The Red Knight (2)
Shiron yanked Siriel free and felt a jolt of searing pain. It wasn't a direct lightning strike, nor residual current arcing through him. He had simply hauled her with everything he had to keep her from being hit, and for a split second his shoulder joint felt as if it were being torn to shreds.
But pain was no reason to stop moving.
The pool's blast radius was wide, and to drag Siriel out he had no choice but to step into it himself.
This isn't going to be easy.
Cradling Siriel in his arms, Shiron kicked through the muck, dodging the bolts that kept slamming down around them. The trouble was the distance to any safe ground free of the pools. The rain kept falling, the puddles multiplying and spreading by the second. He had to step, and step again, and keep stepping whether he liked it or not.
The pools weren't the only thing holding him back. Camilla was a problem, and Bernouil was no better. Somehow both of them shared the same nasty gimmick—the kind that ate away at your mind.
For instance:
Maybe taking one hit wouldn't be so bad…
What if I just let the lightning strike me? It's not like I'd die, right?
In a fight where a single mistake meant death, careless thoughts kept bubbling up unbidden.
Fuck. This is driving me insane.
Cold sweat ran down Shiron's back. Only after putting a good stretch of ground behind them could he finally look at Siriel. Blood was seeping from eyes squeezed tightly shut. Was it even blood? The rain kept falling in red droplets, making it hard to tell. And why was her face so flushed? The sight alone was enough to make anyone worry.
Orca Siriel. You can't go out like this.
Steeling himself, Shiron layered holy power over his hand. Heat bloomed from his palm as he covered her eyes.
And Lucia…
He lifted his head toward the direction where the roars kept exploding one after another. The exchange between those monsters was enough to make anyone's jaw drop—what the hell even were those things?
As the useless thoughts kept stacking up, he felt a familiar warmth settle over the back of his hand.
"…I'm okay now."
Siriel staggered to her feet. Her gaze was still locked on her friend mid-battle.
This is humiliating.
Disgusted with herself, Siriel kicked off the ground. About fifty paces ahead, a pool of water waited. Dead center in it sat her spear, driven clean into the earth.
And then—
A glitter that looked ready to stitch itself across the night sky flared at the edge of her vision. She knew exactly whose light that was. Complicated feelings rose in her chest, and she clenched her teeth.
She had lost her weapon. In a coming-of-age rite where she was being judged by people she had barely met, she had even needed to be rescued—and blatantly, at that.
She was grateful, yes. But wounded pride came first.
Siriel stretched a hand toward the spear. A drifting line of light rose and drifted into her palm.
From the moment the fighting began, Yuma and Glenn had not taken their eyes off it for a second. This might well be the last coming-of-age rite any of them ever saw, so the maids had come down as far as where Yuma and Glenn stood.
"Remarkable, isn't it?"
With dozens of demons at her back, Yuma wore a look of pure pride.
"I worried, once. But those fears proved baseless. Even under the curse pouring from the sky, none of them flinched or turned coward."
"…True enough."
"They've handled every crisis well, and so far not a single person has died."
Yuma turned to Glenn with a bright smile.
"Your daughter's performance is especially outstanding."
"…Have you decided to stop doubting her?"
"I've simply realized that doubt is useless."
"…"
"Unless it's a Prien, how could a mere human hope to stand against an Apostle? If she kills the Apostle here and now, that will be all the proof of trust anyone could ask for."
Lucia Prien. The child Glenn had brought home one day out of nowhere.
Her red hair and golden eyes were rare enough that Yuma hadn't thrown her out on the spot—but at the time, she had not fully trusted Glenn either.
Until the day Lucia knocked Shiron unconscious, Yuma had refused to call the girl who looked so much like Glenn "Young Lady."
And for good reason. Yuma knew the limits of short-lived races better than anyone. No matter how hard they trained, the best they ever managed came after they had barely learned to walk. The years a human body could endure true, brutal training were fifty at most, and she had watched enough of them to know exactly how high a peak any human could reach.
Of course, there had been one exception—a single human whose limits she had never been able to see.
Kyle.
How could she ever forget that name?
In that age of chaos, plenty of people had earned the right to be called heroes, but Kyle had stood alone above them all.
She was the one who had blown off one of Yuma's horns. Of all the pieces the Evil God could play, not a single one had been able to stop her.
Yuma narrowed her eyes toward the place where the storm was rising. From within the red dust clouds, light bright enough to sear the eyes kept bursting out at a frantic pace.
Kyle, too, had poured out that same blinding radiance every time she swung the white blade they called a Holy Sword.
Yuma was not the only one the light made think of someone else.
…What the hell is that?
Inside the pouch clutched in a hand, the one-eyed fairy could not believe what she was seeing. In the heart of the whirling storm, the light exploding outward did not belong to a single source.
The pure-white blade was dazzling enough on its own—but the milky-white sword stolen from Atmos was pouring out a light every bit as fierce.
And yet that milky-white blade had never been forged to shine like that.
That light was purely the craft of the red-haired girl. And—
Dolby still remembered the one who had known how to make even a dull iron sword blaze with that same brilliance.
How could she forget?
The dazzling sword aura that had split mountains and seas and reached the heavens. A crude style with no fancy technique at all, simply concentrating the full power of the body into a single cut—and at the same time, a secret art refined by Kyle, who had mastered the principle of every sword style under the sun.
"Si… Sirius."
Tears spilled from eyes still fixed on the storm. Her small shoulders trembled.
Dolby drifted back into a memory from long ago. Five hundred years past. Around the time the god she served had descended upon the world. Countless of her kin had been taken into human hands.
The reason was simple enough.
Humans needed power to stand against a greater power, and a fairy's eye made for an exceptionally effective ingredient in elixirs.
"…"
Clamping both hands over her mouth, Dolby could not bear to watch the storm any longer. She had no idea how long she would be stuck in this pouch, and she refused to foul it with vomit.
The end of the battle.
No one had lost their life, and plenty still stood on their own two feet—but who the victor was needed no announcement.
Bernouil, not a single limb left intact, had made a pool not of rainwater but of blood.
—You never did give me your name.
"…What, are you a ghost who died without learning someone's name?"
Lucia said it while supporting Siriel. Her tone sounded almost like a sulk, but there was no heat in it—only a cold edge.
—Because that is what I wished for.
The knight who no longer had a single sound limb left spoke. The light in his helmet flickered like a dying flame. In the final stretch of the fight, a milky-white slash wreathed in white sword aura had dealt him a mortal wound.
The only piece of him still whole was the rattling head inside the helmet.
Bernouil spoke in a hollow voice.
—I was once a wandering knight who set out in search of an honorable journey. Rather than serve a lord, I roamed the martial world hunting for the strong, and like the knights of the old folk tales I rushed about saving the innocent and the powerless.
Lucia let out a long sigh. Her gaze did not fall on the armor scattered across the ground. Farther off, she watched a man approaching, so soaked in blood he looked as if he had been painted red.
The obsession burning in his clenched-jaw expression was hot enough to make even Lucia pause.
—But looking back, it was nothing but personal indulgence. In a few decades at most, the people I saved never even reached three digits, and every true powerhouse had already died in the last great war. So I wished for eternal life first, and hearing the voice of a god came after. And then I—
"You talk too damn much."
Teeth gritted, Shiron swung his sword.
Thuk—
"Dizzy. Weird thoughts in my head. I'm losing my mind."
Shiron dropped heavily in front of the corpse. He had taken its life with a Holy Sword, so from the ashes scattering as black mist a black bead would soon reveal itself.
Maybe the frantic fight had left him too impatient. Unable to wait for the body to finish turning to black ash, Shiron began rummaging through the remains.
…Nice.
Finding the black bead, Shiron smiled in satisfaction and muttered under his breath.
"Well done."
Right on cue, a familiar voice spoke from behind him. Yuma.
"Regardless of the result—it's a relief that no one was seriously hurt."
"…Yeah. A relief."
Lucia lowered her head and stared at her forearm, scored with countless cuts. Not wounds from a blade, but from sword aura that had inevitably leaked free.
In close combat, even the wind of a sword could not be taken lightly. Like a stray stone, the minor attacks that slipped through without breaking her focus had put up a better fight than expected.
"This is surely fortune smiling upon us."
"Fortune, is it?"
Siriel shot Yuma a sideways look.
"No one died, and no one was even crippled."
"In that case—"
"In the last coming-of-age rite, several people were left disabled. And two generations ago, people lost their lives."
"…True."
Glenn murmured it—but not quietly. Yuma smoothed a hand over her chest in visible relief and smiled.
"Since everyone is unharmed, I believe we may treat this as cause for celebration. Let us return to the castle at once."
"If we head back like this, we'll have to cross the mountain range twice."
"…Do you have a plan already in mind?"
"It's not like I'm holding back anyone who wants to rest right this second."
Having tucked the glass vial into his clothes, Shiron blinked eyes that had grown noticeably sharper.
"Of course not. As if."
Shiron's gaze fixed on the pouch in Yuma's hand.