Death Knight (1)
The Death Knight (1)
Groaning, the knight of the abyss shoved aside the stone slabs that had crushed his body. Without even tending to what felt like a broken waist, he prostrated himself and begged. I can't fight him.
“Have you no pride at all?”
Swallowing his shame, Lawrence pleaded with desperate sincerity. He simply confessed his deep trauma and bowed his head.
“I’ll fight a mountain if you order me to. I’ll fight fire if you command it. I’ll obey no matter what you tell me to face in this world, but not Nathan Maia. Please, can’t you send someone else? The Archon has plenty of powerful gladiators, doesn’t he?”
“Why should we send someone else? You fight well, kid. You’ve never lost before.”
“This time I might. After all the years I’ve spent wielding a blade, I’ve developed something like an instinct. I—”
Alceides, captain of the Sword Star Sect, burst into hearty laughter.
“The idea that you can’t win is purely in your head. Who knows? Maybe it’ll be different once you actually face him.”
Behind Alceides, the other Sword Star Sect members laughed like beasts in savage agreement. There were powers in this world that made conversation impossible. Powers an ordinary warrior could never overcome. The abyssal cold that drained the life from the living, for instance. Or Sword Qi that no dwarven-forged steel could hope to stop.
And every single member of the Sword Star Sect could wield that terrifying Sword Qi.
They had originally been public warriors tasked with protecting the eastern region, much like the security forces. Now they were little more than the Archon’s private army. At a single word from Alceides, they would carve through Kadon or Orkhistes without hesitation. With only the fading blessing of the abyss to rely on, Lawrence could never stand against them all. Even if he wore the heavy armor he had discarded by the river, they could slice him into chunks and dump the remains in a ditch without breaking a sweat.
In front of a despairing Lawrence, the Sword Star Sect members tilted a cart and spilled its metallic contents with a loud clatter. It was the armor he had abandoned. They had been watching him the entire time.
“Here you go, ‘Kadon.’ Put your armor back on. Now that you’ve had your little mood-changing jog, it’s time to head back.”
“Why…”
“Why? What do you mean, why? We’re throwing you a opponent you think you’ll lose to, and suddenly everything feels unfair?”
Lawrence didn’t deny it. His fingers dug into the dirt, gathering it into a fist.
Vile, stupid bastards.
“You’ve only ever been sent out for fights you could win, so of course you’ve been taking it easy. You probably have no idea why our house boasts such a high win rate in the Gladiator Fights. You never even bothered to pay attention to the bigger picture.”
Alceides spoke indifferently, tapping Lawrence’s back with his scabbard. It was a trick. The mana leaking from the gap in the sheath sliced sharply across his skin. Lawrence’s eyes flew wide as he let out a short cry and rolled across the ground.
“Your wounds heal anyway, don’t they? As long as you aren’t chopped into dozens of pieces or burned to ash, you never die, right? You abyssal monster.”
The captain of the Sword Star Sect sneered.
“Crawl if you have to, but listen well, you half-breed. There’s only one thing we want from you. If you can’t win, at least wound that Sapiens. Bite his fingers off if you must.”
The mana that had seeped into him made the shattered shoulder blade send stars exploding across his vision. Thrashing in agony, Lawrence realized something and ground his teeth. He and Orkhistes were…
“A discard… aaargh…!”
Damn you all.
Having experienced both the abyss and the heavens, Lawrence could say it with confidence: they didn’t seem all that different. The emotionless alien demons that sought to swallow the world and return it to nothingness, or the long-eared devils who treated the world as nothing but a consumable. They were the same.
“Discard? Let’s call it a safety measure. Either way, Nathan Maia is still a living creature. If you slam into him with the abyss’s blessing at full power, won’t it at least give him a bad cold? My father is in a bit of a hurry. He promised to get rid of that Sapiens, but things aren’t going smoothly. Kadon. My friend. Won’t you cooperate?”
When Lawrence didn’t answer, Alceides twisted his lips and grabbed a fistful of his hair, yanking him upright.
“Our house has sent countless gladiators to the arena over the years. Not many were disposed of for refusing orders like you. Do you know why they all decided it was better to go out and die?”
I don’t, you bastard.
“Let… damn it, let me go! I was wrong!”
“The secret basement of the biotechnical company Morphosis is always filled with screams. I hear the owner of Morphosis has taken quite an interest in you—a body that regenerates like a plant.”
I didn’t do anything wrong.
“I’m sorry! It’s all my fault…!”
“You haven’t done anything wrong, you lowly spawn. You weren’t born to make mistakes. You were simply born to be used. It’s not your fault your choices are so limited. You were simply born into the position of a weak surface-dweller, so you only get to choose between two options. Will you go out and fight, or will you be sold to a biotechnical company and experimented on until you’re annihilated?”
Damn it. Damn it. Damn it.
Only then did Kadon, Lawrence, the knight of the abyss, finally understand his father’s words. He had said that unless his son was a fool, he would never submit an application to join the cavalry. For an idiot like Lawrence, there could be no more dramatic form of suicide.
It was crude mockery that crossed every line. It was exactly what you’d expect from an Orléans local who had grown up in the biting wind, but the young Lawrence had been genuinely angry. Back then, every ordinary thing his father had achieved looked far too natural and obvious. He hadn’t wanted to end his life as a fool with his head buried in the sand like his father. To his youthful arrogance, that was as terrifying as ruin itself.
So the son of a rural noble had made the mistake every son who thinks he’s smarter than his father makes. And he had made it at a rather more severe level than average. Drunk out of his mind, he had submitted his enlistment papers to the royal cavalry.
The recruiters and generals had welcomed Lawrence, but they hadn’t believed his claim that it had been the alcohol talking. And on his first deployment to the battlefield, Lawrence had met the knights of the abyss.
Defeat. The threat of death. Groveling in humiliation. Please, just let me live.
He had become the servant of the abyssal knights simply to survive. It was better than never seeing the next day’s sun.
Then, after receiving the abyss’s blessing and being reborn, he had met the Lion Wing Knights.
Defeat. The threat of death. Groveling in humiliation. Please, just let me live.
He had barely escaped the grasp of humans more vicious than demons. Now it was enough to simply avoid defeat. He no longer begged for his life; he simply looked for a place to die.
But the world would not leave Lawrence alone. The heavens had kidnapped him, pouring the abyss into his dying body. He had been rejected even by a quiet end. And so he had continued to live pathetically, continuing to lose.
An undefeated record in the Gladiator Fights? Without the monstrous strength and authority granted by the abyss, how long could Lawrence have survived in that arena? The title of undefeated was far removed from the essence of the man named Lawrence. His true specialty was this: groveling. Please, just let me live. A loser. Lawrence. A loser.
If only he had listened to his father from the beginning, he would never have fallen this far.
“Yes, Father. I remember now.”
At a gesture from the grimacing Alceides, the Sword Star Sect members strode forward and took action. There was no hesitation in what they did. Because he was a servant of the abyss who recovered from any violence.
The knight of death—who should have been a symbol of terror—sobbed at the top of his lungs. Yet though his cries were soaked in the traces of pain, they did not sound like a plea to stop. They were the ecstasy of someone who had regained what he had lost.
“I had a father. I was a man who had a father.”
Alceides, brushing his golden hair back, kicked an obstacle out of the way as if irritated. Lawrence’s jaw shattered under the military boot. Only then did the knight of death stop his song-like weeping.
“You remind me of that Eclipse fellow. I always feel skeptical when I entrust tasks to inadequate people. Achieve results and return. Or die. It would be wise to take that advice to heart. Grinding you up like meat and disposing of you would be the merciful option. Because Morphosis’s blood-soaked basement will cradle you for a thousand years, ten thousand years!”
Alceides and the Sword Star Sect departed. Only two remained to watch over Lawrence until he could stand.
But Lawrence paid no attention to any of it. He had a father. He was a man who had such a father.
Soon the cursed abyssal fog would churn through his mind. It would once again draw a blackout curtain over the memories of when he had been purely human. Even so, Lawrence clung tightly to that single fragment of a memory that would soon vanish. He felt as if he had obtained some kind of clue.
---------------
Nathan thought of the Federation’s Castaya Fortress and the iron citadel of Mikreheim. There was no particular reason. He simply found himself making the comparison. They were the largest structures he had ever seen in his life.
Even those, when viewed from the ground, had been military buildings constructed to face calamities. But this was a luxury item. A damn luxury item.
The scale of the Great Arena he was seeing for the first time could not be captured by words like large or magnificent. Even terms like grand or splendid felt woefully insufficient. If he had to find the most fitting word, it would probably be madness. And waste.
Bricks covered in gold spread in a perfect circle from one end of his vision to the other. The complex foundation designed with hexagrams and circles seemed more suited to a temple than a place of slaughter. Its enormity was so great that placing it atop a mountain peak would cause the mountain itself to sink and collapse. For a simple trial by combat, a much smaller and more solemn space would have sufficed. This was ostentation. A display of how overwhelmingly powerful a force they had built. A wonder that would require an entire civilization to burn its life force to produce was, to them, nothing more than pleasant waste.
“The capacity of one hundred sixty thousand is completely full. They say it’s all thanks to the worst villain in history, Nathan Maia. Looks like you have a talent for drawing crowds too?”
“Benny.”
“The profits coming to us since we hold shares in the arena are enormous. I’ll buy you something delicious with the money later. Don’t be nervous, Nathan. It’s no big deal, right? Just beat him senseless and come back.”
“Benny. Talk without crying.”
Nathan was relaxed. Benny could not understand that relaxation. She simply held him tightly from behind.
“Come back alive. Damn it. Ugh.”
“You still can’t trust a hundred-battle veteran?”
Aspen slipped in from behind and hugged both Benny and Nathan. As Benny made a choked sound, Aspen chuckled.
“From what I’ve felt, that level won’t even reach Nathan’s liver. Why, did you bet on the black knight too?”
“Yes.”
When Aspen’s eyes widened, Benny ground her teeth and explained.
“Because all the long-eared bastards who said Nathan would lose have been wrong every single time until now.”
Aspen, who had been quietly chewing on those words, ruffled Benny’s hair.
“Well done. If all the Eleim outside were like you, how much simpler everything would be.”
Unlike the Arena of Punishment where gambling was taboo, everyone in the Great Arena bet on victory or defeat. Among the more than one hundred sixty thousand Eleim spectators, those who had bet on Nathan numbered just under twenty thousand. It wasn’t simply because of his opponent Kadon’s reputation or his master’s gambler’s nature in the Gladiator Fights.
It was hatred. Hatred for an opponent they could not process. Nathan Maia refused to go along with their wishes. Like an itch in a place they couldn’t reach. Like a mosquito that flew out of sight. Like the neighbor’s enemy who kept succeeding. Hatred naturally transcended profit and loss. Therefore the twelve percent in the stands who were being rational were not the strange ones. The eighty-eight percent who firmly believed they were the race that ruled the world had perfectly reasonable grounds for their hatred.
Of course, the grounds for emotion were not always rational. Nathan, like them, had the right to act as a subject. The right to treat their emotional hatred as ridiculous whining and mock it. If someone acted like a bastard without any justifiable reason, wasn’t it only right to give that damned bastard a damned reason? That was justified revenge.
Nathan rested Van der Ver’s sword on his shoulder.
“Yeah. All the long-eared bastards who said I would lose have been wrong every time until now.”
Nathan gave a short laugh.
“I’ll go prove that you’re wrong too.”
Another sun shines beneath the noon light. A stolen sun. Golden extravagance built with plundered wealth. Vengeance in the shape of a knight stood in the midst of that arrogance, holding revenge in his hands.
“Hello, Lawrence. You didn’t run away. Looks like you’ve grown a lot braver in the last two days.”
The waiting knight of death stared straight at Nathan.
“Call me Kadon. I’ve discarded the name Lawrence.”
“Where did you sell that arrogant voice of yours, Lawrence?”
“I threw it away. If I had known my opponent was you, I would have dropped the bluff and tricks long ago. One question. When we met at the Conclave’s sanctuary, how did you know it was me? I was wearing armor made by the dwarves instead of Orléans armor.”
“Knight of death. Western accent. Not particularly tall. A sense of defeat. Failure to meet my eyes. And above all else, fear. The kind of fear that leaks out as if learned by heart, like a calf that has witnessed the butcher’s workplace.”
Nathan shrugged, scratching inside his gauntlet.
“Satisfied, Lawrence? It wasn’t much different from having ‘Lawrence’ written on your forehead.”
“Damn you. Because of you, something very good came to mind. I can’t remember what it is right now.”
The knight of death lowered his heavy greatsword. Thanks to the strength blessed by the abyss, he held it lightly even though its blade was three times wider than Nathan’s.
“It was faint, but beautiful. Thanks to that, I’m ready to face my fear.”
“What fear? The long-eared bastards who have spent hundreds of years analyzing bloody messes predicted your win rate at eighty-eight percent. If we clash, won’t you be the one who wins?”
There was no trace of actual belief in the languid voice. Though thoroughly looked down upon, the knight of death instead snorted. He extended his sword and took his stance first.
“You’re saying the same thing as those damned bastards.”
“Who are these damned bastards again? Do you have friends who overcome your gloominess and come encourage you? Treasure them. They must be good people.”
“Not at all. They were people who wanted to kill you to secure their political position. They told me that if I thought I couldn’t win, I should at least injure you. They threatened to give me eternal pain if I returned alive after failing. Essentially, die if you don’t succeed.”
“Selling your story again, Lawrence? It’s a shame, but I won’t let myself get hurt, and I won’t let you win. There are people who would shed tears of blood if I went easy on you.”
“It’s not like that day when I begged for my life. Actually, I was planning to surrender.”
“I almost felt grateful. But why were you going to surrender?”
“The threat of pain doesn’t scare me. What scared me was death. But suddenly I had a thought. Hadn’t my life already ended once before?”
The man named Lawrence had died. The moment he sold his soul to the abyss and could no longer remember everything he had held dear. A heart whose bloodlines had all been severed was no longer a heart, but a lump of flesh.
“Once I accepted that Lawrence no longer existed, even death didn’t seem so frightening anymore. And I learned something even more frightening than that.”
“That you joined the abyss before you could even properly say goodbye?”
“No. That I would remain a loser until the end. So I wanted to interfere with what they wanted. I didn’t want to remain completely submissive. Because I realized that the resentment of a defeated soldier who, fearing death, complied, begged, and raised the white flag had followed me my entire life.”
“You want to go out with style in the end. A fine decision. Then why aren’t you surrendering?”
“Because, Nathan Maia.”
The knight of the abyss raised black steam from his entire body. Drawing power from both body and soul to their very limits.
“Just now I also felt that I didn’t want to lose to you either. You son of a bitch who pisses me off right to the very end.”