The Broken Shield
Valkan Gardner.
Shield knight of the Hero Party's vanguard, and the finest shield in the western continent.
Perhaps it was only because Asha Mirabell—the hero who deserved their praise more than anyone—was so terribly cold.
"It's the Hero Party!!"
"Th-the Guardian is here!!"
"Lord Valkan has come!!"
"What are you doing!! Go and bring something—anything!!"
People had always preferred Valkan, bright as clear weather and gentle to the bone, over the frigid Asha.
The saint who bore a shield. The tender Guardian. A smile that never went out.
The epithets set before the name Valkan were enough, on their own, to tell you what kind of man he was.
And that was precisely why.
"Say that again."
"I am sorry, Young Master Valkan. Were I to have ten mouths, I would still have nothing to say."
"Enough with the excuses. Again……. Say it one more time."
"…Yes. I shall give the report once more."
He held even perfect strangers dear, down in the depths of his heart—and his own family, dearer still.
"Aaaah……!!!"
"Y-Young Master!!"
For the first time in his life, Valkan met a grief too large for him to hold.
And so time passed, into the night that followed.
Valkan, who had wept a whole day through without sleep, stroked his dark-brown shield and murmured.
"Hestia. Yeah. Seems I really can't ever get as smart as you."
…His fingers drifted along the crest.
Following the shield's quiet, elegant pattern, old memories came pressing in, one and then another.
A knight, I had insisted, had to raise a sword. I used to rampage with a blade like some thunder-headed fool.
So I went behind everyone's backs and tried a bout against a high-rank magic beast. The result—
"Y-Young Master!! Why are you in there!!"
"Get in, no matter what it takes!!"
"Ah……. It's too late."
I was supposed to die that day, under a high-rank magic beast.
But then you came through our barrier, having quietly unraveled it.
Without the power of the house. Without mana or aura. Without so much as a single piece of gear.
"Brother!!"
"Hestia?! How did you—!! No, why did you come in here!!"
You were the opposite of me. Hopelessly frail, and brilliant where I was not.
"It's dangerous!!"
"……Huh?"
CRUNCH!
"H-Hestia!!!"
"He's free!! Get the young master out first!!"
"No!! Hestia first!! I said get Hestia out first!!"
You came running in with nothing on but a single white nightgown, and you saved me.
"She will never walk again. If any hope remains, it is only that she has yet to awaken the power of the house……. But she was struck by demonic miasma. It lies, truly, beyond the realm of the possible now."
Struck by that high-rank beast's peculiar miasma, you were left unable to rise for the rest of your life.
And so you lost your dreams.
The dream of a hero, which you had whispered only to me. The dream of standing at my side someday. The dream you had held to—that if you only waited in a sound body, a chance to awaken might come.
"……Because of me. You lost all of them."
Even so, you smiled at me.
"Hestia. I'm s……."
"There, you see?"
"……Hm?"
"How many times have I told you? A shield suits you better than a sword, Brother."
A smile with not a speck of stain on it.
I had done something that terrible, and still I couldn't find the courage to apologize. How long I stood there, hesitating.
"……Your dreams. Because of me."
But Hestia comforted me every time I came to her, as if there was no need for any of it.
"They were impossible dreams for me anyway. So please don't be sorry."
And not only that.
"Besides, if you feel that sorry, you can achieve them in my place, can't you?"
"……Me?"
"Yes. Become a hero instead of me, and help the people who are hurting."
You even laid the road out in front of me.
"Set this twisted chivalry right again. Even if someone is a villain, hear their story. Please become that kind of gentle…… guardian."
So I took up the shield.
"Everyone, behind me!!"
"It's Lord Valkan!!"
Just as you had wanted—to keep good people safe from every kind of villain.
And,
"He lets them call him a hero, and all he does is serve the imperial house. Just kill him."
"Let me hear him out first."
"……Sir? You're not going to kill him?"
"As you can see, I don't have a weapon."
Just as you had wanted—to listen, at least once, to what those villains had to say.
"Looked into it, and those bandits—their kids were about to starve to death."
"So what did you do?"
"What do you think! Like you said, I punished the crime as a crime, but I gave them extenuating invasions!"
"……Extenuating circumstances, Brother. Well, you did well, regardless. Right now you are exactly the hero I hoped for. Truly—you are my hero, and mine alone."
"Uh, uh-huh…. Th-thanks."
That was how I became your hero.
"……When the journey's over, I'll apologize properly."
"Yes?"
"Uh, huh? Ah, n-never mind!"
Stupid enough that I couldn't even give you a real apology, I became the hero of the smartest person I knew.
"Remember, Brother. If you have the room for it, please listen to the villains' stories too."
"Yeah. I will."
"You must. You must!"
"Yeah! I promise!"
Just as I was your hero, my hero was always you, Hestia.
Me, with nothing to my name but a strong body—I had to listen to you, the smartest person in the world.
……But.
…But Hestia, my little sister.
"This once, I don't think I can do what you said."
A knuckle creaked.
For the first time, the will to destroy gathered in a fist that had only ever been raised to protect.
"I followed your words all this time, and I learned something. Some bad people are the same as good people, and some good people are the same as bad people. But……."
Some bad people, though.
"Sometimes they're just evil. Evil enough that you've got to kill them right then and there."
And to the eyes of this stupid brother, the ones who called themselves Black Wolf—
"don't look much different."
WHOOM!!
The mutter had barely ended when a fist packed with nothing but an aura of destruction came down on the mythic-grade artifact—Gaia's Shield.
And right on its heels—
BOOOOOOM!!!!
A blast that set the whole manor shaking. Through the shards pattering down and the stone dust lifting into the air, dark-brown eyes—so very like Hestia's—flashed, dreadful and bright. Beneath them, shining the same way, lay the shield: split into two sharp fragments.
He would scar the manor, smash a mythic-grade shield, and in the end break even Hestia's words. There was no helping it.
This fool no longer had—
"……Hestia."
—anyone as clever as you.
Creak. Crack.
Valkan took up the shields, each one sharp as a buckler, one in either hand, and wept tears of blood—and through the shattered window, a clamor reached him.
"B-Black Wolf!! It's the Black Wolf!!"
"The Black Wolf has hit the manor!! Confirmed enemies, four!! Three with the same look as the Central Plaza Incident, and Black Wolf himself—four in all!!"
"Warriors of House Gardner!! Take their heads, and comfort the young lady's spirit!!"
Black Wolf. The instant that filthy name brushed Valkan's ear—
CRACK.
BOOOOOOM!!
Where Valkan had been sitting, nothing remained.
Count Gardner's estate.
Warriors came and went without end, as the region demanded, and so the place was larger than the manors of other nobles, with a great many rooms built in the manner of a barracks. The main house stood at the center, and to either side of it the warriors' quarters and the servants' quarters. Because warriors lived there, the walls were kept low, and where another house might have laid out fountains and gardens, this one was packed with sparring yards, training grounds, and every kind of place for hardening a body.
Anyone who had seen Count Gardner's estate even once was given to saying the same thing.
"If a thief ever broke into Count Gardner's estate, shouldn't we be worried for the thief?"
The eyes of the warriors in residence were as good as a lock, and the moment you were found, household troops and mercenaries would come pouring out like guards. No one in their right mind would ever try to get in. That was the reason.
And yet. Here. Now.
Beneath a roof of stark, vivid blue, higher even than the fifth floor—the top of Count Gardner's main house.
"Ruby and Dalan?"
"Securing the way out."
"Going to plan."
There were no fewer than four people here who were out of their minds.
Their leader, Nahan, looked down at the warriors swarming in and gave the order.
"White Sword Ghost. Find the Heavenly Shield."
"Yes, Captain."
"Tal and Persona move with me."
"Yes, Captain."
"Yeah! Captain!"
A black aura clung to him, faint and shimmering. Pitch-dark eyes gleamed with dread. His voice sank, low and rough.
He had already called up Black Wolf, Stage Two and Mastermind through nothing but the performance, and fear had settled into the eyes of the warriors staring up from below.
Nahan read those eyes even from a distance, and began to take them apart.
The fear was the same as before. They did not look like people who meant to fall back.
……We're fucked.
Push Mastermind any higher than this, and the fatigue would be brutal.
It turned on without mana or aura, so I thought it didn't cost anything. Turns out it was running with my life held hostage.
Well. Nothing in this world is free.
…Heh.
Nahan let out a hollow breath of a laugh and turned his head, and found Luna and Hanryang smiling too.
"That's our Captain! Even I'd be in a bit of trouble if I didn't undo my restraints, but small fry like that must be nothing but a joke to you!!"
"Naturally—it is."
Not funny. Not even a little.
Nahan shot a glare at the two of them, bright with excitement, and ran the plan through his head once more.
We wait like this. When Asha and Gardner get here, we take the restraints off Hanryang and Luna.
Watch the fight from the side and wait. The moment Bad Ending—6. The Hero's Return—closed out, he would pull the Hestia he had stored in subspace back into the open and take her hostage.
After that, leave Lactea and get out.
The three of them would escape through Ruby. Lactea would escape through Dalan. That would be the end of it.
Stop the bad ending, and still walk the current of the original. A genuinely genius plan.
"Hey, Nahan. You any good at studying?"
"Never cared to find out, Big Brother."
"No? ……You little shit. Thing is, your head turns over real sharp the second a fight starts."
All I do is stand here and watch. Does that even count as a fight?
He was turning that question over, striking pose after imposing pose as he looked down at the knights below, when—
RRRUMBLE……!!
The manor shook out of nowhere.
"Oh, shi—."
Nahan barely caught his balance and saved himself from going down. Luna and Hanryang, for their part, had been standing without so much as a sway, which was why—
"……I was so bored I dozed off."
He was about to offer that excuse, that he had been so bored he dozed off—an excuse that would convince no one—when a voice he had never heard came from behind him.
"You dodge once by luck, and already your mouth runs proud."
Dodge?
……Dodge what?
He turned, following the voice, and two halves of a shield—ripped down to a cutting edge—filled his eyes. Fragments that would have punched straight through his brain, if the shaking hadn't sent him staggering.
"…Figures, Captain. If it'd been me, I couldn't have dodged."
"As above. Likewise—it is. With my eyes, I could not even follow—I could not."
Yeah. Me neither.
Leaving the admiring Luna and Hanryang at his back, the man growled his warning.
"I'll tear you apart and kill you. For Hesti—"
"I didn't kill her."
"……? Don't cut me off. Hear the rest. I'll tear the lot of you apart and kill you, for Hestia's soul—"
"Hestia is alive."
For real.