Chapter 5 – An End to the Death-Struggle
1
Down in the underground waterway, where the spray leapt off the current, two vicious blades and a leather whip of slaughter were trading blows.
“Yow!?”
“Watch yourself. One hit and you’re pretty much dead on the spot!”
“…Says the guy who tanked one and is just standing there like normal!”
Rudolf and I were trading strikes with the Black Serpent by a hair’s breadth, closing on the win one sure move at a time. On the cramped board of the waterway, each of us did what he was there to do and poured everything we had into whittling down the Serpent’s stamina.
Nerves sharpened to a point, constantly under the threat of a savage blow. All that motion had piled fatigue into my legs, and I could feel my first step turning heavy, like someone had poured lead into my boots. The damp waterway air had soaked into my clothes, and with every passing minute it dragged at me like a weight, dulling me further.
“…Haah, haah. Getting about time you tired out too, huh, old man?”
“Bwahah, hah, hah, whew. You’re the one whose panting’s echoing all up and down the waterway!”
“Huh? That’s your imagination. I’m not tired at all…!”
“Tch!”
Even mid-conversation, the Black Serpent’s attacks never stopped. I dodged the tail that came slamming down at the center of the waterway, and the two of us, split apart, re-gripped our weapons hard.
“Ho. Looks like you’ve still got some fight in you!”
“…Mgh. Annoying.”
In contrast to me, wiping the sweat off, Rudolf stood planted like a guardian king, all bold and blustering.
“Right then, plenty more where that came from! Come on, Black Serpent!”
The stamina-monster of a division commander leveled his hulking great sword and bellowed. Moving nonstop the whole time, and slipping every one of the Serpent’s fast, crushing strikes. Not something an ordinary person could manage. Where did the bottomless stamina even well up from? For all that he looked, from any angle, like a pure power type, he closed the gap on the Serpent in quick, nimble bursts, and there was nothing to do but gape at it.
“Huh? He’s got way too much stamina… he’s an old man, he’s supposed to run out of gas…”
“Ha! You say something?”
“Nope, didn’t say a thing.”
Even as we swapped idle chatter, the Black Serpent coiled itself up and shifted into the stance for a strike to finish us. I narrowed my eyes and watched, dead still, for the first twitch of movement. Land the first dodge, and ride the momentum to shave at the Serpent’s tough hide. Same thing we’d been doing over and over up to now.
“Sssshhh!!”
But it was about time to be done with the cautious way of fighting. There was so little roughness creeping into the Black Serpent’s movements that you had to wonder whether the concept of fatigue even existed for it. That terrifying attack speed hadn’t dropped from the very start.
“Here it comes!”
“You bet!”
The Serpent drew back its jaw, swayed its tail, and let out a low growl. The ground-hugging tail, savage as a whip, came around, and I twisted my body to slip it by a hair. Rudolf, meanwhile, took the heavy strike head-on with his sword and forced it back by sheer strength. Both of us planted ourselves and, on the very same beat, drove power down through the soles of our feet.
“Now! Let’s finish this, old man!”
“Aye!”
The ground we kicked off cracked lightly, and all of that force poured into closing on the Black Serpent. The tail Rudolf had knocked away slammed into the waterway wall and buried itself deep, which would put a few seconds’ delay on the tail’s next strike. Only a sliver of grace, but for us, the perfect chance. I traded a glance with Rudolf, leapt off the wall in a dancing bound, and drove my knifepoint at the Black Serpent’s head.
“Shhhyaaah!!”
That’s right. With the tail-strike off the table, the only counter the Serpent had left was a bite from those iron jaws. The huge beast gaped its mouth wide, ferocious fangs on show, and, drawn to it, I charged in head-on.
And then—!
“———!”
“Gyugii!?”
An instant before the killing fangs met my body, I stopped dead. I felt the shockwave off its clamped jaws against my skin and locked my killing intent against the Serpent’s, then pulled my gaze off its eyes at once.
My aim wasn’t the undefended inside of its mouth. I wasn’t about to run a reckless play that gambled on being bitten. To make sure the next move connected, I planted the seed of victory: I cut, with everything I had, straight at the seam of the Serpent’s shut jaw.
“Open sesame!”
What held up the Black Serpent’s monstrous bite were the two thick cheekbones bracing the upper and lower jaw. So smash those to splinters, and one of the Serpent’s fearsome ways of attacking was gone, and—
“Checkmate. You big idiot!”
“Gyagaaah!!”
—the Black Serpent’s greatest weak point would be laid open for good!
In this fight, there was no need for me to be the one who ended it. On the scene of this death-struggle stood a division commander with the dumb strength to cleave a giant monster clean in two. As I peeled away, a single shadow swapped places with me and bore down on the Serpent’s head at furious speed. The burly man who’d been watching, keen-eyed, for the moment to settle it hauled back the vicious blade that pierced all things and flashed his white teeth.
“Well done, you little brat! I’ll treat you to sweets later!”
“Heh. Super don’t want ’em.”
“———!!”
The Serpent turned its eyes overhead, but it was too late to panic now. The moment it made that suicidal lunge and failed to crunch me in that split second, the match was already decided.
As the flow of the wind stalled, a warp opened along a single thread of space. Rudolf moved, and the rustle of his clothes reached the Serpent’s sensitive hearing. And then—
“Oraaaaah!!”
A crowning strike that carried a gale with it, the supreme slash he’d honed on the front line as a division commander of the Imperial army, came bearing down on the Black Serpent’s gaping mouth.
However hard the scales that armored the Black Serpent, take a blow to the weak point with no guard up, and grave injury was certain. Into the Serpent’s lower jaw, hanging slack, his downswung sword crashed with a thunderous roar, and a pure-white shockwave and the Serpent’s fresh blood sprayed out in an oval. The Black Serpent, offering no resistance to the force, dropped its head to the ground and thrashed as if in agony.
“Gyuiiiiiaaah!!”
The ground shattered, and the water running through the channel threw up a spray. At the eardrum-splitting shriek I clapped my hands over my ears without a second thought. His cheek cut open by the flying grit, Rudolf still wouldn’t let go of the sword he’d driven in. I kept my eyes wide through the blast and the dust and saw the thing through to its end, as a great gush of blood dyed the jet-black scales red.
“…Ggh, gashi.”
After stopping completely on the spot, the long beast toppled, all its strength gone. That was the moment a long, grueling fight found its finish.
“…That’s that. Nice work.”
His gallant figure came walking slow through the dust, and I called out to him with an easy, breezy air.
“Not bad for an old man.”
“Hah. Course not. I’m one of the Imperial army’s division commanders, I’ll have you know.”
“Proud as you are, look at your legs. They’re like a newborn fawn’s.”
“Sh-shut it, you!”
Rudolf, having burned through every ounce of strength in his body, wobbled and looked about to keel over on the spot. I shoved a shoulder under him on reflex, and he just barely stayed on his feet.
“…Honestly, if you’re at your limit, you could just say so.”
“Idiot. I’m at the age where a man wants to look good…”
I lent a shoulder to the battered-and-bloody Rudolf and looked out over the wreck of the Black Serpent lying there. A refreshingly quiet air settled in, and the gentle sound of the water running through the channel grazed my ears.
The Black Serpent battle. Settled here. The victory went to the two who’d doggedly searched out the thread of the thing and reached the best answer. The Saint’s assassin, put down. In the dim space of an underground waterway, the curtain had come down on a battle that would be carved into history.
2
The Saint’s slash, mowing through the air, tore a deep gouge out of my belly.
“—Kh!”
“Fufufu!”
That eerie laugh clung to my ears and wouldn’t let go, as if it were proof the Saint was in earnest. A wave of heat, spreading into flame, parted us as though to check the Saint where she’d stepped forward to settle it all at a stroke.
“Al!”
“Haah, haah. Sorry… I got a little rushed.”
Rune-sama laid a hand to my wound and closed it at astonishing speed. The pain of my torn belly vanished, and strength flowed back through my whole body.
“Thank you.”
Back in the fight. Two seconds, no more, in between. Her healing magic boasted a staggering rate of recovery, yet she never let the strain drop from her face for a single instant, nullifying the torrents of magic the Saint flung by throwing up a barrier.
“Ufufu. When it comes to healing speed, you’ve already overtaken me, then.”
“Have I. I didn’t notice, no room to spare on such trifles.”
The two of them glared each other down. They cut flesh and blood from each other and whittled one another down, and the fight dragged on by way of endless recovery. Into a battle with no end in sight, one that could send your mind reeling, all three threw themselves in and kept throwing. At the Saint Reshia, who wouldn’t budge a step from her one spot, I hurled slashes that used the whole terrain of the waterway.
“Haah!!”
Blades crossed, and countless sparks glittered crimson. As if she’d taken the stagnant air itself for an ally, the Saint pivoted on one foot, twisted her hips, and flung me, straining against her, into the wall.
“Gah!?”
Along with the spit that flew from my mouth, a heavy impact and a searing pain ran through my back. Still not enough to reach her, after all. I couldn’t draw in the decisive chance to overwhelm the Saint and drive her into a corner. In my own movements I was doing my utmost, aiming a slash at every gap that could be called a gap, and every last one of them was turned aside. Before I could read the Saint’s pattern of movement, Reshia was already swinging her weapon two, three moves ahead of me.
“About at your limit, are you?”
“…Whew.”
I steadied my ragged breathing, emptied my mind once more, and turned my mind to sorting out the situation. In a fight with the Saint, what was the right way for me to move? The way I’d been going, I’d never reach the ground the Saint stood on. My full strength still fell well short. I needed to grow, one more step, in the middle of this fight.
“Haah!”
“Ufufu!”
The glow of magic chased the Saint in arcs. Rune-sama kept loosing spells to pin down the Saint’s free movement, but even she had a ceiling on her mana. In sheer mana volume, the Saint was almost certainly the greater, and in a battle of attrition the advantage went to the other side.
“Lovely. It’s wonderful. Because it’s a fight with your lives on the line, your radiance only grows the stronger.”
A deadlock this even could tip at any moment. If the Saint shifted up one more gear, even fending off her attacks would turn difficult.
“I’ll break it open.”
“Wait, Al.”
Just as I made to step in, she caught one of my arms and called me back.
“What is it?”
“Honestly, this stalemate isn’t what I want. Keep the fight up like this and I think it only bleeds our stamina away.”
“That’s true enough, but…”
I’d no intention of throwing myself at her blindly, but without clashing, no path forward would open.
“The only way to read the Saint’s movement is to keep pressing her.”
“There’s sense in your thinking, certainly. But turn it around, and the longer it drags on, the more our way of fighting is learned too.”
“That’s…”
Hearing it, I caught myself. That moment I’d landed a slash on the Saint: in her mind, it went deep precisely because I’d moved differently from the pattern I’d shown until then. There’s no countering the unknown. But if it was the kind of blow she’d parry with room to spare once she’d seen it, then the one time I got an attack through her was that one moment, and no more.
“…You’re saying I should make a move beyond her imagining at that instant?”
“And on top of that, if we can’t finish her, in the end it only gets harder for us.”
A self I hadn’t been until now. Easy enough to say out loud, but actually changing how you fight is desperately hard. Seal away the sword-strikes the Saint had parried, and forge new cards I hadn’t yet shown her. …No, that’s not it either.
“Are you finished conferring? Fufu. Then let us begin again, shall we.”
The Saint’s single step, put forward like a war god’s, rang out all around.
“Rune-sama. A card you haven’t shown yet.”
“I have one.”
“Then let’s throw it at the Saint.”
I stepped forward at once.
“Oh my. So in the end it’s the same movement as ever?… A disappointment.”
“Say what you like. You monster!”
I took the Saint’s swung weapon head-on in a lateral sweep, and the shock carried through my jet-black sword and left my fingertips numb.
“Yes, yes, yes! You won’t beat me just by defending!”
I went on holding off the heavy blows from every quarter, above, below, left, right, hard enough to grind my bones. When I was pushed back, I covered it with footwork and held my ground without giving way behind.
“—Kh!”
My grip was reaching its limit. Unable to fully disperse the flow of force, the whole-bodied strikes from that long weapon were draining the feeling from my hands. Not yet. Not yet! Braced to right my staggering body, I fought to plant my feet and read the Saint’s next swing.
“Fufufu.”
A smile like a jeer let a fine delay slip into her strike.
“There!”
I saw it, clear as day. A great swing meant to break me where I’d held to nothing but defense. Of course, taking it straight on was impossible, but in an instant I drove my upper body inside her guard and let go of my sword. I put a full-strength open palm into the Saint’s belly.
“Ugh!!”
A move she couldn’t foresee, keyed as her senses were to a killing blow. A bare-handed strike meant only to stagger her, it worked well enough to lock up the Saint’s movement for a moment. Would she ever have thought I’d catch her with a surprise, me who’d gone on doggedly, honestly trading blows head-on? A fighter of her caliber would’ve kept a sliver of the possibility tucked in a corner of her mind, but with her guard down she couldn’t quite carry it through to a snap response.
“I overtook you, Saint. My read got out ahead of yours.”
“With a cheap trick like this… you think you can beat me.”
“Never thought that.”
“—Kh!?”
I knew it. A light strike, a child’s trick, could do nothing to threaten the Saint. From the very start, I never once meant to see this through by my own hand. I’d cast off the self-satisfied way I used to fight; all to reach the one goal of victory, I’d only scattered the stones I could set on the board.
“…Well done. Al.”
“I’m honored.”
The real card, from the beginning, was her new technique. A rear-support mage, specialized in healing, she’d add a spell attack now and then, but had been doling out magic of a power the Saint had no cause to fear, and in this instant she brought out the spell she’d worked up, shown for the very first time.
“…Kneel. Overload!”
“—Aiih!!”
The ground beneath the Saint glowed a pale blue, and then, rising as if to climb to the heavens, an electric discharge coursed through her whole body. The desperate overload, crackling and sparking, tormented the Saint without mercy. An ordinary person run through with that much current would die on the spot, but surely it wasn’t enough to kill her.
Before the surge of magic ran out, I set my stance to strike again. I snatched my beloved sword up off the ground and circled to the blind spot of the Saint writhing in the current. The gap while the Saint healed her own wounds was the moment my attack would land easiest. Miss it, and there might be no next time. This chance she’d handed me, I wouldn’t waste.
“Hah!!”
I timed it to the point where I’d taken her back and the current wrapping her had thinned to almost nothing, and closed to her waist in one motion. I dropped my sword-tip to a hair off the ground and swept it up all at once. The Saint’s eyes rolled and fixed on me, but there was no time now to defend. The greatest firepower I could give an undefended Saint, her whole body still convulsing.
Settle it here, and—
“…I told you, didn’t I. I cannot be finished until I’ve seen this world’s ending through.”
“—Kh.”
A ghastly air fastened onto my sword. A crushing gravity poured down from above without mercy, moving to kill the sword’s momentum entirely. The chance I’d fought for was being smashed apart; at this rate the sword would lose speed and stop before ever reaching the Saint. Her narrowed eyes seemed to press it on me: however hard you struggle, you have no hope of winning. My whole body ran hot, as if brought to a boil.
No. It couldn’t be. There was no way I’d let things go just as she’d pictured them. To shelve my own helplessness and admit defeat was a disgrace as her personal knight. She’d believed I would strike the Saint down, and dealt her a heavy blow to make it so. Come on, struggle! Struggle, struggle, keep on struggling! Fire-in-a-crisis freak strength, anything, I don’t care. Now! I want the strength to land one hit on the Saint!
“Kgaaaaaaah!!”
I re-gripped the sword hilt in both hands and pushed back against the crushing gravity bearing down from above, pouring in everything I had, hard enough that the veins on the backs of my hands stood out fit to burst.
At a weight I’d never felt before, blood ran from my clenched lips. Even so, the surging waves of feeling set my vitality boiling on reflex.
“—Gah!!”
The sword-tip, which had rocked back and forth again and again, touched the Saint’s skin. Slow but sure, the blade edged upward, and the eyes of the Saint Reshia filled with a dread and dismay greater than any I’d seen.
“Gih!!”
“Ku-hah…!?”
A single slash from the black sword, driven all the way through, carved up to the ceiling of the waterway. The water-spray that danced into the air along the line of the strike glittered pale blue in the reflection off the blade. And the Saint’s body, caught in its path, was run through with a red line, split, quite literally, in two.
“A-aah… aaah, aaaah!!”
“It’s over. Saint Reshia… sleep here.”
That prized regeneration of hers, too, would come to nothing with a wound this deep.
“Such… you mean to tell me this is the end I meet?”
The weapon the Saint had held melted into empty air and vanished, and even the pressure that had radiated off her thinned away. This time it truly was the end.
“…Yes. Truly.”
Her last words, perhaps. The Saint wrung a hoarse voice from trembling lips.
“Truly, a wonderful time, one I could take real delight in.”
Her face, wearing its suffering, changed in a breath. Bleeding from her eyes, she smiled in rapture.
“…Al.”
“Yes.”
I sensed the uncanny air about the Saint and stepped back at once to Rune-sama’s side.
“It isn’t over yet.”
Even taking a wound like that, was the regeneration lodged in the Saint the greater force still? The Saint’s mana, which had scattered, snapped back to what it was in no time, and, giving off a divine light, mended that deep wound. The fight went on without ending. This monster, it seemed, would not go down easily after all.
3
A pain that severed every nerve strung through my body. The first such thing I’d felt in all my life. This, surely, was suffering deeper than death. Even when an ordinary person takes a mortal wound, the flame of life housed in me goes on burning, and in exchange, the deep gash where I’d been cut came with a pain like being set alight.
“…Yes. Truly, a wonderful time, one I could take real delight in.”
To think I’d gain fresh experience in this age, of all things. I’d never imagined it. I’d thought that living long only piled up hollow, wasted hours, and yet perhaps this world was not so worthless after all. The bright red blood running to my fingertips, the sharp pain racing through my whole body: they made me feel, truly, that I was alive in this world.
“Fufufu! My heart pounding like this, it’s all thanks to you two.”
I spoke my thanks and set about healing my own wound. A loneliness came over me at the sensation of the pain gradually withdrawing, and at the same time I held a joy that I could fight again. Over a long span of years I’d sought the Elect across the whole continent, and so, at last, I’d found those able to kill god. These two could grow stronger yet. In fact they’d driven me a single step from death: Aldia Graetz and Valtrune von Felsdorf. Without fail, they could become the heroes who save the world.
The Empire route they weave here in this land, the Valugan Empire. How I longed to see it through to the very end, to the moment they made real the world they wished for. The many parallel worlds that had collapsed, over and over. It was here, I felt, that the chain of tragedy would be rooted out.
“Now. Let us begin afresh.”
Against my brimming eagerness, the two of them, weary faces and all, set their stances with killing intent bared plain.
“…Haah. I do wish she’d give it a rest.”
“This time I finish it.”
A strong heart that wouldn’t break though it heaped failure on failure. Truly, children who can turn a burst of feeling into strength hold infinite promise within them, and those buds I had to make bloom without fail. However rich their talent, god could not yet be brought down by the likes of this. They were, so to speak, still young leaves only just sprouted from the seed into the soil, so I would take it on myself to nurture these two and make of them true heroes.
“Lord Svell… only a little further now. The world will surely be saved by human hands.”
The whisper was so faint that none but I could hear it. No one answered my talking to myself, and it was speech that would, I was sure, reach not even Lord Svell. With no leisure to sink into the emptiness, I drew a deep breath and, as I’d planned all along, shifted into the next phase.
Now then. About time I raised the difficulty a notch, I should think. How many hundred years had it been since I’d put out more than sixty percent of my strength? Against children of man, today was the first time, and my expectations were rising.
“You foolish Elect who defy your fate, show me. Make this Saint bend her knee.”
I loosed that provoking line and let a faint smile rise. And, having said it, that overblown turn of phrase, I felt a touch embarrassed. Foolish Elect, indeed. What mouth did I have to spin words that came straight back on their speaker? The true fool who defies her fate: now which Saint might that be, I wonder?
4
Even I, who couldn’t use magic, caught the sign of the dense mana the Saint had wrapped herself in. At an outward pressure so strong it made even breathing painful, I couldn’t stop the shudder running through me. Perhaps unable to watch me like that, Rune-sama caught my hand at once.
“It’s all right. The two of us are together.”
She herself had to be gripped by fear at the Saint’s aura. A force powerful enough that, ordinarily, a person would faint on the spot; just standing there was creditable enough, and the aura the Saint gave off was a thing beyond the human.
“…She’s grown stronger again.”
“It really does seem she’s been releasing her power by stages. Knowing she was going easy on us the whole time, it stings a little.”
Had she come at us with everything from the start, wiping us out would have been simple work. I couldn’t make out the Saint’s aim, and even this crushing pressure of an overwhelming superior, whether it was so much as her true strength, we had no way to judge. Well, either way, what we had to do didn’t change.
“…Let’s resist. Give up before we’ve begun, and even a wish that could come true is snuffed out.”
Let them sneer at me for a fool. Let it be pointed out that we, in the Saint’s eyes, were nobodies who couldn’t know our place, standing up to a vast evil we had no hope of matching. We didn’t care in the slightest. A losing fight, and we’d hold our conviction and fight it through. Whatever the outcome, I prayed the proof that we’d kept challenging would lay the next stone.
“Haah!!”
This time I ignored the sword-forms entirely. With footwork worked into my own style, I drove a barrage of strikes that used every angle and carved wounds faster than she could regenerate. With her weapon not yet back in hand, the Saint parried my sword bare-handed.
“…Much faster than at the start, aren’t you.”
An astonished look rose on the Saint. Throw ten strikes, and nine would be stopped cold, but one would set a faint cut on her skin. More. Faster still. The Saint was blocking after watching my movement, so there was a slight lag before she reacted. Widen that lag as far as it would go by moving faster, and I could break the Saint’s ironclad defense.
“———!”
“Hah!”
And then, predicting the Saint’s next motion. I pictured, vivid and clear, the future a few seconds out, and linked it, instant by instant, into my strikes. Little by little, the attacks the Saint parried grew fewer. And on top of that—
“—Kh!”
As if to lay a limit on the Saint’s movement, a strong current ran through her whole body. Piling on, the magic bolts loosed from Valtrune burst apart before the barrier the Saint threw up on the spot, but the mere fact of a fierce covering fire doubled the number of things the Saint had to think about. Still in this. I can keep going. I was holding my own even against the strengthened Saint. If I could drive one more heavy blow home like this. Just as the thought formed, the Saint let her smile drop and murmured with a thoughtful face.
“…You’ve a fine eye, but your use of it is still clumsy.”
What is this woman on about.
“Let’s leave it here for today… there’s still time, after all.”
I heard out the string of words she laid out as so much nonsense and sent my blade at the Saint’s throat. But the arm I swung was caught by the Saint, and my upper body’s balance broke with it. The next instant, the Saint’s knee buried itself deep in my solar plexus.
“Goh…!?”
Unable to breathe, my thought stopping cold, I was kicked away just like that and rolled to a stop in front of Rune-sama.
“Al!”
Crouching down in front of me where I lay, she wore a desperate look, working her healing magic to ease the pain.
“…Quite an enjoyable fight, that was.”
“Cough, cough!!”
To me, hacking, and to her, throwing up a barrier and glaring the Saint down, the Saint Reshia came drawing near with a graceful step. Facing a hopeless, cornered crisis, my heartbeat spiking, the Saint tucked away completely the pressure she’d worn until then, and, as if to declare that every battle before had been a farce, she raised both her hands.
“I surrender.”
“—Kh!?”
The unlooked-for words brought a stillness down over the underground waterway.
5
Had I misheard? Just now, hadn’t the Saint said she surrendered? In the dim of my swimming consciousness, the warped scenery around me finally righted itself. The Saint came up before us, where we stood unable to answer for a while, and smiled again.
“A splendid death-struggle. I lost to the two of you and your fight. And so, I surrender.”
“Wh-what are you playing at… cough!”
I tried to glare her down and force out some retort, but the instant I did, my lungs refused the air, and a dry cough came instead.
“Al. Don’t push yourself.”
“But… cough, cough…!”
“You. What exactly are you scheming?”
“Fufufu! Scheming, how unkind. I’m only saying, plainly, that I’ve no will to fight any further.”
“It’s that I can’t believe it!”
“Fufufu! Come now. Then how am I to explain it so you’ll understand?”
The killing intent had vanished from the Saint completely. She carried no overwhelming aura now to plant dread in you; she wore a smile so pure and guileless it lent her all the innocence of her outward age. The death-struggle, ended so suddenly, my head still couldn’t catch up. But undefended as she was now, this was the perfect chance to strike the Saint down.
“…Fufu. Will you kill me?”
I set the edge of my blade flat against the Saint’s throat. There was still no will to resist in her; if anything, she tipped her chin up a touch and pushed her neck out toward it.
“Go ahead. If you want to kill me, kill me.”
“—Kh.”
The point cut the skin of the Saint’s throat, and blood ran down the blade.
“Al. That’s enough.”
“…Yes.”
Keeping her gallant look, she caught my arm to draw the sword off the Saint and lowered the point to the ground.
“There’s no will to fight left in her that I can feel. As she wishes, let’s grant her surrender.”
“Fufu. A wise judgment.”
“Don’t misunderstand. Make one suspicious move, and I’ll take your head that very instant.”
“I won’t. Come, bind me or do as you please.”
The Saint held out her wrists, and Rune-sama passed me a chain of metal.
“It’s a magic tool worked with a mana-seal. Restrain her with that for now.”
“Understood.”
When I wound the chain around the Saint’s wrists, even the faintest sign of mana died out completely. With this, the Saint couldn’t use magic.
“…Fufu. I can’t use magic anymore. Does that set you at ease?”
“Hardly. Even without magic, you can still fight by hand.”
“Then you’re welcome to sever the tendons of my arms and legs.”
“They’d only heal soon enough. No point in it.”
“Fufu. So no matter how it turns out, I’m not to be trusted after all.”
Why, then, did she think her word would be trusted at all? Twice she’d violated the Empire’s territory, and on top of it we’d nearly had our lives taken. There was no chance of easing our guard.
“Al. Let’s link up with Rudolf. If the fight with the Black Serpent’s still going, we’ll lend a hand.”
“Yes.”
I gripped the chain bound to the Saint’s wrists, and we started back the way we’d come. I trod over the great smears of blood left in the waterway and put my foot forward toward the outside light spilling in from the exit.
6
“The Black Serpent got away from us. But hey, we won~.”
The one strolling up from ahead, voice all gone slack and manner bright, with a light spring in his step, was Fadi.
“Don’t go celebrating. Reflect on letting a strong enemy slip away.”
“Ehh… but doesn’t that make you just as guilty, old man?”
“What galls me is that I can’t argue back.”
On the face of Rudolf walking beside him, the weariness of a hard fight showed through.
“It’s fine, Rudolf. Nothing matters more than you being safe. You too, Fadi. I’d no idea you’d come down into the waterway.”
“Cleared out the ones up top, so. Heard big bro and Lady Valtrune were down in the waterway, figured I might be some help.”
It seemed the cult’s lot had been wiped out by the intelligence unit under Fadi’s lead. Originally, after settling things with the Saint in the waterway, we’d meant to deal with the enemy strength left on the surface, but if it was already done, so much the better. One weight off the shoulders.
“The surface is confirmed safe. So you can rest easy.”
“I see. Thank you.”
Scratching his head, bashful at her thanks, Fadi turned his eyes next toward me.
“So there’s something that’s been bugging me this whole time.”
His finger pointed slowly toward the Saint, bound to the chain in my hand.
“…Who’s that lady?”
“—Kh!?”
Rudolf, too, lost his voice and threw his eyes wide open. Rudolf had caught a glimpse of the Saint; Fadi hadn’t. That the two of them, seeing her, would react in opposite ways was only to be expected.
“…She’s the Saint Reshia.”
At my short explanation, Fadi nodded, satisfied, with a smile.
“Ah, got it! So that’s the Saint! Mm-hm. I see, I see!… wait, sorry. Come again?”
“Like I said. She’s the Saint Reshia, who led the soldiers of the Svell Order. The one behind all the trouble, with the Black Serpent and the White Serpent at her command. The most dangerous person we’ve been treating as our number-one threat.”
“…Uh. This lady is… the S-Saint?”
“That’s right.”
“The real one?”
“If she were a fake, I wouldn’t have bound her and dragged her along.”
“Ha, haah…”
The air froze over in a heartbeat, and Fadi went stock-still, as if time itself had stopped for him.
“As introduced, I am the Saint Reshia, the very one you all strove with everything you had to bring down. Fufufu! Your faces change so charmingly. What an amusing companion you have here.”
Without a shred of reserve, Reshia stepped in front of Fadi wearing a brimming smile and introduced herself, though no one had asked her to. Both hands bound in chains, her own mana sealed, and the manner of her, treating such circumstances as beneath the smallest notice. She really ought, I thought, to recognize just once that her own sensibilities were out of true.
“The two of us captured the Saint at the end of the fight.”
When Rune-sama put in the note, Reshia cut into the conversation yet again.
“Just so. At the end of the fight I acknowledged my defeat, and here I am, taken prisoner.”
“…Why does she look so delighted about it.”
Rune-sama pressed a hand to her temple and looked down, at a loss. That easy slackness, from someone we’d been seriously trying to kill only minutes ago, kept knocking us off our footing.
“Lady Valtrune. How on earth did you catch this monster?”
“Caught her, or rather, we were made to catch her; that’s closer to the truth.”
“Meaning?”
“Before the match was decided, she suddenly declared her surrender.”
“Hah?!”
Rudolf’s reaction was the right one. She’d thrown away a fight she could win, and while there was even the option of fleeing, she’d made what had to be the worst decision imaginable: letting the enemy take her. There was no way an ordinary person could grasp the thinking of a Saint who’d do something so wildly off the wall.
“You. Are you right in the head?!”
“I’m in no particular ill health. I’m the very picture of a sound body.”
“It’s that beside-the-point answer that makes you seem anything but sound…”
Looking at the two pale faces, I could tell the four of us, the Saint aside, were of one mind: this woman, before she was a threat to the Empire, was a genuinely dangerous case as a human being.
7
Coming up out of the waterway to the surface, we were met by the subordinates Fadi had brought and the handful of escort soldiers who remained.
“Commander! Nothing gladder than seeing you safe!”
A breath of relief from the surface group. But Rudolf’s face clouded as he looked at them.
“…Say. What happened to the others?”
“…My apologies. Many fell in the fighting when we secured the surface. This is the whole of the escort now, the ones here.”
“Damn it. What a thing…”
When we’d first set out from the Imperial capital, Rudolf’s subordinates had numbered more than fifty; by the time the fighting at Nocto was done, they’d dwindled to a mere four. Rudolf ground his teeth, the bitterness plain on his face, and Fadi gave his shoulder a quiet tap.
“Over half of our people died too. For now, let’s just honor the brave men for how hard they fought and all they gave.”
“…Yeah. I know that much.”
Even knowing in his head that he had to make his peace with it, the sorrow he couldn’t hold down showed of its own accord in the shake of his shoulders.
“…It pains me, but I can’t give them a proper burial just now.”
“Yes. Our duty is to see Lady Valtrune safely delivered to the Roscheld Republic. I understand that if we can’t carry that out, the ones who died won’t rest… ngh, I understand it. I do understand it, but.”
“Rudolf…”
Feelings weren’t so easily sorted out. That was how heavy the losses we’d taken this time weighed on us.
“Everyone’s hard fighting is what brought the trouble to a close. Their deaths weren’t in vain.”
There’d been sacrifice, but that didn’t mean there was nothing to show for it.
“That’s… that’s right, isn’t it. They carried out their duty as escorts to the full, didn’t they.”
“Yes. They drew the cult soldiers’ attention and moved to keep the fight in the waterway from being disturbed, and because of that, Rudolf and Fadi routed the Black Serpent, and Al and I managed to capture the Saint. This is a real victory.”
The Order, having lost its Saint, would suffer a heavy blow to its command and in time fall apart. So she was quietly telling them. There were those whose feelings were saved by those words… but one person wouldn’t allow such comfort, and spat out a cruel truth.
“The Order losing its momentum because it lost me? Fufu. How fine it would be were that so.”
The one who put her mouth in yet again was the Saint Reshia, fallen now to the station of a captive.
“What are you trying to say?”
“Nothing so deep. If there’s one thing worth telling you, it’s this: the cult soldiers who slipped into Nocto this time and I are entirely unconnected.”
“—What are you saying?!”
“What I mean is, I never once thought to lead the Order and occupy Nocto. All I’ve had at my command are the White Serpent and the Black Serpent, granted me by Lord Svell.”
“Then the Order—”
“At the Archbishop’s word, they’ll go on sending people into the Empire again, undeterred.”
The kind of thing you’d wave off as idle talk. And yet, if what she said was true, it lent a consistency to that three-way standoff back on the forest road. The White Serpent having gone only for the assassins who attacked us made sense as well, if the Saint and the Order had moved separately, with no coordination between them. And when I thought back to the ones the Saint had butchered in the waterway, they’d been people connected to the Order. The conclusion I’d drawn from all this, I put to the Saint straight.
“…You’re at odds with the Order.”
“At odds? Fufu. I simply did away with them because they were in my way. From the very beginning, I’m no puppet of the Archbishop.”
“Then you’ve no connection to the Madmiasma either.”
“None. I had no part in manufacturing that poison.”
By her eyes, at least, she wasn’t lying.
“What’s your relationship with the Order as it stands now?”
“Oh my. So you’ve the mind to believe my words after all?”
“Answer the question. What’s between you and the Order?”
I drew my sword from its sheath and laid it along the Saint’s throat. When I glared her down, Reshia let out a deep sigh, looked up at the far blue sky, and began to speak with a look that seemed to long for the past.
“The Svell Order was once a gathering of noble souls who revered Lord Svell. To preach to them the wonder of Lord Svell, to pass on the words granted by my Lord, and to raise their faith into something deeper still: that was the role I bore as Saint. …But over a long span of time, the Order sank into a den crawling with a vulgar mob eaten up by lust for power. The Madmiasma, too, is a thing born of an Archbishop possessed by the fantasy of gaining eternal life. Their high-handed, do-as-they-please ways left even me sick to death of them.”
“…So you wiped out those tied to the Order because you’d given up on the men who run its upper ranks?”
“No. The spread of the Madmiasma was a thing that harmed my interests as well. Setting aside any private feeling toward the Order, I simply judged they had to be exterminated.”
Little by little, I was starting to read the Saint’s thinking. She moved by a philosophy all her own, and thought of the Order as no more than one organization she could use. What the Saint herself wished for, and by what intent she’d moved until now, weren’t clear, but that she stood against the Madmiasma came through well enough from what she’d said.
“Marking the Madmiasma as dangerous is the same for us.”
“Oh-ho. Then this time you ought to thank me.”
At the Saint puffing out her chest, smug-faced, Rune-sama tilted her head.
“Why exactly should we thank you?”
“Fufufu. Inside that waterway, the one who slaughtered the men who’d brought in the Madmiasma was me. I did the work you were meant to do in your stead. Might it not be right to feel a little gratitude for that?”
A thoroughly self-serving way of putting it, but there was something to it. That the Saint had lent a hand in wiping out the dangerous factors swarming the waterway was a fact that wouldn’t be overturned, however much ill feeling we bore her.
“You’re right. I’ll thank you for subjugating the ones who brought in the Madmiasma.”
Seeing her bow her head, the Saint narrowed her eyes, satisfied.
“Even so, that won’t get you released.”
“Yes, yes. I understand. I don’t mean to say anything so shameless.”
Seeking no return for it, the Saint nodded with a composed face. A still air, without a single ripple, made you feel that even being captured was part of her design. That breezy manner never wavered once outside of combat, and she seemed to feel no unease at all over how she’d be dealt with from here.
With the talk with the Saint at a stopping point, Rune-sama looked around at the companions gathered there. Of the four surviving escorts, two had taken injuries of some weight, effectively unfit to fight. And Rudolf, perhaps from the long contest with the Black Serpent, had his usual fire well banked down. Judging it hard to bring them along to the Republic, she spoke with a firm, clear bearing.
“Rudolf. Take your subordinates and escort her to the Imperial capital. Al and I will take Fadi and the rest and cross the sea.”
At the sudden order to turn back, Rudolf was thrown.
“W-wait, please. Are you telling me to take the Saint and head back to the capital?!”
“That’s right. Her mana is sealed by that chain. Whatever resistance she puts up on the road, with you along it should be fine.”
“No. That’s not what I’m getting at…”
Before he could ask why she wouldn’t let him come along to the Republic, Rune-sama shot the Saint a glance and shook her head.
“I know. Your wish to carry out your role as an escort to the very end.”
“Then why…?”
“Because they’re already at their limit.”
Turning toward Rudolf’s worn-out subordinates, she told him plainly, without dressing it up.
“They’ve given more than enough. They fought this far with their lives on the line. We can’t wear them down any further than this.”
“It’s true I can’t push my men. But I still—”
“I’m saying this to you as well.”
With a resolute manner that brooked no argument, she laid a hand to Rudolf’s flank.
“Gh!?”
A dull ache shot through him. Guarding the spot she’d touched, Rudolf backed away with a hard look.
“I knew it. Did you think I hadn’t noticed?”
“This is just a graze… ugh!”
He must have taken the wound sometime during the fight with the Black Serpent. Unable to bear the pain, he twisted his face.
“Wow, looks like it hurts~.”
“Bearing pain is admirable, I’ll grant — but such endurance has a way of coming round to trip one up later, you know.”
“So true. You should just head home the normal way.”
“Fufu. A wounded soldier only drags the rest down — turning back is the wisest course there is, is it not.”
“Well, no help for it this time. You were at it with the Black Serpent a long while, so be glad you got off with just a bad injury… I mean, I don’t have a scratch, myself!”
“These children of mine are excellent, after all. To have fought those two and still be alive is something to be proud of in itself. You’ve done well.”
Fadi and the Saint took turns saying whatever they pleased, no reserve at all. At the perfectly matched double-barreled needling, as though the two were comrades, Rudolf cried out.
“You two! You picking a fight with me?!”
“Yep.”
“Yes, rather.”
Not expecting the merciless snap replies, he hung his head and sank into a crouch on the ground.
“Haah…”
At Rudolf’s beaten-down state, Fadi and Reshia traded a look.
“Ah, now he’s crying.”
“We’ve made him cry, it seems.”
“Think I broke his division-commander pride?”
“Surely not. A fighter of the caliber to call himself a division commander would never sulk over a thing like this.”
“That’s true! Right, no way he’d get down over bowing out partway through one mission!”
“Yes. For anyone who calls himself a division commander, that’d be out of the question.”
When would this conversation, driving the cruel truth home, ever end? Rudolf lifted his face at once and turned his eyes to Rune-sama.
“…I’ll go back quietly.”
The sight of that valiant general, shrunk small, was more than one could bear to watch.