A Knight's Valor Holds No Recklessness (14)
Death Knights. Knights of betrayal. Men who had lost their honor.
Among monsters, those called Death Knights were singular in the sheer number of names of scorn that clung to them. And no wonder. They had been knights in life, and then they had fallen into monsters—humanity's mortal enemy—and they sustained that existence by killing their own kind for life energy. Traitors to humankind, they were true monsters, beings who had thrown away even honor.
To a knight, a Death Knight was a stain upon chivalry, a thing that had to be killed the moment it was met.
…And yet, for all of that, records of a Death Knight actually being destroyed were vanishingly few.
The reason?
Simple. A Death Knight kept the memories and the skill of its life intact, and it was a powerful monster that could learn besides. Humanity's one advantage over monsters was the use of technique—yet a Death Knight overturned even that. It was a monster that could wield technique, and it carried the trait of growing only harder and stronger as the years went by. Once one had lived for several centuries at the least, it could no longer be dismissed as an ordinary monster. It reigned as a monster of the highest order.
They reached realms of the sword that even a respectable knight had never touched. They turned the life force they plundered from human beings to the same use as fighting-energy, and beyond that they possessed regeneration and a brutal durability. For those reasons, destroying a Death Knight was no different from a challenge on which even a renowned knight order had to stake its fate.
And now a Death Knight that had lived through centuries of that had been granted the power of a land-god, and had become something alien and hideous, unlike any other monster—something like a chimera. This was not a creature one could simply call strong. It meant the birth of the strongest and worst of monsters.
In truth, that the Hundred Ghost Shield Knights under Ganok had endured this long without losing a single man was already a tremendous feat. The Death Knight Chimeras were dreadful to that degree.
Crack!
……It ought to have been so.
Whoosh!
The Death Knights' blades and spearheads moved like living snakes, like butterflies, tracing uncanny paths. The changes they wrought in the time it took to blink could fairly have been called living things themselves. A man bewitched by that swordplay might have his throat or his heart run through and have nothing to say for it.
And yet.
Whoosh. Whoosh.
"…So that's how it is."
The man whose crimson eyes burned bright slipped past them with ease. More than five Death Knights were hurling countless sword strikes steeped in all the years they had lived, and still he—
"Hm. Crude."
Tak.
He unraveled the strikes by lightly tapping the flat of a blade, as if he were shooing off a flying insect. However fierce an attack might be—fierce enough to overturn the earth—it meant nothing if it never landed.
"Not much talent in life, were you?"
Rattle?!
"Struck a nerve, did I."
Rattle…!
The Death Knights exhaled a surge of wrath. Fighting-spirit given form, no different from fighting-energy, it called to mind foul muddy water. Already it was fit to be called a demon's magic-qi.
The aura possessed by a being of Hell poured forth.
The spirit of the Death Knights, threatening enough already, climbed higher still…!
Crack!
"I told you. Crude. Why can't you understand it the first time?"
Flash!
But as if even their threat were laughable, the knight with the spear toyed with them again. Blows too fast to register as attacks at all drummed across the Death Knights' bodies.
Boom!
Rattle!?
An unpleasant sensation, as if they had become drums set out for someone to play. A helplessness and a humiliation they had never felt since becoming monsters swept over them, and still the Death Knights could not begin to match their opponent's movement.
Toyed with.
A one-sided battle, summed up in those words—and the Death Knights were forced to recall the most unpleasant moment in all the memories of their lives. In a sense, it was the reason these men, knights once, had fallen and become monsters.
Irrational talent!
Geniuses, whose talent rendered their effort meaningless. A breed so absurdly unfair they could catch fifty years of striving in a single day. Because of them, these men had been forced to live crushed beneath humiliation and defeat. But after they became monsters, the ones once called geniuses had died like insects in their hands. However great the talent, a frail thing made of flesh and blood could not defeat them.
So why—
Crunch!
—were their bodies being split in half?
…Like insects.
Slash!
"They soil the eyes."
The crimson-eyed knight, having carved dozens of Death Knight Chimeras to pieces, clicked his tongue, as if merely facing creatures this ugly was unpleasant beyond words.
"Haa……."
"Wh-what in the…."
But unlike his own impression, the Hundred Ghosts could not bring themselves to share it. These were the Death Knights they had fought with their lives on the line. Traitors of humanity, endlessly fallen—and yet their skill had been dreadful past all words, a skill one had no choice but to acknowledge. Watching him erase that whole company so emptily, they could feel nothing but a hollow disbelief.
They ought not to say it, but….
Isn't an unfairness like that the reason a knight falls?
They felt they could understand, if only a little, how those fallen traitors must have felt.
"That's… the Dire Wolf…."
Rak de Duron. Galahad's champion, a knight who contended for the very first place among the young. Over the past five years inside this Hidden Grotto, the Hundred Ghosts had grown tremendously themselves, confident they would not lose no matter the opponent—yet now, of all times, that confidence seemed to shrink.
Then—
"Heh heh. Feeling hollow is only natural, but do not hand yourselves over to despair or jealousy on account of it. Someday that ugly end may be your own future."
"C-Commander…."
As if he had read their hearts, Ganok gave them advice that was also a warning.
"Do not compare yourselves to others. Even if someone stands far ahead of you, you must keep your own pace. Lose that pace and force yourself onward, and the ending is rarely a pleasant one. …You may even meet an end like that."
"……."
"Above all, this is not the time for jealousy. If you are to feel anything, feel gratitude toward the reinforcements who saved us. Do not mistake what comes first."
"Y-yes, sir!"
It was a sharp rebuke that forced them to look at what was real, and a low scolding that sank into the heart, and so the Hundred Ghosts turned quickly toward the next battlefield. As he had said, they ought to be grateful that sturdy reinforcements had come. This was no time to soak in powerlessness. If they had time for that, they had time to kill one more monster.
"…Your way with words is as fine as ever, Sir Ganok."
"Way with words? It is only what anyone would say. If one's valor is lacking, one ought at least to be good at this much. Heh heh."
"……You are making sport of me."
What a joke. Lacking in valor?
"If anyone looked at the vice-captain of the White Dragon Knights and thought his valor lacking, that man would be an utter fool who knew nothing at all."
"Heh heh. And what am I to do if you drag out a name from the old days?"
Ganok shrugged, as if he had heard a name he missed—but only for a moment.
"Let us put reminiscing off until later. The young ones are distinguishing themselves like this. I ought to be running about diligently myself. Heh heh."
"I shall look forward to it."
"And you—are you off to find a battlefield of your own?"
"That is my intent. …Though it seems the field where glory would have shone brightest has been taken from me."
"Ha—hah!"
Ganok laughed before he could stop himself. The man had just shown the valor of crushing dozens of Death Knights, and still he knew no satisfaction. It was absurd.
And yet—
Yes. This is a knight!
There was nothing more splendid. This young knight before his eyes, and also—
The young man who charges, reckless, straight at the most dangerous foe.
Ganok turned his gaze toward the far distance.
Kraaaaaang—!
…Toward the face of the Black Lion, laughing with delight as he charged the god of war.
Reckless past all reckoning.
Youth is a fine thing.
A recklessness one could almost envy.
Thud. Thud. Thud….
"……."
Ninshubur frowned as he looked at the giant of a man who had rushed him in an instant. He had meant to let the attack flow past….
The impact is too great to shed.
A shock of sheer, artless mass—too much to deflect in full. Only today he had already met a knight who destroyed his arm, and he had not thought he would be meeting another such man. He was dumbfounded.
"…What a strange age. A hero is a breed of which even one in an era is a miracle…."
Why were there three of them?
Ninshubur glared at the giant who had shown a blow fiercer than a giant's. A presence dangerous beyond measure—and—
"Khahahaha! The world is wide after all! I was proud I'd grown decently strong, training all over again from the start! Am I still lacking? Ahaha!"
—a warrior whose laughter was so hearty it climbed into a piercing roar fit to rupture an opponent's eardrums.
"Ah. I threw my first greeting and never gave my name. Well met, ancient evil spirit! My name is Maximus Iron de Lionel!"
Thud!!
"I am the Black Lion of the North!"
The northern champion—now some one and a half times his height and bulk of the day before—introduced himself with a cheerful face, and for a moment Ninshubur's head tilted.
"A greeting?"
"A warrior's greeting begins with the clash of blades. That is simply how it is!"
"…Are you mad?"
"Not mad. Common sense. Mark it well, ancient evil spirit."
"……."
Thanks to Maximus's absurdity, Ninshubur experienced, for the second time in his life, the feeling of being at a loss for words.
…What were these people?
Are none of this age's heroes in their right minds…?
Every last one of them was bizarre beyond belief. More barbaric than the ancients, and stranger besides…….
…The god of war shuddered at the madness these humans of the present age possessed.