The Reason for Strength
I finished my preparations for the expedition at literally the speed of light. Normally it would have taken days—reorganizing the troops, inspecting supplies, mapping the march route. I skipped every last step.
“V-Vice Commander?! Where are you going?!”
“We haven’t even finished organizing the troops…!”
“The supply wagons still aren’t ready to depart—”
I left my subordinates’ protests behind and mounted my horse alone.
“—You lot follow at your own pace.”
“What?!”
“I’m heading out first.”
“What?! By yourself?! Taking on a pack of Manticores single-handedly—”
“—Correct. The situation is urgent.”
Army? Supplies? March formation? …Who had time for that crap right now. At this very moment, that insane princess might be back there preparing a “warm meal.” I needed to put as much distance as possible between me and the imperial palace, immediately. A hundred Manticores? Child’s play compared to a single poisoned bowl. A hundred times—hell, a thousand times—safer.
“…The Vice Commander must have caused another incident.”
“I don’t know. Apparently something happened with Her Highness the Princess…”
I heard my men whispering behind me but paid them no mind.
—Hyah!
I kicked my horse’s flank and galloped toward the palace gates. The cold night wind slapped my face. It had never felt more refreshing.
Finally! I was finally escaping!
Goodbye, you cursed imperial palace. Goodbye, you insane princess. I was heading toward freedom!!
And so, without a single soldier under my command, I rode alone toward the frontier teeming with Manticores, urging my horse forward with reckless glee.
= = = = =
I rode for a long time. The lights of the imperial palace faded into the distance behind me until they vanished completely into the darkness. My wildly pounding heart gradually calmed, and the feverish excitement in my head slowly cooled in the night breeze.
Once my mind cleared, an odd discomfort began to creep into a corner of my heart.
…What is this uneasy feeling?
At first it had been pure relief at leaving the palace behind. But the closer my horse’s hooves carried me toward the frontier, the farther I moved from that insane princess, the more a completely misplaced emotion wormed its way through the sense of liberation.
…I feel kind of sorry.
Sorry?
I questioned my own mind. Sorry to who? To that crazy princess? The woman who had threatened to cut off my legs and tried to poison me?
Yet her face kept flickering in my thoughts. The face that had said, I shall prepare a meal for you myself. The face that had pretended to be a blushing bride over a single tomato at the market. The face that had awkwardly picked apart chicken in my quarters. The flushed face that had asked, You won’t eat it?
…That woman had said she wanted to prepare a warm meal for me before I left for the subjugation. And I had screamed about the people, rejected her like I was having a fit, and fled.
Of course it was the right decision. That meal was nine times out of ten poisoned. Protecting my own life had been the correct choice.
…Then why did her final expression keep haunting me? The lonely look on her face the moment I turned my back on her.
“…Ha.”
A dry laugh escaped me. Get a grip, Kyle. You’re pitying the wrong person.
I tried to steady my heart, but then one fact suddenly flashed through my mind.
…Come to think of it. It was tomorrow.
Tomorrow was exactly that banquet.
“……”
My grip on the reins tightened unconsciously. I remembered. The scene from the original novel.
The grand banquet to be held at the palace tomorrow. And in that banquet hall, in front of everyone, Victoria von Roseria would suffer a humiliation too horrific to speak aloud. At the hands of the Crown Prince. Beneath the sneers of her siblings.
I had read that part. That cruel, devastating scene. The humiliation of that day shattered something inside her forever, and that very night she made her decision—to burn this filthy imperial family to the ground. That was how the greatest villainess of the age was born.
The first button of all that tragedy. It was tomorrow.
…I knew. I remembered the early dawn after closing, standing in the empty kitchen chewing on cold staff meal, reading that passage. Watching her being trampled in those printed words, I had thought:
…I bet that woman has never once eaten a proper warm meal.
If I’d been beside her, I would have kicked down the doors of that banquet hall and cooked her a bowl of something anyway.
Back then I thought it was just a useless monologue directed at a character on a page.
…But now. I was right beside that very woman. And tomorrow, that horrific event would happen again. Knowing that, I was currently riding in the exact opposite direction.
“……”
I slowly brought my galloping horse to a stop. In the middle of a dark plain, with only the cold night wind whistling past, I stood motionless for a long time.
…Then I let out a long sigh.
“…Ha. What an idiot.”
It was a remark aimed at myself. If I ran from here, that would be the end of it. Beyond the frontier, past the border, to a place where that insane princess’s hand could never reach. Wasn’t that what I had desperately wished for ever since the day I possessed this body?
Whether the princess suffered whatever humiliation awaited her at the banquet, whether she blackened and became a villainess, whether the empire burned to ashes… what did any of that have to do with me? I just needed to survive and escape. That was what my head told me.
But my legs, my hands holding the reins… refused to move in the direction of that escape.
That sorrowful gaze kept appearing in my mind. Those clumsy hands that had tried to debone chicken for me. And the pitiful woman in the novel who, never having received a single warm bowl from anyone, had eventually burned pitch black.
“…Yeah. Escape? What escape.”
In the end I shook my head with a helpless laugh.
…Fine, I admit it. I was someone who couldn’t run away. At the very least, I wasn’t the kind of person who could turn his back knowing she would suffer that fate. In my previous life I had been the same. The kind of person who would skip his own meals to stand in front of the stove for someone else’s warm bowl. The kind of person who grew attached even to characters on a page and wanted to cook them a bowl of soup.
…How could someone like that possibly run away?
“…I need to finish this quickly.”
I turned my horse’s head. Not toward the path of escape, but toward the heart of the frontier where the Manticores swarmed. A plan formed.
I would sweep away the horde of magical beasts faster than anyone. It didn’t matter that it had taken days in the original story. Since I was alone, there was no cumbersome army to slow me down. I would finish the subjugation at maximum speed and return to the palace before tomorrow’s banquet ended.
Before that woman could be trampled.
“…Wait for me, Victoria.”
Murmuring under my breath, I kicked my horse’s flank with all my strength.
And after riding for some time, from far ahead in the darkness came the sound of savage howling. Massive shadows with lions’ manes and scorpions’ tails. The pack of Manticores that had devoured three subjugation forces. There were easily hundreds of them.
All those red eyes turned at once toward me as I approached alone.
I dismounted, slowly drawing my sword. The cold blade gleamed in the moonlight.
…It’s been a while. This weight.
The quiet that came with gripping a sword rose through my fingertips. A battlefield silence different from the quiet of cooking.
“…Not a single one will be spared.”
. . . . .
Swoosh.
Along with a single flash that split the night sky, the first scream erupted. A massive Manticore was cleaved from crown to tail and slammed into the ground, black blood gushing forth to stain the moonlight.
Kraaaaaaaa——!!
Hundreds of pairs of red eyes blazed at once. Lions’ manes. Scorpions’ tails. The magical beasts that had swallowed three subjugation forces went into a frenzy at the scent of their kin’s blood and charged from every direction at once.
Toward the single human standing alone.
…An overwhelming number. Anyone would have thought so. It was not a range one person could handle. Each of the hundred-plus beasts was a monster capable of tearing apart elite subjugation troops. Any rational person would have reached one conclusion before this sight.
That human would die.
…That was common sense.
But Kyle Lowenheim was a human who stood outside that common sense.
Swoosh!Swoosh!Swoooosh——!!
The sword began to rampage madly. Cut. Cut again. Cut and cut again. Each arc of the blade severed three beasts at the waist; the returning edge took two more heads. Stabbing, slashing, cutting, cleaving—the sword never paused in the air for even an instant. Before one motion finished, the next had already begun, layering endlessly upon the last.
Blood rained down. Severed manes, crushed bones, and broken tails flew in every direction. The beasts didn’t even have time to scream. Every one that charged, every one that stepped into the sword’s trajectory, was torn to shreds.
Claws aiming for him were deflected by the flat of the blade, and the momentum was used to spin and bisect the next creature. Tails striking from behind were cut down without even a glance. As if he had eyes all over his body. As if he had been born solely to swing a sword.
There was no waste. No hesitation. He simply cut what needed to be cut. That was all. He was a man who had spent his entire life engraving that single, simple proposition into his blade.
Crunch——!!
A scorpion tail dug into his side. Armor tore, flesh burst, blood sprayed. But the man did not scream. He simply grabbed the beast by its own tail and took its head off with a single stroke.
His blood and the beasts’ blood mixed until it was impossible to tell which was which. His wounds multiplied. His ankle was torn, his shoulder ripped, claws sank into his back. An ordinary human would have collapsed ten times over.
…Yet the man did not fall. Far from falling, the more he was cut, the more he was injured, the fiercer his sword became. As if the pain were honing him to an even sharper edge, the blood-soaked eyes burned brighter.
If his legs were broken but the hand holding the sword remained steady. If he was pouring out blood but his eyes could still fix on the enemy. If his consciousness was fading but the reason to cut still remained in his chest. Then he had not fallen. To fall meant the heart knelt first.
And this man’s heart had never once knelt.
Therefore the man did not fall. The more he was cut, the fiercer the sword. The more he was wounded, the brighter his eyes. The pain did not break him; instead it sharpened him further.
The beasts that witnessed the sight began to hesitate.
…Their animal instincts were screaming a warning. That thing was not prey. It wore the shape of a man but did not follow the laws of men. It did not stop when cut and grew more savage the more it was wounded. It was a sword wearing human skin. It was a monster wearing the skin of a sword.
Grrrrrrrrrrr…
Hundreds of magical beasts trembled in fear for the first time before a single human. They tried to retreat, to flee.
“…Where do you think you’re going?”
A low, cracked voice flowed from the blood-drenched man’s lips.
“…Did I not say I would not spare a single one?”
The man kicked off the ground. A crimson flash drove into the center of the fleeing pack. The sword split the sky once more. Along its path, the beasts’ screams erupted in succession.
How long had that night been? How long had he cut through it?
…By the time the moon had tilted and the eastern sky began to pale, everything finally fell silent. Hundreds of corpses formed mountains across the plain, and a river of dark red blood flowed, gleaming ominously in the dawn light.
In the middle of that mountain of corpses and sea of blood… one man stood, using his sword as a cane.
There was not a single uninjured spot on him. His armor was in tatters, his entire body dyed dark red with blood. His breathing was ragged, his legs on the verge of collapse. Even so, he stood.
…The fact that he stood. That was all this man had proven that night.
“…Hoo.”
He exhaled a long breath and roughly wiped the blood-drenched blade.
“…Is it over?”
On that miserable figure there was no trace of joy in victory. The face of a man who had single-handedly slain hundreds of Manticores looked far too indifferent. Only one thought held his fading consciousness together.
…I must hurry. Before the banquet begins. Before that woman is trampled.
The man—Kyle Lowenheim—forced his trembling legs to move and walked toward his horse. Behind him, dawn was breaking.
That day, the people of the frontier saw the back of a nameless man. A man who had slain hundreds of magical beasts alone, covered in blood, then vanished as suddenly as he had appeared. The Emperor’s Sword, whom people would later call the Incarnation of the Blade or the Monster Wearing Human Skin.
…People shuddered at that overwhelming martial prowess. But they would never know. That the place this monster had run to, not caring if his own body shattered, enduring that desperate struggle, was simply to stop one woman from being trampled.
…The reason for strength is sometimes so trivial, and so tender.