Duel (3)
I had run through battlefields as a mercenary since I was very young, and in the end, I had survived.
That didn’t mean I had lasted until the end because I was the strongest person on those battlefields. Not by a long shot.
I was still far too young back then, and there were countless people stronger than me. More than that, in the chaos of war, your own strength didn’t mean all that much unless you were on the level of a Master.
There were only two things that mattered if you wanted to survive a war: never let your guard down, and never pity your enemy.
At first glance, they sounded simple enough, but I had seen countless people throw their lives away because they failed to keep to those two rules.
That was why, when I fought someone, I never let my guard down—and I never held back.
And that was no exception this time.
Bang!
“Ugh!”
Bang!
“Y-you damned bastard! I told you to stop, I clearly warned you—”
Bang!
I grabbed Ricardo by the back of the head and, without a word, slammed his skull into the floor again and again.
At the very least, I intended to keep doing this until the word surrender came out of his mouth.
Crash!
Let’s be honest. Ricardo was strong.
He was far stronger than the half-baked knights you usually saw on the battlefield.
Because even if his skill was immature and incomplete, the fact that he could manifest Aura already made Ricardo little short of a human weapon.
That was exactly why I didn’t go easy on him. No—why I couldn’t go easy on him.
I wasn’t some great saint who would hold back against an opponent who might even be stronger than I was.
And I certainly wasn’t soft enough to show mercy to someone who was openly baring their killing intent at me.
If I wasn’t going to do it at all, fine. But once I made up my mind, I finished it cleanly.
A dog that had fallen into a ditch would eventually crawl back out and bite someone.
The only way to prevent that in advance was to beat it hard enough to instill fear—so badly it would never dare bite a person again.
So right now, in this very moment, I would thoroughly trample Ricardo and crush him into defeat.
That was the way I knew how to win.
Crash!
After smashing Ricardo’s head into the training hall floor several times, cracks began to spiderweb through the stone beneath us.
But while the floor cracked, Ricardo’s head looked perfectly fine. His skull was tougher than I’d expected.
“I-I surr—”
“What was that? I can’t hear you.”
He still hadn’t clearly said the word surrender. Which meant it wasn’t surrender.
So there was no reason for me to stop slamming his head into the floor.
Just as I raised my arm high again to bring him down one more time—
“That’s enough. Stop now.”
The swordsmanship professor, who had somehow come to stand beside me, caught my arm.
“...Professor?”
“Cadet Ricardo is already incapable of continuing. Any further attack is forbidden.”
At that, I looked down at Ricardo’s face and saw that his eyes had already lost focus.
As I panted hard and stared at him, the swordsmanship instructor calmly announced the result of the duel.
“By the result of this duel, Ricardo, acting as Eli’s proxy, is no longer in a state to continue. Therefore, the outcome of this duel is...”
“Eli’s defeat, and Sian’s victory.”
****
“Ahahaha! You did it! You really did it, Sian!”
After winning the duel against Ricardo, Cartesia wore the happiest expression I had ever seen on her face.
“I figured you wouldn’t show mercy even if our dear brother was your opponent, but I still never imagined you’d actually grind that idiot’s face into the floor.”
Even as she said it, she couldn’t stop laughing, as if the whole situation delighted her beyond measure.
“...Hm. Did I mess up somehow? He is the crown prince, after all. Maybe slamming his head into the ground like that was a bit much?”
From my point of view, I’d chosen that route because it was far more restrained than drawing a blade and settling things with blood. But now that I thought about it, maybe it hadn’t been such a pretty thing to do.
Besides, Ricardo had been a formidable opponent. Even if he’d failed to use his abilities at the right moment and lost to me so pathetically, under normal circumstances he wasn’t someone I should have been able to beat that easily.
I thought that underestimating—or going easy on—someone that strong was, in itself, an insult.
“No, you didn’t do anything wrong at all. Isn’t that what a duel is, after all? Even if you end up getting hurt yourself, you do it to hurt the other person. Your duel with Ricardo was legitimate, and even the witnesses acknowledged it. At this point, the academy board can’t say a thing about the actual content of the duel. Not even His Majesty can really say otherwise.”
“...Even the emperor can’t object to the result of a duel? So long as it’s a legitimate duel?”
“That’s what I’m saying. If someone could just overturn a duel’s result based on their own power, who in the world would ever agree to duel? The only thing I regret is that I did want you to at least crack our splendid brother’s skull a little more... but well, that’s already in the past.”
With that, Cartesia spoke in a leisurely tone, sounding as though she truly had nothing at all to worry about.
“So for now, let’s just relax and wait to see what the board will go on about regarding this duel’s result. By now, they’ve probably got their feet on fire from hearing you won, haven’t they?”
But something still sat uncomfortably in the back of my mind, so I couldn’t celebrate my victory as purely as Cartesia did.
There was something I absolutely had to see with my own eyes.
“...Sorry, but I think I’m going to stop by the recovery room.”
“The recovery room? Why? Wait—did you get hurt during the duel?”
Cartesia looked at me with alarm, clearly worried, and I gave her a wry smile.
“I’m not the one who got hurt. I was just thinking I should check on Ricardo.”
“My brother? Why on earth do you want to check on that man?”
“He was injured because of me, so I at least want to see what condition he’s in.”
“You beat him half to death a minute ago, and now you want to act like a good person?”
Cartesia snorted with laughter and gave my back a light shove. It was her way of telling me to hurry back and play with her afterward.
It seemed I had been rough enough on Ricardo that Cartesia’s mood had become wonderfully generous.
After getting her permission, I quickly made my way toward the recovery room.
And unlike when I’d been standing in front of Cartesia, my face was cold as ice.
Something’s wrong.
This duel had been full of things I couldn’t understand from beginning to end.
First of all, there was the fact that Eli hadn’t stepped forward herself, and Ricardo had come out as her proxy.
Of course, judging by the killing intent Ricardo had shown me before the duel, it was clear he had disliked me for a very long time.
So it wasn’t impossible that he’d asked Eli to let him serve as her proxy in order to get a shot at me.
But wasn’t the real reason this duel had been arranged in the first place as part of a plan to drive me out of Lutrra?
And yet this plan, supposedly devised by the cleverest of the lot—Letitia or Lobelia—was this sloppy? So sloppy that simply taking down Ricardo in a duel would be enough to end everything they’d planned?
No way.
Most importantly, I’d seen it clearly.
The moment Ricardo was crushed under my hand just now, Letitia and Lobelia hadn’t looked flustered at all. They’d looked utterly calm.
Those were not the faces of losers.
Unless, of course, they were the faces of victors watching everything unfold exactly as planned.
That was why, in this moment, my instincts were telling me something on their own.
Where I needed to go to face those girls—and learn the truth.
Step.
Lost in thought as I walked, I soon found myself standing in front of the recovery room.
And the door to the room... was open just a crack.
Enough that I could clearly overhear whatever conversation was taking place inside.
“.....”
I quietly suppressed my presence and listened in on the voices coming from inside.
After a moment, I could hear Letitia and Lobelia speaking to each other, their voices very faint but unmistakable.
“Tch. What an idiot. I can’t believe he actually won. I figured this was roughly how it would go the moment he started strutting around all smug.”
“See? Didn’t I tell you? Our crown prince is just a fool who was born royal and used up all the luck in his life just by existing. Though... I guess that’s also the only thing that makes him even remotely attractive.”
“That’s a little harsh, considering he’s supposed to be your lover in public. Shouldn’t you be whispering sweet nothings to the man who stepped forward for your sake and ended up collapsing unconscious?”
“Still, looking at him like this does make him a little lovable. It’s almost impressive, really—how neatly he does exactly what we expected of him. What an absurdly obedient man.”
“Speaking of which, I honestly wish our brother looked even half as much like this man. If he did, I wouldn’t have had to keep fawning over him with those ridiculous ‘I’ll gift you a sword’ lines and all that.”
My heart thudded violently.
I felt sick.
I didn’t want to hear anymore. I wanted nothing more than to turn around and leave right now.
I prayed desperately. Please, don’t say that one thing. You can insult me all you want. You can resent me for not giving you a richer life all these years, for not raising you in comfort.
So please, just don’t say that one thing—
“At last, the final piece is in place. The last piece needed to make sure our brother gets thrown out of the academy.”
But in the end, the cruel truth I had tried so hard to avoid hearing spilled from Letitia’s mouth anyway.
“At last, this means we can stop being family with our brother. And I won’t have to pretend to be a good little younger sister anymore, either.”
“Ah, if I’d known things would turn out this way, I would’ve preferred it if Sian had never been my brother from the start.”
I had no choice but to accept it now.
I was wrong.
I had been wrong this whole time.
My little sisters had stopped thinking of me as family a long, long time ago.
The only person who had ever believed we were one family...
was me.
The world of family I had believed in had finally collapsed.
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