A Knight Chews Over Defeat (2)
The next day, the academy could not let the talk die. A great incident had spread through the South, and conversation and argument ran on without a break.
"The temple, collapsed—and all of them at once, like this.... I still feel as if I'm dreaming."
"I know. Still, they say the terrorists were caught, at least. Heh. Hard to believe they were commoners."
"It's frightening. How could anyone commit an outrage that would anger heaven itself!"
"...We don't have to see it only that way. Every one of them was a victim, weren't they? If anything, it almost feels like a righteous revenge—"
"Ha! You're believing that empty rumor? Now!?"
"It isn't so hard to believe. The temple's abuses didn't begin yesterday."
"You—!?"
Word that the Grand Temple had gone up in flames, and that the temples near other territories had been attacked, spread quickly—less than a day after the terror struck.
Unnaturally quickly.
The papers reported as if they had been lying in wait, and the circumstances of the incident, its causes, and the terrorists' motives all became known at once.
......Along with the temple's shame.
And so some muttered conspiracy.
"Agitation! A scheme!"
While plenty of others simply accepted it.
"This is real? Ha. I knew it would come to this!"
There was reason enough. Those who had suffered the temple's cruelties were not only commoners.
Among nobles and knights, the poor had their own long history of abuse at the priests' hands, and many nobles already knew whether the papers' account of the incident was true. Between wealthy nobles with time to spare who loved digging up the truth, and the information guilds that sold it, judging the papers' accuracy was no difficult thing.
And so it went.
"A duel! You dare insult the Radiance!!"
"You face the facts! The evidence is piled to the sky, you ignorant fool! The temple is only a power that spreads the teachings of the Light of Radiance. It is not the Light of Radiance itself! With this incident, they have lost any claim to stand as God's proxies!!"
"You bastard—!!"
In the South, and in Pendragon above all, more than eight in ten of the people were believers of the Light of Radiance, so many burned with anger at any insult to the temple. Even those who thought a temple's crimes were hardly so grave a matter gladly threw down a glove before whoever insulted it.
From the other side, those who insisted the Light of Radiance and the temple must not be treated as the same, and who offered the sounder argument, threw gloves of their own.
Differences of faith, of ideology, of where one stood—fights broke out all through the academy. Not only among the students. Instructors and professors, the academy's faculty, came to blows as well.
......No. To correct that.
"Nobles, those bastards! They can act like this because they weren't the victims. Rotten!"
"Whose side are you taking."
"What? Did I say something wrong?"
"!?"
It was fair to call it chaos unfolding across the whole kingdom.
...Meanwhile, there was one rare place where no debate, no conflict, no fight arose at all. None other than—
"......"
......
—the academy's sword faculty.
"...S-someone say something."
"S-say what? What am I supposed to do?"
"Instructor looks very angry. Talk to him, and it feels like death. Just leave him."
"...Kunta, that was a remarkably intelligent thing to say."
"Kunta was always smart?"
"......"
A place where discussion had been forbidden by force, one might have called it.
Funny enough, even among the sword faculty there were people who wanted to talk about the affair. But their revered master sat in a peculiar posture and held his silence, and they could not open their mouths. One thing they could say for certain: he looked very, very displeased. Speak carelessly, and today might be the day their limbs were torn off. So they chose the wise option called silence, and threw themselves into sword training.
While quarrels broke out across the kingdom, these hot-blooded youths—through no will of their own—kept a peace compelled by fear.
Perhaps peace really does come from force, and from terror.
And the man personally driving home that lesson which was not quite a lesson—
"......"
—sat cross-legged with his eyes closed.
Then—
"Hoo...."
Among eighty students, the woman who perhaps looked the frailest, and who possessed the greatest courage.
"Um, Master...."
Levi Jeanne d'Arc took one step forward and spoke to their instructor.
"......What is it."
He answered a beat late.
Whether because the worry ran deep, his voice had sunk, unlike his usual self. Another student might not even have found the courage to speak again beneath the pressure he gave off without trying. Levi was no ordinary girl.
"...I just thought you might be carrying some great worry."
"......"
"So.... Yes. So I simply wanted to talk to you, Master. Worrying all alone is so—no. It's very painful, isn't it?"
"......"
"I-I know someone like me could hardly offer any real counsel, but I want to share the worry with you."
"......"
For a moment, the eyes of the man seated in meditation slowly opened. At the corner of his mouth—
"—Ha."
"D-don't laugh! I-I know it's ridiculous, but...."
A smile twisted its way into being.
Levi looked ready to cry, flushed with shame. She was afraid she had spoken above her station.
But—
"...Yeah. You're right. A worry is something you have to share with someone."
"......Yes?"
"Thanks. Because of you, I think I know what I have to do."
"M-Master?"
Carefully, Levi looked up at him again, and his gaze turned to meet hers.
"I'm stepping out for a bit. Run today's class on your own. I'm counting on you. Oh—and dump the rest of the work and the paperwork on Assistant Instructor Number One. Understood?"
"...Y-yes!"
Levi could answer brightly, with all her strength. She was simply glad that he was smiling at last. This was his usual self—the master who made her feel steadier than anyone alive.
He vanished that quickly, and Levi only watched his retreating back, a soft smile warm on her face.
"Instructor, there's a meeting today.... Huh? Where'd that man go?"
"He left. He said he had something to do."
"S-something to do?! Th-there's a meeting, and he has something to do!?"
"Yes. He said to leave the remaining work to Assistant Instructor Damian."
"......"
"I'll be going, then. I ought to start my training soon...."
"........."
She went looking for a place to take up a wooden sword, meaning to train with everything she had.
I have to be of help to Master!
Still weak—but someday she wanted to be able to brace that back of his, solid and sure. Endlessly frail, and yet her will held the sturdiness of a great tree. That was Levi.
"Aaah! That damned man!! Ha—just one hit! Just let me hit him once, please—!!"
Cheered on by the mournful wail of an assistant instructor whose overtime was, once again, guaranteed, she swung the wooden sword.
To grow stronger.
...Lee Han went straight.
Whoosh—once his hesitation was gone, no one could stop his stride, and the pressure rolling off him meant no one even tried. His pace quickened until he was eating the distance at a run. The world blurred past in a rush, and before he knew it—
Tap.
"Sir Turtle?"
"Been a while."
"What brings you today...."
"Enough. I'm going in."
"Pardon?"
"Hang in there."
"Ah—hey...."
By rights, the captain of the Royal Castle guard should have stopped him. After the brawl in the castle the day before, Lee Han was not to set foot inside for the time being. But the captain and the guards alike could only stare, blank, as he went in.
"Hoo!"
He blew out a single breath, passed the castle gate in a flash, and came to his old post.
The White Silver Lion Third Knight Order.
As ever, knights stood posted in great number, and the moment Lee Han showed himself their eyes locked onto him.
"Wh-why is that guy here?"
"...??"
"Eek!"
They could hardly have met a plague fiend, and yet they startled the instant he appeared. Those who had suffered most at his hands, especially. Stranger still, even the new knights who were seeing him for the first time, or had barely dealt with him at all, hurried to look away. By rights there should have been glares picking some small fight, or at least the sound of muttering. The quiet was wrong. Jake and Jord, the ones he actually knew, were absent as well, so there was no one to crack the awkwardness. And then—
"—Heh heh. Did some homing instinct kick in all of a sudden? I never even called, and here you are to see me."
A middle-aged man had taken the space at Lee Han's back, his body moving with a loose, drifting lightness. To the eye he looked frail enough that he might barely swing a cane. And yet, among the knights of the order....
No. On this entire continent, there was no one who would take that middle-aged man lightly.
Because he was—
"I didn't even say I came to see you, old man. A little full of yourself, aren't you?"
"Full of myself, my foot. Venting a presence that vicious, and you talk. Rein it in a little. Can't you see them scared witless, not knowing what to do?"
"......"
"Heh heh. You still won't listen. Ill-bred brat."
Baltar Grace.
The greatest knight the whole continent acknowledged, and its idol. A Superhuman who was an army unto himself. An Aura User, object of fear beyond counting and of reverence just as deep. That was the man.
And to that great Superhuman, Lee Han said—
"...Yeah. Honestly, just like you said, I came because there's something I need to ask you today."
"While you're leaking pressure like that?"
"I do need answers today. I also want to blow off this shitty mood."
"...Impudent mouth on you."
"Sorry. I'll apologize. But I can't help it. Keep on like this and I'm going to fall into qi deviation."
"And what is that supposed to be?"
"Mm...... It means I feel like I'm about to lose my mind."
"That is... heh heh. A serious matter, certainly."
Baltar wore a benevolent smile. Benevolent enough that one might have expected him to press pocket money into a hand. Instead of pocket money—
"Mm. As they say, the medicine for a mad dog is the rod."
Thock.
He gave him a light flick on the forehead. It looked utterly weightless, nothing more than a tap....
BOOM—!
The marvel that flick produced was anything but light.
Crash, crash, crash!
"R-run!"
"M-mad!!"
A man went flying. Spinning like a windmill as he flew, turning over dozens of times in a single second, and Lee Han's body—
KRAANG!
—stopped only after it had slammed deep enough to crater the castle wall.
Having delivered a forehead-flick that begged the question of whether physics even allowed such a thing, Baltar snorted a laugh.
"The brat must have wanted his wits shocked awake. He went and took it on purpose."
......Pardon?
A dim-witted reaction, and no telling whose it was.
But in the next moment—
CRRRRACK!
The wall came apart, and a great rupturing roar washed over the knight order.
They flinched. The knights stepped back on instinct.
Step. Step.
What walked out through the collapsing wall, eyes alight with a chill and ghastly gleam, called a wild beast to mind. A beast savage past all measure. A mad beast no one could control.
And the beast—
"—Today, I'm going to be serious."
A human voice—and across his whole body, fighting energy took shape like ghost-fire, crackling into being.
To which Baltar—
"And the times you got hit, you weren't serious?"
—only crooked a finger. Come whenever you like.
At that show of leisure, the beast laughed, savage, as if coming here had been the right answer all along.
KWAANG!!
The beast that could bring down even a castle wall charged the Superhuman.