Episode 20 — After He Fell Asleep (3)

"Fall back."

The decision was immediate. The moment the order reached him, the junior priest raised his mana, and a filthy power surged up like churned mud. The spell was taking form. He drew breath to carry the chant on.

"And where do you think you're going."

A clean slash. A dry, swallowing hiss. The mana was cut—no. It was devoured.

"You dare work magic in front of me? Not even amusing."

Absorption of mana. Not of mana alone, but a power that drank in everything still holding life and made it his own. It was the second Mystery of Lancelot, following the Mystery of Flame: the Mystery of Absorption.

From ancient times a Mystery had been held to overturn common sense—a miracle a god granted humankind, bestowed on those who would walk a king's fate or a hero's road. To possess even one was no exaggeration of having been chosen by the stars. The Magic Sword, then, stood outside every measure. It held five Mysteries in all, which meant three yet remained that could match Flame and Absorption, or perhaps surpass them. The ancients had not idly named it a sword fit to ruin a nation. This was the proof.

Fire roared up and wrapped them, ready to burn them away on the spot. Strength thinned. Even their vitality was being drunk off, a sickening drain. Had anyone of frail body stood there, they would have died at once. To that degree the Magic Sword—no, the duke who wielded that Mystery as freely as breath—was a monster. However mighty the tool, if the hand upon it was even slightly lacking, the sword would swallow its user. So it had been with every wielder before him. Their ends had been wretched.

"Hm. A simple flight seems unlikely. I shall have to be thorough."

"We'd already started. Heh heh."

An ordinary mage would have been terrified. A mage's arrogance and self-regard were born of mana, and this was as good as having that mana sealed. The priest-mage, however, showed not a shred of fear. He smiled brightly, as if glad the chance to test it had come at last.

The priest's spell was nothing like an ordinary chant. It sounded like a request laid before someone else—no, closer to a wish. And the instant that wish ended, something unspeakably hideous smashed through the outer wall and showed itself.

"Summoning magic?!"

"Our lord is here—how could it—!"

However alien summoning magic might be, for a summoned thing to appear inside a space under the Magic Sword's influence ought to have been impossible. The duke did not panic. As their shapes gradually revealed themselves, his eyes blew wide as lamps.

"You. What, exactly, did you make a contract with?"

"Haha. So this power really can't be absorbed by the Magic Sword. Fortunate. I've picked up one useful piece of information."

The mage laughed without end. Spiderweb burns crept across his face. The pain must have been climbing toward madness, and still he rejoiced only that he had found a means of threatening the duke.

"You..."

For the first time, the duke named them a threat. What he sensed was not the cheap feeling of men who merely hated those in power, or who carried some scheme to topple a kingdom. It was something thicker. They had contracted with a being of Hell. Of that he was certain.

They accepted a life that pawns even the soul? Thoroughly mad.

A grudge steeped in madness. Duke Blake had to admit the man before him carried a hatred no smaller than that. A grudge against the kingdom? Or against the world itself? He could not tell.

I kill him now.

He could not leave a thing that dangerous as it was. He decided he would not wonder at the other man's grudge. Begin weighing who was more in the right and who the sinner, and there would be no end. So he fixed his mind only on what stood in front of him.

"Capture is abandoned. Kill them."

The order fell, and the shadows did not question it. They charged at once. Toward those masters, the priest spoke again.

The Hungry Ghosts—chimeras made of monsters and humans as material—crashed into the shadows.

By the time the kingdom's troops arrived, late, what met them was a city district torn in half. Debris pattered down through the silence. No one had died, and that was fortune of a sort, but not a soul looking on was glad of it. Every face had gone white. Terror was the only honest answer, and with reason.

"Regrettably, one escaped. Galahad will compensate every loss."

Seventeen buildings and a forest had burned to nothing, and the fact that this absurd destruction was the work of one duke and fifty knights was enough to stun. The duke who had wrought such a feat still wore an unsatisfied face.

"Are there any dead, Lachlan?"

"I can only beg your pardon."

"I asked whether anyone had died. I fail to see why the apology comes first. Tch."

The shadows were wretched. They could not lift their faces before a lord who worried for them.

"An empty shell. They are not men who do uninteresting work."

The mage they had taken, at the cost of blowing out a stretch of the city, had a beating heart and nothing more. No light lived in the eyes. The flesh was caught. The pith inside it was gone.

"Grotesque things, without question."

Anger lived in Duke Blake's low murmur, but gloom had settled there as well. Duke though he was, too much of the world remained unknown to him. And so—

"If one truly became king, might one come to know all things...? For the present, it interests me."

He recalled the whisper a young lion had tossed off with insolence, and left behind.

Drip. Drop.

"Hah... hahh...!"

The man clutched his arm, breath tearing out of him. In the flight, a blow from the knight named Lachlan had ripped the arm clean off. He had managed to stop the bleeding. He did not know how long it ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠would hold. The knight's strike was ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠not the true trouble. The Magic Sword's flame was burrowing through his insides as well. Before long, when that fire reached the heart, he would simply die.

Strong, as expected. Even setting the three Superhumans aside, two monsters of that order. Nothing but dreadful.

He pressed on only by a subordinate's sacrifice. Pain climbed, and still he kept moving. Surrender was not a word he owned. And so he meant to go on.

"No. It ends here. Step down from the stage, Andrea Laurent."

Regrettably—or perhaps the cruelty of fate always arrives unannounced—the high priest stopped. Andrea Laurent turned bloodshot eyes on the black-haired man and said nothing.

"Forty years ago, the temple raised a host of warriors to stand against the kingdom. The late ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠king saw that ambition and broke it once. I had heard the survivors still lived as parasites upon the temple... Who would have thought that now, of all times, they would again be plotting to overturn the kingdom?"

From the man's mouth came not only his name, but his affiliation and the history he had hidden. How did he know?

"Did you think the duke was the only one hunting you? Filthy vermin. You sowed a plague called faith across the North and thought you could slip our eyes? The North must have looked easy...!"

The earth groaned, deep enough to pass for the howl of some great beast. When he snarled his rage, the ground shook once. Only then did Andrea Laurent understand. The ones planted in the North, those of shallow faith, had at last spit the information out.

"...Which is why I should never have used those of thin faith."

"Their faith was not thin. We wrung it out of them only after more than five hundred days of torture. Vicious. How thoroughly did you brainwash them?"

The man shuddered with disgust. The harm a handful of insects had done the North was no small thing. It did not show on the surface, but if one said the land had taken a sickness into the bone, would that be easier to grasp? To that degree their doctrine—the ideology, the thought, the method of brainwashing they had spread—was vicious. Even now the remnants had not all been cleared away. So he had come himself. The moment the information was in hand, he had moved, determined to find them and tear them out by the root.

"Speak freely. You who call yourselves the Blood Cross Army—where is your den? Speak, and I will grant you a merciful death."

"...You even learned our name. Impressive."

The instant the name left the man's mouth, he knew they had been found. Andrea Laurent held a gloomy sneer. What was he thinking? All at once he took a cross in hand—no, a Reverse Cross—and lifted a prayer that belonged in no scripture.

"Damned fanatics."

The man—Magnus Julia de Lionel—shook his head, sick to the bone of it. He had heard their doctrine more times than he cared to count, and its extremity set his teeth on edge. He understood what it meant, though. Even he could feel the sympathy in it. And if that thought spread and soaked into the people of the kingdom, the rule of law—no. The kingdom itself would fall, without question. It had to be stopped before it spread any further.

"Maximus."

"No need to take him alive?"

"It would be meaningless."

"Then I understand."

The knight of gigantic frame, Maximus, Northern Great Warrior, stepped out before him. The place was too narrow for the Black King to run wild. The smaller of them would have to do it. Relatively smaller.

"I hear your rank in the Blood Cross Army is a thousand-man officer, at the least. I'd like to see that power."

Maximus knew the man was a sinner who could not be forgiven. Even so, he offered him the chance to meet in a fair contest, so that one human life might end without regret.

But the offer was thrown away.

Blood spilled. It ran from his eyes, his nose, his mouth, his ears. He cast aside the chance Maximus had given him—the chance to die as a man.

Drip. Drip. Andrea Laurent's body began to melt. Blood dissolved his flesh and bone and erased him from the world, and in their place an alien power descended. In that moment he held strength enough to fight, alone, a knight order worthy of a great lord.

Except—

"...There is no folly to match this!"

The choice to gain ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠power and become a monster with no reason left was worse than foolish. It was an insult to life itself.

How could a man refuse the struggle and choose to become a mass of blood? Maximus burned with rage. Better to die a human. Why meet one's end in a shape like that?

"If the world was that hateful to you, then you should have rebelled all the harder."

Not become this.

The thing only dripped. Maximus cast aside his usual cheer. With a presence as grim as the grave, he seized his great axe—a battle-axe of tremendous size. Wind tore around a weapon larger than most axes, and he swung it as freely as a club, monstrous strength on full display, as he turned to meet the wretched blood-monster lunging to take him.

"Hup!"

He struck with everything he had.

After a certain knight, soaked in blood, had fallen asleep, the hour before dawn was busy with the aftermath. They say that night was unusually long, and that the thunder of it went on for a great while.