The Master Blacksmith (3)
"Even so, I can't send you off alone on nothing but rumor."
The power of blood was a wondrous thing. I could feel how genuinely he worried for me — even though, in truth, the two of us were meeting for the very first time.
"I won't be going alone."
I loosened the lizard scarf around my neck.
"Ruby, show him."
"Squee—!"
Ruby stretched all four legs and beat the air with a mighty flourish. The moment the artifice broke, he swelled in an instant into a magma dragon fifteen meters long.
Graaaaaaaaah—!
Ruby reared his head back and unleashed a draconic roar.
"A dragon!"
"An earth dragon! An earth dragon's attacking!"
The marketplace plunged into utter chaos, and the warriors nearby gasped in terror and snatched up their weapons.
Ruby showed them no particular hostility. He had merely revealed his existence, and yet before the pressure of his aura, ordinary people couldn't so much as twitch.
A gap in standing that crushed the body from every direction at once.
"I trust that's proof enough the rumors were true."
Luka looked up at Ruby, his face drained of color. A storm of emotions warred across his features.
"So... it was true. You really are a dragon tamer."
"I am. Though I hear taming an earth dragon is without precedent in the Empire's history."
"Then is it also true that you slew the Demon Count?"
"It is."
"Good. I'll tell you where to find Grimscale."
Luka spoke in a resolute voice, as though he had settled the matter in his heart at last.
"But I won't send you off empty-handed. The will of House Rain goes with you."
He lifted the sword hanging on the wall and pressed it into my hands.
"Its name is the Avenger's Sword. Grimscale possesses a reinforcement-type Awoken Ability called 'Impenetrable Carapace.' No ordinary attack will pierce that shell of his — but with this blade, the story changes."
A sword that nullified a specific Awoken Ability. Could a name ever have suited a weapon better than Avenger's Sword?
I took the sword and slipped it into Sanpedla's Travel Bag.
"I'll return it once I've used it."
"Good. A weapon belongs in the hands of one who knows how to wield it."
Luka fetched a map and spread it across the table.
"Finding the way will be no trouble at all. Once you enter the Demon Realm, the sword will guide you of its own accord. The problem is the realm's environment itself."
He circled a single point on the map with his graphite pencil.
"Be careful, Iden."
His voice trembled, ever so slightly.
"House Rain paid for the future of its line, and still never reached this place."
Just as the human nations were divided among their lords, the lands of the demonkin were partitioned and ruled by the demon nobility.
Grimscale's territory lay north of Ashford, beyond Stormrock Fortress — two days' ride on horseback, or half a day by travel art.
Since I'd promised to return before the iron cooled, I chose the travel art over the horse I'd ridden in on.
Come to think of it, this was my first time covering such a distance without a companion. With no one's eyes to mind, I could unleash my power as I pleased, and when I spread the travel art to its fullest extent, it felt as though I were flying across the fields.
The farther north I went, the more the landscape took on the air of a graveyard.
Frost had frozen the desolate plains rock-solid. There were no farmlands near the front lines — not because of famine, but because of the miasmic residue drifting through the air.
Here and there I glimpsed travelers camped out in the wild, forming circles of watchfulness around their cooking fires and resting in shifts.
About five hours in, the silhouette of Stormrock Fortress came into view. The fortress sealed the border between the Esterji domain and the Demon Realm behind a long, towering wall.
The Central Plains had its Great Wall too, built to hold back the horse-riding tribes. But in sheer height and thickness, Stormrock overwhelmed it a hundredfold.
At that point I drew in the travel art and approached the fortress entrance on foot, plain and simple.
"Halt! Identify yourself!"
Crossbows jutted out from the arrow slits in a bristling wave. Crossbowmen were stationed in the watchtowers flanking the gate as well, all of them poised to riddle me with bolts at the first wrong move.
"Iden Esterji."
The moment I gave my name, a stir ran along the inside of the wall. After a brief pause, a figure who appeared to be an officer appeared atop the ramparts.
"Is that you, Third Young Master?"
"It is."
"Step into the torchlight!"
I obeyed his instructions without protest. Standing before the torch, I felt a gaze combing over me from head to toe.
"Open the gate!"
At the officer's shout, the thick iron gates began grinding apart to either side with the groan of straining pulleys. I crossed the broad drawbridge and stepped inside the fortress.
"We are honored by your presence, Lord Iden Esterji."
The officers knelt to receive me.
"I'm hardly your commanding officer. No need for such ceremony."
The officers glanced at one another, then rose with the utmost timidity. Tension was written plainly on their faces.
That look — I knew that look. The calm before the storm.
"Iden!"
A crowd of knights in solid black armor came swarming out. Standing at their head was a beautiful youth draped in a gray mantle.
Chris Esterzy. My flesh and blood, so it would seem.
With his arrival, a sour reek of alcohol rolled over me. He'd apparently had more than a drink or two — his eyes were already glazed over.
Good, actually. He'd come to find me before I had to go looking for him.
Luka had advised me to avoid Chris whenever possible, but crossing into the Demon Realm without the fortress commander's permission had never been an option to begin with.
"You seem to be doing well for yourself, Brother Chris."
"Doing well?"
Chris's eyes twitched.
"Does that look like doing well to you? Exiled to this dreary pit, playing guard dog for a living?"
I saw several officers grimace. They weren't Chris's men — they were the standing garrison of the duchy. Having their duty denigrated by comparison to a dog could not have sat well with any of them.
"And yet it's thanks to your efforts, Brother, that the people of the domain live in safety."
Truthfully, I'd heard monsters were leaking through in a steady trickle. If the commander had been drowning his sorrows in drink instead of doing his job, well — it explained a lot.
"All polish and shine, your words."
Chris's lip curled.
"I hate you more than I hate Mabel. You snake. While Mabel and I were busy at each other's throats, you were busy racking up points with Father. Wearing that innocent face, playing the worried son, playing the darling child... How was the capital, hm? Staying glued to Father's side — did it start to feel like the duchy was already yours?"
"It was a magnificent place. It would have been better still if you could have come along, Brother."
"Wretched creature. I could sew that mouth shut."
"I truly don't understand what's gotten into you, Brother. You're hardly in any position to be angry with me over nothing — if you think back on everything that's happened."
He had tried to poison me before I could even walk. He had sent assassins in the dead of night. On top of that, he'd spread vicious rumors through high society — he'd gone to tireless lengths to bury me, just the one of me.
"I'm not in a position to be angry, you say?"
He glared at me with bulging eyes.
"You went to the capital with Father in my place — and I'm not in a position to be angry?!"
He strode forward and seized my collar with both fists.
"If only you had never been born, none of this would have happened! The moment you came into this world, everything began to go wrong. You're the problem, Iden. You're a thing that should never have existed!"
His scream struck the vaulted ceiling and echoed through the entire fortress.
The real tragedy was that this drunkard's rambling was unfolding in front of every officer and knight present.
"Is it my death you're hoping for?"
I tore his hands off me by force. He stumbled back, looking startled.
"In that case, kindly open the gate. As it happens, I have business in the Demon Realm."
"...Why would you go to the Demon Realm?"
"You have no need of my reasons. What matters is the fact that I intend to enter it of my own free will."
"I am the commander of this fortress. Give me a reason, or I won't let you through."
"Brush it aside, then. Otherwise, I won't go."
"......"
Chris fell silent.
Right about now, he would be weighing two possibilities.
I must interfere with whatever he's scheming. Versus — no, better to let him walk into the Demon Realm and guide him to a violent death.
Which way he would decide was obvious.
"It's your own decision, Iden."
"Naturally."
Chris turned and barked over his shoulder.
"Drek!"
"Yes, my lord."
A knight of enormous bulk stepped forward. Slung across his shoulder was a two-handed sword of a size to rival the one Srudal carried.
"Escort my brother into the Demon Realm, and come straight back."
"It shall be as you command."
Drek bowed his head in mute obedience.
"I have no need of a nursemaid."
"Shut it. Send you wandering into the Demon Realm without a guide, and what do you suppose Father would say to me? If this is another scheme to paint me as the villain, you can forget it."
"...Very well. I'll graciously accept your consideration."
"Don't misunderstand. It's for my sake, not yours."
Chris lurched away, and the Raven Knights trailed after him like ducklings.
Beyond the fortress's northern face stretched a land where neither man nor devil could live in peace. Only when my feet touched the Demon Realm did I finally grasp the full weight of Luka's warning.
The sun was nowhere to be seen behind a shroud of heavy clouds. Darkness lay across every quarter of the sky. The atmosphere brimmed over with miasma, and thick thickets of thornbush crowded the ground before me.
"Where are we headed, my lord?"
Drek asked.
"To the territory of the Demon Count Grimscale."
"...This way, then."
Drek took the lead, and I followed behind him for a long while. He found the path unerringly, without so much as a single signpost to help him.
Even this harsh land had its roads — unsurprising, really, since it had once been human territory.
It was when Stormrock Fortress had vanished from sight behind us that we came upon a fork, where the way split left and right.
"This way."
Drek turned toward the left.
"Are you certain about that?"
I was holding the Avenger's Sword Luka had given me. A faint light was seeping from the blade — and the light was pointing to the right.
"......"
Drek stared at me in silence.
Was he surprised?
Truthfully, so was I.
[ This sword responds to the presence of Demon Count Grimscale. ]
Luka had explained the blade's function to me, but I hadn't expected its performance to be this reliable.
Drek glanced briefly back toward Stormrock Fortress, then reached for the two-handed sword on his back and spoke.
"As it happens, direction matters very little here."
His blade's tip swung around to face my chest.
"Because you die here, my lord. Paying for the privilege of entering the Demon Realm with one's life — surely that's a tale as old as the realm itself."
I laughed. The unfolding of events hadn't strayed a single inch from my expectations.
Seeing this, I found myself wondering whether humankind truly had any right to slander the demonkin.
Sword-qi erupted from Drek's blade. A blue aura blazed to life, roaring as it drove back the surrounding miasma. This man was one of those rare Master-tier Awoken — of course he was strong. A skilled hand picked specifically for my assassination.
Drek loosed a short battle cry and lunged at me. I stirred the energies of wind and fire at the same instant.
The Art of the Wind Spirit,
the talisman of Summoning Wind.
And the Art of the Fire Spirit,
Scorching Flames of a Thousand Visions!
The two elemental arts fused into one, their effects compounding, and dozens upon dozens of pillars of fire surged upward with the fury of a crashing wave.
"What the—?!"
Drek raised his sword into a guard. But no single blade could hold back a natural disaster. His body was swallowed whole by the surging inferno.
Where the Scorching Flames had passed, nothing remained but ash. Drek had barely preserved the outline of his form, but the light of life was already draining from him.
"How... how could you... such power..."
His head drooped slowly downward.
"Let Chris know, will you? Tell him I gave it my best effort on your behalf."
By my count, this made the third time Chris had tried to kill me. It was about time I taught the man that indulgence carried a price.
Of course, House Rain's vengeance came first. Somewhere behind me, Uncle Luka was watching a lump of iron cool, and growing more anxious by the hour.
I raised the sword and confirmed the direction ahead.
Firelight flooded the horizon. The Scorching Flames had dyed the miasma-soaked plains in precisely my favorite color.
Beyond that ocean of flame, I could see a towering wall. That was Grimscale's territory — and the line of defense the humans of a previous generation had abandoned.