The Great Expedition Was Not a Failure
Raiga surveyed his surroundings.
Pitch-black darkness.
A place where everything seemed frozen still, without so much as a breath of wind.
“A location-shifting realm.”
The Abyss changed its nature according to the master who occupied it.
This one possessed a realm of location conversion that scattered everyone who entered.
And typically, the masters of Abysses with such traits…
A fifth-rank Abyss. Pathetic for a Fragment holder.
Having conquered countless Abysses and slaughtered their masters, Raiga had developed his own ranking system for them.
Fifth rank sat among the lowest.
Separating entrants meant the master’s power was that weak.
Still, cases where a monster holding a Fragment of Ruin ranked only fifth were almost unheard of.
Not every Fragment holder is strong, but…
That made it highly likely this one had acquired the Fragment only recently.
It might have planted this trait specifically to fully absorb the Fragment’s power.
The disappointment, however, was considerable.
At this rate there would be no pleasure in the hunt at all.
I expected at least a third-rank Abyss.
From third rank upward they were formidable.
Monsters that surpassed human limits usually belonged to the third rank.
Take Baal, who had appeared at the Mountain of the Cultivator.
The moment that creature created an Abyss it gathered hundreds of thousands of people.
Even as a mere incomplete shell it tried to absorb their lives by herding them together.
Baal’s shell alone could properly be measured as third rank or higher.
Grrrk.
Grrraaargh.
Then it came.
A strange groan from not far away.
Turning his head, Raiga saw a gigantic “eye” standing on two legs.
“A Hybrid?”
He had sensed no presence.
No scent either.
Inside the Abyss that was only natural.
Yet finding a Hybrid inside an Abyss was decidedly odd.
“So a wandering monster somehow managed to dominate an Abyss.”
Monsters that drifted through the Abyss.
Hybrids were one of them.
Newly entered “lifeforms” contaminated by the Abyss’s poison and transformed—those were Hybrids.
That enormous single eye was a mutation born of the adaptation process.
With degenerated intelligence and feeble strength, they were the most common monsters, doomed only to wander.
Seeing so many Hybrids appear meant the master of this Abyss was likely a Hybrid as well.
He had hoped for a proper hunt, yet it was nothing but Hybrids.
Tsk.
Raiga clicked his tongue softly and spoke.
“Do you truly believe you can pierce my Blessing?”
The Blessing.
It was like a guardian deity that protected Raiga.
The very reason even Fragment contamination could not touch him.
Mere Hybrids could never break through the solid wall of that Blessing.
I could not use it in the palace, but there is no reason to hold back here.
Rumble.
In an instant Raiga’s body surged.
It trembled finely and began to glow blue.
The power he had been unable to unleash when facing “Goat” at the Eight Houses training ground.
Releasing it there might have collapsed the palace itself.
Moreover he had sworn to use it only when hunting Fragments of Ruin, so nowhere else was permitted.
Had he used this power against Goat, the outcome would have been different.
Thus Raiga tore open the sealed force.
The seal of the Five Gates spanning five generations.
Among the East Gate, West Gate, South Gate, North Gate, and Central Gate—the first of them, the East Gate!
“…Let us finish this as quickly as possible.”
Swish!
Crack!
The sound of hidden weapons raining down.
Boom!
A concealed poison pouch burst, and she tried to sever her opponent at the speed of light, yet—
…Nothing works?
Nothing landed.
Shalla was panicking for the first time in her life.
From childhood she had roamed countless battlefields and slaughtered more humans than she could count.
There had never been a human she set her mind to kill and failed; by the time she reached adulthood she was already called the “Death Wolf” on the battlefield.
“Ah…”
Seeing Serengeti still standing unharmed after she had poured everything out, Shalla opened her mouth for the first time.
The moment their eyes met, Shalla was forced to look away.
…Strong.
It was not merely strength of arms.
Upright.
Those eyes were far too upright.
A pure-white woman who had lived a life utterly different from her own.
She had thought her a flower raised in a greenhouse. She was wrong.
That woman was a knight who had walked battlefields equal to—perhaps greater than—her own.
Even so!
Knights.
They were fools.
Men who prized honor even in life-and-death combat.
Even Abdullah, said to be the strongest knight of the Balan Kingdom, had never imagined poison—complacent idiots, every one of them.
She had met and killed countless knights, and they were all the same.
Many had died simply because they underestimated her for being a woman.
But… the woman before her was different.
Not a single opening.
It was not the crushing strength that simply overpowered an opponent.
She simply never gave an opening.
It looked as though she read and countered every move in advance.
Yet were knights not the sort of soft fools who only swung swords honestly in training halls?
“Every one of your techniques is shallow.”
“……What?”
“The emotion in your blade. It is nothing more than shallow hatred. Do you believe you alone have clawed your way through hell?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I am saying the hell you endured was not true hell.”
Serengeti spoke.
The reason she was different from other knights.
The reason she could not help but be different.
“…So you’ve tasted real hell, then?”
Shalla scoffed.
She too had lived in hell.
A little girl surviving on the battlefield was hell itself.
King Friedrich had been her savior.
He had given her life, power, and a name.
What did this woman know to spout such words?
Amid the thick killing intent, Serengeti continued.
“Yes. Standing beside the Knight King means exactly that. We, the Seven Knights of the Round Table, carved our way through hell together with the Knight King.”
…The Seven Knights of the Round Table.
It was not an official title.
They had simply called themselves that.
The seven knights who were the Knight King’s closest retainers and served him alone.
Serengeti had been one of them.
Though not the strongest, her faith and loyalty had burned fiercer than anyone’s, and so she had been able to serve Knight King Wilhelm to the very end.
“Every great deed the Knight King accomplished was hell in its own right. Yet the Great Expedition alone truly deserved the name of hell.”
“What are you saying?”
An abrupt story.
Shalla frowned.
The Great Expedition had been hell? What was she trying to say?
Serengeti paid her no mind.
She had never been speaking to Shalla in the first place.
“Listen. We did not face humans alone. In the daily cracks of betrayal we had to battle monsters that attacked in ever-changing ways. It was an ordeal where even blinking was forbidden.”
Enemies on every side.
No one knew who would betray next, and monsters that transformed into the dead attacked as well.
When they slept, dream demons tormented them; when they opened their eyes, the comrade who had slept beside them was dead.
The flow of time, the flow of thought—none of it was normal.
The Demon Realm.
Its Eight Hells had been more than worthy of the name.
“Do you truly believe the Great Expedition failed?”
Serengeti looked around her.
At the soldiers and knights, at the nobles and Duke Saien, at the king.
Every one of them said the Great Expedition had failed.
Not only they—the entire world believed it.
But—
“Do you truly believe the Knight King accomplished nothing?”
Wrong.
Utterly wrong.
It was time to set the false story straight.
“The Knight King—!”
And so Serengeti raised her voice to the world.
“Slew the King of Hell, the Demon King!”
“……!!!”
In that instant every shoulder flinched.
Knight King Wilhelm had killed the Demon King!
It was the complete opposite of what was known.
The Great Expedition was said to have ended in failure.
Yet Serengeti was a knight who had lived the Great Expedition of the Demon Realm.
As the Knight King’s closest retainer she would never speak a lie.
Still, no one could open their mouth.
They were overwhelmed by Serengeti’s sheer presence.
“Even amid the betrayal of the sages of the Tower of Magic and those once called the Eight Heroes, even amid the desertion of countless mercenaries and soldiers, the Knight King silently pierced the Eight Hells and drove his sword into the Demon King’s heart.”
The sages of the Tower of Magic.
And the Eight Heroes.
They were the ones who had swollen their power after joining the Great Expedition.
They were also the ones who had made the entire world believe the Great Expedition had failed.
Yet those rumors had been false?
They had been traitors all along?
Confusion filled every pair of eyes.
Then Serengeti turned her gaze upon the young Duke Saien.
“Failed, you say? Exhausted, you say? And thus the Balan Kingdom was weakened?”
“…….”
Flinch!
Duke Saien lowered his eyes without meaning to.
He felt as though he stood before a great beast.
Moreover he had been the one who most loudly declared before the king that the Great Expedition had failed.
At the time no one had refuted him.
Everyone had quietly thought the same.
Serengeti raised her voice still higher.
“No! Not in the least. Every valiant knight of our Balan Kingdom devoted himself to the Knight King until the end. Not a single sacrifice was in vain. Their spirit still guards the Balan Kingdom. Therefore—!”
She shifted her gaze to the Demon of Pride, King Friedrich.
“Therefore I shall show you now. How the Knight King and we carved through hell and slew the Demon King.”
She leveled her sword.
Interesting.
For the first time since arriving in the Balan Kingdom, King Friedrich felt amusement.
Because Serengeti had crushed Shalla and brought her down?
No. That was not it.
Her soul itself excited him.
Does it not shine as brightly as a god’s soul?
He wanted it.
That soul.
He understood at last why she was called the Pure White Knight.
Few beings were as upright as she.
Yet that only made him more curious.
…The Knight King, Wilhelm.
The one such a knight followed.
About Knight King Wilhelm.
What manner of man had he been?
How radiant a soul had he possessed?
A pity.
Believing him to be Greed, he had never even approached.
Had he known otherwise he would have gone himself to harvest that soul.
“Ghk!”
…With a final cry another knight fell.
Unstoppable momentum.
His knights could not halt Serengeti.
“You will have to step forward.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
King Friedrich spoke to the man standing beside him.
If any knight could stop her, there was only one.
The monster he himself had perfected.
Originally the strongest, then made stronger still by feeding on the flesh of countless gods!
The King Slayer, Yajam.
He would force even Serengeti to her knees.
……Yet.
For a moment King Friedrich tilted his head.
Something kept nagging at him.
Something strange is mixed in.
What was it?
Neither human nor monster, something odd was blended among the crowd.
Something that should not exist.
Even the Demon of Pride, who had lived countless ages, was seeing it for the first time.
No one had noticed, and even he had nearly missed it.
What are those little brats?