In Search of a Fateful Encounter

The carriage rolled on without rest, and the journey was ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠dull beyond belief. In the usual trash novels the road forever coughed up bandits and their lackeys, but sadly, nothing of the sort happened in the north. Any moron living up here with just enough brains to try robbing the knights of the Human Lighthouse Order had already been weeded out by natural selection.

The trip was long and tedious, so from time to time I called Helga inside. Whenever I did, she grumbled through the exact same routine.

"I don't understand it. Enlisting in the Human Lighthouse Order, of all things."

"What's not to understand? A man wants to learn the sword and become a knight. Is that so hard to grasp?"

"Wouldn't it be better to join some other order and start as an apprentice knight? Someone as clever as you, Lord Bjorn, can hardly be ignorant of how infamous the Human Lighthouse Order's entrance trial is."

Helga wasn't wrong. The Human Lighthouse Order ran on an entirely different track from the other knightly orders, and to see where they diverged, one first had to start with whom the Order belonged to, and how it had ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠been born.

Follow its history all the way back, and at the very end stood the royal knights of the First King, ruler of Esteria's first kingdom. The First King had come from the coast of the Homeland, humanity's old country, and everyone around him had been sea-folk raised on salt water. The first kingdom was gone, but a handful of those royal knights survived and struggled on at the far edge of the Esteria continent to protect what remained of humanity. That was the origin of the Human Lighthouse Order. In short, it was a knightly order with the character of marines besides.

Posted to Lighthouse Village in particular, you put out to sea on patrol every single day, and in a crisis you were expected to serve as bait to slow the demons' advance. You had no choice but to be at home on the water. So they prized surviving the sea as highly as swordsmanship itself. The Order's infamous entrance trial was precisely that — adapting to the ocean. Much like the modern Navy SEALs.

On top of that, the Human Lighthouse Order was, on paper, an institution under the Emperor's direct command, with His Majesty as supreme commander. That was why its head was called a commander, and not a captain. Of course the Emperor was a commander in name only. In practice the Order belonged to House de Jevitz — which did not mean they took in the half-competent.

It was for that very reason the current Emperor, hoping to set the Order properly beneath his hand, had granted Canniel a dukedom and tried to summon him to the capital, only for Canniel to refuse while holding forth about sacred duty and the like. The affair was exceedingly famous.

But that was all setting-lore, so I'll pass over it. What mattered was that the entrance trial was dangerous enough for a fair number of people to die in it every year. It was not a test a fourteen-year-old child could be expected to endure.

"Why? Does it sit wrong with you, having me as a subordinate? Speak as you like, Senior Knight Helga."

"No — that isn't it!"

"Honestly, it isn't a trial a fourteen-year-old ought to attempt. But you know as well as I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠do that for a Sword Expert, it's a piece of cake."

However brutal and infamous the trial, it was like any other order's: reach Sword User and you were already comfortably over the line. To a Sword Expert, the very backbone of a knightly order, it was no different from a children's game. Helga caught that I meant for her to stop circling the point, let out a sigh, and laid her true feelings bare.

"You already have everything, Lord Bjorn. Not only a gift for the sword, but a brilliant mind as well. I don't believe you need to stake your whole life on swordsmanship alone."

"I'm grateful you're worried for me. But this is a decision that brilliant mind arrived at. I'd like you to trust it."

"...If you go so far as to say that, then I will trust you, and follow."

And so the carriage rolled and rolled, until four days later it reached a village beyond the lands under direct de Jevitz rule. A tiny place, whose only amenity for travelers was a single rundown inn.

"We'll rest here before we go on."

I said it looking out of the carriage. Sunset was still a long way off, and Helga asked, plainly puzzled.

"If we pick up the pace now, we can sleep at the castle tonight."

"I like it here."

"If what I said earlier overstepped and soured your mood, I will apologize."

"I am not throwing a tantrum!"

"Hah... very well."

She had clearly written it off as the whim of a brat just come into puberty. Sorry, but it couldn't be helped.

The little village was called Lothric. A place that scraped its living from the fields, it was now enjoying a boom without precedent, a corundum mine having been discovered not long ago. And in the years to come, the Bjorn de Jevitz who sold his soul to a demon would die here together with Sword Saint Landeros.

Landeros's Holy Sword Galgduval would be driven into the mud alongside the demons' corpses. The deserter who picked the sword up would flee, only to become a single meal for some beast of the hills. And Galgduval would pass into the hands of a young woodcutter who lived looking after his grandmother in a forest hut, far removed from Lothric Village.

That young man was Mion, the protagonist of the Esteria Chronicles. I had set foot in the very village where the hero of the Esteria Chronicles was born to his fate — where he took up Galgduval, gained his fateful encounter, and the great epic began.

The moment I stepped out of the carriage, ash blew into my face. I drew up the hood of my cloak and fastened the clasp, and when I raised the cloth mask a damp, musty smell rushed in all at once.

The people here went about wrapped in gray cloaks, day in and day out, on account of the ash that never stopped flying. Even close acquaintances couldn't tell who was who. So they painted great emblems of their station across the back of the cloak and over the left breast — a medieval do you know who I am?

My cloak was no exception. The crest of House de Jevitz, stamped across my back as big as a gate, laid a heavy pressure over the little village. The villagers didn't dare look me in the eye. They only stole glances from a distance.

As expected, the inn was cramped, with only a handful of rooms. It couldn't house every knight of the Lighthouse Order, so most of them would have to camp nearby.

"I'll camp too."

Tonight I had to find the place where the protagonist had gained his fateful encounter. If I meant to slip off alone after dark, sleeping in the camp was the better choice. Helga dug in at once.

"You may not."

"Why?"

"With ash coming down like this, if we put you outside, who would dare sleep in the inn?"

"I'm about to become an apprentice knight of the Human Lighthouse Order. What does it matter? Planning to pamper me like this then, too?"

"Then, I couldn't say. Now, no."

Her tone was entirely set. I had no intention of bickering over useless protocol.

"I'm the one who insisted we stay here, so it's only right that I sleep outside."

"The Human Lighthouse Order is a knightly order that serves House de Jevitz. Following any order we are given is our duty."

"For all that, you couldn't keep a straight face earlier, when I said we'd rest here."

"...Ahem. In any case, sleep indoors."

"Didn't you say you'd follow any order from House de Jevitz?"

"Serving House de Jevitz is no less important."

"Answer me. Which matters more — following orders, or serving?"

It was a game that would end my way regardless. Once the little fuss had passed, I pitched a small tent in the camp and lay down, turning the Esteria Chronicles over in my mind once more.

Mion had certainly lived somewhere near here as a woodcutter. During the demon invasion, bound in place by a grandmother too frail with age to endure a hard journey and able neither to go nor to stay, he finds a soldier dead near the house, Galgduval clutched in the man's arms. Pursuers after the holy sword soon latch onto him. To survive, Mion takes up the sword and runs, and the place he reaches is the very corundum mine that brought Lothric Village back to life.

The protagonist goes into that mine, and there he meets Jin, sealed away by the demons. The seal, weakened by the long years, shatters in answer to the holy sword, and Jin — asleep through all that age — reveals her radiant form to the world once more.

In a voice that wavered like flame, Jin spoke to Mion.

And so Mion begged a wish of her.

I couldn't help how wretched that passage made me. A proper classic may well be known for its stifling, dragging plots, but a wish like that, begged of the great Jin? He might at least have told her to kill the pursuers.

Whatever I thought of it, that was Mion's wish in the Esteria Chronicles, and Jin granted it by guiding him to a church nearby. Afterward, through every part of the Esteria Chronicles I had read, Jin never appeared again — but the measure of her power could be guessed even from the folktales.

Of them, the old tales wrote this:

She had fallen into the Demon King's trap and been sealed, yes. Even so, Jin's power was transcendent and absolute.

Tonight, my goal was to undo that seal and make a wish. If I could take even the tail end of a fateful encounter from Jin, I might find another road through a future currently running straight into death — raise a vast mansion in the southeast of the Esteria continent, famous for its vineyards, and live pickled in wine and brandy while I spent day and night fucking beautiful maids.

I sat in the tent and meditated, gathering mana in my dantian, for several hours. The sun went down, and around me only the footsteps ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠of the Lighthouse Order's night watch sounded, soft in the quiet.

In the dead of night, I rose slowly.

I had already confirmed the corundum mine's location during the day. It sat halfway up a wild hill nearby. I opened the rough wooden door and stepped through, and a mine broader than I had expected received me. A grown man could stand straight from the entrance and still not brush the ceiling with his head. It only widened as it went deeper — less a mine people had dug than something closer to a cave. Naturally formed pillars of stone held the ceiling fast, and wooden planks had been laid over the path so people could pass.

I called the mine tour to a close there, shut my eyes, and read the flow of magical power. If Jin of the Flame had been sealed in this place, the sealing formation would be pouring out a vast force. However thick the cave walls, they could not hide it entirely.

I was exactly right. Feeling along the outer wall as I wandered the mine, I felt a cold energy gather at my fingertips — so faint that anyone else would have taken it for nothing more than a natural current of mana. So faint that even I, knowing full well what was hidden here, had nearly walked right past it.

"Here."