The Night of Knights and Bonfires (3)
That day, a miracle came to all six hundred and thirty households dwelling in Wales.
"So. Have you been well?"
"Would I have been, if it were you?"
"...I'm sorry. I came too late."
"Yes. Far too late."
"......"
"Still. You did come."
"...I'm sorry."
"Enough with the apologies."
"......"
"You haven't eaten, have you? Somehow I ended up making a great many of those trout sandwiches you like."
"Huh?"
"They're your favorite, aren't they? Hehe."
"...Right. They were."
One knight laid down his sword and went back to being the head of a house.
"I'm home."
"You're back?"
"...Yes."
"Good. So long as your body's sound, that's enough. That's enough..."
"...I'm sorry it took so long."
"I said it's fine."
There were soldiers reuniting with their families through tears.
"Honestly, I thought you'd already forgotten me and married some other man."
"I wanted to. But I've got loyalty, you know."
"...Yeah. You really do."
"What are you standing there for? Aren't you going to hug me? Then I'll do it."
"...How could I not."
And there were lovers who, though parted for a long time, confirmed what they still felt for each other and held on without letting go.
Thus the six hundred and thirty young men returned safely to their hometowns and met their families, and that day the domain rang with the sounds of weeping and laughter.
Leave, granted after five years—no, after decades.
Rank and age made no difference. The troops laughed and talked, and even after night had passed and dawn had come, they did not sleep. They wanted to feel, for even a little longer, this dreamlike rest, this warmth of family.
They were happy.
...And so.
"Why are you the only elder still here? Why not take your leave with the others?"
"At my age, leave hardly feels like leave. I am more at ease simply working."
"And a soldier gives up his leave for that? Leave that hasn't come in decades?"
The old knight's choice was difficult to understand. Out of a rare fit of consideration, Lee Han had meant to take the entire cleanup upon himself, and yet the man had refused and stayed. In plain terms, a soldier was declining reward leave and volunteering for further duty. It was not the sort of act anyone would fail to find absurd.
"Ho ho, do not scold me too harshly. Even so, Mordred ought to have at least one person in charge, and am I not, if I may say so, a rather fitting choice?"
Former head of House Mordred, current knight commander, and, by all accounts, a man of influence who had once cut quite a figure even in the Royal Capital. Those were the words that adorned him. Far from merely fitting, he stood in overwhelming superiority to the present margrave, both in the right to speak and in authority, and it was true that he had remained for a reason with some validity to it.
"Don't you even want to see your granddaughter?"
"I do. Even so, I have no wish to neglect my duty. More than that, even if it is not I, my son and my grandsons will look after the child well enough on their own. There is no need for me as well."
"That isn't what I meant..."
"More to the point, where on earth did a teleportation scroll like yours come from? Magic enough to move hundreds of people at a stroke—even if there were dozens of mages, I wonder whether they could manage it after pouring in mana for hundreds of days."
As if to change the subject, Ganok asked it back. He had never before seen a scroll possessed of such power. Nor was it merely a question meant to turn the talk. As Ganok understood it, teleportation—spatial magic—was classed as rather high magic even among spells. Moving one or two people was already a great feat, and this had shifted more than six hundred at once. It would be no exaggeration to call the thing a treasure on par with an artifact.
"...Is it that valuable?"
"It was your possession. Did you not know its worth?"
"......"
"Why that face? Are you unwell somewhere?"
"No, nothing like that. It just feels like the affection behind it is... heavy."
"Hm?"
"There are things like that. Haa..."
"??"
For reasons unclear, Lee Han looked as though his head ached, and Ganok only blinked. The man who had not shown a sliver of fear even before a high demon was breaking into a cold sweat.
Kuuu-gung. The Mordred Secret Grotto gave an uneasy shudder. The space itself was showing signs of collapse.
"Only natural. After all that thrashing."
In the end, this Hidden Grotto had been nothing more than a space whose time and place were twisted by the power of the great evil spirit. With that spirit—the very source of the warp—extinguished, it stood to reason that the distortion of the space would restore itself. Even then, the natural course would have been a restoration spaced across several days. This battle, however, had been ferocious beyond measure. The instant the warp snapped back, the place would come crashing down.
...Of course, it would not fall this very moment. Even if it collapsed, there would be something like four days. Which was to say—
"Secure the important byproducts first!"
"Prioritize the trolls' lifeblood! With this much, we could cover three years of a knight order's operating costs!"
"Tendons, claws, and the monster cores of the higher monsters—those are mandatory!"
"...Isn't that just telling us to take the whole lot?"
What it meant was that the farming had begun. Human greed has no end. Even in a place that might collapse at any moment, they made certain of their own gain, and no one cursed them for it. Being a knight did not mean one had no greed, and if a man fought with everything he had and received not even a price for it, the will to go on would dry up.
If anything...
"Fortunate. That we can repay them even in this way."
Ganok said Mordred required not a single share, and that they should take as much as they wished. The byproducts had come from the land of Wales, so Mordred held first claim on the spoils, but Mordred was not so lacking in conscience as to demand it. Rather, he thought it fortunate that they could repay those people with such things.
Yet while some were gathering byproducts, elsewhere—
"Hm. So that pervert—no. That vampire bastard is dead?"
"Severing his neck itself did not take long. However strong he may have been, he was never going to withstand us."
Information was being gathered. Bale Tristan, the man who had held the vampire off while Lee Han fought, reported the outcome of the battle outside.
However.
"...But it left a bad taste."
"?"
"We certainly succeeded in slaughtering the vampire, ghouls and all. And yet I could not shake the thought that the process had been too easy."
"The corpse? You checked, didn't you?"
"Yes. We secured his body as well. It was the true body, not a clone. ...Even so, strangely, it did not feel as though we had won."
"......"
"So when we made for the Hidden Grotto, I left fifty of the Eagles outside, against the chance of some mishap."
"Good."
Lee Han was not greatly surprised that the vampire had been brought down. However legendary a monster he might be, he could not have overcome the Crimson Eagle Knight Order. In particular, those who had learned Air Walk now possessed a destructive power on par with bombers that could turn the ground to a wasteland. These days, even Lee Han suspected that if he were told to fight those hundred alone, he would have to look less than eager. So the vampire's death was not especially strange.
"...Still. He died a little too easily, didn't he?"
He could not help the tilt of his head. The vampire's death felt far too empty.
That guy died that easily?
As Lee Han knew him, Number Two had been a stubbornly tenacious bastard. Back then he hadn't known the man was a vampire—only thought him a pervert with bizarre abilities—but that persistence, and that gift for staying alive, no one denied. So when a fellow that stubborn died in a breath, something about the passage grated.
He didn't run, and fought to the end? No. The one I know isn't the sort to fight that honestly.
If things looked hopeless, he was not a man who would hesitate to bolt. Nor would he spare a single dirty trick. That sat wrong with Lee Han. It wasn't like him.
He was turning that slippery unease over when—
"Did you examine that vampire's blood?"
"?"
"Was it black—no. Was it rotting?"
"...Now that you say it, the smell of the blood was strangely foul..."
"As I thought..."
"??"
The one who cut into the talk was Lark. His eyes were severe to begin with; when he knit his brow, the killing intent bound in those crimson irises pressed out all the harder. So this was the Heaven-Slaying Star, officially recognized by the Grand Spear. A frightening momentum.
Fortunately, no one present was frail enough to be cowed or overwhelmed by a presence like that....
"Ghk!"
"Sir Aren, are you all right?"
"...Bring some water."
...There was one, as it turned out. The rest were unharmed, and they only looked at Lark.
"......"
Perhaps because he understood what those looks meant.
"It was half a year ago. When the Ghost King was summoned."
He brought out a piece of information he had been hiding.
"Galahad pursued the suspicious pair who summoned the Ghost King, and in the end we succeeded in capturing them... nearly."
"Nearly?"
"...They died in the course of the capture."
"So you're just saying you failed?"
"There is no such thing as a mistake for our House Galahad! It is only..."
"?"
"...that the instant the capture succeeded, their souls vanished."
"??"
Lee Han tilted his head, wondering why the talk had suddenly turned to exorcism, and Lark's brow furrowed.
"I know it is madness even as I speak it, but it is the truth. Those bastards possess a method of discarding the flesh. In short, they flee by abandoning the body."
"......"
"And the proof that a soul has escaped is blood gone rotten. As the soul departs, the blood putrefies in an instant and gives off a horrific stench."
"......"
"...What do those eyes mean?"
"The speech is grand enough, but those are the eyes of a man watching someone who can't admit he failed and is piling on excuses."
"......"
Click.
Lark raised his spear.
Lee Han opened the art.