Are You Alone?
Are you alone?
Looking back on it, the meeting with Hadley had been strange from the very beginning.
We were meeting for the first time, and yet somehow he'd felt familiar.
At first, Juhan had dismissed it as nothing worth worrying about. He'd seen plenty of Holy Knights lately — maybe he'd passed the man somewhere without noticing. Or maybe Hadley's way of speaking, his whole atmosphere, had simply reminded him of someone else.
But still.
Something about it had never quite sat right.
There was the way Hadley had suspected him so excessively. Juhan might have been an outsider whose identity hadn't been thoroughly verified, but Hadley's reaction had gone a little beyond that range — as if an unexpected outsider had barged into the middle of his carefully laid plans.
At first I just thought he was an overly rigid Holy Knight.
The longer he spent traveling with the man, though, the more that assessment changed. Because Hadley knew far too much about this barrier. He moved through it as if he'd come and gone dozens of times already, casually sidestepping every trap inside without a single moment of hesitation. Suspicion was only natural.
I could have forced myself to write that off as simple competence, sure…
But the final piece — the one that drove the nail clean through Juhan's doubts — was what Hadley had said in the last clearing while looking at the red crystal.
That the crystal was the core of the barrier, and that touching it would let them escape to the outside.
Hearing that and looking at the crystal again, Juhan had finally been certain.
This bastard really was trying to deceive him.
No matter how you look at it, that crystal was never made for escaping a barrier.
It was a conviction built on instinct. Because Juhan wasn't seeing that crystal as an escape device at all — he was seeing it as something designed to devour.
Perhaps it was because the energy was so familiar. The moment he first laid eyes on the red crystal, he'd roughly understood what it was for.
A device built to corrupt a living being's mind… and then dominate it.
And besides — Hadley was the same man who, as recently as this afternoon, had openly refused to trust Juhan and treated him like an enemy. For that same man to suddenly worry about Juhan's life and urge him to go first? Laughable.
He had some kind of goal.
So Juhan had simply asked him, without any particular answer of his own, in a calm voice:
How had he infiltrated the Holy Kingdom?
By then, Juhan was already certain that this Holy Knight named Hadley was a plant — a spy who'd slipped into the Holy Kingdom.
Though revealing my own identity is obviously out of the question.
There was no version of this where Juhan exposed what he truly was. Not to a cult that served the Great Catastrophe, and not to the Holy Kingdom either. Eternal secrets didn't exist. The dolls he had created already knew enough about him.
Thump—
Thump—
The red crystal was still beating like a heart.
"…What is that supposed to mean?"
Even through the eerie vibration, Hadley's voice remained startlingly composed.
"What nonsense are you spouting all of a sudden?"
There was no trace of panic. No flash of anger. He simply asked again, as if he truly couldn't understand.
To an outsider, it would have looked as though Juhan had said something completely unhinged, with Hadley having nothing whatsoever to do with any of it.
But when Juhan kept staring at him without another word, Hadley frowned, clearly displeased.
"…Don't tell me you're suspecting me?"
For some reason, he was fiddling with one ear as he asked — as if adjusting something.
And to that reaction, there was only one thing Juhan could say.
"If that's how it sounded, then yes."
He simply nodded, quiet and matter-of-fact, as if the question itself were obvious.
"Ha."
Hadley let out a short, dry laugh.
"Looks like being trapped in this barrier has driven you out of your mind."
With that, the tip of Hadley's sword began to turn toward Juhan.
"Who do you think is the reason you're still alive this far?"
"Beats me."
Juhan shrugged, as if he genuinely had no idea.
"I'm curious about that myself."
"……."
In that instant—
A chill settled over the air.
Hadley's gaze, fixed on Juhan, sank into something cold. As if there was no longer any point in keeping up the act.
"Tsk."
At some point, the tip of his sword had dropped, scraping lazily along the ground like some street thug.
"Haa… Was he just sharp from the start?"
Hadley pressed a hand to his head as if it ached.
"Or is he just insane?"
"Could be neither."
"Is that so."
Hadley gave a short nod of acknowledgment at Juhan's deadpan reply.
Then—
Flash!
He swung his blade at Juhan with the speed of a bolt of light. A sword strike so fast it was nearly impossible to react to — as if to prove that his rank as a Holy Knight had not been faked.
Clang!
"……."
Of course, the attack was blocked by Juhan, who had already drawn his own sword at some point.
Clang!
Clash!
At some moment the red crystal's heartbeat had stopped. Inside that space, only the sharp ring of metal kept echoing across the clearing.
Clang!
"…You've got quite a bit of strength."
"I wasn't invited to become a Holy Knight for nothing."
"Tsk."
Blade met blade as the two men shoved against each other. Even in the middle of it, Juhan was carefully watching Hadley's every move.
How the hell is he using Divine Power?
There was more than one thing that didn't make sense. Hadley was clearly using energy of a nature similar to the Great Catastrophe — similar to Juhan himself — and yet at the same time he was also wielding something that looked exactly like Divine Power.
Clang!
Is the god of this world just a scarecrow or something?
Juhan clicked his tongue inwardly.
Clash!
Hadley's sword shoved Juhan's back hard once more.
"Thinking about something else in the middle of a fight?"
"Who knows."
"Arrogant bastard."
Clang!
The blades struck again — this time it was Juhan who pressed the attack first.
"……."
Hadley's brow twitched, ever so slightly. The force behind Juhan's strike was stronger than before.
Clash!
Whoosh!
Hadley deflected Juhan's blade with a short motion, then cut horizontally toward him and opened a bit of distance.
"You really are a strange one."
"Me?"
"Yeah. In a situation like this, most people would have run already — or thrown themselves at me with everything they had."
He flicked his sword clean with a casual motion, then muttered as if he had no other choice, still fiddling with one ear.
"I can't drag this out any longer. Tsk."
To Juhan, the way Hadley kept his hand to his ear looked exactly like someone receiving information in real time.
Hummm!
And with those words, red mist began to gather around Hadley — an energy incomparable to anything he'd shown so far. A movement that said he was finally about to get serious.
Here it comes.
Juhan lowered his stance, watching Hadley carefully, ready for the attack that would follow—
"…What?"
Suddenly Hadley's expression hardened. He tossed a short question into empty air, looking for all the world like a man who had just received some unexpected piece of information. His gaze was fixed on a corner of the empty space above them.
"……."
"……."
The standoff stretched on. From Juhan's position, finding an opening wasn't easy. Even standing still, he knew the moment he charged, a counter would come right back at him.
Across from him, irritation and confusion flickered across Hadley's face.
"…They got here faster than I expected."
With that, Hadley abruptly lowered his sword — a movement so sudden it was hard to believe this was the same man who'd been about to fight with everything he had.
"What do you think you're doing?"
"Heh…"
Even under Juhan's sharp glare, Hadley only sneered as if the whole thing were amusing.
"I won't even need to lift a finger."
He simply kept talking at Juhan.
"Try to survive."
"What?"
"Or maybe trying to talk your way out of it would work better."
Hadley's eyes narrowed with those words.
"Well then — if you're still alive when we meet again… see you around, Juhan."
With that as his final line, Hadley hurled himself into the red mist.
"……."
It had all happened in an instant. The man was already gone without a trace.
I could chase him if I wanted to, of course.
Juhan briefly considered whether he should pull out Number 7 to go after him.
But then the anomaly began.
Whooosh——
What now?
All at once the surrounding red mist began to spin around Juhan like a whirlwind. Some of it even clung to his body.
Anyone watching would think I did this.
If someone else saw the scene, there would be no conclusion available except that Juhan himself was the cause of every last bit of it.
Whooooosh——
The longer it went on, the faster the red mist whirled — still centered on Juhan.
I need to shake this off somehow…
The moment he tightened his grip on his sword to clear the mist away—
Step. Step.
Juhan heard a single set of footsteps whose owner he could not yet see.
One pair of footsteps, walking with cool, unhurried pride through the barrier. Footsteps that made no attempt whatsoever to hide themselves. Perhaps that was how confident the walker was in his own ability. Or perhaps they were meant to be heard by whoever was inside — a message that said: run, if you think you can.
Step.
Step.
The footsteps drew steadily closer. There was no doubt they were coming this way.
And then—
The red mist in the direction Juhan was watching began to thin and part.
"……."
Through the gap, a man emerged.
It was Executor Antara. Clad in a black cloak and armor, he looked at Juhan with indifferent eyes.
After regarding him for a moment, Antara turned his head and took in the clearing.
The red mist was still swirling violently around Juhan. There was no real need to explain what that must have looked like from Antara's perspective.
"……."
"……."
A brief silence.
Then Antara's gaze locked onto Juhan, and he spoke a single line.
"Any last words?"
A low voice. A question so final it left no room for excuses.
But hearing it, Juhan found himself asking something in return before he could stop himself — perhaps because he had never expected the situation to turn out this way.
"…Did you come alone?"
He genuinely wanted to know.