Ragnis Lien da Levien
Ragnis Lien da Levien
Wyvern knight. On name alone they looked like a downgraded version of a dragon knight, but on the battlefield they were not only mobile artillery that seized air superiority and launched spells—they were an elite force that made enormous contributions to collapsing enemy formations with ridiculously long glaives and the like, using aura-reinforced bodies and the wyvern's acceleration.
Even their worst drawback—having to master both Mana and aura—was offset to some degree because they were a military force.
That was because a military was a collective where you only drilled the necessary things in accelerated fashion and then specialized. Unlike an adventurer who, having decided to learn both, had to refine endlessly while weighing every variable, a wyvern knight's magic only needed to be raised to a certain level; after that, there was no need to study further.
The military could make up for whatever they lacked with manpower and support. Put simply, mastering both disciplines only slowed their progress a little compared with other aura users.
In exchange for that slight delay, they gained more than double the benefits, so when it came to the military, it was no exaggeration to call it low risk, high return.
Of course, looking at it from the knight's personal achievement, the waste of the finite resource called time was so maddeningly inefficient that I wouldn't even consider attempting it. But then again, with no guarantee that such achievement could ever be attained, it wasn't a bad choice. The world was full of knights who went their whole lives without ever feeling aura.
I might end up facing one of those bastards. So how could a fourteen-year-old fresh-faced kid possibly have an answer through straightforward means?
It was an extreme binary choice. Bend your convictions, or risk your life.
"Eldmia! I'm starting to see it!"
I had no idea how many hours had passed or how far we'd flown. Occasionally a few dark villages slipped by, and between stretches of forest I'd dozed off to preserve stamina, but the biggest reason was that the wyvern was faster than I had ever imagined.
One thing was certain: if I'd lost Gies or hadn't had a wyvern, I'd be sprinting like a madman right now, cursing the world while trying to solve problems far beyond me—how to enter the capital in time, prove who I was, locate Ragnis, and everything else. For that alone, I had no choice but to thank that bastard Delt from the bottom of my heart.
When I focused on the direction Gies pointed, something no bigger than a grain of millet was flying at the edge of the pale-blue dawn sky.
"Wow. I can barely see it too. Are wyvern pilots just able to see that kind of thing?"
"There's no way. At this altitude, the only thing flying around alone is a wyvern, so when you do see it, it's just a matter of thinking, 'That must be it.'"
I'd assumed it was based on transcendent eyesight, but it turned out to be based on sound and reasonable deduction.
"Not sleeping and piloting is impressive enough, and I thought your eyes were good too. Well then, raise our altitude. How high do we have to go so that bastard won't notice?"
"If we glide in from above, he probably won't notice us even when we're only about one story higher than him. Up in the sky, people surprisingly don't think to imagine something flying directly over their heads."
Come to think of it, we were flying at nearly cloud level, so that made sense. The only things flying at or above this height would be another wyvern or something like a dragon.
"But right now we have to kill the wyvern before Delt has a chance to notice, so we should go a bit higher."
Fuck. Once that really sank in, I started to grasp just how reckless what I was about to do actually was.
"Gies. We've only known each other a few hours, but I'm placing the second-greatest trust of my life in you. Ragnis's life and mine are in your hands, got it?"
The plan itself was simple. I would strike the wyvern's head, snatch the bound Ragnis, and Gies would catch us. If I couldn't manage to even strike the wyvern's head and went tumbling shamefully, Gies would dive down fast, catch me, and we'd try again. Gies had confidently said that wyvern pilots had done similar exchanges between themselves plenty of times, so there was no chance of a mistake.
"For a debt-free life, I'll catch you without fail."
"Yeah. The altitude's high anyway, so there'll be some leeway in the fall. It'll work out somehow."
"Eldmia... you really are incredible. Even trained wyvern pilots take a long time before they can make catches like that."
"When you grow up after your village burns down at eight years old, you end up like this."
Honestly, I was just using knowledge from my past life to psych myself up over and over. But there was no one to compare me with and no way to prove otherwise, so I gave him that answer instead.
"I'll ascend then. Since the opponent might be a wyvern knight, I won't send a separate signal. When the distance is right, I'll have the wyvern flap its wings once... you can begin then."
I couldn't see his face, but his tension came through clearly in his voice. Come to think of it, how many times in a lifetime do you get the chance to help a guy doing insane shit like this? It wasn't something you did twice, so I wanted to succeed in one shot too.
"It's almost dawn, isn't it?"
"Yes. Since we're flying toward the capital, the sun will rise in front of us."
"Can we time it with the sunrise?"
"I'll make it so."
When it came to flying, this guy never showed the slightest trace of uncertainty or hesitation. Was Gies actually an even more capable pilot than I'd imagined? Maybe that's exactly why someone had gone to the trouble of setting him up just to get him under their control.
Once we had it in sight, the distance closed in an instant. While I was marveling at Gies's skilled flying, we climbed and were flying above that bastard Delt, but he didn't notice at all.
The guy was flying in black gleaming armor, his cloak and dark brown hair fluttering, and in front of him lay Ragnis, trussed up as if she'd been rolled in a blanket. Honestly, with the hood pulled down deep, there was no way to confirm it was really Ragnis, but given the circumstances it had to be.
And since I had to do it anyway... the wyvern's head looked infinitely small.
"Fuck."
I wasn't scared. Maybe it was because the situation was too surreal, but once I'd anticipated the fall, this high altitude almost felt like a safety airbag.
In my head, countless imaginary Eldmias rehearsed the optimal way to plant a sword in the wyvern's skull, then missed and plummeted away screaming. Right then, the wyvern flapped its wings.
"Here I go."
I was actually proud of myself for jumping off, drawing my sword without a single moment's hesitation.
The fall began with the sound of wind slapping my ears.
Gies had to be a capable pilot. I could tell instinctively that if I fell like this, I'd hit the wyvern's head precisely. A terrifyingly accurate distance calculation.
Even while I fell straight toward the wyvern's head, which Gies kept perfectly level beneath me, Delt noticed nothing. Just when I started thinking I should be entering his field of view, his calm but puzzled gaze finally turned upward. Calling it 'finally' was probably unfair from his perspective. In real time, only one or two seconds could have passed.
"...?"
In that split instant, what I read on his face was a question.
His face said he couldn't understand why a person was falling toward him from above. The situation was so surreal that it didn't even occur to him to wonder who I was; from his eyes, I could tell he was stuck on the simpler question of why anyone was falling at all.
"That's obviously...!"
There was no time to calm my madly pounding heart, so I kept only the one single-minded determination not to let go of the sword I gripped with both hands, and brought it straight down onto the wyvern's head.
"Because of gravity, you fucking bastard!!"
After passing through the resistance of the skull I felt for an instant, the wyvern's head split apart.
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He'd thought dawn was breaking.
This was also Delt's first time flying toward the capital from this direction, so the glare was stronger than expected and he frowned without thinking, but that was all it was. The moon setting and the sun rising were perfectly natural phenomena.
That was why, in the split second when his eyes met Eldmia's, what filled Delt's mind was a simple question.
'Why is a person falling from above my head?'
The feeling that their gazes crossed in less than a second must have been the result of extreme tension and bewilderment in a situation he hadn't anticipated in the slightest and couldn't possibly have anticipated.
Someone fell with a shout he couldn't understand. Even as his eyes took in the blade of an unidentified figure sinking to the hilt into the wyvern's head, Delt couldn't react.
He couldn't even understand.
'How did he not fall off?'
Unable to process what was happening, Delt could only see someone who had dropped out of the sky now crouching in a bizarre posture on the wyvern's otherwise bare head, somehow keeping his balance.
It transcended common sense, transcended cognition, and even transcended understanding.
"I am!"
That was why.
Until the moment Eldmia twisted his grip on the sword, ran along the wyvern's neck—which kept its strength for a brief instant—closed in right before his face, and swung the sword two-handed, Delt couldn't react. He who had fought countless battles for his family, trained relentlessly, and never shied away from dirty work, couldn't react in the slightest.
Even when he saw movement on the level of a seasoned aura user, eyes blazing as though they were on fire, and a beautiful blade flashing toward him in the light of dawn, Delt still couldn't properly register the danger to his life.
"Eldmia Ega!"
Only after hearing that single phrase, which was the answer to all his questions, did Delt understand.
'Ah, so that's how it was.'
That was Delt's final thought, as his head was severed in a single blow.