A Blade Hidden in Joy (4)

Am I dead?

My heart ached only with guilt toward Ellie.

And then, before me, Baram appeared.

He was staring straight at me, unblinking. When I tried to walk toward him, he backed away a single step and began to growl, low and warning, as if to say don't come any closer.

"Why... why are you doing this? I'm sorry... I know I couldn't protect you... I'm sorry..."

Then, to my broken words, a voice like a young child's answered.

- You did nothing wrong.

"Is that... is that you?"

When I asked, needing to be sure, Baram nodded and spoke again.

- You're not to blame at all. Don't let guilt destroy you.

"But... you died! I watched you scatter to nothing, crumble into dust before my eyes! I... how could I!!"

- I told you not to! Guilt will eat you alive from the inside out, and then it will break you. I don't want to watch you crumble like that.

"Even so... you died because of me... you died...!"

- Don't worry. I'll live on in your memory forever. That's enough for me.

- If you drown in guilt, your one and only lover will grieve terribly. When you suffer, she suffers too. So shake it off, and get back up.

"....."

- You crybaby. Honestly, you've been like this ever since you came to this world. Still, it was a joy watching you grow all this time.

"Wh... what is that supposed to mean?! How do you even know about that?!"

- I don't know the details either, but I heard the Azure Dragon's words from the moment I was born. Somewhere in all of that, I suppose I heard about you.

"How can I meet the Azure Dragon?"

- Well, look at you, using honorifics all of a sudden. Getting all high-and-mighty, just like the Azure Dragon himself. Huh?! But asking me won't get you anywhere—I don't know either. I was nothing more than a spirit who came down to be of help to you. That's all I ever was.

I looked at Baram again and asked.

"So... where will you go now?"

At my question, Baram was silent for a moment, considering, before he answered.

- Who knows. I imagine I'll drift here and there, scattered to the winds, like the wind itself.

"....."

- Don't make that face. If you ever feel like it, once you become a god, bring me back.

"Yeah. I will. I'll bring you back to life, I swear."

At my answer, Baram laughed.

- Ha! I've landed myself a fine patron! The Successor of the Azure Dragon himself, promising to be my guardian!

"Right... so until then, you can't disappear. Promise?"

- And you'd better not die, either. I'll be waiting. Hyun-ah.

And with that, my comrade and friend dissolved into scattered light.

In his final moment, I sent him off with a smile.

Then, from behind me, came the sound of claws on the ground. Someone was approaching. My other wind spirit—Jeongryeong.

Jeongryeong padded up to me and spoke.

- If you cry like this, Baram won't be able to rest easy, wherever he's gone.

"Yeah. I have to get back up."

The Status Window told me of the final gift Baram had left behind.

"Thank you. Baram. Jeongryeong."

At my words, my one remaining spirit nodded and nuzzled his face against my leg. Comforted by Jeongryeong, I closed my eyes to return to the waking world.

When I opened them again—

I was back in the instant before Gaap's spear ran me through.

But somehow, it didn't matter. Neither the Dragon's Momentum nor my own instincts were raising any alarm. This was different from simply failing to sense a threat. An overwhelming certainty swept through my entire body, as if shouting that this thing could never, ever harm me.

In an instant I was on my feet, risen from the very spot where Gaap's spear had struck me down—yet for some reason, my afterimage remained pinned beneath his weapon just as it had been. A domain that leaves such images behind, turning evasion itself into offense.

At last, Gaap drove his spear through that afterimage.

And my afterimage took on a gruesome shape where it stood.

Ellie, who must have heard my heartbeat and rushed down in a panic, was somehow already standing at the entrance to the royal hall. Her dress hung in tatters, the jewels gone from her, her shoes discarded somewhere and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠her bare feet bloodied from end to end. But her eyes were fixed on one place only—on Gaap, the demon who had killed my afterimage.

I took hold of the wind howling around me and unleashed the domain. The power of wind took form and descended upon the battlefield.

Thuck.

Thuuuck.

THWACK!

Swords of wind summoned themselves one after another within the domain's bounds. And I finally ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠revealed myself.

I was no better off than the battlefield itself. My clothes were shredded, I was soaked in blood, and I lacked even the strength to stay standing. But with this power—with the final gift Baram had left me—it felt as though he were right there beside me again.

= You... I killed you. I'm certain of it... how...! =

"I'm so angry right now that I don't think I can hold my strength back. So do yourself a favor and survive this as best you can."

= You've finally lost your mind, haven't you! Just moments ago you couldn't even land a proper hit! =

"....."

= Enough pleasantries! I will slaughter every last one of you! =

With that roar, Gaap charged at me—and his spear pierced clean through my chest.

= With power this flimsy, you think you can w— wait. There's no feeling...? =

I appeared behind Gaap's back, leaving an afterimage in my wake, and wrenched the sword that had been driven into the ground free of the earth. The Sword of the Azure Sky in my right hand. A sword of wind in my left. Gripping both blades, I surged forward.

A exhilarating wind whirled around me, wrapping my body. I dashed forward, faster than before. A pack of wolves made of wind sprinted alongside me toward Gaap, like hounds that had caught the scent of prey. Bearing my blade, the wind-wolves bared their fangs and claws at him.

Gaap swept his spear at them, but—

= What the hell?! Why won't they disappear!! =

I closed the distance and spoke quietly.

"Since when can wind be cut down by a spear or a sword?"

These beings were made entirely of formless wind. Naturally, being neither alive nor dead, they could not die. More of my own afterimages gathered around the battlefield, each drawing one of the swords planted in the ground. Four afterimages, myself included. They all took their stances and charged—straight for the target.

The first afterimage cleaved through Gaap's left leg and left wrist, and he could no longer hold his crimson spear.

= I will not be toyed with any longer! =

He drove his yellow spear into the ground, shuddering the earth itself—but the wind is untouched by the ground, flying free above it. Unaffected, the second afterimage sheared through his right leg and left arm, and Gaap's left arm flew off entirely, spraying arcs of blood as it fell.

= I WILL FORGIVE THIS NO LONGER!!! =

He hurled the yellow spear at me with all his might. A pointless attack.

"Getting hit that badly and you're still only attacking afterimages. I suppose your capacity for learning is lacking."

= You wretch. I will kill you if it's the last thing I do. =

"Look at the state you're in. Do you really think anyone left alive fears you now?"

= You think you can kill ME and walk away unscathed?! =

"Then tell me—did you think you could kill my comrade, my friend, and die a peaceful death? You don't get to die peacefully."

As I spoke, the third afterimage severed his right leg and right wrist. Writhing in agony, Gaap lost his grip on the yellow spear and dropped it. Immediately after, the fourth afterimage darted in and finished it, carving through his right leg and right arm—which flew away along the same arc his left arm had traced.

The next one would have been me. But I had no intention of granting him an easy death. I could still summon plenty more afterimages of wind. One after another, they came into being.

"How many of these do you think you can endure?"

Gaap trembled from head to toe, as though terror had finally seized him looking at me. It didn't matter.

"Go."

Only after nineteen afterimages in total had carved their way across his body did my assault end. Then came my turn. I could feel the Authority approaching its limit. This would be my final strike. Taking my stance, I charged at Gaap.

Gaap, a mangled wreck, looked at me and rasped:

= I'll be... waiting for you... in hell... =

In the instant my blade fell, I answered him.

"Go to hell alone, please. Who said you could drag anyone there with those filthy hands of yours?"

With those words, my blade took his head. The headless body toppled forward and never moved again.

The Wind Domain slowly faded away. And through its dissolving edges, a woman I knew came walking barefoot toward me, slow and unhurried.

"Your feet don't hurt?"

Without answering, Ellie simply walked up to me and leaned quietly into my chest. Then her body began to shake, slowly at first, and I felt my chest grow damp.

"El... Ellie!"

"Hic! I thought you were dead! Why! Would you show me! Something like that!! You scared me half to death!"

Apparently, the afterimages had looked completely real to her. If they'd fooled even Ellie, a master of the sword in her own right, then this technique was more terrifying than I'd realized.

More pressing—Khan was in danger. He'd be facing Furfur right now. I needed to go, immediately. But Ellie had me locked in her arms so tightly that I couldn't move an inch.

Just then, someone came trudging down the path I'd come by, spear in hand. It was Khan—the very man who had sent me off alone, telling me to fell Gaap by myself.

Khan stared at me, still pinned in Ellie's arms. Taking in her trembling form and the state of our surroundings, he seemed to have pieced the situation together—namely, that Ellie was currently sobbing into my chest. Just as I'd expected. Khan's eyes seemed to say I knew this would happen, and then he turned on his heel and hurried urgently into the royal citadel.

Running off that fast because he's worried Fairy might have gotten hurt... as if no one could tell.

First things first: calming Ellie down. She still had me locked tight; there was no getting free.

"Ellie. Did I scare you that badly?"

She nodded vigorously against my chest.

"You're on three strikes. I'm actually going to cry, so don't you dare talk to me."

"...Ellie... I'm sorry..."

"Hic...! Do you have any idea how worried I was? You just smiled at me and dropped down without a single word..."

"Th... that's... if I hadn't even done that much, I was afraid you'd worry even more..."

Ellie lifted her tear-soaked eyes to mine.

"Then don't DO things that make me worry!!"

"...That's... fair... yes..."

"You were wrong. So wrong!"

"I'm sorry..."

"So what even happened? I watched Hyun—you get brutally murdered by a demon. With my own eyes."

I told her it was an afterimage, an illusion created by my ability. A phantom conjured from the afterimage technique—it wasn't my real body, so of course it couldn't be harmed. Then I told Ellie that Baram was dead.

Ever since I'd obtained the Sword of the Azure Sky, Baram and I had spent five years training together, entrusting our lives to one another—comrades and friends bound by the sword. Of course I'd grown attached to him, and he'd played with me in his own way, nipping at me lightly or tugging at my sleeve. During the Tide of Corruption, he'd carried me, my life hanging by a thread, across that vast distance to save me.

And even after all that, I had survived once more on his help alone.

Even as the Wind Domain slowly wound down, Jeongryeong simply watched me in silence. Then he rose slowly from where he sat, nuzzled my leg—and popped out of existence in an instant. Watching this, Ellie seemed to finish assessing the situation, turned, and started walking toward the entrance of the royal citadel. I moved in front of her, slowly, and crouched down. At my wordless offer, she climbed onto my back, saying that she'd let this one slide, just this once, and together we entered the citadel.

She knew how close Baram and I had been—that must be why she let it go. If our positions had been reversed, if I'd watched her become a corpse before my eyes... I'd have kept my sanity? I guarantee you, I would have gone mad with rage. Part of it was surely because she was a contractor, but the other part would have been that I could never forgive the thing that killed her, that I'd loathe myself for failing to protect her, and I would have torn the world apart.

Thinking that, I felt deep gratitude toward her—that even after witnessing my gruesome state, even after watching me die before her eyes, she'd chosen to let it go. Supporting her carefully so she wouldn't slip, I carried her barefoot along and told her thank you. With a single "Don't ever do that again," I answered "Yeah," and so the dispute between Ellie and me was settled.

Though the moment she saw the wound in my side and the gash along my forearm, Ellie declared that no, actually, this was unforgivable, and got angry at me all over again.

Even after treatment, we couldn't rest. We had to bear the aftershocks of the battle. Following the attack by two high-ranked demons seeking to slaughter the imperial family, the Successors were forced to remain at the palace for several more days for the crown's protection.

The death toll from this battle: roughly one thousand. The overwhelming majority were knights and soldiers of the imperial household. It was the bitter harvest of Gaap's "entertainment"—the numbers he'd butchered for sport—piled atop Furfur's disgust-fueled slaughter of soldiers as casually as one might crush insects. And even in death, those soldiers had held their posts; as if to prove they had protected them to the very end, not a single noble suffered so much as a serious wound. The demons had stormed a banquet hall packed with nobles, and aside from a few who'd taken minor scrapes or been knocked over, it was an outcome people could only call miraculous.

But two things did not escape the nobles' notice: that Florence, Successor of the White Tiger, had been nowhere to be seen during the battle—and that the Crystal family, which Florence ought to have been attending to, had breezily shown their faces at the banquet. Factions began forming to slander Gerald of the Crystal family, all in the name of expanding their own influence. Countering them, the head of the Ignight family, Sunset, and the head of the Cumul family, Ellie, spoke up in his defense. But the nobles had no intention whatsoever of hearing us out.

Amid that uproar, the nobles demanded the truth be revealed. In the end, the Emperor himself came forward and announced that the Successor of the White Tiger had been stripped of her title through the Successor Contest. They had kept silent out of fear of the chaos that would follow the loss of one of the Four Pillars—and the nobles, digging their own graves with their own hands, reached toward us with no countermeasure in place. With me at their head, every Successor began to freeze them out entirely.

And now, a funeral had been held to honor the fallen soldiers and knights. Attending funerals after every battle was simply how it had always been, and a bleak heaviness settled over me. At my side, Jeongryeong appeared and rubbed his face against my leg, as if to soothe me, comforting me in his own quiet way.

The gift I'd received when Baram died. Ever since gaining a fragment of the Wind Authority, I could summon Jeongryeong at any moment—and he, in turn, appeared at my side whenever he pleased.

Right. I have to keep going. Until I can bring Baram back. I mustn't cry. I can cry later—when I see him again.

As if sharing my thoughts, Jeongryeong walked along watching me, and together we made our way to where the funeral was being held.

The funeral lasted three days in total. A few wretches among the nobility tried to pull their filthy stunts even at the funeral, hoping to sully it—so I gave them one warning in my Draconic Tongue, and they never came near me again. If you're going to act out, at least mind the time and place... One of these days, I really do need to round the lot of them up.

Even after the memorial and the funeral concluded, the Successors had to remain regardless, and so the contractors couldn't leave freely either. As a result, everyone bound for the four front lines had ended up crowded into the imperial palace. But the heads of the Four Great Families were, if nothing else, cut from different cloth—despite the distances involved, not a single problem arose on any front. Minor matters, it seemed, were handled independently by each family's proxies. Whenever something heavier came in—an incursion, for instance—a message would arrive ordering troops dispatched to observe the situation, followed almost immediately by word that the incursion had been repelled. To me, it was nothing short of astonishing. Have... have territories always run this smoothly by the seat of their pants...?

The biggest factor seemed to be that each family had installed genuinely capable people as their proxies. The Cumul family alone makes it easy to understand—look no further than Edgar. He'd spent years at Sirius's side, watching, listening, and handling affairs directly; if anything, his experience was abundant rather than lacking.

Thanks to the lull, we trained while resting at the palace, and even sparred with Khan to sharpen our skills. Since the palace attack, things between Khan and me had warmed dramatically, so he readily obliged. Better yet, Fairy and Ellie had grown close enough now to honestly be called friends.

It had now been a week since the funeral. We were gathering for another sparring session, each of us carrying a spear or a sword, when Fairy appeared out of nowhere and planted herself in our way.

"You guys. Aren't you tired of this yet?"

I shot Khan a questioning look—what is this?—but he only sent back a gaze that said beats me...

I moved over to where Khan and Ellie stood and settled down beside Ellie. Fairy looked at the four of us clustered together and announced:

"Seriously—you have gorgeous women like us right here, and you'd rather just swing swords and spears at each other?"

So, in other words: I'm bored right now, so let's all go out and have fun. Said in ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the most roundabout way possible. But wait—she just called herself pretty, didn't she?

When I stared hard at Khan, he simply sighed and looked away. He's trapped in this too, just like me, apparently.

"Fine. So what do you want to do?"

When I asked, Fairy planted her hands squarely on her hips and declared:

"You, me, Ellie-unnie, and Khan—let's go on a date. All four of us."

A double date? I saw plenty of those back on Earth, but here I doubt most people have even heard of the concept. Thinking about it quietly, though... I really have been living at a breakneck pace. Those demon bastards never give anyone a moment's peace, after all...

Ellie was sitting quietly beside me, listening, and judging by the look in her eyes, she wanted to go. I nodded.

"Sure. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Why not—let's give it a try."

At my answer, Fairy cheered, "Knew it! Hyun!" and showered me with praise. Though honestly, being praised like that didn't make me happy at all...

The double date was set for the day after tomorrow. We'd fought and scrambled so hard for so long that, apparently, she wanted to play as soon as possible... Still, you need at least one Fairy in any group for life to have any flavor to it. Imagine a crowd made up entirely of Khans—perpetually serious, taking every joke the wrong way. Horrifying.

That day's sparring and training ran noticeably lighter than usual, on the excuse that we couldn't wear ourselves out before tomorrow's date. Afterward, Ellie and I parted from Khan and Fairy in the training hall and walked off together, hand in hand—and somehow, Ellie seemed a little giddy. I suppose she'd been worn thin too, all this while. With a small chuckle, I walked on beside her, and we decided to turn in early tonight, so we'd be fresh for the date tomorrow.