Until the Heart Beats (7)
To the very end, it was a savage fight, with not a single moment in which they could afford to lower their guard.
KRA-KOOM!
KRRRZZZT—!
The bastard was vicious past all belief for a man already dying. His magic turned their blood cold again and again, and Lee Han and Rak were sent tumbling across the ground more times than they could count. Absurdly enough, the monster was at his strongest only when the end was upon him, as if he had undergone some great awakening. He threw himself at them like a man burning his very soul for fuel, and he would not let go.
And yet—
Shunk!
It was they who won.
In Lee Han's hands were a sword broken in half and a snapped blade. Both had shattered in the melee, but in the end the broken edge was buried in the bastard's heart, and the half-sword had been driven through his throat. There was still some fear he might regenerate.
Thup.
He had no mana left with which to cast. This time he had poured out everything, and his body was melting where it stood.
Shaaaa...
It was much the same as a monster's flesh crumbling to ash in death. The bastard was meeting an end no different from a monster's.
"Ah, what a shame... If I'd had just a little more mana, I could have taken one of you along for company. Then it wouldn't have been so boring. Hehe..."
"Bullshit."
"What a vile thing to say."
To the very last, he was nothing but repulsive. He was hardly even human. How was he still speaking with his throat run through? The question had barely formed when he spoke again.
"...Y-you know. Pendragon—no. The reason you came after the Magic Tower was the Magic Sword, wasn't it?"
"......"
It came out of nowhere, and it was not something they could simply let pass.
"Ah, you probably heard it from my disciple. Th-that we were after Pendragon's Mysteries. Hehe."
"...What is it you mean to say? Do you intend to beg forgiveness even now?"
Rak let a cold pressure seep from him, a chill so sharp that even the breath of spring drew back. Hearing the man confess that they had dared to lay hands on the Magic Sword—on Galahad itself—seemed to send rage boiling up in him.
"Heh... heh. Y-you're a knight of Galahad..."
Tur read what he needed in Rak's fury and laughed, feebly. He was dying. It would not have been strange if his breath failed at any moment.
"Khh...!"
Even so, Tur chose to open his mouth rather than rest.
"T-to be honest, we knew how absurd it was, trying to obtain Galahad's Magic Sword. The blade swallows even mana whole. A Magic Sword and a mage are the worst match there is..."
"......"
He spoke like a man who knew the blade well. That, too, was not something they could let slide.
"How do you bastards..."
Five Mysteries dwelt within the Magic Sword. The nature of those Mysteries, however, was wrapped entirely in secrecy. Galahad itself had spent every effort to hide the blade's power, and those who knew what it could do were vanishingly few. For a secret of that order to spill from Tur's mouth, it was only natural that Rak's face went rigid.
"C-curious? About h-how we know?"
Tur mumbled. Even opening his mouth looked like labor now, and it would have been easier on him to say nothing more. But Tur kept on.
"Th-three years ago, s-some people came and put it to us like this. 'If there were a chance to steal Pendragon's Mysteries—and even obtain the Magic Sword—what would you do?'"
He talked all the way to the end.
"A-at first I thought it was nonsense, but the power 'they' held was considerable. I liked that the whole organization was nothing but cells. They were a pleasant sight, living like parasites. Hehe."
"......"
"Th-the name of the organization was the Blood Cross Army, wasn't it? Haha. Th-they boasted they could obtain the Magic Sword easily enough, and they said they'd give us ownership of it if we helped. So we set the children who'd been driven out of the old Magic Tower in motion. Th-thanks to that, moving the Sultanate was simple, and we figured that using it as a pretext to slip into Pendragon wouldn't be hard. ...Well. Looking at the state of us now, it seems it was the worst choice we could have made."
The bastard was bright as a child, even though his own choice had reduced him to this.
"I-in a way, we were pieces on a chessboard. Pieces used to fulfill their purpose. Thinking of it now, that's what occurs to me. Well, we were just as full of plans to use them, so we're hardly in a position to curse them."
The knights hung on every word. Hearing the Blood Cross Army named even here was unsettling enough; they had never imagined those people were tangled up in the Magic Tower's movements as well. But the moment that word—purpose—left his mouth, their attention snapped tight. This might, at last, be a thread that could lead to the extermination of those disgusting parasites.
And so, as the bastard mumbled on—!
"—Hehe. But I'm not telling you any more."
"......"
"I-I wanted to see faces like that."
"You piece of shit...!"
They had wondered why he had suddenly spilled every secret with such kindness. Now it was plain he had vomited the information for no reason but to make them angry. Sickening, to the very last. And Tur—
"...Haa. I wanted to play a little longer..."
Crsssh.
Even at the end there was no gravity in him, no regret, not even guilt. His head simply cracked and crumbled away like sand.
For an Archmage who had lived four hundred years, it was an end of almost laughable emptiness. The men who had killed him twisted their faces and let their tempers show.
"Repulsive to the very end."
"This is why I don't deal with scum, goddamn it!"
They shook their heads, as if to say that talking to a madman had been a mistake from the very start.
"Instructor...?"
They had been listening from the middle of the conversation, but the three of them could not bring themselves to step out into an atmosphere so grave. At last Irene found the courage to call to him, almost under her breath, wondering if something had gone badly wrong.
And at that call—
"...Oh. You're here? You worked hard. Truly."
He welcomed them with a bright smile, as if he had never been serious at all.
"Hehe!"
Our simple little Irene. Smile at her, and she smiles right back.
He praised her and beckoned her in, and Irene ran to him like a retriever that loved people far too much.
"You know what! It was really hard! We went all the way to the place you told us, and there were dozens of mages, and so many golems carrying artifacts—!"
The girl poured out everything that had happened to them, looking every bit as if she were hoping to be praised.
"That so? You went through a lot. I'm sorry, dragging you into something dangerous for nothing."
"Ah, n-no, that's not what I meant...!"
"If it's an apology you're after, tell me later what you want. I'll grant most anything."
"...Now that I think about it, it was a little dangerous."
The instructor indulged every bit of Irene's fussing. The mood was nothing but gentle. He did not look in the least like a man who, moments ago, had been pouring killing intent at a mage.
Unlike Irene, though, the two boys could not bring themselves to say that they had suffered.
"...This looks like a war was fought here..."
"Even a battlefield wouldn't be this much of a goddamn mess."
The Spring Fairy's Mystery had turned everything around the Castle in the Sky into a field of flowers, but it could not fool eyes as keen as theirs. What they saw was not a meadow in full spring bloom. It was the aftermath of a brutal fight, and the two knights who must have waged it upon a frozen snowfield. Like an afterimage, the course of the battle flickered through their minds, and both boys shook their heads. It made them dizzy. It raised the hair on their arms.
Even felt secondhand, the duel between an Archmage and knights was enough to leave them reeling at the mere imagining of it. And in the midst of that—
He pulled them in.
"You did well too. Same as I told the chick—if there's something you want to ask of me later, say so. I'll grant most of it."
"...Um, Instructor. I-I'm not a little kid."
"I know."
"......"
They were forced to forget the dizziness. Out of nowhere he had hugged each of them and patted their backs, as if to say well done. It was embarrassing. Pointlessly so. They were adults too.
But—
"Embarrassing or not, if you've done well, you ought to be praised. Child or adult."
"......"
"Thank you. I mean it."
"......"
"...Mm. Was that too corny?"
"...Yes. Enormously."
"Judging by your face alone, you are the sort who ought to laugh all hearty and come out with something shameless. 'A man's got to try a fight that might kill him.'"
"...Aren't you talking about your uncle?"
"I'm only saying you're of a kind."
"...Geomdung. Ever heard of the art of destroying muscle?"
"...I would rather not."
"No. I'll teach you."
Roen tried to bolt, but Lee Han caught him at once. Roen was hardly frail, yet the difference in their frames was not a gap he could cross.
"Bwahaha!"
Watching a scene that might have come straight from a sitcom, Derek burst out laughing. A moment ago the air had been perfectly serious, perfectly fine, and yet this—
No. It's better because it's cheerful.
From long ago, Derek had preferred sitcoms that felt like ordinary life to movies that were merely funny. And for good reason.
They feel like the everyday stories of a family. Of friends.
For Derek, who had never had anything of the sort even once, they were stories he envied and longed for. And now—
I'm inside one.
The boy was endlessly glad to find himself inside that sitcom.
"...Hm?"
He had been about to teach one cheeky little brat the bitter taste of life when a tiny aurora came circling at his side, shedding the warm breath of spring, and Lee Han blinked.
"......"
"......Y-you can talk?"
"......"
The Spring Fairy—a beautiful fairy in the shape of a woman—circled him and greeted him as if they were old friends, and Lee Han pinched his own cheek. The moment felt so unreal he might have mistaken it for a dream.
But his cheek did not hurt.
So it had to be a dream...
"...That hurts."
His cheek was too solid for his own fingers to draw any pain from it, so the fairy pinched it hard in his place, and Lee Han felt it.
It hurt.
...A great deal.