The Flagbearer's Challenge
They had arrived safely in Bilkenos.
They parted ways with the Grand Duke after agreeing to meet again the following morning, and now Simon was walking the night streets of the northern capital's busiest quarter. The inn they'd taken for the night was a fair distance off, so he decided to enjoy a leisurely stroll on the way.
Drinking parties raged everywhere he looked. One after another, red-faced, bearded men were hoisting their beer mugs and bellowing at each other in quarrels that teetered on the edge of violence.
Duels broke out by the dozen. In truth, wherever northern folk gathered in a circle, you could safely assume a duel was underway. In a land where strength and courage were virtues, people never stopped trying to prove themselves.
A grievance? A duel. Bad food? A duel. A bump on the street? A duel.
Steel rang out again and again, and the crowd's heckling was every bit as colorful — That's it! Push him harder!
And so, as Simon soaked in the scenery of the North—
"Hmm, hm~"
Erzebet was plastered to his side as always. Simon stole a glance at her as they walked.
He had learned of Geheim — the new technique by which a Legion Commander draws out an Ancient Undead's latent potential and detonates it.
But he still didn't truly understand how such a technique came to be.
"Consider why your Ancient Undead choose to follow you."
He had a fair idea. Erzebet had admired his father Richard, and now she followed Richard's son.
Which meant that what he ought to offer her in return was—
Ugh!
Simon's face flushed scarlet and he shook his head violently. The other party was an undead. A difference of race? Of species? It went far beyond anything so trivial. This biological gulf could never, ever be bridged.
"My Lord Commander?"
Erzebet rolled her eyes toward him.
"You do seem to carry many thoughts within you. Might some worry be weighing upon your noble heart?"
"Ah — it's nothing."
Simon forced a smile and waved it off.
The Ancient Undead, who had lived for hundreds and sometimes well over a thousand years, were the most mysterious beings in the world. Especially those contracted to a Legion Commander — each was missing something somewhere deep inside, and they followed their commander to fill that void.
In exchange for her loyalty, what can I possibly give Erzebet?
While Simon wrestled with the question, they arrived at the inn before he knew it. Erzebet had bought wine, cheese, and fruit again today.
She never touched a bite herself, but she seemed to treasure the time the two of them spent chatting away together.
Tonight I should talk with Erze about Geheim.
Just as Simon reached for the inn's door handle—
"……"
A strange wrongness registered, and his hand stopped mid-motion.
Unease flickered across his face for a moment — then he took hold of the handle again.
"My Lord Commander."
Erzebet called to him, her expression stiff. Simon only flashed a smile, pulled the door open, and stepped inside.
The place was packed.
Northern warriors, every one of them armed, filled the narrow common room to bursting, and all of them were glaring at Simon with murderous eyes.
A menacing tension hung in the air. Simon walked calmly through the crowd all the same. Over by the kitchen, the innkeeper and his wife stood clutching each other in sheer terror.
"……"
Some faces were familiar. There was the man whose face he'd left puffy and swollen last night — and mingled among the others, his crew who'd taken their share of Simon's blows as well.
Retaliation, then.
Simon let out a light sigh and spoke.
"So what exactly is this supposed to be?"
"You pulled quite the amusing stunt, outsider."
The voice came from a middle-aged man planted squarely on the stairs leading to the second floor.
He tipped back the beer mug in his hand and drained it, throat bobbing, foam sliding down through his beard. Then he cocked his head to one side.
He's the one in charge.
Simon sized him up instantly. Not an ordinary man by any measure.
He wore a coat of white fur that looked to have come from a monster, and atop his head sat what appeared to be sharp, triangular animal ears. He carried the marks of both beastman and northerner.
But most striking of all was the flag leaning against his opposite shoulder.
This man was a Flagbearer.
Chak!
He thrust his palm out sideways. At once, the very man Simon had beaten came ambling over, sank to one knee, and thumped his chin down onto the outstretched palm.
"Now, this one here—"
Squeeze.
The Flagbearer seized the man's jaw and shook it roughly.
"He's got a filthy personality, but he's young, and I saw potential in him — marked him as my successor."
"……"
"And then the whole North hears that he picked a fight with an outsider — a prissy little noble, no less — and got himself flattened."
Every time the palm swung back and forth, the man's face wobbled helplessly, his cheek flesh jouncing in a most undignified way. It was a comical sight, yet not a single warrior nearby so much as twitched an expression.
"So my standing among the Flagbearers is in tatters."
The moment he released the man's jaw, he drove a kick into his stomach.
Crash!
The man rolled mercilessly across the inn floor until he slammed into a wall and stopped.
"I trust you'll understand the position that leaves me in."
The Flagbearer rose from his seat and brushed off his hands. Plucked whiskers drifted down to the floorboards.
Creak. Creak.
He began to walk, the floor groaning beneath every step. He passed right by Simon, kept going, and was soon heading for the door.
"All that talk of the North's honor, of its pride."
Thud.
The Flagbearer's steps halted. Simon was looking back over his shoulder with a smile.
"Hardly an honorable method, though. Would you say?"
Why, this little—!
Unspeakable curses flew from every corner of the room, and the ring of drawn weapons filled the inn. Simon, without a hint of alarm, carried on as if nothing had happened.
"I am a guest of the Grand Duke. Neither of us wanted the hassle, so after I won, I showed him mercy — and this is how my goodwill comes back to me. You'll forgive me if I find it a touch irritating."
The Flagbearer turned around.
"……A guest, you say. The whole of Bilkenos knows the tale of how you pressed yourself upon the Grand Duke on the eve of his campaign and were turned away."
Hahahaha—!
Laughter rang out from all sides.
"And even if you truly were the Grand Duke's guest, it changes nothing."
The Flagbearer slowly raised his arm.
"Guests who vanish overnight are a dime a dozen in the North."
At his rough, downward signal, every warrior in the inn roared and hurled themselves at Simon.
The sounds of bodies slamming and things shattering rang out in an unbroken chain.
The Flagbearer, it seemed, had no intention of joining in. He left the cleanup to his men and walked outside.
"Spilling a woman's blood on the eve of a campaign is bad luck, so I'll spare you."
He said it while looking at Erzebet, who stood waiting outside the inn.
"Losing your master is a shame, I'll grant — but in the North, you'd best mind that tongue of yours."
Erzebet merely smiled.
Strange woman, the Flagbearer thought, and moved on.
"Phew."
The wind blew cold.
It left a sour taste to bury a young stranger with no ties to this land here of all places, but there was no helping it. He must have had real skill, to fell my successor. But a man with middling power throwing his weight around gets exactly what's coming to him. All he had to do was grin and bear a bit of street-punk roughhousing. The Flagbearer clicked his tongue and kept walking.
Tonight, he wanted fierce liquor — the kind that would scorch his throat raw.
He was scanning the main street for a suitable tavern when—
"Chief! Chief!"
One of his men from the inn came sprinting toward him, his face drained a ghostly blue.
"We're in deep trouble!"
"What now?"
The man could hardly get his mouth to stay shut, trembling like a leaf. He flailed his hands wildly as if trying to explain something, then shook his head hard and shouted instead.
"Just come and see! You have to see it with your own eyes, Chief! This is—!"
"……?"
The Flagbearer returned to the inn with his man in tow.
Before they'd even arrived, the place had gone quiet.
Finished already?
He strode in, flag braced against his shoulder.
"You lot. The cleanup's supposed to— hm?"
The Flagbearer's eyes bulged wide.
The inn's walls were drenched head to toe in blood. Warriors had been smashed into the walls or planted into the floorboards, their lower halves hanging limp.
Through a silence that raised the hairs on his neck, only moans of pain echoed.
And there, atop a hill-like heap of warriors' bodies, a blue-haired boy sat with his legs spread carelessly wide, his eyes glinting with a killer's light.
"Oh, there you are."
The instant their eyes met, the Flagbearer felt goosebumps erupt across his entire body.
"How is this possible! Just — just what in the hell are you?!"
"I told you. A guest of the Grand Duke. Or—"
Tap, tap.
Simon brushed off his hands as he rose to his feet.
"Perhaps I should say, an ally."
Simon came walking over with his arms dangling loose at his sides. Through it all, Erzebet leaned against the wall as though dizzy, murmuring Oooh, so magnificent. I want to devour him.
"Useless, all of you!"
The Flagbearer dropped his flag to the floor and tore off the fur coat slung over his shoulders, revealing a hulking frame of muscle tempered through countless battles.
"Hngh!"
Jet-black erupted explosively from his body.
So this man was a necromancer too. Fur of pure jet-black sprouted across his frame as his body began to shift and change.
……Metamorphosis!
Kizen had no shortage of students who specialized in this dark art. In the blink of an eye, the man had become a leopard wreathed in black fur, baring his fangs.
Shrrrrik—!
He even condensed jet-black into his right hand and drew it out in the shape of a sword.
"I'll end this without pain."
The Flagbearer smashed through the inn floor as he charged forward in a savage rush.
In a heartbeat he had closed the distance and swung the jet-black sword at Simon—
Kwajik!
Something flashed in a straight line before Simon, and the sword he'd swung split cleanly in two.
My jet-black sword—!
The moment he dropped his gaze, he saw it: a long, metallic, tentacle-like thing stretching up out of the floorboards.
Wham—!
At the same instant, Simon stepped in close and stomped down hard on the Flagbearer's instep.
"No more running away now."
Shhhrrrrk!
Shhhrrrk!
His right arm, drawn back behind him, suddenly began to disappear beneath a flood of countless bones. They assembled over his limb like armor, a mass of bone several times the size of Simon's own arm — enough to look like one vast, swollen gauntlet.
Heavy Bone Gauntlet
The moment the Flagbearer saw that colossal arm rising, the color drained from his face and locked solid.
If that thing connects—
"Wai—!"
KWAAAAAANG!
Simon's hips twisted as he delivered a perfect, full-force swing. The Flagbearer caught the gauntlet head-on, blasted straight through the floor, and plunged down into the earth below.
"C-Chief!"
The warriors still clinging to consciousness, the innkeeper and his wife, even the subordinate who'd rushed in last of all to deliver the warning — every soul in that room could do nothing but stand with their mouths hanging open.
"I didn't kill him."
Simon said it as he dismantled the gauntlet, its armored mass flowing back into a swarm of individual skeletons.
"But I can't simply let this one sli—"
Mid-sentence, Simon lowered his head.
Something was touching his abdomen.
The eyes of the Flagbearer's subordinate had gone bloodshot scarlet.
"Ch-Ch-Chief! Are you actually insane?!"
While the Flagbearer was being hammered down by Simon's fists, he had scooped up the fallen flag and pressed its tip against Simon.
"Khh. Khkh……"
Trembling amid the wreckage, the Flagbearer lifted his head. His missing teeth came clattering down in a gruesome patter.
"Die. Just d—ie…!"
Crack!
Simon drove a kick into his face and knocked him cold, then immediately checked his own body. The spot where the flag's tip had touched him had warped into a round shape — like a target mark.
Thump.
Every cell in his body was sounding the alarm.
Goosebumps raced up his skin as cold sweat ran down his spine.
Simon's gaze turned toward the window.
Wheeeeee!
The black night sky was churning like a typhoon, sweeping around in a vast circle.
"Goddammit! Everyone, run!"
The Flagbearer's man screamed as he bolted for the door. Having grasped the situation, Simon allowed himself a faint smile and spread his legs to shoulder width.
Now, finally, a little tension.
The role of a Flagbearer was, in truth, one thing only:
To mark a target — even at the cost of their own life.
BANG!
And the Grand Duke always answers.
Keeeeei—!
Atop the great gate of Bilkenos, a window swings open.
A black-haired woman was raising her bow.