After He Fell Asleep (1)
…It's over.
Relief did not come. There was no joy in having survived, and not even the thrill of victory—only the flat sense that one miserable task he had been forced to see through was, at last, finished. For a man who had brought down a monster of legend, it was a bleak way to feel. There was nothing to be done about it.
And no wonder.
"I lost…."
Had he won by his own hand, he might at least have tasted some achievement. In the end he had borrowed another's. He had given his best—no, he had given everything—and still he had lost, so thoroughly that not even an excuse remained. What lingered in his mouth was not the clean satisfaction of a thing well done, but the bitterness left after chewing a great wad of medicinal herbs.
…And yet.
"Heh. The kids lived. That's enough."
He felt neither helplessness nor self-loathing. His disciples, the children, were alive. That single fact might be the only thing he had any right to boast of.
"For Pendragon! For Lionel…!"
"Waaaaaah!"
Cries of victory rolled in from far away. They must have succeeded in wiping out every last gnoll still inside the Colosseum. Absurd as it was, his disciples' voices cut cleanly through the roar of that vast crowd, and he could tell that every one of them was safe.
"Those brats."
Only then could he—could Lee Han—let a satisfied smile settle on his face.
"Heh heh. Teaching seems to have suited you after all. Or perhaps I simply never noticed, and you are a more tenderhearted fellow than you pretend."
"…I'm trying to savor the moment, so leave me be."
"That insolent mouth of yours is the same as ever. If you only knew how to respect your elders, you would be perfectly tolerable."
"I show plenty of respect to elders worth respecting. You're just not one of them, old man."
"……Should I have left you to die?"
Baltar Grace clicked his tongue, as if to ask what manner of man this was. Limp as boiled spinach, and still his mouth worked with uncommon vigor. The sort who could fall into a river and float on his lips alone.
"And who told you to show up late? If you'd just come when I asked, how much better would that have been?"
Lee Han was not grumbling without cause.
Help me out a little, old man.
The moment he understood that no ordinary monster had appeared, the first person he had begged for aid was none other than this old man. And this old man—
"A man cannot move on uncertain intelligence. That is the way of things."
"So you wait until the disaster's already happened? I'd love to hear you try that excuse after everyone's already dead. Ha!"
"…Ahem."
Even Baltar looked away, at a loss for anything to say. Failing to trust Lee Han had, without question, been his own judgment.
"S-still, the moment I sensed something amiss, I came running, did I not? So let us put it behind us."
From the Academy to the Royal Castle was nearly twenty miles. He had crossed that distance in a single breath, and that much effort, at least, was real. Put the other way, however—
"If I and those kids hadn't held out, we'd all be dead."
"Hm. I've nothing to say to that."
They had endured—no, Lee Han had endured—and only because of that did the effort mean anything. Baltar conceded it plainly: this time, everyone in the Royal Capital owed Lee Han a debt. While no one else moved, he alone had prepared, and he had stopped a catastrophe.
"I cannot speak for that pack of mutts, but if that thing had run wild through the Royal Capital, it would surely have been a disaster."
Glug… bubble… glug…!
Baltar turned his eyes on the Ghost King, taken apart as completely as a scattered puzzle. It was plainly dead, and still it was trying to regenerate. A horror to which the name deathless fit all too well.
"…Had that thing taken food, even I would not have found it easy."
"Lucky it was stupid."
Lee Han did not deny his own part. If the monster had stopped clinging to him and eaten something else, the fight would have ended on the spot. The moment it fed, it would have recovered some measure of its prime, and even an Aura User would not have had an easy—
"Still, it is a shame. Fighting the thing in its prime would have been amusing. Heh heh."
"……Senile old bastard."
A thought struck Lee Han. Even if the Ghost King had not been at thirty percent—even if it had stood whole, at full strength—he suspected Baltar's odds would still have been the higher ones. As far as he knew, the knight called Baltar Grace was, quite simply—
If that troll is a Demon King, then this old man is a God of Battle.
A giant of the age, a man for whom losing was unimaginable. Even if he completed the Plum-Blossom Sword he had shown today, he doubted he could land a proper blow. In any case—
"I'm sick of it. Sick to death of it."
The mountain he meant to climb seemed not even to show its ridge.
Afterward, royal soldiers and the rest of the reinforcements arrived late, and the situation was put in order with surprising speed.
And him? He simply stayed where he was.
"Rest. I will handle what remains."
The old man was showing a rare consideration, so it seemed safe enough to trust him with it. Even so—
"Somebody might try to pull a scheme with that thing, so just get rid of it quickly."
"I know. Spare me the nagging."
Baltar, who understood better than anyone what Lee Han wanted destroyed, agreed without protest to burn the Ghost King's corpse. Nobles, mages, and any number of others would surely scheme for ownership of it. That was no prediction. It was a certainty, and he could already see, clear as day, what mischief they would make with that ill-omened thing.
I didn't go through all that just to watch bastards play games with it.
If Lee Han were forced to see that sight, he would fly into a rage and snap the neck of every last soul who coveted the corpse. Knowing as much, Baltar simply did as he was asked. There might be those who complained later.
…And who, truly, could say a word to him? Unless the Military God rose from the dead, there was no one left who could give Baltar an order.
Fwoosh.
Aura went up like fire and burned the Ghost King's corpse.
Aura—the knight's mystery, a thing only a Superhuman could ever take in hand. The goal every knight reached for, and a wonder so strange that even magic could not comprehend it. The moment that unknown power touched the body, the Ghost King's corpse caught fire.
Burn a monster, and death-miasma rises. Burn something on the order of the Ghost King, and it would not have been strange for a reek to blanket the whole of the Royal Capital. Aura erased every impurity. It was, by another name, the purest and most powerful force of purification in the world. Before it, impurities, curses, even vengeful grudges had no means to endure.
With Aura around, you wouldn't even have environmental problems.
If Aura Users had existed in the modern world, they would have made a fortune. Decide to do it, and one could clear away filth like this without leaving the slightest harm upon the living world.
……I really must be tired.
The stray thoughts came out of nowhere. Lee Han smiled bitterly and mocked himself for it: his condition was plainly nowhere near normal. Then—
"…Handle the rest however you like, old man."
"And where do you think you're going?"
"I want to rest."
"Impudent brat. You mean to dump all the work on this old man?"
"You owe me that much. Or should the one who did the suffering have to worry about the cleanup, too?"
Why should he explain himself to men who had dragged their feet and only now arrived? What about them was worth the courtesy?
"Heh heh. You do have a pretty way with words, boy."
The words were barbed, but the tone was brisk and clean, as if he had never meant to stop him from going. And then—
"Things will grow busy from here. You've made yourself far too conspicuous with this affair."
Lee Han said nothing.
"Until now we managed, somehow, to hide your every merit. This time that will be difficult. Within a few days, I expect, a summons will come from the Royal Castle."
Still nothing.
"Do not wear your displeasure so openly. For someone, this would be a glory they had longed for all their life."
"Agh! I don't want to hear any of it right now. I'm leaving."
Lee Han waved him off. His head already ached; he was done listening. Baltar knew the man's temper well enough to snort and say no more.
Instead—
"Boy. Take this with you, at least."
"What is it?"
"Bring it to an alchemist or a mage you can trust. You ought to get something worthwhile out of it."
"…Hm."
He was given a gift. The only thing to come out of the Ghost King's corpse after Aura had burned the rest away. It looked like a jewel, and yet it was unnervingly grotesque.
"Don't tell me this is…?"
"The heart. That alone refused to burn, and remained."
A monster's heart. And not just any monster's—the Ghost King's. Even a troll's heart traded for the price of a castle. The Ghost King's heart was a thing whose value could not be measured at all.
A priceless treasure. A jewel beyond any reckoning of worth.
Lee Han looked at Baltar with an expression he could not have named. Why hand him a treasure like this, instead of reclaiming it?
"The one who suffered should receive the fruits of it. I have no gift for maggots who did nothing. Take it. This was only ever between you and me."
"…I'll call it compensation for the beating."
"Boy, try speaking a little more prettily."
"Want me to bat my eyes?"
"Not that."
"Make up your mind."
Lee Han closed his fist hard around the Ghost King's heart. He did not indulge the well-fed worry of whether he deserved it.
I'll put it to good use.
His fingers clenched. Feeling powerless once was enough. Even now, tired enough to collapse where he stood, his eyes shone hard and bright—confirming that he had gained a foothold toward whatever came next.
"…Heartless brat."
Watching the man vanish without so much as a proper goodbye, the grumbling came first. Not a scrap of human warmth in him. Even so—
"And yet, seeing how he looks after the children—he has changed a great deal. Heh."
To trouble himself over a fallen girl and one boy besides: a sight unthinkable in the fellow who had once meant to live in solitude. Baltar found himself satisfied anew. What satisfied him, though, was not merely that the man's temper had rounded.
"His back has broadened while I wasn't looking."
His strength, too, had changed beyond recognition. Of that there was no doubt. He had grown markedly since his days in the knight order. Even then, among the White Lions, no one short of captain rank could have faced him—and now even that was beside the point. Aside from Baltar himself, no one among the White Lions could beat the man any longer.
At this point, among the knight orders of the Royal Capital, the only ones with any hope of standing against him would be the knights of Pendragon's legendary order, the company gathered solely from the strong the Military God himself had chosen: the White Dragon Knight Order. Anyone else matching him was a distant prospect.
Baltar Grace, former captain of the White Dragon Knight Order, felt a strange satisfaction.
"If he were only a little more diligent, he might be worth entrusting with something…."
It was a meaningful remark, though what he meant to entrust was impossible to say. Even so, Baltar decided not to bind him. Left free, the man was growing as he pleased. He had not been like this even when they sparred every day. So Baltar would leave him be. The man would find his path in freedom.
"I look forward to the next time."
The next time they met, how far would he have grown? The old man smiled, looking forward to a young man's growth.
…There was, however, one thing.
"But why did he not take this old man along?"
He had seen to everyone else, and yet, strangely, left the old mage behind. Watching that, Baltar clicked his tongue. That fellow, honestly.
"Doesn't know the first thing about respecting his elders."
Mistaking the mage who had fainted from exhaustion—Odwal Bernard, twenty-eight years old—for a man of greater years than himself, Baltar scolded him for it. His character, as ever, was a failing grade.
The weight on Lee Han's back vanished in no time.
In Taechang's case—
"Thank you for bringing him back safely."
The violet-haired girl he had seen at yesterday's debate hurried over and took the boy in hand. She fussed over him with a tenderness that overflowed, and Lee Han's gut gave a sour little twist. The kid had denied it so stubbornly—and sure enough, there was something between them.
Irene Windler was much the same.
"I will see to her."
A woman who looked to be a knight of the ducal house appeared, and Lee Han entrusted Irene to her. It was suspicious enough, but—
That bastard's little sister?
He could see yesterday's insufferable Lachlan in her face. Probably a younger sister, he figured, and reason enough to hand the girl over. More than that, the blood soaking her from head to toe said she had cut down dozens of gnolls on her own. That alone was trust enough.
"…Thank you for trusting me. And thank you for looking after the young lady."
"Forget it. Tell your brother that next time I'll make a rag of his face."
"That would be welcome."
…Her character seemed decent enough, too.
And so, somehow, his hands were empty. Light on his feet, he went looking for a place to rest, and at some point—
"…Ah."
He realized he was standing in the yard before his own house. He could have lain down anywhere, and yet here he was, home again. He wasn't a migratory bird. Just as he was thinking what a fool he was—
"You're back, Sir Knight."
"……."
"Hehe. You worked so hard."
"Since when have you…."
"Mm. I was just waiting the whole time?"
"……."
A woman was there to welcome him with warmth. How long had she been waiting? At the sight of Layla Winter, who seemed to have waited until the moment he returned, he went briefly blank.
Thud.
"Maid?"
"Yes."
The instant he called her, Layla came all the way to stand before him. He was just wondering why she had come so close when—
Ah. I'm the one falling.
It was not that she had closed the distance. He was collapsing, and knowing it, Lee Han tried to get his feet under him again. But Layla—
She caught him fast.
"You can just rest easy. Lean on me. Make yourself comfortable."
"……."
"Sleep. They say sleep cures everything, don't they!"
"…An educated remark, for a maid."
"Hmm?"
"Haha…."
Lee Han never managed to pull free of her arms, and simply let himself be held. It was an ease almost too complete: not a trace of sharp perfume, only the clean scent of soap and the smell of warm sunlight. And then—
Ah. This is comfortable.
A gentle touch, motherly. He sank into a softness he could not resist, and in no time sleep took him—utterly defenseless.
"It's all right. You're all right."
Layla, as if to guard that unguarded self, lent him her knee for a pillow and stroked his hair, tender as anything. As if no worry in the world need trouble him.
Rustle.
The dark clouds had given way, and beneath a sky sinking into the glow of evening a cool wind swept kindly across the yard.
"You worked so hard."
The maid only held the knight close and warm, afraid he might catch cold.
On and on.