CHAPTER 5

Mercenary and Knight: Encounter and Clash
Another_Hero.

1

October 18, 12:30 AM

On a mountain trail outside Folkestone, in southern England.

Spread out before him were three knights and their commander, the Knight Leader. As well as the wielder of the Curtana Original, the mastermind behind the coup d’état: Second Princess Carissa.

Here and elsewhere, the blades targeting Third Princess Vilian’s life were innumerable. But there was one man who blocked their path.

William Orwell.

A ruffian mercenary who, at one time, was in a position to be knighted.

In his hand was the Ascalon: The product of a certain author, it was a legend embellished to the extreme. Everything about it was calculated to realize the effects of a sword that had never existed, a Soul Arm said to have the ability to theoretically slay a fifty-foot-long evil dragon.

And the action he took with it was an extraordinarily simple one.

He didn’t plunge into the enemy lines, cutting down knight after knight like a man possessed.

He also didn’t use some sort of trap or trick to make fools out of the entire group at once.

He simply swung the Ascalon from high to low.

To cause the ground at his own feet to explode.

A dull boom and a shock wave burst.

An immense wall of dust rippled through the air, a curtain drawing over the knights’ vision in an instant. The rumblings that shook the ground were earthquake-like, and even the brawny warhorses whinnied in fear.

“Damn!!” cursed the Knight Leader.

Several of his knights fired off arrows at ground zero, but it was all in vain.

As the evening breeze blew the dust away…

It was empty. All that was left was the ground where the Ascalon had hit and the eerie cracks in it.

“I see. You’re thinking of Vilian’s safety first and foremost. If the battle here gets chaotic, you could all just die,” muttered the second princess to herself, soothing the steed she rode with a light touch. “…It may look like you’re dealing with things calmly, but you’re also exposing your weakness. In your prime, you would’ve been able to fight us and protect that unsatisfactory sister of mine.”

“How shall we proceed, ma’am?” asked the Knight Leader.

Carissa exhaled, seeming to find this dull. “Bring me two heads.” She reaffirmed her grip on the sword, which lacked a blade. “I’ll make sure the Curtana Original is working and get used to wielding it. I want results by the time I’m finished.”

“Understood, ma’am.”

“Your enemy will be an old friend. Don’t pull any punches.”

“I assure you, I have no acquaintances within the enemy ranks.”

With only that, the Knight Leader walked into the darkness, without even so much as getting onto his horse.

The enemy was close.

At this distance, his own two legs would get him there faster.

2

Third Princess Vilian was in the arm of a certain mercenary.

Said mercenary carried her in one arm and a sword larger than her in the other, but his movements weren’t weighed down. As a matter of fact, William Orwell’s voyage was not that of a normal human at all.

You couldn’t say he was running. Much like a thrown ball, each step arced over twenty meters at a bound. He used not only the ground but tree trunks and branches as footholds, leaping and leaping.

The blue moonlight was striking.

The biting cold was comforting.

The unique feeling of weightlessness seemed like a release from the clinging sense of entrapment.

The mercenary and the princess moving under the night sky were like two characters in a picture book.

It wasn’t a real throne room, where she was toyed with as a pawn in worthless political games. It was a scene out of a children’s story, of a king’s lands, where anything could happen.

“Hee-hee…”

A smile formed on the princess’s lips.

She didn’t know why she had laughed. Maybe it was her relief at escaping a direct crisis. Maybe it was her joy at finally outdoing her sister Carissa, who had always seemed like an unscalable wall. Maybe it was the fact that even one person was willing to stand up for her. Or maybe the scenery before her eyes simply struck her as beautiful.

Whatever the reason, she laughed.

She opened her mouth wide and laughed for the first time in a long time. A defenseless laugh, having cast off all her fetters as princess of a kingdom—a laugh like any other girl would have.

“Ah-ha-ha!! Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!”

Her arms and legs swung; she laughed so hard she thought she might slip out of William’s hand, but the mercenary didn’t particularly stop her.

Instead, William Orwell eventually descended onto a dark mountain path.

He let the princess down gently. Vilian asked him with a conspiratory giggle, “Well, what will we do now?”

“Run, Your Highness. Somewhere safe.”

As he answered, William proceeded into a thicket a short distance from the trail. There was a small hill there about a meter high, probably made out of dirt, with a rag resting on top. William removed it to reveal a horse made of metal, its four legs folded up.

Vilian looked at the letters engraved on the silver horse’s surface, then made a dubious face. “Bayard…?”

“It doesn’t have effects like the ones the sixteenth-century author dreamed of, but it has camouflage to escape magical searches. As long as nobody sees you with their naked eye, the Knights will not find you.”

“I—I see.”

“Bayard has been programmed with the location of a Necessarius hideout. Unlike those old fools in Canterbury, no sorcerer who knows real combat would forsake you.”

The third princess let out a very slight sigh.

The mercenary continued to inspect Bayard, completely unaware. “I will follow you anon, so please get onto Bayard, ma’am. I will take care of the Knights. I will be sure to keep any pursuit to a minimum, so you may rest assured—”

William’s words stopped midsentence.

The reason had to do with Vilian’s fingertips.

The third princess’s face was downcast, and she’d reached out to softly grip his clothes.

“Please stop,” she said abruptly, smiling a little. “What would you have me do after fleeing from here? My life would be saved, but what then? My sister will have control of all Britain within moments, and as I hide, alone and afraid, they will drag me out to the gallows. Either I will be killed now or killed shortly after. Isn’t that the only difference here?”

Her smile had no life in it. William Orwell watched her in silence.

“And there is no guarantee the Necessarius hideout Bayard will bring me to will take me in. Even if I am of the royal family. They have no need to take the risk of protecting me, the third princess, who has no real strength or authority to begin with.”

The princess’s eyes wavered as though she was looking for him to refute her.

“So please, stay your efforts. I’ve given up trusting anyone. Yes, that’s right—even the Knight Leader, who was always there to offer a helping hand, tried to kill me during a coup d’état. And you’re the same, aren’t you? Once something compelling occurs, you’ll betray me in the end, won’t you? So stop this, please. I do not trust you. I choose not to.”

Vilian’s words continued alone, carefully controlled to avoid faltering.

“I am sure I will go to my death hating this country and the world. You have no need to fight any further, either. You may try your hardest and wield your sword for someone who doesn’t trust you, but it would all be empty, wouldn’t it?”

This, in other words, was what the third princess, Vilian, was saying:

Abandon me.

No matter how strong the mercenary, he was but one man. If Carissa’s forces, having taken control of the nation itself, were to clash with him, it was obvious that William Orwell would not escape unscathed.

That was why she spoke thusly.

Vilian was ordering him to be disgusted with her and leave this place.

“…”

William released the Ascalon to the ground beside him—

—to move both of his now-free hands.

“Hya?!”

The unintentional yelp came from Vilian. The mercenary put his hands underneath the princess’s arms, then picked her up as though she were a small child.

“U-um, I…”

Ignoring Vilian, who was terribly surprised, William placed her on Bayard’s saddle. After that, he lightly stroked the metal horse’s neck area. As though this had sent some kind of signal, Bayard’s legs slowly unfolded and it rose.

Now that Vilian was looking down at William, he took her hand and wrapped it firmly around the reins before he spoke.

“Please rest assured.”

He did not smile.

He did not know how to set others at ease, so he displayed it through his actions.

“Even if you don’t trust me, my reason to fight for you will not change at all.”

“Wait—”

Before Vilian could finish, William Orwell lightly rapped the back of his hand on Bayard’s body.

In response, the metal horse began to move.

The sudden burst of motion threw the third princess backward, and she unintentionally tightened her grip on the reins. Bayard had fully automatic controls, so she wouldn’t be able to figure out how to disengage it quickly. In the meantime, the distance between them simply opened wider and wider.

“You fool…”

Unable to jump down, either, Vilian gripped the reins with her small hands tightly enough to crush them.

She’d said all that to get that mercenary away from the jaws of death, and all it had done was isolate him even more. The fact made her clench her teeth in frustration.

“Those weren’t the words I wanted to hear, you blasted fool!!”

3

William Orwell stared into the darkness until Bayard had vanished from view.

Eventually, he relaxed his shoulders, then picked Ascalon up off the ground.

Feeling a person’s presence, he slowly turned around.

“The third princess is that way, then?”

The familiar voice belonged to his old friend and chief of the Knights.

“But why do you stand in my way now? Acqua of the Back is a member of the Roman Orthodox Church’s God’s Right Seat. He should have no reason to risk his life for our nation’s third princess.”

The mercenary replied not with words but with action.

The lump of steel was over eleven feet long and weighed over four hundred and forty pounds. He swung it sideways.

The sound of air splitting.

A flash of light.

Not many would have been able to notice that he’d flipped the huge sword over, then used the sharp, thick spike near the base of the back to launch a giant nearby boulder.

The mountainside near them exploded into pieces. Earth and sand flowed across the path, completely blocking off the thin trail continuing behind William. It functioned both to prevent anyone from pursuing the third princess and to block William’s own escape route.

While the knights around them were surprised and set their guards, only their leader, his old friend, nodded quietly. “I see. No matter what your attachment, it doesn’t change what you need to do. That way of thinking is so truly like you.”

“…” William, holding the heavy Ascalon in one hand parallel to the ground, glanced about at their surroundings.

A semicircle with an approximately thirty-meter radius, with the mercenary at its center. That was the encirclement the silver-armored knights had created. Swords, spears, axes, bows, maces, and many other weapons glinted in the moonlight.

They numbered a bit under forty.

As he watched the Knight Leader, who stood at the center of them, William’s lips moved slightly.

“…More men to die.”

His few words caused the atmosphere near the knights surrounding him to become highly charged, but once again, the Knight Leader alone nodded frankly.

“We may be bolstered to a degree by the Curtana’s power, but even now, not many would be able to keep up with you,” he admitted, sticking his thumb to his chest. “I will duel you.”

“This is a battlefield,” spat William. “I’ve no interest in your courtly chivalry. If you want me, then all of you come at me. If you would prefer not to die needlessly, then remove yourselves posthaste.”

“Don’t worry,” said the Knight Leader, shaking an arm.

Suddenly, there was a longsword in his hand with a blade about an inch wide.

The two-and-a-half-foot sword was optimized for knights to use while riding their horses. However, the silver-colored surface of this particular sword was covered in something dark red and coarse.

“I meant it in the old sense—a duel to the death.”

Pok! The surface of the Knight Leader’s dark-red longsword bubbled.

It wasn’t a mere chemical reaction. Each one of the bubbles was the size of a basketball. They were giant, clearly bigger than the sword’s thickness, and in the blink of an eye, they multiplied into dozens, even hundreds. Then, all at once, the entire shape crumbled.

A new blade began to form.

A ten-foot-long sword, much like the Ascalon William wielded.

“Hrunting?”

The name appeared in an old legend. Tempered in the blood spatters of enemies it slayed, the mythical magic sword was said to grow sharper with each strong opponent it killed.

“…The decade since you left—it’s right here. I am no longer the one who fell to you at Dover.”

The Knight Leader, holding a Soul Arm of the same name as the legendary sword, spoke quietly and simply.

“Allow me to use my decade to test the fruit your decade has borne.”

That was the signal.

Each wielding his weapon in order to kill a superhuman monster, the clash between mercenary and knight began.

Sound vanished.

Light scattered.

William and the Knight Leader had simply jumped directly at each other, hitting the Ascalon and Hrunting together. Despite the simple act, the aftereffects that flew all around them were enormous.

A few moments later, the blast of wind came.

With a thundering boom, a dome-shaped shock wave expanded out from the two. The blast winds reached one hundred meters out, mowing down the fully armed knights encircling them. Trees were ripped out, the mountainside was chipped away, and the asphalt trail shattered like glass.

By the time the shock wave passed, neither of the two combatants was where he had been before.

They had jumped into the night sky.

Footsteps banged like gunshots, ringing through the darkness at a moment’s delay. Thirty feet in the air, their gargantuan blades clashed two, three times. The sparks were like lightning bolts; the shock waves billowed out, one after another; and the onlooking knights were hit with an expansion of light and heat like being in the path of an exploding firework.

Some cried out.

Some crouched and tried to take the hit.

The shock waves pounded them all down equally.

“I see,” said the Knight Leader after landing on the peak of a thick tree, glancing down briefly at his subordinates.

This was probably the reason William Orwell had let the third princess escape earlier. It wasn’t that he would struggle to protect her while fighting, nor was it a sense of despair, wanting to safeguard the princess’s life even if he died. It was no more than an attempt to avoid getting her killed with his own strength.

The Knight Leader turned a new glare on his old friend, who landed on the top of another huge tree.

At first glance, it would have looked like the two men had been fighting physically by hitting their swords together, but the battle’s true essence was in sorcery. After all, even if you built your muscular strength with reckless abandon, you’d never get that much destructive force out of it. As soon as you crossed a certain line, your own muscles would compress your organs, ending in self-destruction.

The secret to their battle was meticulousness. Before this had started, each man had inferred all possible side effects that would come about as a result of putting out unreasonable strength or speed, then continuously picked out which ones to use during the clash of their overwhelming power in the meantime. During their battle, hundreds, thousands of ill effects would come about, their type changing from moment to moment depending on the situation. If a caster let even one of those slip through during a high-speed battle, then a moment later, he would die.

It was easy for a person to say they were going to overcome their own limitations, but to succeed only after going that far…And even if they did go that far, they could never completely get rid of the limitations of their own physical existence. Depending on the case, developing tricks to use as tactics, such as Kaori Kanzaki challenging others to short contests using her sword-drawing technique, worked for victory. But whether it was through the power of sainthood or that of the Curtana, a person was never stronger in battle just because they had a stronger raw power. When all was said and done, anyone who wielded immense strength also needed technique and the capacity to control their immense strength.

William was strong.

The Knight Leader was strong.

One couldn’t stand in their position merely having acquired some sort of power. It was because these two had mighty skill from the start that they could add on special powers and step into the realm of what defied imagination for normal people.

Conversely, if one blocked the magic the other was using to supplement their high-speed combat, they could bring down the caster indirectly…However, this didn’t apply to the two fighting here and now.

William possessed the innate disposition of a saint as well as a group of spells he’d developed in God’s Right Seat.

The Knight Leader possessed the Curtana and the all-British Continent, along with sorcery he had optimized for knights.

These symbols, which served as their sorcery keys, would not be easily snatched away. Furthermore, both of them being extremely talented casters, the two of them had acquired mind-sets that would not easily shake during the process of overcoming numerous wars. Even if one or two of their limbs were cut off, their magic would likely never run out of control.

The two only watched each other’s stances, continuing to glean information that went beyond mere soldiers.

Being old friends meant nothing. The time that had passed and the roads they had traveled down, constructing spells unbeknownst to each other, were moot.

“Hmph.” The Knight Leader sniffed. “You are certainly talented for a saint…but you don’t seem capable of giving full play to your abilities.”

“…”

“I can sense your wounds throbbing with every attack. You won’t use your forte, water, or your high-speed sliding movement. Is your Academy City defeat still dragging you down?”

William didn’t answer. All he did was slowly swing his ten-foot-long giant sword to reposition it.

“Is there a reason to go that far to protect the third princess?” said the Knight Leader, also moving as if in response. At the giant tree’s summit, he shifted his dark-red Hrunting smoothly.

He noticed the knights under his command struggling on the ground below but still trying to grasp their bows with shaking hands. He didn’t spare them another glance.

“Certainly, the benevolence and morality that form her basis are remarkable,” he continued. “But not, I should think, enough to operate a nation. The more important problem is this: What is the most efficient political move to direct this country? If you were to ask me which would save the United Kingdom as it is now, military might or virtue, there is only one real answer. Her Highness Carissa appears to be concerned, but it does not seem to me that the third princess could wield the Curtana Original. Not in terms of her personality or ability.”

“…”

“I won’t say the Curtana is all that matters. But the fact remains that it is an effective combat strength. The Knights will make the best choice for the kingdom. With that choice being Her Highness with the Curtana Original in hand, our position is to support her with all our might—”

The Knight Leader abruptly stopped at the sound of a chuckle.

The mercenary’s shoulders were moving slightly, up and down. But the smile on his face wasn’t the wild one the Knight Leader knew, the one he’d give when faced with a sturdy opponent.

It was a laugh.

“You talk overmuch, my friend,” William Orwell said, outright denying all the things he’d just heard. His expression implied that it was absurd to even bother remembering them. “Have you fallen to where you cannot even take up your sword and fight a man, without layering excuse upon excuse for yourself and others both?”

There was no voice in response.

Boom!!

Leaping from the canopies of the ancient trees, the mercenary and the knight clashed overhead.

The incredible force of their departure crushed the limbs they’d been standing on.

William and the Knight Leader had both jumped straight up from the tops of the trees. Then, making gravity yield through brute force, their bodies seemed to slide right through the air, and their swords—they collided without mercy at the midpoint.

Sparks exploded.

An inexhaustible shock wave obliterated.

Having completely lost their forward energy to the initial attack, the mercenary and the knight began to descend vertically. But for them, gravity was no threat. They ignored it and swung their swords again from point-blank range.

Duga-zzzaa-guga-gigigigi!! Blade and blade snapped in a complex pattern.

With no footholds in their aerial battle, they couldn’t place their body weight behind their slashes. Instead, William and his foe used the energy from parrying each other’s attacks to rotate their bodies, then repeat their attack from a different angle—repeating, repeating, repeating, and repeating again.

They looked like two gears, their teeth locked together as they descended.

Gears with thick blades, shaving away at the other like a circular saw.

Their 360-degree exchange made the most of their situation, but it wouldn’t last forever. The ground was still getting closer. And the moment they landed would be a chance to break the deadlock.

It came a moment later.

Their feet made contact with the undergrowth-laden ground.

“!!”

“!!”

A thunderous boom rang out.

William Orwell and the Knight Leader each went away from the other, about fifty meters from ground zero—exactly like pebbles blown away by a huge bomb.

But the regroup hadn’t come about of their own intentions.

As they landed, they both took another step forward and unleashed a mighty strike, but each was thrown back by the other’s attack power and sent sliding across the ground.

Scrriiittch!! William’s soles scraped nastily.

It was the sound of the black soil tearing away along with the underbrush. Almost like a railroad track, only the line William went along had been carved out of the ground.

Because of the aftereffects, the battlefield had shifted away from where the knights had fallen.

William’s back was almost touching the slanted surface of the landslide hundreds of yards across that he’d caused in order to cut off his own escape route. Meanwhile, the Knight Leader repositioned his dark-red longsword. William wouldn’t be retreating any farther than this. Not because of how thick or high the wall was, though. Surmounting that wall was synonymous with giving away the route leading to the third princess.

And the Knight Leader could tell by looking at William.

His body weight was already starting to lean forward, into his giant Ascalon.

Just like he was at the starting line of a short-distance sprint.

But the Knight Leader was about to charge, too.

“The reason for your anger is the third princess, is it? Both of us have slain many on the battlefield who we decided were enemies. What good is it now to take up the sword for a reason like that?!”

“Insignificant. Your excuses are insignificant!!”

“Hmph. You mean to tell me you’d rather not cut down those who might submit to surrender, even on the battlefield?! I suppose it is very much like you to say that!!”

A burst of noise.

The Knight Leader, dark-red longsword in hand, plunged toward William, and the mercenary responded by charging toward the chief of Britain’s knights, putting them on a direct collision course.

“But to think you would make an enemy of the military to protect ‘Virtue.’ Are you quite certain there is worth in supporting that girl?!”

Sparks and a shock wave scattered around, spreading, and even during that time, they moved at a high speed.

Blade clashed with blade, and they glared at each other from point-blank range.

“I have no need for rambling about my stance just so you can hear it,” William spat.

Scrape.

William’s Ascalon pushed back against the Knight Leader’s sword.

“I will demonstrate my reason for fighting through this body and sword of mine!!”

The mercenary briefly pulled his own sword back. Then, to bury the slight empty space that opened up, he slammed the blade against the Knight Leader’s dark-red longsword. The incredible impact caused the Knight Leader’s balance to be shaken ever so slightly, and William followed up by unleashing a second strike.

The chief of the Knights wouldn’t perish from just that, however. He swung his dark-red blade around to parry, then let the force of the impact send him backward.

A distance of thirty feet opened up between them.

…Mercs fight without considering military or political reasoning. Even whether or not the third princess is princess of this country holds no meaning for him.

The Knight Leader, reading his opponent, gripped his longsword handle with even more fervor.

Flere210—the one who transforms tears.

As his magic name implied, the Knight Leader’s reason for taking up arms was to transform cold tears into warm ones.

But that alone is still shallow. It is far from enough to kill me, you wannabe mercenary.

“…”

On the other hand, William, having finally stopped moving, regripped his own sword’s handle in his hands.

The Soul Arm Ascalon.

Over ten feet long and over four hundred pounds, created by a sorcerer who had calculated the values from a legendary, mythical blade related in a sixteenth-century tale—it was a sword that possessed the capabilities to theoretically slay a fifty-foot-long dragon.

The double-edged sword’s blade didn’t have a uniform edge. Each part had a different thickness and angle to it, allowing its user to wield it like an ax as well, or a razor, or a saw. It was even equipped with a can opener–like spike and a wire running across the blade like a jigsaw, giving insight into just how eccentric the sorcerer who had created it truly was. Scales, flesh, bone, muscle, tendon, fang, claw, wing, fat, organ, vein, nerve…The creator seemed to be serious in their intent to make it something that could break down an entire dragon by itself.

In the Knight Leader’s hands was a dark-red longsword: the Soul Arm Hrunting.

Almost thirteen feet long, its weight was unknown but probably the same as other longswords of its type. A Soul Arm with the same name as the magic sword used by the mythical Beowulf. Each time it killed an enemy standing in the way, their spattered blood would supposedly strengthen the sword and sharpen its blade…But more than likely, the Knight Leader’s sword applied the angelic power of telesma as blood spatters, gaining immense destructive force by compressing and sealing large amounts of it.

Its steel no longer obeyed normal physical laws: a lightness that didn’t match its actual mass; a hardness to take an attack from the Ascalon and not be scratched; and above all, a supersharp blade that would probably kill William in one clean hit. It explained a few things.

…In the end, it’s the same as the crosses in Crossism—an application of Idol Theory, thought William in calm analysis. By applying the Curtana and the Hrunting, swords that symbolize the United Kingdom, they further increase their ability to control alien powers within the kingdom’s territory…Hmph. I had wondered how he was using more telesma than an average saint’s body…As loyal as ever to his theory of knights, to entrust his own life to his sword and his nation.

As he thought the final words, William Orwell bent his lips slightly.

The Knight Leader, not noticing it, said, “We don’t need secrets in a one-on-one fight. I’ll explain the details if you like.”

“This coming from someone who has deceived the queen.”

“The second princess’s plan is effective, but to be honest, I’ve been slightly bored by it. Well, I’m sure she’ll allow me to do things my way, if it’s only a short break taken against a mercenary.”

“I see. But that’s not necessary,” denied William. “I’ve figured you out, but an enemy like you will need more than that to be defeated.”

“That was fast,” the Knight Leader muttered, appreciative and impressed. But then:

“And unfortunate. This battle will only happen once. I would have liked to fight you at your strongest.”

Ga-boom!!

The darkness of the night rumbled with a strange force.

The Knight Leader hadn’t moved a step from his position.

He had, however, recklessly swung his sword.

But range didn’t come into play.

William dodged to the side immediately upon hearing the noise, but he was already too late. His left shoulder, including his collarbone, already had a hole of an inch or two carved out of it.

…That wasn’t…Hrunting…?!

His attack was clearly different from the ones that had come before.

Faster than the blood could spurt out, William had already regripped Ascalon in his right hand.

“Did you know this? Beowulf is famous for his magic sword Hrunting, but in the most important battles, strangely, the sword played almost no part at all.”

There was no sound.

The Knight Leader stepped up to William faster than sound could travel.

Hrunting came at him in a horizontal swing, and William caught it with Ascalon, using just one hand. But apart from that, the noise of slicing wind reached his ears. He felt a strange chill, and as he channeled all his strength to swing his head out of the way, a shallow wound ran across his cheek.

“In Beowulf’s infamous battle against Grendel, he used the strength of his own arms. In his battle against the water monster, an old sword in the enemy’s hideout. And then, during the final battle of his life against the wicked dragon, a different blade once again.”

The Knight Leader moved anew.

With William’s balance slightly askew from his dodge, the Knight Leader released Hrunting from its locked clash with Ascalon.

And then he swung a longsword.

William parried with Ascalon, but his balance was off. His body lifted into the air.

Boom!!

With a huge noise, William Orwell flew.

“The story has one thing to teach us. To divide your fate—to always have more than one trump card ready.”

As the Knight Leader’s lips moved, the mercenary’s body slammed into a giant tree and crumpled down to its base.

Ignoring the cracking as the tree began to fall, he continued, “As I thought, this is as far as a wannabe mercenary can go.”

William stood, blood spurting from his left shoulder but Ascalon still in his right hand.

The Knight Leader’s words reached his opponent’s ears.

“Duels don’t need secrets. I’ll explain the details if you like.”

4

On a freight car on the Eurostar line headed from London to Folkestone, Touma Kamijou pressed himself to the roof to keep himself hidden.

The train was traveling fast. He didn’t know what a foreign train’s average speed was, but they probably didn’t reach close to two hundred miles per hour normally. They’d been going at low speed using diesel, which they did when there were power transmission issues in the city of London, but then the train had suddenly sped up, presumably because electric power had been reestablished.

There were few trains running, since it was the middle of the night and close to the last train time. More importantly, with most of the United Kingdom region embroiled in a coup d’état, regular schedules were not being maintained. It was only because there were no other trains on the line that this one could shoot along at this ridiculous speed. That said…

“Mgha-gha-gha-gha-gha-gha-gha-gha-gha-gha-gha-gha-gha-gha—”

…With the relative 186-miles-per-hour wind blast pressing directly into his face, Kamijou’s expression was currently twisting into strange shapes.

The knights patrolling inside the train couldn’t find him as he was shivering madly from the chill, and there was a simple reason for that.

Nobody in their right mind would ever hide themselves in a place like this.

…And, personally, it wasn’t as though he wanted to be on the roof or anything. At first he’d certainly been hiding in the freight cars. But the knights patrolled at uneven intervals, so if he wanted to escape detection, staying in one place was actually more dangerous. Because of that, he’d been sneaking around to match the knights’ movements…and before he realized it, this was where he had been driven.

Yeah…I’ve heard of illegal immigrants clinging to the walls and roofs of freight train cars to smuggle themselves from Mexico into the U.S. I wonder if this is what it was like…, thought Kamijou, remembering a documentary he’d seen in his dorm in Academy City.

In his case, though, his goal wasn’t just to arrive at his destination, either.

Index…He gritted his teeth slightly.

When the coup had broken out, Index had been with the second princess, who was said to be the one behind it. He had no idea what sort of state Index was in now, but it was clear from the situation that her safety was not guaranteed.

After all, she held the knowledge from 103,000 grimoires in her head.

The idea that anyone who wanted to bolster their national combat strength even a little bit would use her for evil purposes wasn’t a strange one.

To be frank, this wouldn’t be simple or easy. It wasn’t something an amateur would be able to confront alone.

…But it’s not like I have to beat the enemy boss and all the forces protecting her. Kamijou spared a glance at his right fist. For now, I’ll slip through and rescue Index. If that’s all I’m thinking about, this should go better than if we brought a whole bunch of people into the enemy camp.

But just then, Kamijou caught something out of the corner of his eye.

When he looked over, he saw the top of a silver helmet near the area where the freight cars linked together. The person wasn’t merely trying to move between cars—they seemed to have their hands on the ladder.

A patrol…? Crap, is someone climbing up here?!

The armor-wearer was to his front. Frantically, he headed for the rear of the car. With the train whizzing by and the relative wind blasts urging him on, he started to slide across the flat freight car roof. Feeling a chill that it would be over were he to fall off into the gravel passing by at such a speed, he came to the tiny gap between cars and jumped down into it.

Freight car junctions weren’t like regular trains—they didn’t have passages between them. Each car was isolated, and the place Kamijou had jumped down to was no different: small and surrounded by a metal railing.

The gap between cars was cramped, so it looked like he could move between them if he jumped over the railings. A shudder ran through his spine as the rails and gravel sped past his feet, but he still moved to the adjacent car.

Damn, he swore to himself. This thing’s going pretty fast. I feel like we should be in Folkestone by now…

But it didn’t matter if they were arriving in ten minutes or one. If they found him, that was it. There was nowhere to run on this speeding train. If a group of knights converged, his right hand alone wouldn’t really be able to deal with them, either. He didn’t have a precise grasp on their numbers, but the train had originally been on the move to transport additional troops to the second princess. It looked like he could safely assume somewhere from one hundred to two hundred were packed on board.

…Sheesh. This is a little beyond the level of street fights.

Using both hands, Kamijou slid the door aside and slipped himself through.

The cars near where he was hidden were actual freight cars, loaded with many articles of equipment instead of personnel. Heaps of swords and spears were messily bundled together by category, reminding him of firewood. They weren’t the arms and armor you’d see decorating mansions; each one of them was an honest weapon, maintained to kill.

Still, though…In the unilluminated freight car, Kamijou sighed.

He couldn’t speak much English. He could probably understand some if he broke words apart into letters and syllables like in textbook English, but locals would blend words together and leave bits out to make it easier to talk. With such fast pronunciation, he couldn’t understand any of it.

But even he could tell that the knights on this train were ruffled by something. It seemed an emergency had happened. The exact reason didn’t come across to him, but he thought he made out one name that they repeated.

William…

He was pretty sure it was a relatively popular name for westerners, and he didn’t have any idea who it could belong to.

There were probably a lot of people with that name in the United Kingdom. He considered that this William was a sorcerer from Necessarius, but he decided it wouldn’t do him any good to think about it anymore.

And then:

<“Hey.”>

The sound of someone suddenly talking to him from the back of the freight car nearly stopped Kamijou’s heart in his chest.

It was a girl’s voice.

Kamijou whipped around to look and saw, in the shadow of a heap of silver suits of armor, something wriggling about. It was a person. A girl, with her hands behind her back and both feet fixed to the car with separate cuffs.

Wait, those clothes…? he wondered. Her outfit looked almost like a lacrosse uniform. Feel like I’ve seen them before…Are they a fad in London?

Without paying attention to Kamijou as he thought, the girl spoke. <“You don’t look like a knight. Or some kid apprenticed to them. Did they catch you and put you on this train, too?”>

Her voice sounded languid indeed, but he didn’t have a clue what the quickly spoken English meant.

She seemed to guess the problem from the look on his face. “Hmm? Oh, I get it. Sorry ’bout that. You look Japanese, so maybe I should speak your language?”

“W-wait, you could tell I’m Japanese…?”

“Whenever you see an Asian for the first time and they’ve got that creepy, faint smile on their face, that means they’re Japanese.”

…Is that how other cultures think of the Japanese ingratiating smile? thought Kamijou, suddenly tired.

The girl, however, didn’t seem to notice. “Anyway, I’ll ask again. You’re not with the Knights, right?”

Unable to figure out what she was after, he looked back at her again.

The girl was probably around fifteen, with white skin and blond hair. There were four physical restraints, one on each of her limbs. They weren’t modern handcuffs—more like those wooden planks with the holes you see when they put people on a guillotine.

When Kamijou didn’t respond, the blond girl frowned unhappily. “…You don’t understand Japanese? Or is my pronunciation wrong?”

“N-not at all. I understand you. I understand, but…”

“Oh, okay. I’m Florice. I was, well, pretending to be in a little sorcerer’s society, but…I guess that doesn’t matter. Help me out, would you?”

5

A gash about two inches wide had been dug out of William Orwell’s left shoulder.

A significant amount of fresh blood flowed freely from the dark-red wound. Ignoring his now-powerless left arm, the mercenary readied his giant sword with just his right hand.

The distance to the Knight Leader was about thirty feet.

Both were spaced to clash within an instant, but the Knight Leader didn’t move at all.

Then, as though making a light practice swing, his dark-red longsword cut through empty air.

“!!”

A slash came at William from beside him, a completely different angle, aiming to lop off his head.

After he crouched to avoid the strike, several rays of flashing light crackled all around him.

A moment later—

Matching the longsword’s movements as the Knight Leader swung it like a baton, invisible slashing attacks came at William from every direction. The underbrush tore apart as clawlike scars scored thick tree trunks, and several leaves floating in the night air split apart one after another.

Whether it was from the sound of the wind, some other sense, or even a supernatural premonition—William swung his head and jumped back to dodge. He caught one swing on the thick side of Ascalon’s blade and repelled it, fending off all the Knight Leader’s attempts to kill him.

Zzzz-ghh-ghh-ghh-ga-ga-ga-ga!!

—A flurry of sparks came next.

Swinging his greatsword fast enough to exceed the speed of sound, sometimes protecting his backside without turning around, William spoke.

“I am sure you do not believe that merely modifying the range of your attacks will kill me so easily.”

“…Another thing you saw through quickly,” the Knight Leader said with a bitter face as he whipped his dark-red sword around. “As always, apart from when you absolutely need to speak, you’re detestably silent.”

Right now, what the Knight Leader wielded were patterns.

Many legendary weapons appeared in myths about warriors and knights Scandinavian, Celtic, Charlemagnian, and Germanic, but they all had a certain fixed pattern.

“I had thought to compensate for my weaknesses one by one by mastering many knightly ways and combining them…but it would seem that if you pile complexities upon complexities, everything starts to simplify toward a single, simple attack. Perhaps it’s also not too dissimilar to the death of a star like our sun. Stars that grow too massive explode and create a black hole…A theoretically simple gravity field but overwhelming in its strength at the end of the day.”

A single strike, born from layers atop more layers of every spell imaginable.

Due to its nature, magic-based disruption or nullification would be extremely difficult. In order to unravel the knots, it would be necessary to follow every road the Knight Leader had investigated.

“Still, that wasn’t a black hole in the sense of a complete and total end. There are several ways a star can die. If a star’s mass is below a certain amount, it can apparently turn into other things, such as neutron stars or interstellar clouds. My single attack is no different—it seems that because it is incomplete, it still possesses the attributes of a sword.”

The Knight Leader’s slender fingers regripped his longsword’s hilt.

“Theoretically, the attributes of swords of this level can’t be fully compressed into one category and are instead split into several. The easiest way to understand it is this: ‘severing power’ that can slice through anything; ‘armament weight,’ to create immense destructive power; ‘durability’ to prevent it from breaking; ‘movement speed’ to move faster than anyone can follow…In rare cases, a ‘specialty usage’ is needed to kill a specific monster, and ‘precision’ allows it to move automatically to strike at vital spots. And there are also the patterns, which I’m controlling now.”

“…In other words, it’s attack range, yes?”

The Knight Leader had probably reanalyzed the laws used by the Scandinavian Gungnir and Mjölnir, the Celtic Fragarach and Brionac, and others like them before putting them all together and concentrating their properties. His personal brand of evolution had given shape to an entirely new spell, just like how the life of an overexpanded star ends with the creation of a black hole.

Plus, even outside of European legends, the sort of which the Knight Leader liked to work into his spells, other similar legends—the ingredients for this black hole—existed throughout the world.

“As a result of reanalyzing many cultures, legends, Soul Arms, and weapons in order to compile this skill system, I came to realize something: It is the wish of all men to seize victory from a place their opponents’ attacks cannot reach, burying them in a flood of unopposed strikes…I dislike that it reeks of uninteresting gun societies, but I am forced to admit it is effective in its own way.”

And the ingredients to make that a reality are…

“Hah!!” William used Ascalon to parry a long-range strike that raced toward his temple from the side. It struck the sword’s thin wire that was strung like a jigsaw located along the sword’s front, sending sparks flying. When they stabbed into a nearby tree trunk, it was a blade, only a few millimeters long, that looked like dark-red rust.

“Sword shards.”

The Knight Leader casually revealed the trick he should have kept hidden.

All the while, he swung the dark-red sword around like before.

“Some excellent armaments and Soul Arms will retain much of their original power even after being reduced to fragments. After all, the sword used by King Charlemagne was forged using shards of the holy spear.”

“Someone poised to fight France resorting to use the legend of a French king?”

“How unusual for you to speak when it isn’t necessary.” The Knight Leader grinned.

Roar!! Guided by the sword’s motion, rust blades went after William from dozens of directions.

“I will use anything I can. And if you’re going to go that far, even the Curtana’s etymology comes from French. Come to think of it, it meant a sword whose tip had broken, turning it into a ‘shortsword.’”

At that, the Knight Leader abruptly stopped moving.

This time, William was the suspicious one.

“Don’t make that face,” his old friend said, repositioning Hrunting. “I already told you I don’t like to acknowledge a worthless gun society. A proud and noble knight lives by the creed of defeating an opponent after he has used all the strength in his own hands.”

“…You plan to point your sword even at powerless servants in order to brag about your pride?” William clicked his tongue softly.

The sword Ascalon, held in his right hand, emitted a red flash of light.

Except—the light was more than one color. It glimmered and shifted depending on the blade’s angle, like the surface of a CD.

But strictly speaking, that wasn’t entirely accurate, either.

The eleven-and-a-half-foot Ascalon didn’t have just one blade. It had many parts with different thicknesses and angles, one like an ax, another like a razor, yet another like a saw. There were even a can opener–like spike and a jigsaw-like wire running down the sword length equipped to it.

The source of Ascalon’s glow lay in those functions.

With many methods of attack to choose from, Ascalon changed color depending on which part was active and how it was used. Red for the ax-like blade, blue for the razor-like blade, green for the can opener–like spike, yellow for the jigsaw-esque wire…Mana would be supplied to a specific part of the Soul Arm, chosen in real time depending on what would provide the most destructive force in any given situation, and the section that was used would determine the light’s color.

“I would have liked to not use it, if possible.”

“That’s not like you. Are you holding back against the one representing the evil dragon?” The Knight Leader smiled and gripped Hrunting’s hilt tightly.

There was more than one thing an evil dragon symbolized in Crossist teachings. For example…

An invading force of heretics or an alien people. Even…

A fallen angel stained with evil.

6

Inside the freight train, Touma Kamijou was standing face-to-face with a girl bound by her hands and feet.

She said her name was Florice.

…If he’d known the entirety of the incident tonight, maybe the group name “New Light” would have immediately popped into his head. However, Kamijou was no more than an adventitious amateur participant. Necessarius wasn’t exactly sharing all its information with him. Aside from Lesser, who had been gravely wounded before his eyes, he didn’t really know the names or faces of any of its other members.

“Hey, stop standing around and help me already.”

“Help…with what?”

“Don’t you have eyes? These things. Help me get them off.”

She grunted and held out the wooden shackles constricting her ankles.

Kamijou saw them and scowled. “…What the heck did you do to end up in those stiff-looking things?”

“I mean, I don’t think I did anything bad. Ha-ha-ha,” laughed Florice. Then, she added in whispered, quickly spoken English, <“…I was a little impressed when those knights rescued me from the Necessarius church, but then they put me in chains and threw me onto this freight train. I can’t believe it. Turns out they were trying to silence me right from the start! Shit. This is where trusting those civil servants will get you, Bayloupe. You idiot…And I’m not about to end my life clean after the mission like Lesser, either.”>

“What?”

“Nothing at all. Aren’t your circumstances basically the same? Pissed off the knights, and now they’re bringing you in or something?”

“I snuck on board to get to Folkestone.”

That was in itself a very interesting few words, but Florice turned a deaf ear. For now, if she knew he wasn’t one of the knights, there was no problem.

“Anyway, here. Help me get these off, will you? Thanks to this Soul Arm, there’s a two-meter box keeping me in. So…well…there. I can’t even get to the key hanging right over on that wall.”

“Huh? This is what you wanted?” Kamijou reached a hand for the key chain hanging on the wall, but then stopped abruptly.

Florice made a dubious face. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. It’s just that my right hand is called Imagine Breaker. The short version is, if the key is magical, then as soon as I touch it, it’ll shatter. And then we won’t have any way to get you out of those cuffs.” As he explained it, he suddenly looked up. “Wait. I don’t even have to bother with taking care with the key, right? If I just break the magical restraints directly with my right hand—”

“Huh? Uh, hey, wait, wait wait wait!! I don’t know what you’re trying to do, but—?!”

As Florice busily muttered, Kamijou grabbed her ankle restraint with his right hand.

With a snap, the shackle fell to pieces.

“See? Should’ve just done this from the start.”

“Uh…Ah…”

Kamijou then went around behind her and destroyed the shackles binding her hands, too. “And there we go. Ha-ha. This means you’ll have a life debt to pay, my Florice—”

“Wait, gwaaah?! If you break them without thinking, you’ll—”

Bfweeee.

Naturally, an alarm went off in the freight train.

He sensed people rustling about in the cars in front of them and behind them, and then he began to hear the physical clanking of armored footsteps.

Florice turned a bloodshot death glare on Kamijou. “N-now what?! The game’s only ten minutes in, and it’s already over!!”

“N-no, it’s too early to give up!!” said Kamijou offhandedly, heading for the iron door.

Since it was a freight train, there was a large sliding door on the side wall of the car, in addition to the doors in the front and back, used for loading and unloading freight. Kamijou unlatched it, then used both hands to nudge it open a little.

A gust of wind blew into the car.

“Where are we?”

“I don’t know—probably close to Folkestone by now?”

As he listened, Kamijou glanced outside the door again to where the train was headed.

Spread out before him was a flat green plain. But as far as he could tell from how fast the ground was zooming by behind him, it was painfully obvious what would happen if he jumped out carelessly.

So he said, “We’ll just have to jump.”

“Are you stupid or something? If you want to kill yourself, then leave me out of it!!”

“No, not that. We’re coming up on a river! If we want to escape, that’s our only chance!!”

“What? We can’t do that. It’d take a miracle to survive diving from a high place using water as a cushion. It happens all the time in Hollywood but never in real li—”

“Let’s go. If we hold hands, there’s nothing to be scared of!!”

“Huh? Huh? Wait—we’re actually going to die, you moron!!”

The freight train passed over an old stone bridge.