Winter (5)
The sudden change in the air made me frown, along with the darkness that felt as though it were tightening around my entire body.
Irene’s words kept echoing in my ears, and I wanted to answer her, to say something that would reassure her.
But this darkness kept warning me to get out of here at once.
The darkness hanging over this area was a kind of mana.
What else could I call this murky, swamp-like power that dragged you deeper into the dark the mere moment you sensed it?
No, more importantly, I needed to understand why this mana had appeared in the duchy in the first place.
“...Evan.”
“You should leave for now. I’ll figure out what this is, so let’s head back to the duke’s estate together.”
“You need to get away too. This is something a black mage made.”
“A black mage... you say?”
My eyes narrowed at once. It wasn’t as if I didn’t know what a black mage was.
How could I not know the word that had made even Irene’s cold face flash with fear?
It was tied to the black mage who later became the single greatest piece of evidence against Irene when she was branded a traitor.
I suppose that organization was later called Jeol-myeol.
The group that became the greatest obstacle in the unfolding of The Rose with Thorns had also been created by black mages.
So why was a black mage appearing here, right now?
Still, it was hard to dismiss her claim that one had appeared.
This filthy darkness was clearly abnormal, like something that would stain my entire body if I let it.
My field of vision was shrinking by the second. For now, getting Irene out of here came first.
“I’ll judge the situation later. Right now, you need to get out of here.”
I couldn’t forget that I was a bodyguard knight.
If Irene died uselessly in a place like this, then what was the point of me being her guard at all?
Meeting her eyes, I spoke with firm resolve, and she nodded as well before starting to move.
It was too sudden for me to even think about evacuating the residents of the territory.
For now, it was still only darkness, so no one had been hurt or killed yet.
But there was no telling when this darkness might bare its fangs at a human being.
We needed to meet up with the others as quickly as possible.
Fwoosh—
As I drew mana into my body, the white flames rising from me began to drive the darkness back little by little.
The path ahead became faintly visible even through the dark, and before long I spotted a group of figures in the distance and called out.
“Sir Chris!”
“Evan? The young lady is safe, I hope!”
“She’s safe. We need more people to handle the evacuation.”
“The knights are already moving. Evacuation shouldn’t be a problem.”
Sir Chris’s face twisted the moment he came closer.
Had he also realized that this darkness belonged to a black mage?
After confirming Irene’s condition, he hurriedly turned to me and spoke.
“A black mage has appeared. Nothing has happened yet, but we need to take care of him before anything does.”
“There probably aren’t many of them. The mana isn’t dense enough for there to be a whole group.”
This darkness was certainly spreading across the entire city, but its concentration wasn’t especially thick.
There was likely only one black mage, maybe two at most. Then the question became: what exactly were they after?
What could one or two people possibly do in this duchy?
Then a certain incident flashed through my mind, and my brow furrowed. It was only a single line, something that had brushed past me briefly before disappearing.
The tragedy in Yuris stole the light of life from the woman named Irene.
It had ended there, so I’d forgotten it all this time.
But if that tragedy was connected to the black mage this time...
If that tragedy was what twisted Irene into the person she became?
Turning my head, I found Irene standing at my side, flinching as she looked at me.
Her blue eyes trembled.
There was nothing in them but concern, and looking at her, I gave a faint smile.
“Evan, don’t tell me...”
“I think I need to go.”
“Can’t Sir Chris go, or maybe lead the other knights instead...”
“Sending the knights won’t help much. In fact, it’ll only cause confusion. Aren’t black mages known for being strong against numbers?”
The nature of black magic was broad-area, large-scale attack.
Unlike ordinary mages, they excelled in curses and poison, so if someone who couldn’t properly handle mana stepped forward, there was a good chance they’d be outmatched instead.
The right people to face them would probably be a single strong individual rather than a disorderly crowd.
If you were to name the strongest knight in this duchy, you’d have to look among the Experts.
And right now, the only person who might have reached the realm of Master was the Imperial Knight Commander.
As for the strongest among the duchy’s Experts—
“I have to go.”
It wasn’t Sir Chris.
“Sir Chris, please protect the young lady. I’ll take care of the black mage.”
“I’m the one who’s faced black mages before, so I should be the one to—”
“I’m going.”
This was something I had to handle myself.
It wasn’t enough to simply eliminate the black mage; I had to find out what he was after.
I had to consider every possibility, one by one—whether the organization called Jeol-myeol had already begun to take shape, whether the tragedy that would one day strike Yuris had its roots in black mages.
What if that black mage was the beginning of the whole tragedy?
Wouldn’t it be a problem if Sir Chris dealt with him and we never learned why he had come here in the first place?
At the very least, I was the one who knew a little about the future. I had to go.
“Please look after the young lady.”
Maybe he realized I wasn’t going to change my mind.
Sir Chris, who had been watching me in silence, finally spoke in a low voice.
“...Black mages all use sorcery. Keep every possibility in mind. Even the smallest movement could be a fatal strike.”
“Sir Chris.”
Irene shot him a glare and seemed about to say something, but Sir Chris only shook his head and looked back at her.
“This is already out of my hands. Please trust your bodyguard knight once. Wouldn’t he feel hurt otherwise?”
“...I do trust him. But this is different from simply trusting him.”
“Young lady.”
When I spoke, Irene turned her head and looked at me.
Even in the thick darkness, those blue eyes were still fixed on me, shimmering softly, and before I knew it a laugh escaped me.
Who would have imagined, when we first met, that our relationship would ever become like this?
Finding her concern for me strangely amusing, I smiled faintly and spoke to Irene.
“I’ll be fine. Do you really think your bodyguard knight would lose to something like a black mage?”
I won’t break. There was no way I’d give up so easily over something like this.
The things I’d face as Irene’s bodyguard knight would only grow harder from here.
Could I really back away and stand by just because of a name like black mage?
There were only five years left until the heroine appeared.
Only five years.
I had to grow stronger. Even if a Master-class knight stood before me—
I had to become the kind of man who could draw his sword without hesitation.
I was Irene’s bodyguard knight, after all.
“Don’t get hurt.”
“I won’t.”
“That’s an order. Don’t you dare get hurt again like you did then.”
“...I’ll keep that in mind.”
What her voice carried wasn’t its usual coldness.
Suddenly, the coldness of the weather seemed to vanish from my mind.
The warmth riding on her voice heated my body, and for a moment I even felt as if this season might not be winter at all.
By “then,” she probably meant the day I’d first met the assassin and been injured.
I was different from back then. I was far more used to handling a sword now, and I even managed to beat Sir Chris more often these days.
I tightened my grip on the sword.
Clutching that rough hilt, I turned my gaze away from Irene and back toward the darkness.
Thick darkness—and then white mana, cleaving through it, began to rise from my body.
A strange exhilaration filled me from head to toe. My heart pounded, and my muscles slowly began to tense.
I remembered the first time I had ever held a sword. I remembered meeting the assassins, and the blood that had stained that blade.
Cutting someone down was such a horrific thing.
Even if the one being cut down was a villain, it was never something a human could carry out lightly.
But if the hand gripping the sword was filled with resolve, if it belonged to someone who had something to protect, then hesitation had no place in that blade.
At this moment, the trembling in my hand vanished.
A black mage—perhaps the beginning of the tragedy that would one day strike Yuris.
The bodyguard knight who had once grieved Irene’s death in a dark room was now stepping into the darkness alone to protect her.
I might die. In the end, all the resolve I carried might prove meaningless and vanish in the blink of an eye.
I might regret this. I might survive this disgracefully, only to one day lament the moment and die alone in sorrow.
Despair, frustration, regret, duty, grief. All of it could blend together into one and leave me struggling for the rest of my life in a black, bottomless swamp.
Even so, I would not retreat. I wanted Irene Yuris to be happy.
I wanted her to remain, in the end, not a villainess, but simply the noble lady of Yuris.
So the knight raised his sword.
In an instant, fierce white flames began to wrap around the blade.
Even though darkness had swallowed the stars and moon alike, the flames coiling around my sword pierced through it and illuminated everything nearby.
The wavering green eyes finally fixed on one direction and stopped.
Toward the darkness surging most thickly of all.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
Disease, confusion, chaos.
The foundations of black magic, the elements from which all darkness sprang.
They were also what the black mage Kalipa loved most. What would happen if that seed were hidden within this duchy, the one sworn to protect the North?
“How amusing.”
The twisted corner of his mouth split wide enough to make one's skin crawl, and black teeth glimmered in the opening.
Darkness, stinking and foul, leaked from inside his mouth, and the life wandering nearby began to wither slowly under it.
Yuris, the shield among the five great houses of the empire—the house that protected the North.
If all of it were to collapse in vain, then perhaps he could achieve the Jeol-myeol that had so regrettably failed thirty years ago.
Disease was such a trivial thing, and yet sometimes there was nothing that could break a person more easily.
It burrowed into a person’s weak heart and brought it down. A weakened heart could not endure a tired body.
For no matter how strong a knight might be, in the end humans still fell to illness.
Watching the creation before him, Kalipa burst into laughter.
A disease that couldn’t be cured with the medical knowledge of the present age—
How many years had he spent creating it?
Like a shadow, the massive creature he had quietly crouched into existence slowly began to move.
Once the disease started moving, its seed would spread through this duchy.
The thought that those tiny footsteps would spread across this vast land and bring everything crashing down in a single instant sent a thrill racing down his spine, and his body trembled with it.
“Kekeke... keh...”
How exhilarating! The shield of the empire collapsing.
And all because of Kalipa, this black mage!
Even as his body was being raked raw and blood ran from the claws digging into him, a smile stayed fixed on his face.
Could this merely be called delight?
No, this was pleasure!
The sensation of wriggling insects crawling coldly through his brain was so wonderful that drool streamed from his open mouth.
And yet Kalipa kept laughing. His back bent and buckled, his body collapsing, but even as he convulsed on the ground like a spider with its legs cut off, he laughed.
Thud—
At last, he heard the sound of his creation beginning to move.
The heavy footsteps pounding the earth sounded as though his own heart were beating in time with them.
What leaked from the grotesquely opened mouth was no longer a human voice.
Only a twisted sound came out, like the roar of a beast.
Through the white of its rolled-back eyes, he could dimly see a black figure approaching him.
A figure?
No—look at that sword. He must be a knight.
His warped mind finally came back to him, and Kalipa staggered to his feet.
When the head he’d thrown back settled back into place, a rough voice was spat from his throat.
“Have you come to stop me?”
“Yeah.”
“Have you come to die?”
“No.”
It was a very short answer. And what, he didn’t like it?
If he could place this knight’s head at the end of the banner marking the glorious beginning of Jeol-myeol—
Once again, that surge of exhilaration returned, and Kalipa smiled in a grotesque way.
“A truly brave knight, aren’t you? I’ll even give you the honor of hanging from my banner. Legs, arms? Or perhaps your neck. Choose for yourself. I’ll let you pick which part gets displayed, specially for you.”
Ha ha!
Then Kalipa burst into laughter, and Evan simply watched the black mage with a steady gaze.
There was nothing in those eyes but calm. Kalipa cut off his laughter and stared at the knight gripping his sword.
Then the knight slowly opened his mouth.
“You think I’m going to die here?”
“...Of course.”
Don’t ask—
But the rest of the words never came. No, it would be more accurate to say they could no longer continue.
Kalipa thought what lay before him was an illusion.
Swish—
His enormous creation, sliced apart in a single instant by a white sword strike and brought crashing down.
How could he possibly believe what he saw with his own eyes?
“...Huh?”
Drip, drip—
But when he felt the black liquid splashing onto his cheek, Kalipa could only stare blankly ahead.
What he should have been seeing was darkness, and only darkness.
And yet what was this white light shining before him?
“You’re the one who’s going to die.”
At those words, his body froze stiff.
All this time, he’d thought he was the sort who never felt fear.
Even a pitch-black void where nothing could be seen, even death standing right before his eyes.
He had never once thought of those things as frightening.
And yet—ah.
Rising out of the darkness was not only white light.
That green light!
Those green eyes, sharp as repeated thrusts of a sword into his body, were locking him in place.
At that moment, Kalipa felt fear for the first time.
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