The Men of the Kingdom Part II

by Kugane Maruyama

  Only those with a death wish would willingly undertake this mission, but the thief had probably agreed to participate precisely because he knew, although they’d spent only a short time together, that Climb and Brain lacked those critical skills.

  Feeling grateful, Brain continued moving in a half crouch with quick steps. The atmosphere of the surrounding buildings gradually began to change, and the number of large nonresidences increased. Their destination was extremely close.

  “So why are we headed to the warehouse district?” the thief asked as he glanced around the area.

  Climb replied, “Princess Renner said if you wanted to collect a lot of prisoners together, you’d need a place big enough to imprison them all. Rather than gathering them in a square, it would make more sense to lock them in multiple warehouses and split up families.”

  “I see. By scattering families, the members can be used against one another as hostages. Then I guess we have to hurry. Well, I’ll take a roundabout way and look for the safest route I can find.”

  “Thanks.”

  They had to worry about what happened after they found the people, too. Considering the return trip, they knew finding a safe route ahead of time was a must. It was especially important to find a good route because there would probably be a whole crowd of people to take with them.

  But Brain wondered how long their good luck would hold out.

  This mission really was essentially an order for Climb to go die.

  If the enemy had rounded up commoners, they had to have a reason for it, so there would definitely be someone keeping watch. From what he’d heard, the enemy mastermind, Jaldabaoth, could slay an adamantite-rank adventurer in one blow. The subordinate of such a monster would by no means be weak.

  He glanced at Climb, who was running next to him.

  The boy who wore pure-white armor to inform people of his connection to the princess was caressing his gauntlet. No, he’s caressing the ring on his finger beneath it, Brain knew.

  It was an accessory he’d gotten from Gazef.

  Apparently Gazef had received it from an old woman and former Blue Rose, and it was an ultra-rare item said to be created by ancient magic. He’d heard briefly that it allowed warriors to break through the limits of their strength.

  Survive and return it to me. Brain remembered Gazef’s face as he’d told the boy that.

  He hadn’t been wearing any particular expression. No anger, no sadness, no pity—because he knew that warriors with a master worth serving sometimes had to go to battles that might as well have been death sentences. But he had the feeling that Gazef lending such a valuable ring—giving the most support he could offer—spoke to his state of mind.

  Running to join the thief up ahead after being waved on, Brain sensed a presence and looked up. He ran his eyes along the edge of the buildings—and received a shock so great he thought his heart would stop.

  There was—he guessed from the figure’s height and build—a little girl, blond hair fluttering behind her, on the edge of the roof of one of the warehouses. She wore a very expensive-looking dress of white material embroidered with silver. High heels that sparkled like crystals peeked out from its hem. In addition, she was wearing a necklace and earrings—all sorts of elegant accessories. She looked like the daughter of a great noble or a noblewoman from somewhere.

  Even discounting the strangeness of the white mask covering her face, her figure was remarkably mysterious, sparkling ominously in the light of the curtain of fire behind them. Her ostentatious appearance combined with her faint presence made her seem to have slipped out of some spirit world.

  Her outfit, the color of her hair, and the way she talked weren’t the same at all. If the girl back then was born of darkness, this one had come floating down from the moon. Still, this had to be the same one. The figure burned into Brain’s memory overlapped with the one before his eyes.

  He was sure of it. He knew the face beneath that girl’s mask was that of the monster Shalltear Bloodfallen.

  She didn’t seem to have noticed them. But with that monster, distance meant nothing because the moment she detected them, they would be killed instantly. But could they leave without drawing her attention?

  It didn’t seem remotely possible.

  Before he knew it, it felt like walking on thin ice—and it was cracking. When he worried that she might sense even his slightest tremble, a sickly cold sweat oozed from every pore in his body.

  Climb and the thief were about to say something, but he stopped them by putting a finger to his lips.

  They must have inferred something from how pale his face was. They both froze and concealed their presences.

  What should we do? What would be best? We will absolutely die if we fight that thing. We can’t run away even if we want to. The only way I managed to back then was because of the secret passageway. It’ll be impossible in a place like this. But why is she here? Don’t tell me she’s been looking for me…

  Having thought as much, Brain smiled.

  There was only one answer.

  “Climb, I’ll buy time. You go.” He turned to the thief and bobbed his head. “Take care of him.”

  He didn’t wait for them to argue.

  He jumped, grabbed ahold of the building, and pulled himself up. He didn’t have the climbing skills of a thief, but it was no trouble to clamber up two stories by the strength of his warrior arms. When he reached the roof, Shalltear was still in the same spot.

  Brain’s heart lurched.

  He was scared—so scared he couldn’t handle it. The memories of desperately fleeing last time came back to him. Still, for some weird reason, he had the courage to face her.

  “…What can I do for you?” Her icy voice, a little different, since it was coming from behind the mask, reached Brain’s ears.

  She doesn’t recognize me? Why not? Could she be…acting? I guess I should act like I’m dealing with someone else first and see how she reacts? Having made that decision, he said, “I saw a strange woman up on the roof. What are you guys doing in the capital?”

  “Why should I have to tell you? Or rather, what is a human even doing here? Are you the only one who made it this far?”

  His heart was racing. He wanted to know how far away the others had gotten, but he couldn’t look. He raised his voice a bit while evading her question. “Were you looking for someone else? Not me?”

  “You? Why would I be looking for you?”

  “This is the second time we’ve met, isn’t it? I couldn’t forget your beautiful face.”

  Shalltear’s hand moved to touch her mask. “…Perhaps you have the wrong girl?”

  For a split second, Brain was stunned. Maybe he was mistaking her? But he immediately discarded that idea.

  It definitely wasn’t someone else.

  He couldn’t be sure of the voice, since it was coming from behind the mask, and he didn’t have a perfect ear, but there was only one Shalltear Bloodfallen in this world, and there was no way Brain could mistake her.

  Is this that thing where it’s hard to remember someone so insignificant?

  If she wasn’t being sarcastic and really didn’t remember him, it had to mean that she just hadn’t taken very much interest in him. From someone as dominant as Shalltear, that was neither arrogance nor hubris.

  “Ahh, sorry. Yeah…you’re right. This is our first time meeting.”

  “Oh? Well, if you’ve come around, that’s fine with me…but maybe I should kill you? Do you want to die or live? If you bow down to the ground and lick my shoes, it might improve my mood.”

  “Sorry, not interested.”

  Brain exhaled slowly and lowered his hips, assuming a position from which he could draw his sword. The martial art he activated was, naturally, Domain. Of course, he knew it wouldn’t work on her.

  Shalltear sighed with annoyance and lightly scratched her head. “What a pain that you can’t see the difference between our abilities…”

  No, I’m well a
ware of it. Brain answered Shalltear’s grumble to herself in his head as he watched her.

  He was so aware of how terrible she was it made him sick. So why aren’t I running away? Brain wondered, and the corners of his lips curled up.

  Not a single ripple appeared on the lake of his heart. Even before such a horrible being—from whom he’d fled, abandoning everything—it remained surprisingly tranquil.

  Shalltear approached him casually. Her movements were exactly the same as last time. In that case, he was sure to meet crushing defeat. Everything he’d spent his life doing would be shattered for kicks.

  I guess…that’s how it goes.

  Brain was terrified.

  Maybe it was pathetic; he had been in plenty of life-or-death duels before. But he couldn’t lie.

  He was scared.

  His opponent was an overwhelmingly powerful being who could easily take his life. If his battles up till now had been life or death, this would be leaping off a sheer cliff.

  He may have been prepared for death in battle, but he wasn’t prepared for suicide.

  Strangely, however, the stabbing feeling in his chest, the desire to run away at full speed that he’d had since arriving in the capital, was gone.

  Suddenly, he remembered a view of a young man’s back.

  That boy was much younger than himself. Though trembling, he had stood with all his might against an overwhelming surge of murderous intent.

  Brain smiled a melancholy smile.

  That old man had said that sometimes humans could unlock unbelievable levels of power. But Brain felt it was probably impossible for himself.

  He couldn’t muster all his strength in service of the princess like Climb, and he couldn’t devote himself to the people and the king like Gazef. People capable of those feats were fundamentally different from Brain. He was a selfish person who’d lived his life thinking only of himself.

  But…would buying time for Climb cancel that out…?

  One step and then another. Shalltear, with her left pinkie finger raised, closed in at a bizarrely slow pace.

  Was his extreme focus making time decelerate for him, or had Shalltear deliberately slowed her steps to tease him? Brain felt that either possibility was equally likely and grinned. That’s what she’s like.

  His encounter with her had lasted only a few short minutes, but he had the feeling he understood her personality better than that of any other woman he’d ever known.

  Two more steps, I guess? Until the end of my days with a sword…

  He had fled. But he hadn’t let go of his weapon.

  He lived his life alongside his sword, so it was probably right to die alongside it.

  He made up his mind.

  It was as though Brain had revealed himself to her in order to reach this decision.

  “Wielding this sword is…my life, huh.”

  With those words, he decided to forget everything. His opponent was a being of distant heights. He couldn’t afford to waste his energy on pointless thoughts any longer.

  He unleashed Divine Strike, a martial art that was impossible to perceive.

  But even using Domain and Divine Strike at the same time, he couldn’t reach the monster before his eyes. The attack was still so slow she could catch his sword by the ridge on the flat of the blade with no trouble. So that was why…he used one more martial art.

  He saw the face of Gazef Stronoff in his mind.

  If he hadn’t met him in the capital, even if he had made it to this point, he definitely wouldn’t have thought to use it.

  But all the people he’d met here changed his mind.

  Brain was grateful to the man who was once his greatest enemy, someone to overcome, and was now his rival.

  He accepted the reality that he might die here.

  It’s belated, but…thanks, my friend and rival.

  The thought alone lightened Brain’s mood. Now he could let everything go, no more hesitating. The humiliation he once felt was gone.

  “Ahhhhhhhgh!” Brain’s lips parted, and he bellowed with the scream of a werethrush. It was a war cry that contained all his strength, poured out from the bottom of his soul.

  He unleashed an ultra-fast Divine Strike against the opponent he sensed with Domain. But that wasn’t all. Divine Strike wasn’t speeding up a single swipe of his sword.

  The attack was—

  —four simultaneous slashes.

  During the battle where Brain Unglaus had first learned defeat—Gazef Stronoff had used this very martial art.

  Brain had admired him and practiced the move over and over, all the while lying to himself, saying he was doing it to know his enemy. Then, in suffering, he forbid himself to use it.

  But now, at this moment, all of Brain’s shackles had come off, and he used it without hesitation.

  “Fourfold Slash of Light!”

  Actually, Fourfold Slash of Light had a major weakness.

  Unleashing four strikes at once was a burden too great for the user’s body to bear, so the attacks would go all over the place. Due to the move’s low chances of hitting its target, even its inventor, Gazef, ended up reserving it for use against multiple enemies—when he was surrounded, for instance.

  Fourfold Slash of Light had fewer strokes than Sixfold Slash of Light, so it was somehow manageable to direct them all at one opponent, but landing all of them was still a rare feat.

  There was no way such a haphazard attack would hit Shalltear Bloodfallen. Brain was well aware of that.

  But there was a move Gazef Stronoff didn’t possess that Brain did, and it supported his accuracy within its range to an astonishing degree: Domain.

  The four errant slashes were redirected with the help of Domain’s superhuman precision targeting, and the blades traveled the arcs Brain saw in his mind.

  Four simultaneous, ultra-fast slashes that would absolutely hit their target…

  This blow would be difficult for even vaunted heroes—humans who had surpassed human capability—to block. It would be nearly impossible to block all four slashes with the physical abilities of a member of the human race. It was an attack that was truly beyond human.

  But Shalltear Bloodfallen stood in the uppermost heights of ability, where no one could surpass her. From the point of view of someone like that, those four divinely fast attacks might as well have been moving at a snail’s pace.

  “Hmph,” she scoffed. And her left hand blurred, moving even faster.

  A hard sound like the clang of metal rang through the air—the four attacks and blocks had happened so fast that the sounds became one.

  So in other words…

  Shalltear blocked all four slashes, and not a single blade reached her.

  She shrugged. She laughed under her mask to think that she had wasted time going along with this child’s play—not at the warrior in front of her but at herself for being so foolish as to entertain it for even a minute.

  But the next moment, her eyes widened slightly.

  If someone who could numerically compare the pair’s abilities were present, they would have given Brain thunderous applause. They would have applauded him with the shock and respect afforded to one who caused the sun to rise in the west.

  Yes, such was Brain’s miracle.

  “…Huh?”

  Shalltear was looking at the nail of her left pinkie finger—it was damaged. Part of it was missing—less than a third of an inch, but still.

  Shalltear thought back over their exchange. Her nail had been severed at exactly the part she’d been using to block the slashes.

  As she recalled, the four slashes had come two from above and two from below—precisely sandwiching the spot she was using to block.

  “…You did that on purpose?”

  “Pft! Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

  The man before her suddenly started to laugh.

  Shalltear wondered if he’d gone insane but then thought twice and decided it was something else.

  He must be laughing at the
fact that he cut off my fingernail. But she didn’t understand. So he cut off my fingernail—what’s the big deal?

  Shalltear’s fingernails and fangs were treated as natural weapons; as such, they could be broken with weapon-breaking skills. Since they would grow back as life force was recovered with healing magic, they broke more easily than other weapons at the same level. They weren’t so great. They couldn’t even compare with her magic item, the Pipette Lance.

  So she had no idea why this guy had burst out laughing.

  You cut my pinkie fingernail a little bit, so what? What does it matter? She looked at the other four nails on her left hand. Even her pinkie finger was still long enough to rip easily into human flesh, despite being shorter.

  “It seems you pass as a nail clipper…”

  The man opened his eyes wide with ever-increasing jubilance. “Thank you! For complimenting me. My sword…my life…hasn’t been in vain. I reached, just barely, that infinitely tall peak.”

  I’m not complimenting you.

  She’d meant it sarcastically.

  But his reply seemed to be genuine. Meaning this man was delighted to be called a nail clipper.

  Does this guy have a screw loose? When she thought about it, he had been saying weird things ever since they met. Anyhow, he’s creepy, so I’ll kill him and get it over with.

  Having decided that, she was about to charge, when—

  She received word from Demiurge that he’d started the battle.

  She knew what that meant. She looked over without thinking, but she couldn’t sense the presence she was looking for.

  “Because of his ring…?”

  One of the rings their master wore had the power to hide him completely from detection abilities. The guardians had all been given one as well, but this ring was powerful enough to erase even the presence of the ruler of the Great Tomb of Nazarick.

  Frustrated that she couldn’t sense her master, she faced forward again, but the mentally disturbed man who had been standing there was gone.

  Ah! I forgot about the weirdo!

  When she glanced around, she saw him watching her as he jumped down to street level. He’d run to the edge of the roof while she was distracted.