chapter 5
Chapter 5: The prosecutor who descended the mountain for free is Mistaken
The fangs of the Snow-Wind bore down on me. Aimed precisely at my retina without a single millimeter of deviation.
"─!"
Right before the spear tip could skewer through my retina, I squeezed my right eye shut.
It wasn't a reflexive avoidance born from simple terror or fear.
Fwooom!
A pressure of wind surging in an off-beat rhythm. It wasn't just wind. A cutting gale of freezing cold literally frosted the surroundings while raising a layer of ice crystals. Before I knew it, the ground beneath my feet had frozen over, and then it started rapidly glaciating as it crept up my ankles. This was clearly no ordinary spear.
But I didn't panic.
"……!"
The one who twisted with shock and bewilderment was Lady Iris.
A sight she couldn't believe even seeing it. She instinctively tried to pull back the spear she'd driven downward.
Twitch.
The muscle of my shut right eye spasmed lightly. But the spear tip caught between my eyelids didn't budge an inch, staying stuck.
As though it had been pinned in place, buried under an absurd pile of boulders.
"Swordless Style, 4th Form—Blade Catch."
I murmured calmly with my right eye still shut. This sensation of gripping a blade edge and locking it firmly in place.
‘I never once succeeded with this art against Master.’
Thanks to that, I'd had to give up even counting how many eyeballs I'd lost. And now I'd pulled it off in my very first real fight. I was sinking into a wave of deep emotion welling up from within—but only for a moment.
Trickle.
At the peak of that emotion, liquid ran down from my shut eye. Were these tears of emotion?
"Ah, shit."
In one sense, they were tears, yes. The problem was that they were tears of blood.
‘Just barely grazed me.’
Still too rough around the edges. Swallowing my bitterness, I set aside the shallow scrape etched across my eyeball. I did catch it, though. Couldn't this count as half a success?
As I reflected on that, the other party's situation was even more dire than mine.
"Ngh, ugh!"
Snow Spear Iris was straining with everything she had to pull her spear free from where it was pinned between those eyelids.
"Ugh, haaah……!"
Desperately trying to withdraw the spear or, conversely, drive it deeper—she was struggling with the spear handle that wouldn't budge a single millimeter no matter what she did. Desperately, breaking into a cold sweat.
Like a young girl trying to overpower a full-grown adult through sheer strength.
In Lady Iris's eyes swirled emotions she'd never shown in her life—shock, fear, shame, and bewilderment all tangled together.
"And yet she won't let go of her weapon, even through all this."
"!"
I spoke while watching her. Glancing around with my other eye.
"Ah……."
Only then did Iris realize it. The gazes of those watching this duel.
The eyes of the many subordinates who had once admired her.
Watching their commander—always so aloof and cold—sweating profusely while floundering helplessly.
"That's…… well, not the pride of a spear user—no, of a Spearmaster, I suppose. Not bad."
"You bastard!"
Watching her cry out in belated outrage, I opened my shut eye. At that instant, she—off-balance from gripping the spear—staggered and stumbled backward.
"Don't get too full of yourself! You were caught by [Snow Blossom's Curse], you……!"
Stepping back, she cried out while looking at the flow of glaciation coiling and blazing around me.
Crack, crack.
The freezing that had started from beneath my feet was by now winding past my waist, creeping toward my neck.
"A curse?"
I could understand it in my head. Though of course, compared to what I had received during training, this was truly nothing but child's play.
CRASH!
The moment I lightly lifted a foot and moved, the ice coating my body shattered all at once and scattered like a skin being peeled away.
Through the scattering shards of ice, I took another step forward toward Lady Iris.
Stride.
"Eek……!"
Just one step. As the distance closed, the color drained from her face. Her skin, already cold as ice, went pale—pale enough to look like a corpse.
"W-what are you doing, Lady Iris?! Against a nobody like that?!"
The one more flustered than her was Baron Vilmayer. And even more flustered than Baron Vilmayer were the Iron Cross Knights who had gathered to watch their captain personally take the field.
"I have one question, Spearmaster."
"!"
I opened my mouth, bringing to mind the name I had boldly called out earlier.
"In that Iron Cross Knight Order of yours—just how strong are you?"
Captain of the 3rd Iron Cross Knight Order, Snow Spear Iris.
"Are you 3rd?"
"Tch……!"
The answer didn't come back immediately. So I asked again. Simply because I was genuinely curious.
"Or have you merely received the treatment of being 3rd through connections and status?"
The outside world I'd returned to. Just how strong was she, who had stepped forward so boldly while those around her propped her up?
"How much further do you intend to humiliate me?!"
Unable to hold back any longer, Lady Iris cried out, and simultaneously kicked off the ground. Movement clearly shaken by emotion.
The Snow Spear swung again with a sharp gust of wind, this time aimed not at my eye but at my chest.
I didn't stand by watching this time either.
There was no need for even that much.
While the spear tip that moved first was still well ahead, driving toward my chest—in a moment that didn't take even a tenth of a minute in total:
The sword I thrust forward clashed against the tip of her spear.
In an off-beat rhythm, wind blew from behind each of our weapons. The winds from both directions became tangled.
Flowers of snow scattered.
Shards of the spear tip, gleaming like crystals, sprayed across a canvas of pure white.
And then, as if to stain it.
"Kuh, ugh……!"
Retch.
Blood finally came spewing from Iris's lips, those lips that had been cold as ice. Likewise, drops of blood fell one by one to the ground beneath her feet.
"C-Captain!"
"Captain!"
"Lady Iris!"
The Iron Cross Knights who had gathered around her could see it far more clearly.
Her beautiful Full Plate Armor—specially crafted to accentuate a woman's curves—had been torn apart hideously along the back.
It was not a fair and beautiful back.
Soaked in crimson, utterly violated—a horrific sight of red flesh and white bone tangled grotesquely together.
The ribs that should have supported her organs were all shattered, and with the broken bones having torn through her lung and lacerated her organs, Lady Iris once again spat out a breath of bloody mist.
Heave!
Every time she opened her mouth, bloody froth bubbled up. A few of the Iron Cross Knights instinctively moved toward Iris.
"Everyone, do not……move!"
That was when it happened.
She, who wouldn't have been strange even if she collapsed right then and there, knelt while propping herself on the broken shaft of the Snow Spear and cried out.
Even while summoning her will amid wounds that would have killed an ordinary person outright.
I looked down at her in silence. She still had the composure to speak even now.
"That fellow, huk, that fellow is……."
Lady Iris cried out desperately.
"[The Organization]……."
"What?"
"A monster of [The Organization]……. Run, and spread the word……!"
‘Now, what the hell is 'The Organization'? What nonsense is this?’
Before I could tilt my head in confusion, she continued talking on her own.
"They have begun to move…… for the release of [The Seal]……!"
"B-but, Captain!"
"We cannot abandon the Captain!"
"Even if it costs us our lives!"
Meanwhile, the ones calling themselves Iron Cross Knights—rather than following her orders—began burning with fighting spirit as they surrounded her protectively.
"……."
I suddenly recalled a conversation with Master.
"I'm not particularly a sexist, but by a lot, a woman is ill-suited to lead a military organization. Especially the younger and prettier she is."
"That's quite a sexist thing to say."
I hadn't understood it at the time. To be honest, I still didn't.
"By a lot, when a young and pretty woman serves as the head of an armed organization, at the critical moment, they enshrine their leader as a princess."
Just as those words said. In Lady Iris's expression—as she hovered at death's door—she could only see fools reeking of chivalry who defied her final order.
"Foolish fools……! With the likes of you, there's absolutely no way to face [The Organization]……."
"You keep going on about this 'Organization'—"
Before I could even ask back, one of the Iron Cross Knights kicked off the ground.
"And they lose themselves in the delusion that they're the prince who'll protect the princess, turning the entire organization into a band of brain-dead idiots who can't function."
"Master, are you really a woman?"
"Why, should I step down and show you for 5 minutes to make you believe it?"
Setting aside the chill of realizing Master's shocking prejudice might be somewhat accurate—
I looked at the Iron Cross Knight who had become a prince right before my eyes.
"Haaaah!"
Movement that made the woman before him look like a goddess by comparison. Not just slow and clumsy—it was far worse.
"Now is the time to stake the pride of our 3rd Knight Order and protect the Captain!"
"Lady Iris is mine to protect!"
And the truly horrifying part was that it wasn't just 1 or 2 of these princes.
"I, I will protect Lady Iris!"
"We're the ones protecting her!"
"Even at the cost of our lives, in repayment for all the times she's protected us!"
There was no time to even sigh.
"Swordless Style, Chaos Form—"
I turned toward the army of princes before me, and set into motion to end all of their fairy tales at once.
"Blade Break."