!"
"Oh, of course. My apologies. I’ll stop talking about the fight you lost in less time than it takes to blink."
Mavis turned to another centaur—one with muscular arms and a face that was already beginning to crumple.
"And Petrice. Dear, dear Petrice. You always tell the younger centaurs that dignity and honor matter above everything else."
"You drill knightly virtues into them like it’s the only thing that matters in the world."
Petrice stiffened, as if she already knew what was coming.
"And yet." Mavis continued, savoring every word. "Here you are. Bullying a single Hero with your numbers. Where was your honor then, Petrice?"
"Where was your dignity when you were standing in a group, waiting for your turn to gang up on a man who has done nothing but defend himself?"
Petrice opened her mouth, then closed it. She looked away, unable to muster a response.
But Mavis was far from finished.
"And you." She turned to a centaur with a heavy broadsword strapped to her back. "Tiana. You always boast that you can carry the heaviest of swords."
"The other day, you came to me and demanded I add more pure wiltonite ore to make your blade stronger. You said, ’I need a sword that can crush my enemies.’ Do you remember?"
Tiana’s face was already turning pale.
"Please, Mavis. I—I’m already feeling distressed today. Don’t take it too far."
"Too far?" Mavis’s voice dripped with mock concern. "I’m just asking a simple question!"
"Your heavy broadsword—the one you’re so proud of—keeps getting smacked aside by the Hero again and again. And you keep having to pick it up, over and over, like a dog running after a stick."
"Is that the crushing power you were looking for?"
Tiana’s muscles bulged as she clenched her fists, but no words came out.
Instead, tears rolled down her cheeks, and she turned away, unable to face the tiny centaur who had cut her deeper than any blade ever could.
Mavis watched her go, then scanned the crowd for her next target.
"What about you, Bruna? You told me you wanted your sword to be lighter so you could swing faster. Well, you certainly swung fast—straight into the Hero’s block."
"And then what happened? Oh, right. You got thrown onto your back like a overturned turtle."
"You don’t have to say that—"
"And you, Helena! The one who insisted on a longer blade for reach."
"Tell me, how much reach did you have when the hero stepped inside your guard and flipped you onto the ground before you could even blink?"
"Please, stop—"
"And you—"
Mavis didn’t stop.
She continued pointing at one centaur after another, delivering comments and insults about the fight.
She tore into their techniques, their stances, their choice of weapons.
She mocked their battle cries and their retreats.
She dissected every failure with the precision of a surgeon and the cruelty of a conqueror.
And after each one, the targeted centaur wore an expression of pure grievance, but couldn’t fight back.
Because the insults, harsh as they were, were all completely true.
They could only stand there, burning with shame, utterly incapable of mounting any defense.
—
Luca watched the scene unfold with growing fascination.
The entire time he had been here, what he had observed among the centaurs was unity and sisterhood.
When one centaur fell, another immediately stepped forward to take her place.
When one faltered in battle, the others called out encouragement, pushing her to rise again and press forward.
Every interaction he had witnessed spoke of camaraderie—the same bonds he had seen among the finest knights of any realm.
It was obvious these centaurs would sacrifice themselves for one another without hesitation, and he had developed a genuine respect for that.
But now this tiny centaur had appeared out of nowhere, and she was spewing insult after insult with the precision of a master archer.
The other centaurs, clearly unaccustomed to such verbal combat, had no ability to respond in kind.
They were straightforward warriors—sly remarks were simply not in their repertoire.
They could only stand there, growing more embarrassed by the second.
It made Luca realise that this tiny centaur who was apparently Sigrid’s sister was truly completely different from everyone else in this village.
Where the others carried themselves with knightly dignity and adhered to their sacred values, she seemed to operate on an entirely separate wavelength.
She didn’t care about honor or propriety. She referred to the other centaurs as "meatheads" and "brutes who only use their muscles."
Speaking as though she occupied some higher intellectual plane from which she could look down upon them all.
And yet, Luca found that he didn’t mind it.
It almost felt as though she were on his side—though he knew, of course, that she wasn’t. She was simply using this moment to mock her comrades.
Still, it was refreshing to see someone giving these centaurs a hard time besides himself.