The Highest Honor
Spearpoints flashed across the snow-covered plain.
In the midwinter air where every breath scattered white, the Silent Spear unit raced at full speed. Their charge cut the wind like a single spear thrust driven straight ahead.
"Increase the pace. Focus everything on throwing their formation into chaos as fast as possible."
"Yes, sir!"
The moment Arteon's order fell, the entire unit answered as one and followed hard on his heels.
Before long, a force peeled away from the Kar lines far ahead and came pounding straight toward Silent Spear. At their head rode a figure Arteon knew at once. His expression hardened by a fraction.
It was Kortzan—the same man he had fought on the first day.
Kortzan, for his part, recognized Arteon's face and poured out a thick killing intent.
"You…!"
The wound from yesterday still throbbed. Bandages bound it tight, but a day had never been enough to heal it. Right now, though, an injury like that was nothing more than a trifle.
Yesterday's debt… I will repay it no matter what.
A Kar warrior always repaid a debt. That was a warrior's pride—and the only way to prove his own existence.
Kortzan clenched his axe and mace. Crimson energy rose from his body like heat haze. Full power from the outset, as if reconnaissance were fit only for dogs. Arteon's eyes cooled to ice.
An aura user was charging in with his life already thrown away.
Arteon turned his head slightly toward Grein behind him.
"Grein. I'll take that one. Lead the men and wipe out the rest."
"…Understood."
"We have to punch through this place as fast as we can."
"Yes, sir."
Grein answered with a rigid face. He knew exactly why Arteon was peeling the unit away. Only an aura user could face another aura user. If ordinary soldiers got tangled in a fight between men who could wield aura with stability…
They would only get in the way.
One misstep and friendly casualties would simply climb. Staying out of that duel was the correct choice—yet still Grein's grip tightened on his sword. Fury rose at the powerlessness that still left him unable to stand as true support.
He raised his voice.
"Silent Spear! Flank and smash their force!"
The razor-edged cry split the air. Every soldier behind him shared the same thought; every one of them understood the situation. And so—
"Those are the platoon leader's orders! Break through those bastards in one stroke and drive into their lines!"
"We'll do it even if it costs our lives!"
"If they aren't aura users, no one can stop us!"
A single purpose fused the unit. Silent Spear, boiling with rage, became one spear and charged the Kar warriors trailing Kortzan.
And then—
Arteon and Kortzan.
The two men rocketed straight at each other.
"Hraaaaaaaah!"
Kortzan's axe swept upward from below and split the air; a snowstorm exploded outward. The wind alone flung snow high enough to blind, yet Arteon's gaze stayed fixed, sharp, on the man beyond it. He drove the spear he held in a long, straight thrust.
Clang!
Arteon's spear punched through the flurry and met Kortzan's axe. A heavy boom rolled out; snow around the two of them burst in every direction. The shock wave of force alone would have crushed an ordinary man. At its heart, Kortzan glared at Arteon with bloodshot eyes.
"Today, right here, one of us dies…!"
"Not a difficult problem."
"Arrogant little shit!"
Kortzan's mace smashed into the ground. Arteon had already slipped back out of range. Kortzan's eyes blazed as he hauled up his aura. A deep, grinding hum filled the air; red aura blazed along axe and mace—truly ferocious pressure. In answer, blue aura bloomed from the tip of Arteon's spear and climbed higher still. The mere act of drawing power made the earth tremble in small, continuous shivers.
The standoff did not last.
Kortzan moved first. With a heavy stamp he roared and came on like a storm.
"Hraaaaaah!"
The axe in one hand dropped from high overhead, aimed at Arteon's skull; at the same instant the mace on the flank waited for any opening. But—
Arteon refused to give him space. He drove the spear straight forward in a single line. The point hissed past Kortzan's side by a hair and carved empty air. Kortzan lunged a full step closer and swung the axe again—an blow thick with the will to split a body clean in half. Arteon recovered the spear and twisted just enough to the side. The axe cratered the ground with a thunderous crash; stone shards flew as the earth cracked open. The attack had only just begun.
"Hraaah!"
The mace whipped in toward Arteon's ribs. Arteon laid the spear across, turned the mace's path, and dropped low, sliding straight into Kortzan's guard.
"…!"
Closing to this distance?
"You mad bastard!"
At a range where two fists would barely fit, how was anyone supposed to use a spear? This distance was—
"You're begging to die."
"Hardly."
Arteon's eyes flashed. He drove his left shoulder hard into Kortzan's solar plexus. A metallic crack rang out; the big warrior's body jolted. Kortzan bit down on the groan that tried to escape and dropped both weapons, hands snatching for Arteon—but Arteon was already gone from the spot.
Kortzan howled in fury.
"You rat bastard! Is running all you Empire dogs know how to do?!"
Arteon answered the twisted shout with silence. He poured aura into the tip of Iglis. The weapon amplified what he fed it, swallowing the space around them.
"Is talking all you know how to do?"
"…!"
Kortzan scrambled to raise axe and mace in defense, yanking aura up in panic—
"Hup…!"
Arteon's thrust streaked for him in a perfect straight line. No feint, only pure concentrated force. For an instant Kortzan felt as though he faced a ballista, a siege engine meant to shatter walls.
"Hraaaaaaaah!"
Aura crashed into aura with a detonation that tore the air. The two forces swallowed everything nearby and threw out a violent aftershock. Kar warriors and Silent Spear soldiers locked in their own fights whipped around in startled faces toward the epicenter.
…So aura users really do stand beyond ordinary men.
Is this what happens just from weapons colliding…?
The Silent Spear soldiers were stunned, yet a part of each of them filed the moment away as the height they themselves would one day have to reach. Complete or incomplete, if they could not handle aura they would never truly follow in Arteon's wake.
When the violent shaking of air and earth finally died, the two figures at its origin slowly became clear again.
Kortzan had crossed his weapons in an X to block, but he was far from whole. The armor across his upper body had been torn clean away; blood ran from wounds that looked as though flesh itself had been ripped open. His face twisted. The look in his eyes alone seemed capable of shredding a man.
Arteon only steadied his breathing and drew mana up once more—like a cold-blooded creature that had set every emotion aside and sunk entirely into the fight.
Kortzan ground his teeth. If another strike like the last one came…
I die.
He had no confidence he could stop a second. What in the hell was the difference between this young Imperial dog and himself? All the years he had spent crossing battlefield after battlefield, surviving fight after fight—and yet—
"Why… I cannot accept this!"
It felt as though the entire road he had walked was being denied. Kortzan's face contorted with rage; a scream torn from pure spite ripped out of him as he charged.
"Graaaaaaaah!"
No defense at all—an all-or-nothing assault that carried the clear will to die together if he must. Meeting that charge head-on would be genuinely dangerous.
Arteon watched him come and tightened his grip on Iglis. The safest course would be to keep slipping aside until the man's strength burned out. Yet for some reason—no, there was no reason at all. Only the courtesy due a proud enemy.
"This is the highest honor I can give you."
With that short line he drew his aura up. Power gathered at the tip of Iglis, flaring blue and swelling. Faces of countless Kar warriors he had fought before flickered past; Arteon's focus climbed to its peak.
And then—
"Hraaaaaaaaaah!"
Kortzan's axe, exploding with red aura, came down. Arteon seized the shaft in both hands and answered with a single driving blow of his own.
The detonation dwarfed everything that had come before. A storm of blue and red force swallowed the surroundings. The shock was so vast that Kar warriors and Silent Spear soldiers alike broke off their fights and ducked low, certain that another step would send them tumbling away on the gale of power.
Is this… really the realm of men fighting…?
Then what of a 6-Star? What of the heights beyond? This alone already felt like something past human limits; those higher battles were impossible even to imagine. The old legends—that an 8-Star could split the sky and cleave mountains—suddenly seemed as if they might be true.
When the howling storm of force at last settled—
"Khahk!"
Kortzan collapsed and vomited blood. Every heave of his body sent another mouthful spilling out; it felt as though every bone had shattered, and he could not move.
"Ghk… grrk…"
A wet, rattling sound rose with the blood-flecked spit that ran from the corner of his mouth. He forced his eyes open and looked up at Arteon standing over him. The younger man was not unscathed either, yet—
…Monster.
The gaze fixed on him stayed cold and clear from first to last. Like… him.
Despair settled over Kortzan's shoulders like a vast wall. He understood completely: this was the place he would die.
"…Time to finish it."
The last collision had left Arteon's vision faintly blurred. He shook his head once and forced his focus back. This was no moment to show weakness. He had to kill the man quickly and rejoin the unit; the operation he was meant to carry out was still underway.
Footfalls crunched. Arteon walked toward Kortzan with Iglis in hand. There was no pleasure in killing a fallen enemy, but there was also no reason to hesitate. In the eyes looking up at him he already saw a thin, resigned calm that had accepted death.
"It's over."
Arteon drove the spear toward him.
In the exact instant the point was about to pierce flesh—
A tremendous force screamed in from the side. Arteon dropped low at once and swept Iglis across. Pain like a snapped wrist shot through him as the spear jolted hard. Something flashed past his front—
And the man who had been lying there was gone.
Arteon looked up at the figure now standing before him.
A man stood with the half-dead Kortzan slung over one shoulder. His expression was calm; neither killing intent nor battle lust showed in his eyes. Yet—
Arteon could not move carelessly. On that shoulder, half-glimpsed—
"Six… feather tattoos."
Arteon's eyes narrowed. Then this man was—
"The Taman of this place?"
At the question, Krelmuk's mouth curved in a long, slow smile.