The Road to Grandheim

Wolfgar finally stepped through the door. I'd believed he would pull through — he was Wolfgar, after all — but the man himself looked a little sheepish, shoulders slightly slumped as he cleared his throat.

"You're going after the mage who took Maria."

"Yeah. That's right. We have to."

Wolfgar had faced that mage himself. He would remember the face, the build — all of it.

"I overheard something. They said that mage came from the capital."

The capital. So that was why the three troublemakers had headed there too. Surely those three weren't planning to take a mage down on their own. They were strong, no question — but I had felt firsthand just how dangerous a mage could be. One wrong move and there would be no taking it back.

"Haren, that mage is strong. Honestly, I don't think I could win even if we fought again."

"But you haven't given up."

At my words, Wolfgar nodded, his face set with a hard, unshakable resolve.

"I'll keep going. So my regrets won't be for nothing. I'll keep going."

Will like that was more than enough.

"Then let's go to the capital."

Our next destination was set. The place in the Runheim Kingdom where the most monsters appeared and the most mages gathered. The capital, Grandheim. Everything led there.

But there was one stop I wanted to make first.

"Wolfgar, you got any other luggage?"

"Nope! This is all I've got."

"Then let's make one stop before we leave."

Wolfgar trailed after me without a word of complaint. The place I led him to was the graveyard — the one where the villagers were buried. I stopped in front of a single plot. My friend was laid to rest there.

Oble.

The grave was kept meticulously clean; his wife must have been tending it regularly. I had seen it briefly at the funeral, but this was the first time I had come back in two years. I had done my friend a disservice. I brushed the dust from the headstone with one pass of my hand.

Oble had been my peer. Both of us had figured we would live out our whole lives without ever leaving Laoren. And yet a day like this had come after all — the day one of us left.

"Oble, keep watching over Laoren."

Neither of us had ever amounted to much as monster hunters. But we had been the ones who ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠stood between this village and the things that wanted to eat it. He had talked about retiring and still looked sorry to go, so I figured he would like the job.

I finished the goodbye I had never gotten to say and turned away. There was truly nothing left for me in Laoren. Now we were leaving for the capital — for Grandheim.

The capital, Grandheim. Raoren County sat at the northernmost edge of the kingdom, a long way from the capital, so we packed light and set out at once.

"Haren became a mage?"

"That's what happened."

We were going to be traveling together for a while, so I gave Wolfgar a rough account of everything that had happened. His face twisted with bewilderment.

"So Haren is a terrifying being now?"

"A terrifying being?"

He was talking about me like something out of a fairy tale.

"In the stories they told in my village, mages were always terrifying. When I faced one myself, I felt the same way."

The mage Wolfgar described was strange even just to hear about. Hair ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠that poured endlessly, like flowing sand. Clothes woven from cloth mixed with golden grit. Just the description carried a wrongness that no longer felt human. No wonder Wolfgar had been afraid. But a look that distinctive would make the man easy to find. Ask enough questions and we would turn him up eventually.

"Wolfgar, do I look terrifying to you?"

"Hmm. No. You're still Haren."

"That's right. Even as a mage, I haven't changed."

Mages were beings who had surpassed humanity. People who had built worlds of their own could never be the same as ordinary folk. But the way I saw it, they were still people. They acted on desire. They felt joy and rage and sorrow like anyone else.

"Mages are dangerous. But if all you do is fear them, you'll never be able to stand against them."

Mages were not invincible. See through to the heart of what they were, and an answer would present itself.

"Haren."

Wolfgar stopped dead in the middle of the road and turned to me.

"Can a monster hunter never defeat a mage?"

Dreygan, who had stood at the very peak of what a monster hunter could be, had declared it impossible. If even he had drawn that line, what chance did the rest of them have?

"I don't know."

I didn't want to draw that line myself. I was a mage now, and even so, I couldn't accept sealing off the limits of what a human being could do.

"Wolfgar, I want you to prove it."

"Prove it?"

"There's a mage standing right in front of you."

Mages lived inside worlds of their own making. At best they traded with ordinary people. They had never tried to teach anyone outside their circle a single thing. The only ones they recognized as their own were those who shared their mana — and even among those, only a vanishing few ever earned real acknowledgment.

"If you can take me down, you'll have proven that a monster hunter can defeat a mage."

Wolfgar's eyes slowly went wide. That, clearly, was a thought that had never occurred to him.

"The road to the capital is long. And finding the mage once we get there will be even longer. So come at me with everything you've got until then."

I had learned a great deal sparring with Wolfgar. Becoming a mage hadn't changed that.

Learning every kind of fight I can is going to matter.

I couldn't lean on magic alone. If I wanted to change this world, I had to use everything I had. I wasn't about to give up being a monster hunter any more than I was about to give up being a mage.

"All right."

Wolfgar clenched both fists.

"I'll prove it. I swear I will!"

A fierce light kindled in his eyes. I had a feeling I wouldn't be seeing that huddled, self-recriminating version of him again. And this way, the road to the capital would double as training.

"Then let's start right now!"

"Right now?"

"I've got lost time to make up for. And you can train while you walk!"

Ah. So what he meant was—

"You want to keep training the whole way down the road?"

"That's right. Wouldn't it be a waste not to?"

This guy. A stretch of rest and he'd come back sharper than ever.

"You're sharper than you look, Wolfgar. Let's do it."

He'd learned well. Time was a resource you used, not one you wasted. If we could train on the move, there was nothing better.

Wolfgar drew his short spear and his long spear. I raised my fists to match him.

"From here on, we rest when one of us drops."

"You won't be stopping on my account!"

All that rest had left him overflowing with energy. I was no different. We would train until one of us couldn't get back up.

The road to Grandheim was, as roads went, well maintained. Laoren sat at the kingdom's northernmost fringe, and the Runheim Kingdom built its highways outward from the cities at its edges, so the route was better than most. On foot, the trip took about three months. Ours was no different — except that whenever training ended, we simply collapsed by the roadside and slept wherever we fell. The only time we stopped in a village was to resupply. Every other hour went to training.

I kept my mana use to an absolute minimum while we sparred. At first I had wondered whether I ought to practice pushing it to the limit, but the world had a way of throwing the unexpected at you. That kind of training I could do against monsters. With Wolfgar, the goal was finer control — and I learned more along the way than I had expected.

Mana could take the same shapes as water. A roaring waterfall one moment, a fine drizzle the next.

I drew my mana down as thin as a thread, as fine as it would go. Honed that thin, it split stone without hesitation — like a masterwork blade ground to a killing edge.

For raw power, put spin on it. For a cutting edge, draw it thin.

So what happened if I did the opposite — if I packed it together?

Wolfgar's short spear came whipping in. A short spear transferred force cleanly, and he could put everything he had into the tip. I clenched my fist. Mana gathered around it, condensing toward a single point. The instant it crossed a threshold, I drove the punch into his spear.

A deafening blast tore through the air. Wolfgar went flying backward, spear and all. The recoil threw me the other way.

"Haren, what did you just do?"

"I focused my mana into a single point."

"That's like the explosions mages use!"

It was close, yes. This was probably the primitive form of the mana missiles mages used so freely. The insights were stacking up, one after another. I still couldn't conjure fire or lightning the way they did — but I was growing.

"Wolfgar, the road to the capital has to go around this forest."

As if on cue, we came up against the largest forest in the Runheim Kingdom. A wood so dense, its trees so stubbornly thick, that no highway could be cut through it. The Source of Life — Eldviorn. In the distant past, the stories said, elves had lived here.

The truth of it, though…

You could just as well call it a monster forest. A place no one walked was a perfect place to hide, and the monsters that hid were the dangerous ones. Most of the creatures that crossed over from other dimensions existed to kill people. The ones that swallowed that instinct and went to ground were far more likely to be mutants. Variants — the same breed I had faced when I went to help Jefran.

"Haren, are you scared of the forest?"

Wolfgar grinned at Eldviorn, baring his teeth.

"I am Wolfgar, a warrior raised on a proud mountain! A forest like this is my playground!"

He threw his chest out and bellowed it to the trees. He looked like a wolf pup puffing itself up and sticking its tail in the air. Not that I was anything more than a tiger cub myself.

"Then keep up. If a monster shows, that's just more training."

"You'd better be careful you don't get eaten."

"A guy who isn't even a proper monster hunter, giving advice to one? You're about a hundred years too early."

We plunged into Eldviorn, racing each other through the trees. The forest lived up to its reputation. The trunks were several times thicker around than a man, and the canopy above was so dense that barely any sunlight reached the ground. Roots and undergrowth taller than a person stretched on without end.

Wolfgar and I tore through it all. He moved through the tangle as if to prove he really was a man of the mountains, weaving between trunks with a speed I could barely match.

Even a monkey would have a hard time outclimbing that.

If anything, I realized Wolfgar had been underrated the moment he left the mountains.

"Haha, Haren, you're slow! The great wilderness has turned you into a slug!"

Wolfgar, I had to admit, had a gift for getting under a person's skin. Watching him tear ahead in high spirits, I pushed more mana through my body. Explosive leaps carried ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠me from trunk to trunk as I bounded after him. I was going to catch that bastard.

"Hhk— hick!"

Wolfgar yelped, spun, and bolted in earnest. Even with mana running through me I could barely keep up. I was starting to understand, all over again, just how deep his talent ran. The jumping power to clear trees. The balance to land clean every time. Dreygan hadn't taken an interest in him for nothing.

The thought of Dreygan put a bitter taste in my mouth. And in that instant, the world dropped out from under my feet. I had let my mind wander and missed the branch breaking. I tumbled, turned a somersault in the air, and hit the ground.

"Haren, you all right?"

Wolfgar doubled back and called down to me.

"Sorry. I zoned out for a second."

The guilt I still carried over Dreygan, maybe. Zoning out in the middle of training — I was in worse shape than I thought.

"No — more importantly."

Wolfgar pointed at the ground beneath me.

"Down there. A monster."

The words were barely out of his mouth before the forest floor — brush and leaf litter and all — erupted upward. A mid-sized monster had been buried vertically in the earth, waiting. Its skin was made of leaves. The maw yawned open, a hair's breadth from swallowing me whole — and my hand, honed thin as a blade, shot forward.

A wet, shearing hiss. The enormous mouth that had been about to take me was sliced clean through. I opened my Third Eye without a second's hesitation and reached out.

The instant-death magic took hold, and the monster's life-flame guttered out. It never even had time to feel the pain in its mouth. It simply folded in on itself and collapsed.

"No problem."

"Looks that way."

I dusted off my hands and stepped clear. Wolfgar stared at me like he didn't know whether to laugh.

"Against monsters, Haren, you look like a monster yourself."

"I just know how to fight without mercy. More importantly."

The unexpected fight had snapped my focus back into place.

"We've still got training to do."

"Try not to fall again."

"Don't worry about it."

I gathered mana into both legs and stamped ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the ground. The forest shuddered, and birds exploded from the canopy in a dark cloud.

"This time, even if I fall, I'll jump right back up and catch you."

Wolfgar gave a full-body shudder, then forced the corner of his mouth up anyway.

"This is going to be the scariest game of tag of my entire life."

Cut through Eldviorn, and Grandheim wouldn't be much farther. Wait for us, Capital.