Nechagni
Nechagni
What is a Master?
Few could answer that question straight away. Even scouring the whole world, you wouldn't find many, and the chance of a correct answer was equally remote.
Before even defining what a Master was, there were countless people who couldn't tell you what sort of person a Master might be.
They had six arms, or stood twice the height of an ordinary man, or could split mountains with a sword.
The drawn blade cut day from night and shone like twilight.
Those were the only answers you'd hear—tales that sounded like legends or fairy tales—and some people believed them in earnest.
Even the subjects of Count Warpol's domain or Count Sholukund's domain, right near the War God's fortress-sanctuary, were no different.
Geographically close, they should have had access to accurate information, but humanity's peculiar attraction to sensational rumors kept them from ever correcting the misconceptions.
They truly believed Masters were monstrous beings, mighty warriors who had cast aside human form.
That was what they genuinely believed.
And now, the woman watching a Master enter the fortress thought much the same.
A legendary figure, whispered to be the Sword of the War God, a monster of the Mythical Era.
A Warrior Monk of immense stature, carrying hundreds of swords, said to have erased a kingdom in a single night.
When the soldier heard that the one being called the only answer and hope against that being was entering the fortress, she hurried to the entrance, filled with anticipation and curiosity.
What would this rumored Master look like? Would he be as majestic as the legends and myths claimed?
Driven by such curiosity, the woman reached the fortress gate and peered through the bustling soldiers at the Master's party.
'...What.'
The Master she saw for the first time was nothing like what she had imagined.
He was not a giant, nor did he have six arms.
He carried no sword massive enough to cleave mountains, and radiated none of the overwhelming presence that might split night from day.
The leader of the group strode into the fortress alongside the king of the Mountain Kingdom, his face etched with tattoos.
He looked like an ordinary man.
At a glance, he was handsome, and his height and build were quite large compared to an average person, but that was all.
Rather, the deep weariness in his expression and the melancholy on his face provoked an odd, prickling sensation in those who saw him.
His teal eyes were downcast, and the people walking behind him gave off a similar impression.
The one supposed to stand against a mythical monster, the one said to be able to fight it, was, contrary to all expectations, an ordinary human.
*
"Hey, Karl!"
"Ah, yes!"
"This little shit, lost in thought—why are your hands idle?"
"Sorry! I was just thinking about something for a moment...."
"Huh, a damn recruit thinking—what's there to think about? Don't stand there like a moron, move your hands, you idiot!"
"Yes, sorry!" The woman using her younger brother's name shut her mouth tightly and brought the wooden mallet down with dull thuds.
With each blow, the stake drove deeper, and she watched the incremental shift with interest as she kept working.
It had been two months since she had begged the conscription officer to let her use her brother's name and made her way to Nechagni.
She had adapted to military life with astonishing speed.
The curses and abuse that had once wounded her deeply now meant nothing, and she had grown accustomed to the dried rations she had once thought inedible.
Hammering and standing rigid with a heavy spear were becoming second nature.
Humans were adaptable animals. Feeling that truth deeply, she swung the mallet again and again.
Bang, bang—the palisade slowly settled into place, and she wiped her forehead with a trace of satisfaction.
Heavy sweat clung to her. As she wiped it, the soldier beside her, who had been unloading lumber, spoke.
"Karl, how is it? The work manageable?"
"Ah, yes. Thanks to you...."
"What 'thanks'? Ugh, why the hell are we even doing this crap."
The grumbling soldier was her superior. He was only a senior in name, neither high-ranked nor particularly outstanding, but he had practically looked after her when she could barely pull her weight.
So the woman going by the name Karl inevitably grew deferential, and each time, the senior soldier would smile awkwardly and hastily change the subject.
"So, what do you think?"
There was no context. Karl didn't immediately grasp what he meant, and she had to turn to him with a blank look.
"About what, sir?"
"You know, the business of taking down the Sword of the War God."
"...Even if you ask what I think...."
Karl made an ambiguous face at that—much like the expression her superior wore.
It was the same face shared by every soldier within the palisade walls encircling the fortress, and even by some of the fortress's high-ranking officials.
Amid a haze of vague detachment and idle speculation, those wearing that expression could not sympathize with the dragon-kin who were shouting that the coming war would be an immense catastrophe.
The reason, it seemed, was that the looming threat lacked any sense of reality.
And that lack of reality was not theirs alone.
The entire fortress was steeped in that atmosphere.
So much so that no one truly felt the approaching danger.
Leaning on her mallet, Karl gazed out beyond the palisade and thought about the rumors.
The scattered rumors about the enemy that filtered through the fortress.
To people who had never even seen a follower of the War God, let alone a Warrior Monk, these tales were equally airy nonsense.
The enemy was called the Sword of the War God.
This Sword of the War God was a real monster, they said—one that could topple cities and sweep away armies with mere gestures and swordplay.
Its body was as long as a mountain range, its bulk as massive as a giant, and its burning gaze could release a roar that shattered human bodies.
It sounded like something a frightened child waking from a nightmare might sob out.
Most soldiers who heard the stories reacted just that way.
Only the dragon-kin were an exception.
Thus the atmosphere in the fortress that was to become a battlefield did not match what you'd expect from people facing an overwhelming enemy.
It was an atmosphere that would collapse the moment real battle began, but Karl had no way of knowing that.
For now, something else was on her mind.
She withdrew her glance from beyond the palisade and turned her head, following a spreading commotion.
Her superior also turned to look. From that direction, someone was cutting through the encampment set up among the palisades.
"Ah."
After a quiet exclamation, the senior soldier eyed the figure with utter skepticism.
That figure was a famous one.
A man with black hair and melancholy teal eyes, a large deer slung across his shoulders.
A man whose lean build was striking, more like a scout or hunter than a warrior.
It was Aslan, the Master of Combat.
The senior soldier stared at him blankly and then muttered a word.
"Hope, they call him...."
The forces currently gathered near the fortress fell into four main factions.
Some, like Karl and her senior, were from the Kallus Empire's territories; the rest were mages from the City of Mages, warriors from Baramunz, and dragon-kin from Belus Alpen.
The dragon-kin of Belus Alpen, who made up one of those factions, called him hope.
The sole hope of this mythical battlefield, they said.
It wasn't a sentiment that inspired much empathy. Karl could only make a skeptical face.
She shifted her weight from the mallet and leaned against the palisade. Just then, the man who had been walking suddenly looked their way.
"Uh, shit. He heard us?"
In that instant, the Master of Combat lightly kicked off the ground, deer still on his shoulder, and closed the distance in a blur.
Crack-boom!
A thunderclap. Karl froze at the sudden noise, and her senior's hand unconsciously went to his hip.
Karl heard an ominous sound rushing in from behind her.
A groaning creak of twisting timber—the sound of the palisade toppling.
Shivers raced down her spine, her body locked, and her mind went blank in that moment.
"Domination."
Aslan, who had approached at near-invisible speed, reached out his hand.
And murmured a word in a voice only Karl could hear.
As that incomprehensible syllable slipped out, a scent—warm and alive—wafted toward her.
At the same time, the oppressive weight that had chilled her spine vanished.
The man stood nearly nose-to-nose with her. His teal eyes glinted fiercely. When Karl turned her head, she saw the palisade frozen in mid-air.
An overwhelming mass far too heavy for one man to support.
Yet at Aslan's extended hand, the palisade halted and slowly tilted back—then kept going until it planted itself deep into the ground.
A depth that would have taken Karl days to pound in. As the deeply embedded palisade stood motionless, the man let out a breath and spoke.
"You should be more careful."
His tone held no reproach—just a hint of concern, lightly spoken.
And that tone was utterly at odds with the surreal sight he had just demonstrated.
It was a voice filled with an almost painfully human quality, steeped in weariness.
A far cry from any legend or myth.
As the soldiers stared blankly, Aslan swept his gaze over them, smiled awkwardly, and walked away.
Once he had moved on, most soldiers turned back to their tasks or resumed their conversations, but Karl couldn't.
She harbored questions and wanted answers.
As the risen sun set and Karl finished her own palisade work for the day, mealtime came.
She had heard that the Master's party had refused offers of rooms inside the fortress and set up camp outside, so she followed the rumor to their encampment near the palisade.
In her hand was the last piece of cheese she had brought from home.
Beyond the lit campfire, she saw a variety of silhouettes.
A dragon-kin wrapped in a blanket, an elegant woman busy cooking, a tall old man holding a crossbow alongside two girls, and even a white-haired woman with a forlorn expression.
They were unique, but hardly the stuff of legends or hope—a far cry from the special beings one might have expected.
At the center of them all was Aslan.
The man who had saved Karl earlier, wielding that strange power.
He was munching his stew, and when everyone's eyes turned his way, he looked up.
"...Ah, the soldier from this morning."
Swallowing his food, he recognized her with a gentle expression and gestured for her to come closer.
Without even asking why she had come, Aslan shifted aside to make room for her to sit and asked the buxom woman, "Is there a bowl left?"
"Well, there is, but...."
"Then please."
"Mm, very well. If Lord Aslan wishes it."
The woman, with a somewhat reluctant air, produced an empty wooden bowl and ladled stew into it. Even Karl briefly lost her gaze to the woman's astonishing figure before bowing her head deeply and accepting the bowl.
Sitting on the log Aslan had been using, Karl tilted the bowl and sipped the stew. The gentle warmth that spread through her, the careful flavor, and the conspicuously large chunks of meat made her think of home.
The nostalgic taste softened her eyes, and only after a long moment could she observe the party in detail.
On closer inspection, the Master's companions were unusual and far from ordinary.
Their weapons looked ready to take life at any moment, and despite the late hour, they remained razor-sharp in demeanor.
They were unmistakably formidable.
But they looked nothing like the Masters Karl had imagined.
Rather than special heroes or monsters, they seemed to be ordinary people with blood and beating hearts, just like Karl.
There were individual differences, of course, but that was how they appeared to her.
Even Aslan, regarded as the greatest hope among them, gave off an especially human impression.
Eyes that seemed tired and somehow sorrowful; a gentle manner at odds with his melancholy air; the very image of an approachable, kind young man.
As she ate the stew and bowed her head at Aslan's thanks for the cheese, she suddenly spoke.
The words slipped out before she knew it.
"...What exactly are we fighting?"
A silence fell. As the party's gazes turned to her, Karl instinctively drew a breath.
"I mean, will I... be able to go home?"
Home. At that, a certain understanding seemed to pass among the group.
That she had not come willingly—that she was conscripted.
And Karl, too, belatedly grasped her own situation.
Nobles did nothing without reason—they were not that foolish.
That these nobles were gathering forces, meticulously preparing for the coming battle—
It was proof of how monumental the approaching fight would be. A hiccup escaped the woman in man's clothing.
It was sudden fear.
She hadn't known why she'd come, but now she did.
She was afraid.
So she had come to these people the nobles lauded as hope, seeking comfort and reassurance.
The intention was written on her face. She squeezed her eyes shut, and when she opened them, Aslan was sitting beside her on the log.
Over the creak of the wood, Karl gazed at his profile in a daze.
That melancholy face soon spoke.
"I don't know."
An indifferent answer, contrary to the comfort she had expected. As the woman stared blankly, Aslan wore a pained expression.
"If I said no one would die, that'd be a lie. This is a war. Someone will surely die."
A deep kind of fear was visible in that anguished face.
A fear that seemed to go beyond his own death.
After saying that, he fell silent for a moment.
A silence heavy with oppressive weight.
The overwhelmed woman's mouth fell slightly open. Then the man patted her shoulder.
"But you won't fight alone. There will be people on the battlefield with you."
It was an obvious thing to say, and she couldn't grasp the intent.
As the speechless woman struggled to interpret his words, that deeply human hope smiled and added,
The words that followed were again something she hadn't expected.
"And I will be there too. That's the only thing I can guarantee."
It wasn't a promise that they would survive, or that she could go home, or that they would definitely win.
Nor was it a clear statement about their odds or the nature of the enemy.
It wasn't optimism, nor pessimism.
It wasn't comfort, nor a curse.
It was simply the promise that they would fight together.
Not born of confidence, nor forced words meant to raise morale.
Just a declaration, uttered with boundless sincerity, that he would be there.
She couldn't fathom the reason.
But the woman, conscripted under her brother's name, found that her heart grew much lighter upon hearing those words.
More comforting than any solace she had ever known.
With a sense of peace, she held her bowl of stew, and Aslan patted her shoulder once more.
The hand of hope was warmer than she had ever imagined.