The Sure-Hit Sword (2)
If Kalman was the Sure-Hit Sword, then Ruby was something like the Sure-Hit Arrow. Like an arrow fated to find its mark, the little lizard tore through the tangled market district at the speed of light.
"Ruby!"
After a chase of nearly an hour, the creature came to an abrupt halt in the middle of a crowded plaza.
"Ruby?"
I looked around the plaza. "Is this it? Are we here?"
There was nowhere here to hide anything as valuable as a mana root. The sight lines ran open in every direction, and far too many people were passing through.
"Did you break down or something?"
I carefully picked Ruby up by the tail.
"Squeee!"
Ruby suddenly thrust its head skyward and shot out a little jet of flame. I glanced up without thinking — and flinched in shock.
High, high above, an enormous fortress that rivaled a duke's residence hung suspended in the air. It was no trick of the eye, no illusion. A building genuinely floated up there.
A floating castle.
The pinnacle of modern architectural engineering, so they said, raised by gathering hundreds of enchantment-type and transformation-type Awoken in one place.
And building it wasn't the end of it. I'd heard that merely keeping the thing aloft devoured a full year's budget from a respectable noble house.
"Good work, Ruby."
I stroked Ruby's head with a finger.
Back when I was taking refinement lessons from my tutor, floating castles had been somebody else's story. Nobody in the duchy had the kind of money for that brand of obscene extravagance.
But this was the Capital. Here, people actually existed who would take the notion of hiding my treasure in a fortress in the sky and carry it through to the end.
The fact that it floated meant nothing to me. The problem was the floating castle itself. At the very least a ducal house — possibly a royal-level power — had to be lurking up there, and one could hardly just barge in blindly.
It might be time to consider reporting this to Father. Handle it carelessly, and the whole thing could balloon into a major scandal entangling the high nobility.
I was just about to head back to our lodgings when it happened.
"Wh-what was that?"
"What was that sound just now?"
A single thunderous boom rolled across the plaza. I fixed my gaze on the floating castle and studied it hard. The roar had come from somewhere deep inside.
A fight? Had a battle broken out over the Ironshine?
No... this was no ordinary fight. I could faintly sense demonic qi. Something unholy was crouched in the sky above.
But there was no way demons were in the Capital.
"Stay put, Ruby."
Grasping the situation came first. If these really were demons, there was no telling how the sparks might land on Father.
In a secluded alley, I transformed into a peregrine falcon and clamped my talons around Ruby's body.
"Squeak!"
With Ruby in my grip, I beat my wings and hurled myself up into the sky.
Seen up close, the floating castle was far larger than even the ducal residence — and it possessed everything a castle ought to have. A bell tower, watchturrets, terraces, gardens in riotous bloom, fountains gushing water...
I alighted softly on a windowsill. There was no sign of life anywhere near. The balcony doors hung shattered, and the floor was soaked with blood.
Blood?
I released my transformation first. Following the trail of red, I came upon the corpse of a young knight. His lower half was gone without a trace.
"Squee!"
Ruby gave a short warning cry.
"Don't worry, Ruby."
Soothing the lizard, I stepped inside. The interior was worse still. The broad corridor was strewn with the wreckage of destruction.
And with corpses. Countless corpses.
The bodies of knights and soldiers lay tangled together in a heap, staging a single tableau of hell.
How could something like this be unfolding in the skies above the Capital?
There was no time to wonder. From somewhere close by came the ring of weapons clashing.
Suppressing my presence, I moved toward the fighting. Two corners later, a vast audience hall opened before me.
A hulking demon with a single horn jutting from its forehead was swinging an axe in wild, sweeping arcs. Crimson aura flickered along the blade like open flame.
Two knights were holding the creature at bay, but their swords carried no aura at all. The gap in power was plain to see.
"Guaaagh!"
At that single scream, the knights dueling the demon were hurled aside as torn shreds of flesh.
Only one knight still drew breath. A young woman, and her wounds were grave — her left arm had been cleaved away at the shoulder, and a broken leg refused to carry her.
I couldn't simply stand and watch. When I let my presence show, the knight looked over at me and murmured, as if she couldn't believe her eyes.
"A child...?"
Her astonishment lasted only a moment. Biting her lip hard, she forced her broken leg to move and dragged herself upright.
"Run, now! I'll hold this position!"
"Truly a sight to move a man to tears," the demon smirked, hooking its bloodied axe over its shoulder.
Why were demons and knights trying to kill each other here?
What I'd hoped to find was something like a corrupt noble's secret storeroom. Not a slaughterhouse presided over by an arrogant nonhuman.
One thing was certain: something enormous had happened. Never once had I heard of demons stirring up trouble in the Capital. If demons could roam the Empire at will, why on earth would Father have worn himself ragged up in the North?
"I told you to run!" the knight shouted, her voice hoarse.
"Go down to the entrance hall — there's an emergency descent line. Ride it down and call for Count Kalman's help!"
"Kalman," the demon sneered.
"Ah, the one they hail as one of the Seven Pillars of the Empire. By all means, call him. I want to see what faces you humans make when your very last hope is shattered."
The knight's breathing turned ragged.
"You are no match for Count Kalman."
"All you do is prattle about what you wish to believe. Let us see today how much of it comes true."
She thrust her sword forward. But the battered blade held none of the power needed to stand against the demon.
I reached out and took hold of her arm. She turned her head and looked down at me, deep despair swimming in her dark-brown eyes.
She had already given up on hope.
Fetching Kalman wasn't the problem. Before she was a knight, she was a living, breathing human being — and as things stood, her story was about to reach its end.
"What's your name?"
The knight's eyes wavered.
"Irene... I have no family name."
"Tend to your wounds, Irene. This will be over soon."
I took another step forward, placing myself in front of her.
"Over soon? Who do you think you'll finish off, you little runt? Has fear addled your brain?"
The demon's rage boiled over. Loathsome demonic qi poured from its entire body — this creature was the source of the presence I'd felt from below.
Behind it sat a large chest, packed with so many spirit fruit they had heaped into a mound.
"...Ironshine."
The demon grinned.
"What, feeling greedy?"
"Where did you get that much Ironshine?"
"You intend to interrogate me?"
"No, I'm offering you a chance. Spill what you know now, and the real interrogation becomes unnecessary."
The creature's face twisted.
"One last question. The Ironshine. Where did you get it?"
"Save your questions for after you're dead!"
With a roar, the demon charged. Its massive axe, wrapped in crimson aura, blazed like a bundle of kindling.
"Look out!" the knight cried out sharply.
I scattered five talismans. They streaked through the air and took up the five directions. The instant the demon stepped into the heart of the formation, the talismans flared red and bound its entire body.
"Wh-what is this! Let go! Let go of me!"
Flattened against the floor, the demon squawked and shrieked.
The Demon-Sealing Formation.
It had never been an art designed to truly seal demons — just a binding technique someone had slapped an impressive name onto. But in a world where demons actually existed, the day it sealed a real one had arrived at last.
I strolled over at my leisure and slapped a few more talismans onto its backside.
"Grrrgh!"
Now the creature could do nothing but roll its eyes.
"Grrh! Grrrrrgh!"
Come to think of it, keeping its mouth shut until the proper interrogation seemed like a fine idea.
Dipping a finger in the blood pooled on the floor, I wrote a single character on the demon's forehead — the character for loss.
The moment I drew the final stroke, the creature fell silent as if by magic.
"Finally, some quiet."
"..."
"You'll behave now, won't you?"
"..."
The demon averted its gaze from me. All its overweening swagger had vanished; nothing remained in those big round eyes but fear.
"And how are you holding up over there?"
I turned to check on Irene.
"...Pardon?"
"You are all right, aren't you?"
I waved a hand back and forth before her eyes. She seemed to have gone entirely vacant. The blood loss must have been too heavy.
"I've kept your arm safe. Holy magic can put it back on, so get yourself to a temple before it's too late."
I handed her the severed arm.
"Who are you? How could you subdue a demon without so much as touching it?"
"Treatment first. At this rate, you're going to die."
"Please, tell me your name, my savior! I have never heard of anyone so young among the Seven Pillars of the Empire!"
I more or less hauled Irene away and loaded her onto the emergency descent line. Even as she sank toward the ground, she kept shouting that she simply had to know my name.
"Whew..."
That was that.
There was a reason I'd hurried her off. The treatment mattered, of course — but if she'd kept clinging to me, disposing of the Ironshine would have become a delicate matter.
I inspected the chest the demon had been guarding. It was crammed full of potato-shaped Ironshine bulbs. The color was wrong, though — not the shade Zargon had shown me. Tainted by demonic qi, the bulbs had turned a deep violet from end to end.
"...Damn it all."
This made it far harder to tie Zargon's trading house to the Ironshine. They could simply dig in their heels and swear they had never sold contaminated goods.
Before that, though — why corrupt perfectly good mana roots in the first place? Spite, so that if they couldn't have them, no one would? Or were demons simply unbothered by spoiled goods?
There were far too few clues for now. The details would come out once I put the captured demon through a proper working-over.
Hoping some uncorrupted Ironshine might remain, I rummaged deeper into the chest.
"Stop."
A stranger's voice sounded right at the back of my head. A blond man in a longcoat was glaring at me.
"Turn around and show me what you have in your hand."
I looked down. A bulb bristling with demonic qi dangled from my right hand.
"Uh... just so there's no misunderstanding, I have nothing whatsoever to do with this unholy thing."
"Squeeee!"
Ruby chirped in fervent agreement.
Which did rather undercut my credibility. The situation looked a little too damning.
But I was human, and I radiated a pure energy the very opposite of demonic qi. Surely my goodwill could offset his hostility.
A chill ran suddenly down my spine. Light flared from the man's right hand like a bolt of lightning. In that instant I unleashed the divine art of Shifting Form, Swapping Positions — an ultra-fast technique that leaves nothing behind but an afterimage.
"...A curious trick you have there."
The longsword that had slipped from his sleeve hummed as it returned to the man's hand. The motion was fluid, as though the blade were alive.
"But there is no such thing as luck twice."
A pillar of dazzling light surged from his sword. The sword-qi sheathing the blade was so resplendent, so thick, that the steel beneath it had all but vanished from sight.
A Grand Master.
He was one of the Seven Pillars of the Empire.
"Does being a Grand Master mean you get to kill people on a whim?"
"That depends on the person."
"If you knew who I was, you'd think twice about killing me."
The man didn't so much as twitch an eyebrow at my threat.
"I am Iden Esterji, son of Duke Drek Esterzy. If you wish, I can prove it."
"You claim to be an Esterzy?"
This time, there was a reaction.
"That's right."
Something felt wrong. Even after I'd revealed my identity, the man showed not the slightest sign of backing down. No... if anything, his mood seemed to have soured further.
"How convenient," the man said, as if chewing on the words. "The criminal has come to me of his own two feet."