The Blackened Tower
Fighting monsters was, by nature, like walking through mud and hoping your shoes would stay clean.
No matter how many you wiped out with magic right in front of you, it was no different from dipping a foot into filth and then trying to rub it clean with a cloth before stepping forward again. Monsters kept rising from the darkness of unpurified land, surging toward humans like a wave crashing over everything in its path.
In other words, the only way to rid the world of monsters was to turn the mud back into dry earth.
The tower is to the southeast. It hasn’t been blackened for long, so the terrain shouldn’t have changed much.
The stench of monsters burning from all directions hung thick in the air. It was because the night before, the mage company led by the princess had rained magic down on them.
Owen and the other knights had been assigned to slip beyond the barrier, infiltrate the tower, and retrieve the blackened Holy Relic.
When a Holy Relic was blackened for a long time, it twisted the surrounding land grotesquely as if trying to hide itself from the world, swallowing the tower within that distortion. But this one had only fallen recently, so people expected it would be easier than usual.
Even so, there were too few of them. And because anything involving monsters always defied prediction, no one could say with certainty how this would end.
Whoosh.
Sylvia caught a monster’s attack with a barrier spell and steadied her trembling breath.
The formation at the front was much like the one she had seen with Heston. And because Owen wore armor similar in build, it would have been natural to feel the same sense of familiarity she had when working with Heston. In reality, though, it was nothing alike.
The partner’s changed. I might not be able to cover as well as Heston did. I might even forget you’re behind me.
Back then, he had bragged that there was no way she could forget him, but as time passed, Sylvia kept realizing more and more how different Heston and Owen truly were.
In broad strokes, that was it.
Heston dealt with things by the rules; Owen pursued the most practical outcome. When a monster attacked, Heston met it head-on with his sword, while Owen let the strike slide past and waited for the opening. That did not mean he forgot Sylvia was behind him.
It only meant that the way he fought was so precarious she had ended up adding unnecessary defenses, or feeling her heart drop all the way to the ends of the earth, more times than she cared to count.
He really does slip through everything so neatly.
The tension made sweat drip from her chin. Sylvia wiped it away irritably and focused on Owen’s back.
Heston’s way of fighting, pushing straight through and breaking everything in his path, was hard on the body, but that had never been much of a concern. Sylvia was always behind him. She supplied him with strength and shielded him in turn, so there had been no need to worry about him running out of stamina.
But Owen had always fought alone. Since he had relied only on his own strength, it seemed he had grown accustomed to conserving his stamina as much as possible.
Compared with Heston’s simple, decisive movements, Owen’s twisting, flexible style was ten times harder to read.
He had just made a mistake. After Sylvia forced a monster to stop, Owen’s blade had slipped in shallowly.
"Still, it’s nice that I can see all the weak points."
As if nothing had happened, Owen calmly drove his sword into the monster’s blue-glowing core and called back to Sylvia behind him. Seeing a monster’s weak point with the help of a Supporter was basic, the first thing anyone should know. Instead of feeling comforted, Sylvia felt humiliated.
That’s his problem.
The person who should be adjusting here was Sylvia, but Owen kept instinctively trying to match himself to her support. With the two of them both thinking too much, they kept slipping out of sync.
Hah.
Sylvia let out a long sigh and emptied the strength from her body.
Just trust him. Don’t think. Just trust him.
After chanting it to herself dozens of times, her mind finally felt a little hollow. Then she fixed her attention on Owen. The moment Sylvia’s mana, which had been complicating his body, disappeared, Owen’s back jerked in slight surprise, but he quickly steadied himself and raised his sword again.
Thwip!
Owen ducked under the Tilco that swooped down at him, then twisted and drove his blade into its side.
Normally, Sylvia would have wondered why he was taking such unnecessary risks by moving so close instead of simply cutting off the wing, and she would have cast a barrier spell. But now she trusted him and did nothing. As expected, when the Tilco’s muscle tore and it lost balance, staggering on one wing, Owen seemed to anticipate the motion and buried his sword in its forehead.
Grrrk.
The monster’s grotesque groan split the air, and its heavy body rolled over and struck Sylvia’s shoe. Only then did Owen belatedly go, “Ah,” and come over to kick the corpse aside. Almost as if he were clearing the path for her.
Sylvia gave a small laugh and stepped into the trail of bodies he had made for her. Owen watched her with a renewed, almost startled look, then took the lead again and walked on.
"This might end earlier than I thought."
After a long while of fighting off monsters that burst out of the scorched forest path as they walked, the tower appeared sooner than expected.
They had already fought a battle around the monsters gathered near the tower, and now there was truly nothing left but to go inside. Of course, the tower would be swarming with monsters as well, but getting here usually took three times as long.
"By the way, has Sommers always been this good?"
"With a Supporter attached, he’s practically flying."
"He was good already. Did Rockwood get all the treasure or something? Sommers got some too."
The knights, relieved to have escaped the worst of it, soon began muttering as they watched Sommers kick at the piled-up monster corpses while searching for the door. And for good reason: his performance all the way here had been almost absurdly dazzling.
I'd say about a quarter of those were killed by Owen.
Absently, Sylvia thought as she moved to deal with the aftermath of the monsters.
"Sylvia! Leave it. I’ll handle that."
Just as she was examining one monster that looked a little off, another monster in front of her suddenly burst into flames. Startled, she turned around to see Courtney pushing through the crowd and waving.
"Ah."
At the sight of that face, an unpleasant sound slipped from Sylvia’s throat.
Courtney was smiling brightly, as if she had no idea how much distance had settled across Sylvia’s expression.
Courtney was the mage who had joined this expedition. Originally, it had been Kermio, the mage who had followed the 1st Knight Order, who was supposed to come along, but Baila, the chief mage of Alzen, had strongly persuaded the princess that Courtney would be far more helpful since she had already visited the tower a few times before it blackened.
Before departure, Courtney had personally handed Sylvia the water skin she had gone out to fill, telling her that they would be traveling together.
I can’t tell you how glad I am that I’m going with you, Sylvia! It’s such a relief to have a friend with me.
Friend, indeed.
Could Sylvia and Courtney really be bound together by such warm, easy words? That was what she had thought with cold sarcasm, but in the end, she had taken the water skin from Courtney, who spoke sweetly about how she had gone so far to fetch the water for her.
"I was looking at some monsters. I thought the neck area looked a little strange."
"Monsters mutate all the time! Why go around inspecting every little thing yourself? You can just burn them all to ash."
"It’s the rule to look once."
"Haha. Join the Knight Order and you really do become a knight, huh? From what I hear, it sounds like we’re going to try and get inside today. We might as well handle it quickly, don’t you think?"
"Today?"
"Yeah. We’ve got time."
Originally, the plan had been to find only the entrance today, return, and come back tomorrow morning to clear the inside of the tower. But since there was time left and the work seemed easier than expected, it looked like the idea of finishing everything today had started to spread.
Well, if they handled it early, then the people left at the barrier would have a much easier battle at night too.
When Sylvia went to check with the chief knight, Courtney’s words were confirmed to be true. She watched Courtney busily burning monsters, then looked up at the tower, blackened as if charred to the bone. Beneath it, Owen and the other knights had gathered and were poking at the tower with daggers, one jab after another.
They were looking for the door.
When a tower became blackened, the first thing it did was hide its entrance, so the usual method was to stab around blindly until it was found. Sylvia watched a little longer, then decided that since Owen had left her with plenty of mana, she might as well sweep the tower lightly with magic.
"Can you reach it from there?"
Owen, having removed his helmet, was shaking sweat from his damp hair. Sylvia tapped his arm and pointed higher up. He followed her gesture and looked up.
"With a sword, maybe."
After a moment, Owen nodded. Sylvia pointed just a little lower than before and asked,
"Then what about stabbing it with the sheath in place and climbing on top of it?"
"Is there a door there?"
"Yes."
"Got it. Then."
It looked rather impossible. Even the place she had told him to stab at was high to begin with.
"I’ll help you, so..."
But before Sylvia could even finish, Owen shoved his sword in with brute force, then sprang upward as lightly as if the armor weighed nothing at all and stabbed the spot Sylvia had pointed to with a dagger blessed by mana stones and divine power. Soon after, she heard the sound of stone collapsing.
Owen landed easily and pulled out his sword before the wall had time to turn.
The bricks began to move, one by one, as if they had come to life, and before long the door appeared.
"Here!"
It was in the exact opposite direction from where Sylvia and Owen had been standing. As they walked up, the people gathered there came into view.
"That’s ominously black."
Someone muttered at the sight of the door, gaping blackly like a maw. But an older Supporter immediately smacked the back of his head, saying, "What sort of rotten thing is that to say?" and stepped forward first, urging them to go in quickly.
"Let’s finish early and head back."
"Things are going so smoothly that our suspicious Black Moons are probably scaring themselves for nothing. Isn’t it only natural that it’s easy? This tower has been blackened for barely a week."
The chief knight joked as he motioned them inside. Soon the knights reorganized their formation and began to enter as well.
"Mage-nim! The door has appeared!"