Subjugation (3)
"I am quite well. I merely had matters to ponder, is all."
Hm. Idle musing, perhaps — yet there is no great harm in looking back upon the past. Even so, to do it in the very middle of a battlefield? That, I concede, was poor judgment.
"Did you worry for me?"
"I'm just relieved."
Whether she had truly worried, I could not say, but the thought that she had come out to meet me warmed me enough to draw a smile — and at the sight of it, she snapped her head away, eyes darting elsewhere. Her cheeks had flushed a deep red, and the flustered reaction that came with them made things awkward for us both.
She whirled her head around as though she'd witnessed something she ought not to have. What am I to do with that...? I will admit I have grown foolish with age, but surely my face is not so unseemly as all that.
"Forgive me... Have I grown silly in my old age?"
It seemed the viewers had finally resigned themselves to believing that I was, in fact, forty-eight years of age. Well, they were beginning to grasp, however roughly, that this body could not possibly pass for a youth of twenty-three. Even had I taken up the sword at the age of three, such martial attainment at twenty-three would have been beyond impossible. Hm — though I do sometimes wonder whether, had I arrived at my current age instead, I might have climbed to an even higher realm.
But that is neither here nor there.
"N-no, it's not that! It's just... I thought you were such a beautiful person."
Had I heard her correctly? Beautiful? Me?
"Then my ears must be failing me."
Beautiful... In forty-eight years of living, that was a word I had never once been graced with.
"It's not that... it's just, your hands are so beautiful..."
"Do you realize how strange that sounds, even as you say it?"
"Yes..."
Who can say? I certainly cannot. Truly, I cannot. "Face like a widow's ghost" I heard often enough in the old days — but beautiful?
"Setting that aside, we ought to prepare for battle."
"I can feel it coming."
So her senses were sharper than I'd given her credit for. It was still a fair distance off. Well, I suppose that at her age, having reached the latter stages of the Zenith realm, her talent need hardly be questioned. Of course it is so.
What manner of realm is Zenith? The system that divides the great realms here may differ, but put simply, Zenith was a wall. Countless First-Rate warriors did whatever it took to surmount that wall, yet if even one in a hundred managed to cross it, that was considered many indeed.
Now and then a blessed generation would arise and break through together — but that was less a blessing than a warning that a danger of equal measure was coming.
It is beyond reckoning how many souls the wall of Zenith has broken. That is precisely what it means to be called talented.
"Is something the matter?"
"I merely realized, anew, how young you truly are."
"Ye-yes...?"
"I mean only that you have attained such a realm at so young an age."
"Ah... yes. Of course."
Do not trail off like that — I am every bit as awkward about it as you are.
"Might you entrust this battle to us?"
"Do as you see fit."
They had not come this far without resolve of their own. It is not mine to carry every burden for them.
"So THAT is the Impure Knight."
It certainly did look the part of the impure. I cannot claim to know what "impurity" means in this world, but this much, at least, I knew: no one who beheld that sodden, sloughing flesh endlessly melting the earth beneath it could ever call it divine.
"When I first heard that the Impure Knight served the Winter Lord, I did wonder why it did not remain at his side."
"It is certainly not a pleasant thing to look upon."
Rotten and unrotten. Flesh and not-flesh. It melted the very ground and trampled the sprouts of life beneath its bulk.
"Does it not live up to the name 'Impure'?"
"Sila. Will you be all right without me?"
I did not have full confidence that they could truly destroy that thing on their own, and so I went to Imperial Princess Sila's side to ask. But up close, her condition was plain — face drained white as though poisoned, hand pressed to her mouth, retching.
"Urp... Sir Seojun... are you all right...?"
"Wh-what... what in the world is happening?"
Why on earth did she look like this...?
My face had gone stiff, hadn't it. Only after reading the chat did I manage to settle myself somewhat. If it showed that plainly, even to the viewers, what was I to do about it?
"Are you well?"
Her color said, unmistakably, that she was not — and yet all I could offer was that meaningless question.
Was I flustered, then?
The evening of that day had been much the same. A seizure that began without warning, and a self that could do nothing at all.
But I am different now. I am no longer the weakling I was then. I have grown stronger. I have matured.
Looking about as the princess gagged, unable even to answer, I saw that half of those present were retching, half had sunk to their knees, and the worst among them lay rolling on the ground.
"What on earth is happening..."
"I haven't the faintest idea either."
What was happening, and why — none of it made sense. Whatever the reason, it did not matter. In a situation where nothing could be understood, the only key was that revolting mass crawling its way toward us.
I walked toward that grotesque thing, to which the word "knight" could not possibly apply.
My cracked sword had seen no repairs, I had received no replacement, and I carried no spare. There had been no leisure to see to any of it.
So, rare for me, I chose to strike first. Whether severing any particular part of it would kill the thing — whether killing it would even end this calamity — I had no certainty whatsoever.
But somewhere in the corner of my chest, a voice insisted that this thing was the cause.
As I drew near the mass, the reek of decay mingled with some unnameable stench and began to waft outward — the kind of smell that would make an ordinary person wish their nose cut clean off.
But this sort of stench had long since grown familiar to me. It did not matter.
The arc of my full-powered swing split the mass for a moment — and then it began knitting itself back together at once.
It was less a wound closing than the feel of a blade drawn through water.
Yet the sheen that rose across its surface had the look of oil, and I could not fathom what it truly was.
In Murim, unleashing one's full strength against an enemy whose abilities and trump cards were unknown was a fine way to invite disaster, and so the habit of probing strikes had long since been carved into me.
I learned this only through the questions scrolling up the chat window.
And now — was this not a situation that allowed for nothing so leisurely as a probing strike? Then what in the world was I to do? Thinking on it, I recalled that the thing was less like water, and more like oil.
"And yet I had grown rather attached to it, truth be told."
It could not compare to my beloved sword waiting back in a corner of my room, but this blade had served me faithfully in its own right. Still, in this winter blizzard, there was only one way I knew to kindle a fire.
To sacrifice the sword.
I deliberately bent the arc of my swinging blade so that it scraped along a coarse outcropping of rock.
Splitting, healing, splitting again and healing again — and somewhere in that rhythm, the sword had begun to glow a sullen red.
White sparks scattered through the wild sweeps of the blade.
"This is farewell, then."
It had been a loyal companion all the same. Rest well. Your final moments you will spend together with that thing.
The Impure Knight was engulfed in white flame and began to burn.
Even as a sound like a scream — like a ringing in the ears — rose from within the great flames, the fire did not die. Once kindled, it roared on without pause even in the howling blizzard, lighting everything around it.
A hand-like thing of burning flesh reached toward me, but its arm soon burned away and severed entirely.
"What in the world WAS that thing?"
An "Impure Knight," they called it — but that was no existence that could be called a knight at all.
It had merely known that fire was deadly to it, and feared the end of winter. That was the thought that came to me.
"And yet — how does that fire burn so utterly white?"
Even in Murim, no one had ever produced a flame so white. And somehow, it even carried a feeling of warmth.
"Uuugh..."
The groans around me began, little by little, to fade.
"So it was that flame..."
Had I simply erased the thing wholesale, there would have been no way left to cure any of them.
"Sila. Are you all right?"
It was the same question I had asked mere moments ago — but the situation had changed now.
Now, at last, I could ask it with my head held high.