[Chapter 1] A Legend's Retirement and the Sword Princess of the Abandoned Annex
Five years ago, on the Plain of Silence — the front line of the Holy War that had plunged the entire continent into a living hell for five straight years.
Over ground that shuddered beneath the stench of blood and seared flesh, one of the Demon King's Four Heavenly Kings, Malgaroth, the 'Lord of the Abyss,' came crashing down.
KRAKOOOM—!
Ethan's black-iron blade slid free of the monster's heart, and with a thunderous roar the head of the mountain-sized beast rolled down into the blood-soaked dust.
The war was over. A full stop had at last been stamped onto the brutal campaign that had dyed the continent red.
But the price had been cruel.
With his dying breath, the Heavenly King had unleashed an ancient curse of the abyss. To shield the soldiers at his back, Ethan had wrung his body dry of every last drop of mana and taken the calamity head-on, alone.
CHIIII—!
A searing heat, like molten metal surging backward through his veins. His soul circuits burned jet-black from head to toe, and Ethan dropped where he stood.
Inside a worn field-hospital tent, beneath the acrid bite of disinfectant, the chief medical officer of the Imperial Army gripped a chart in trembling hands.
"...It's Soul Necrosis, Commander."
The old man's voice had sunk heavy, like the reading of a death sentence.
"The Heavenly King's curse has gnawed through the very core of your soul. From this day on, every time you raise your mana past thirty percent... your soul circuits will ignite, and you will suffer hemorrhaging so violent you'll cough blood as your insides tear apart."
"And the treatment?" Ethan asked flatly from the bed, wrapped in bandages.
"...There is none. Not even the holiest 7th-Circle magic known to man can regenerate circuits once they've burned away. You have a year at most... and without a miracle, no longer."
This was the legendary hero who had saved the continent as the youngest Sword Master in history. At that merciless verdict, his adjutants clenched their fists hard enough to draw blood.
Yet Ethan's face remained utterly serene. Gazing up at the stained canvas ceiling, he murmured quietly within.
'Well, the war's over anyway. All the better.'
Five years of hellfire, rolling through screaming men and corpses. Everyone else had trumpeted him a hero, the Sword of the Continent, but to Ethan the blade had never been anything more than a long, soul-grinding chore.
'I don't need any hero's welcome. I'll just nap on a nice sunny bed and drift off peacefully. That's all a man can ask.'
He would turn aside the palace's summons and the nobles' schemes alike, quietly draw his pension, and that would suit him perfectly.
Imperial Year 524. Early spring, midday.
Warm spring sunlight poured down dazzling over the plaza before the main gates of Thera Imperial Academy. Beneath the silver spires, the opulent magic carriages of the Empire's most illustrious noble houses sat lined up in rows, and their sons and daughters stepped down in their finest uniforms with haughtily tilted chins — faces brimming with the chosen-elite pride of the Empire's very topmost tier.
"Look at that one. The newest model, isn't it? The magic carriage reserved for the Royal Knight Order?"
"They say the young lord of Count Berg's house is enrolling this term as well."
Through that glittering tide of silk and jewels, a man in an old, shapeless navy coat trudged in. Tangled jet-black hair; eyes of idle gray, drowsy and still. His bloodless pallor and clean-cut jaw lent him a strangely cool, worn elegance.
Empty-handed, not so much as a bag over his shoulder, Ethan fished a cheap peppermint candy from his pocket and popped it into his mouth.
Crunch.
The candy cracked, and a sharp sting of peppermint spread through his mouth, rinsing the staleness away.
'The war's barely over, and they're still playing the bloodline game.'
Amid the resplendent nobility, Ethan in his dust-caked coat looked as shabby as shabby got — a jarring figure that belonged nowhere near the Empire's most prestigious academy.
"Who is that? A janitor?"
"What on earth are the guards letting in?"
The young nobles clicked their tongues, making no effort to hide their distaste. Sneers and scorn rained down on him, but Ethan only dug a finger in his ear and shuffled on. The spring sun was far too warm to waste on the whispering of spoiled young lords, and every joint in his body was beginning to ache.
'Land one instructor post, sit on it for the year I've got left, then straight into a coffin. Simple.'
With nothing more than the name of employment at the Empire's foremost academy, a fat royal pension would arrive on the first of every month, regular as sunrise. Whether the students got lippy was none of his concern. As long as the money came on time, the world could turn itself upside down for all he cared.
Topmost floor of the academy's main building. The Headmaster's office.
Through the wall of glass stretching from floor to ceiling, the whole academy lay in view below.
Clack.
The moment the office door opened, the old man at the desk shot to his feet. A snow-white beard, deeply carved wrinkles, and a soft blue shimmer of mana wreathing his frame — the Headmaster Seraphim, one of only seven 7th-Circle Great Mages on the continent and the supreme head of Thera Imperial Academy.
"You've come... Sir Ethan."
Seraphim's voice was shaking. He hurried around the desk and planted himself before Ethan — the gaunt frame hidden inside that loose coat, the bloodless face. That the strongest swordsman of the age, the man who had severed a Heavenly King's head five years past and saved the continent, should stand before him in such a wreck of a body made the old mage's chest wrench.
"To summon a man in your condition out to a bustling place like this... I am ashamed, truly."
"Think nothing of it, Headmaster. A man's got to earn his keep."
Ethan flopped onto the plush leather sofa and let out a long yawn. Graceless to a fault — yet Seraphim only gazed back at him with eyes full of pity.
The headmaster carefully drew a gold-embossed document from the desk and offered it.
"A post arranged just for you. Honorary advisor to the top-ranked Class S. One or two lesson observations a month, your own research suite and a personal attendant attached — and the salary, of course, is of the highest grade."
A privilege for which the masters of the Empire would have knelt and begged. Ethan pushed it away with a frown.
"I'll pass. Babysitting the Class S darlings, sweet-talking their noble parents — I'm sick to death of all of it. I only want to rest. Quietly."
Just as Seraphim's face clouded over, Ethan's gaze snagged on a dust-laden approval tray in the corner of the desk. One post, scrawled across paper yellowed with age:
[Re: Appointment of Temporary Instructor for Class E — Vacant Three Consecutive Years]
"Headmaster. What's that?"
Ethan tipped his chin at it, and Seraphim flustered, waving both hands.
"Ah — pay that no mind! That is Class E, the thing the whole academy calls its disgrace. A place of exile for the talentless and the disowned — troublechildren their own families threw away. They use the crumbling annex out in the northern forest, and the instructor's seat has sat empty three years running. It is no place for a hero such as you."
'An annex in the woods, far from the main building? Not a single applicant?'
Ethan's dark-gray eyes flashed.
"How many students?"
"Three or four, no more. Hopeless cases, every one of them — the professors gave up on teaching them long ago..."
'Three or four students. A secluded annex in the forest. No interference from the main building?'
A cheer erupted inside Ethan's chest. Where in all the world was there a more perfect utopia for napping, lazing, and coasting through his days?
"I'll take that one."
He said it, already plucking the papers away. Seraphim's lips hardened into stone.
'Ah... good heavens.'
The old man's eyes reddened and brimmed.
'The children everyone pointed at and abandoned... the failures even the Empire itself gave up on... is this man prepared to pour out his dying life to take them in?!'
The resolve of a true hero — spurning riches and glory to embrace the outcasts from the coldest floor of the world! Choking down the surge in his chest, Seraphim brought his crimson seal down onto the contract with all his strength.
SLAM!
"That noble heart of yours... I shall not forget it as long as I draw breath, Sir Ethan!"
Tears brimming in his eyes, Seraphim clasped both of Ethan's hands tight. Deadpan, Ethan tucked the contract into his coat and crowed inwardly.
'Perfect. The ultimate cushy posting, found.'
The northern forest path, a long walk from the main building. Weeds and creeping vines grew thick on either side of the deserted dirt track.
The Class E Annex, emerging from between the trees, was pitiful. Paint peeling in sheets, cobwebs sagging under the eaves — an abandoned ruin in everything but name.
'I like it. In this state, no one troublesome will ever bother coming out here.'
Hands jammed in his coat pockets, Ethan was just stepping toward the clearing behind the building when a sound tore through the hushed forest air, sharp as a whipcrack.
FWOOSH—!THWACK—!
With each dull, meaty impact, the post-and-straw-dummy at the center of the clearing lurched as though it might snap in two. And before it stood a girl.
Raven hair spilling down to her waist and the supple lines of a born swordswoman. Her neatly pressed white uniform was blotched with sweat and dust, and hard breaths rose between the drops sliding down her cheeks. Her red eyes flashed as though to skewer the empty air — smoldering cold as blood-drunk rubies, and in them seethed a terrible hunger and a bitter, curdled resentment.
Elena von Arden. Youngest daughter of House Arden, hailed as the premier sword family of the Empire. A child branded "a useless failure" for her inability to channel mana into a blade — and discarded for it. She stood there alone, gripping an old wooden practice sword.
Ethan's gaze dropped to her wrists. White bandages wound around both, and through them dark blood had soaked in sopping patches, staining the sword's grip. Even with the ligaments of her wrists tearing, the girl set her jaw and raised the sword again.
FWAAASH—!
A stroke that carved the wind in two. But with no mana behind it — pure brute strength alone — it did no more than scrape the post's surface, and the recoil shook fresh drops of blood from her wrists to stain the dirt red.
This was not training. It was desperate self-destruction — a girl cursing her own weakness as she carved herself to pieces.
Ethan stood in silence and tracked her every stroke. He had lost his mana, but a Sword Master's eye remained his.
'She isn't using her wrists' range of motion at all. She's just hammering down on raw force, so every ounce of shock runs straight back into the joints.'
Left as she was, those wrists would be crushed to rubble inside three days. It wasn't the absence of talent — it was the flailing of a body coming apart because she carried a sword too pure for it.
'Nothing good ever comes of meddling in other people's lives.'
Ethan shook his head hard. Whether her family had thrown her out, whether her wrists snapped — it was her life. For a man returning to dirt in a year, stitching up a tiresome new bond would leave nothing behind at all.
'Check out the bed, then sleep.'
He turned to go. The trouble was the instinct of a lifetime lived as a warrior; watching her wreck herself and simply walking past left a fishbone caught in his throat.
Just as he brushed by the girl, Ethan loosed a cavernous yawn and dropped one careless remark.
"Don't crank your wrists around like that."
A lazy, bone-dry voice.
"Cut like you're tossing the blade down its path."
Tap.
The practice sword she had been mid-swing with stopped dead in the empty air, as if the world had lied to her. The girl's ruby eyes shuddered violently. The boulder that had crushed her breath shut for three years came tumbling down. The truth struck her like a thunderbolt: the habit of wrenching her wrists to force mana into the blade — that had been the very shackle jamming her sword's flow. A thick fog lifted from her mind, and a blade-path she had never once seen came pouring down like a waterfall.
'...Huh?'
An icy shiver raced down her spine. A single sentence. The fatal flaw that neither her family's head nor the academy's nose-in-the-air sword professors had ever managed to find — and this shabby-coated man had collapsed it in one go, with a single yawn-flecked remark tossed over his shoulder in passing.
Elena sucked in a rasping breath and wheeled around — and in that very instant a bitter early-spring evening wind swept cold through the woods. And from the throat of the man it struck, there tore loose a harsh, wet rupture.
Khhk—!Khhk, khhk—!
Coughing that sounded as if it were ripping his chest open. Ethan's body wavered and stopped. Pain lanced through his solar plexus as though every soul circuit in him had been strung red-hot and skewered through him at once.
"Hhk — khhk...!"
Ethan scowled, fished a crumpled handkerchief from his pocket, and clamped it over his mouth. When his ragged breathing finally ebbed and he pulled it away, thick, dark blood had spread in a heavy bloom across the white cloth — a bright red stain unfurling like a flower.
"Ha, damn it... aching again. What a pain in the ass."
Clicking his tongue, he shoved the bloody handkerchief carelessly into his pocket. Then, without one glance at the girl frozen stiff behind him, he pushed open the annex's rickety old door and slipped inside.
Creeeak — BAM.
The door shut, and the red of the sinking sun came down, mournful and slow, over the drops of blood dotting the ground.
Elena stood rooted, still clutching her bloodied practice sword. Her fingertips were trembling.
What that man had just tossed her, without a second thought, was a principle of the sword that stood beyond her entire family's art — the very threshold of a divine realm of the blade. And mere moments after handing her that enormous enlightenment... the man had coughed up blood.
'For a failure like me... to open the path of the sword for me...?'
For her — the daughter her own house had declared worthless and thrown away. The pale face of the instructor who, in that flash of a moment, had wrung his very soul out to teach her the truth of the sword, then turned away with blood on his lips from the recoil.
'My teacher... for my sake... blood...'
An unstoppable fervor spread through Elena's red eyes. From somewhere deep in her chest, something hot and ferocious — the like of which she had never once felt in all her born days — began to swirl, terrifying in its sweep.