Two Men See It Through (6)
The Noble Council of Pendragon.
Alongside the royal house, the Guild Union, and the merchant league, it was one of the kingdom's vital organs.
The assembly where the Royal Capital's high nobles gathered was forever famous for the uproars, great and small, that shook its halls. Even nobles seated in the same council had split into factions, and that was likely why. It was an institution built to govern the realm, yet watch them tear at one another and it became plain enough: in any world, the powerful behaved much the same.
Crash!
"I told you! The Sultan's escort is our responsibility!"
"Escort, my foot! They said they don't need one. On what pretext are we supposed to guard them!"
"We should never have received them in the first place. That's why this disaster happened."
"You ignorant fools who don't know the first letter of diplomacy! Is that really what you mean to say? Refuse them from the start? Are you in your right minds! If you've got a head on your shoulders, try using it! A head isn't an ornament."
"What? You think I'll sit quiet just because you opened your mouth!"
"You're taking off your glove? Where does this wretch get the nerve, forgetting his place...!"
Every few seconds a glove went flying and a duel was sealed, and amid the shouting the nobles never once stopped swinging their fists. It was impossible to tell whether this was a council of learned men or a fighting pit. The quarrel had erupted over the Sultan's terror the day before, and with no decent proposal forthcoming, the chamber was nothing but empty noise and bellowing.
"Haa. Stifling. Sir Dalton, haven't you an opinion? If you've a good one, let's hear it."
"...What clever scheme would I have?"
"Ha. Modest, unlike usual. That's not like you. Feeling unwell?"
"Ah, no. My thoughts are simply tangled, Sir Edry."
"Hmm. If something's the matter, say so anytime. We're senior and junior, aren't we?"
"...I'm always grateful."
A conversation between senior and junior councilors that looked warm at a glance. A glimpse, perhaps, of how much school ties mattered.
And yet the face of the noble called Dalton was severely stiff—so slightly that one would miss it without looking close.
He...
That idiot Sultan. Why does he have to blow everything up on his own and get himself caught!
His eyes had sunk a shade deeper. He was finding the present thoroughly unpleasant, a cold sneer resting on his mouth without end. Dalton—no. The wily old mage wearing Dalton's skin found the whole affair nothing but contemptible.
The illegal mage Greg was an old mage past eighty this year.
Knights and warriors lose the youth and vigor of the body as they age and fall into decline. Mages were another breed. The older they grew, the deeper their mana became, and thanks to that Greg was passing his eightieth year in robust, untroubled health.
Just as now.
"Tsk. Did I pick the wrong man to wear? To think he'd be this poor and this shabby..."
Greg had learned too late that the original owner of the skin he'd pulled on was an honorary noble of the scholarly sort, a man who had read books all his life and never had any money. He had chosen him because the fellow belonged, more or less, to the Noble Council, and never imagined poverty like this. There wasn't even a common attendant. The living stipend from the council was all of it. Honorary post or not, how did a man called noble live a life this plain—no, this poor?
"Hoo. A noble for the first time in ages, and I draw a dud."
Greg clicked his tongue and grumbled through his disappointment, but he didn't turn vicious. It was one of his principles. When he played at being someone else, he concentrated on the performance, and that acting was also why he had been able to stay on the run for so many years.
I thought I could put the fugitive life behind me.
Even Greg, however, could not live another man's life forever. He was desperate to settle in one place.
For instance.
"...The Sultanate would make a fine nest."
Sultan Salah had been attacked and was lying low in his lodgings, but Greg knew the Sultan would never abandon Mystery. How could a man that greedy give up an opportunity like this?
The stone rolled in his palm. It was a highest-grade monster core, the one the Sultan had given him, holding a light as brilliant as a jewel. Small as a pebble, and yet the worth of this single stone could not be measured in coin.
I asked him to get it because I needed it. I never thought he'd hand it over this easily.
The Sultan's power struck him anew as tremendous, and greed boiled up in Greg.
I want it!
That man's life...!
He was a mage who had spent his whole life striving to plunder other people's lives and talents. Honestly, Greg coveted Mystery, but he coveted the Sultan's life as well. Get his hands on that, and he would never have to worry about research funds again. And if things went well...
Then even the Magic Tower won't be able to treat me lightly!
The moment the Magic Tower's name rose in his mind, countless emotions crossed Greg's eyes. Love and hate. Envy and greed. A mage's homeland, and the ivory tower he would have to return to someday—the one he missed. He wanted to be acknowledged. He wanted the Tower to look up at him. His life's research, kept on the highest floor. A dream, plain and simple.
Greg burned with it.
Steal the Mystery, and once this research reaches the old men of the ivory tower, they'll have to acknowledge me whether they want to or not.
He was already looking forward to the day the men who had driven him out would regret it and call him back.
A clack. A tap.
"......"
...Rolling the monster core out of habit, Greg suddenly felt something wrong.
What?
A mage who had lived eighty years never simply let an alien sensation wash over him. To have survived so long was to have a survival instinct honed to an extreme.
He—
A flash.
It's quiet!
He read the situation at once. Not even a grass insect was singing. The silence was awkward in its completeness. The moment Greg noticed, he snatched up only the monster core—
"—Sharp instincts, for a spell-slinger."
Crunch!!
"!!"
A hand burst through the wall as lightly as sand and came down on him. Greg's heart lurched. It was a sight that might have paralyzed a man with a weak heart outright, but instead of merely freezing—
A rush of force. A boom.
"Krgh!"
He threw up a mana barrier and blocked it. Being ambushed was half a lifetime's trade for him. Surprise attacks were nothing he wasn't used to...
Crack—crack—crack!!
"!?!?!"
Damn it—!!
Greg spat the curse aloud, but as the mana barrier sheared apart his voice was buried. The attacker's arm was smashing through it without hesitation. This was the barrier of an old mage who had lived eighty years. His talent might have fallen short, but he had never neglected the tempering of telekinetic force, training it steadily all his life. A barrier wrought of that force ought to have matched a castle wall for sturdiness. Seeing it about to collapse, of course he was horrified.
Greg understood at once that his attacker was no ordinary man.
This one's not ordinary!
The instant he knew it, he chanted instead of fleeing.
"Clouds, gather."
"Storm-wind, lodge yourselves in the clouds."
"Let lightning dance, and let the wind dance keen."
"Annihilate my enemy!"
⟨ Thundercloud ⟩
The chant finished in a flash, and a thundercloud took shape: a small sphere of storm, compact, and packed with vicious force.
Thunder rolled.
"Die, you wretch!"
Greg hurled that terrible thundercloud and was already chanting another spell, meaning to run. Even he would not walk away unhurt if the blast caught him. In truth the attack was less a bid to kill than a move to get clear. Anyone who wasn't a complete fool would dodge a thundercloud.
......That was how it ought to have been.
"Stings a little."
Grind—crunch!!
The thundercloud was pulverized.
"You damned monster!"
What in the world was he!
Watching the thundercloud he had cast at full power shatter to pieces, Greg had no mind left with which to keep his sanity. That was not a spell that ought to vanish so easily...
N-no way!
"A-an Aura User! An Aura User's come for me—!"
An Aura User. The terror of mages, a superhuman who could annihilate a nation alone. Greg made a fuss as if that monster had appeared, but the attacker only sneered, as if the idea were funny.
"Wouldn't it be a waste, sending an Aura User after a spell-slinger like you?"
As if to say a superhuman would never come all this way to catch the likes of him. And more than that—
"If those gentlemen had moved, this would've been over already. We wouldn't be doing it the hard way."
With a low scoff, the attacker was already in front of him.
"W-wind, lodge yourselves in my legs!"
⟨ Gale Step ⟩
Greg chanted in desperation and sprang into the air.
Whoosh!
Telekinesis and the spell carried him, and he glided upward as swiftly as a bird. The attacker's assault had already brought the house down, so getting out was not difficult. He shot skyward in an instant, fast enough to pierce the clouds, with nothing in his head but the need to escape.
H-how could the likes of him chase me all the way into the sky!
Aerial battle had been a mage's domain since ancient times. Sacred ground that knights and warriors could never invade. And so—
At last I can breathe.
Greg, who had done nothing but panic from start to finish, was about to let out a sigh of relief that he might live. But the moment he exhaled and lifted his head—
"—Right. Done running?"
"...Hk!?"
He sucked in a useless breath. There was the attacker, walking the sky as naturally as he did—no, more naturally still.
"H-how...!?"
Footholds struck into the empty air, one after another.
"???"
"Right. How would a spell-slinger know a thing like that."
The attacker drew his sword, unhurried. And as he did—
"Haa. Trying to take you alive instead of killing you is a pain."
"??"
...Hearing words he couldn't make sense of, he could only watch the sword break his mana barrier and slam into his flank. The whole sequence happened in an instant, and Greg thought—
......How, exactly, was this supposed to be taking him alive?
Lee Han let out a small sound of admiration.
"Tougher than my kids."
That old spell-slinger was fairly impressive. Lee Han had put real strength into the blow, and all he'd managed was a few broken ribs. The mana barrier itself had been decently solid. A different level from the usual spell-slingers. They said old ginger bites hotter. Accurate enough.
But.
"A spell-slinger's a spell-slinger."
Lee Han stopped admiring him. However strong a spell-slinger was, however old, it didn't matter. Even an old man, if he was a spell-slinger, deserved a beating. Filth that walked around in someone else's skin deserved it all the more.
"Sir Lee Han. Lord Dalton is safe. His wounds are severe, but if he goes to a temple he'll recover before long."
"Good to hear."
While he was subduing the spell-slinger, Galahad's knights had found the victim whose skin the mage had stolen, back in the mansion. Lee Han counted that fortunate. People taken by spell-slingers were dead nine times out of ten.
"...Now that I think about it, I'm pissed."
Crunch!
"Gyaaaaaah!"
Lee Han shattered Greg Bin's shoulder where it was. The man thrashed in pain again, and Lee Han paid it no mind. He stomped the back of the man's head.
Crack. Crunch.
"...Sir Lee Han, he'll die if you keep that up."
"He won't die. You know how tough a monster a spell-slinger is."
"S-spell-slingers aren't monsters, though?"
"Bugs, then?"
"......"
"I'm joking."
"Mm..."
The Galahad knight was somehow certain that had not been a joke. Those eyes were not looking at a person as a person.
...A frightening man.
His martial power was great enough to draw nothing but admiration, but the thoroughness and cruelty with which he treated mages went past bold and into something absolute. Eyes that saw a mage not as a person, but as a monster to be exterminated. Eyes he was afraid would follow him into his dreams.
"How'd your side go?"
"...Don't worry. We finished it quickly, without losses."
"Galahad, as expected. You're the best in the kingdom."
"...I-I'm grateful for the words, but won't the Silver Lions be hurt if they hear that..."
"Have they earned the right to be hurt?"
"......"
...The knight felt a little sympathy for the slighted Silver Lions.
"Splendid. Even so, how did you find a mage in a Royal Capital this vast?"
"We learned through the Magic Tower's chief disciple that a mage had infiltrated the Noble Council, so it isn't all that..."
"No one else knew a mage was hiding in the council. Only he knew."
"......"
"Haha. Praise that knight too much and you get jealous, I see."
"...Your Grace."
"Ahaha!"
Duke Blake looked to be enjoying himself. Perhaps all the more because he had come out for a walk with his disciple for the first time in a while.
"You've improved, Lark. I could give you the knight-commander's seat before long."
"I am still endlessly lacking. I had to borrow Your Grace's strength to catch men like these."
"...Rascal."
Blake laughed at his disciple's modesty.
"Urgh..."
"J-just kill me..."
"W-water, water, please...!"
Men were rolling beneath the feet of Duke Blake and Galahad's knights. Fifty thousand troops that had been hiding in the foothills along the border. They had carried the Sultan's banner, and now they cried out from heat and agony as if they had been roasted in a furnace. Duke Blake, who had single-handedly neutralized forty thousand of them, laughed lightly.
"A bit of exercise after so long. I feel good."
"Mmm..."
Lark, who had barely neutralized ten thousand alongside the knight order, swallowed a groan. Master of the magic sword, a match for a superhuman. That power was still so overwhelming it rendered tens of thousands of troops useless.
Truly...
The wall I want to reach is too tall, and too thick.
He found himself wondering what that insolent scoundrel would have said, had he seen this.
Probably—
"Old man's still hale. He could take a new wife."
...Something that impious, no doubt.
"Ha..."
The scoundrel's rubbing off on me.
He shook his head at the idle thought.