Master of the Spear
Master of the Spear
It was dark. Black bled across his vision until nothing remained, and in that darkness Aslan felt something familiar.
This was the deep layer of consciousness where even dreams could not reach—the dim interior of a human soul, bordering on the unconscious.
Aslan was sinking into it. But he wasn't suffocating. He couldn't see his own hand in front of his face, yet there was no panic.
He knew this place.
He cast his gaze around, and when he spotted something recognizable, he let out a sigh.
A distant horizon. Weapons drifted through infinite darkness, stretching to the limit of human vision.
There were no winding roads or landscapes befitting any martial tradition, but Aslan understood what this was. And sure enough, his assumption was correct.
[Ar―Slll―Anrgggg]
A sound forced from something that lacked human oral structures.
It was there, beyond.
Immeasurable darkness. Bubbles and colossal tentacles drifted within it. The shape was mist-like, hazy—refusing to resolve no matter how directly he tried to perceive it. All he could see was a faint afterimage bleeding into the void.
Because human cognition simply rejected the task of perceiving it.
And yet he knew.
It held weapons.
With countless tentacles stretching out across every direction of the universe, it grasped an infinite multitude of arms—every weapon humankind had ever forged.
So many weapons flooded his vision at once that the sheer density made his consciousness swim. Aslan beheld the entity lurking beyond them.
No one knew its true name.
An ancient Predator that had crept forth from Chaos, it fed on souls to swell its flesh and hoarded Knowledge.
What it craved was the skill that living things accumulated.
Techniques for surviving. For killing.
The god was obsessed with that karma of life and death.
And so people called it by this name:
War God.
Aslan perceived it through a body that was not a body, and the first thing he felt was weariness.
This was one of the reasons he resisted sleep.
Whenever he sank deep enough that not even dreams could find him, the gods were always the first to arrive.
Their naked courtship. Experiencing it always left him disgusted.
The sight of vast beings incapable of anything resembling conversation forcing their way into his soul and waving their hands at him—it was repulsive.
"Grrrrgh, Arhghaaaaaa!"
The will reached out and pressed into Aslan's soul. The meaning bleeding through the darkness, the seeping fog, the bubbles, and the gloom was simple enough.
Make an offering.
Aslan let his body fall backward, as if laughing at the demand, and closed his eyes.
Time to wake up.
He shook the flesh he could feel—through heightened luck beyond the unconscious—and the world collapsed.
On the other side of that collapse, the War God shrank, and the darkness lifted.
He rose faster than he had sunk. Aslan broke the surface at a violent speed—opened his eyes—and the sea of sleep was gone. He was on dry ground.
"...Damned War God."
He clicked his tongue quietly and opened his eyes to find a faint glow swimming in the gloom. Aslan registered the light and pushed himself up.
The glow came from a single magical lantern and the woman beside it.
A woman who had fallen asleep with her arms wrapped around a spear.
The moment he saw her, Aslan took stock of his own body. Nothing serious, but he could feel bones and joints grinding from the impact of the fall.
Grateful that his remaining mana was plentiful, he drew it up and wrapped it around his body, then checked his gear.
The Wings of Stymphalos, Seobsaeng, the blood sword Rutil, the twin spears, the green scale shield—all of it remained, nothing missing.
The hammer he'd been holding had apparently been thrown clear during the fall; it lay off to the side with a few Stymphalos feathers scattered nearby.
'Not on guard, but not off guard either. Curious.'
The fact that she hadn't touched any of his equipment surprised him, and he studied her.
She was hugging her spear, so she hadn't been entirely at ease, but she wasn't fully alert either. The fact that she'd fallen asleep made that clear.
'She said she wasn't injured, didn't she? Let's see...'
He watched her silently, then approached. His footsteps didn't wake her. Her eyes were closed, her sleeping face gentle and soft.
Aslan stood over her and slowly checked her condition, confirming no injuries. That was a relief. He'd thrown his body on the line to save her—it would have soured things if she'd been hurt anyway.
He was about to straighten up when he noticed the book lying at her feet.
Next to the lantern. A novel.
Almost without thinking, he picked it up and opened it.
It was an adventure novel centered on romance.
An adventure, certainly, but with the occasional lewd passage, and most of the story revolved around the love affairs of the main cast and those around them.
The adventure elements, accordingly, were mild.
As he skimmed through, he saw almost nothing that resembled a life-or-death struggle.
A rare book in Geladrion, but it showed clear signs of having been read many times.
Well-maintained yet visibly worn. The sections heavy with romance and eroticism were marked with hand-grime from repeated touch. Aslan noticed that and kept flipping. Pages turned with a soft rustle.
"...Ah..."
The rustling drew her awake at last. A voice thick with drowsiness came with it.
The woman's brown eyes rose slowly and met Aslan's teal gaze.
Her half-lidded, sleepy eyes gradually opened—and then landed on his hands.
On the hands holding her most treasured book.
A flustered look spread swiftly across her face, and her lips twitched. Her throat rippled as she swallowed.
She looked torn between demanding it back and staying silent.
Aslan extended the book before the pause could stretch.
"My apologies for reading it without permission."
A light apology. It only flustered her more.
"Ah, n-no, it's not... that book isn't... I mean, it was just here, so..."
The excuse had no weight. A tomb sealed for a thousand years—who would leave a modern romance novel lying around? Aslan smiled slightly, and the woman bit her lip hard as she took the book back.
Even in the darkness, her ears were unmistakably red. Aslan watched her, then sat down beside her at a polite distance.
"You must enjoy novels."
"...I don't."
An obvious lie.
Aslan chose not to point it out. "I like stories myself."
It was an offhand remark, and her gaze shifted toward him. He lowered his eyes and went on.
"In the past, I was drawn to... darker stories. I thought they offered more to chew on. More material to work with. But... these days, it's different."
The words were disjointed, and she seemed unsure how to respond. He glanced at her and finished the thought.
"Now I prefer happy stories. Stories where people find happiness."
She watched him quietly when he said that.
Her gaze held suspicion and a silent question: Why are you telling me this?
He looked back at her, calm and direct.
"Do you enjoy romance novels?"
A straightforward question. She hesitated visibly, then nodded. The way she bit her lip again made her embarrassment plain.
"What kind of romance do you like?"
"Wh-why do you want to know?"
He adjusted the mana circulating through his body as he answered. The power spreading through his wounds was accelerating his recovery.
"I'm in no condition to move. Thought I might pass the time with some light conversation."
The Master of the Spear glanced at his body at those words, then bit her lip once more.
"Do I... have to answer?"
Shame. A hobby was one thing, but sharing it with a near-stranger was another. Aslan tilted his gaze upward briefly and said,
"If you'd rather not, you don't have to."
"...Then I won't."
The words carried a shy evasiveness. Aslan nodded.
"In that case, would you tell me your name?"
Her head lifted and fixed on him.
Aslan tilted his own head slightly and spoke.
"And why you had to kill Tormule. Please."
The noblewoman bit her lip again. It seemed to be her way of channeling unease.
With her lip still caught between her teeth, she raised only her eyes. The gentle downward curve of their corners lifted, turning her expression fierce.
"Is this to pass judgment on my sins?"
A reasonable assumption. Usually, when someone asked why you'd done such a thing, they meant to condemn you for it.
But Aslan shook his head.
"If I'd known Tormule was colluding with priests, I'd have killed him myself. So I hold no regret. We weren't close, anyway."
She'd been expecting censure; a bemused look crossed her face. Aslan leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes.
"And I've no right to pass judgment on anyone."
With every expectation overturned, she simply stared at him, at a loss.
She couldn't fathom why he wanted to hear her story. No matter how she turned it over in her head, it made no sense. Today was the first conversation she and this man had ever had.
"Then... why do you want to hear it?"
So she asked. She had no other choice.
Aslan kept his eyes shut for a moment, then opened them and looked at her.
His profile, for some reason, carried a deeply sorrowful cast. With a face touched by melancholy, he smiled gently.
Kindness lived in those teal eyes.
She flinched before she knew it, and the man said,
"Because you had the look of someone who wanted to be heard."
Her brown eyes trembled sharply. Before she even realized it, her mouth was opening.
*
The woman's name was Rumel van Holne.
And as she appeared to be, she was of noble birth.
She was the eldest daughter of Baron Holne, a vassal of the Margrave of Saingirus.
She had been a typical noble daughter without anything particularly remarkable about her.
She could swim, and she enjoyed rowing a little boat out onto the lake to gaze at the water. But that was about it.
She had grown up in reasonable comfort in Gerne, the city of the Barony of Holne.
She had never held a weapon in her life, and she had never expected to. Her younger brother would inherit the title, and she would eventually be married off to some other noble family.
So she lived her aristocratic life, content with Gerne.
It was a pastoral existence.
Then one day, Baron Aira—whose lands bordered the Barony of Holne—came calling.
Baron Aira had conspired with mercenaries within Gerne to launch a surprise attack. The castle walls crumbled as if by some absurd trick, and people died.
Baron Holne, who had initially intended to pay a ransom and secure release, was killed as well.
Her mother, her younger brother—even the servants were slaughtered.
The warriors who had sworn loyalty to her house threw themselves at the attackers to protect their lord, or to avenge him, and died horribly.
Everyone died.
Gerne burned. Rumel herself was nearly violated.
But she escaped. By a thread.
If luck had not been with her, she would have died too.
In the chaos, she had seized a mercenary's spear and driven it through him. Then she had fled across the lake in a small rowboat.
With a single spear, the clothes on her back, and one beloved book.
The one who burned Gerne, overran the Barony of Holne, and butchered her family indiscriminately—that had been Tormule.
Tormule, hired by Baron Aira.
Tormule, who had Warrior Monks at his side.
Tormule, who had murdered her family before her eyes in brutal fashion.
Her father, his entire chest drilled through by a technique called the Spiral Spear. Her younger brother, a hole punched clean through the center of his face. Her mother, throat slit, dying slowly with a sound like boiling blood.
Rumel swore vengeance.
She crossed the lake and survived: crawling across the ground by day, hiding in tree hollows by night.
Eventually, she reached the City of Pleasure, Asan.
There she sold every piece of jewelry and every dress she owned for a pittance, bought armor and rough clothing to conceal her face and chest, and became a mercenary.
She moved with a single driving thought: someday, revenge.
A year passed that way.
To survive, she had to hide who she was. She had to grow stronger.
She had to become strong by any means necessary.
She swung her spear with desperate intensity, stealing every technique she could by watching over others' shoulders.
In the process, she discovered her own talent.
With that talent and her relentless training as pillars, she threw herself into one life-or-death struggle after another and grew.
When she had become strong enough, she caught Tormule's eye and joined his mercenary company.
She survived multiple expeditions and battlefields, earned his favor, and rose to become his adjutant.
All so she could drive her spear through his heart.
When Rumel finished speaking and pulled her knees up to bury her face in them, Aslan leaned his head back against the wall to gather his thoughts.
"He was a Warrior Monk?"
"Yes. He was."
Her voice dripped with clear, sharp hatred. Aslan exhaled quietly.
He hadn't known Tormule had been in league with the Warrior Monks for that long.
"That piece of filth was always like that. He'd do anything for money. Tormule was human garbage who'd sell himself to priests or bandits as long as they paid."
Aslan grunted a small acknowledgment.
This was a different picture from the Tormule he had known.
Not that it had been some elaborate act to deceive Aslan—that would have been bafflingly unnecessary.
After thinking it over, Aslan concluded that Tormule's avarice ran even deeper than he had realized.
Pay him, and he'd fight evil to the death. Pay him, and he'd just as readily fight for the Evil Gods. That was Tormule.
Hearing this now, Aslan saw it clearly.
Good and evil meant nothing to Tormule.
Which was probably why his name carried such weight as a mercenary.
Aslan exhaled and looked at Rumel.
What mattered wasn't Tormule. It was this noblewoman.
Only a year since she'd first picked up a spear.
No matter how fiercely vengeance burned inside her, no matter how obsessively she trained, it was not normal for a noble girl who had never touched a weapon to become a Master of the Spear in a single year.
This was innate talent.
The same kind of overwhelming, natural genius he'd sensed when he first saw Fay.
Innate talent, luck, circumstance, and a single-minded obsession bordering on madness—those were the ingredients that had forged Rumel into a Master.
Talent and motivation like this were rare.
The perfect candidate for a companion.
He wondered how he should offer comfort, then realized it wouldn't take. He closed his eyes heavily and opened them again.
"Has it eased anything to speak?"
Comfort wasn't what she needed.
Rumel knew that too. She answered, voice muffled between her knees.
"A little. Yes."
A story she'd never been able to tell anyone. A story no one had ever been able to hear. He'd drawn it out of her in the disorientation of this strange place. Under normal circumstances, he'd never have been able to hear it.
Aslan was grateful that luck had aligned in his favor, and he arranged everything he'd been told in his mind.
"Now I understand why you felt you had no reason to live."
Rumel's eyes turned toward him.
"No place to return to. No goal. A future that holds nothing but bleak emptiness. I know that feeling well."
Her head turned. The brown eyes fixed on him were drained of strength.
"Because I've been there. The circumstances differ, but still."
When confusion surfaced within that weariness, Aslan smiled wryly.
He had a place to return to, but couldn't. He had a goal, but it was impossibly remote. And his future wasn't just bleak—it was saturated with malice.
The world wanted to chew him up and swallow him.
Surviving at all had been a slog.
He rose to his feet. Rumel's gaze followed him as he gathered the daggers that had scattered during the fall and tucked them back into his cloak.
Then he noticed the hammer on the ground, kicked it lightly into his grip, and slung it over his shoulder. He turned at an angle and faced the deeper darkness of the tomb.
Beyond the pressing dark, wind wailed, and Aslan's hair stirred lightly in the draft.
The ceiling was sealed.
Meaning the tomb ought to be airtight.
But it wasn't. He could breathe.
He caught on at once: the tomb was leaving a path open. Beckoning. He called up everything he knew about this place and turned back to Rumel.
He stepped toward her and extended his hand. Rumel, still hugging her knees, stared at it.
"I have a goal. To change this world."
A puzzled look crossed her face.
"If I want to change this world, I have to kill every last Evil God. That's what I live for."
The puzzlement became shock.
"And I've no intention of rotting away in here. For the sake of that goal... I'm getting out. Will you help me, my lady?"
Shock mingled with something else and took on new shape.
Aslan went down on one knee, hand outstretched, like a knight straight out of those adventure tales she loved. Rumel's eyes quivered faintly at the sight of that hand.
Her gaze passed over it and rose to his face. When their eyes met, Aslan smiled gently.
The hesitation in her expression cleared. She reached out and took his hand.
Aslan pulled her to her feet, smiling bright and clear.
The novel Rumel cherished was a tale of adventure and love.
And she would not be able to refuse this adventure.