Master and Student“Oi, Wynn. In front of you…”
Faster than Locke could speak, with an explosive sound as he stepped, Wynn instantly accelerated.
“Wha-, what?”
“Where did he come from?”
Panicked, a pair of soldiers jabbed at him with their spears.
Without slowing down, he dodged the spear tips with small sidesteps.
In that moment, while the soldier’s weapons were extended, he slashed upwards at the defenseless soldiers’ sides into their chests.
“Shi-, s.h.i.t.”
Another soldier drew his sword and tried to slash at him, but the bodies of his comrades killed by Wynn’s blade prevented him from attacking.
While the soldier was occupied, Wynn stabbed him from behind the corpses.
As the point struck the soldier in the chest, piercing through his heart, the light died from the soldier’s eyes.
As the blade was pulled out, the body fell forward.
A pool of blood spread onto the rocky ground, and the surroundings smelled of blood.
It was done all in a moment.
It was before the sentry soldiers had time to recover from their surprise and call for reinforcements.
Locke could only watch all this happen from behind.
Taking into account the fact that his magic power sealed by the “Magic Sealing Barrier”, Locke was completely surprised by Wynn’s nonsensical physical abilities.
Being evenly matched with those who use body strengthening magic, Locke realized that this was extraordinary.
Moreover, at that moment, with virtually everybody, friend and foe alike, unable to use magic, he realized that common sense had been overturned.
“Now there is n.o.body else anymore. Let’s go, Locke.”
After checking around the bend, Wynn started running.
Though he was thinking ‘I wasn’t really needed,’ Locke followed after Wynn.
Though he trained himself, without magic to strengthen him, Locke’s physical abilities were slightly better than an average soldier.
Wynn, who had joined up with Locke, proposed to go to the capital alone, while he should run and hide somewhere.[1]
However, Locke rejected the proposal.
It was reasonable.
Since Locke also wanted to become a knight.
To run away as Wynn suggested, as a friend, and as a comrade, he wouldn’t do it.
Wynn recognized his indomitable will, and gave in.
Wynn didn’t say another word about Locke’s refusal to temporarily flee.
If Wynn truly wanted, he could have left Locke behind in the blink of an eye, but instead, he matched Locke’s pace as they advanced.
It wasn’t like he was worried about him or anything.[2]
When asked about his reason for doing so, he replied that slowing down to a normal speed would allow him to take any enemies by surprise.
Certainly, after recently seeing a step able to propel him over ten paces in an instant, Locke believed that he could engage the enemy head on, and kill them before they could react.
This was what would normally happen when an ordinary knight faced off against a common soldier.
As they moved through the forest, Wynn told Locke about how he defeated the dangers that Locke and the other apprentice knights faced.
As Wynn recounted his story, Locke followed several steps behind him.
The total amount of Wynn’s magic power was far less than an average human’s.
The average commoner could still use spells like “Light”, “Firelight”, and elementary level defensive magic, but to create more than just fire or ice, but to use explosions or frost to occur in attack magic requires a large amount of magic power, and the average commoner could only try, before they would lose consciousness from running out of magic power. That was why his grades in the magic cla.s.ses were abysmal.
This was a handicap for him, who wanted to become a knight.
In a battlefield, magical combat was indispensable.
When a battle breaks out, the royal court magicians would chant ritual magic and cast magic for large-scale destruction and wide-area barriers. Meanwhile, catapults would fire incessantly in the downtime, then the knights would rain magic and the archers would fire arrows.
On a large-scale battlefield, Wynn would be useless as a knight.
That was why he aimed to become a knight by entering knight school.
Many of the knights from the knight school were a.s.signed to the Imperial Guard Knight Order, or the Royal Knight Order.
Though the imperial guards and royal knights were grouped together, there were actually differences between them.
Eminent n.o.bles made up the Imperial Guard Knight Order.
On the other hand, the lower-ranked n.o.bles and those from knight houses made up the Royal Knight Order.
Wynn’s goal, was the latter, the Royal Knight Order.
Unlike the Imperial Guard Knight Order, which needed connections to join and whose quality seemed to be deteriorating, the Royal Knight Order was made of the most elite knights.
The duties of the royal knights were of a larger breadth than the imperial guards, whose duty was to guard the imperial family. They served as the main line of defense for the palace and the capital.
At the center of the empire, they gathered intelligence, and also undertook escort missions of VIPs.
Their battlefield was the capital city, but there sometimes were times when they made use of their advanced education to infiltrate hostile areas.
Therefore, when they left for their battlefields, they weren’t clumsy.
They weren’t a force meant for large-scale battles, but were a knight order which made use of their individual fighting strength.
Though they didn’t escort the imperial family, the royal knight order, which occasionally escorted important state guests, was not an order one could enter with half-baked strength.
It was a very selective knight order.
Wynn had no other alternative than to aim for that place.
The inability to use magic was a large handicap for him.
Wynn had lost to long-range magic attacks since his first year examination.
So for the next examination one year later, he perfected a countermeasure.
“I, who has understood the way of fire, Fireball!”
When he decided that he wouldn’t be able to catch up, the vice-captain cast attack magic.
It was a well-used spell in the battlefield: when it hit the target, as it exploded, flames would spread. It was an attack magic with high killing potential.
As Wynn moved, as swift as the wind, unaffected by the bad terrain, he looked back as he heard the chant and felt the heat behind him.
His left hand flashed quickly.
A silver light cut through the air.
It was the same attack that had intrigued the vice-captain when the demonic beast had attacked.
Fundamentally, in the central part of the spell, was was something like a core, which, if hit, would have an effect.
In this case, the fireball would blow up, causing an explosion.
The silver light Wynn had launched — the short-sword Leticia had presented him with— flew into the fireball, as if it were absorbed.
In the next moment, flames burst out as the explosion boomed.
“Gah!”
Receiving the shock of the explosion from a close range, beginning with the vice-captain, the three knights were blown away, and hit the ground.
As the explosion subsided, the three men were on the ground, groaning.
Their legs were bent in impossible directions, and though they weren’t dead, blood flowed from their heads.
In order to escape from the explosion, as he threw the short-sword, at the same time, he dove into a ditch.
He approached the fallen knights.
The short-sword was stuck in a tree some ways off.
Despite having been hit with an explosion of that level, the short-sword Leticia had given him was not even covered with soot, and continued to give off a faint luminescence.
He returned the short-sword to the scabbard at his waist, and began running.
‘Near the fourth group is Locke’s group, the third group.’
‘It shouldn’t be only my group that ended up in this situation.’
Locke and Cornelia should still be defending against their attacks.
‘Estimating the time it would take for this plan of action, I should be able to save Locke in the third group.’
Wynn left, leaping lightly with energetic movements.
While he had saved up for the tuition by acting as an adventurer, he had gotten used to moving through places with bad footing.
Along the way, he felt an uncomfortable feeling, but he kept running without paying any attention to it. Right then, he was just in time to see Locke about to be killed.[?1?]
…
“At any rate, I think it was good that you came at that point.”
“It was thanks to you, Locke, that I realized magic was sealed. They ended relaxing their guard.”
“But well, something will soon be attracted to this smell…”
Locke patted his injured left arm and grimaced at the smell coming from his body.
His left arm was already wrapped in bandages, thanks to Wynn.
As the only survivors, they hurried to the fort to find out what had happened.
At the plaza in front of the entrance to the fort, where they had practiced camping the night before, lay two corpses.
They were Nigel and Irusu.
They were the knights who acted as the captains of the periodic subjugation mission.
“Now what do we do?”
“First of all, we should sabotage the magic amplifying device.”
They were hidden among the thickets as they surveyed the fort.
The drawbridge that led to the gate was raised, so a frontal infiltration seemed difficult.
Two soldiers stood guard from a window above the gate.
“Locke, this way.”
Wynn gestured, and stealthily moved towards the fort while hiding in the thickets.
While hiding from the patrolling soldiers and guards along the way, Wynn reached the moat surrounding the fort.
“I wasn’t just pretending to be an adventurer on the surface, I had to hide from monsters many times, you know?”
Wynn whispered with a proud expression on his face upon Locke’s admiration at his ability to discern well-hidden locations.
“Since they also can’t use magic here, we’re lucky that they can’t use any detection magic.”
That is why they tried to isolate themselves from all outsiders.
Soon, Wynn pointed towards an opening in the fort’s walls.
“We’ll get in from there.”
“What? But that’s—”
“It is where the kitchen waste is thrown into the river.”[3]
“Ewww….”
The amount of trash produced by a fort that often held a thousand people was not trivial.
Some of the waste could be used as fertilizer within the fort, but most of it was just thrown into the river, as is.
“There is another garbage chute, but…”
“…Let’s go with the kitchen waste one please.”
Fortunately, none of them had any heavy armaments.
They swam across the river, and climbed the stone wall into the chute.
“Ewww… it’s slimy…”
“Please bear with it.”
“This is nice and all, but how did you know about this place?”
“Every summer, for a fortnight[4], I partic.i.p.ate in the training that happens at the fort. I always work to clean this place.”
“Wow… It must be hard to clean this place in the summer…”
When it gets warmer, insects swarm and the stench is especially terrible.
Due to his experience at the on-site training during the summertime, he seriously doubted that anybody would clean this sort of place.
Only commoners like Wynn, would clean it when he came every year.
Normally, there were hired servants who would do it, but in this situation, he believed that there wouldn’t be any more of them in the fort.
‘They were probably all fired,’ Wynn thought.
As expected, there were no human presences in the fort’s kitchen.
Though there should have been some sort of detection magic guarding from the outside, it seemed that the magic sealing barrier had neutralised it.
They probably didn’t have enough personnel to guard every place.
Luckily, for that reason, no knights or soldiers approached this place.
The first thing they did after climbing out of the chute was to search for a cloth to wipe the slime off of their bodies.
As expected, even Wynn was slightly grossed out by that sort of thing.[5]
Exiting the kitchen, they accidentally met two patrolling soldiers, but after that, they had stealthily moved through the fort.
Their goal was to disrupt the magic amplification device.
Wynn didn’t judge whether or not the insurgents of coup d’état were in the right.
However, they were going to kill the all the students, including him and Locke.[?2?]
Due to that, Wynn saw them as an irreconcilable enemy.
Upon seeing his friend almost killed, he couldn’t find any more reason to forgive them.
The one with the largest war potential in Imperial Capital Simurgh, Leticia, would probably also have taken measures against the insurgent faction.
If Wynn understood Leticia’s full strength from the rumours, they might pose no threat to her, but having her magic sealed would still be harsh for her.[6]
However, whether or not her magic is unsealed, if it’s Leticia, she should somehow manage.
“Mu!? You b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!”
“Hey, we’ve been discovered. Wynn!”
“I got it!”
Not unexpectedly, they were discovered as they climbed the staircase.
At the pointed, investigative voice, Locke’s feet instantly stopped, but Wynn had sped up.
However, Wynn’s feet also stopped after a while.
“Instructor Aldo… …”
“Cadet Wynn.”
There stood the man who had guided him for one short month.
“You really ended up being our final obstacle.”
A faint smile appeared on his face.
“I heard the situation from the slain knights in the forest. But, why did you have to also kill the students!?”
“…Anybody who can wield a weapon, though they may be students, could become a threat. We had already decided to do this when we began our plan.”
“If we were to be rendered powerless, there should have been another way.”
If the knight instructors took off their equipment, the students would also take off theirs.
Moreover, they could have just surrounded and captured them.
“That was one of our objectives, Cadet Wynn. You life has significance. If you died, that ‘Brave’ would undoubtedly become incensed. To where would that wrath be directed? Towards we who caused it to happen— the imperial knight order.”[7]
“… That… is certainly true…”
Locke reflexively agreed.
Seeing as Leticia adored Wynn so much, if he died, her wrath would definitely be directed towards them.
The problem was, it might not affect only the knight order, but probably affect the whole empire.
“In order to create the smallest scapegoat possible, this plan was refined. Right now, we can no longer pull back, so we must eliminate any possible obstacles to the plan.”
The knights and soldiers pointed their spear tips and blades at Wynn and Locke.
“The plan has already started! With the magic sealed, the last part is for them to experience it! We, the true knights, will make those pigs, who indulge in luxury without fighting, taste the extent of our power! Even if our enemies be students and children, and even the man the Brave calls ‘Master!’ ”
Aldo shouted out instructions to the soldiers.
Simultaneously, the soldiers stabbed out with their spears.
As the spear-tips approached, Wynn swung his sword.
The spear-tips in his blade’s path were cut off, and went flying, leaving only wooden sticks.
“True Knights!? The type of knight I aspire to be aren’t like you guys!”
Wynn leapt among the knights, as if he were performing a sword dance.
Wherever the blade flashed, blood sprayed from the soldiers’ hands that held the spears and swords.
“Locke, we’re breaking through! I leave the rear to you!”
“O-, okay!”
He decided not to retreat backwards, but advance upwards.
He paid no heed to the cries of pain from the knights and soldiers as he sliced off their hands, and slashed at their torsos.
There were people who bore the pain to pursue and a.s.sault Wynn, but Locke suppressed them.
Their movements dulled by injuries, Locke could overwhelm them.
Meanwhile, Wynn continued his b.l.o.o.d.y blade dance.
The blade slipped through the ineffectual spear-tips coming from all directions.
“We miscalculated, Sir…”
Aldo also drew a sword.
In order to fight the aristocratic knights and take over the capital’s key inst.i.tutions, they sealed magic, and used the very best people.
One person, in front of their eyes, ferociously swinging his sword, the student who so aspired to become a knight, exceeded their calculations.
He had seen it during training.
The one able to defeat a magically strengthened opponent.
After having their own magic sealed, against Wynn, who had never used magic in the first place, they had weakened themselves.
Seeing how Wynn fought from up close, he could see traces of the Brave fighting, which he had seen from afar.
Before he knew it, Wynn and Locke had broken through the ma.s.s of knights and soldiers, and now stood before him.
If he looked around, the groans of the wounded soldiers were the only things audible.
Blood dripped from Wynn’s blade, and his whole body was dyed a deep crimson from the blood.
Creating that gruesome scene, a single student had overwhelmed veteran knights.
“What I want to be is a knight that protects the powerless! I don’t want to be a knight that only resolves things with force like you guys!”
While breathing heavily, Wynn forced his voice out.
That sharp glint in his eye pierced Aldo.
Wynn had not known that Leticia had saved the world as the Brave.
‘Onii-chan, Onii-chan.’
The girl who had always walked behind him, following him, was a.s.signed a mission to save the world, and at the end of the arduous, bitter journey, she slew the Demon Lord.
After she slew the Demon Lord, it should have become peaceful.
But despite that—
Right now, a tremendous amount of blood was being shed all over the place.
Though the Brave should have brought about peace, even now, blood was being shed.
“I am not like Leti, who can protect many people. However, I want to become a knight that can protect the people within my reach! It will happen sometime! In a different way than your methods!”
Wynn exclaimed as he leapt.
‘A straightforward attack!’
In only a month of practice, he had observed the swordplay that had ended his subordinate’s lives.
By casting away shields and armour, it was a sword technique that focused on speed.
‘If that is the case, then kill the speed.’
Though the speed was fueled by fury, it was a straightforward attack— extremely easy to read.
Defending Wynn’s strike with his shield, he slashed while Wynn wasn’t moving.
Aldo used his experience to predict the trajectory of Wynn’s blade, then prepared his shield.
And Wynn’s blade arced in the trajectory Aldo predicted.
‘I’ll receive it!’
Deflecting the sword with his shield, his sword stabbed out from behind the shield.
Flicking away the sword, the point moved vigorously towards the weakened Wynn’s head— instead of flesh, the point of the sword pierced through empty air.
Wynn took a low stance as his sword moved towards Aldo’s chest, who still had his sword held out..
There was no time to bring back his shield.
Having put all his strength into his own stab, it was impossible to evade this attack.
At that moment, Aldo saw Wynn’s pupils.
There was no more unbridled fury, only calm composure in his eyes.
‘An unrecognized genius… huh.’
Aldo instantly felt the blow piercing his chest, and then Aldo lost his consciousness for eternity.
In a room twenty meters wide. [8]
In the center, a black lithograph floated in the air.[9]
It was engraved with closely packed magic words, and below the floating lithograph similar magic words were etched, forming the magic formation.
Though there weren’t any windows, the lithograph and magic formation emitted a pale blue light, illuminating the room.
There were six forts centered around the capital.
On each of their highest floors, identical magic formations and lithographs were installed.
In cases of emergency, these devices would be activated, and the magic of the empire’s magic users would be amplified.
Right now, it was using this, that the Magic Sealing Barrier was cast over the capital, and that the Seven-fold Barrier Formation was used to seal the Brave.
Wynn and Locke stood there, bathed in the luminescence of the lithograph and the formation,
“In the end, we must depend on Leti.”
Neither Wynn nor Locke had any strength.
However, not Leticia.
As a duke’s daughter, and as the most-celebrated Brave.
“It can’t be helped. Being so far from the capital, we can only do this much.”
Locke placed his hand on Wynn’s shoulder.
“That’s right. Compared to saving the world, she really was dragged into something foolish.”
‘Now, I wonder what Leticia is thinking, while in this confrontation.’
Wynn swung his sword down onto the lithograph.
His blade chipping due to repeated overuse, Wynn used his sword to smash the lithograph, and the magic formation at his feet stopped glowing.
“Sorry, Leti. I entrust the rest to you.”
‘It’s alright. Leave it to me, Onii-chan.’
Wynn felt like he heard Leticia’s voice whisper in his ear.
“… It’s alright. Leave it to me, Onii-chan.”
Smiling, Leticia closed her eyes.
She suddenly felt her magic power return.
“Wha!? The barrier is gone?”
“Eeh!? How could it be? What are they doing, your subordinates~?”
The sense of weariness that recently enveloped her body grew weaker, and vanished, as if it were a lie.
The magic power had returned.
“Who sabotaged the device…?”
“… Onii-chan did it.”
Leticia quietly replied.
With that, a sudden storm of magic power a.s.saulted Zaunas and the Black-hooded demon.
“Gu-, Guh…”
“A-, a-, aaah”
Unable to even breathe, oppressive atmosphere was more intense than those he had felt while traversing tens of thousands of battlefields.
It all came from a girl standing ten-odd paces away.
She was wrapped in a golden shine as magic leaked from her body.
It was the “Brave,” Leticia van Mavis.
There stood the girl that became a legend.
Suddenly, Zaunas felt the wind.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!”
From behind Zaunas, a shriek erupted in the room.
“Wha!?”
Turning around, the black-hooded demon was impaled onto the wall.
Leticia slowly drew her sword.
With a slight sound, the black-hooded demon melted into black dust and vanished.
‘So like this—’[?3?]
He couldn’t see it at all.
Praised as a hero, his own eyes couldn’t even follow it.
So this is, “The one closest to G.o.d,” who had defeated the Demon King, Leticia van Mavis!
“I will never forgive you for involving Onii-chan. However, I sympathise with you.”
Taking her eyes of the now-vanished demon, she faced Zaunas.
Zaunas recovered from his surprise, taking deep breaths.
‘My body is heating up.’
He felt exhilaration from facing a strong opponent after several years.
“It is an honour to fight the Brave once in my life’s final moments ”
Drawing his sword, he stood at ready.
“I promise. Certainly, I will not interfere further.”
“Is that so. Now, please convey your thoughts.”
Leticia returned Zaunas’s smile.
“Let’s go! Leticia van Mavis!”
With a piercing scream, Zaunas swung his greatsword at Leticia.
Handed down for generations through his family, it was a powerful magic sword.
Of course, it fell short of the holy sword, but even then, it was still a sharp sword.
He poured all his magic power, and his whole spirit into one blow—
“Gah…!?”
The sword was knocked away, and with it, Zaunas was blown several meters back.
Without any defensive actions[10], he hit the ground.
He had no idea what happened.
It all happened in an instant.
Enduring the pain, using the greatsword as a support, he rose to his knee.
“Impos…sible, for it to be this…”
His face twisted in agony, he looked at Leticia.
She who held the t.i.tle of Brave had not taken one step from that spot.
He understood.
She had simply brushed off the attack to which Zaunas had devoted himself.
It was only that.
Somehow righting himself, he stood on his knees.
Among the people who were watching their battle, the children, Zaunas’s subordinates, not one sound leaked out. They were unable to believe their eyes.
“Here I go.”
Holding her sword towards his chest, Leticia quietly spoke.
“Come!”
Staggering to his feet, Zaunas raised a war cry.
Compared to the many enemies he had faced on the battlefields, Leticia held overwhelming strength.
With minimal movements and the fastest attack— among the battles Zaunas had fought up until then, he now thrust forth, faster and stronger than he had ever done in his lifetime.
However, Leticia dodged with almost no movement.
Seeing that he had resolved to die, Leticia let loose a slash.
The blade approached his body.
He was satisfied he had crossed blades with the strongest opponent at the end of his life.
The man who had served the empire for four decades entrusted the duty to the next generation, and fell into a long sleep.[11]
“Sheathe your swords.”
It wasn’t a loud voice.
Nevertheless, the clear voice reverberated.
They were at the plaza in front of the castle gate.
The imperial guards and the insurgent knights faced off.
Relying on the firm gate, the imperial guards were pinned down by the coup d’état faction, but when they realized the magic sealing barrier had vanished, they advanced.
The insurgent knights who were inferior in magic and numbers, were at a disadvantage there in front of the palace.
Though each of the forces in the inst.i.tutions were damaged, having been unable to take total control of the capital, they were headed for defeat.
In that moment, a single girl suddenly appeared between both sides.
Many eyes beheld the figure of Leticia the Brave.
The Brave who should still have been young and immature.
However, she emitted an intense presence.
By merely standing there, the place felt like an inviolable, sacred place.
“I have killed the ringleader of this incident, Zaunas, with my blade. I will permit no more bloodshed from this point on.”
“However, Brave-sama. They have pointed their blades at the empire. To overlook that—”
“Silence please!”
Leticia turned to face the imperial guard knight commander who who had spoken up.
“From this point on, anybody who wants to fight will have me as their opponent. Do both of you have the resolve?”
She slowly moved her gaze around.
Both sides were completely swallowed by Leticia’s presence.
Confirming that there were no more movements, Leticia gave a small sigh.
‘When we were small, the knights in the stories we read were champions of justice who defended the weak.’
However, in reality, storybook knights were not to be found.
Self-interested, those trampled over others without batting an eye were rampant, while the knights who sincerely worried for the country were dead. And now, blood was shed in order to avenge them.
Leticia lifted her eyes from the insurgents, who had resigned and released their arms, and looked to the sky.
While thinking of Wynn, who was somewhere under this vast sky—
‘The knights of our dreams, where are they? Onii-chan…’
Leticia sorrowfully lamented in her heart.
AN: The next chapter is the epilogue of part 1
Cornelia and Jade’s circ.u.mstances will be shown next time.