Chapter 102
Chapter 102
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 102
Chapter Title: Forced Peace
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Leaving the chilling cold and darkness behind him, Dale spoke.
“Withdraw.”
Not even the creatures of shadow, nor the Death Knight he commanded, were an exception. A vortex of black and blue swirled at his feet as the Shadow Cloak, masquerading as a black robe, fluttered.
Dale readjusted his grip on his sword. Peacemaker. At the absurd sight, Mikhail quietly drew a sharp breath.
A black mage, dismissing his own creations to face him with nothing but a single sword?
“That is far too reckless.”
Just as a Sachsen could not, a Lancaster could not carelessly raise a sword against Sachsen blood. For that was the ‘weight of their blood,’ a burden shared by all those present.
“Are you afraid of killing me?”
“…”
Dale asked again.
“Are you afraid of the fallout? Of making an enemy of my father, and the entire North, by killing me here?”
Mikhail shook his head.
“I simply have no desire to kill you, my lord.”
“The knight whose head you took off in a flash of that sword must be wailing in the afterlife.”
Dale jeered, as if speaking of someone else’s affairs.
“We all understand that this world is not a fair place, do we not?”
Mikhail Lancaster answered calmly, as befitting the legitimate heir of one of the Empire’s three great ducal houses.
“I am truly glad you think so.”
Dale tightened his grip on the hilt and continued.
“Because in this unfair and utterly absurd world, nothing that happens should be considered strange.”
Nothing that happens should be considered strange. At the same time, Dale’s four Circles began to accelerate, channeling not the black and blue, but only a singular, chilling cold. The surrounding temperature began to plummet, and a layer of white frost started to form over the area.
A descent below freezing, toward absolute zero.
“Shub.”
Dale spoke, and at his word, the ‘Ancient Mother of Darkness’ smiled silently. A slender tentacle slid through Dale's ear, past the auditory nerve, and burrowed into his brain.
In that instant, his world transformed.
A world of a winter’s night, filled with chilling cold and darkness, unfolded before him.
But this was by no means a ‘world of ideation.’ It was merely a phantom, an illusion Shub was overlaying upon the Fight Club by manipulating Dale’s brain.
That was enough.
A mage’s ideation, after all, was a battle of how concrete an image one could construct—even if that image was a world of absurd delusion.
Dale lifted his head.
He was now lost in a world of self-hypnosis.
He bore the risk that Shub’s power could inflict permanent, ‘irreversible damage’ on his brain.
The Hero from Another World, the Empire’s pitiless hound…
…readjusted his grip on the sword.
***
A chill.
Goosebumps rose unwittingly. It was not merely because of the frost spreading across the Fight Club.
The ‘Dale of Sachsen’ before him… was now exuding an indescribably chilling aura, as if he had become a different person entirely.
He could not understand.
A black mage had dismissed his Death Knight, withdrawn his shadow creatures, and showed no intention of using his Shadow Cloak.
He simply held a single sword, accelerating his four Circles as a substitute for aura, and stared at him. By any common measure, it was the worst possible misstep, a fight with no chance of victory. It should have been.
But the intuition Mikhail Lancaster had honed as a swordsman was whispering to him.
‘He’s dangerous.’
What was? The twelve-year-old child before him? A mage who couldn’t even use aura, holding nothing but a sword? He didn’t know. He couldn’t understand.
All emotion vanished from Dale’s face. His blue pupils stared into the void, unfocused.
At that moment, Dale kicked off the ground. His sword, wreathed in chilling cold, swung out, and Mikhail’s Bloodflower Sword coiled around it like a bladed whip.
No, it tried to.
But before their blades could meet, Mikhail stepped back, overwhelmed by an unknown fear.
Unconsciously, his eyes fell upon the symbol of House Sachsen embroidered on Dale’s clothes.
The Night Raven. A messenger of death.
Only then did he understand. The true nature of the emotion Mikhail Lancaster was feeling.
It was the ‘fear of death.’
He increased the distance and once more unleashed his invisible sword aura. Amidst the storm of aura that scattered like a tempest, the bladed whip of the Bloodflower Sword lashed out.
*Clang!*
Dale, too, swung his sword. He deflected Mikhail’s Bloodflower Sword and surged forward. Again, the formless blade swung in an unpredictable arc, but nothing changed.
He parried every blow.
A mere mage, unable to even use aura, against the knight said to be closest to joining the Seven Swords of the Continent.
Without the slightest waver or tremor, utterly composed.
*Clang!*
The blood-flower that should have bloomed scattered in vain, and a flower of frost blossomed in its place.
It was then.
*Clang!*
Slipping past Dale’s strike, the tip of the whip-sword finally plunged toward an opening.
At the same time, Dale reached out his arm.
To catch Mikhail Lancaster’s aura-infused sword.
A future flashed in his mind: the eldest son of House Sachsen being torn to shreds by his whip-sword. And beyond that, the political storm that would erupt between the two ducal houses.
That very image caused Mikhail to hesitate for an instant, but Dale snatched the bladed whip without a shred of reluctance.
An act no different from shoving one’s hand into an industrial blender.
Mikhail’s movements froze.
Dale’s arm, which should have been shredded by the whip-sword, was gripping the blade perfectly intact. Without a single scratch.
《Forced Peace》.
An invincible barrier that could nullify any attack, on the condition that the wielder was ‘clearly aware’ of it. And in his state of extreme self-hypnosis, Dale’s hyper-sharpened senses had detected Mikhail’s sword.
He could see without seeing, know without knowing, and feel without feeling.
Therefore, as long as Dale was clearly aware of the formless sword, it was impossible to break the ‘peace.’
A sword cannot tear human flesh; a flame cannot burn a person.
If blue magic was the natural enemy of mages, then Peacemaker could be called the natural enemy of knights, sealing all physical attacks.
“H-How…!”
Mikhail, who could not have known this, was stunned. At that moment, Dale moved. Gripping Mikhail’s whip-sword, he swung Peacemaker.
A fear of death, like the swing of a reaper’s scythe, wrapped around Mikhail’s spine.
An inescapable fear of death.
Just then, Dale’s brain surpassed its limit, and he finally regained consciousness. To make matters worse, the 《Forced Peace》 effect from Peacemaker vanished. In other words…
*Schhhk!*
The worst imaginable situation unfolded.
──Dale’s hand, still gripping the sword, was torn apart as if it had been thrown into a blender.
From his five fingers to his elbow, scattering flesh, blood, and bone.
But no discernible scream was heard.
Without even a twitch, he ignored the agony of his arm being shredded, for the sword in his other hand was aimed squarely at Mikhail’s throat.
As if he had known this would happen from the start.
“Why did you not strike my neck immediately?”
Dale asked, maintaining his composure even as one arm lay in tatters. He pressed the cold, sharp tip of his blade against the throat of the next of the Seven Swords of the Continent.
“If, after cutting my arm, you had struck for my neck without hesitation.”
Dale said.
“I would certainly be a dead man now.”
But he couldn’t. He had been crushed by the ‘weight of blood’ that flowed in Dale of Sachsen.
“…Did you calculate from the beginning that I would hesitate?”
“At the very least, I calculated that this world is not a fair place.”
Dale replied.
“…”
Mikhail remained silent. If he had truly intended to kill Dale with all his might, this fight would have undoubtedly ended in his victory.
After shredding his opponent’s arm, landing the next blow would have been a simple matter. But Mikhail Lancaster lacked that level of resolve.
A moment’s hesitation. That difference in resolve decided the match.
It would not be wrong to say he had lost the psychological battle.
It was a paper-thin difference, but in the world of combat, hypotheticals like ‘what if’ are meaningless. There is only a loser and a winner. That is all. It was no different now.
An absurd difference in character.
Mikhail Lancaster stood without a scratch, while Dale looked so desperate he could collapse from blood loss at any moment. Despite this, the scales of victory had clearly tipped.
It was a victory for the one cloaked in black, stained with blood.
“I, Mikhail of Lancaster,”
Mikhail finally said after a long silence.
“in this place, where I have faced Lord Dale of Sachsen.”
He released his formless aura in an explosive burst, shattering his beloved sword into countless pieces.
“…!”
“I declare my unquestionable defeat.”
For a knight to break his own sword. Before the champion of the Fight Club, the second son of a ducal house had chosen to inflict upon himself the greatest possible shame.
“…I accept your defeat.”
Dale replied, watching him from amidst the chaotic mess of flesh, blood, bone, and shards of metal.
Without the slightest loss of composure.
***
‘A championship won by giving up an arm and even letting a tentacle burrow into my brain.’
That night.
Dale, who had suddenly lost an arm, muttered to himself as if it were someone else’s problem while sitting on his bed. It was truly a glory built on nothing but wounds. Yet on Dale’s face, there was not a hint of the despair one would expect from losing a limb forever.
A poker face so composed it bordered on nonchalant.
‘A prize coveted even by Duke Sachsen.’
It had better be a prize worth trading flesh and bone for. If the Guild City’s words turned out to be a bluff, he wouldn’t even need to bother Lord Black.
Dale held out his arm—the one that had been shredded from fingers to elbow, now a mangled stump.
At the same time, the Shadow Cloak billowed and began to swarm into the empty space where his arm had been.
In a way, it was no exaggeration to call it a part of his body, and that was no metaphor.
The darkness took substance, mimicking the form of a limb. He experimentally moved the prosthetic arm made of shadow.
‘It moves surprisingly well.’
A limb made of pure malice, connecting shadow and nerve endings.
‘I’ll have to make do with this until I return to the duchy.’
Contrary to what most people thought, losing a limb or two was not a major issue, at least by the ‘standards of the Black Magic Tower.’ Restoring or replacing a few body parts with their technology was a simple matter.
Especially for the son of the continent’s greatest black mage, Lord Black.
This very mindset was why House Sachsen and the forces of Black were pointed at and called the ‘Clan of Darkness.’
Yet even the White Magic Tower packaged such healing as a ‘miracle of the Goddess’ while raking in tithes, did they not?
It was only because he had insurance that allowed him to willingly risk flesh and bone that Dale could even attempt such a gamble.
A magical way of thinking, difficult for a knight to comprehend.
It was even more incomprehensible for House Lancaster, which had no connection to magic.
Contrary to what Mikhail believed, Dale had held the upper hand in the gamble from the start. Even he wasn't bold enough to bet his limbs without a safety net.
Still, that didn’t mean the pain of losing a limb simply vanished. Dale bit his lip against the agony.
‘I have to endure this, no matter what.’
No matter how nonchalantly he tried to feign composure, Dale could not escape the confines of being human.
***
As Dale drifted off to sleep in a haze of pain, an assassin emerged from the shadows.
Lady Shadow.
Watching Dale groan in his sleep, Orelia reached out a hand. Reached out to the very ‘Black Prince’ who would become the Empire’s standard-bearer and drive her homeland into hell.
──Her slender, white fingers gently caressed Dale’s cheek. As gentle and merciful as those of a holy maiden.
Why was it?
That this person she should despise and hate felt so small, so lovely.
Every time she watched from within his shadow, witnessing the darkness and pain he shouldered… the sight was so heart-wrenching, so endearing, that she could not control her emotions.
“Ah, my lord…”
Having given up on being heaven’s puppet, she was like a child just beginning to learn her own emotions.
A woman’s joy, the ecstasy of slaughter. Orelia carefully placed a kiss on Dale’s cheek, not denying the desire and pleasure that coiled in her heart.
“Please, wind your puppet strings around my body.”
She pledged to be the ‘assassin’s blade,’ wielded from within his shadow for the rest of her life.
Dale’s ragged breathing, born of pain, eased ever so slightly.
***
Some time later, the Fight Club’s matches concluded, and the Black Market finally opened its doors.
A secret dark market, open only to the continent’s greatest nobles and wealthiest merchants. A place where the Empire’s foulest desires swirled, a Path of Beasts where neither objects nor lives were sacred.
A masquerade of beasts.
Dale, too, was there, having become one of those very beasts.
As the champion of the Fight Club, he held the privilege of ‘instantly claiming any one item.’