The Search (2)
It was, if anything, a perfectly natural reaction. Elaine had expected Delic to come out like this ever since the day he first entered the Boundary alongside Harad.
Harad's worth in the Boundary defied imagination. Entering the Boundary required Harad. Even setting aside whatever he felt as Ellen, that much was undeniable fact. With Harad alone at their side, the knight order could roam the Boundary without strain.
"I'll give you the vice-commander's seat."
"Don't need it."
Any knight of Serzila would have acted exactly as Delic had. The orders were tightly knit — comrades bound so close that another man's life outweighed their own. Delic had spent years on the searches burying people dearer to him than his own life.
"Is it that you hope the searches grow safer?"
"It isn't."
In the Boundary, knights grew weaker. Their aura bled away even when they stood still, and so they were forever being forced to fall back from beasts they could have beaten on any ordinary day. Of course, even that had its uses — as added weight builds muscle, fighting with less aura than usual only sharpened them.
"I want to fight a battle properly for once."
But that was that, and the unfairness of it was still unfair. Knights had always ached to show their full skill, and in the Boundary that was impossible.
"Harad. With you here, it's possible."
Now an exception stood before their eyes. Delic was practically drooling over the prospect, and so were the rest of them.
"Sorry to disappoint, but joining the order is out of the question. I'm a busy man."
The 1st Knight Order was only the beginning. Harad intended to win the recognition of every order in Serzila. Even if the knights themselves balked, Grand Duke Aratus would simply conscript him into their missions by force. To keep living in Serzila, making peace with the knight orders was a necessity.
"Besides, His Highness the Grand Duke would never allow it anyway."
At that, Delic and his knights deflated like children.
"But we can work together now and then. That alone ought to be room enough for you all to spread your wings."
Delic and his knights lit up like children again.
"In return, there is a condition."
"Name it."
Harad pointed at the flag. No — to be precise, at what lay beyond it.
"Let's head over there. We've plenty of time left."
"…That's outside the search route."
Delic's face went grave, as though the delight of a moment ago had never existed. The knight orders were forbidden to stray from the search route. It was an imperial edict — and the imperial house dispatched inspectors at regular intervals to see it kept.
"There's no inspector out here now, is there?"
"You can never be sure."
The orders were scrupulous about that edict. It was loyalty: if they put a foot wrong, Serzila itself would pay the price.
"I'm a magician, you know. If it comes to that, tell them you were charmed by me."
"Oh… wai—"
For a heartbeat, Delic was tempted. The next, he was horrified. The orders were not famous for their flexibility, and their heir was less flexible still. He held to the orthodox path and prized discipline above all else.
And that heir had been listening from just beside them.
"…Just for today."
Elaine spoke as he opened eyes that had been quietly closed all this while, his face carrying the look of a decision made.
"Then I'll be charmed, just for today."
Him? The Grand Duke's heir?
The knights' faces stayed frozen for a long while. The youngest, Gulen, could be excused, but Delic, Zambello, Tursten, and Parman were veterans all. Even Parman, the greenest of the four, had seven full years of service behind him in the 1st Knight Order. They knew Serzila as well as the years they had given it — and the same went for Elaine, the Grand Duke's sole heir.
If the Grand Duke stood above discipline, Elaine had long since become one with it. He had never once strayed from principle; his only exception was his own laziness. Which is to say he was perfect, laziness aside — no, even that laziness was a product of inborn talent, which made Elaine the equal of perfection, or its better. He was gentle yet unbreakable, kind yet absolute in judgment — a man of iron who would one day rule Serzila.
And yet — that man?
"…He hasn't actually been charmed, has he?"
Parman, the most rash-tongued of them, muttered it and hastily clapped a hand over his own mouth. Fortunately, Elaine seemed not to have heard; he was pressing quietly onward. They were past the flag now, past the turnaround point — uncharted ground even for the 1st Knight Order. Had Elaine not been present, the knights would have been grinning the whole way.
Harad saw straight through every last one of them.
There isn't a knight in Serzila who isn't sick to death of hollow searches.
The orders had always ached to conquer the Boundary. They dreamed of endless life-or-death battle and of Serzila's glory.
Strange. Elaine's reaction had caught him off guard. And it wasn't even Ellen. He had been certain Elaine would refuse outright, yet Elaine had gone along with it. That line — I'll be charmed, just for today — was still lodged in his mind.
So this is a test.
Not a test of Harad. His worth in the Boundary had already been proven, and the question of whether he might bolt for the Outlands had been answered long ago. This was a test Elaine was setting for himself.
The dream must have been nothing more than the trigger. His doubts about the heir's seat must have taken root long before; the tale of a past life — passed off as the reminiscence of his grandfather's old friend — and the dream had merely given those doubts a gentle push. And so Elaine had begun to seek change. He no longer cared if the maids saw him keeping company with Harad. But Kubel he had not met.
Just how far can I accept? Elaine seemed bent on finding that limit. Or perhaps it's a test of his retainers — of how far the line could be crossed. It was the wariness of a man crossing a stream, tapping every stepping stone before he trusted it: a caution quite unlike Elaine, and yet, in choosing the Boundary as his proving ground, entirely like him.
The bearing… is roughly right.
The search party was pushing through a wilderness of rock where no road existed, because this was not the search route. Harad took his bearings from the sky — or rather, from the thread of thin smoke stitched across it. It was the remnant of the watchtower that had stood in the Sacred Ground of Fire. Follow that smoke, and at its end would be the Red Tower King's outer shell.
Further west than I expected. The 2nd… no, the 3rd Knight Order's ground? Or even past that. The 1st Order's garrison and its search route sat in the central stretch of the Boundary, and the smoke ran clean across the 1st Order's domain — further left, further in. There was no crossing it through the 1st Knight Order.
If it had been near, he had meant to scout it out in advance. Lost, then. Harad clicked his tongue. It was too late to turn back; the search would go on until Elaine was satisfied — or until he was angry.
Then it happened. Harad stopped walking, and Elaine and the knights stopped with him. Harad had already become the heart of the search party.
"There — that rock. A magical beast."
Until now, Harad had announced beasts as though relaying orders down a chain of command. This time, it came out more like a report. He was speaking to Elaine.
"Fourth tier."
"…And?"
"It's your hunting day, isn't it? Catch it yourself, my lord."
The words were deferential; the tone was command.
"You do it. That's why I brought you along."
Today's search was Elaine's courtesy — an occasion arranged so that Harad might grow closer to the knight order.
"I've shown my worth as much as it needed showing."
"Show more. The more you show, the more the order will acknowledge you."
Elaine wanted Harad to accomplish even more.
So the 1st Knight Order was never the goal. Its recognition was already his; the slow work of bonding could wait. Harad thought of Cassion, commander of the 2nd Knight Order — a man who despised magicians with a vengeance. Elaine seemed to want Harad's exploits to spread all the way to the 2nd. Call it consideration; it was pointless all the same. Harad knew too well that it would do nothing but pour oil on Cassion's temper.
"It's more efficient for my lord to take it."
The chill of the Boundary and its biting wind — Harad was free of both without raising a wisp of mana, but that immunity extended no further than himself and those at his side. Right now the knights had ringed him at even intervals, because Harad had been channeling mana to widen the circle of his warmth.
"If I take it, my mana hits rock bottom."
It was a third-tier beast with a fourth-tier's face — but third-tier all the same. And Harad's Projection was a one-shot affair; manifest it once, and he was spent. Of course, given enough time, Harad could bring down even a fourth-tier beast without Projection. Mana would drain in the process, but claiming the slain beast's heart would restore most of it. Even so, conserving was the right call. This was not the search route. He needed something in reserve against the unknown — and if he was thinking of the knights, then what needed husbanding was not Elaine's strength but Harad's warmth.
"…Very well."
Elaine accepted it without protest — though he plainly wanted the fight himself. Why else are the North's knights called battle-crazed? Every last one of them had learned it by watching Serzila.
Elaine laid a hand on his pommel and walked slowly forward, toward where Harad had pointed — a colossal rock jutting up like a small hill.
"That's its head."
At Harad's word, Elaine gave a vague nod and launched himself, landing neatly on the rock's summit.
I did say it was the head. Harad clicked his tongue even as his eyes gleamed.
The beast heaved itself upright. That alone was enough to shake the earth. Its bulk matched its head, which had passed for a small hill — colossal beyond sense. Its chest was broader than most buildings, though its height was barely a third of the watchtower they had seen in the Sacred Ground of Fire.
Gulen, curiosity getting the better of him, brought his sword down on the beast's big toe. Aura wreathed the blade, yet it left not so much as a nick on the claw.
Thud. The beast's body quivered faintly. It seemed, if anything, to find the gesture laughable. That was when Elaine drew his sword.
The world was white. Snow fell in sheets over the rocks, and the sky hung so thick with countless clouds that not a single fleck of blue showed through. Thanks to which, Harad could see Elaine with perfect clarity — or rather, the jet-black aura of Serzila.
It's faint. Faint, without question.
In his past life, Grand Duke Elaine's aura had been a jet-black that seemed severed from the world itself. The black now blooming atop the rock beast, far away, was pale indeed beside that jet-black. But black was black, and measuring a twenty-year-old against the Grand Duke he would one day become was a cruelty past bearing. The fair comparison was the fight with the rag-beast.
It's deeper than it was then. One true battle — that was all it had taken for Elaine to grasp that Heavenly Might and aura were no different things.
Exactly as predicted. Elaine was a genius handed down by the heavens. In his past life, too, every battle had carried him forward by leaps and bounds. Only the wall of Sword Master had taken him long to break. It wouldn't this time. That was the whole reason this regression existed.
Harad let himself admire the aura. Jet-black power ran down the blade in long, trailing streams, and the sword swung — very, very slowly. It looked arrogant. It looked lazy. But it was no different from a sword swung at full strength: identical force, identical speed. That was Heavenly Might.
The blade that had been idly combing the empty air fell across the beast's head. The steel itself crossed only a sliver of it, but the jet-black aura drove far deeper, and the beast clove in two. Elaine was falling by then; his second swing carved through it crosswise. Then a diagonal stroke, then its opposite, drawn again and again — the sword never stopped moving. It looked slow, and it was murderously fast.
Before long, countless thin black lines scored the beast's body, each one a sword's path and a wound both. When Elaine's boots touched the ground, the wreckage of what had been a beast came pouring down behind him, every piece smaller than a hailstone.
"When did he become a Sword Master…?"
It was a bearing that could have deceived even Vice Commander Delic — though a true Sword Master was, of course, another creature entirely.
Harad found the sight both welcome and frightening. The rock beast had been weaker than the wounded rag-beast, yet it was still a fourth-tier foe.
…Still. A monster is a monster.
This Elaine was growing stronger faster than the Elaine of his past life. And now that different Elaine came up to Harad and held something out.
"Eat it. I hear you like these."
It was the heart of a fourth-tier beast.
"……"
This was the part that terrified him, honestly.
"…Gulp."
The body — no, the Origin — was honest.
"We eat, and we move out," Elaine said.
Not a return. A departure.