Volume 1, Episode 20
A little while later.
By the time the billowing dust clouds had finally begun to settle, a tiny bell gave a faint clink from somewhere nearby.
“Spirit knight Ren, confirmed to have lightning and wind—dual attributes.”
“Is that so? Well, that is a bit unexpected.”
Seherbian rested his chin on his hand and answered lazily. All through the fight, he had done exactly as Ren told him and sat there very obediently, doing nothing but watch.
Then, at the very last moment, when Ren had summoned a wind spirit, he had been genuinely impressed. It was common enough for spirit knights—even renowned spirit tamers—to contract only one spirit of one attribute each.
Dragons were no exception.
Sidbell, the Guardian Dragon of Spring, had contracted with fire. Asubell, the Guardian Dragon of Summer, had contracted with water. As for Akibell and Winter Bell, they had not made spirit contracts at all. The reason was simple: their own guardians following at their heels were already troublesome enough.
In the end, spirits chose the tamers whose soul frequencies matched theirs, so most people were naturally limited to a single attribute. Tamers who formed contracts with two or more were something like mutants.
“Mimir.”
Yes.
“That one isn’t dead yet, is he?”
The white staff that confirmed the target Seherbian had pointed at gave a little jingle.
The boss, Hati, has a confirmed life response. He is currently immobilized by the wind.
Grrrnnk.
Surprisingly, the creature was still alive. But like a fish caught in a net, it could do nothing but breathe in ragged, wheezing gasps under the wind’s restraint.
As Seherbian rose and approached, the odd eyes split starkly between red and black blinked weakly. Boss Hati had completely lost the will to fight.
“Looks like you deliberately kept him alive.”
Yip.
When Seherbian reached out to stroke its head, Boss Hati whimpered and wagged its tail like a newborn puppy.
“Mercy to the thing that tried to kill you. You’re really too soft-hearted.”
Freed from the binding under the dragon’s touch, Boss Hati shook out its fur with a flustered fwoof, then turned and fled into the darkness. One by one, the other Hati roaming nearby also concealed their presence and followed after their leader.
“Or maybe just stupid……”
Seherbian muttered that under his breath, then shifted his gaze to the side. Not far away, in the middle of a ruined house strewn with broken planks, a man who called himself a winter knight lay sprawled on the ground. He looked so exhausted he seemed unable to so much as twitch a finger.
Myaaang!
Daisy, now so faint she looked as though she might scatter into the air at any moment, hopped quickly over to her contractor’s side.
Then Ren, sensing her, opened his eyes.
“Ugh, priest?”
“Yes.”
There was a weak glow coming from Daisy, but it was so dark in the middle of the night that all Seherbian could do was speak toward the silhouette.
“You’re safe…… thank goodness, cough.”
“You were handling a wind spirit.”
Seherbian spoke flatly.
“You had a way to avoid this whole situation, so why didn’t you run?”
Wind, if it were any other attribute, was specialized for mobility. Escaping on a wind spirit would have been easy.
At the serious question, Airen let out a breathless laugh and then coughed.
“Because I didn’t want to run.”
“Then you should have finished them off properly.”
Those sunset-colored eyes, cold as frost, looked down at Airen.
“You could have died. You’d used up all your strength on that last strike and didn’t even have the power left to hold your sword, let alone fight.”
He had also suffered plenty of minor injuries while fighting the Hati. The smell of blood drifted from somewhere nearby.
“I was pushing it.”
Ren nodded toward the darkness beyond them. If he listened closely, he could hear the faint whimpering of young wolves somewhere behind the shadows of the ruined house.
“They probably mistook the artificial lake for a natural one and made it their den…… cough. From their point of view, if they thought people were threatening their pups or their family, of course they’d attack.”
“If you keep letting people off like this, one day you’ll really die.”
“Ah, maybe……”
At the icy rebuke, he agreed so meekly that Seherbian had no immediate response. His whole body hurt as if he had been beaten senseless.
Seherbian crouched down in front of him and asked, “So what? If you just felt sorry for them and let them live, what then? What are you going to do now? The Hati pack that has to protect its cubs will keep attacking anyone who comes to the tourist district.”
His tone was cold, but Ren didn’t seem bothered at all. Coughing all the while, he chuckled like a hooligan.
“Thanks for worrying about me, priest.”
“……”
Seherbian said nothing, but Airen continued anyway, as if that silence were an answer in itself.
“Actually, tonight I was supposed to meet up with…… my companions in Rosaria. If I tell them, they’ll probably handle it on their own…… and the priest…… is also sa…… fe…….”
Thud.
The strength left his hand as though he were already dead. His faintly continuing voice snuffed out like a candle going dark, and even the coughs fell silent.
Seeing that Ren had completely lost consciousness, Seherbian slowly got to his feet. The wind moving through the branches sounded desolate.
Clink!
Would you like to move to the next location?
After staring blankly at the collapsed Airen for a moment, Seherbian buried his face in both hands.
“I really want to, damn it……”
If everything had gone according to plan, he had intended to roam around freely by himself, unbound by anyone’s prayers.
The people who came looking for Winter Bell, and the wishes they prayed for, were all exhausting.
If by companions, he means the same knight order……
Seherbian slowly turned over the information Ren had given him before collapsing.
Fortunately or unfortunately, he possessed a branch of the omnipotent World Tree that could guide him to a destination as long as he provided the information.
“Haa. No helping it.”
In the end, he hoisted the unconscious Ren across his shoulder and trudged forward.
* * *
The sky was already beginning to pale with the first gray light of dawn.
It was deep into spring, but at this hour the air had a peculiar chill to it, and there were some who had spent the night awake under that cold sky.
The lakeside camp.
Their clothing was practical and unremarkable, and the hastily erected tents were so flimsy, full of holes, they looked as if they might blow away any moment. Beside the campfire sat a pot with the residue of a half-eaten stew still stuck to the bottom.
They looked rough enough to be ordinary mercenaries—sprawled wherever they pleased, snoring in sleep or trading crude jokes with loud laughter—but they were, in their own way, the Varzian, the winter dragon knights who upheld honor and chivalry.
Crackle, crackle.
One man, stationed to keep the fire from going out, sniffed loudly and muttered, “That explosion just now—that was the boss, right?”
“Probably.”
The woman with a sword answered briefly.
She stood with disciplined posture, staring in one direction. In the distance opposite the city center, near the alley of the ruined houses cloaked in thick darkness, a faint cloud of dust could be seen rising in wisps.
“Spirit knights who can handle wind that well are rare.”
Even from the lakeshore so far away, the wave of wind had been powerful enough to stand out clearly. And for the people gathered here, waiting for their commander around the campfire, that technique was familiar in form.
I don’t know why he didn’t use lightning, though.
Their commander’s usual signature was lightning-based attack magic rather than wind. With that question left lingering in the back of their minds, the two of them sighed at the same time.
“He’ll come back today, right?”
“……Who knows.”
By now, the public security guards had probably already gone running over, so as long as he wasn’t dragged away for causing a disturbance, it would be a relief.
The two exchanged a look that held exactly that meaning and let out another long sigh.
Airen Varzian, the leader of the winter knight order Varzian, was an exceptional spirit knight who could wield both wind and lightning. If enemies appeared in the dark, lightning—far more destructive than wind—would have been the more suitable attribute.
But their commander, by temperament, was a little too soft.
This time as well, that damned chronic flaw had surely kicked in, and he had failed to finish the enemy off completely.
And that kind of softness was exactly the sort of thing that made everyone around him uneasy.
Vice-Commander Jin narrowed her eyes and stared toward the side where smoke was still rising.
I should have gone with him.
It had all started the day Airen suddenly set off on his own, saying he wanted to find Winter Bell. That was how things had come to this.
Jin had never once won an argument with her commander. No—an argument was never even possible to begin with. She had been his loyal retainer since before he became the commander of Varzian.
“But it’s been a long time since the kaboom! earlier, hasn’t it? Look at the sky. It’s already about to dawn.”
The man pointed up at the sky with a finger. The long night had passed, and the world beyond was gradually brightening.
Morning was almost here.
“Don’t tell me our boss got locked up again and is chewing on barley bread in a cell……”
“Drake, sir.”
The knight, who had been muttering in worry, shut his mouth with a snap.
His name was Casio Drake. Addressing her by his surname rather than his given name meant he had gotten on Vice-Commander Jin’s nerves, and she was strict about regulations.
“Sit properly.”
“Yes!”
Casio Drake immediately set down the pile of firewood he had been clutching like a pillow and straightened his posture.
What kind of knight was Jin? There had been quite a few members who had had their necks nearly snapped—or been made unable to walk on two feet for a month—simply because they had spoken carelessly in front of her.
Especially when it came to the commander.
Clicking her tongue at the frightened Casio, Jin flung something at him.
Tap!
Casio reflexively caught the object, and when he checked what it was, his expression turned flustered.
It was the armband that symbolized command authority over the troops. It had originally belonged to the commander, but it was also the thing the vice-commander had been holding in his place. The fact that Jin was handing it back to Casio again meant only one thing.
“A-are you going?”
Jin answered with a nod.
Casio stared blankly as she tied up the sky-colored hair she had been wearing long and loose, then sprang to his feet with the armband still clutched in his hand.
“The boss said very clearly not to leave the camp after assembly.”
“Do I look as though I’m leaving?”
“Aren’t you?”
Just by looking at her posture, it was obvious she was about to run. When he pointed out that this was a violation of orders, Jin answered proudly.
“In an emergency, checking on the commander’s safety is also my duty. I’m simply being faithful to my assigned task, so don’t slack off and keep your own post properly.”
“I-I’m not slacking off!”
That was what he said, but Casio averted his eyes with a guilty look.
Jin was just about to snort at the all-too-obvious lie when—
“Report! An outsider approaching near the barracks!”
It was the watchman’s report.
The moment she heard it, Jin snatched the armband back from Casio, tightened her grip, and broke into a run.
Before he knew it, Casio had lost command authority again in the span of a few words. Looking regretfully at his empty hands, he ran after her.
“Who is it? Alone?”
“Yeah, uh, no. He’s carrying someone on his back……”
As Jin and Casio ran closer, the watchman on duty gave an uncertain report.
“The moment he reached the lakeshore, he started approaching us head-on. Looks like he’s got business at our barracks.”