Shadow War (3)
Swash!
Monsters were swept away in droves by the greatsword.
The flame of hope gradually spread across a battlefield that had been thick with despair. A single combatant had turned the tide of the entire engagement.
"Follow His Highness!"
"All captain-rank knights, support the First Prince! Everyone else, deal with the mid-to-high-grade creatures!"
Screams turned into war cries, and meaningless deaths became noble sacrifice.
"Hold on just a little longer! The end is in sight!"
"Don't let them go! Hurl your swords at anyone who runs!"
Monster corpses piled up. When the blood that had spilled finally pooled into a lake—
"DIIIIIE!"
a white storm shredded the last of the monsters to pieces.
"Grkhh…!"
Thwack!
Theo's greatsword drove in from the heart and cleaved the creature clean in two. The final high-grade monster let out a death shriek and collapsed into nothing more than a corpse.
"W-we won!"
"WAAAAAAH!"
A sudden monster assault—and its victors had been the sun and the moon.
"…We actually pulled that off."
Lunan flopped down onto the ground with a grim laugh. Blood was still trickling from her side, but it wasn't life-threatening.
I'll need to rest up for a while, at least.
The ambush had come so abruptly that they'd fought unprepared, and she'd accumulated wounds large and small all over her body, not just at her flank. A fair amount of monster venom had built up in her system too—she could have passed out at any moment and no one would have found it strange.
Still, a job's a job.
She was one of only seven captains in the Black Moon Knights. Which meant she bore the responsibility of managing whatever remained to be handled.
She hauled her heavy body upright and took stock of the surroundings.
"Ugh…."
Objectively speaking, the situation was grim. Many were dead, and many more wounded. The captain-rank knights had at least gotten off with injuries, but the rank and file had been mown down like autumn leaves.
"The garden's in a sorry state, too."
The once-beautiful landscape had been smeared with blood and gore, transformed into something grotesque. It was a small mercy, maybe, that most of the damage came from the monsters themselves. Buildings and outer walls alike were cracked or collapsed.
Considering an attacking force capable of razing several villages had struck, they'd actually gotten off cheap.
Where's Prince Leo?
Scanning her surroundings, she spotted Leo trudging toward her with his greatsword in hand.
"…Where did you go?"
"I handled the monsters coming from another direction."
He wasn't on Theo's level, but Leo was plenty strong in his own right. He could handle a column of monsters on his own.
Thank goodness he looks unharmed.
The moment she breathed a sigh of relief, she noticed something—one person hadn't been visible for a while now.
Where's Tae-hyun?
Right before the monsters appeared, he had abruptly left the formation and vanished. He should have returned long ago, yet he still hadn't rejoined them.
"If you'd been here, maybe there would've been fewer casualties…."
Lee Tae-hyun was strong. Aside from Leo, probably the strongest in the entire Shadow Garden. And yet that same man had disappeared at the very moment his prowess was needed most.
"……"
A flicker of resentment began to rise in her. Don't tell me he sensed the monsters coming and ran off alone—
No. No, stop it.
What kind of captain distrusts her own people? Surely there was a reason he couldn't come back sooner.
"I'm going to look for him."
Dragging her wounded body behind her, she made for the depths of the garden, walking slowly, step by step, in the direction Tae-hyun had vanished.
"He should be around here somewhere…"
When Lunan reached the vicinity of the Dark Palace, she witnessed a scene she could scarcely believe.
"Wh… wha-aat…?"
Monsters—different ones from those that had attacked from the front—lay shattered, piled into hills. Her spine went cold in an instant.
They were attacked from behind too?! If these things hadn't stopped here and had pushed all the way through, they wouldn't have just killed the rank and file—the captain-rank knights would have died as well.
In truth, this force had been positioned like the main attack column.
"So why are they all dead here…?"
"Oh, Captain."
Just then, a familiar voice brushed past her ear. She turned her head—and there was the very face she'd been searching for.
"T-Tae-hyun!"
"…Are you all right? You should get treated immediately, I think."
Lee Tae-hyun examined her body and spoke gravely. Of course, that was the last thing she cared about right now.
"Did… did you do all this?"
"Well… yes. I suppose so. They came swarming this way out of nowhere, so I dealt with them first."
"Ha… haha…."
The tension drained out of her all at once. Her legs gave way, and she nearly collapsed before Tae-hyun caught her. Her shoulders trembled; her heart pounded.
She was ashamed of herself for having suspected, mere moments ago, that he might have fled.
You fought back here all by yourself, quietly, without a word.
If not for Lee Tae-hyun, the Black Moon Knights might have been erased from the world by now.
"Whoa, you really aren't okay. Just hold on a second, I'll fetch a medic right—"
"Tae-hyun. You really… you really…."
Overwhelmed, Lunan pulled him into a fierce embrace.
"You really are a monster of a man…!"
"……"
Usually in moments like these, aren't you supposed to say something touching? Swallowing that thought, Tae-hyun carried her off to the infirmary.
The damage the Shadow Garden had suffered was substantial. Immediately deployable forces had been cut to twenty percent, and every captain-rank knight had been seriously wounded. It was no exaggeration to call it the worst catastrophe since the order's founding.
By all accounts, the White Sun got off easier.
After all, they were a force mobilized with war in mind. The strike had landed on their critical strength—the front-line power excluding the reserves guarding headquarters. In the end, the attackers too had been forced to withdraw without achieving their objective.
Small mercies, I suppose.
If this had been a full war between the two knight orders, the losses would certainly have been far greater.
"And right before the Grand Mandate of Heaven, of all times… a terrible omen, this is!"
"Yes, yes, I hear you—now would you please put the sword down?"
"A swordsman must always have his blade at hand!"
"This is a hospital ward, though."
Only after I interjected did Lunan puff out her cheeks and set the sword down.
The Shadow Garden's infirmary was currently at full capacity. Even with the lightly wounded being treated outpatient, there wasn't a spare bed to be found, and chaos reigned.
"Haah… I feel kind of guilty. Barely any time after I scout you, and I drag you into all this mess."
"If you have time to apologize, spend it recovering."
"…Sometimes I look at you and think you're more of a captain than I am."
She gave a wry smile and sat up.
"Oh, right. The prince is looking for you."
"For me?"
"Yeah. He seems to have something to say about the whole incident."
Unexpected. I hadn't imagined Leo would come looking for me first.
"And…."
Lunan rolled her eyes and added in a suggestive tone,
"I think he's planning to give you some other very important~ duty as well."
"An important~ duty?"
"I was planning to recommend you anyway, but given the circumstances, you're the only one who can manage it."
"So what is it, exactly?"
"Heh heh. You'll have to go hear it yourself."
She clearly had no intention of telling me, so I wrapped up our conversation lightly and stepped out of the ward.
"Leo's looking for me, huh."
It wasn't as if I had no guesses. Thanks to Lunan broadcasting it far and wide, everyone now knew that I was the one who had single-handedly annihilated the monster force that attacked from the rear that day.
Leo.
The more I thought about him, the more peculiar a figure he seemed. Drawing on everything I'd observed so far: he shied away from contact with the outside world, but he was by no means a bad man. If anything, he came across as a wise sovereign who genuinely cared for his own people. A prince who took pleasure in intellectual inquiry and held a firm governing philosophy all his own.
Theo of the First Prince's faction, by contrast, was closer to a violent tyrant. He had gone so far as to wage war and try to kill his own brother on the grounds that Leo hadn't renounced his claim to the throne.
He even said with his own mouth that becoming the Monarch was his goal.
Where Leo had shown a certain wariness toward the notion of the Monarch, Theo had argued that a Monarch must be born to stand against the higher-dimensional beings.
And the one who qualifies to be that Monarch is himself.
At this point, there was nothing left to deliberate. The First Prince, Theo. He was the one fated to become this world's Monarch.
"Ah, you've come."
When I made my way to the Dark Palace, Leo greeted me with a welcoming face.
"I heard you called for me."
"I did."
Leo was smiling, but his skin had grown paler than before—so pallid I half wondered whether his veins were showing through.
"I've heard the reports. You slew the monsters advancing from the rear, single-handedly?"
"It was nothing. Compared to the main battlefield, I'd call it an easy task."
"Hahaha, humility carried too far invites bad luck, you know."
Besides, if I sang my own praises here, even a gift he was about to hand over might start to waver.
"In any case, the reason I called you here is none other than this."
Leo laid out the matter at hand.
"First of all, your skill ranks among the very best in the Black Moon Knights. For someone of your caliber to remain a mere rank-and-file member simply won't do."
"Then…"
"The eighth division of the Black Moon. I would have you take command of it as its captain. Naturally, the formal establishment will come once this incident has been fully resolved."
…I'd somehow blundered my way into a captaincy. It was a meteoric promotion—so stratospheric it almost felt unfair that I'd been surprised by the White Sun offering me a vice-captain position.
I suppose it's only natural, really.
They say emergency situations breed rapid promotions without end. And especially now, with every captain-rank knight wounded, it made sound judgment to seek out capable people and seat them in positions of command.
"It's a position I've hardly earned, but I'll accept it with humility."
"Good. I look forward to working with you."
Contrary to my expectation that this would be the end of it—
"And."
Leo's words continued on.
"In truth, what I'm about to say now is the real reason I summoned you here."
"Yes?"
"Are you by any chance familiar with something called the Namekeeper?"
Namekeeper? It was an office I'd never heard of.
"I'm sorry. I don't believe I've ever come across the term."
"There's nothing to apologize for. You need only learn it now."
He began his explanation.
"The Namekeeper holds a crucial role in the Grand Mandate of Heaven. It is they who personally carry the name granted by the heavens and deliver it to the one who will become king."
With that, he unfurled everything he knew about the Namekeeper. The office, he said, could be held only by members of a single bloodline, generation after generation—the descendants of the great archmage Rentel Eigert, who had aided the First King in building the kingdom. Just as the royal bloodline had been charged with the task of leading the nation, the descendants of Rentel Eigert were charged with the task of serving that king. The origin of this covenant was the Namekeeper's sacred duty: to perform the rites at the altar within the First King's Tomb, and then to receive the king's name.
"And down through the generations, it has been considered a knight's supreme honor to serve as the Namekeeper's escort."
To carry the name of the next king alongside them. Beyond the political and material rewards that would naturally follow, the duty carried immense symbolic weight—it meant, in effect, having one's name inscribed into the Grand Mandate of Heaven itself, the state ceremony by which the king was decided.
"By custom, each candidate for the throne designates and appoints his own escort. Where there are many candidates, there are many escorts."
"I see."
"And I would appoint you to that post."
"…I beg your pardon?"
I blinked and asked him to repeat himself.
"The Namekeeper's escort. I want it to be you."
Leo said it once more, his eyes full of conviction.