chapter 2
Chapter 2: Prosecutors who have left The Mountain for Free, do not draw their Swords
"O-Older brother……?"
A trembling sound escaped Chloe's lips. I scratched the back of my shoulder.
"……Yeah. It's me."
I paused for a moment, then added.
"The right older brother."
A brief silence followed.
"R-Really? Ernst Büschel……?"
"Yeah, can't you tell just by looking?"
"……."
"……."
I said it and immediately regretted it. My current appearance was, to put it plainly, the form of something that had torn its way back out from the jaws of hell. Even saying it myself, it was hardly a convincing look.
"When you were six, you snuck into the kitchen, stole cake, and pinned it all on me."
"……!"
"It was meant for the envoy from the royal capital. I got beaten the whole day because of that."
"Ugh!"
A brief silence. And then.
Clatter.
The Short Dagger slipped from Chloe's hand.
Clatter.
There was nothing left to drop, and yet another clattering sound followed.
"Hng, hiik."
Drip, drip. It was tears.
Soaked in tears, a flush of embarrassment spread across her face. Crying and laughing, laughing and crying.
"Aah, it really is…… Ernst Büschel……."
And just like that, she came rushing toward me and grabbed my collar…… or rather, nothing of the sort happened.
There was no collar to grab.
All that covered me was a single piece of sackcloth loosely draped around my lower half. The rest—nothing but my own physique, boldly asserting itself to the world in all its rugged glory.
‘Oh, this magnificent body!’
‘Not the time for that.’
I shook my head quickly and looked down at my frail little sister before me.
"Brother!"
Chloe placed her pale, slender hands against that very physique and buried her face against it without a word.
"You were alive……! And you've gotten so re, relia……ble—!"
"Ah, well, yeah."
I stood there in a daze. ……Honestly, the awkwardness of not knowing what to say was one thing, but setting that aside. Though, did her voice just tremble oddly when she said reliable? Well, whatever.
"So, what in the world happened?"
It had to be said. The expression on Chloe's face—still buried in my chest—went visibly pale, even from where I stood.
"Th-That……."
Chloe lifted her head and looked up at me. Her eyes were wet with fear.
"Father…… became a traitor."
"What?"
I blinked, dumbfounded.
"Treason?"
That nouveau riche noble whose entire mental capacity was devoted to sucking up to anyone above him in exchange for a comfortable life—treason? Treason takes nerve. That man had none.
"People came from the royal capital—from the Central Magic Tower and the Royal Knight Order—carrying a golden edict."
"From the Tower and the Knight Order……?"
Büschel County was deep in the northern frontier, land at the very edge of the kingdom.
"Yes. They said the Sealing Stone of the Cursed Mountain Range that our family was entrusted to guard had disappeared."
"The Sealing Stone?"
‘What was that again? Was that setting in the original work?’
Well, there was one symbolic boulder that sealed the entrance to the Northern Cursed Mountain Range.
But considering I'd spent over ten years at the peak of that Cursed Mountain Range trading blows with a mad elven Master, what meaning could a seal or a stone possibly hold at this point?
"Father was executed on the spot for the responsibility of the Stone's disappearance, and the territory was confiscated. As for the Lord's Castle being reduced to ash……."
Chloe continued in a trembling voice.
"It was because they bombarded it without restraint—with magic and sword energy alike—claiming they needed to find the whereabouts of the Sealing Stone."
"Ah."
I can see the picture. Whether the stone genuinely disappeared or there was a scheme from the start, I couldn't say.
But it was obviously those greedy people at the center pulling a baseless scheme to legally plunder land at the frontier.
"So right now, those Magic Tower and Knight Order people are camped out on the ruins of my old home?"
"Yes. Even now, every day they drag away the remaining people of the territory, and under the pretense of questioning them about the Sealing Stone's whereabouts, they inflict all manner of horrific torture……Ah!"
Chloe flinched and hid herself behind my broad back. From beyond the ash and rubble, the sound of unhurried footsteps approached.
"There you are, young lady of Büschel."
An insufferably arrogant voice.
And the men themselves were just as their voices implied—so bloated with arrogance it looked ready to burst.
Two Royal Knights in sleek, ornate silver armor, and one mage in a luxurious violet Robe.
"Our new Lord's patience is reaching its limit."
One of the silver-armored knights spoke. New Lord?
"Our Lord has graciously extended his hand of mercy and forgiveness to a wretched girl like you, the daughter of a traitor. But even his patience is not without end."
"……What do you mean by that?"
"And who are you?"
I was about to respond to that gaze—the kind one reserves for an insect—but Chloe cut in first.
"That's enough."
Chloe steadied her breath and stepped forward.
"The person here is nothing more than a 'porter' who used to work at the old castle. He has the size, but he's too dim-witted to string two words together properly."
"Wha, what……?"
Just as I tried to say something in bewilderment, the look she shot at me was sharper and more piercing than anything before.
It was a look that said: shut your mouth. I stared at that look for a long moment.
Even a fool could understand.
The other side: two gleaming knights sent from the royal capital, and one mage.
Our side: A suspicious mass of muscle with nothing but a piece of sackcloth around the waist.
"Ha, you. You don't look like a simple porter."
Perhaps sensing something off. One of the knights looked our way and continued.
"Looks to me like you've been… comforting a lonely young lady. In more ways than one, I'd say……."
"……?"
I stayed silent. Chloe was still glaring at me with a look that could kill, urging my silence.
‘Please, don't say a single word.’
"It's power."
‘Why do I even?—’
"In the end, all the problems of this world come down to power."
I had no intention of staying quiet. The knight smirked.
"The hell are you mumbling about, you madman."
I glanced up at the sky for a moment. The ashen sky of the north.
A question-and-answer exchange with my Master suddenly came to mind.
That day too, she looked at me—half-dead, barely clinging to life—and asked, as though it had nothing to do with her.
"Why is it that you hunger so desperately for power?"
"Because it's good to have it. It's amazing."
‘It wasn't a thought-out answer.’
"Correct. And carve one more thing into yourself alongside it."
At that, my elven Master burst out laughing as if she couldn't believe what she was hearing.
"Power and weakness are like light and shadow. Neither can exist without the other. Does a light growing blindingly strong cause its shadow to disappear?
No. Rather, the shadow cast on the other side grows all the darker and more defined. Overwhelming power will, without fail, produce the deep despair of those crushed beneath it."
My head—stuffed to the brim with muscle clear up to the brain—couldn't even properly chew over the meaning.
And yet now, strangely, those words came back to me.
I looked again at the knights before me.
"Because you have power, you think you can do whatever you like?"
‘No matter what shape the shadow it casts.’
The knight's brow twitched.
"Because you are strong, and we are weak."
"Isn't that just the way of things?"
Having received the knight's agreement, I nodded as well.
"Yes."
And then I said it.
"I think so too."
"You dare, trusting nothing but those clumsy fists of yours, whatever it is you think you're about to—"
"Wrong."
I cut off the words that followed.
"These aren't fists."
"What?"
"I am a Swordsman."
That was right. I had trained in the sword under that very Master—the Greatest Swordsman on the Continent. Of course, there was no sword in my hand or at my belt.
That didn't change a thing.
That day, I became a swordsman. And that was precisely the essence of what my Master, Heavenly Sword Sillia, had taught me—the Swordless Style.
‘A true Swordsman is one who finds and removes the root of that which demands the sword be drawn.’
"This is my sword. Any objections?"
I quietly clenched my fist. A brief silence fell over the scene as they stared at it.
After the silence—laughter erupted, loud enough to shake the very ground.
"You crazy bastard, what kind of sword is that?! Clenching your fist and going on about swords……!"
The laughter that followed did not last long.
"Swordless Style, First Form—"
There was no sword. Not even my fist struck them—it stopped in the air before my chest, a clean straight punch held in place with precision. It never reached them. It never even grazed them.
"—Thrown Sword."
Fwooom!
But the overwhelming pressure of wind that surged from that fist—that was a different matter entirely.