The Rumblings of a World at War
Time passed slowly, and yet quickly, too, in a way that was somehow certain.
The culprit behind the attack on the princess was never caught.
In the Bernice Empire, however, it was officially announced that the perpetrator was not human.
A monster.
More specifically, a monster with intelligence.
The news that a monster had infiltrated the imperial palace of the Bernice Empire and attacked the princess sent the entire continent into an uproar.
Until now, monsters on the Majest Continent had been dangerous, but not enough to rank as humanity’s greatest threat.
That was because, apart from the northern reaches of the continent, there simply weren’t that many powerful monsters roaming the rest of the land.
In fact, wars among humans had always been the far greater danger.
But this incident forced the continent to rethink the threat posed by monsters.
Among monsters, those with high intelligence were extraordinarily rare.
Unless one was a northerner, they were the sort of existence a person might live their entire life without ever seeing.
And so people had unknowingly underestimated the danger of monsters, especially intelligent ones.
Highly intelligent monsters usually possessed a unique power of their own.
An innate ability entirely unlike human magic or sword aura, something that belonged solely to monsters.
Depending on the individual, the abilities varied, but most worked on principles completely different from human magic, making them impossible to detect or block with ordinary magical barriers.
When the Bernice Empire announced that the reason the imperial security had been breached was this peculiar innate power, every nation on the continent went on guard.
If even the imperial palace of the strongest nation on the continent could be breached so effortlessly, what would happen to weaker countries?
If an intelligent monster truly set its mind to it, wouldn’t assassinating a king be no difficult matter?
It was as though, in some distant age, the ancient races had once nearly ruled the continent.
Because the imperial palace had been breached, the leaders of every nation tightened their vigilance based on that very thought.
At the same time, the Bernice Empire declared all-out war on monsters in response to the princess incident.
The Bernice Knight Order’s commander had already lost his life to monsters in the northern wilderness.
Before the shock of that could even fade, a monster had then struck the princess in the very heart of the imperial palace.
The continent’s strongest power could not stand by and watch this kind of monster tyranny, and so it began planning a massive purge.
In the long term, they would cleanse the north. In the short term, they would eradicate every monster habitat around the capital, Hailon.
Not only the Bernice Empire, but also the countries surrounding it joined in the empire’s intent.
Some of them participated not out of sincerity, but because they had no choice and feared displeasing the empire, but in the end, they all joined.
As a result, the continent’s situation suddenly became chaotic.
It wasn’t a war among humans, but battles were still breaking out day after day, and armies were constantly marching out.
Of course, the scenes were nothing like a true war, where people slaughtered one another in misery.
Most of the time, it was simply humans butchering monsters one-sidedly.
That was because, unless one went to the far northern reaches of the continent or across the sea to the Thousand-Year Continent, the monsters living in the central regions were extremely weak and few in number.
Thus the massive monster purge that began in the Bernice Empire gradually spread outward toward the continent’s edges.
It continued until every leaf had fallen from the green, lush trees, and then through one round of cold weather and into the season when fresh leaves began to bud again.
“Princess, where are you going?”
“I was thinking of getting some fresh air for a bit. I can go by myself, so—”
“No. His Imperial Majesty gave strict orders that you are never to be left alone.”
“Ah…”
Silvia found herself with no rebuttal to the female knight’s uncompromising words.
If it had been a male knight, she could have come up with one excuse or another. But of all things, it had to be a female knight.
“…All right. Then I’ll stay in my room.”
“Yes, please call for me anytime you need anything.”
It was a stiff, utterly rigid reply, with not a trace of flexibility in it.
Silvia let out a faint sigh at the sight of the knight, then closed the door again and went back inside.
Several months had already passed since that day, the one everyone had come to call the “princess attack incident.”
During that time, the Bernice Imperial Palace had never again allowed an intruder to set foot inside.
Rather, it was they who had gone out and erased countless monsters from the world.
Haa, this is stifling.
Silvia thought to herself as she perched on the edge of her bed.
It was still cold outside, but the weather was gradually warming, and she had been thinking of going out for a walk after such a long time.
She had wanted to go back to that open stretch of land beneath the tree where she and Evan used to lie down together so often, because she loved the view there.
“I guess I can’t even go there on my own anymore, Evan.”
Silvia murmured as she looked at Evan’s portrait, which still sat on the table.
Silvia, who had been attacked by the masked white-haired “monster.”
It had only been recently that she had fully recovered from the wounds, far more serious than she had expected, and was now able to walk around as she pleased.
The injuries left by the monster that had invaded the palace healed far too slowly, as though some strange innate power had been involved.
Even the highest-ranking priest’s healing magic, said to restore simple wounds perfectly within seconds, could not fully mend Silvia’s injuries.
And even her memories of that day were incomplete.
Thump—
Silvia carefully pressed her left lower abdomen, where the scar remained.
The sensation of skin being pierced, of blood spilling out, was something she never wanted to experience again.
Without question, it was the most horrifying sensation she had ever known in her life.
Just touching the scar and remembering it was enough to make her stomach churn.
Still.
That person, back then…
Even within her blurred memory, Silvia clearly remembered what the white-haired masked figure had said to her.
If you only listened to the words and not the face, they were so much like Evan’s that it would have been hard to call them anything else.
It was the same thing Evan always said first whenever he returned from a campaign and came to see her.
Perhaps that was why.
Why she had approached a suspicious stranger she had never seen before without hesitation, and even helped him stand.
“Haaah…”
She did not want to recall the pain of the wound, but the thoughts of that person, or perhaps that “monster,” would not leave Silvia’s mind.
His voice, hair color, build, even the atmosphere he gave off.
Everything about him was completely different from the Evan Silvia remembered, and yet his tone and manner of speaking were unmistakably Evan himself.
And although the voice was different, there had been sincerity in it.
His words about how, whenever he went out and came back, he would always come see her first.
Silvia still could not forget the longing and the joy she had heard in that faintly trembling voice.
Had he really been a monster?
Knock, knock, knock—
“Ah.”
“Princess. A visitor has arrived. It is Lord Gert.”
“Ah, please show him to the reception room.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
Silvia set her thoughts aside and quickly stood when a visitor arrived just in time.
Since news had spread that Silvia had gotten out of her sickbed recently, people had been visiting her from time to time.
Gert, then…
Click—
After hurrying through her preparations, Silvia opened the door leading to the reception room.
Gert was already seated inside, waiting.
“Ah, was I a little late?”
“I greet you, Princess. Not at all. It’s fine. Haha. You’re surely not feeling well yet.”
The man with long, dark brown hair tied back.
Looking at his outfit, Silvia gave a wry smile.
The Bernice Knight Order uniform.
It was a uniform that now evoked loneliness and grief rather than reassurance.
“Please, sit. I had tea brought in.”
“Thank you, Princess.”
Silvia knew Gert well enough, too.
He was one of the friends of Evan, her former fiancé, and a knight who had accompanied him on the campaign where he met his end.
He was one of the four knights who had witnessed Evan’s final moments, so Silvia had often met and spoken with him before.
“Thank you for coming.”
“Not at all, Princess! If only to see Lord Evan, the former commander of the knights, I should have come to visit you myself.”
“Hehe. I appreciate that.”
Silvia sat across from him and took a sip of tea.
Without the slightest awareness of the desire flickering beneath the gaze Gert directed toward her.
*
The continent-wide monster purge that began in the Bernice Empire.
As a result, many things changed within the empire.
The greatest change was that the demand for mercenaries, which had not existed in peaceful times, skyrocketed.
Requests for monster subjugation, delivered through the adventurers’ guild, increased sharply as well, and adventurers steadily multiplied across the empire’s cities.
The second major change was that the central government of the empire authorized each city to maintain its own armed force.
Of course, most of those troops were mobilized for monster suppression, but this was still different from the old days, when the creation of any force not directly under the capital had been forbidden.
With the city lord serving as commander, each city could independently maintain up to ten thousand soldiers.
Thanks to that, the many adventurers flowing into the cities were mostly incorporated into the city forces.
In truth, calling them “forces” made them sound more organized than they really were; they were not some rigid, disciplined army.
They were little more than a gathering of numerous adventurer parties operating under the name of a city army.
Still, when it came to fighting monsters rather than other humans, that was no problem at all.
In fact, they often performed better than a stiff, formal army.
Schupelben, the city beside Hailon, was one of the cities that had adapted to this change quickly.
Schupelben’s lord, Sophia Medeir.
Though young, she was known to be intelligent and highly capable, and she was one of the first lords to move as soon as the empire changed the law.
The army of Schupelben, commanded by her, was far more systematic than the armies of other cities.
From the start, she had neatly sorted its colorful adventurers into the front line, the center, and the rear.
“Oh, that must be him. The detached unit commander.”
“Wow, I heard he’s hard to see in person.”
“Yeah, but he doesn’t look that strong. Just look at him—he’s skinny. Isn’t he a mage, not a knight?”
“No, I heard the detached unit commander is a knight. Look, he’s got a sword at his waist.”
To the point that Schupelben even operated a detached unit that no other city army had.
The adventurers serving in Schupelben’s army murmured among themselves and sneaked glances at the white-haired knight passing by.
A black robe that fell from neck to ankles.
White hair, so pale it seemed almost to reach his collar.
Skin so white that it looked as if he had never once been touched by the sun, unlike a knight should be.
He was the detached unit commander of Schupelben, known only by rumor.
The white-haired knight crossed the road with no change in expression whatsoever and stepped into the building.
The soldiers glanced after him as if a rare creature had just appeared, and only after he disappeared did they finally, one by one, look away.
“Still, people have a lot to say about his name.”
“His name?”
“Yeah. You know the Imperial Sword Ghost, right?”
“The Imperial Sword Ghost? You mean Evan Erche, the guy who was said to have died before?”
“Yeah. That’s his name, too. Evan.”
“Wow. There must be something about that name. One was a commander, and the other’s a commander too.”
“Hey, come on, can you really compare them? The commander of the imperial knights and some city army’s detached unit commander?”
“Still, come on. The word ‘commander’ matters, doesn’t it? And they say the detached unit commander is strong too.”
“That may be true, but… huh, hey, there she is.”
The petty chatter between the two soldiers was soon forcibly cut off by someone’s arrival.
Schupelben’s lord and the commander of this army.
It was Sophia Medeir.
“I have an announcement.”
At Sophia’s voice, everyone focused.
“The next subjugation schedule has been set. The location is…”
From the rooftop of the building, someone silently watched as Sophia relayed the notice to the soldiers gathered in the training yard.
The white-haired knight who had just gone inside the building.
It was Evan.