Knights Call Themselves the Vanquished (1)
The soldiers' panting filled the forest path.
It had not been a march anyone planned, and it had not been a march in any ordinary sense. They had been made to cover thousands of meters at a dead run, and not one second of falling behind could be allowed. Even if a war broke out, no commander would order anything so brutish. A man would spend the last of his strength before he ever reached the fight.
But this was now.
KUGUGUNG!
"F-faster! Run!"
"Second quake!"
"E-everyone, brace for the shock!!"
No one had breath left for complaint. They were too busy forcing their bodies on.
An earthquake is nature's wrath, and no human being dares stand against it.
CRACK—CRRRK!
The worms had already torn the ground soft. Under the quake that weakened earth collapsed like a castle of sand, and for hundreds of meters around them the world turned to chaos. To be caught in it would not mean being buried alive. It would mean dropping as if off a cliff that had sunk beneath you, and ending as a burst tomato.
None of the soldiers wanted that ending. They simply gave everything they had and got clear of the shaking ground.
Thud!
It took only a few dozen minutes. By some miracle, they made it out of the zone where the earth was failing. If ever a moment proved that a human being, once resolved, can do nearly anything, this was it.
"I-I'm alive..."
"I... I can't walk another step..."
"...I'm dead."
They dropped in heaps, sitting where they fell or simply folding over. This was the moment the officers ought to have barked them back into some kind of order. Unfortunately the officers were no better off than the men, panting and collapsing in the same ragged piles.
The relief of utter exhaustion lasted only a breath.
KWAGWANG!!
"Ah..."
The Tunnels were coming down.
The greatest fertilizer works on the southern continent, and a hell for convicts with more than a century of history behind it.
KRKRKRK!
Groooan—
Watching destruction happen in front of their eyes, what a person felt was not the relief of having lived. It was awe, and a blank, stunned quiet. How many people ever see, as it happens, hundreds of meters of ground sink and fold in on itself? And if they do, that day is likely the last of their lives. In that sense, these men were lucky.
"This is all thanks to His Highness—ah, no, Sir Aren!"
"That's right! If it hadn't been for Sir Aren, we would've—haah!!"
"Noble, wise White Lion of Pendragon! You are our hero!"
The soldiers did not spare their praise for the royal-born knight who had saved them. Without his quick judgment, far fewer would still be breathing. If the story spread, every subject in the realm would marvel. Fame and honor beyond measure were promised in that moment, and by the nature of a man called Aren, this should have been the hour he drank his fill of satisfaction and grew arrogant.
"...Please stop. Please...!"
He only covered his face, burning with shame.
There are people who steal another's merit and smile as if it were their own. There are also people who cannot endure being put in that place. Aren was plainly one of the latter.
His character had been arrogant, yes. Lately, though, he had received a harsh education of the spirit quite against his will, and a little sense had taken root. The Geumjjoki who had finally grown up shuddered at the praise turned on him. It was too shameful.
And yet.
"Modest, too...!"
"Royalty, after all!"
"Heir of the great Knight King!!"
Once a man looks good, everything about him looks good. The scales were not about to fall from the soldiers' eyes.
"I said shut your mouths!!"
"Haha. Shy, is he?"
"Well, I'll be."
"And modest, at that..."
"Aaaagh!!"
The reformed problem child was in agony.
"—He deserves every bit of that praise. Why's he carrying on?"
"Right?"
The two knights, Jake and Jord, tilted their heads at Aren's shuddering. In truth, it really had been Aren who saved most of the soldiers.
"Who but royalty would do a thing like this?"
Why had the soldiers cooperated so cleanly, obeyed the order to evacuate, and even looked after the prisoners? Because royalty itself had stepped forward and done the work.
Even if the men giving orders belonged to the Silver Lion Knight Order, would those soldiers have followed so easily? Dawdling would have been the best of it. Refusal would have run wild.
But the one who commanded them was an heir of the Knight King, blessed by the noble Silver Dragon. The silver hair that marked that blessing, and the name of Pendragon, had the power to make even an unreasonable order obeyed.
So today, of all days, he deserved the praise. And yet...
"Sense came to him late, so he can't see himself straight?"
Or perhaps a lifetime of false compliments had made sincere praise so unfamiliar that he didn't know what to do with it.
Still, they decided the reaction wasn't a bad one, and they would not add praise of their own. The Geumjjoki had only just learned sense. Praise him now and he might turn back into a worthless fool, and what would all that reform have been for?
As Lee Han put it, no animal is slower to learn than a person, and no matter how thoroughly you reform one, they slip back to what they were. So you have to keep a club handy and beat it into them, regularly...
"Hoo. We'd better find him fast, if only so there's someone left to swing that club."
"You could just admit you're worried..."
"What?"
"...Nothing. Not a thing."
Jake and Jord hurried toward the collapsed Tunnels to find the man who had never come up from below. They believed he was safe. They also knew better than to trust the belief. Monster of a man or not, he was not actually a monster.
And as if to agree with that thought—
"H-he isn't dead, is he? ...He didn't actually die fighting, did he?"
Someone was already searching harder than they were. A gray-haired boy. A face they knew.
"The helper."
The one who had aided them in the Tunnels. His name was...
"Lord Derek. Are you looking for our senior?"
"Sir Jord."
"...Haa. So he really didn't make it out."
"...A lot of things happened."
"...Mm."
Derek wore the look of a man who could not bring himself to say the rest. They guessed that a great deal had happened, and let out a low breath.
That guy...
Even the senior, if the ground had him... ngh!
Their faces went grave. They had known this was a mission on which someone might have to be written off as dead. Even so, they had never imagined the dead man would be him.
Shadow was just settling over their faces when—
"Ah! He's there!"
The two knights blinked.
Detect
"...Wait. Why is he being detected from here?"
Derek blurted something that made no sense at all, and both of them tilted their heads at the same time. Detected? Detected how?
The answer came at once.
Thud!
All three of them jerked. A mound of earth gave a faint heave, and they understood.
"D-don't tell me!"
"D-dig! Hurry...!!"
The two knights tore into the mound. There was no shovel, so they dug with swords. In a sense it was something a knight should never do, but when a comrade's life is the question, what does a sword matter? They would stoop to worse.
For this moment the knight's companion made an excellent shovel. They dug with everything they had, and then—
Thud! Thoom!
The earth began to heave faster, until at last—
FWOOSH!!
An arm burst free.
"...Whoa. How is he actually alive?"
Derek breathed it at that arm, and as if to take his side—
KWAAANG!
The man himself broke into the open.
"Khak—hack!!"
The instant he surfaced he spat a great mouthful of dirt and coughed in a chain. He was a wreck. Dust caked him from hair to boots, and the wounds were beyond counting. Anyone else would have left the world long before this. His life was so stubborn that, drawing the fresh air of the surface, he slowly—
"Haaaah! I—I lived...!"
—showed signs of coming back.
The three of them stared.
"Did that bastard just dig his way up to the surface?"
"...The quake was bad enough. How did you survive under a mountain of dirt like that?"
"He's not a worm. What even..."
No. Common sense said even a real sandworm couldn't live under that much earth. And yet...
...Is everything I thought I knew just wrong?
Derek went blank. Survival was one thing. The man had dragged a giant out of the mound with him.
But soon—
"...Haha."
Relief spread through him, and a foolish laugh broke out. The situation itself was, in its way, delightful.
Anyway.
Just being alive is entertaining, with him.
There was no time to get tired of it.
...He had died, and lived.
Wow. How am I alive?
Lee Han was still coughing up dirt. The oxygen was too sweet. The sunlight felt too precious. He was drinking in every bit of what a man feels when he comes back from death. Even so, he could not quite believe his own return.
Live long enough, and even a monster brat turns out useful.
The giant sandworm Lee Han had carved apart, and Maximus had finished. Lee Han had survived by making that corpse his shelter. Whether because size itself is a tyrant, or because the thing lived in earth, the sandworm's hide had held against a measure of the soil's weight.
What followed was simple. Once the quake settled somewhat, he dug with his bare hands and crawled through the earth as if he were swimming, body and all. How long he had glided through soil like a mole, or a worm... He might have been crushed at any moment. Climbing free might have been the thing that killed him. He did it anyway.
A human victory, plain and simple. He felt like congratulating himself.
"...Heh. You could have come out alone. Why drag me along and invite more danger?"
"Oh, now you're awake, you bastard."
"So air was this sweet all along."
"If you get it, then thank me. Don't talk like an idiot."
"...Of course. I give thanks for the saving of my life."
"I'm not asking you to get down and bow. Forget it. A thanks like that is worse than none, you ass."
"Th-that's unfair. I truly am grateful..."
Maximus looked awkward. He was used to being the one who saved a life, not the one who owed one, and the courtesy came out clumsy. He was not so rotten that he failed to feel the thanks.
He wanted to get up, if only to settle the grievance. But—
"...In my heart I would bow this instant. My body will not move."
"That's what you get for using your Gyeong like a lunatic."
"Agreed. Still, I never thought the body would come apart this far. ...Is this muscle pain? A sensation I have never known."
"...That's you bragging."
The way Maximus had used his internal energy was past brutish. It was suicide. Especially the last of it.
Twelve stacks of internal energy, shaped into a horn of lightning.
When he unleashed it, even Lee Han had flinched inside. Lee Han himself never stacked past five when he used Stacked Energy. That man had stacked it twelve times and more. Anyone else would have burst on the spot.
Only Maximus, who possessed it, had endured. Even so, he would need a long time of quiet recovery.
And that fact—
"...A pity."
Lee Han looked at him.
"We should have settled it."
"...Well, I'll be damned."
Maximus was sorry beyond words. To have to put the match off over muscle pain...
"—Hm. No. Sit with it a moment, and it seems I lost after all. You were the one still standing at the end."
Lee Han said nothing.
Lee Han still said nothing.
"Next time I shall come again as the challenger. Heh!"
"...You're screwing with me."
Lee Han meant to snap back. He had grounds. But someone had no sense of timing.
Whoosh!
"—Forgive me, sir. The debt for saving our vice-captain will be repaid later. This is no place for it now. Please pardon the rudeness!"
A woman appeared from nowhere, bowed her head to him, and turned in a rush. Pale-skinned, clearly of the North, nearly six feet tall, she shouldered a giant far larger than herself—seven and a half feet—and vanished at speed. The whole thing happened in an instant.
Lee Han...
"Well. She's got some strength."
He had never meant to stop them from taking the man, so he only scratched his cheek, sour.
And then—
"...That bastard handed me a win like charity and ran."
The victory Maximus had bestowed, as if it were alms, sat wrong enough to furrow his brow. Lee Han looked down at the sword hilt at his waist: the remains of what had been a gladius, its blade gone entirely.
Truly.
"What kind of winner looks like this...?"
It was a victory more irritating than defeat.