The Frozen Blade's Defiance
Kaaang!
The hand that had deflected the blow throbbed with a dull, stinging ache.
But there was no time to dwell on it. A vicious blade came hurtling in with enough force to carve his arm clean off.
Kagagak!
The swords screamed.
Arendt squeezed out the last of his strength and flung Vincent back, then ducked low to evade the blade that came flying again. The edge grazed past him by a hair's breadth, carving a long gash across his white cheek.
He's changed his tempo.
The moment he bit his lip and drew his mana up, frost crystallized across his blade. White rime spread across the floor beneath his feet — and at the same time, a chill settled into Arendt's eyes.
Kaaang!
The two blades clashed once more.
An earsplitting shriek of steel — kagak, kagak — carved itself eerily into the darkness of the corridor.
"Why so impatient? Straying completely off the script you had in mind?"
"……Truly unbelievable."
Vincent let out a hollow laugh.
There was no way to refute it.
Where, exactly, had it all gone wrong?
He had expected the knights to show up. After all, that absurd ransom-note farce had obviously been the man's own staged play to lure them in.
But he hadn't considered any of it a variable.
It meant facing the imperial knights alone, yet he'd assumed he needed no manpower beyond himself anyway.
The golems would make up for any shortfall. And now that he had the artifact in hand, he'd even gained the ability to turn an unknown number of people into allies.
And yet……
No knight could reasonably point a blade at civilians. So he'd thought that if he used the civilians as shields, they would be helpless — and instead, he now found himself forced to fight the owner of Frost-Tinged Touch with his own artifact sealed away.
An ordinary apprentice knight would be one thing, but against an artifact bearer, the outcome had become impossible to call.
And as long as he himself was pinned down here, the others would be free to protect the people and fight the golems with their full attention.
Vincent, who had been wearing that hollow smile, twisted his lips into a sneer.
A burst of blade aura exploded toward him in an instant, and Arendt's eyes flew wide. His reflexive loosening of his whole body spared him a deep gash — but at the cost of his balance, and he was sent sprawling backward.
Crash!
The instant he raised his head after slamming into the floor, a sword was already upon him. He rolled desperately out of the way — and with a wet crunch, the blade buried itself in the spot where his shoulder had been a heartbeat before.
Vincent didn't hesitate. He hewed a huge arc across the floor itself.
Grriiind — the sword split the solid stone like paper, then drove on toward Arendt, who had yet to find his footing.
He raised his frozen blade to block, but with a screech of metal a violent shockwave tore through his entire body.
Blood welled up between his clenched teeth and spilled from his mouth.
Arendt let the blade slide off to the side and, seizing the brief opening it created, clamped his hand hard around Vincent's forearm.
The cold boring down into his bones made Vincent fling Arendt off with reflexive force and spring back to put distance between them.
"……"
The spot where their hands had briefly touched had frozen solid, stark white.
Vincent was at a loss for words for a moment — then burst out laughing.
"Ha……"
By this point, he truly had no choice but to admit it.
He was the one who'd fallen into the trap. A barely-twenty-year-old whelp had caught him in a web he'd spun himself.
But a spider's web could only ever snare butterflies. A flimsy trap like this could simply be torn apart.
Laughing softly, Vincent steadied his sword.
"Insolent little bastard, with no idea of your place."
"Insolence is my role, always has been."
Arendt spat out the blood pooled in his mouth, and the corners of his lips curled into a grin. The blood that hit the floor froze solid in an instant.
"And it's a fine opportunity, too. I've been curious just how far I can go."
Crack. Arendt rolled his neck. When he shook out his sword, ice crystals slid from it like snow, dissolving in a soft whisper.
"……Ha. Don't tell me you intend to use me to test your artifact?"
"Why not? You were planning to do the same thing to me, weren't you? Surely you know the saying — you reap what you sow."
"You really are a genuine madman."
"Hearing that from a pervert mask makes me feel incredibly proud, actually."
Sword gripped firm, Arendt kicked off the ground and lunged at Vincent.
"Everyone, into the drawing room! That side is still safe!"
Neumann shouted himself hoarse.
The servants, supporting the nobles, moved with flawless efficiency at the guildmaster's orders.
The mansion was already in ruins. Shattered furniture and fragments of destroyed golems littered the floor.
Helen, locked in a standoff with a golem, couldn't hide her bewilderment as she yelled over her shoulder.
"Where did these things come from?"
"It seems they were summoned all at once from the garden."
"And whoever summoned them?"
This time the question flew from Benjamin.
Arthur batted away the golem's incoming fist with his sword, then cleaved straight through its core.
With a thunderous collapse, another golem crumpled to the ground.
"Probably somewhere inside the mansion. And……"
Arthur's voice trailed off.
That damned summoner was, no doubt, holding the line all by himself — the kid who'd sauntered off alone on the pretext of visiting the privy.
Idiot.
His teeth clenched on their own.
It wasn't that he couldn't understand. Only now, with things in this state, could he piece together why Arendt had moved the way he had.
If Vincent had been here, the knights would never have been able to devote themselves fully to holding back the golems.
"You could've SAID so from the start! This is infuriating!"
In the end, Arthur vented his frustration by cutting the golem down in a single blow.
Neumann, who had been evacuating the people alongside the servants, came scrambling over.
"Sir Arthur! I've gathered everyone in the inner drawing room for now!"
"Is there anywhere that could serve as an escape route?"
"No, the mansion appears to be completely surrounded."
Arthur turned his head to survey their surroundings.
The ones who'd come crashing in first seemed to have been more or less cleared away — he could see Richt, Kendrick, and Diana regrouping with them.
A few of the Security Department men who had fled earlier had also returned, clinging to a single golem and fighting for their lives.
Laios was glancing in and around the mansion as he fought, as if taking stock of the entire situation.
"This will be wrapped up soon. We'll handle it from here, so stay with the people, Guildmaster."
Just then a golem that had closed to within arm's reach swung its thick arm at the two of them.
Arthur raised his blade aura on reflex. But before he could even react, the golem abruptly stopped where it stood — and crumbled to pieces.
"Is everyone all right?"
It was Laios.
"C-Commander?"
Arthur stared blankly at his commander, who had closed the distance in an instant and saved him.
Shaking his blade clean in the empty air, Laios strode toward Neumann.
"You've done well. Now evacuate as well, Guildmaster."
"Y-yes, of course…… Ah! Baron Cromwell has been missing for some time now. We're searching for him, but……"
Neumann, who had been standing in a daze, came to his senses with a start and finished.
Laios gave him a small nod.
"Understood. We'll search for him."
"Yes! Best of fortune to you!"
Neumann bowed and hurried off toward the inner rooms. Every so often a golem lunged after him, but Helen and Benjamin covered his retreat.
Once he'd confirmed Neumann had reached safety, Arthur regripped his sword.
"Commander, Arendt is……"
"I know."
He had asked half in anxiety, but only a calm reply came back from Laios.
"Let's finish this as quickly as we can."
Thud. Thud!
An ominous vibration had been pulsing from somewhere above them for a while now.
That was exactly where Arendt and Vincent were facing each other.
So I can't leave my post.
His grip on the sword tightened without his meaning it to.
Holding back this many golems was already a struggle for just seven men. And above all, there was no way Laios hadn't grasped the situation by now.
As long as he stood his ground with such resolve, none of them could act rashly.
As if to shake off the stray thoughts, Arthur steadied his blade and cut down another golem in one stroke. Right now, dealing with the enemy in front of him came first.
Vincent was growing steadily more anxious.
When that brat had first planted himself in his path, he hadn't imagined the standoff would drag out this long.
His opponent was a mere apprentice knight.
By rights, this should have ended within a few exchanges. He'd even been confident he could subdue him completely and drag him back to the main branch alive, to keep him until the job was done.
And yet……
The fingertips of the hand gripping his sword had frozen over at some point. The opposite arm — the one that had taken the cold at the very beginning — was all but useless now.
After several rounds of trading blows, he could feel the biting chill creeping in through the shallow cuts scattered across his body.
Had he been an ordinary man, he might have frozen to death already.
"Ha……"
Creak.
When he forced the frozen hand to move, the skin — hardened stiff — contracted with a horrible sound.
Arendt was no better off.
Slumped with his shoulders sagging as he caught his breath, the young knight let out a dry, hacking cough. Blood sprayed from between his lips. He bore deep gashes in more than one place.
And even so, Arendt did not release his mana.
The moisture in the air froze solid, settling as white frost at the young knight's feet.
A breath of air that belonged to no season drifted out between his slightly parted lips. To Vincent, who knew the true power of Frost-Tinged Touch, every last bit of it was a threat.
Vincent's eyes narrowed as he studied his opponent.
And then there was this.
He's just barely slipping out of reach.
When he swung to cut off an arm, he only managed to slice the forearm; when he aimed to sever a leg, the blade merely grazed a shin. It was as if the boy instinctively knew where each strike was aimed and how it should be blocked. If deliberate, it was masterful; if instinct, a prodigious talent.
Even with lethal blades flashing back and forth mere inches away, those eyes remained endlessly calm, as if reading his opponent in meticulous detail.
Detached — or more precisely, the attitude of someone watching another person's affairs altogether. A coldly objective gaze, looking down on everything from above.
"What? Getting cold feet?"
At that silent stare fixed on him, Arendt smirked and drew up the corner of his mouth.
Even while putting on that bravado, his whole body screamed as if it were coming apart.
After all, this was a man skilled enough to have shaken off both Arthur and Richt at once and escaped — the odds of beating him one-on-one were vanishingly slim.
But who would have thought that merely tangling up his ankles and dragging things out would cost this much?
One of the magic stones set into his sword had shattered at some point, and the second was losing its light as well. He had drawn on his mana far too aggressively to wield Frost-Tinged Touch.
Thank goodness for the magic stones.
Without them, there was no telling what state he'd be in already.
"No, it's only that I found myself thinking how nice it would have been if you'd been on our side. 'Impressive' doesn't begin to cover it. I could send you accolades."
"Sorry, but that's not for you to decide. That's my call."
"That's exactly why it's such a shame."
Clicking his tongue, Vincent regripped his sword.
Reflexively, tension flooded through Arendt's body. But the attack landed somewhere entirely beyond his expectations.
Kwadeudeuk!
Vincent's sword split the floor wide open and came surging toward Arendt's heart.
He barely deflected it, but a massive scar had been gouged into the ground where he'd stood.
Vincent leapt up with a light, fluid motion, kicked off the wall, and shot toward the ceiling. Then, twisting his body in midair, he planted both feet firmly against the ceiling itself.
"……!"
Arendt, who had been tracking his movement with his eyes, froze for an instant. Beneath the mask, a smile of uncanny size spread across Vincent's lips.
With a long grinding crack, fissures spidered across the ceiling where Vincent's feet had touched. Then, kicking hard off the ceiling, Vincent plummeted straight down toward Arendt.
If I take that head-on, I die.
At that powerful instinct, Arendt flung himself desperately to the side.
The next instant — kwaaang! — Vincent's sword slammed into the floor.
Crack.
Along with that ominous sound, the ground beneath his feet gave way and dropped out from under him.