The Fake Sword Master
A mere six hours earlier.
The walls of Denver Castle blazed like a city that never slept. Bonfires burned brilliant above and below the battlements, leaving no stretch of stone in darkness.
The fortress patrol captain stood watch behind the sealed gates, scanning the dark beyond the firelight, when he caught a strange movement in the shadows.
"Who goes there?"
Even with the captain's bow drawn and aimed, the figure kept coming. When at last the firelight found him, it revealed a gray-haired mage shuffling forward, leaning on a long staff.
"Identify yourself! If you don't—?!"
He had barely blinked as he spoke. The space his arrow had been trained on was empty.
"Young man, what are you looking at? That's just my afterimage."
"Wh—what?!"
He spun the bow toward the new voice, but a staff interposed itself, blocking the shot. Four patrolmen closed in at once, spears leveled at the mage from all sides. His expression did not so much as flicker.
"Name's Frox. I've been chaining teleports, so I'm exhausted and my head's pounding. Would you mind taking me to Roan? It's urgent."
Of course, a single sentence was never going to get him an audience with the Viscount of Ahental, the overall commander.
Frox had genuinely believed it would. But Denver's fortress patrol captain neither recognized him nor lowered his weapon, so Frox was forced to produce a letter stamped with Ereb's personal seal.
Viscount Roan of Ahental came at a run the moment he heard a suspicious mage had arrived carrying a letter sealed by his second son.
"What's happened? Has that second boy of mine caused another disaster? Sir Messi is with him—there shouldn't be any real trouble."
"A disaster? Heh heh. Oh, he caused one, all right. Do you have any idea where I've just come from?"
"Engaldar, surely... wait. Don't tell me—"
Frox threw his head back and laughed, thoroughly enjoying the shift on his old friend's face.
"Your guess is right. I came from Pasio territory."
"...You mean they took it?"
"They would have finished the occupation without any trouble, originally. Something unexpected came up, so here I am."
Frox handed over the letter bearing Ereb's seal. As the viscount read, his expression shifted by the second.
"This is madness. A surprise attack...? I distinctly ordered him to focus on defense. This is the boy's first command—where did he find the gall?"
"I know why. Don't you?"
"I can already hear it. He takes after me in my younger days, or some such nonsense."
"What, you already knew the answer and you still asked me?"
They both burst out laughing.
"Don't scold him too hard. He scored a major victory. It'll probably go down as the worst defeat in the history of the Crombell knighthood."
"A great feat, my foot. All they did was stick a knife in the backs of a bunch of men who were off whoring."
"You say that, but you can't keep the grin off your face."
"It isn't spelled out in detail here, but Sir Messi drew up the plan, didn't he?"
A nod. The look on Frox's face said there was no point stating the obvious.
"Remarkable. It was like dealing with a mind built nothing like my own."
"That's exactly how I feel whenever I look at you."
The viscount scanned Ereb's letter again.
"According to Sir Messi's assessment, three Ablaze will join the counterattack. Is that it?"
"He seemed certain. The countermeasures should be written in there as well. From what I gathered, he intends to use the terrain of the Tollid Mountain Range for an ambush. He said he remembers the lay of the land from when he came through Denver on his way to Ahental. If anything's changed, he's included a second plan, so take a look."
"Even a backup..."
The viscount clicked his tongue at Messi's thoroughness. Come to think of it, without Messi's proposal for a preemptive strike, they never would have uncovered the enemy's scheme. They would have been ready for a surprise attack, perhaps—but not for three Ablaze.
I might have died.
"If anything's unclear, ask. Things were urgent, so he didn't write it all down—he explained everything to me in person."
"This part bothers me. Baron Denver will have a hard time accepting it. With his territory already a battlefield, this will look like we're asking him to sacrifice his people and his entire fortune besides."
"Let me see. Ah—leaving all the baggage behind and taking the people with you. Messi said Crombell has a sharp mind on their side. To fool both the Count and that fellow, this is necessary..."
The first person who had to be persuaded, if Messi's plan was to proceed, was the Viscount of Ahental himself. Frox became Messi's mouthpiece, unpicking the viscount's concerns one by one.
Hiwork's shout might as well have been a starting gun. Everyone moved toward their own objective.
Bacillus recalled the portion of Messi's plan that had been assigned to him.
Within the time limit, kill as many Crombell knights as possible.
Fake Sword Master? That son of a bitch!
Bacillus charged the enemy.
Eson threw himself into the path, desperate to hold him.
"Sir Obert...! Sir Rickray...! Why the hell aren't you coming?!"
Hiwork kept calling for the two Ablaze even as he backpedaled.
And then—
Count Crombell turned without a moment's hesitation and ran.
"Hold them!! Hold them however you can!!"
He bellowed at the Crombell knights who stood staring at him in a daze. He alone was running in the opposite direction. It was an act devoted to a single purpose: staying alive.
Their lord had rarely been so blatant. The knights looked stunned. It wasn't as though Count Crombell failed to understand how they felt. He did not imagine his authority had sprung from barren earth. But he did not regret what he was doing. No—he regretted that he had not run sooner.
Family honor, authority, all of it—none of that matters if I'm dead!
He, more than anyone, understood the greatness of a Sword Master.
Count Crombell scrambled onto his horse and glanced back at the spot where Eson had been standing only moments before. Eson was on the ground. One arm was gone.
A flash—
Bacillus swung his blade once. The remaining neck went with it, and Eson's body tore apart in shreds.
They say mana refined to the absolute peak of sharpness will cut you just for standing near it...
It was the phenomenon called an Aura Storm—something that appeared only in the aura of a Sword Master or higher. It was as good as a certificate that he was well and truly fucked.
Damn it. He's the real thing!
He had thought Eson could last at least twenty exchanges. In the time it took to sprint eight steps and mount a horse, an Ablaze had died.
Even if Eson had only just reached Ablaze, he was never the kind of man to die that easily!
Count Crombell immediately wheeled his horse and drove it toward the rear. From that moment on, nothing but screams rose behind him, without pause.
The Crombell knighthood had always believed they understood Sword Masters reasonably well. They had Alan Aster, after all.
He was fond of drink and women, but every now and then—truly, only every now and then—he would come out and cross blades with them. Those sessions had been a chance to feel, through the clash of steel, why a Sword Master was so strong. They had considered it productive time.
Until a flash of light split their bodies apart.
Fuck. Sir Alan. You've been going easy on us this whole time.
If they had known what the real thing looked like, they would have run. That was the last thing a knight understood as he died, everything below the waist already gone.
Bacillus flicked aside what he had just cut down and drove into the cluster of knights. Every fine hair on his body stood on end like a blade. His senses told him: countless weapons were thrusting for his life. And a Sword Master's body answered: just dodge them.
Twenty weapons crashed in at once, and still Bacillus felt it—a sensation he could not put into words, and yet knew: where each blade would come from, and how.
That was a Sword Master.
A Sword Master was not merely someone who understood his own sword and how to use it. It was a comprehension that encompassed the weapon called "the sword" in its entirety. One's own, and everyone else's. Perhaps, as the saying went that all things were connected, it even felt as though every weapon that was not a sword had been mastered as well.
That almost pleasurable sensation shone brightest on the battlefield. It opened a new field of vision to Bacillus. All he had to do was surrender his body to it.
He shoved aside two incoming blades with his own, opening a path, then swept a third away while catching a fourth. A dip of the shoulder let an attack miss by a few centimeters. A shift of his weight bled off a low cut as he pinned an opponent's sword underfoot, then took a life with a light thrust. He slipped behind another man and used him as a meat shield, drove his blade through the shield to kill the man instantly, shoved it farther to kill a second, then used the acceleration of the draw to take three more heads.
That was what happened in the space of a blink. Of twenty weapons, seventeen had lost their function or their owners. The problem was that he had done it without using aura at all.
The Crombell knights, locked in shock and terror, could do nothing even as they surrounded him.
"Hmph..."
Bacillus surveyed his surroundings at his leisure. He realized a human face could display a single emotion with such perfect, undiluted clarity.
In the distance, he could see Count Crombell's fleeing back. The vassal nobles were following him.
Chase him down and kill him?
Not impossible.
But the order to kill as many of the Crombell knighthood as possible held him in place. At the very least, he understood why Messi had said it.
The moment Count Crombell dies or is captured, the war ends. But Crombell's remaining forces would survive intact and simply pass to the next family head.
Messi, with a cruelty all his own, meant to exterminate every root of Crombell's power so that they could never again compete with Ahental as a rival. And that could only continue if Count Crombell stayed alive—and refused to abandon the war.
"Are the men here all the Crombell knights who came to the Melta Barony?"
"N-no... not yet..."
The Crombell knight, overwhelmed without even realizing it, pointed upward with his eyes—not even knowing why he was answering.
"Ah. That's right. There were more up there."
Bacillus checked the time he had left, and reached a conclusion.
"Sorry about this. I'll need you to die a little faster."
Count Crombell dismounted, took his horse by the reins, and barely managed to get over the rockfall blocking the valley entrance. The horse had been a comrade through every campaign, and yet today it was infuriatingly slow, and he could not understand why.
"Damn it, move, move! What's wrong with you today?!"
"M-my lord! Your horse's rump..."
Where Viscount Foild was pointing, an arrow was buried in the horse's flank. It must have been hit when the arrows rained down from the cliff.
How hard-pressed was I, that I didn't even notice the state of my own horse?
Shame, humiliation, embarrassment, rage—every ugly feeling surged up in his chest. He looked at Foild, who had pointed out the horse's condition. The viscount had already led his own mount over the rockfall some time ago, and was waiting loyally.
"Crego. You've served me well."
Count Crombell drew his sword and took the horse's head in a single stroke. The severed head sailed over the rocks, spraying blood. It had died without even feeling the pain.
The Count walked toward his vassal noble, the bloody sword still in his hand.
"M-my lord. Crego, the horse you cherished...!"
"I'm cutting down people I cherished. You think one beast is any great matter?"
"What?"
A wet crack. Foild's head flew.
Foild's horse shied, startled, but the Count yanked the reins as if it were nothing and soothed it. The moment he was in the saddle, he was gone.
The vassal nobles and Viscount Hiwork, who had only just gotten their horses over the rocks, froze at the sight of their lord already vanished into the dark—and Foild's headless body.
"Viscount Foild was someone he actually entrusted with real work..."
"...We should go. Quickly. The family head is clearing the path ahead, is he not?"
At Viscount Hiwork's urging, they all threw themselves onto their horses and pursued the Count. They had grasped the deeper meaning of those words. If it was their family head, the moment he encountered soldiers, he would retreat without a thought for anyone else's safety—including theirs.
Count Crombell drove his horse in a frenzy, then seized hold of his wits as the surroundings seemed, impossibly, to be growing brighter.
What is this?
Even if dawn were breaking, it should not be this bright... The thought had barely formed when he saw the flames rolling in the distance.
"Fire?! What idiot set a fire here?!"
There was no one around him to answer.
Did the infantry following behind us make a mistake?
If that were true, beheading every last one of them would not have been punishment enough. The fire was not slowing. It was racing to find its next host.
Only a moment ago the distant sky had looked like a sunset. Now the heat was touching his skin.
Whoever you are, when I catch you...!
Cursing the faceless soldier who had set the blaze, Count Crombell turned his horse to find another path. The road ahead had long since been blocked by fallen, burning trees.
A Sword Master behind me, and a fire-demon in front.
The thought of turning back and meeting that monster made his skin crawl. Count Crombell left the road and drove his horse into the forest.
The flames kept spreading on the wind, devouring dawn dew and damp earth in an instant. Soaked in black ash, the Count wandered between the flames, a wretched figure.
The horse, lathered in sweat from the heat, collapsed first. Count Crombell went down with it, rolling across the ground. He struggled to his feet and rubbed his face, meaning to wipe away the sweat. The ash smeared, rendering him unrecognizable. He climbed back through the forest, trying to live.
The air that hit his lungs was scorching. His lips were stiff and cracked. He was a breath from losing his mind.
A-am I going to die like this...?
Count Crombell leaned his back against a tree and felt his end approaching. He could barely walk. He no longer had the reason to tell where the fire had not yet reached. There was nothing there but despair.
And then—
He opened his eyes. A black-haired other-race stood there as if the flames had nothing whatsoever to do with him.