A Changed Future (1)
Serzilla was hot, and the Boundary was cool.
Even so, there were days when Serzilla itself turned faintly brisk. This morning had been one of them. Winter was closing in — the season when the brutal North grew more brutal still.
Which meant that, before he knew it, half a year had passed since he had become a hostage.
And yet Harad was still twenty.
It was an age of knowing almost nothing, when he had to lean entirely on what Elaine of his past life had told him.
If I'd known it would come to this, I should have lived harder.
Harad of the past life had been a parasite. That was putting it kindly — Elaine and the knights had called him a cripple, and it had stayed that way right up until he turned twenty-five.
It's going more smoothly than I expected, though.
Securing the tunnel had been the heart of it. In his past life, how immense had the tunnel's contribution been? Without that hole, the Outlands could never have gnawed away at Serzilla so easily.
The tunnel would become the Outlands' primary route of infiltration. And Harad had seized it in advance — in the very year of his regression, no less.
It was an achievement he could not help but be satisfied with. But he could not afford to rest on it.
Problems still sprawled everywhere. He had blocked the tunnel, yes — but the Outlands had been eyeing the continent long before that tunnel had ever existed. Their methods were surely as varied as they were many.
And Harad did not know all of those methods.
Only one thing was clear: he had to erase Elaine's regrets. That was why he could not refuse the 1st Knight Order's request for cooperation.
To stand at Elaine's side, Harad had to carve out a place for himself — and Serzilla needed its knight orders.
"Incredible."
Gulen marveled at Kubel all over again. He had seen the man plenty of times, but admiration escaped him every single time. It was a frame no Northerner could help but envy.
"You really haven't got some secret to it?"
Kubel scratched his head and smiled awkwardly.
He had simply been big from birth. It had nothing to do with his origin. Smoke and body size were unrelated things.
"If only you weren't a magician, you'd have made a fine knight."
Gulen mourned the waste of Kubel's talent — saying that talent as overwhelming as that inborn strength was a rare thing indeed.
"Fine magicians are rarer than fine knights. You drew the more precious lot, Kubel."
"Are you saying it's easier to become a knight than a magician?"
"Isn't it?"
Magicians were the rarer breed. Even lumping in the Outlands' entire population, the world held more people who wielded aura.
But the continent would lose. Granted, the Outlands' ways were treacherous — though the truth was, even that much was skill, if skill it was.
"When it comes to strength, knights are stronger."
Gulen puffed up his pride.
"Strength belongs to the person. It isn't a matter of one's trade."
Which was stronger, knights or magicians? There was no more pointless topic under heaven.
"...Talking with you leaves me feeling like I'm always the one in the wrong."
"I wasn't trying to sour your mood."
"I know. That's why I'm not even angry."
Gulen had taken to swallowing whatever Harad said on faith — and he looked none too pleased with himself for it.
"I'll go bring the horses."
Gulen headed off, muttering to himself as he went.
"Strength..."
It was a good sign. It meant he was thinking. That thought needed to dig deeper. The more that gleaming bald head turned, the stronger the knight named Gulen would become.
Gulen returned leading two horses, a cart hitched behind them.
A cart for Kubel — the man couldn't ride.
"Not even a proper carriage? Isn't that a bit shabby, treatment-wise?"
"...There is no carriage in existence that would fit that frame."
"I see."
Kubel climbed meekly into the cart. Creak — the cart let out a faint shriek.
The horses carrying Harad and Gulen moved off, and thankfully the cart rolled along just fine. The wind, promising winter, was crisp.
While Gulen and Kubel wrapped their coats tight, Harad stripped his off and walked straight into the wind.
"Even this counts as warm to you?"
"It's on the cool side, if anything. I wish it were winter all year round."
"What a ghastly thing to say."
Gulen looked envious all the same. Northerners loved their brutal North — and hated its winter. Because winter took the lives of the people standing right beside them.
"I hear you found traces of magicians."
"We didn't find traces. We found the magicians themselves."
"Magicians?"
"Yes."
Gulen nodded.
Cassion, that man picked it all up secondhand.
Overheard, at that — since it was neither Elaine nor Ellen heading out.
"There were three of them."
Three magicians, run into during the sweep. Rare for the season, but hardly astonishing.
"Did you kill them?"
Gulen nodded again.
"Strong, but apparently not your caliber. No special magic either. Projection?"
"Right."
Magicians who could not manifest Projection. Which meant that, at best, they stood at the threshold of the 4th Circle.
"Casualties?"
"Sir Gawen was wounded. Ah — Sir Gawen is..."
"I know who he is. Fine beard on that one."
Gawen was a knight of quiet depth. Perhaps not yet — but he would be, in the future.
"Sir Gawen's face was torn wide open."
Harad's brow creased at that. It was a wound that would heal — but the scar would remain.
"So it'll scar. Do you happen to know how to erase one?"
"Why would he erase it? It's a medal."
But Gawen of the past life had carried no scar on that face.
This never happened before.
Something that had not happened in his past life had happened — which meant the regression had changed things. Or rather, that the regressed Harad had.
Of course he had expected moments like this to arrive eventually. Serzilla itself was already drifting from the future he knew.
But because of what?
He was just combing back through the past half year when Gulen spoke to the tense Kubel up on the cart.
"I hear you're a 3rd-Circle magician. I've got expectations of you."
Gulen did not speak casually to Kubel. The other 1st Knight Order men who dropped in on Harad now and then were the same — they all talked freely with Harad, but never with Kubel. It was the size of him. The knights respected Kubel's raw strength.
"For us it's only a request for cooperation, but it's a fine opportunity for you as well."
Kubel was in a position where he had to keep proving his usefulness. Only then could he keep living in Serzilla — because he was a magician.
"...I'll do my best."
Kubel's answer was glum. And it did not seem to be only nerves over the fight ahead.
Creak. Creak. The cart kept on shrieking. Kubel kept squirming.
"Something weighing on you?"
"..."
"Speak freely. We're close, aren't we?"
"Close how, exactly?"
Gulen cut in.
"Same lot, aren't we? Magicians, living off someone else's roof."
"...I heard Shura is going to learn magic."
"Shura? Ah. Right, your girl's a magician too. That's, well..."
"Don't finish that sentence."
Harad cut him off. Gulen had no sense for these things — a Northerner, and young on top of it. That big bald ox was a year Harad's junior. All of nineteen.
"She'll be taught, never fear. Cassion or I might do it — or you might."
"...Would Shura have to prove her usefulness too?"
"Someday, such a moment might come."
Harad answered honestly. Shura had already proven herself once; securing the tunnel had been that little girl's doing.
No reply came.
He turned — and Kubel's face had gone sheet-white. Only then did Harad realize the man had misunderstood.
"You don't honestly think Serzilla would send a child to the front."
"Once she comes of age..."
"Even so, Shura will never see blood."
Harad could state it flatly.
"Even if you begged, I wouldn't allow it. Ellen wouldn't either."
Shura's origin was the Eye — an eye that saw into people's hearts.
"Shura's origin is no fit for a battlefield."
Did that even make sense? That was Gulen's face — because he had never once seen a magician who couldn't fight.
"Compare a magician to people. Not to knights."
People all the same — but still. Harad explained on Gulen's level.
"Not just anyone becomes a knight. Magicians are the same. There are origins made for fighting, and origins that aren't."
"So just as some men become knights, other humans turn scribe?"
"Oh. Exactly."
Harad was impressed. That gleaming bald head was slow, but it had undeniably started to turn.
"Of course, order them to fight and they will. But not every human fights well. Same thing."
Gulen nodded. Even the folk out on the street right now would fight if ordered to. They just wouldn't be strong.
"But magicians have mana, don't they?"
"That's because magic is their field of study."
An ordinary magician would beat an ordinary man. That much was certainly true.
"But plenty of mana or a high Circle doesn't make everyone strong."
As with people, magicians each had their own field — and their own limits. Usually the origin decided it. Some origins suited combat; some did not.
"Mana is not a power born for battle. It merely gets used in battle."
"Then what is it a power for?"
"Why ask me that? Ask the world."
Of course, the Outlands deemed it a power for war. That was why the Ivory Tower got no respect out there — the origins gathered in that tower were ill-suited for combat.
The Ivory Tower was full of cloistered scholars. People who pursued their origins for their own pure sake.
Harad met Kubel's eyes.
"The North is ignorant, yes — but not so graceless as to force a man who cannot fight into a fight."
"..."
"Still — if your heart won't settle, then earn merit enough for two. Shura's share included."
Kubel's eyes were firmer than on the day they'd first met. The tension remained, but the resolve had not faded.
He had to kill, so that Shura could live.
Since his regression, this was the third visit to the 1st Knight Order garrison.
The knights had seen him far more often than that. From time to time they came down to the Inner Castle to show Harad useless objects — useless to them, that is; to the knights, things that looked like magic. Thanks to that, he knew every face and was on decent terms with the lot of them.
To the 1st Knight Order, Harad was a magician they could trust — even if not one they would stake their lives on.
Gulen led him to where the 1st Knight Commander was. The knights they passed on the way greeted Harad with easy familiarity; Gawen was among them.
His face really is hurt.
Gawen's face was wrapped in bandages, only his eyes showing. The wound looked severe.
There's no way that doesn't scar.
And yet Gawen of the past life had worn no scar. He had been a polished, strikingly handsome man.
The future has changed.
He had come at the 1st Knight Order's request — but now, whether they liked it or not, he would be entering the Boundary. If that was a regressor's duty, then duty it was. He had to find out why the future had changed, and how.
Inside the timber building where Toremote lived stood a desk — the garrison's only desk.
Toremote stepped over the enormous axe propped against it and strode across the room.
He was Gulen's father, yet looked thirty at most. His muscles probably read younger still. It was the mark of a Sword Master: the body was held forcibly in its prime.
"Been a while, Magician Harad."
Toremote grinned and stuck out a hand the size of a pot lid. A build that lost nothing even beside Kubel's — and bald, too, just like Gulen.
Come to think of it, Gulen's head was shorn by force.
Not hair loss — Toremote had shaved it all off for him. Said hair got in the way of fighting.
The hand clasped in Toremote's felt close to being crushed. Truly the monstrous strength befitting a Sword Master.
"Vice Commander Delic has been singing your praises."
He meant the sweep where they had met the rabbit, no doubt. The knights had not seen the rabbit that day — which is to say, all they had seen was Harad at his finest.
Perhaps that was why Toremote's gaze ran so much deeper than it had at their last meeting.
"I hear you found the tunnel together with the Grand Duke's daughter. It staggered me. The Grand Duke's daughter credits it all to you."
Toremote's eyes deepened in real time. Harad found the look heavy to bear.
Hotter than the rumors said.
In his past life, Harad had heard from Elaine and Gulen — until they were sick of saying it — that Commander Toremote of the 1st Knight Order was a knight of tremendous passion. He had never felt that heat in person. By the time Harad of the past life had managed anything worth mentioning, Toremote was already no longer of this world.
"I've heard plenty about you too. They call you the strongest Knight Commander."
"Haha. You heard right."
Toremote did not deny it, even as flattery. It was conviction in himself. He was the strongest superhuman in Serzilla after Grand Duke Aratus.
"But there's nothing to boast in. Strength and nothing more — and nowhere to spend it."
Because he was a Sword Master, Toremote could not set foot in the Boundary. His strength was being left to rot.
"I understand. Not our fault — the imperial household's."
"Already speaking as Serzilla's own, I see."
Our. At that word, Toremote laughed all the louder.
"Then I'll ask without ceremony. We'll need to leave the scouting routes. Delic says it'll be brutal without you."
No talent alive was better cut for breaking new ground than Harad.
"Will that be all right? If we're caught, it's serious."
It was an imperial command. Serzilla was not to stray from its scouting routes.
"The Grand Duke's leave was granted long ago. He said that if we're caught, it's to be laid at your door — called your own initiative."
"..."
"He also said you'd understand the moment it was put to you that way."
To Grand Duke Aratus, Harad was a succulent tail — a tail to be savored in ordinary times and cut loose the instant it became a snag. It was the price Harad had accepted in exchange for coming and going through the Boundary as he pleased.
"Where are we to go?"
"Remember that time? When you killed the Outlands magician."
Harad nodded. He meant Ios. Back then, Harad had crossed paths with Toremote and Cassion.
"You advised us to push out beyond the Boundary — and the result was the 2nd Knight Commander claiming a head."
That time, Cassion had killed Compaso. A magician whose origin was the Eye — Ios's comrade, a 4th-Circle of the same Ivory Tower.
"The Outlands filth killed this time had come from that quarter."
"So you believe something is out there."
"I do. My gut says so."
"Sound grounds."
Knights were, at times, beasts. By the Sword Master stage, they carried instincts keener than most beasts'.
"Then I'll set out at once."
There was no reason to tarry. Harad wanted to confirm the reason the future had changed — and quickly. By his reckoning, that reason would be waiting exactly where Toremote had pointed. A Sword Master's gut could be trusted.
"Will you manage? I hear magicians need time for meditation."
It was kin to the question Gulen had once lobbed at him — why he never memorized incantations. A magician whose inner imagery was incomplete would check the image of his magic in his head before taking the field.
"Only shoddy magicians bother with that. Not me."
A form of preparation — one Harad had no need of.
"I see."
Toremote laughed like a beast. The North loved confidence like that.
"You can take Delic with you."
Toremote said he had already set aside the pick of the 1st Knight Order's elites.
"Aren't you trusting me a little too far? You might lose knights over this."
"Is there a reason not to? The Grand Duke's daughter trusts you."
Toremote was refreshingly blunt about it, and Harad felt anew the weight of Elaine's standing.
As expected of Elaine.
If he meant to rise, he had to keep company with Elaine. Not Ellen.
"May I take this one along as well?"
Kubel was already slated to go. Harad asked, pointing at Gulen.
"Him? He won't be any help."
Toremote's face soured — not a face a father ought to wear at his own son.
"What's wrong with me, then?"
Gulen bristled.
"You asking because you don't know? You're weak."
"Tch..."
Gulen's face went scarlet. Toremote shook his head and sighed. The emotional weather between father and son looked brutal.
But Harad knew the sigh was not aimed at Gulen.
"Well, take him if you want. Only don't set your hopes high."
Toremote clicked his tongue, eyes on Gulen's hip. A sword hung there.
"Idiot."
Not an axe.