The Youngest Sword Seeker (3)
The capital of the empire, Camelot.
Only about a month earlier, Najin had visited the capital as a tourist. This time he found himself pressing far deeper into the city—into places where, under ordinary circumstances, he would never have been allowed to set foot.
Boom!
The moment the gate guards spotted the carriage engraved with the imperial crest, they stamped their feet and snapped into salutes. They opened the way so the carriage could pass without stopping. There was no need to verify identities. The imperial crest itself was proof enough.
And so the carriage rolled on without pause into the capital’s depths. Past towering buildings toward the center, then deeper still into the center… At some point the scenery changed.
They had entered the heart of the imperial capital.
The empire’s core, thoroughly protected by every kind of artifact and magical implement. The instant they crossed the barrier, Najin felt the very flow of the air reverse. Air of impossible purity. The mana saturating the atmosphere was under perfect control.
Through the carriage window, soaring spires came into view. Magic Towers, they were called. Those towering Magic Towers greeted Najin as if announcing that he had truly arrived at the empire’s heart.
The carriage made for one tower in particular.
A Magic Tower administered by the imperial family and filled solely with court mages loyal only to the throne. The carriage halted before the main gate of the Platinum Tower. Najin stepped down and silently looked up at the Platinum Tower rising high into the sky.
It feels a little overwhelming.
-They just threw gold coins at the place. Pure waste of money. Tsk tsk…
Merlin’s tongue-clicking reached him.
She soon began muttering that a proper mage was supposed to find enlightenment in hunger and desperation, and that kids these days, and so on. Najin let it drift in one ear and out the other.
“This way.”
Following the Royal Guard Soltis, Najin walked on. Only after passing through several layers of security barriers was he allowed through the dimensional gate that linked the tower’s upper and lower floors.
Flash.
Beyond the bluish gate, a vast open space greeted him. At its center stood a woman with cascading blonde hair.
An eight-circle archmage.
Lord of the Platinum Tower, Cypria Gachevska.
The empire’s great mage regarded Najin with listless eyes. Fatigue clung to those eyes; her whole expression said she found the entire world a nuisance, as if she had been dragged out of her laboratory against her will.
“Haa…”
She exhaled a long breath and brushed her hair back. When the Royal Guard stepped aside, she crooked a finger at Najin—come forward.
The Arhevetz Special Law was under imperial jurisdiction. Displaying such an attitude while enforcing it was thoroughly disrespectful, yet Royal Guard Soltis remained silent. Any ordinary mage would have earned a harsh rebuke…
But Cypria Gachevska was the exception.
She was so anomalous within the empire that a special law had been written solely for her. Considering that four-tenths of the artifacts blanketing the capital of Camelot had been created and were still managed by her hand, it was hardly surprising.
“Stand right there. Don’t move.”
Najin took his place at the center of the circuit as ordered. Beneath his feet, intricate circuits meshed and turned like the gears of a precision clockwork.
Click.
Cypria snapped her fingers.
As circuit locked with circuit, a whirring sound rang out, and flames flared up before Najin. The flames shifted from black to red, from red to pure white.
It looks like Cambria’s ranking chart.
-Similar idea. They use that color sequence when subdividing and distinguishing the grade of a soul.
The grade of the soul?
-Yeah.
Merlin confirmed.
-Climbing realms is ultimately the process of the soul sublimating, remember? The soul’s color isn’t literally those hues, but they express it that way for easy distinction.
From black all the way to platinum.
With every sublimation the soul draws closer to the stars, so it isn’t entirely wrong, Merlin muttered.
-Black, red, white, platinum. Four broad tiers. This is to confirm whether you’ve reached the Sword Seeker realm.
Najin looked ahead.
The flames burning before him were white.
-White is proof you’ve reached the Sword Seeker realm.
Even as Merlin spoke, Cypria, standing in front of Najin, gave a subtle look. She gazed into empty space and tilted her head, as if signaling that the next stage could begin.
“….”
Narrowing his eyes, Najin sensed a faint wavering where her gaze rested. A recognition-hindering barrier or something similar, perhaps. He looked away again.
Then his eyes met Cypria’s. She regarded him with a faintly awkward expression before letting out a short breath.
After the sigh she grasped at the empty air.
A staff now rested in her hand. She raised it and struck the ground. With a crisp thwack, circles rose behind her back.
Eight circles.
The gear-like circles rotated slowly as she leveled the staff at Najin. Waves spreading from its tip wrapped around his body.
Whirr, whirrr…
The gears enveloping him began to turn. With every span they moved, letters started combining above them. Hadn’t she said those gears read the information engraved on the soul? The thought made Najin mutter inwardly.
This isn’t going to expose Excalibur, is it?
-What?
Merlin’s reply was pure incredulity.
-Hey. How many circles does that girl in front of you have?
Eight.
-Right. Eight circles?
Her voice was triumphant. He couldn’t see her—he hadn’t closed his eyes—but he could picture her crossing her arms and giving a little shrug.
-I’ve got ten. Ten, I said. For reference, the gap between eight and nine is already huge, but the difference between nine and ten is twice that again.
Is that so?
-Obviously! Nine is incompleteness; ten is perfection. I’m a perfect, flawless great mage. Some brat like her piercing my recognition hindrance? Then I’ll cheerfully admit defeat and retire. I’ll stake everything on it.
To break my recognition hindrance you’d have to drag the Witch of Kamran right under my nose at the very least. Merlin snorted as she muttered.
-Still…
She continued.
-Your age will get out. The magic was cast to check age in the first place.
I suppose so.
-The moment your age is exposed, there’s no going back. You know that much, right?
He knew. Once his age came out, every kind of attention would pour down on him. But he had already steeled himself for that much.
I’ll be revealing Excalibur later anyway. Shouldn’t I start getting used to it now?
-You’re good with words, at least.
Merlin laughed.
By then letters were rising above the gears.
-Ready?
Ready? He had been ready from the moment he left the underground city. Najin answered the question with silence, and the letters floating above the gears completed themselves.
What formed was a two-digit number.
Eighteen.
Cypria Gachevska’s eyes flew wide.
Lord of the Platinum Tower, Cypria Gachevska.
She was thoroughly exhausted. She hadn’t slept properly in days, and a mountain of artifacts still needed immediate tuning. She had wanted only to finish her work and rest when the untimely summons arrived.
-Enforcement of the Arhevetz Special Law?
-Yes, direct orders from the department…
-Why dump that on me?
-Apparently the subject of the bill is quite special.
She knew of the Arhevetz Special Law’s existence.
But enforcing it hardly required a powerhouse of her caliber. It was like using a cow-butchering knife to kill a chicken—no, like sending a great mage who hunted dragons after a goblin.
So she made her annoyance plain.
She grumbled and asked whether it really had to be done.
Yet the department charged with the Arhevetz Special Law even produced imperial authorization. After reviewing the subject’s information and records they had concluded that “the disguised age might actually be the real age,” or some such nonsense.
Making a fuss over nothing.
Cypria clicked her tongue.
The Platinum Tower Lord’s time was precious beyond measure. If this turned out to be a fuss, she would file a formal protest with the responsible department. The tower’s budget would get a nice little boost.
Thinking that, she crooked a finger.
She had already confirmed with the soul-flame that the youth before her had reached the Sword Seeker realm. What remained was age. The disguised age was twenty-eight, wasn’t it? A Sword Seeker-level powerhouse at twenty-eight.
What a load of crap.
Cypria let out a hollow laugh.
Was the Sword Seeker realm that easy? Even when the Sword Saint—called an unparalleled genius—reached it at thirty, the world had been turned upside down. Likewise, when she herself, once called the girl beloved by magic, reached the sixth circle at thirty-four, the entire magical academia had been shaken.
And they expected it in the twenties?
And they were seriously considering it?
Did this field look easy to you people?
Talk sense. Talk actual sense.
Obviously a forged identity. With that thought she waited for the result. Information began combining above the gears. No traces of artificial manipulation on the soul—pure white. Demonic energy likewise undetected…
Data rose one after another.
Finally the time engraved on the soul itself appeared.
Eighteen. See? Just as I thought—identity forged after all. Not twenty-eight but eighteen… Wait. What?
“….”
Blink. Cypria blinked. She stared again at the number floating before her. It still had not changed. Eighteen. Eighteen.
“Uung…?”
Is that so. Did I pull too many all-nighters?
I must be tired from lack of sleep. Definitely seeing things. She shifted her gaze. Beyond the recognition-hindering barrier stood the supervisors watching the proceedings.
Their faces were pale past pale, turned pure white. Hearing them mutter “eighteen… eighteen…,” Cypria’s head slowly tilted.
Lord of the Platinum Tower, Cypria Gachevska.
To question the magic of the empire’s great archmage was an enormous discourtesy and rudeness. The supervisors therefore could not dare raise doubts; they only stared with eyes wide enough to tear, but…
“No, that doesn’t make sense.”
Cypria herself could not accept it either.
She steadied her breath and struck the staff down again. The gears wrapped around Najin’s body once more at high speed. More precise and meticulous than ever, without even omitting the chant this time, she recited the magic.
Thirty seconds later.
Only the same number—eighteen—floated above the gears. Silence swallowed the chamber. It was not that the supervisors’ murmurs were blocked by the recognition-hindering barrier. They were truly silent.
Shock beyond measure steals every word.
The great mage, the Royal Guard, the supervisors who had handled this work for decades—every one of them fell silent.
“My real name is Najin.”
Only Najin spoke.
“I am eighteen this year.”
He answered with a smile.
At that utterly innocent voice, Royal Guard Soltis, standing a few steps behind, slapped his own forehead with his palm.
Sword Seeker at the age of eighteen.
An unprecedented, unparalleled event.
It did not even take a single day for the rumor to spread and the entire empire to be turned upside down.
“What? Eighteen?”
The heart of the empire.
The highest place in the Briton Empire.
“If my memory is not mistaken, the youngest Sword Seeker was thirty, was he not? I recall Sir Caron the Sword Saint reaching it at that age.”
The man seated upon the throne widened his eyes.
At his question the retainers bowed their heads in affirmation.
“The youngest Sword Expert as well—I recall Sir Caron claiming it at twenty-three.”
That, too, was accurate.
It was Sword Saint Caron who had shattered the records for youngest Sword Expert, Sword Seeker, and Sword Master—twenty-three, thirty, and forty-seven respectively. Those were the marks Caron had left. Even then the empire had been turned upside down.
An impossible story. Was Caron actually a bio-weapon manufactured by the Magic Towers? Fabricated. A lie…
Plenty of such rumors had flown even then. The man blinked several times and reread the report. The number written there still had not changed. A swordsman who had reached the Sword Seeker realm at the age of eighteen. Najin.
Not even the twenties.
A Sword Seeker in his teens?
“Heh…”
He let out a hollow laugh.
Amusingly, the three possibilities that first occurred to him were: homunculus, demon contractor, larva of Kamran. All three were dismissed.
Soul: pure white.
No artificial traces.
Not a scrap of demonic energy detected. Re-examined with fifty-seven additional artifacts; results identical.
It was the report submitted by Platinum Tower Lord Cypria Gachevska. Her word was trustworthy. Yet the thing was so hard to believe even with both eyes open that the man rubbed his face.
“Place of origin?”
“Unknown. He said he could not answer.”
“Bloodline?”
“No matches within the empire.”
“Is that so.”
The man decided quickly.
If the youth would not reveal his origin, there was no need to press deeply. With no matching bloodline inside the empire, foreign origin was likely—or some unspeakable origin.
Either way, it was nothing they needed to know.
What the empire desired was simply a capable talent loyal to the empire. So long as the origin was neither Kamran nor the land of demons, it scarcely mattered.
“Leave that part alone. Dispatch a separate investigation team. Quietly, and in secret.”
If he were foreign, other nations might try to claim him under some pretext. That part would have to be handled with the utmost discretion.
“But more important than anything else—”
The man rose from the throne.
Platinum hair like starlight cascaded with the motion. The one who stood above all people, the emperor of the empire, fluttered his sleeve with a smile.
“—is confirming that person with my own two eyes.”
I will confirm him myself.
Summon him here. With that declaration the emperor of the empire shifted his gaze. There stood the sword of the empire, always steadfast at his post.
The Empire’s First Sword.
The Empire’s First Horn.
Looking upon the empire’s first pillar, Gerd, the emperor smiled.
“Sir Gerd.”
“Command me.”
“Summon the Sword Masters. Should not the empire’s three Sword Masters stand together at this historic moment?”
The summons was issued.
It was the first Sword Master summons since the subjugation of the fallen star “Full Bloom Moon” twenty-one years earlier.