Hero Esmeralda (5)
At first, she'd simply planned to throw him away.
Even if Jim was what held the party together, was he worth more than her life? This was a reasonable judgment. That was all.
Jim left because... yes, because he wanted to rebuild his hometown, so I had no choice but to send him off. That's what I'll tell them.
He hadn't been kidnapped or killed—he'd left of his own free will. If she spun it that way, surely Milia wouldn't go berserk on the spot.
Given how Esmeralda had clung to Jim and refused to let him go all this time, the story had its awkward edges, but time would smooth those over.
And strictly speaking, it wasn't even a lie, was it? Jim would return to his real hometown—not the fake one—and live happily ever after.
Well. He might cross paths with the Demon King's Army again, but that was a problem for later.
*Sigh*... By then, I'll just have to somehow get closer to the girls.
Yes. She had failed this time.
But it was neither a bitter mistake nor an irredeemable one.
So all she had to do was run the moment her opponent showed mercy.
...Right. There's no shame in losing to someone stronger.
All that mattered was winning in the end.
Esmeralda had started out as nothing more than an ordinary country girl. Becoming the Hero hadn't instantly made her strong, so of course she'd known defeat countless times.
She was strong now precisely because she had survived those humiliating losses. This time would be no different. She would simply grow stronger still.
Esmeralda dredged up excuses like that, one after another.
But...
"Ha! Seriously... if this is how it goes, that really would be the dumbest move I've ever made."
Esmeralda felt a killing intent.
It wasn't aimed at her.
She had simply happened to catch what was leaking out of the tent.
No—if she was honest, she'd probably been half-focused on that direction all along, on the chance something like this might happen.
One way or another, Esmeralda had noticed the exact worst-case scenario she'd been dreading.
"Ugh, seriously. This damn life of mine—nothing ever goes right."
She turned back the way she had come.
"Haha!"
Esmeralda laughed.
She honestly had no idea what she was doing anymore.
To say she was simply following her heart would be a lie—this was practically suicide.
And she could say with absolute certainty that she was no one Jim would risk his life to protect.
And yet Esmeralda had stood against the Legion Commander, Eleven, blade raised.
Even knowing full well he'd spared her because she was a nuisance. Now she'd made herself an even bigger nuisance, so there was no backing out of it.
"Hah. I thought you were reasonably clever, but you truly are a fool."
"What can I say? I like following my heart over my head."
"Do you know who this one is, and still do this?"
"Of course. I know him very well."
*Clang!*
With a grin, Esmeralda drove her Holy Sword up against Eleven's blade, striking it away like she was pinning it down.
"He's my precious comrade. At least until he betrays us first."
"You senseless—!"
"If I wanted to chase rationality, I never would have become the Hero in the first place!"
Esmeralda shouted back at Eleven's fury, swinging her sword.
But the moment their blades met, hers began to be pushed back, one-sidedly.
The gap in skill was stark.
Strength aside, there was a gulf in technique as well—Esmeralda could never hope to overpower Eleven.
But!
*Shwaak!*
In that instant, blades came tearing through the tent fabric from every direction, flying at Eleven.
The Holy Sword, moving at its wielder's will. The authority of Esmeralda, who synchronized that power into other blades and commanded them as one.
I can only move twelve at once for now! But against a single opponent, that's more than enough!
Esmeralda deliberately retreated, as if drawing her opponent's blade after her.
On the surface, it looked like she'd lost her balance and was about to fall. But Esmeralda knew. Her opponent was, unmistakably, a monster.
To bring him down, she needed the heart of someone willing to carve through flesh and shatter bone.
"Clumsy!"
*Kagagagang!*"
But Eleven was a veteran of a hundred battles who had survived a hundred years on the battlefield alone.
Unfazed by Esmeralda's clumsy improvisation, he swept aside all twelve blades in a single flourish.
"...!"
For a heartbeat, Esmeralda's eyes were locked on the sight.
A single stroke, wielded with the fluid grace of flowing water.
Her eyes drank in the ability of a swordsman standing on a plane far, far above her own.
And then the blades came back around, straight at her.
The moment that pristine stroke came cutting down, Esmeralda snapped back to her senses.
"Ggh!"
She caught the blow.
And Esmeralda went flying backward, unable to bear the force behind it.
The tent she'd torn through a moment ago whipped up into the air like a mat and vanished skyward.
"Strange."
"..."
Eleven made no move to pursue Esmeralda. Instead, he looked down at Jim—who, even in the middle of all this, showed no sign of waking.
"I see. You drugged him to sleep."
"Haha, he kept trying to run. Easier to just knock him out."
"How strange. And you call such a one your comrade?"
"What's so special about being comrades, anyway?"
Esmeralda roughly wiped the blood trickling from her mouth—the toll of her internal injuries—and gripped her sword anew.
"If being together is fun and easy, that's a comrade to me."
Even as she said it, she felt like she was convincing herself.
Right. It was fun being with him. Whatever else was true, I never could bring myself to see Jim as my enemy.
That was probably because Jim had never once crossed the line. Not even once.
Here was Esmeralda, slipping sleeping pills into his meals—and Jim had never once so much as thought about attacking her in her sleep, let alone poisoning anyone.
"If Jim had truly been a hopeless piece of trash, I wouldn't have tried to save him. But he isn't. He had his chances, and he never once tried to kill us."
Maybe he just didn't want to dirty his own hands.
Or maybe, deep down, he felt guilty about it all.
Esmeralda had thought it cowardly. But that was all it was—a thought.
It was no reason to kill him.
Yes. She was the kind of being who always sought the line, even if it meant being played for a fool, used and exploited. The kind who forged ahead down paths no one else would walk.
"So I'm taking Jim back."
The Hero.
With a feeling somewhere in her chest finally loosened, Esmeralda lunged forward.
Her odds were as slim as ever.
She was outmatched in strength, in technique, even in the sheer weight of experience they had each accumulated.
A fight with no chance of victory.
And I've always been the kind of person who challenges fights exactly like that!
*Kang!* Esmeralda's Holy Sword rang against Eleven's blade. It felt like swinging a sword at a towering boulder.
Even facing that immense gulf, Esmeralda forced a smile.
"Haaaahp!"
Twelve blades swept in, tracing the arc of her swing.
"...!"
Eleven's eyes went wide at the artistry of it, and he fell back.
A swordsmanship meant to shatter swords.
Against Esmeralda's unorthodox style of combat, even a Legion Commander like Eleven couldn't bring himself to clash blades head-on.
*Kagagagang!*
Esmeralda's swordplay was like a spread fan being whirled rather than a blade—Eleven smiled at it.
His opponent was weak.
Compared to him, her swordsmanship was pitiful and she lacked the power to press him.
However many times he knocked them away, the twelve blades came wheeling back after the Holy Sword. A discipline of offense and defense in one, fanning out like a fan and shielding her like a cloak.
Eleven did not call it cowardly.
What was there to feel offended about, when the weak schemed by every means available to topple the strong?
"Good. Give me more!"
Eleven let out a wild laugh and drove Esmeralda back.
He paid the twelve swords hunting his own blade no mind. If his opponent aimed for a single opening, this side could respond all the more easily.
Choosing a short, decisive engagement over evasion, Eleven pressed the attack.
"Haah!"
Esmeralda gulped down air.
Forget countering with her twelve swords—merely fending off the maddened onslaught was all she could manage.
Under an assault so ferocious she nearly forgot to control her own blades, Esmeralda twisted out a smile.
But at this distance—!
From retreating again and again, Esmeralda had strayed a considerable distance from where she'd started. And that had been her aim all along.
Far from the campfire, she had drawn him deep into the forest, where the trees grew tall and even starlight could not reach.
Slowly, little by little—that was how she'd lured him. To the point where their eyes had adjusted to the dark enough to track each other's movements.
"My specialty is swordsmanship, but that's not all I've got."
"What—?!"
Common Magic Lv. 21
Learn whatever there was to learn.
The more tools at her disposal, the better. Fortunately, she'd been surrounded by more than enough teachers willing to show her the ropes.
Esmeralda's bread and butter was, first and foremost, her swordsmanship with the Holy Sword.
And precisely because of that, her opponent never suspected she might have other means.
Her strike plunged straight into that blind spot.
Common Magic
⟨ Flash Bang ⟩
A burst of brilliant white light erupted before Eleven's eyes, close as he was from pressing Esmeralda so hard.
Eleven's vision—wide open and fully adjusted to the darkness—was swallowed whole by the light in an instant.
Esmeralda's strike seized that opening.
Twelve swords fanned out in a ring around her Holy Sword, which she leveled parallel to the earth. Like the hour marks of a clock face, they held a perfectly even interval.
In the same breath, every blade drank in sword aura of every color.
A supreme technique that wrung the synchronized power of the Holy Sword and her twelve blades to its very limit.
Midnight
The Hero Esmeralda's secret art came pouring down upon Eleven.