Parting Does Not Mean Farewell (1)
"Hah... hah!"
The man walked with everything he had, breath tearing out of him. He had been running at the start. The farther he went, the harder it became. What was this place?
Wh-why is the air this heavy?
It felt as if gravity itself were pressing him flat. Simon, chairman of the Guild Association, gasped until the world in front of him went black. He was one step from fainting, and the twin brother and sister hauling him along like luggage shook their heads.
"Mister, you're in the way."
"You don't get enough exercise. Exercise a little, mister."
"It's not mister. Call me big brother, you little brats..."
"You sure can talk."
"You're the one who said we should come. Then you lean on us for everything. Useless mister."
Tina and Tik. The werewolf Half-Bloods had covered nearly twenty miles at a run and did not look tired in the slightest. If anything, they moved with the light step of children whose stamina was spilling over. The two of them turned to the woman beside them.
"But is Grandma all right?"
"Want Tina to carry you?"
"I'm fine. Please don't mind me. More importantly, aren't the two of you thirsty? Shall I give you some water?"
"We're fine. Grandma should drink."
"We're not weaklings."
"How dependable you are. Hehe."
"We're dependable!"
"Tina's strong!"
The twins trailed after her like puppies that had taken to a person, grinning wide. She smelled good, and instinct told them she was someone good.
"...Playing favorites, I see."
Simon laughed, hollow. Count the snacks and meals he had bought them for a month, and they ought to have been good to him. Was it even reasonable to be this polite to someone they had known for less than half a day?
If I didn't owe them, I'd be the one doing the scolding...
The help he had taken from those twins happened to be a debt of his life, so he could not bring himself to say a word. Then—
"Huhhh?"
"Hm?"
"...A puppy?"
The twins, who had been striding along full of energy, stopped short at what blocked their path. No. Not a puppy.
"Orthrus?! What's a high-rank monster doing here?!"
One look at the shape, and Simon knew it. He nearly jumped out of his skin. It might appear to be nothing more than an infant, but high-rank was high-rank. Not a thing you could ever afford to ignore.
"Puppy!"
"Wait!"
"Hey, you two!!"
Before Simon could stop them, Orthrus and the twins were already at play. They proved that a child and a dog need less than ten seconds to become friends, and somewhere in the middle of it they had started a game of tag. Simon's head throbbed. He was about to clutch the back of his neck.
Tap, tap.
To be precise, a gentle hand calmed him before he ever got that far.
"Ah—Elder?"
"I don't think we need to worry. It seems we've reached our destination."
"Pardon?"
"Look over there."
"That's..."
"At a glance it seems to be nothing at all, but there's something there, isn't there?"
"......Ah."
Simon was a sharp man. Give him the slightest hint, and the answer was not hard to reach. And so—
"F-Found it...!"
He ran as desperately as a man who had found a long-lost love, and the priestess followed with a benevolent smile.
Ding. Deeng—.
"The bell is ringing. So clear..." The priestess listened to that bright, limpid toll and broke into a hearty laugh. It was a sound like the person who had rung it: utterly upright, without a crooked note in it.
It bears saying now: Lee Han had not meant to leave like some wretch who did not know gratitude. The meeting of the high and mighty was dragging on, and he knew that staying would only stretch an awkward silence. He had simply meant to slip out quickly, and to go find them later and offer his thanks in person. And yet—
"Ungrateful wretch."
"...I told you, it's not that I have no sense and was trying to leave."
"That is what one calls a cowardly excuse."
"......This is driving me insane."
The treatment rankled. He knew perfectly well she was doing it to tease him, but she was doing it openly with this many people around, and the weight of it only grew.
She knows I hate this, so she's laying it on even thicker. That woman.
He was certain of it. Isis teased him precisely because she understood his intentions better than anyone. He hated being looked at. Let people see him chatting so warmly—if that was the word—with the crown princess, and everyone would know whether they wanted to or not.
The moment the people here step outside, that kind of nonsense will spread through the whole Royal Capital.
Well... it isn't exactly nonsense.
Even so, it was nothing if not a scheme to wreck his peaceful daily life, and Lee Han could not fathom why this woman was doing it.
She knows I hate standing out. She actually knows, and still—!
Fame, attention, all of it was nothing but a nuisance to him. She of all people ought to have known that, and watching Isis scatter fuel for gossip left a sour taste in his mouth. Then—
"Sir Lee Han."
"...It's been a while, Author."
"Haha. I did not come as an author today, but as a swordsman. I wanted to be of some small help to Offen's benefactor. ...Though, seeing things now, I wonder whether there was any need for me to come at all. I thought it a chance to repay even a little of what I owe, and it seems I have not repaid a thing."
"Just coming was a great help. If anything, I'm grateful you came all this way over a letter I dashed off and sent by pigeon."
Iliad, who had arrived at the head of House Offen's instructors, shook Lee Han's hand and scattered the gazes fixed on the crown princess and on him. Isis's eyes narrowed to slits, but the two of them went on talking, oblivious.
"But why come in person? Your body's not even sound yet."
"Lacking as this body is, I still wanted to be of help. And do not worry. I have recovered enough skill to look after myself."
"...Your level really is decent. Honestly, I thought it would be a blessing if you could even swing a sword, and you recovered this much in a month or two? Yeah. You deserve to be called a Sword Saint."
"You flatter me."
Iliad, met again after two months, was hale. The last time, his color had been bad and he had been so wasted there was hardly a muscle on him. Now he looked endlessly healthy, and his presence had settled. Just as he had boasted, he had more than enough skill to keep his own body alive.
The frightening thing about this man really is the swordsmanship and the Intent.
Destructive methods like Sword Resonance or fighting-energy were probably beyond him now that his body was ruined. The true skill of a swordsman once called Sword Saint did not come from destructive techniques. It came from sublime swordsmanship and from Intent. Among the four hundred knights gathered here, fewer than thirty could be sure of holding the upper hand if they crossed blades with Iliad as he was. And even that judgment—
Half a year from now is going to be terrifying.
—was only an assessment of a man still in recovery. Once his body was tempered further, half a year on, it would not be thirty men in this place. He would have the skill to stand among the top thirty in the kingdom.
"If we get the chance later, teach me a bit of swordwork. Somewhere along the way I got relatively better at fighting with my fists than with a sword or an axe."
"Haha. I know very well how fierce your axe-work and swordsmanship are, Sir Lee Han. Do you need the teaching of a lesser hand?"
"At least in pure swordsmanship, you could turn over everyone here—no, the whole kingdom—and you wouldn't find anyone better than you, would you?"
"That is..."
"Knew it."
"...You are as frank as ever."
It was a conversation only possible between men who had fought a duel in earnest, even if one of them had lost his reason. Iliad protested that the praise made his face burn, and even so he looked elated to be acknowledged, the way a devotee shows his heart to someone he admires.
"You're closer to Lord Iliad than I expected."
"Same sort of thing as with you, old man."
"With me?"
"We fought like we meant to kill each other. That's all."
"...Haha! Indeed! Then you could hardly help growing close."
Pat, pat. A handsome man in his middle years laughed and clapped Lee Han on the shoulder. Marquis Jenimia. At a glance he seemed endlessly light, the sort who called a philanderer to mind, but Lee Han knew that was only the surface. He was a thoroughly decent man. This time, too, he had come to help without a moment's hesitation.
"Mm. Thinking about it, I'm grateful to you, and sorry. All I've got for you is debt."
Lee Han knew shame, so having asked Tristan for help left him a little embarrassed. But—
"You're fretting over a trifle. If anything, this was something I was bound to help with. If not for you, who would have known Mordred faced a crisis like this? Honestly, had a high demon been set loose, the kingdom—no, the whole of the South—would have been in ruins. So for Tristan it is a fortunate thing to take part, even in this small way, in a glorious battle that stops a demon. Yes."
"Our knights are saying the same."
"...You people live awfully handsomely."
Lee Han could be shameless with others. With Tristan, he could not. There had been circumstances, but charging in on them was not something he could excuse, and they had not even picked a quarrel with him over it. They had written the whole matter off with a single Air Walk, magnanimous to a fault, and this time they had not only been the first to come running but had fought the vampire as well.
I'll have to send them a proper gift later.
He owed too many people too much. While he was quietly settling on that, the air changed.
"Is that so? You have faced both the Sword Saint and the Divine Bow? Now that is a fresh tale."
"It's not fresh. It isn't even interesting."
"I wonder."
"......Ahem."
His body lurched for an instant. The moment those two drew near, the pressure around him seemed to shift, and he looked at them without bothering to hide how burdensome they were. To the eye they were young men who looked younger than he did. Youth was only the surface. It would be no exaggeration to call both of them old monsters.
"I-It has been some time..."
Simply by standing there, they pressed on his body as if it were natural. Lee Han forced the greeting out. Duke Blake and Grand Duke Magnus. Two monsters wearing human shape were showing him considerable interest.
"You have grown."
"I can no longer disregard you. Grow careless, and even I would be threatened."
"......Ha."
A hollow laugh escaped him at words like that. Careless? Threatened?
What a load of bullshit.
Now that he had awakened Intent, he could not help but know. These two were another class entirely. Marquis Jenimia? Of course that man was formidable. Judged by the realm of Intent alone, he was clearly more mature than Lee Han, close to a completed form. But those two had gone a step further. They had completed an Intent of their own—a world of their own—and made it one with themselves.
So that's why those two are called the equals of Aura Users.
Superhumans. Those two were Superhumans. They had simply become Superhumans by a road different from an Aura User's. Because he had grown, Lee Han could sense it clearly, and that was why he was overwhelmed.
What is this? The more I grow, the more of these ancient monsters show up?
He had finally thought himself a lion, and out of nowhere two enormous elephants had appeared to crush his back. The two elephants left him no room to grow cocky or arrogant. The delicate lion could only whimper.
Life...
There were, strangely, far too many elephants around him.
"I cannot understand why they keep coveting what belongs to another. They have no sense of fair dealing..." Isis's mutter was low, with a chill running through it, but no one heard. Proof that she possessed a means by which even a word spoken to herself could not reach another ear.
"How impudent. Nothing but a thief's heart."
Isis had no history of losing what had once come into her hand. Even a worthless ornament, even a cheap trinket—once it entered her grasp, it was hers. So she ground her teeth. Watching them covet the most precious jewel among her possessions made her temper spike of its own accord.
...Should I put a collar on him?
Out of sheer spite, she wanted to. But wise as she was, she knew she must not. Do that, and the jewel would snap the collar in an instant and leave her.
Flare—.
While she failed to press her displeasure down and her eyes briefly held a wavering light—
"Please do not overuse it, beautiful young lady. Power like that only ruins you."
"......"
"You may take it for the nagging of an old woman who knows nothing. I hope you will not. Take it as an old woman's worry."
"...I shall be careful."
"Hoho. Not only is your face beautiful. Your thinking is wise as well."
"......Hmph. I am merely not so foolish that I cannot tell sincere counsel from sly lies."
Isis answered that curtly, and the old priestess smiled kindly and nodded, as if the girl were to be praised. The usual Isis would have frowned and called it impudent, but she could not bring herself to say a word to the priestess. If anything, what she felt was fondness. And no wonder.
"My sworn younger brother said there are people in this world called hermits. Masters who hide their skill and live buried among ordinary folk..."
"...?"
"It was true."
"...Huhu. You flatter me."
A Saint... Live long enough, and you even meet someone like this.
That old priestess was clearly someone with the standing to rebuke her. Looking upon the connections of that sworn younger brother—connections that could reduce even a duke, or the princess of a nation, to nothing remarkable—Isis at last let her weariness show.