The Phantom Realm (2)
Just as I'd expected, the pursuers were closing in behind us. King Sandor's men. Their appearance would have given them away anywhere.
“Wh-what the hell? Why is the sky acting up all of a sudden?”
“Don't let it bewitch you! Keep your eyes on the road ahead!”
“But this could all be an illusion….”
The pursuers had lost their way inside the phantom realm. Gorgeous flowers bloomed in riotous profusion, and streams babbled along their banks. Seasons flowed past in the blink of an eye, and the trees burst into fruit.
I extended my arts further in the direction they had come from. There, the enemy's illusion was spread wide — a powerful technique blanketing an area of two or three kilometers.
I widened the range of the Seven-Star Chained Formation. My illusions began to drape themselves over theirs.
Who is this?
I could feel the enemy illusionist's shock. Through the medium of our arts, our consciousnesses were locked against each other, and to some extent each of us could read the other's mind. Far more easily, if the opponent was weaker than I was.
How dare you encroach on my domain.
I am the finest illusionist in the Empire. You dare trespass on me with such half-baked tricks?
Illusionists, as a rule, seemed to suffer from a severe excess of self-regard. Perhaps a lifetime spent deceiving people for a living did that to a person.
I began devouring the self-proclaimed Empire's-best illusionist's technique from every angle. The hierarchy between illusionists was simple to settle: if my illusion could overlay yours, I was the superior of the two.
Impossible!
The enemy poured out every scrap of strength he had to keep his technique alive.
You there — what trickery is this…?
Before long, every illusion he had woven collapsed like a mirage. Where the phantoms vanished, nothing remained but ruins.
KWARURURUNG―――!
And then, the battle was in full swing. A colossal sandstorm raged across the field with enough fury to tear the very earth open. Within the storm, a white light flickered like a lighthouse.
The sandstorm would be King Sandor's true body, and the white light Kalman's sword aura. Kalman was still alive. But he looked as precarious as a candle before the wind.
Illusions alone would never stop King Sandor. He was a supreme powerhouse whose caliber equaled mine in my Divine Manifestation state.
I withdrew the Seven-Star Chained Formation and opened my eyes.
“Are you all right, my lord?”
The escort knights hurried to help me up, asking after me.
“Follow me.”
I sprang to my feet and ran in the direction where Kalman was fighting. The knights fell behind in an instant. Only Uld could match the pace of my swift-travel art.
KWARURUNG――!
Another thunderous detonation rolled across the land.
It seemed Sandor and Kalman had been fighting like this all through the night. Not a patch of undamaged terrain remained anywhere near.
“I'll pick up the pace!”
Uld accelerated further. I pushed my swift-travel art to its limit as well. But we were still too far. The sandstorm lay another three or four kilometers away — and Kalman's light had already grown so faint it looked ready to gutter out at any moment.
— Can mortal flesh ever kill sand?
The matchup was terrible. Kalman's sword excelled at cutting tangible things, and King Sandor had no substance to cut. All things considered, holding out this long was impressive in itself.
Three or four kilometers was nothing to my swift-travel art. But I doubted Kalman would survive even that brief span of time.
“KALMAN!”
I shook the air with a Lion's Roar — then leapt not forward, but high into the sky.
From a height that overlooked the sandstorm itself, I spotted the man standing firm at the storm's very center.
There wasn't a single unbroken spot left on Kalman's body. Even if Sandor never delivered the finishing blow, it looked as though he would succumb to his wounds regardless.
Kalman. Look at me.
It amounted to a gamble. If my guess was right, he would be able to use me as a way out of the storm.
I pulled out a handful of talismans and layered barrier after barrier in the air before me. The barriers coalesced into a powerful shield at my front.
Kalman tilted his head upward. I felt our eyes meet. I clenched my core and shouted once more.
“COME TO ME!”
That instant, Kalman flew toward me like an arrow loosed from a bow.
Shunk.
Kalman's sword split the barriers and plunged into my side. A heat like fire seared through my flank. Kalman and I became one tangled mass and fell together out of the sky.
…So this is the Sure-Hit Sword. There really is no way to block it, no matter what I do.
The one who caught us was Uld.
“My lord Iden, your wound!”
Uld fussed over the small cut in my side far more frantically than over Kalman, who was hanging together like a bundle of rags. The moment Kalman hit the ground he scrambled up and ran his hands over my body, searching.
“Are you all right?”
“Hey, now's hardly the time to be worried about me—”
“Are you truly all right?”
Kalman's voice trembled, unstable. Not a trace of his usual composure remained; he looked half out of his mind. It seemed the fact that he had nearly killed me had rattled him far more than his own brush with death.
Come to think of it, there were rumors that Kalman had deliberately killed his own father with his Awoken Ability. Unintentionally, I had just poked his trauma straight in the eye.
“I'm fine.”
I held out my arm to show him. A hairline crack ran across the bracelet on my wrist.
“This is what stopped your attack.”
Cracks remaining: 2 / 3
The Bracelet of Sacrifice — a gift from my father, a cheat of an item that negates any fatal, lethal strike up to three times. The gamble had rested entirely on trusting it.
“Ha….”
Kalman let out an empty, deflated laugh.
“You insane bastard. Hahahahaha….”
“What does it matter? You lived, didn't you?”
I answered him with a smile.
Kalman's Awoken Ability was the Sure-Hit Sword.
His blade never, ever missed its mark — not even if that mark was a small boy three kilometers away.
I had leapt high into the air precisely so Kalman could set me as his target, and he had read my intent perfectly.
“Sandor is withdrawing.”
The sandstorm condensed into a single rope of yellow dust and blew away to the south. All that remained now was the enemy illusionist, presumably lying prostrate somewhere.
“Let's return to the holy city. We need treatment.”
“I'm fine.”
Kalman forced himself up onto his feet.
“Sorry, but you look about as far from fine as a man can get.”
His white coat was so streaked with sand and blood that its original color was beyond recognizing.
“That's not for you to worry ab—”
I struck his pressure point without warning. His knees buckled and he dropped where he stood. I fished a single restorative pill out of Sanpedla's Travel Bag, forced it into his mouth, and then pressed my hand against his back to guide his qi circulation, keeping his internal injuries from settling.
Kalman's condition was far graver than I'd imagined. It was a wonder he'd managed to stay upright at all in that state.
Since I was already guiding his qi anyway, I did him the small favor of adjusting a few of his meridian points. Not enough to make him an enlightened master, but his qi would flow a little more smoothly than before.
Before long, the knights caught up with us.
“My lord Iden!”
My wound set off yet another uproar. Shaka in particular raged about even harder than Uld, declaring that we should have torn that prince to shreds the moment we laid eyes on him.
Part of me wondered if all the fuss was really necessary — but then again, I supposed this was the first time I'd ever been hurt by another person's hand.
Once the first aid was done, I gathered the knights together.
“We're taking Kalman back to the holy city.”
The restorative pill could only keep his internal injuries from worsening; it was useless against external wounds. Trauma this severe could only be healed by holy magic.
But our delegation had exactly one priest, and that lone priest was pouring every ounce of his strength into treating Irene.
And her treatment showed no sign of ending soon. Somehow, the search party had managed to recover Irene's severed arm, and reattaching a severed limb, it turned out, was an extraordinarily difficult piece of magic.
“Then what should we do with the cargo in the wagons? Shall we take it to the depot and deliver it to Prince Iden?”
Shaka asked.
“No.”
I swept my gaze around us. Corpses lay strewn in every direction. Most had fallen to Kalman's blade; the rest to my knights.
“The imperial family will claim that we attacked the delegation. They'll spin it as us being so blinded by the dukedom that we ignored His Majesty's arbitration proposal.”
“You mean that nonsense about surrendering the dukedom to Lord Mavel and turning you into the crown's lapdog.”
Shaka grinned, murder gleaming in her eyes.
“Honestly, this worked out well. A chance to show those soft-bellied lords in the capital what the North is capable of.”
The knights laughed along with Shaka. They say squads grow to resemble their leaders, and Shaka's squad was far more belligerent than any other.
“There won't be an open war just yet. They failed to kill Kalman, so they'll be tearing their hair out trying to figure out how to respond.”
I vaulted onto Ruby's back.
“Let's go.”
Kalman's condition was dire, so Ruby and I reached the holy city ahead of the others. The first place I stopped was Colin's priests' hall.
What we needed now wasn't an ordinary priest but an exceptional one. If the wound was treated sluggishly, the leak in his meridians would only widen.
“Lord Colin accompanied the expedition to the North.”
The old priest bowed his head apologetically as he spoke. So the finest priest I knew was away, just when we needed him most.
“Then who's the best priest after Colin?”
“That would be Lord Daron. He oversees the Gije parish—”
I carried Kalman straight to Gije. Daron was the one Colin had once recommended as an immensely promising talent, and I'd caught a glimpse of him at the parish's consecration ceremony. But I rarely worked alongside clergy, so it had slipped my mind.
The priests' hall at Gije stood noticeably larger than the surrounding buildings, drawing the eye at once. Hymns drifted out through the gaps in the windows.
The moment I flung the doors open, every head in the congregation snapped toward me.
“Good heavens!”
The congregation recoiled in horror at the sight of blood-soaked Kalman and me.
“Remain calm! It is the Grand Duke!”
A young man with brown hair hurried down from the pulpit. He rushed over and immediately began examining Kalman's condition.
“A patient in critical condition. I will take charge of him from this moment.”
“I leave him in your hands.”
That composed young man was Daron. Only now did a weight lift off my chest.
I sank into a pew in the chapel and let out a long breath — then suddenly noticed how quiet everything had become. The congregants were all bowing their heads to me now, as though I were Solitas himself.
“Raise your heads.”
The people lifted their heads one by one. Their eyes brimmed with reverence. But I still had no immunity to looks like that. One gaze from Uld alone was hard enough to endure — and just how many people were staring at me here?
I slipped quietly out of the chapel. In the distance I could see Shaka sprinting toward me with everything she had, her cheeks flushed crimson — she'd clearly beaten someone else half to death, too.
“My lord Duke!”
Shaka stopped in front of me to catch her breath.
“You gave orders to take one prisoner.”
“I did.”
“We've got him. He claims he's the finest illusionist in the Empire….”
I snorted. So even after being crushed like that, the man still hadn't let go of his pride.
“As it turns out, the prisoner is one of King Sandor's beloved concubines.”