Who Is the Owner of This Body? (2)
The von Clyde family. Once they had simply been the von family, but they stood now as the northern grand ducal house of the Roswell Empire—the empire the Roswell family had raised after drawing the great powers of the east, the west, and the south into its fold.
As the von family they had been a native power of the north, living by the work of driving back its countless barbarian tribes. When the Roswell Empire resolved to swallow even the north, the better to brace for the Age of Night, they were taken in as one of the Four Grand Ducal Houses and granted a new surname: Clyde, drawn from one of the old names of the northern lands.
So they were Clyde. But the von line was the root, and the world called them von Clyde as well.
This looked like the Clyde main house. Which meant the problem was Felione.
“If it’s Felione, that’s the Empire’s international academy.”
On the map it sat in the crown territory of the imperial capital, at the center of the Four Grand Dukes’ domains—an academy with separate divisions for commoners and nobles, and a wide spread of majors.
This body, as far as I could tell, had been enrolled in the same year as the imperial prince. Judging by Evan’s reaction, he seemed to think I might suffer some physical retaliation once I set foot back in the academy.
So the trouble was revenge from the women who fancied the prince? Then I would have to prepare on this side as well.
The Hero now was Carn. I had drawn a line between myself and that bastard.
Even if I could not bring the Age of Night to an end—the Demon King, the Abyss, all of it—I could at least hold the line. Keep the nations of humanity standing. That much was within reach.
Did that mean I was now meant to carry out, in this body, whatever duties this body already bore?
For the moment, only one thought occurred to me.
“Hmm. What would a life that isn’t the Hero’s even be like?”
Surely it couldn’t be harder than catching the Demon King.
Looking after the body was not especially difficult. A fair share of holy power seemed to have crossed over from the old one, and handling strength came easily enough. There was plenty of mana besides.
“You’ve got mana spilling over, and what a waste. If you’d been at the Mage Tower from the time you were small, you might have taken the Archmage’s seat for yourself.”
That was something Lea had said, back before I took up the Holy Sword and played at being the Hero.
The more mana overflows, the harder it is to control when you actually try to use magic. It wasn’t that I couldn’t have done it. But there was an easy road right there—holy power, swung at the end of the Holy Sword—so why waste the time?
Yes. That was how it ought to have been. And yet this body, astonishingly, was suspicious to its core.
Look at the light pouring off it.
“This is no ordinary body.”
It had been the same when I used Explosive Sword before. The body came through perfectly intact. Set aside the way stamina drained, and the strength of the flesh itself was no different from the body I used to have.
Which raised a contradiction. Was this truly a possession? In theory, of course, it isn’t impossible to train while keeping one’s figure, but it hardly looked like the sort of labor a noble young lady would undertake. And even that has its limits. This young lady’s body seemed to hold considerable strength despite never having been trained in the slightest.
It was as if Tati the Hero had simply been poured into this shape, unchanged. The missing stamina could be written off as a kind of penalty, the cost of the stretch of time it took to settle into a new body.
I stood before the mirror and studied the woman inside it. Black hair with a sheen of indigo. Tatiana von Clyde, of the Clyde family.
Perhaps it wasn’t possession at all. Perhaps I had simply become that person. And if so, where had the original Tatiana gone? Or had Tati the Hero and Tatiana been fused into one?
A dark mage had once put forward a theory: use the art of possession, and the caster’s power carries over into the new flesh. So I called a servant of the main house aside and asked. She claimed to be the lady’s maid of this body’s owner, Tatiana, and she told me everything—about the name, and about the day Tatiana vanished.
“You’re saying that after I disappeared, they tore the place apart looking?”
“Aigoo. That’s what I’m telling you. The last scrap of information we managed to get was that someone like you, my lady, was being carried off by bandits.”
A good deal of time had passed since then. Which meant this was the only body left. So the possession account was the right one?
If there had been a crime aimed at Tatiana, word of it would have surfaced long ago. Taking the worst assumption, it was better to conclude that Tatiana had died, and that I had slipped into the body by a perfectly wretched piece of timing.
When the flesh dies, the soul dies with it. But there are also cases where a new soul enters a body whose soul has already gone, and rewrites the fate that was waiting there.
No. There was no need to tangle it. Go to the Church, and their miracles would tell me everything. That would be the end of it.
Ah. And then they would find out I used to be the Hero. I couldn’t even be sure.
“A young lady kidnapped on the road home after her engagement was broken, who lost her memory from the shock and is taking time to pull her body together. The present fits that story perfectly.”
Playing the young lady. I could manage that well enough.
“Tatiana.”
“Why have you called for me, Young Master?”
I had lost all sense of time and was turning over when I ought to leave for Felione, when Evan summoned me aside. Why was this man calling me again? Had he found Tatiana’s real body?
“It’s a new semester, so you’ll choose the combat course at the academy as well. The engagement’s broken. From here on, you need to learn how to fight.”
A new semester?
“Combat? Ah.”
Each of the Four Grand Ducal Houses has its own charge. Northern von Clyde is so devoted to the martial path that the Empire’s fighting strength rests on their shoulders. Western Elisif handles alchemy, and is in truth one of the only alchemical houses in the world. Eastern Iris is the house responsible for the Empire’s magic. Southern Berylf is the house responsible for the Adventurers’ Guild.
Members of the blood are expected to follow. Von Clyde takes up arms, Elisif the various arts of alchemy, Iris magic, and Berylf the running of the Adventurers’ Guild. It seemed my turn had come. Once a young lady has been cast off by her betrothed, taking up a weapon is a settled fact.
“You’ll need to decide at least before you go back to the academy.”
“Understood.”
The Tatiana of before had taken politics, refinement, magic, and courses of that sort. So those would have to be changed. Politics meant nothing now to a young lady whose engagement had been broken. Refinement was a noblewoman’s proper field, but it meant nothing for a daughter born to the northern Clyde house. The magic course hardly bore discussing.
“I’d like to recommend archery. What do you think? Archery’s easy to learn, isn’t it?”
Archery, easy?
A magic archer, perhaps. For an ordinary archer to reach true mastery, you have to drill like someone who has lost their mind. Plain swordsmanship would be better. Just how simple did the Clyde family think this was? Even that elf had told me it was brutally hard.
“You just loose the arrow and you’re done, aren’t you?”
“What’s with you? Do you have any idea how hard it is to build skill with a bow?”
That damned pointy-ear had gone further still. To punch through an enemy coated in mana, he said, you had to load the shot with just as much mana, and it demanded a monstrous degree of focus. I wasn’t slighting the art. But if that was truly what it took, then how lightly was Clyde looking at the thing?
Hmm. Fitting, I supposed, for a house that made its living fighting barbarians.
“I prefer the sword.”
“The sword? You? That would be even harder. With a bow, all you do is shoot from the back and you’re finished. You’d have to train your body more than you would for archery.”
Isn’t that usually the other way around? I had heard that raising a marksman was the difficult part. Was he mocking me?
“By that logic, an archer also has to train at least enough to protect their own body, should someone close in.”
“The version of you that lost her memory is better, I’ll give you that.”
Evan looked me up and down with a face of pure disbelief.
Ah. So it was dangerous after all. The Clyde blood might well have grown that sort of beastlike instinct. Or had the Tatiana of before simply been meeker than I expected, in front of this man who appeared to be her older brother?
“And what, exactly, do you take me for?”
“The old you would have clicked her tongue and fussed about how she was supposed to pick up a weapon.”
Watching his face twist, I decided the present was better, at least.
“Right. Same as the past. Even so, I prefer you as you are now.”
“Was the previous me madly in love with the imperial prince?”
That would be a problem. The more I learned of the woman called Tatiana, the further she felt from me. Weren’t we exact opposites? The sexes had been different from the start.
“Not that. She threw herself into finding a husband. The one she got caught on happened to be the prince.”
Whether that was the whole of it or not, he added that he preferred the present either way.
Some pitiful sacrificial lamb, then? In that case, I was rather looking forward to meeting our dear imperial prince at the academy. I would have to play the northern grand duke’s daughter regardless.
“At any rate, I’ll use a sword.”
“Well, if you’re that set on it, I won’t stop you. Here. Take it.”
Evan thrust a sword at me out of nowhere. It looked like the ornamental sort of blade nobles love to fuss over. The edge, though, was keen—ideal for killing a man. And what, exactly, was I supposed to do with the thing?
“This is?”
“A sword your mother left behind. She was the Sword Saint—Esilia. I can’t be bothered explaining every last detail.”
“Sword Saint Esilia?”
That name, I knew. Among the beings called the Seven Gods is the God of the Sword, a figure also called the Mad Blade: Natalia. Esilia was the woman said to have inherited her will, and word had it she was Natalia’s own disciple—student to someone the world revered as a god while she still drew human breath.
If Tatiana’s mother had been that woman, then committing myself to the sword was the sensible course no matter how I looked at it. A Sword Saint’s blade would be a famous one besides, and it ought to sit well in the hand.
Shall I give it a few swings before I go?
The Clyde family keeps a training yard of its own. They say it serves both for drilling the soldiers and as the practice ground of the Clyde clan. I faced the wooden sparring dummies and gave them a few easy swings.
Boom. Crack.
“I can’t seem to get any proper swordsmanship out of this.”
The sword itself was light for its size, and it cut beautifully. An ordinary soldier could have swung it and carved an opponent apart without trouble. It settled into the hand as if bound to its owner, grip closing snug around my fingers.
The problem was that I was doing with it exactly what I had done with the Holy Sword, so each swing didn’t cut. It destroyed. What is this. It’s actually frightening.
The Holy Sword shears with holy power. This thing doesn’t even take the form of compressing that power into a cut. It bursts the enemy at the step in between. Was I supposed to call that a good thing? It didn’t feel like one. An ordinary human would have been hurt.
What were those rude creatures.
“My lady, that is difficult to call swordsmanship—”
In the end, one of them came over and said it to my face. I could not deny the man his courage. To think there was someone who would declare, with perfect confidence, that this was not swordsmanship.
Yes. Fair enough. What I used was swordsmanship that swung holy power, in the end, and holy power was something only the Holy Sword could endure. This sword wasn’t bad either. It had simply become a thing that took that destructive force, amplified it, and threw it outward. Holding the power inside the blade and swinging it, the way one did with the Holy Sword, was impossible.
And yet. This is irritating.
No. This was certainly not the Holy Sword. So it wasn’t holy swordsmanship either.
“Still. Swing a sword, and it’s swordsmanship. Wouldn’t you say?”
Boom.
The practice dummies went to pieces in a heap. It was surely the first time a slender sword—not even a greatsword—had smashed every one of them apart. The young man who had come to force his own definition through went deathly pale each time the blade I swung burst its target in a flare of light.
“Uh, th-that is, I—”
“One more word, and I’ll burst your neck with my swordsmanship. It is swordsmanship, isn’t it?”
Near enough to a threat. Swordsmanship all the same.
“It is! This is swordsmanship! Magnificent, my lady!”
Yes. Yes. That was how it ought to be.
I really wish the lot of you over there would shut your mouths.