Midterm Evaluation (14)
"Listen well. His Majesty the Emperor is... the Sun. Do you understand what those words mean?"
Naturally, the first time I heard them, I hadn't the faintest idea what bullshit they were spouting.
"It means that He is the one and only being in this Empire—and its ruler."
The man standing beside the first speaker picked up from there.
Whether the Emperor was this country's ruler or its slave, I couldn't have cared less. All I wanted was to tell them to just send me home.
"And you have been chosen as that Sun's Moon."
"You will become the Moon that shoulders the Empire's dark side and holds it up."
"Accept it as an honor... and survive."
What came after was beating disguised as training. They taught by striking us, and striking us, and striking us again, driving the regimen to the very edge of outright abuse—ordering us to land a blow on an instructor inside a room without a single light, or pressing red-hot pokers against our flesh in the name of torture-endurance drills.
In that fucked-up place, the only things I managed to learn properly were throwing techniques and close-quarters combat. And how to handle a dagger.
I hadn't even wanted to remember any of it again...
That experience had once left me traumatized, so I avoided dredging it up whenever I could. Back then, my body had been carved open from head to toe, and the blood welts never got the chance to fade. Missing fingernails and toenails became a normal state of affairs, and my breakfalls were so clumsy that broken bones were a regular occurrence.
Even now, it feels like the screams of the children from those days still circle my ears. The bastard of an instructor assigned to us had no give in him whatsoever, either—any kid who fell behind the training was beaten without mercy.
"If you have the will to dodge the rod, you have the will to keep up with the training."
Every single time he spat out that line, I thought, over and over, how badly I wanted to rake my fingers across the great scar over his right eye again.
Just like right now.
Whump—
"Kraaaagh!!"
The beast's forepaw, heavy with unmistakable killing intent, swept toward me in a horizontal arc, and I barely reacted in time to spring upward. From there I bored into its right side—the eye I had already blinded—while it wrenched its body left to reclaim its field of vision. But to someone who'd been drilled in throwing techniques until he was sick of them, that enormous bulk looked like nothing more than a target that had forgotten how to move.
I conjured a hand axe into my left hand and hurled it into its eye, then broke my plummeting body with a practiced fall. The beast, however, had no intention of simply absorbing the attack. Whether or not it had seen the axe coming, it seemed to have already written off its right side—not even a flinch of evasion showed. Instead, it chose to hammer me with its left forepaw, and thanks to that decision, I went bouncing and rolling across the ground three, four times yet again.
"Guh—... kgh... khh..."
I felt a rib give way, and whether it had skewered an organ as it splintered, fresh red blood kept pouring from my mouth. The right arm I'd sworn I'd blocked with wasn't intact either—below the elbow, I couldn't feel a thing.
"A-Are you all right?!"
"Jenison?!... Kgh—"
By sheer luck, the place I'd been flung into was where the rest of our party was locked in a desperate struggle against a horde of beasts, and the Saintess—who had been busy pouring healing and buffs into the party members—took one look at my condition and sprinted straight over. Divine power streamed from her hands a moment later, coaxing my bones back into their proper places, and the organs that had been skewered healed as if they had never been touched at all.
I'd barely finished wincing at the pain before I hastily raised my head to read the battle. Brihen, the one who'd been ambushed, looked outwardly unharmed but lay unconscious; Albert, Huven, and Shino were tearing into the front line to fill the hole he'd left; the Imperial Princess and Isabella stayed absorbed in raining their magic down on the beasts. Caerlin seemed to be trying to wrest control of them as well, but judging by the results it wasn't taking, and she too was firing other spells into the swarm.
Down one front-line warrior, they were holding up admirably, and I wanted to shower them with every ounce of praise they'd earned—but that wasn't the serious problem right now. The problem was the wolf off in the distance, the one that had been watching me and the Saintess this entire time. The crimson eye that had been fixed on the Saintess now turned toward me. From its ruined right eye seeped a liquid the same color as its iris, and the hand axe I'd buried there lay shattered, rolling in the dirt.
Awooooo—
The instant I tried to push my half-mended body upright, its howl began, and every one of us had our eyes dragged toward it. The beasts that had been attacking without pause stopped as though they all shared a single mind, doing nothing but gazing at the wolf—exactly as we were.
Vmmm—
Before long, the violet magic stone set quietly in its forehead began to glow, and a wave of change swept through the beasts around it. The tentacled one sprouted even more legs; the bird-shaped one swelled even larger; the insect-like beasts' fangs and claws sharpened further still.
Awooooo—
At the Black King's second howl, every beast hurled itself at us at once.
"Kgh... what the—?! All of a sudden?!"
"They just got faster...?"
"I-I really can't hold them anymore...?"
Unable to adapt to creatures that had transformed so drastically, all we could do was be driven back, helpless.
"Kgh... ugh."
"It just keeps getting harder..."
...If that thing charges us now, we won't be able to do a single thing to stop it...
Everyone looked toward the black wolf thinking the exact same thought—but the wolf was already gone from sight. Some wondered who it would lunge at; a few even begged for it not to come their way. Fortunately, not a single blow reached any of them. Because the wolf had been watching one man from the very beginning.
The black wolf's strike—so fast the eye could barely follow it—the man evaded with a swift step backward.
The wolf did not like that. Not one bit. It was nothing more than a brat who hadn't even finished growing, and compared to the others, his mana wasn't outstanding either. So it had dismissed him. But that judgment was soon corrected—ever since the man had offered up his own arm and gouged out its right eye.
The agony was unlike anything it had known since the day it was born, far beyond imagination, and the wolf soon flew into a towering rage, grinding its teeth. Unlike other beasts, it was clever, and it wielded great power. A sense of superiority had been only natural—and that superiority had been utterly crushed by a single child. A man who looked like he couldn't kill a low-rank beast on his own had dug out its eye. The fact gnawed at it, and at some point the wolf's target had quietly shifted to that man. Ignoring the burning torment streaming from its eye, it bared its fangs.
"First... before you learn to defend... practice taking a hit."
The beast's forepaw swung at my torso. My body still hadn't fully recovered, dodging was beyond me, and I went flying once more, slammed into the dirt. Blood tried to bolt from my mouth again, but I clenched my teeth and held it down—and when I raised my head, what greeted me was a black paw descending.
SLAM—
SLAM—
SLAM—
The beast kept hammering its forepaws down on top of me, looking like it was having the time of its life, and though no one could see my face as I barely held it off with both arms, I'm certain it wore nothing but arrogance. Even with iron plates conjured and wrapped around my arms, the shock came ringing through.
All I could think was that I would die if this kept up, so I started hunting for a gap—and the moment it raised both paws to bring them down together, I kicked off the ground and burst free.
"Defense must always be perfect. If even a fraction gets through, your defense has failed."
The iron plates were already crushed flat, and the arms pressed against them had cracked somewhere—a pain like splintered bone stabbed through. I'd barely gritted my teeth and endured when the beast, who had no intention of granting me time to mend, thrust its jaws at my throat once more.
"If your defense fails... give flesh, take bone."
I wrung every last scrap of strength from my already-limp left arm and shoved it between its jaws.
CRACK—
Teeth punched in and the agony arrived yet again—but it was far better than dying. With that thought, I tried to gouge its left eye this time, but my right arm had fractured just the same and no force would come. The beast simply bore down with its jaws and severed the arm it held.
Bone snapped and muscle screamed, but I couldn't afford to care. My head was busy churning through every idea that might deal the thing even a speck of damage. I crashed down with a thud, claws came flying, but I hastily conjured a fresh left arm, planted it against the earth, and threw myself clear.
...And if the one in front of you is stronger than you... then what?
The beast was strong. It wasn't called an intermediate-rank demonic beast for nothing. It had seemed to carry near-human intelligence from the start, but from the moment it lost an eye, it turned excessively cautious—striking only when I couldn't fully counter, hunting solely for chances to attack one-sidedly. Part of me half regretted not going straight for its throat instead of merely its eye, and from conjuring weapon after weapon, my mana was all but spent.
"...What a laughable thing to say."
"I guarantee it."
I steadied my breathing. Closed my eyes, very slowly. Seized my rioting heart and forced it still. However used to pain I had become, my arms and legs still trembled like aspen leaves.
I am not strong. I am no hero. I have no sense of justice either—I am selfish, a coward who would use anyone if it profited me, and the word fits me perfectly. With hands once soaked in every kind of blood, I take up a blade again. The hands that once stole lives keep shrieking at me. That's enough. Run away. Isn't this hard enough? There'll be another chance. They never stop pleading.
To resist the voices coiling at my ears, I cut one of them off. Perhaps that part of me hasn't gone numb yet, because the pain feels brand new. Then I clench my still-trembling hand shut and pin my heart in place. Do you know when the next chance will come? What does running solve? Drenched in someone else's blood, do you even have the right to call this hard? I chant the words over and over.
When I open my eyes, teeth like a row of tiny blades are already closing in on me—and steeped in that familiar feeling, I set my stance.
Instructors barking at us to conquer ourselves in the name of a graduation exam. Countless daggers and hidden weapons closing in with naked killing intent. Some of the kids clutched their dead comrades and wailed; others hoisted those very corpses up as shields and drove blades into the instructors' flanks.
In the middle of it all, the scarred instructor facing me gave me a glance—and before I could even parse what it meant, his sword was aimed at me.
The blade surging in. My reaction, hopelessly late. The instructor's eyes, watching me with something like pity. And yet I survived that moment—because of the techniques beaten into my body through endless, sickening punishment.
"If you survive this... there will be almost no one you cannot kill."
"How do I know...? Because I did."
I dove in.
And slipped past it—far, far too lightly.
That was the thought that struck everyone watching at the same moment. Like a shadow flowing into another shadow, the distance between the black wolf and the black-haired boy had collapsed at a staggering pace. The wolf's swung forepaw tore through empty air, and before the boy lay its chest, utterly unguarded.
What followed was a rounded slash arcing upward.
Shrrk—
"KRRAAAAGH!!!!"
"......"
"...Haha?"
Albert, who prided himself on his mastery of the sword from years of watching his family's knights; Shino, who had weathered countless blades while learning the assassin's trade; and every other cadet who had been sneaking glances at the wolf and the boy even in the middle of battle—all of them froze where they fought, their eyes stolen by that single stroke.