A Curse, a Gate, and a Sworn Oath
A curse.
I murmured under my breath, eyes fixed straight ahead. Vile curses were coiling toward me like thousands of serpents, a display vicious enough to chill the blood — though sadly for them, they couldn't so much as brush my collar. The moment those curses touched my pure-white divine power, they scattered like dust. Just as knights are weak to curses, curses are rat poison to the divine.
So who's behind this?
People assume black mages are deranged madmen, but in truth they were incurably calculating creatures — black magic runs on life force, not mana. Which meant a black mage daring to touch a military train could only mean one thing: he had a backer powerful enough to make such recklessness survivable.
I flexed my fingers open and set off toward the source of the curses. When I pushed open the door to the next car, suspicious characters were waiting inside.
Seven in all. Their faces were familiar — the soldier who'd inspected the tickets, the ones who'd saluted Leon back at the station, even the men who'd been loitering beside us waiting for the train.
The entire train was a trap.
They seemed to run deeper than I'd expected, too.
"Hm? There's a priest here."
The black mage clicked his tongue at the sight of me. A remarkably composed reaction, for a black mage facing a priest. I knew the reason at once.
"Deal with him."
At his curt order, one of the men behind him drew out a long staff and leveled it at me. A mage, then.
"O ice, seize the enemy's breath."
A chill swept along the staff and engulfed my legs. The divine power that had so easily melted the curses held no resistance against magic. The rest of them drew their swords in unison, and aura bloomed from every blade at once.
They've fought priests before.
A knight and a mage together — against that combination, an ordinary priest couldn't muster a whisper of power. Unfortunately for them, I was not an ordinary priest.
I rapped my knuckles lightly against the hilt. Aura rose along the scabbard and drove back the cold.
"Aura—!"
The knights gasped in alarm. The black mage, on the other hand, curled his lips into a sneer.
"Ah, so you're a half-baked priest after all. Don't be alarmed. A cheap imitation of aura and divine power — nothing more."
"So you know of Battle Priests."
"Know of them? They were the Holy Nation's single dumbest idea."
His mockery was open and unashamed. The Holy Nation, desperate to overcome the elemental counter-cycle, had once cultivated Battle Priests who wielded both aura and divine power — for if a warrior could command both, he'd hold the advantage in every matchup imaginable.
There had been one fatal flaw, of course. Aura demanded faith in oneself; divine power drew its strength from faith in a god. The two could barely coexist. In the end, the Battle Priest became neither priest nor knight — a half-measure, a hollow compromise.
That's the official story, at least.
The real reason the Holy Nation abandoned the program was something else entirely, but I had no intention of explaining it to the man in front of me.
"A half-breed, then. Finish him."
At the black mage's clipped command, the knights hurled themselves at me. The one in front swung his sword at me in honest, straightforward arc — clearly intending, per the black mage's advice, to crush my aura with his own.
I gladly met his blade. The two auras collided, and a vile smile spread across his face.
"You idi—"
Clang! A sharp crack split the air, and aura shattered. His, not mine.
One.
I watched his severed head sail through the air and counted silently.
"Condensed aura! He's at least a Higher Knight! Don't fight him alone!"
One of the knights shouted the order in a panic. A Higher Knight? How flattering.
Muttering the joke to myself, I swung at the next man. "Yah!" He twisted his sword desperately to parry — a decent reaction, all things considered.
I wrenched my hips and drew back my shoulder at the same time. The unnatural motion tore at my muscles, but the divine power knit them back together in an instant. His mid-swing blade froze dead in the air — then shifted into a thrust.
"What in the—"
Shock flared in his eyes, then dimmed.
Two.
I shoved the corpse aside with my shoulder. The next knight flinched, just barely, as his comrade's body came flying at him. It lasted no more than an instant — but on a battlefield, an instant is all the opening you need.
"Three."
I said it while looking straight at the black mage. Fear surfaced in his eyes. A lovely sight.
Then, abruptly, his expression hardened into grim resolve.
"Fall back—!"
He cried out sharply and flung his hand outward. Blood sprayed from his palm like a fountain, arcing into the air — and then, impossibly, it simply stopped, hanging suspended mid-flight.
You can't be serious.
My eyes sank deep.
"Gate Opening!"
The black mage pointed at me and roared. The suspended blood plummeted to the floor, and the spray that had shot upward like falling rain in reverse began to bubble and boil from the ground up. Soon the blood-soaked floor melted away, and something black and unholy revealed itself — a grotesque arm wrapped in bristles like a boar's hide. A demon's arm.
"Gate Opening?"
"Heh. So you know of Gate Opening. You've got a decent eye. You should count yourself lucky—"
The black mage crowed loudly, his face brimming with pride. Fair enough, in a way — Gate Opening, the art of manifesting a demon in the flesh, was high-tier black magic by any measure. The problem was that his own skill didn't come anywhere near that level.
"Tsk. You forced a Gate Opening you couldn't sustain. What an idiot."
I clicked my tongue and shook out my hand, letting aura and divine power scatter into nothing.
"Uwahahaha! He gives up! That's right, half-breed! Bow your head!"
The black mage howled with laughter. I raised three fingers and looked at him.
"Release your Gate Opening within a count of three, and I'll kill you painlessly. One."
I folded down a finger.
"...What? You arrogant little— you've gone completely insane!"
The black mage laughed so hard he sprayed spit. I folded the next finger and whispered.
"Three."
Screeeech— A sound like screaming metal tore through the air from every direction at once. Then black chains erupted from my right chest, and in moments they had filled the entire interior of the train from wall to wall.
Fast and slow had no meaning here. As if the outcome had been settled from the start, the chains extended and arrived in the same instant. The two knights, the mage, and the demon's arm were impaled without even managing to resist. The demon's arm writhed like something trying to flee, but the black chains only bored deeper into it.
It wasn't combat. It was closer to one-sided dining.
"Gate Opening?! How does someone who wields divine power—"
The black mage stammered, eyes bulging with terror. "You're mad! You've had a demon's heart transplanted! What kind of lunatic does that!!"
He trembled like a man seeing a ghost. I hadn't transplanted one — I'd been given one, forced upon me. But that, too, required no explanation.
As I approached, the black mage shook like a leaf.
"Y-you didn't count two! You skipped two!"
"Two has always been silent."
"S-silent?"
"Forget the trivia. You — how did you manage a Gate Opening? At your garbage-tier level, it should be impossible."
"G-garbage?! You think I'd answer that?! I am a follower of the Inverted Star! Pain is my rapture, and curses are my blessing, you fool!"
He declared it with pride. Black mages were notorious for terrifying endurance, and the accepted wisdom was simple: torture doesn't work on them.
"That's what they all say. At first."
I waggled my index finger, and pure-white flame roared to life along its length. At the sight of that divine fire, fear showed in the black mage's eyes for the first time.
"Threatening me with divine power! Blasphemy! That's forbidden under Holy Nation law!!"
It was a little funny, hearing a black mage lecture me about Holy Nation law — but he wasn't wrong. The Holy Nation strictly forbade the use of divine power for torture.
"It's fine."
I leaned in and whispered into his ear.
"I've been excommunicated."
The black mage's face contorted into something vicious.
The Table of Truth.
I brushed the dust from my hands. The Table of Truth was one of the Ten Enemies of the Empire — an organization of black mages. In practice, a sect of heretics who served as errand-runners for the Outer Gods.
Where an ordinary black mage might sacrifice one unit of life force to gain three units of power, the fanatics of the Table of Truth would burn three of their own and ten of somebody else's to gain five. That was how the man back there had managed a Gate Opening he had no business casting.
And that raised a question.
Why was the Table of Truth after Leon? Were they planning to replace the faculty?
In the original story, Leon lost an arm — but still became a professor. How would he have survived an ambush that included a black mage capable of Gate Opening?
"Where are the enemies—?!"
Just then, Leon burst onto the scene with a mighty bellow. Blood was trickling from his lips; he'd apparently bitten through his tongue.
A bitten tongue alone couldn't break curses this potent.
Ah. He has a talent for black magic.
It seemed Leon carried latent potential for it. That would explain why his curses dissolved early and he'd clawed his way out of the trap — and the black mage, spooked by the unexpected variable, must have cut and run. Now that I played the scene through in my head, I could roughly understand how Leon had survived one-armed and still made professor.
"Where are the enemies!! Leon has arrived!!"
"Quiet."
At my curt words, Leon blinked at me, dumbfounded.
"Why are you speaking informally?"
"Captain Leon."
"Why informal—"
I drew the insignia from my coat. Golden radiance poured out of it, washing over the entire train. Drenched in the light, Leon blinked stupidly.
"...A star?"
Leon's face went corpse-pale.
Unit 444.
Leon swallowed dryly at the number inscribed on the insignia the man held out to him.
There was a saying on the front lines. The useless get dragged to the front, the talented get sent to headquarters — and the very best of all are deployed to the deepest front. And beyond even that deepest front, there were those who operated in hell itself: the units that bore repeating numbers, standing against the curses of the Great Demons.
Unit 111. Unit 222. Unit 333. And then —
Unit 444.
The number painted on the man's insignia.
"All honors to the Empire—!!"
Leon threw the salute reserved for generals, desperate and rigid.
I'm dead. I am so, so dead.
He wanted to bite off his tongue right then and there. Every act of disrespect and insolence he'd committed against this man in the past hour flickered before his eyes.
Then the man returned the salute with practiced ease.
"Captain Leon."
"Sir!!!"
"I am carrying out a classified mission under the Commander's orders. This — all of it — goes in your report. As your work."
Repelling a black mage ambush was an enormous feat. And he intended to hand that credit to Leon?
He's unbelievably cool!
Well, of course — this was the legendary Unit 444. A man worthy of being called a hero would hardly hold a grudge over one of Leon's minor blunders.
"Yes!! Understood, sir!!"
Leon let out a breath of pure relief. Then, in a flat tone, the man called to him.
"Captain Leon."
"Captain! Sir Leon!"
"Oh. You're still standing?"
The man asked it as though genuinely marveling. Still standing — what did that— Leon caught the meaning a beat too late.
He means get your head on the floor!
Leon slammed his forehead into the ground in a panic. He hit it hard enough that a thud! rang out, but given the circumstances, he felt nothing at all.
"Now our eyes are level."
At the man's flat voice, Leon squeezed his eyes shut.
He absolutely held that grudge.
He'd chattered away in banmal at a general of Unit 444. This wasn't a mistake that would merely sour a military career — it was the kind that ended it.
Nail me to the Academy.
And never return to a battlefield again, so help me. Leon swore it silently.
"Right, you're headed to the Academy."
"Sir? Yes!!! Absolutely!!! Sir!!!"
"There's one thing I need to ask of you."
Nothing about it sounded like a request, but with his forehead still pressed to the floor, Leon had no choice but to nod.
"Say the word, sir! Anything!! I'll do it!!! Anything at all!!!"
Leon shouted until his throat bled.
"Anything?"
The man's voice as he repeated it sounded exactly like a devil's whisper. Leon desperately did not want to nod. But the choice had never been his to make.
"Yes!! Anything!!"
The corner of the man's mouth curled up, slow and predatory.