The Award Ceremony (0)
Once qi deviation takes hold, reversing it is extraordinarily difficult. But while it was still in full swing, a thread-thin chance remained to set things right.
Raising those odds even slightly required two things: a vast supply of external qi, and a guide capable of steering that qi along its proper course.
The external qi was covered. The internal elixir Vitten had brought was more than enough.
What remained was the question of whether I was qualified to be the guide.
I answered with certainty: I was. For the sole purpose of staying alive, I had kneaded and worked my qi and blood more than anyone else in the world.
My severed-pulse illness had forced the choice on me again and again—freeze to death as I was, or force the qi to move somehow and survive.
I guided the energy pouring from the internal elixir into every corner of Thalia's body. Where a channel was blocked, I drove it open; where one had been damaged, I routed the flow around it.
"...Ngh."
Thalia let out a small moan. She must be feeling as though her body were burning alive from the inside.
The third variable was her willpower. Carrying a fatal sword wound, she was fighting her own rampaging qi and blood.
If the pain broke her and she lost consciousness, everything we had done until now would come to nothing.
Sweat ran down my spine like rain. It was work of indescribable delicacy, and I had never been more grateful for Vitten's silence.
I lost track of time. Of place. Of my own existence. Through the palms joined to Thalia, I painted an entire universe.
Only when my body collapsed to the floor did I realize the work was finished.
"My lord!"
Vitten rushed over and propped me up. The moment my mind returned, I turned to saving Thalia first. I was merely exhausted; for her, it was a matter of life and death.
"Are you all right?"
At first I thought my eyes had failed me. The woman before me didn't look like the Thalia I knew.
A bright luster glowed from her skin. Her face looked years younger, her features more finely drawn. The sword wound at her side had vanished without a trace, and a pure radiance seeped from her violet eyes.
Internal qi reconstruction.
The supreme miracle of rebuilding the entire body as though it had been born anew.
The implications were enormous. The Esterzy Duchy had gained its second official Grand Master...
...and Vitten's future girlfriend had become considerably prettier.
"So I did survive."
Thalia said it sounding oddly disgruntled.
"I was certain we'd missed the window to get her to a priest."
"You held on well. That's what made the treatment possible."
She stared down at her own two hands.
"It seems you did more than simply heal me. I can feel a strength far greater than before."
"Lord Iden healed you. With a giant's mana core."
"While I was in the throes of the overflow, I heard Lord Iden calling to me. I took it for an auditory hallucination..."
Thalia looked straight at me.
"It was no hallucination, then. The Young Duke saved my life."
"And me?"
Vitten asked.
"You didn't hear my voice at all?"
"No, sir. I suppose it was too quiet."
Thalia smiled faintly. And that smile was devastatingly charming. Vitten's heartache was scheduled to worsen for the foreseeable future.
The demon army retreated beyond Stormrock, leaving roughly twenty thousand dead behind.
As for why Ragnor, their commander, never took the field himself, we could only speculate from the Steel Guard's testimony. Though my father had lost to Ragnor, Ragnor himself had apparently been quite shaken by my father's power. The war, in other words, may have been a probing engagement—a way of measuring how many strong ones the human race possessed.
But then Kalman had arrived from the Empire, and there had been the magma dragon, the Hellcat... and unaccounted-for variables like me and Mabel besides.
In the end, Ragnor seemed to have reached the same conclusion we had: defeating the Duke of Esterzy did not mean defeating humanity.
Instead, on their way out, they razed Stormrock Fortress to the ground. When Uncle Luka heard that the fortress had fallen, his reaction was:
"Good riddance. I've been wanting to get my hands on that decrepit facility for ages."
Luka and Count Andrassy got along famously. Both were mad for machinery, and both trusted engineering over people.
So Luka stayed in Andrassy to help rebuild Stormrock, and I backed his decision with both hands raised. Only with the fortress standing again as soon as possible could the people of the territory sleep soundly, both legs stretched out.
For three days after the battle, a joint funeral was held. During that time we also laid to rest the twelve fallen of Frost.
After the funerals came the rewarding of merit.
Among the virtues of a ruler, the sages often named this one: dispensing reward and punishment fairly.
Merits were divided broadly into first, second, and third class. Luka hammered out the medals in no time, and the prizes were drawn from the finest mana cores harvested from the monsters.
At the award ceremony held in the borrowed count's mansion, the first to come forward and collect a first-class award was...
"Thank you for your efforts, brother."
Mavel Esterzy.
"Much appreciated."
Mavel received from me the medal of merit along with a box brimming with mana cores. His face had been set like a lump of lead throughout the entire ceremony.
As it turned out, Mabel had fought hard indeed. The demons who had poured through the eastern wall were utterly annihilated by him and the Orchid Knights.
— Well fought, brother. I am giving you this award to show that I am not a man who cannot separate public duty from personal feeling.
That was the political message folded into it, though whether he picked up on it was anyone's guess.
The second to collect a first-class award was Rosrik.
Rosrik, Kaldrik's father, had been retired on account of the overflow. Yet he had pushed his Awoken Ability a step further, manifesting a tremendous awakening called Legend Slayer.
Together with a soldier named Leo, he had commandeered the watchtower ballista and brought down no fewer than seventeen giants before the battle ended.
"You are now, in name and in fact, the finest giant hunter on the continent."
I offered Rosrik the compliment with a smile.
"Thank you, Young Duke."
Rosrik accepted the plaque with a solemn expression. From the seats came applause far louder than Mabel's had drawn. A common soldier—and one past sixty at that—taking first-class merit was no everyday sight.
"Young Duke, this body of mine has no use for a mana core. Might I have your leave to transfer the gift you have given me?"
"Do as you please."
I granted his request without hesitation. Who he intended to pass it to was obvious.
The last first-class honoree was Thalia.
"Vice-Commander of Frost, step forward."
Thalia walked out. Her armor had been wrecked beyond repair, so she wore plain clothes—a rare sight indeed.
"Thalia, Vice-Commander of Frost, stood against Grim Red, the enemy's elite knight order that had infiltrated through the underground waterway, and halted their advance. In token of my admiration, I confer upon her this plaque and prize, and look forward to her unflagging service in the days to come."
"Thank you."
Thalia bowed her head.
But Vitten... Thalia was the one receiving the award, so why were you the one beaming? Your mouth simply would not stay shut.
Next came the second- and third-class awards. So many heroes had carried out their duties brilliantly at their own posts that it struck me anew: running a territory was not something one gifted Daoist could manage alone.
With the prizes handed out, all that remained was the road home. I called Vitten and Thalia to my lodgings to discuss the march schedule.
"We should start back soon. The situation has settled, and I can't keep the territorial lords detained forever."
The two exchanged a glance. Vitten cleared his throat once, quite without cause.
"Then there is a place you simply must visit today."
"Where?"
"There's a shop in Andrassy with incredible meat pies. A famous eatery, as they say—people claim that if you leave without trying their pie, you haven't truly visited Andrassy at all."
"It's really that good?"
Vitten looked flustered.
"W-well, it may not suit your palate, my lord. It's commoners' fare, after all—hardly a match for the ducal table..."
"No."
Suddenly, I was interested.
In my past life, I had roamed mountains and rivers living off wild greens. But whenever our travels brought us to a great walled city, my master would always take me to the market and buy me noodles or dumplings. The stalls we frequented then were much the same thing as the "famous eatery" Vitten described.
The teeming market, and a craftsman's handiwork bought for a handful of coins.
That sensation alone still lingered in my memory.
"Let's go. What's one meal eaten out, in the grand scheme of things?"
"Then I'll send word ahead to the restaurant. Lord Iden will be calling on them, so if they could prepare a seat—"
"No need to drive anyone out. I'll just transform and go, won't I?"
"Are you certain that's all right?"
—Are you truly fine breaking bread pressed in among the lowborn?
That was what he meant. I answered with a short laugh.
"Of course I am."
It suited me well enough, actually. I wanted to see, up close, how the daily lives of these war-worn northerners were picking themselves back up.
Few would recognize Vitten or Thalia in plain clothes, so the transformation art was mine alone—worn as an ordinary boy you might pass on any street.
When the day's duties were done, the three of us made for the so-called famous restaurant. It was doing roaring business. The notion of standing in line and waiting your turn for a meal was an unfamiliar one to me.
After roughly an hour's wait we were let in, and the interior matched the picture in my head exactly: bellowing mercenaries, tables rubbed dull and scarred by years of use, servers who looked ready to snap at anyone.
We settled at a table near the wall. Vitten, who knew the place well, took charge of the order.
"Three meat pies, one felipet, two ales, and one Sparkling Bay juice."
"Order received!"
The server scurried off to the kitchen. We were waiting on the food when a voice rose from the next table.
"You actually saw Lord Iden?"
"Course I did. I was posted on the west wall."
A man swaggered, lifting his cup.
"So? Is the rumor actually true? You know—the one that Lord Iden is Solitas's avatar..."
"Avatar, my foot. Solitas all but asked the man to be friends."
The man set down his cup, shot both hands forward—swoosh, swoosh—and supplied his own sound effects.
"Lightning went KRA-BOOM! Fire went FWOOSH! Demon or whatever, the moment they met Lord Iden's eyes, they just dropped dead where they stood."
They were swapping eyewitness accounts of me. There was no way I could keep from listening.
"Ah, I want to join Frost too."
"Come off it. No Awoken Ability and you're dreaming of knighthood?"
"You never know. Frost takes unawakened members too. Word is they fought like devils this time as well."
"Still, if you do join Frost, you'd best watch out for their first squad leader. Vitten, was it? The man's famous as a pervert. Supposedly somebody saw him sprinting through the middle of the panic, stark naked with a woman in his arms."
"His brain's parked in his crotch, that one. Tsk."
I began reciting the Clear Void Sutra in my head to strangle the laughter. Thalia, on the other hand, failed to strangle hers, utterly and miserably.
"Ah—my apologies, senior."
Thalia waved a hand in apology, then surrendered to laughter all over again.
"I shall... issue an official statement. To set the record straight..."
"No, let them chatter. They wouldn't know my face if it bit them."
Vitten said it with a sour edge.
Before long our order arrived, and every dish carried the touch of a master's hands, just as Vitten had sworn.
The two of them wrapped their hands around their beers; I held my fruit drink. I turned a simple toast over in my mind.
"Might I give the toast?"
Vitten asked. He seemed to have something prepared.
"If we set out tomorrow, that's five days of marching."
He extended his glass.
"So—happy birthday, in advance."
"Happy birthday, Lord Iden."
"...What?"
Only then did I understand why the two of them had been trading glances in front of me.
They had stood as my guards since I was two years old. But the world of a duke's son and the world of his knights had always been kept rigorously apart.
Now, eleven years on, they were inviting me across that line—and I found I did not mind it at all.
"...Thank you."