Insects, Bow Your Heads
Fwaaaaaaah!
Pure white sword qi surged through Serengeti's entire body. For all that brilliance, she was still drawing ragged, heavy breaths.
He's strong.
She had broken four knights, and now only one remained. Yajam, the King Slayer. He was every bit as formidable as his reputation—no, stronger still. Word had it he had already slain three kings and laid their heads at King Friedrich's feet. To cut through the protection of countless knights alone and take a king's head was proof that his swordsmanship had reached its absolute peak.
"Who taught you the sword?"
"······."
And Yajam, for his part, was just as startled as Serengeti. He had never expected anyone in the human realm to receive his blade this well. This was before the matter of devouring stars. Serengeti's pure swordsmanship itself stood on a far higher plane than the scraps of talent he had faced on every battlefield until now.
Yajam was a master who had never once stopped tempering his sword. Even renowned swordmasters had never satisfied him.
"Your master must have known how to handle a blade reasonably well. But you learned it wrong."
"······."
"You're tracing something, yet it's crude. Is that the fault of a master who taught what could not be taught—or of a disciple who, even after learning, could not keep up?"
Yajam tilted his head. The swordsmanship was unmistakably of the highest order, yet its form and frame were strangely crude—as if it had been abandoned halfway through. An ordinary fighter would have been overwhelmed the moment blades crossed, but someone with eyes like his could spot the flaw at once.
Usually, in cases like this, the master is the problem.
Whether from a teacher's greed or from teaching that was never properly finished, the seams showed. Tsk. Yajam clicked his tongue lightly.
"I don't know who your master was, but······."
"I wasn't taught."
"Then?"
"I only traced it myself."
Serengeti told him the truth. The sword she was drawing as she swung was not her own. She was merely following Wilhelm's sword—Creation of Heaven and Earth.
"You cannot defeat me by imitating another, child."
Yajam's voice carried a note of pity. Crossing blades had told him everything. Serengeti's potential did not end here. There was still room for her to grow stronger. If only someone could draw that out of her, she was the kind of talent who would soar into the open sky. A genius of a type Yajam had never seen before. For someone who had only been copying, her grasp of the form and structure was surprisingly solid.
A genius of this kind only grows stronger when she meets another of the same kind.
Not him—and probably not her master either. A genius who could grasp structure and unfold the whole just by looking—did such a person even exist in this world? If she had met a proper teacher from the start······ given her talent, she might already have left him far behind.
"Well then. Even so, let us give each other our best. We kill or we die."
Yajam took up his sword. The talent was a waste—but once they had met on a battlefield, he had to kill her. That was war.
"······."
"······."
Everyone held their breath. Nearly ten thousand people stood gathered, yet not even the sound of breathing could be heard. They were more absorbed than they had ever been—in the fight between Serengeti and Yajam, in the scene of two lights crashing together. It was impossible to believe this was a battle between human beings.
It was more like······.
"A battle of the gods······."
If gods ever clashed, it would look like this. Serengeti was a goddess of victory—the goddess who would bring hope to a Balan Kingdom that had suffered defeat after defeat!
"······Marquis Weiser."
The King of Balan spoke quietly. He, too, was overwhelmed—yet he could not simply stand still.
"······Yes, Your Majesty."
"I am sorry. I had no eye for people."
The King of Balan admitted his mistake. The strongest in the Balan Kingdom was neither Battus, knight of Duke Saien, nor Abdullah, his own personal knight. It was Serengeti. What if he had sent her out from the beginning? Then Battus might not have died, and Abdullah might not have lost an arm. Regret surged in, but it was already too late. There was no one else to blame. It had happened because he himself had lacked the eyes to see.
"Ah—no, Your Majesty."
Marquis Weiser hurriedly shook his head. But the King of Balan was not the only one who had misjudged. After Serengeti displayed her power, the young Duke Saien had gone completely silent, head bowed, eyes averted. A powerhouse beyond any comparison to the likes of Battus. Even a hundred Battuses—a thousand—could not stand against a single Serengeti. And yet there was no room to boast. Marquis Weiser had known his own daughter no better than any of them.
"If it is not too late even now······ the Balan Kingdom will change its stance regarding the Knight King. We will make clear that the Great Expedition was no failure, and that the Tower of Magic and its so-called heroes are false."
"······Will you be all right, Your Majesty?"
Marquis Weiser asked, his face full of deep concern. The Tower of Magic and the Sages. The Heroes' Association that called itself a league of heroes. And that was not all. The factions that had grown fat on the failure of the Great Expedition were not one or two. If the Balan Kingdom dug into the full truth of the Great Expedition, it would be as good as making enemies of them all. But the King of Balan's face was set with resolve.
"They spread false rumors and dragged the honor of the Great Expedition and the Knight King through the mud. Should we not set it right, even now?"
"Your Majesty. It will not be an easy fight."
"The Knight King's fights never were. Nothing was ever easy."
Nothing was easy. The King of Balan would fulfill the duty entrusted to him. Restoring the Knight King's honor was also his work to do—even if it meant going to war with King Friedrich.
"Ah!"
"She won······?!"
In that instant, death-cries rose one after another. When eyes turned back to the duel, there stood Serengeti gripping a broken sword.
"That is······?"
But Serengeti had not lost. She had cleanly cut off Yajam's head. And the moment she did—
Gloop. Gloop.
From the severed neck, something like black oil poured out. Then, from within that black oil, countless hands burst forth and began to take the place of the cut-away face.
"I am the Locked Hand of God. Knight of the Goddess—let us fight again."
That was a hand of God? No matter how one looked at it, it was far closer to a demon. Terrifying demonic power. A miasma so foul that merely standing near it made the body shudder!
"Everyone, fall back!"
Serengeti cried out in urgency. Fwaaaaaaah! She unleashed the power of the star and stood against the miasma.
The Locked Hand of God. The moment she recognized what it truly was, Serengeti could only be horrified.
All of them—hands of gods who once held divinity······!
She could not even begin to guess how many hands were packed inside. What was certain was that every one of them had belonged to beings who had once been gods. Countless stars had been crammed tight into Yajam. And so Yajam had become something entirely different—the being called the Locked Hand of God.
King Friedrich.
Serengeti fixed him with a freezing stare. Why else would he have mixed a monster like that into the field? From the very beginning, King Friedrich had intended to destroy the Balan Kingdom. The ending had been decided from the start. He had merely been enjoying the kingdom's desperate thrashing—enjoying the game.
What is he doing?
But something was wrong. For a man who had been enjoying a game, his expression was far too stiff. Had he not expected the Locked Hand of God to emerge?
Some other variable has appeared.
What was it? What could possibly make King Friedrich freeze like that? But there was no room left to keep thinking.
"Kh······!"
Yajam—no, the Locked Hand of God—was insanely strong. The monster was spewing miasma that stole life the instant it touched anything. Left alone, it would take every life in the royal castle. Just holding that miasma back was already pushing Serengeti to her limit.
"Stop."
······Then it happened. A red-haired boy appeared right before her eyes. Hands clasped behind his back, the child strode boldly out in front of the Locked Hand of God. For a moment Serengeti could not understand. Where had this child come from? If a boy this conspicuous had been mixed into the crowd, she should have noticed. Yet she had felt no presence at all.
Sleep······!
The instant the question formed, a deep wave of drowsiness crashed over her. Serengeti closed her eyes and fell asleep. The red-haired boy glanced once at the sleeping Serengeti, then looked back at the Locked Hand of God and spoke.
"Bow your head at once."
"Ahem. Where does a mere demon get the nerve to hold its head high before a god?"
"We are the balancers of the world. Dragon Gods who destroy insects like you."
Ahem. Hands planted on both hips, Isera puffed out his chest and smiled.
The Demon of Pride. King Friedrich looked out over the battlefield. From the start he had known Serengeti could not defeat Yajam. Killing Yajam would only summon the Locked Hand of God. No human could contend with a monster forged from the hands of countless gods.
Things that are neither human nor monster are mixed in among them.
But once he became aware of the two children, King Friedrich could no longer enjoy this game. He had meant to watch the Balan Kingdom thrash and then bring it to ruin—
Divinity.
Only then did he understand that those two children were beings who possessed divinity. The only existence a demon like him could fail to notice was divinity. And yet it was strange.
A divinity I have never seen before.
Pride had prided himself on knowing every divinity in Pangenia. But a divinity shaped like those two children—he had never seen it, never even heard of it. There were gods who kept the form of children, but not like those two. Then what were they?
What was certain was this: gods and demons were natural enemies. In the distant past, at the height of the gods' golden age, demons had not even dared look up at the sky. But not now. Every god who might have restrained them had either been annihilated or lost their power. Even the last remaining goddess had died, had she not? And the demons' power had only grown stronger since then.
The only ones who might still stand against me are Martial God Karas and Dragon God Ainharthar. But those two can barely hold their own domains.
They had recovered their divinity, yet they were not free enough to leave their territories. They had recovered divinity alone—everything they once enjoyed was gone. Then who were these?
Wondering, King Friedrich met the eyes of the two children.
"······Dragon Gods?"
And he understood. The unknown divinity. Those two children were Dragon Gods. But not of this world. He knew every Dragon God who guarded Pangenia. Then—
Could they be the Guardians of the Heavenly Realm?
King Friedrich's expression hardened by degrees. If those Dragon Gods were Guardians of the Heavenly Realm, this was no matter to take lightly.
Even so, they will not dispose of the Locked Hand of God so easil—
—KRAAAAAAAAGH!!!
"···············."