Realization
Rian's refusal to kill Khalifa had not been purely a matter of taste.
She had crossed the border and stirred up trouble, true — but she had surrendered meekly, without a single casualty and without any struggle. To execute her on the spot, without so much as a trial?
The Empire would surely rise against it. Rian had no desire to hand an enemy hungry for war even the smallest excuse.
But perhaps that intention had failed to reach him.
"Ha!"
The knight burst out in a scornful laugh.
"Just as I thought. You play at being otherwise, but you can't hide what you really are. Fine. I'll do it myself."
He thrust out a hand, and a soldier behind him passed over a weapon — a throwing spear, its tip honed sharp as an awl.
"Do stand there and watch. You, playing the saint all on your own... you filthy hypocrite."
He swept the arm holding the spear far back, the other stretched forward to take Khalifa's measure. It was a throwing stance straight out of the manual. Should that razor-honed tip strike her chest, the best she could hope for was a mortal wound — and the odds favored instant death.
Watching him, Rian fell to thinking. As the knight settled into his stance, his robe slipped back and bared the formal dress of the knight order. No medal hung on his chest — only a single badge in the shape of a sprout.
A sprout just beginning to bud was a token issued solely to newcomers, those who had barely entered the kingdom's knight order. Proof that the man was a raw recruit. And that only made it stranger.
His form clung close to the textbook, yet it drew nothing from his own body's strengths or quirks. The mana stirring within him was no great amount, either.
And yet—
...What could he possibly be thinking?
He had brought no more than a few soldiers. Against Rian and Khalifa, who outclassed him beyond all comparison, he laid his hostility bare with no care at all for his own life?
While Rian was sunk in the thought, the knight loosed the spear at last. The sharpened shaft tore through the air, aimed to run Khalifa through the heart.
Rian looked at her. Death was closing in, and still she did nothing but stand.
A barrier to block it, or a movement swifter than the spear to slip aside — either would have been well within her ability.
Khalifa took no action whatsoever. She only clenched her eyes shut, as though already seeing the moment about to come.
Shhhk!
In the instant before the spear would have pierced her, Rian's hand shot out.
Several seconds passed with her eyes shut and still no pain came, so Khalifa eased them open — and at once they went wide.
"...Sir Hero?"
A broad back filled her vision. Rian had stepped in front of her and taken her place.
"At last your true colors show! Sacrificing even your hand to spare a leader of the wicked Empire... you—"
The knight, crying out as if he had finally unmasked the truth, never finished. His mouth closed, slowly. What lay before his eyes was too staggering to bear.
The spear he had hurled with every ounce of his strength had stopped at the tips of Rian's fingers — without so much as bending the single index finger held out to meet it.
Faced with a sight he could not believe, his mind stopped cold.
How?
His Majesty the King had proclaimed before all the people that the Hero's martial might was in truth a fabrication, and that his achievements were a lie built by stealing the deeds of nameless heroes....
Stopping a thrown spear with one finger was a marvel not even the commander of the Royal Knight Order — a man this knight revered without reservation — could have managed.
"No matter how I turn it over."
The spear dropped to the ground. Not a single drop of blood beaded on the finger that had stopped it.
"I cannot make sense of it."
Rian took one step forward.
"Just how strong do you imagine you are, to spew such slander in front of me? Did I..."
A piercing light flared in his eyes.
"...look so ridiculous to you that you thought I would swallow an insult that grave?"
The knight could not readily open his mouth. The sound that broke the silence rose from behind him.
Neeeigh!!
The horses screamed — and then the soldiers, flung from their saddles, groaned in pain.
The terrified mounts had thrown their masters and bolted in every direction.
The Hero kept coming. The knight reached out on instinct to fend him off, but he could not. His whole body had locked rigid; he could not move.
The commotion at his back died away quickly. Not a single groan of pain remained to be heard, which could only mean they had lost consciousness.
In a rush the knight drew up his mana and examined the Hero, and only then could he grasp what was happening.
No... this is impossible...
But he did not want to believe it. He could not.
The unidentified power that had sent trained warhorses fleeing like frightened donkeys, knocked the soldiers senseless, and now pinned even a knight like himself where he stood — that power held not a shred of magical force. It was nothing but the sheer presence of a single man.
He resisted to the very end, but the moment Rian drew close and laid a hand atop his head, his consciousness failed him.
As the knight's body went slack and began to collapse, Rian caught him and lowered him carefully to the ground.
Khalifa, who had been watching from behind, spoke.
"You're not going to kill him?"
"Why? Would you rather I did?"
Sweat traced down Khalifa's back. The reply had sounded indifferent, but a barb lay buried in it.
As expected. The nature of these imperials is cruel beyond all measure.
She rushed to explain herself.
"N-no! It's not that — you just looked angry, so I...!"
"I am angry."
Rian looked at her.
"Not at some green knight. At the ones above him, who ordered this pursuit."
He hadn't caught it at first. But once he drew near, he knew.
The knight's robe, his uniform, his boots — all of them were far too worn to be newly issued gear.
Something had already struck him as wrong.
Khalifa of the Storm. The foremost figure of the Empire's Central Intelligence Bureau.
A powerhouse one could not be certain of capturing even if the entire Royal Knight Order were dragged along. And they had sent a single knight with a handful of soldiers to take her? It made no sense.
That no family crest hung on his chest was proof the man was a commoner. The moment that fact settled into place, the truth was absurdly easy to infer.
Khalifa had been found within the kingdom, so a pursuit had to be mounted — yet if she turned on her hunters midway, no one could vouch for their survival. No one had wanted to step forward. They had shoved the duty off on one another until it landed, at last, on the most junior member of the order: a man with neither the standing to refuse nor much knowledge of what he was walking into.
Rian looked down at the knight's slack, open palm. Calluses and torn scars covered it so thickly that the hardship behind his efforts needed no further measure.
Of course. To enter the Royal Knight Order, that nest of noble knights, in a commoner's body, ordinary effort would never have been enough.
Biting his lip against the bitterness of it, Rian turned back to Khalifa. He meant to hear the answer to the question the pursuit party's interference had left unfinished.
"Tell me. In the few days I spent resting, what exactly happened to the kingdom?"
"It began after you refused that absurd mission — the one ordering you to go and congratulate the crown prince of the neighboring kingdom on his birthday..."
Khalifa opened a pocket of subspace. Inside her magical pouch lay a report in which everything the Eastern Alliance had done was set out with perfect clarity.
Far better than trying to convey it all aloud, through a trembling heart and a throat too tight to make herself understood.
She handed the neatly compiled report to Rian. As he read swiftly down the page, his brow drew faintly tight.
Then she passed him a scrapbook of slanderous articles, published across the various kingdoms, all written to tear the Hero down. The effect was considerable.
"......!"
The instant Rian took the scrapbook and saw the articles cut large across the first page, his pupils shook violently — and a knot of veins stood out stark across the back of his hand. Whatever force he was putting into his grip, the paper crumpled past creasing and began to tear.
Khalifa killed even the sound of her breathing and did nothing but watch his mood.
Enemy though he was, she looked up to Rian. He was the Hero, after all — a living legend who would be carved into history. Nor was she alone in it. Among the Empire's own people, those fond of the Hero were easy enough to find.
It was part of why she had risked herself and come all the way to the kingdom to win him over. Woven into that purpose was a longing to meet Rian in person.
But the Rian standing before her was, contrary to everything she had imagined, frightening.
A sharp gaze. An ice-cold manner. Reactions whetted to an edge.
He made no effort to hide it. He was treating her, plainly, as an enemy.
Honestly, Khalifa felt wronged. The Empire's excesses had all taken place before she assumed her post. Back when the Empire had been crying war, war, and war again, she had been deep in the forest, living a slow and quiet life.
She had committed not a single war crime, and since the accord the Empire had applied itself soberly to nothing but its own internal affairs.
So why did his hostility remain exactly as it was, unchanged?
I want to go home.
Khalifa sighed inwardly. She could hardly unburden the whole of her grievance before the Hero, and contrary to the ambitious resolve she had set out with, all she wanted now was to go back and rest.
"Khalifa."
"Y-yes! Yes!"
Startled by the sudden call of her name, she answered in a rush and bit her tongue. Her face flushed with embarrassment, but fortunately Rian seemed not to have noticed.
"If you're the head of the Central Intelligence Bureau, you'll have cover identities on hand, and the tools to go with them."
Khalifa hesitated a moment. She wavered over whether she ought to tell the truth to a Rian who stood against the Empire.
But she had neither the courage to deceive the Hero nor the confidence to deal with what would follow, and in the end she had no choice but to speak honestly.
"I do. A great many of them..."
Fortunately, he did not seem to have raised the matter in order to catch her out. He went on as if it were nothing of consequence.
"I'll need to borrow them."
"Might I ask what for...?"
"I need a way into the capital without my identity being exposed."
"...Yes! I'll have them ready at once!"
Khalifa drew out a radio and began speaking into it, apparently issuing orders to her subordinates. Rian watched her a moment, then turned and quietly bit down on his lip.
He had shown none of it, with someone of the Empire standing right before him — but inside, he felt as though he were rotting away.
Malicious rumors were pouring out of every kingdom. That he was, in truth, a madman who delighted in torture and massacre. A warmonger who lusted after blood and fire. A parasite who had climbed to his place by plundering the merits of others.
Such slander had not been entirely absent over the past ten years. But until now it had come from only a handful — noise buried at once beneath the crowds' cheers, their roars of acclaim, their fervor, and gone.
And now?
Black propaganda of every kind surfaced anew before a day could pass, and the flames turned on Rian, far from dying, burned ever fiercer.
Within the kingdom he had become a traitor overnight. The Alliance seemed to regard him as a greater enemy than even the Demon King, and had set about erasing him from society altogether.
"......"
A deep hollowness surged up from his chest. Ten years lived without a moment to draw breath, facing down calamity after calamity and solving problem after problem. His goal had come to nothing, true enough.
But a poor ending did not erase the road that had led there. The countless lives he had saved across those years were the force that had driven him, and they were his pride.
And now all of that effort and devotion was being shattered to pieces — for no better reason than that he had refused an order once, and with just cause.
All at once, the figure of the unconscious knight caught his eye.
"You and I both..."
A metallic tang of blood rose in his mouth.
"...our lots are no different."
This knight, who had forced his way into the kingdom's knight order through grueling effort, only to be driven into mortal danger by the limits of his birth.
And himself, repaid with nothing for ten years of devotion — everything he had built collapsing in a single instant because he had shown defiance.
Was their wretchedness not precisely the same?
...Is it the same, no matter which kingdom I turn to?
He could see it. Close enough to seem within his grasp, yet never arriving in his hand. Near enough to touch, and in truth impossibly far.
A miserable future, baited with the phantom called hope — used this way and that, and cast aside the moment his usefulness ran out.
"Um... Sir Hero? Everything's ready.... Hello?"
A clear voice lifted Rian out of his thoughts. When he came back to himself, Khalifa's face was close enough that her breath might have touched him.
"......?"
"...Ah!!"
She startled and stumbled backward.
"S-sorry, you weren't, um, answering, so I, uh—"
She was the one who had come closer — so why was she reacting like that? Rian watched her long ears, flushed red and fluttering, and then spoke.
"Let me ask you one thing."
"Ah, yes. Anything..."
"You're a high elf. How did you come to work for the Empire? You could have lived your whole life in the Great Forest without any particular trouble."
Khalifa barely managed to recover her composure before she answered.
"Ahem. I needed the money. The Great Forest is far too backward. If it's to develop, it needs a great many resources."
"...For the sake of your own people, you mean?"
"It's a little embarrassing when you put it that way... but, well, something along those lines?"
Rian looked at her with faintly startled eyes.
"They said you were a monster without blood or tears. The report must have been wrong."
"...What? Who's been spreading a rumor like that? Where did it come from?!"
The look in Khalifa's eyes as she asked could have killed.
"I told you — I'm the one asking the questions."
Rian let the protest pass and slipped in one more, almost idly.
"...So. Has the Great Forest developed?"
"Yes. Beyond recognition... huh?"
Khalifa's eyes went round.
"But why would you — don't tell me you're interested in the Empire...?"
"...Who knows. I've little time to spare, so let's be off. I'll keep my pace in check — follow me."
Rian turned. Khalifa stared blankly at his back, and then her eyes flooded with delight.
Unlike the first time, when he had refused her outright without even hearing the offer, he had not flatly denied her question. His hostility toward the Empire seemed to have thinned, visibly.
...The Hero Rian's turn to the Empire truly was not far off!
"...Yes! I'll follow!"
A joy she could not conceal rang clear in Khalifa's voice. Rian gave no answer and launched himself forward.
Whatever she might be thinking, he had no intention yet of crossing over to the Empire.
...Right. Not yet.
First he had to see it with his own two eyes. Whether what was written in the report was true. Whether the Alliance had truly cast him aside. He would find out for himself.
If the contents were false, then Khalifa and the imperial lot who had made a fool of him would pay the price.
And if they were true—
Then...
Rian closed his eyes. The two figures shot forward at tremendous speed.
Toward the capital of the kingdom.