Cleaving Through
“Burn, baby, burn! Serves you right!”
After tearing through the forest for what felt like forever, Ashir scrambled up a nearby tree and grinned down at the thick black smoke billowing in the distance.
Escape and torch the World Tree in one stroke. The fire would keep any pursuers too busy to follow this far, and as a bonus it would thoroughly screw over those insufferable Evergardens and that washed-up brat. He could hardly contain his admiration for the two-birds-one-stone brilliance of it all.
“So how much farther do we have to go?”
“A carriage is waiting roughly two hours from here.”
Done gawking, Ashir hopped down from the tree and turned to the ones guiding him.
“By the way, how the hell did you all manage to sneak in? How much did that annoying blonde pay you?”
Counting the elf who had first pulled him free, a full six spies had somehow been planted inside the Great Forest without him knowing. Every last one of them was a pure-blooded elf—hardly the sort a human like Ganix should have been able to buy off easily. And yet they had carried out the mission to burn their own race’s sacred World Tree without so much as a flinch. Ashir figured the price must have been astronomical.
“We are not swayed by such trivial material things.”
“What, then—he promised you noble titles once he becomes emperor?”
“Not that either.”
“Huh? Then what?”
When they insisted it was neither wealth nor honor, Ashir tilted his head.
“Faith. It is faith.”
“The only one who can move us is the Saintess. Ooh…! O Saintess…!”
“Amen…”
“Amen…!”
They pressed their palms together, gazed up into empty air, and began to pray like the most devout of Christian believers.
“…Ah. So that crazy bitch was the one pulling the strings.”
Ashir’s face twisted in disgust the moment he saw it. Blind faith. A cult of fanatics who would do anything in its name. Of all the people he knew, only one was capable of something that cult-like.
“Yeah, yeah, I get it. Save the praying for later and just move already.”
With a look of pure revulsion, Ashir put a careful bit of distance between himself and the group, and together they left the Great Forest behind completely.
“Hah…”
Staring blankly at the exit that had been open mere moments ago—now a collapsed ruin—Darian let out a hollow laugh before he could stop himself.
“Are you all right!?”
“Yeah! I’m fine! What about you, Tene!?”
“I’m completely unharmed! But the exit…!”
“I see it.”
A dragon like Tene was never going to be hurt by a shock of this level, and her voice came through from the far side of the debris almost at once.
Damn it. Completely sealed off…!
Darian forced his racing heart to settle and studied the blocked escape route with cold focus. The ceiling of the floor above had finally given way under the fire, and by sheer rotten luck the falling structure had sealed the exit shut.
“…First things first! Everyone, cover your nose and mouth with these!”
With no immediate way out, they needed every extra second they could buy. Darian soaked cloths in potion and shoved them into the elves’ hands, shouting over the roar.
“Is there another way—anywhere else…!?”
Once he saw the elves wrapping the cloths over their faces, he swept the room in a frantic search.
“No windows in here!?”
“…There is a passage for the messenger birds, but it’s far too small, and it’s already…”
“Haa…”
No other exit. The one that had been open moments ago—now buried—was their only hope.
“I’ll break through!”
“No! This building isn’t solid enough to take your strength! One wrong move and the whole thing comes down on top of us!”
“Ah…!”
They had a bulldozer that could punch through the blockage, but the World Tree was already collapsing in real time. There was no chance it could withstand Tene’s power. If she misjudged the force even slightly, Darian and every survivor in the room would be crushed under the falling structure.
Cliff on every side. A hopeless situation.
“…Cough. Damn it all!”
To make matters worse, the protective aura that had been shielding him from the searing heat was starting to fade. The sweat beading on his skin began to evaporate on contact. The back of his neck, his face, his entire body flushed an angry red as first-degree burns set in. The scorching air rasped down his throat until it felt raw and blazing, and his vision was starting to blur.
This is bad…! We’re almost out of time!
“…Is this… the end?”
“…What?”
One of the elves, watching Darian sway more unsteadily by the second, forced the words out.
“It’s because of us, isn’t it?”
“……”
“If it were just you… you might still… make it out…”
She wasn’t wrong. Alone, Darian might have found a way. But that meant abandoning the three people right in front of him.
“I only… I only have one request.”
“Please tell my family… that I love them…”
Faced with Darian’s stunned silence, she smiled weakly, as if everything were already over, and made her final request. Her eyes held emptiness, sorrow, and underneath it all, resignation.
“…Shut.”
“…Pardon?”
“Shut up!”
He hated that look.
“Scream that you want to live! That you don’t want to die! That you want to be saved!”
“That’s why I’m here!”
Even after years as a firefighter, Darian had always insisted on staying in the field. The paperwork excuse was only half true. The real reason ran deeper.
For every life he had pulled free, a handful he hadn’t saved still haunted him. Trying to save every single soul in a mere human body—a woman’s body, at that—had been like clutching sand and panicking as it slipped through his fingers. In a way, it was a hopeless, futile thing.
And yet Darian had never stopped closing his fist around that sand. Because if you kept holding on long enough, the grains that stuck to your palm were yours to keep.
“If you understand, then shut your mouth and save your strength!”
Don’t give up! Focus on what’s in front of you! Find a solution!
With his mind clear again, Darian began assessing the situation with cold precision.
In the end, this is the problem. I have to clear this obstacle.
After turning it over and over, he arrived at the same conclusion: the debris blocking the exit was the single greatest threat.
So how do I remove it?
Tene? No. I’ve thought it through a dozen times—no.
Bring my daughter? Tene could get her here fast enough, but she’s fully occupied extinguishing the fire. If she fails to contain it here, we have secondary damage to worry about.
Which leaves only one answer.
“…So it comes down to this.”
After grinding the problem through his head again and again, Darian found the solution.
Shing—
“I saved people with this axe the day I arrived in this world, too.”
He drew the axe haft he never let leave his grip and muttered under his breath.
“I’m not smashing it. I’m cutting through.”
My lord’s skill is exceptional.
Sometime during one of their usual sparring sessions, Gordon had said it.
A battle axe clad in mana is powerful enough to pulverize anything it touches. But while it has destructive force, it has no edge.
That had been Gordon’s assessment as they traded blows. Crushing power. Unpredictable attacks born of wild, shifting movement. Reach longer than any sword. But Darian’s fighting style was nothing like a classical swordsman’s clean cuts—it was pure instinct, the combat of a beast.
There was no single right or wrong way to fight. Every approach had its strengths and weaknesses. So Darian had brushed off Gordon’s critique with a shrug: as long as he won, what did it matter?
But Gordon was a man steeped in assassination and swordsmanship. Even if his master didn’t want it, as the one teaching martial technique he had wanted to pass something of his own method along.
If my lord has no wish to learn, that is perfectly fine… but I would advise mastering at least this one motion.
And so Gordon had decided to teach him exactly one technique—one single motion—and drilled it into him.
“Feet a little wider than the shoulders.”
Ssshhk—
“Align them parallel. Right foot slightly back.”
Scrape—
“What are you…?”
“Both hands raised level with the ears. Steady.”
Darian moved slowly, calling up the sword stroke he had watched that day.
“Only one thing left. The resolve to cut…!”
He raised the axe until the blade nearly kissed the ceiling, then closed his eyes.
Hummm—hum—
A blue light began to coil along the jet-black edge forged from Tene’s scales. The first time he had drawn out mana it had been a faint, fragile thing—but now he could call it as naturally as breathing.
Split it clean down the middle. Think of nothing else.
The world around him went quiet. In Darian’s mind, only he and the obstacle before him remained. The will to cleave through that seething, presence-radiating mass of debris.
His racing heartbeat suddenly felt impossibly slow. Not because his heart had stopped—because his perception had outrun it.
Ssshhk—
In that state, Darian began to swing.
The axe descended in a single straight line—impossibly slow, perfectly calm, utterly without tremor. From a distance, it would have looked as though the raised axe had simply appeared at the bottom of its arc, the motion too fast for the eye to track.
“…I cut it.”
CRAAACK—!
The words left his mouth in the same instant the obstacle split cleanly in two.
“Huuuh!?”
“Waaah!? Wait—ma’am!”
The elves’ jaws dropped. On the far side of the debris, Tene—who had been pacing in helpless circles—went wide-eyed.
Not a single scrap of collateral damage. Only the obstacle itself had been parted with perfect precision, the flames clinging to the cut surfaces snuffed out on contact.
“…Let’s go. Outside!”
Having climbed a step on his own staircase without even realizing it, Darian finally broke into a look of pure relief and shouted.