Valhalla!
Just as the thought of death flashed through my mind, someone stepped in front of me.
It was Zeke.
Clang—!
“Fall back!”
Zeke parried the demon’s blade with his own sword, deep blue aura surging along its edge, then charged straight ahead. In the next instant their swords tangled wildly in midair.
Under normal circumstances the cheap iron sword the demon held should have snapped helplessly before that aura, splitting cleanly into iron and hilt. That did not happen.
Why?
Because the demon was using aura as well—pitch-black aura that suited the word “demon” perfectly.
Yet when I observed more calmly, one fact became clear.
That bastard isn’t whole.
I see. He’s injured.
Yes. Earlier I had been too flustered to notice properly, but the body dueling Zeke was far from normal. Vicious wounds covered him, and the left shoulder that did not grip a sword dangled as though it might tear free at any moment.
The cause of those injuries was not hard to guess.
Merlin’s… knights.
Yes. Them.
Around the moment I reached that conclusion, the Ancestor shouted again.
Zeke won’t last long either. Hurry and possess me!
It certainly looked that way. At a glance Zeke seemed to be pressing the demon, yet somehow—
That guy still has room to spare.
A quiet confidence radiated from him, as if he could brush Zeke aside whenever he chose. So I did not hesitate. I possessed the Ancestor into Golgol.
But—
How long can he last? Five minutes?
Would five minutes be enough? I had no idea. Honestly, I still did not fully understand the Ancestor’s combat strength once he took over a body. I simply had to trust him as far as I could.
And so—
Shield and sword! The greatsword is too heavy for one hand!
“Yes!”
I handed over the ultimate shield Kracion and the longsword. The Ancestor charged straight into the fray. Zeke looked briefly startled by the sudden reinforcement, yet as an outstanding knight he recovered his composure almost at once.
Thus the two-against-one battle began.
The Ancestor and Zeke pressed the demon with the seamless coordination of brothers who had trained side by side their entire lives. Even I was astonished.
This strong?
Zeke’s strength I already knew. But the Ancestor?
I knew he was a legend in his youth, yet…
Right now he occupied Golgol’s body—a fragile skeleton. He was not even using his preferred greatsword, only a longsword. And more than that—
He can’t use aura. One slip and the weapon flies out of his hand.
In short, he fought under every possible handicap. Even so, the Ancestor conducted the battle as though he had spent a lifetime fighting exactly this way. He truly led it.
Clang, ka-ga-ga-gak—!
Whenever the demon’s assault grew fierce he drove forward with the shield and broke its rhythm. When the pressure shifted onto him he slipped aside with uncanny timing and pushed Zeke to the front. Zeke supported him in turn; the instant Zeke looked about to fall, the shield was already there.
Advance, withdraw. Block, strike. Every transition from offense to defense and back again flowed as smoothly as a well-rehearsed play. Lacking aura, he could not match Zeke’s raw destructive power, yet sheer experience more than compensated.
Still, something felt off. Watching that near-acrobatic offense, an unease I could not name kept gnawing at me.
Is it because of mana?
No. Looking at the flow of the fight, they would corner the demon and finish it before five minutes were up. Time was not the problem.
Then why?
I understood the true shape of that anxiety only moments later.
Damn it—!
The Ancestor’s cry of alarm rang out together with a sharp metallic clang. A sword spun through the air.
“Ah!”
The scream belonged to Zeke. The blade that had rocketed skyward was his.
What? What just happened?
I had watched the entire exchange yet still could not grasp how the situation had flipped. All I could tell was that the demon had used some extremely high-level sword technique to fling Zeke’s weapon away.
So, then—what becomes of a knight who loses his sword in the middle of battle?
The answer is simple.
Death.
Shit—!
The Ancestor lunged with the shield raised, but the demon, as though he had expected it, simply shouldered him aside. Then he adjusted his grip and charged straight at Zeke.
Perhaps Zeke had already accepted his end. A resolute light suddenly filled his eyes.
In that fleeting instant our gazes met. It should have been impossible both in time and space, yet somehow I heard his voice.
Zeke was saying—
—Run.
Immediately afterward he flung both arms wide, as if offering his heart while intending to pin the enemy with his own body.
Rage exploded inside me.
Valhalla, for the love of—!
What the hell am I doing right now?!
Who am I?
Khtun Falaon!
A warrior who, had he been born in the North, would have stopped Ragnarok; had he been born in Greece, would have ended the Gigantomachy. Odin? Heracles? Mere ordinary men who simply happened to be born in ages without me!
And yet here I am, hiding behind others and watching like a spectator!
Valhal—laaaaaaaaa!
I roared inwardly and hauled up every scrap of fury. The warrior’s blood that had been sleeping inside me surged; scorching heat flooded my skull.
But what could I actually do?!
Think. Think!
No.
A warrior acts with the heart, not the head.
The instant that truth struck me—
Something blocked inside my mind burst open.
Every necromantic concept I had seen, heard, and felt from the moment of the Blood Awakening Ceremony—when I received Death’s Blessing—until now shattered into fragments…
and then linked together like chains.
…Mist. Ghoul. Zombie. Skeleton. Death. Bone. Corpse. Domain. Rage. Sorrow. Caster. Demon…
Those linked concepts took the most familiar form I could currently express and manifested in the world.
They became chains of bone.
Yet I knew even this would never stop the demon’s aura.
Then…
Bind the body itself.
Chara-ra-ra-rak!
Bone chains snared the demon’s arms, legs, shoulders, head—every joint that could be bound.
And just as the pitch-black aura sank a finger’s breadth into Zeke’s chest—
The demon’s sword stopped.
Silence fell over a situation no one had foreseen.
Into that silence my voice rang out.
“Ancestoooooor—!”
On it—!
Seogak!
The Ancestor’s blade severed the demon’s arm; the edge of the shield, driven with full body weight, smashed into its skull.
Puh-uk!
Demon blood sprayed. Still not enough.
I snatched up the greatsword that had fallen to the ground and charged.
And then—
“Valhaaaaaaaaaaa—la!”
Kung!
The blade plunged vertically and split the demon cleanly in two.
Immediately after the demon was bisected, a vast silence settled over us.
I, Zeke, and the Ancestor all found it difficult to accept what had just happened.
Strip the event down to bare facts:
The demon had been hiding its strength.
Therefore—
Zeke nearly died.
Only two lines, yet for us it had been a pulse-pounding hell.
How could it not be? Since when did demons wield a sword that well?
I am not some special demon-hating bigot, but still…
Ping—!
My vision suddenly spun.
“Y-Young Master!”
“I-I’m fine.”
Apparently I had burned through every last drop of mana. As proof, Golgol collapsed in a clatter of bones. Tiktak, for the record, had already been dismissed long before.
Anyway—
“It’s… over, right?”
“Yes, it seems so. Ah—there’s the core.”
“Ah, the core.”
Indeed, a demon core lay where the creature had stood. Compared with the liquid monster’s earlier, this one was noticeably larger…
Looking at the core, he truly was not at full strength. For a demon of that caliber the core is only the size of a fist.
“You know a lot about demons?”
Not really. Only the few times I ran into them and killed them.
“Then why did that demon… Ah, Sir Zeke, please don’t look at me like that. Right now the Ancestor is standing in front of me.”
“Pardon?”
Zeke stared at me in incomprehension, but unfortunately I no longer had the mental energy to explain. My eyelids were already dropping.
I really should not close my eyes yet.
Still have to collect the hostages… Right. What happened to the soldiers who were guarding the entrance?
The five-man standing force that included the scheming Milo and the wise old veteran Sir Herben—were they safe?
“That son of a bitch…”
Killing him so cleanly was a lifelong regret. If he had been the enemy of our soldiers, he should never have been allowed such a peaceful end.
No—more importantly—
What about the necromancer?
As mana exhaustion set my head spinning, all sorts of thoughts fragmented and floated through my mind. I really should not have let him die so easily. So easily…
Ah, I can’t hold on any longer.
“Sir Zeke, I’ll leave the rest to you.”
“Y-Young Master!”
Rest easy. There seems to be no danger nearby.
Yes, Ancestor.
Yet something is still writhing inside my head—necromantic inspiration.
As expected, I really am a genius…
My memory ended there.
After Khtun collapsed, Zeke carefully laid him on the ground and looked down at him in silence.
“Young Master.”
Honestly, he knew by now.
That first meeting—
—I bear a responsibility as a noble. And that responsibility is heavier than a knight’s creed. Therefore I cannot yield to you here. Regardless of the duel’s outcome, my life is not mine alone. So choose.
—…Choose what?
—End it here, or withdraw quietly.
—If we end it…
—One of us will not see tomorrow’s sun. And I guarantee the one who closes his eyes will be you.
All of it had been nothing more than bluff. If they had gone all the way, the one who closed his eyes would have been the Young Master; with a little care Zeke could even have captured the exhausted boy.
Yet what had moved Zeke was not strength but character.
Look just now. In the instant their eyes met when death was certain, the fury that had boiled in those two pupils—
Lords who would weep for a knight’s death were rare; lords who would rage for one were rarer still. And even then the feeling was usually no deeper than the regret of a well-honed blade snapping.
Khtun was different. He had felt genuine, scorching rage at Zeke’s peril.
Perhaps that was why Zeke felt ashamed of himself.
If I had truly cared for the Young Master… I should not have fought beside him. From the very beginning I should have thrown my life away to get him out of here.
But he had not. Why?
…There were many reasons, yet in the end they were all excuses.
My loyalty simply went only that far.
In this moment, however, Zeke swore.
“I shall follow you with my very life.”
Having offered that vow, Zeke gathered the core and the jewels that had formed the mist magic circle. Then he slung Khtun over one shoulder and the two girls over the other and walked out of the cave.
How long did he walk?
At the exit—
“Hah! Zeke, are you all right?!”
“Milo…? How are you here? Wait—you’re not dead?”
Zeke’s eyes went round at the sight of Milo and the soldiers he had assumed were corpses. Given that demon’s skill, none of them should have survived.
“Nearly died. Some pitch-black bastard suddenly appeared swinging a sword… If he hadn’t been in such a hurry to charge straight into the cave, we’d all be dead for sure. But are you okay? The Young Master? What happened to that thing?”
“We’ll talk while we walk. It’s a long story.”
Zeke let out a breath of relief and stepped out of the cave.
Meanwhile Arch, who had been watching the scene calmly, roughly understood how events had unfolded.
As I thought—he was after the first demon’s core from the beginning.
Probably trying to consume it and recover his strength.
Yet one question remained.
How did he know the first demon was already dead?
An unsettling current still lingered in the air.