A Being of Godhood
"Lord Bjorn, the water is here."
"......"
"You've sweated a great deal. I'll bring a towel at once."
In the rear courtyard of Lighthouse Castle, Barton Wigner watched Amber brush past him and turned to me with the look of a man who could not make the scene add up.
"Now just what is all this, I ask you?"
"What? Barton Wigner. You didn't go home?"
"How many times are you going to make me say it?! I passed the second exam, I tell you!"
The duel between Amber and me that had set little Lighthouse Village buzzing passed without further remark, and the second examination went ahead on schedule. Barton Wigner had sat it in the Lighthouse Order's sword forms, and mercifully he had not made a mockery of my instruction—he succeeded in demonstrating all eleven forms.
"Oh, right. Quivering like a newborn fawn the whole time?"
The trouble was that Barton had forced the forms through more than he had performed them. The instructors cocked their heads and ordered him to demonstrate again, and when that demand passed a third time, Lighthouse Master Sir Ragnar stepped in himself and handed down the notice of passage. Barton, backed into a mental corner, lost the strength in his legs the moment he heard it and fainted outright. He looked so much like a fawn fresh from the womb that he earned the name Knight of the Deer before he was even dubbed.
"Ahem. I passed, and that's the end of it, isn't it?"
"Don't go around telling people you learned swordwork under me. Amber was a hundred times better than you."
Amber had sat all three subjects of the second examination. She had arrived already a Sword User, so that was a pass from the start; water-walking she cleared without particular difficulty; and even the Lighthouse Order's sword forms, her one weak point, she passed with room to spare. Worthy, indeed, of the top graduate of the Human Lighthouse Order in the Esteria Chronicles.
"Amber was a Sword User from the start, mind you. Not that any of it would look like much to your eyes, Lord Bjorn. Even the instructors were left speechless by your art, I'll have you know."
I had sat all three subjects as well. Where I differed from Amber was that I had cleared the three of them at once.
"Walking on the water with your sword wrapped in aura, running the Order's forms all the while. Once a man's a Sword Expert, is that the sort of thing just anyone can do?"
Barton let it out in open admiration, as if he were seeing it again. From the look of him, the plan to brand Sword Expert into every mind had worked. Among the knights of Lighthouse Village, at least, no one would be left doubting my ability.
"Enough. What's the point of saving face on an exam you pass just by making Sword User?"
"Setting that aside—how in the world did you win Amber over? Duel terms or no, I never dreamed that insolent bitch would mind you so tamely."
"What are you talking about? Win her over?"
This time I was the one staring at Barton, dumbfounded. Who had done what to whom?
"I've brought the towel, Master."
The moment her name came up, Amber was there with the towel in hand. At the word Master, a sigh slipped out between my lips.
"M-Master?!"
"This is the end that awaits a lady knight who loses a duel. Barton, you stood as witness yourself. What exactly is surprising you?"
"Then you truly gave him your body and your heart—hk!"
"Do you require anything further, Master? If you command it, I can undress right here."
My head was genuinely spinning. Against the migraine rolling in, I ground at my temples and spoke through a sigh.
"Barton, none of what you're imagining happened. Amber, toy with me in that nonsense way one more time and I will make you answer for it."
"I must have gotten too carried away teasing Barton. But wasn't it you, Lord Bjorn, who ordered me to offer body and heart? I have only done as I was commanded."
In the few days since she had been let out of the cells, Amber had had eyes for nothing but needling me, the way a mischievous older sister might. The trouble was that I wasn't used to speaking with women in the first place, and so I had no answer ready for teasing pitched that high. In the duel I had said those things on purpose, to provoke her. What kind of lunatic went around talking like that to women on an ordinary day?
Once she caught my discomfort, she leaned into it, throwing out sexual jokes more blatant still, solely to put me on the spot. She had sworn a knight's oath, but the way I had gouged at her wounds during the duel had clearly left a grudge. Even my threat to charge her if she did it once more earned only a shrug, and then this bullshit: a vassal's sin was her liege's sin, so when the day came she would swallow her tears and collect on her lord's crime herself.
Hah. All of it because I, her liege, lacked the strength. The fault ran deep in me—who else was there to blame? If anything, I ought to be grateful. Amber's conduct had pushed this world one step closer to a trashy, assembly-line power fantasy.
"So why have you been pulling this bullshit since morning? Did I order that, too?"
"You would call waiting on you bullshit?"
Amber held out the towel and glared.
And why was she the one angry?
Under that look, I began to wonder whether recruiting her had been a mistake.
"The Human Lighthouse Order is the knight order of House de Jevitz, and are you not the eldest son of House de Jevitz?"
"On paper, it's the Emperor's order."
"On paper, the Holy Cross Knights belong to the Papacy as well. In any case, I thought you of all people might know what the final examination is. The second exam is over, and the instructors haven't said a word. It unsettles me. They are not the sort to simply leave us be."
"What, you don't know the final exam? Everyone in the North already does."
"I am from the southeast."
"As am I, come to that."
Barton, having apparently made his own sense of things, packed his bewilderment away and put a word in. Fair enough. Southeast-born, and raised in the country besides—they might genuinely not know.
Jin asked it of me, apparently curious himself.
Unlike the first examination, which changed with every cohort, the second and the final had been the same since the founding of the Human Lighthouse Order. And it was the substance of that final trial, more than anything, that had given the Order's entrance examination its infamy.
"The final exam... Calling it an exam feels strange, honestly. Easier if you think of it as a rite of passage."
"So it's easy, then?"
"If you're lucky."
"What is it, that you keep talking around it?"
Amber and Barton were both watching me, faces bright with curiosity, so I gave them the answer.
The moment the word demon left my mouth, both their faces locked. Jin came back at me, thick with disbelief.
At most we grab a few icicle hounds, the very lowest of demons, off the outskirts of the Homeland and hold a ceremony.
What are you so worried about?
Relax. It's a rite they hold every year. Nothing's going to happen.
The only one actually seized by fear was Jin. Amber's face had already gone calm, as if to ask when it had ever stiffened, and Barton tilted his head and asked me again.
"I, ah... don't know if I ought to say this, but... demons are just a lie the religious lot cooked up, aren't they? I heard they look at the monsters living in the Homeland and go calling them demons and whatnot. Is it those monsters we're meant to catch?"
"Say that where the Holy Cross Knights can hear you, and your head comes off."
"Those gentlemen are too busy thrashing heretics to spare a glance for a country bumpkin like me. And I'll tell you, no matter how much demonology I study here, the whole business still sits wrong."
"You'll know soon enough whether it's real or a lie."
"When you put it that way, it sounds real."
Amber, it seemed, believed in her heart that there were no such things as demons. For crying out loud. What did she imagine the Human Lighthouse Order was doing out here, taking the sea wind at the empty end of the continent? The positivists swarming the capital these days were spoiling perfectly innocent ground. The advance of scholarship mattered, yes—but it had spread now, of all times, just as the demons were preparing to come south.
"From what I hear, the magic ship's refit is nearly done. We leave for the Homeland within a fortnight."
No need to lecture them, point by point, on how wrong they were. They would realize it for themselves soon enough.
Candidates who had passed the second examination were given basic instruction—chivalry, a code of conduct for battle, demonology, and the like. All the rest was free time.
The last ease before the road down to Stemwind. I needed to sink into personal training and raise my survival rate, even a little.
I had been composing myself in the rear courtyard of Lighthouse Castle, sunk deep in the mental art, when Jin's word of approval snapped my eyes open.
"Then at last!"
Until now, to use the Fire Crystal I had to pass it through my dantian, neutralize it in my own mana, and only then draw on it. A stopgap, forced on me because my body could not endure the crystal as it was. So even after reaching the middle tier of Sword Expert, I had done nothing of note beyond conditioning my body and drilling the mental art. Impatience had just begun to stir when Jin's approval finally came down.
Focus on the Fire Crystal? What kind of bullshit was that? There was nothing to focus on or not—it was already blasting its own claim out of my chest, fierce as anything. Look, even now... huh?
When I focused as Jin had said, the Fire Crystal lay coiled in my chest in a form unlike anything I had known it as. As far as my body had prepared itself, the crystal seemed to be reclaiming its original shape as well.
Jin's directions had turned thorny. Draw on the Fire Crystal's strength without using my own mana? That was no different from being told to use chopsticks with no chopsticks. And yet the flame rising from the crystal drew itself out thin as thread, as if it had read my heart. I knew it by instinct. The Fire Crystal was granting me its power of its own accord.
An old lover he still couldn't forget? Talk like that and it sounded as if I'd stolen her right out of his arms.
"You told me to focus. What kind of teacher lets his mind wander?"
Forcing a ragged groan back down my throat, I focused on leading the mana pulled from the crystal out to my fingertips. Only now did I understand why Jin had declared it impossible to wield the Fire Crystal's power in full. Even this merest sliver, unneutralized by my own mana, blazed as if it would burn my insides away with every inch I drew it. My arm writhed as though it had been laid on a hot griddle, screaming to be saved.
In that moment, my right hand caught fire with heat. It shone a searing scarlet, like iron fresh from the forge, with the force to melt whatever it touched. Was this a color a human body could even give off? I stared down at my own hand, dazed.
"So this is the Fire Crystal's power in truth. Touch this flame, and any strong man dies—is that it?"
The boundless potential the thing held left me shaking my head. If I could only wield it properly, there would be nothing in the world to fear.
If it came to that, what would a Sword Master matter? I could bring even Sword Saint Landeros to his knees.
Jin meant that if my body grew stronger, I could draw out the Fire Crystal's power and fashion him a temporary body. Endure the output, and I could summon Jin—one of the Three Gods—and sweep the field clean. It was no different from having gained an ultimate.
"Heh heh heh. Step up, Kanniel. You're dead."
"Who is going to die, sir?"
I turned toward the voice. Helga Sentle, senior knight of the Lighthouse Order, was standing there.