Revenge
Knight Commander Tekeloman pressed forward on a body already in tatters. Blood soaked through the cuts his sword had taken, but the man paid it no mind and charged on.
When the knights who had only hesitated behind him finally joined the fight, he found a sliver of breathing room. With it, whenever his body refused to move, he swallowed one of the potions he kept against his chest; when even that was impossible, he simply poured one over a wound to stem the bleeding. He never stopped fighting, yet the situation never improved.
The Caelon Empire's forces, with Knight Commander Gallard at their head, had kept their core troops held back while the front lines ground through a war of attrition. They chipped away piece by piece, springing traps and magic in unbroken succession, as if determined to leave no opening of any kind. The moment one of their men who even looked like a key fighter fell, he was yanked to the rear for the Saintess's healing and sent back out to fight again. Caelon's soldiers, even with mortal wounds, returned under a Saintess's support and fought on like the undead. Fibron's, once struck a killing blow, simply died where they stood.
Damn it… if only we had a Saintess of our own.
Tekeloman was not a man who often blamed the gods, but even he could not help but despair at a fight so thoroughly unfair.
A Saintess was a woman chosen by the goddess's call. The criteria remained unknown, but those selected found holy power settling into their flesh. Nearly a thousand Saintesses were produced in the Caelon Empire each year. In the Fibron Empire, the number never even reached a dozen.
It was enough to make one curse the ruthlessness of the Goddess Ruasta. Even if Caelon only sent its defective Saintesses to the front on a quota system, the mere presence or absence of a Saintess on the battlefield made an enormous difference. A Saintess's holy power could mend wounds no potion could touch, and in a single stroke. To be able to call on that miracle hundreds of times—or even only dozens—was a gulf in military power nothing else could bridge.
It was said that the Goddess Ruasta bore the epithet Guardian of Balance. That she so blatantly favored the Caelon Empire left only resentment.
Maybe I should have brought that Saintess over to our side after all.
The Saintess whose arms and legs had been severed, who had even lost an eye. He had said at the time that she was of no value and he would not take her—but that had been a lie. The Fibron Empire was choking under a severe shortage of Saintesses. Had he taken her, she could have been healed and put to good use.
No. I do not regret my judgment. I could never have done something that filthy.
No matter how many times he turned it over, Knight Commander Tekeloman believed his choice had not been wrong.
He had seen that woman once before, on another battlefield—fallen to the ground with her arms and legs cut away, smiling a desolate little smile. From a distance he had watched her heal the knights of her own country. She had devoted herself to Caelon's knights until she collapsed from exhaustion. And in the end she had become their discarded pawn, thrown away after losing her limbs.
How could anyone use a person who had been betrayed by those she had given everything to?
Knight Commander Tekeloman held a vow of his own. Even if he took the field to protect what was his, even if he killed countless enemies, he would not become a monster.
He raised his sword for the wife and child waiting at home. If Fibron fell, the Caelon Emperor would begin a merciless exploitation—and might even stage a massacre under the pretext of "taming" them. To keep from being stripped of everything, one had to fight. But if, in the process, he became a monster, he would be no different from those unspeakable devils.
That, he would not allow. Alive or dead, he wanted to remain a knight.
"Commander! Fall back! There is no hope here. We will hold this ground—please withdraw and plan for another day."
"Until my head is cut from my shoulders, I will not turn my back."
Tekeloman's blade, guided by the tips of his fingers, cut down man after man. A Knight Commander of the Fibron Empire—and among them, a man whose swordsmanship was in a class of its own—dropped five of the enemy empire's knights in an instant.
He glanced behind him. The civilians who had fled were far enough away now. The moment when he no longer needed to fight so desperately had arrived—but with the enemy already this close, the option of flight had been erased.
The mages at the enemy's rear were still intact. Even if they spun and ran at once, more than half of them would die under a concentrated magical barrage. To raise their odds of survival even a little, locking with the enemy and fighting was the rational choice. And if fortune smiled and they somehow won the battle, the result would be beyond anything they could ask for.
"All of you—charge! Do not stop! Charge the enemy!"
A thunderous crack split the air.
At the very front of the charge, Knight Commander Tekeloman was swallowed by an ominous explosion.
A shrill ringing flooded his ears. When Tekeloman came to himself, his knights were shielding his fallen body. He tried to rise in a rush—and crumpled back down.
He looked at his arm.
Ah…
His left arm was gone entirely. He braced his right hand against the ground and forced himself up. One of his knight commanders stepped close.
"Enough, sir. You have done more than enough. Leave the rest to us. You are in no condition to keep fighting."
Tekeloman shoved the man roughly aside and staggered forward. On a limping leg, with the one hand he had left, he raised his sword.
"Die!"
A few enemy knights closed on Tekeloman in his half-dazed state—but even with a single arm he cut their throats. His legs lost their balance and buckled, yet his blade never missed.
He had to kill one more. Just one more.
If the knights who had trusted him and followed him this far were not to die, he had to kill at least one more enemy with his own hands. There was room for nothing else in Tekeloman's mind.
I walked slowly along a path soaked in blood.
Choi Yebin twisted her face at the sight of the corpses—an expression unusual for her.
"This is… truly vicious."
On our way toward the border region we passed a hillside. Battle had already swept through; blood and bodies lay everywhere. What set the scene apart was that most of the dead wore armor bearing the Fibron Empire's crest—and that their corpses had been hideously mutilated.
Almost certainly the victorious knights of the Caelon Empire had done this out of spite. Choi Yebin had killed countless people, nearly died countless times, and seen more corpses than she could count along the way—and even she had to look away. The horror of a battlefield needed no further explanation.
I could feel the set of her jaw and the chill in her eyes.
"They toyed with these people at random. You can tell from the wounds alone. This wasn't a battle—it was a one-sided slaughter."
The Saintess turned her face aside as well. Then she spoke quietly.
"These bodies belong to knights of the Fibron Empire."
For a moment she knelt and prayed for them.
When the girl's prayer ended, the sphere I held aloft began to thrash wildly in response to the corpses. I flicked my fingers lightly, and the blood that had flooded the field began to draw into the sphere. Its size swelled beyond what it had been before.
Faced with the alien sight, Choi Yebin asked as she walked.
"That magic floating in the sky—does it absorb people?"
"More precisely, blood and life force."
"Then is that the mass-slaughter magic you posted about on the Massacre Gallery…? Is that it?"
I shook my head.
"Slaughter magic isn't this polite. This is… simply put, a battery for casting slaughter magic. The mana in my body alone isn't enough to fire off a mass-slaughter spell. Even if I forced mana in from outside, my body couldn't take it."
I closed my eyes for a moment and let the old days surface. The days I had nearly died over and over refining the magic, thrashing in pain. The days I had been forced to watch so many people die. This power had never been lightly won.
I erased that day—now a distant past—and added shortly:
"It's a magic I nearly died refining more than a few times, trying to cast slaughter magic bare-bodied. This sphere sits apart from my body, absorbs people's life force and blood, stores them, and can even shape them into creatures or tentacles—but its core role is energy storage."
I raised my hand, and the sphere began to spin madly. Then sharp blades erupted from it.
"Ghk—!"
The moment the blades flew, several Caelon Empire knights who had been lying in wait nearby crumpled to the ground. At the same time, their life force was drawn into the sphere.
"Men stationed as sentries—looks like we've arrived."
Sure enough, after a little more walking, the sound of a massive force locked in combat reached us.
"We'll clean up the ones fighting first."
I said it and started forward—and Plimia seized my arm. Whatever fear had taken her, she clamped down on my hand and began to tremble hard. Terror, resentment, and a tangle of other feelings mixed in her eyes.
"Ga… Gallard… Gallard is there. The one giving orders from the rear is Gallard. On the o-other side—Tekeloman… the Fibron Knight Commander who saved me is there too."
Gallard. Tekeloman.
I confirmed the faces of the one who needed to die and the one who needed to live.
Then I moved my fingers and lofted the sphere high into the air. I patted Plimia's head and whispered.
"Don't be afraid. Those people aren't worth your fear."
From the sphere, a scarlet light more terrifying than anything it had shown so far began to pour out.