CHAPTER 5
WILHELM VAN ASTREA
1
—Let us speak of the man named Wilhelm Trias.
Wilhelm was born the third son of the Trias family, a family of local nobles in the Kingdom of Lugunica.
The Trias family was an old, storied family granted land along the kingdom’s northernmost border with the Holy Kingdom of Gusteko. This said, its fame as a family of warriors was a thing of the past; by the time of Wilhelm’s birth, it had become a small, weak baronial family, with only a meager fief and a tiny populace to its name.
In real terms, it was no more than an example of nobility fallen from grace.
Wilhelm’s brothers were well removed from him in age, and his upbringing had no connection to inheritance of family leadership. Furthermore, he, lacking the aptitude for civil government of his brothers, encountered wielding the sword as his one path leading to a future.
The sword decorating the great hall of their mansion had once been used by a string of men in the Trias family to gain fame as warriors for the kingdom, but to the present Trias family, it was simply a treasured sword to be admired on a wall.
Even Wilhelm did not remember what triggered it.
But when he drew the treasured sword, which he had never before even set hands upon, out of its scabbard, the way he was instantly captivated by the beauty of the steel—that, he remembered distinctly.
Before he knew it, he’d been taking the family sword on his own to the mountains out back, swinging it from morning till night.
The first time he touched the sword, he was eight; he became accustomed to the length and weight of the blade, and when his limbs grew so that they were no longer mismatched, Wilhelm was fourteen, and the finest sword wielder of the domain.
“I’ll go to the capital and enter the royal army. Then I’ll become a knight.”
And it was at fourteen years old that Wilhelm spoke those words and ran off from home, carrying the brainless dream any boy had thought of at least once.
The trigger was on the night of a storm when he had an argument with his oldest brother. His brother had begun a “What will you do for your future?” lecture to Wilhelm, immersed in only the sword and minded to associate with brats and scoundrels in the territory.
Through swinging a sword, he’d felt himself growing stronger and stronger, and that by itself had made him happy. And so, the older brother’s words toward his younger, lacking any ambition for the future, were very strict. He had piled sound argument upon sound argument, and Wilhelm, deficient in words, spoke those words as the prelude to his flying out the door.
He followed them with his trademark phrase, “You can’t understand how I feel!” and left, and in truth, the result was that Wilhelm left his family with nothing but a sword and a small amount of money.
It was an unplanned departure, but Wilhelm was able to safely reach the royal capital.
Wilhelm, triumphant as he arrived, made his way to the Royal Palace with all haste, and records note that he entered the royal army as a common soldier.
If it were the current era, a stray ruffian arriving in an attempt to pass through the castle gate under such circumstances would have been rightfully and properly turned away. However, at that time, there was a civil war with an alliance of demi-human tribes centered upon the eastern lands of the kingdom—the Demi-human War had long continued, and the urgency was so great that no number of volunteers seemed enough.
It was then that a boy appeared, selling himself as having fair skill in the sword. He was welcomed with both hands, and Wilhelm entered the royal army without the slightest hindrance.
Thus, unconnected to setbacks or travails, Wilhelm stepped onto the field of his first battle.
There, for the first time, the boy came to know the wall called reality. His skill with the blade, unmatched on his home soil, served nothing against veterans of the field of battle, and he was confronted by his own recklessness and conceit.
Such was the hardship of youth, the baptism of one’s first battle.
—Yes. By rights, it should have been like that for anyone.
But in truth, without ever having faced live combat, Wilhelm’s skill with the sword easily surpassed fifteen normal youths put together.
“What? They really weren’t as tough as I thought.”
In his first battle, the boy soldier had built a mountain of demi-human corpses, and from atop that mound, he thrust his sword into his attackers.
No one could behold him and not feel afraid of the bloodstained future that awaited him.
Wilhelm’s abnormal strength in the sword was multiplied over the days he swung a sword in his homeland. From morning to evening, until his energy gave out, Wilhelm had lived by continuing to swing the sword—every day, from age eight to fourteen, six years without pause.
Even once he had entered the royal army, his lifestyle of devoting every free moment to the sword did not change.
Within the same unit, there were perhaps one or two people who reached out to Wilhelm, but he rebuffed their overtures, immersing himself only in the sword for days and months until the boy became a man.
Unbroken by reality, yet unsatisfied with himself, Wilhelm continued to swing a sword on the field of battle, unable to quench the feeling of gloom within him.
With his blade, by rending the flesh of others, bathing in their blood, and taking the lives of his opponents, he proved that he was stronger—and he knew that only in those moments did a dark joy sprout within him.
As knowledge of his skill with the sword spread, the name of the rural-born swordsman who refused all promotion, to knight or anything else, became known in both the royal army and the Demi-human Alliance by the alternative name of Sword Devil—a devil of the sword, rushing across the battlefield, and smiling only when cutting a person down.
It was a name that became synonymous with fright and hatred, and both friend and foe steered wide of him.
His exploits were beyond counting, and yet, there was no question of promoting Wilhelm to knight.
He did not associate with others, stoically devoting himself to the sword, rampaging on the battlefield without regard for his allies, leaping into the enemy formation, dancing as he made flowers of blood bloom.
Such a man could not be worthy of a flowery title such as “knight.”
In a kingdom with a long tradition of chivalry, Wilhelm’s existence was loathed as an interloper regardless of his many services to the nation.
And Wilhelm himself never once thought of changing that circumstance.
He did not think like a knight, with their high pride, regard for the lives of others, and their tendency to polish the nobility of their own souls. When he fought, he killed people; he made their blood flow and smashed their lives to pieces. He, who took more joy in that than anything, was not suited for knighthood, and if it stopped him from being able to enjoy that, he wanted nothing to do with being a knight.
His longing for battle was warped, but over a great deal of time, the heart of the young man named Wilhelm rotted.
And it was when he was eighteen—when he had been in the royal army for three years, and when none in the army knew not the name “Sword Devil”—that a gap in that heart was born.
2
She had beautiful, long red hair, and from the side, her face was so pretty it made him shiver.
With the enlargement of the battle lines, Wilhelm was temporarily sent back to the royal capital from the front lines, forced to take leave that he suggested was unnecessary.
Separated from the battlefield, and the rampant smell of blood, gunpowder, and death, Wilhelm, with too much time on his hands, slipped out of the castle gates with his beloved sword in hand, heading for the lower parts of the capital.
Since running out on his own family, the treasured sword he had taken with him in lieu of a parting gift of coin had become greatly worn, but over the course of ten years, he was used to that beloved blade like none other. It was not that he could not use other swords, but when he was bent on taking the lives of others, that sword was indeed best.
Walking all alone, Wilhelm headed down a street in the lower quarter with no sign of life. His destination was the very edge of the royal capital, a run-down district that had been abandoned midway through its construction.
The capital went from the Nobles’ District through Market Street, continuing through the Commons, and the abandoned district had apparently been conceived a ways back, but construction had been aborted quite some time prior with no sign of resuming anytime soon. The word was it would likely stay that way until the civil war was resolved.
“……”
In the morning, the unfinished district had no signs of human life, and if any did exist, it would be scum gathering there for no good purpose. They were cowards that would scatter like baby spiders if a little antagonism hit them.
Of late, not even those outlaws had come close to the Sword Devil, wholly devoted to the blade, unafraid and unawares when he entered the unfinished district on his days off.
“Just as well, I suppose.”
The reason Wilhelm swung his sword in the lower city rather than at the parade grounds of the Royal Palace was so that his ears would be undisturbed by annoying voices, immersing himself into a silent world where he was alone.
Wilhelm no longer sought to measure his skill by crossing swords with others.
He turned toward the swordsman he imagined in the back of his mind, counterattacking his unleashed steel. The training he had continued since his youth always had Wilhelm crossing swords with the person he considered his greatest foe.
“Aren’t you a bad looker?”
His eyes oozed with bloodlust; his lips were contorted in madness.
The empty-eyed swordsman with whom he crossed swords every day was his reflection in the mirror.
—To Wilhelm, his greatest enemy was always himself.
This was not in a philosophical sense but rather, a realistic view of his might.
On the battlefield, he confronted his opponents—in other words, he took their lives. Having survived the battlefield, on the edge of life-and-death, there had been none on the field of battle to date that was mightier than he.
Then what worthy rival was there to cross swords with than he, a man he could not kill no matter how hard he tried?
Therefore, during his leave, he went to a place devoid of others to immerse in a sword dance against himself.
For it was only there, in a sword drama none should ever yearn for in reality, that he truly felt what it meant to be alive—
“Ah, I’m quite sorry.”
That day, the sight of a beautiful girl was the foreign element wedging itself into the Sword Devil’s world.
To swing his sword and meet himself in deadly combat—Wilhelm, on his way to the unfinished district with that aim, stopped when he noticed a different guest ahead of him.
Normally, the heart of the unfinished district Wilhelm used was a completely empty space. The footing was comparatively level, and the breadth made it an ideal place for him—and yet, a foreign element rested in Wilhelm’s place of relaxation, tilting its head slightly toward him.
“To think someone would come to a place like this, and so early in the morning—”
“ ? ”
The girl addressed Wilhelm with a little smile.
But Wilhelm responded to the greeting with a simple slap of his antagonistic aura to drive her away.
He felt as if he was shooing away an annoying insect. An amateur amid such antagonism would beat a hasty retreat; even a man of skill would likely perceive Wilhelm’s level of skill and do likewise.
But the girl did nothing of the sort.
“…What is the matter? Such a scary face.”
She parried Wilhelm’s antagonism, continuing her words as if it were nothing.
Wilhelm felt annoyed, clicking his tongue.
This was an opponent upon whom such hostility was ineffective—in other words, someone completely unrelated to the martial arts. At the very least, someone upon whom violence was effective would have shown some reaction to Wilhelm’s antagonism.
But to someone unconnected to such things, it was simple coercion. Depending on the opponent, someone might even receive it with a simple narrowing of the eyes.
In the case of the individual before him, she was a shining example of the latter.
“Woman, what are you doing here on a morning like this?”
He hurled abuse at her, but she had yet to release Wilhelm from her gaze.
The girl made a little “hmm…” at Wilhelm’s words, then said, “I would like to ask you the very same thing, but that would be a bit too mean, yes? Your face says you have no sense of humor.”
“There are many dangerous men in this area. I cannot approve of a woman for walking around it alone.”
“Ah, are you worried about me?”
“It is possible that I am one of those dangerous men…”
Wilhelm replied sarcastically to the girl’s lighthearted comment, making a sound with the hilt of his sword to announce the presence of his weapon. But the girl did not turn an eye to Wilhelm’s action, pointing behind her as she said, “Over here .”
The girl, sitting on a stairway, shifted her finger to a building opposite that against which she leaned. As it was a place Wilhelm could not see from his position, his brows furled at being invited to come closer.
“It is not that I do not wish to see, but…”
“Never mind that, come on, come on.”
Wilhelm’s cheek twitched at the tone, like that used when coddling a child, but he calmed himself and went over to her. He walked alongside the woman higher up on the stairway, leaning forward to peer at what lay on the other side.
“……”
On the other side, the hot rays of the morning sun were shining on a broad, yellow flower garden.
With Wilhelm at a loss for words, the girl lowered her voice and confessed her secret to him in a whisper.
“They stopped maintaining this district quite some time ago, yes? I thought no one would come, so I planted some flowers. I came over to see the results for myself.”
Wilhelm had walked that way many times, but not once had he noticed the presence of the flower garden, even though all it would have taken to see them was for him to stretch his back a little higher and broaden his vision.
With Wilhelm’s mouth remaining closed, the girl looked at the side of his face and asked, “Do you like flowers?”
He turned to her, seeing the small, gentle smile her face made as he stared.
“No, I hate them,” he replied in a low voice, curling his lips.
3
From then on, Wilhelm and the girl continued to encounter each other from time to time.
On his days off, Wilhelm would walk to the unfinished district in the morning, only to find her having arrived ahead of him, bathed in a quiet wind as she gazed at the flowers.
Then, when she noticed that Wilhelm had arrived, she would ask him, “Do you like flowers now?”
He would deny it with a shake of his head, immersing himself in swinging the sword, acting like he had forgotten her very existence.
When his sweat flowed and he raised his head, finishing his deadly struggle with himself, he would see the girl still there.
“You really have a lot of time on your hands,” he’d always say in a sarcastic voice.
He thought that, bit by bit, the amount of time they spent speaking gradually increased.
They always spoke after he’d swung his sword, but he began to exchange a few words before swinging his sword as well, and the conversations after he swung his sword also became a little longer.
Gradually, he went to that place at an even earlier hour, sometimes arriving to the flower garden before the girl. “Ah, you are so early today,” the girl would say, a regretful smile coming over her.
—It must have been three months since meeting her like that before they’d exchanged names.
The girl called herself Theresia, adding, “For now,” sticking out her tongue a little.
When Wilhelm replied with his introduction, she pouted when he said, “I’ve been calling you Flower Girl until now.”
He thought that exchanging names meant intruding onto each other’s circumstances to some small degree. To date, their exchanges had been harmless and inoffensive, but their quality steadily began to change.
One day, Theresia asked him, “Why do you swing the sword?”
Without a moment’s concern, Wilhelm replied, “Because it is all I have.”
As was typical, Wilhelm’s return to military duty was greeted with days filled with the scent of fresh blood.
In due course, the civil war with the demi-humans had intensified; over and over, he casually carried out his missions, slipping past an enemy’s magic into his flank, slicing him from toe to chin.
He rushed overland, broke through the wind, flew into the enemy camp, and sent the general’s head flying. He returned to his own camp with the head impaled on the tip of his sword, and bathed in gazes of acclamation and fright, he exhaled.
Suddenly, he realized that on the battlefield below his feet, even as blood flowed, there were flowers blooming, swaying in the wind.
And now, without being conscious of it, he took care not to tread upon them.
“Do you like flowers now?”
“No, I hate them.”
“Why do you swing the sword?”
“Because that is all I have.”
It was his ritualistic exchange with Theresia—when they spoke about flowers, Wilhelm was able to reply with a small smile. But when they spoke of the sword, somehow, it felt painful to give his stock reply.
Why did he swing a sword?
I have nothing else , he thought day after day, and there, his thought process had ended.
When he seriously pondered the question in search of an answer, Wilhelm turned back all the way to the day he had first held a sword in his hand.
At the time, Wilhelm was yet to know that the sword in his hand would be bathed in blood.
When Wilhelm saw himself reflected in the light gleaming off the pristine steel blade, what had he thought?
One day, still in a vortex of thought, unable to come up with an answer, his feet took him to the usual place.
His steps grew heavy, for he was filled with gloom at how he would face the girl waiting for him.
Perhaps it was the first time in his life that he had worried his head about such a thing.
Had he not continued swinging a sword without needing to think?
Just when he had resolved to give such a nasty reply…
“—Wilhelm.”
…the girl, there in place ahead of him, looked back with a small smile as she called his name.
—Suddenly, his soul shuddered.
His feet halted, and he could not help feeling nauseous.
Suddenly, Wilhelm was assailed by a realization that seemed to crush his body.
When he sought to cast everything aside with such a conclusion, that he had swung the sword without a thought, a variety of things he’d stopped thinking about and set aside suddenly spewed forth.
He didn’t understand the reason. The trigger wasn’t set in stone. That moment, the bulwark he had raised so long ago had abruptly reached its limit.
Why did he swing the sword?
Why had he started to swing the sword?
He yearned for the glimmer of the sword, the strength, the purity of living by the blade.
There was that, too. There was that also, but surely, it had begun somewhere else.
“I have to do what my older brothers can’t.”
It was because swinging a sword was a field largely neglected by his older brothers.
Yet even so, it was because his brothers sought to protect their family in their own way that he, so useless to them, sought his own, different way to defend them.
Was that not why he was captivated by the strength and glimmer of a blade?
“Do you like flowers now?”
“…I do not hate them.”
“Why do you swing the sword?”
“It is all I… I could think of no other way to protect others.”
Ever since, the previous ritualistic exchange of words ceased to be.
In place, he thought that their topics shifted around quite a bit. Before he realized it, he was heading there not with the aim of swinging a sword, but to meet Theresia.
In a place where he should have been swinging his sword without a thought, his head somehow came to find that insufficient, and topics shifted to places away from the sword.
Until then, his fighting style had been to charge single-handedly into the enemy formation and take as many heads as he could, but somewhere along the line, that changed to him running around with a focus on diminishing harm to his allies any way he could.
The sight of him prioritizing his companions’ safety over slaying the enemy naturally resulted in a change in how others saw him.
Old war comrades that had stuck with Wilhelm since his bad-behavior days were both delighted at the change in him and conflicted by it…
…for the number of people who spoke to him and that he spoke to both increased.
Previously unheard-of calls for his promotion to knight arose, and he spent only a small amount of time weighing the matter before accepting.
Deep down, he, too, found having such prestige better than not.
“There were calls for my promotion, so I became a knight.”
“I see. Congratulations. That makes you one step closer to your dream, doesn’t it?”
“Dream?”
“You took up the sword to protect people, didn’t you? And a knight is someone who protects others.”
He felt that, among the things he wanted to protect, her smiling face stood out.
4
More time passed.
Having become a knight, and coming into contact with more people within the army, the information reaching his ears naturally increased.
The deeply bogged-down civil war continued, with an advance on one front matched by retreat from the next. Wilhelm, too, experienced not only victorious battles but defeats as well.
Along the way, he spent his days continuing to struggle to protect those within reach of his sword, while bitterly regretting those things that were beyond his reach.
It was by happenstance he heard that the fires of war had shifted to the land of the House of Trias.
That fact casually reached Wilhelm’s ears from a newfound companion inside the army. Namely, that the civil war that had begun in the kingdom’s east had broadened, reaching all the way to the Trias domain in the north.
There was no order given.
So long as a knight did not forget the position allotted to him, it was impermissible for him to act on his own. But to Wilhelm, embracing once more his feelings from the time he first grasped a sword, such things meant nothing.
By the time he rushed to his beloved homeland, the advancing enemy army had already turned it into a sea of flame.
When the scenery that he had abandoned over five years before faded before the reality of more familiar sights, Wilhelm drew his blade, raised his voice, and dashed into the bloody mists.
He cut down his foes, trod over their corpses, and shouted until his throat grew parched as he bathed in blood spatter.
The enemy’s numbers were overwhelming. There were no reinforcements, and it was a land weak in fighting strength to begin with.
Until that point, he had meant to fight in battle on his strength alone, but he learned the price, taking one wound and then another—becoming unable to move.
Collapsing atop a pile of corpses, crushed before the numbers of the enemy force that still showed no signs of running dry, Wilhelm understood that death was coming before his eyes.
The beloved sword that had long been with him fell by the wayside, for his fingertips were too numb and lifeless to hold it aloft.
With his eyes closed, he looked back at half his life, during which he had done nothing but swing a sword.
It was a lonely life—a life with nothing.
Along with that conclusion came a momentary sight—and along the way, one face after another flashed before him. He remembered them one by one: his parents, his two older brothers, the bad friends he had hung out with in the domain, his comrades and superiors from the royal army—and finally, that of Theresia, with flowers behind her.
“I don’t want to die…”
It should have been his true hope to live by the sword and die by the sword. But faced with the actual result of his way of life, devoting everything to steel, Wilhelm, with the end he should have desired before his eyes, was stricken with an unbearable feeling of loneliness.
The enemy soldier that had cut down so many of his comrades would not honor the final words he had let slip. Inhumanly large in body, they mercilessly swung their great sword down at Wilhelm—
“ ? ”
—He would eternally remember the beauty of the slash that lashed out.
A storm of swords blew, and in course, the demi-human’s limbs, head, and torso were cleanly severed.
A great uproar spread among the enemy force, but the racing silver flash was faster, easily inflicting death in large quantities.
Splattered blood rose up, the death cries did not cease, and the demi-humans’ lives were shaved away.
The all-too-vivid slashes did not register even with those struck by them, managing no expression as their lives were snuffed out.
Whether such acts were cruelty or mercy, no one knew.
As to what was known, there was but a single thing—
—Surely he could not reach that realm of the blade in a lifetime, or even eternity.
He had lived by swinging a blade, devoting the majority of his not-overly-long life to that purpose. And because of that, it was Wilhelm who could keenly comprehend the heights of the swordsmanship repeated over and over before his very eyes.
So, too, the fact that it was a realm he, a man of no talent, could never reach.
If Wilhelm had created a valley of bloody mist in his homeland, it was truly a sea of blood that spread before his eyes. The literal mountain of corpses piled atop one another had no comparison.
The silver flash did not cease its dance until every demi-human invading the Trias lands had ceased breathing.
Having witnessed the overwhelming slaughter to the end, he was carried out by late-arriving comrades from the royal army. They shouted various things and tended to his wounds, but Wilhelm never took his eyes off the sight.
Finally, the slender long sword wavered, and the sword fighter finally walked off.
Wilhelm shuddered when he realized that the sword fighter had not been bathed in a single drop of spattered blood.
He reached out with his hand but could not reach the back moving away.
Most likely, the distance between them was not a physical one alone.
It was when he returned to the royal capital that he heard the true name of the one bearing the alias of Sword Saint.
It was around the same time that the name of the Sword Saint began to reverberate in every land in the stead of Wilhelm the Sword Devil.
Sword Saint—once upon a time, that was the legendary being who had cut down the Witch bringing calamity to the world.
To that day, the men beloved by the sword god were of the blood of that single family, and it was through that direct bloodline that one generation’s superman was born after another.
The name of the Sword Saint of that generation had never been public even once—so, too, until that time.
5
It was several days later that his battle wounds had healed and he made his way to the usual place.
Gripping the hilt of his beloved sword, Wilhelm quietly trod the soil as he headed for the flower garden.
He was certain she would be there.
And in accordance with his firm belief, Theresia was sitting in that place, no different from before.
“……”
Before she could look back, Wilhelm drew his sword and leaped at her.
Just before the semicircular cut would have split the girl’s head—she caught the tip of his sword with two fingertips, bringing it to a halt.
A sound of wonder caught in Wilhelm’s throat as a malevolent smile came over his lips. “Humiliating.”
“…Is that so?”
“Were you laughing at me?”
“……”
“Go ahead and laugh, Theresia…no, Sword Saint—Theresia van Astrea!!”
With all his might, he raised his sword high and sliced at her again, but she evaded by a single hair in an undisturbed motion.
A moment after the dance of her red hair stole his eyes, his feet were swept from under him, unable to break the fall as he was cruelly sent crashing down.
Even without a sword in her hand, the Sword Devil’s blade could not reach the Sword Saint.
An impregnable wall, a preposterous difference was now evident between them.
“I will not be coming here anymore.”
Several times more, Wilhelm went slicing after her, and each time, he was struck by a counterattack and beaten to the ground.
At some point, his beloved blade was snatched from him, and as it rested in her hand, he was beaten by the hilt until he was unable to move.
So far. So very weak. He could not reach. It was not enough.
“Don’t hold a sword with…that face…”
“I do, for I am the Sword Saint. I did not understand the reason why I was, but I understand now.”
“Reason, you say…!”
“You swing the sword to protect others. I think I can do that, too.”
It was Wilhelm who had given Theresia, the girl who loved flowers, who could find no meaning in gripping a sword, that reason—all the more because she was stronger than anyone, the furthest beyond the reach of anyone’s sword.
“W-wait, Theresia…”
“……”
“I’ll take your sword from you. As if I care about your blessing or your role. Don’t underestimate swinging the sword…or the beauty of the blade, Sword Saint…!”
The woman did not stop. Her back grew distant.
All that was left behind was a lone, foolish devil, speaking of the sword to her, who was loved by the sword.
Afterward, the two would never meet there again.
6
The Sword Devil vanished from the royal army; in his place, the name of the Sword Saint spread within it.
A knight worth a thousand men—with hard fighting by Theresia, the embodiment of those words, the civil war tilted in their favor. Though a single person, her martial feats were beyond the realm of any individual, and the alias of Sword Saint resounded—even the demi-humans versed in the old legends despaired.
It took two years after the Sword Saint emerged on the battlefield for the civil war to end.
The Demi-human Alliance lost those who carried it upon their shoulders, and when peace talks were carried out somewhere between the current leaders on both sides, it announced that at minimum, the fight between those bearing swords had come to an end.
Blessed by the end of the long-running civil war, the royal capital gently opened up and began to flower.
A ceremony had been planned where a powerful, beautiful Sword Saint would be granted several medals. People throughout the kingdom traveled to the capital to glimpse the sight of Theresia, the red-haired Sword Saint—the hero whose passion had single-handedly brought the long suffering from wild war to an end.
—It was then that the Sword Devil unexpectedly descended, as if to slice that passion asunder.
The soldiers on guard became agitated from the incredible antagonism rising from a man with a naked blade in his hand. But it was none other than the Sword Saint, the flower of the ceremony, who checked them and advanced to the fore.
Each turned their sword toward the other, almost as if walking onto a prearranged stage.
When her long, red hair fluttered in the wind, none failed to hold their breath at the sight of her facing the intruder. It was difficult to find words for an appearance with such refined beauty, yet so at one with the blade.
The malevolent antagonism of the individual facing the Sword Saint was the polar opposite. Both the brown mantle over him and the skin underneath were filthy all over from rainwater and caked mud. Even the sword in his hand was meager compared to the ceremonial holy blade the Sword Saint held in hers. The blade of the well-made sword was crooked, with reddish-brown rust all over it.
Though the king was seated on the same stage they were on, he halted the knights attempting to go to the Sword Saint’s aid. When the Sword Saint stepped forward and her swordplay glimmered, all pulled their chins back, and none raised a voice, watching in silence.
At the beginning, no doubt many found the two figures having vanished from their sight.
Blade recoiled from blade again and again; high-pitched sounds shot past the spectators.
There was a chain of glimmers and sounds of steel as the two figures danced upon the stage at a dizzying speed.
Soon, those witnessing the spectacle had lost their voices, their hearts going to and fro, overwhelmed with a vast sense of admiration.
They battled with incredible force, switching where they stood, from the ground to the walls to the very air as the swordplay of the two sword fighters blurred. Some even realized that the sight had brought them to tears.
But as they listened to the orchestra of echoing steel, they instinctively shuddered, intoxicated by the sublime sight.
They thought, is this really a realm that people can reach?
Can the beauty of the sword truly instill such deep feelings in others?
Their swordplay intermingled, with locked swords, flashing tips, and repeated recoils.
And finally…
“ ? ”
…the discolored blade snapped in half, its tip sent flying, spinning round and round in the air.
Then, the hand in which rested the Sword Saint’s ceremonial sword—
“Victory…”
“……”
“Victory…is mine.”
The holy sword audibly dropped to the ground, and the broken sword’s warped tip came to rest just short of the Sword Saint’s throat.
The spectacle made time stop, and all knew.
The Sword Saint had lost.
“You’re weaker than me, so you have no reason to wield a sword.”
“If not me…then who?”
“I’ll carry on your reason for swinging a sword. You just need to become…my reason to swing one.”
He lifted up the hood of his outer garment. The sullen face of Wilhelm glared at Theresia from under the dark, filthy cloth.
Theresia shook her head a little at Wilhelm’s behavior.
“You are a terrible person. You’ve made a person’s determination, resolve, everything all go to waste.”
“I’ll carry on everything that’s gone to waste. You can forget about gripping a sword and just take it… Yes, that’s it. You can raise flowers and live in peace and quiet behind me.”
“Protected by your sword?”
“That’s right.”
“You’ll protect me?”
“That’s right.”
Theresia placed her hand against the flat of the sword thrust toward her, taking a step forward.
The two faced each other, close enough to feel each other’s breath.
Tears welled in Theresia’s damp eyes, but they only conveyed her little smile as they fell.
“Do you like flowers?”
“I stopped hating them.”
“Why do you swing the sword?”
“To protect you.”
The distance closed as their faces drew close; finally, it vanished.
When she drew back from the touch of their lips, Theresia’s cheeks were red. She gently stared at Wilhelm as she asked, “Do you love me?”
He averted his face and bluntly stated, “—You know I do.”
Just then, the people enthralled by the dancing of swords regained their senses, and a great throng of guards pressed close. Wilhelm’s shoulders sank when he saw familiar faces among the soldiers rushing over.
Theresia’s cheeks puffed up at his dismissive demeanor.
Their smiles were like those they had exchanged during the days they spent gazing at the flowers.
“Sometimes a woman wants to hear the words.”
“Er.”
Scratching his head with a guilty expression on his face, Wilhelm reluctantly looked back at Theresia, drawing his face close to her ear as he whispered, “Someday, when I feel like it.”
And thus, he glossed over the embarrassing words.
7
—He raced like the wind, and the gleaming, treasured sword rent the stone-like hide with ease.
“Ooooooooooo—!!”
The shout the aged swordsman raised seemed to trail behind him. Whale blood spewed from the fresh blade wound, dying the sky scarlet.
He appeared wounded all over his body.
Then as before, blood seemed to be dripping from his left shoulder, but the blood spatter drenching his entire body had mixed with his own blood, turning its color to black.
Over such a brief period of time, no more could be expected from healing magic than stopping the bleeding and restoring a small amount of endurance. He was still in a gravely injured state, told he must have complete rest.
But seeing Wilhelm as he was that moment, none could laugh him off as an old man on death’s door.
Seeing the gleam in both his eyes, seeing the strength in his steps as he raced, seeing the vividness of the slashes of the sword he wielded, hearing the earsplitting cry echoing forth, and captivated by the glimmer of his soul, none could laugh off the old man’s accumulated life as that of a fool.
His blade ran, a scream rose, and the White Whale’s enormous, suffering body was wracked with intense pain.
With the demon beast crushed under the Great Tree, unable to move, the Sword Devil racing along its back did not hesitate to use his blade. The slash begun at the tip of its head ran down its back and reached its tail, and when the Sword Devil stood upon the ground, he turned right around, rending its belly on his way back to the head.
In one swing—sharp, deep, and very, very long—the single flash of silver cut the White Whale in two.
With a leap, the Sword Devil came down onto the tip of the unmoving White Whale’s nose once more.
He shook the blood off his drenched sword as he and the White Whale looked each other eye to eye—their two fates merging together.
“…I have no intention of speaking ill to you. There is no use explaining good and evil to a beast. Between you and me, there is only the law of life and death: The weak are cut down by the strong.”
“ ? ”
“Sleep—eternally.”
Leaving behind one last little murmur, light faded from the White Whale’s eyes.
Its enormous body went limp, and when it collapsed, the earth shuddered; the droplets of its fresh blood formed a muddy river.
No one could put the feeling of blood running underfoot into words.
A silence befell the Liphas Highway. And then—
“It’s over, Theresia. It’s finally…”
Atop the head of the immobile White Whale, Wilhelm turned his face skyward.
When the treasured sword fell from his hand, he brought that hand up to cover his face, and with a quivering voice, the weaponless Sword Devil said, “Theresia, I…”
The voice was raspy, but there was boundless, undiminished love within it.
“I love you—!!”
They were words of love only Wilhelm knew. Things he had never told her.
They contained feelings accumulated over many years, words he had not spoken even once to the one he loved most, right up to the day he lost her.
Finally, after the passage of decades, Wilhelm had voiced the words with which he should have answered her question so long ago.
Atop the corpse of the White Whale, his sword fallen from his grasp, the Sword Devil cried out his love for his departed wife, and he wept.
8
“—Here, the White Whale has fallen.”
Haltingly, the sound of a stirring voice echoed across the silence of the nighttime plain.
At that voice, the men, lost for words, lifted their faces.
Their gazes poured over a young woman calmly advancing to the fore on the back of a white land dragon.
Her long, green hair was frayed, and she was cruelly adorned by wounds suffered at the height of the battle, her face sullied by her own blood, a most sorry state for her to be seen in.
And yet, in their eyes, the girl had never shone brighter.
That was natural for those who judged the worth of others by the glimmer of their souls.
“……”
With the knights gazing upon her, the gallant young woman lifted her face and took a deep breath.
Having lent her treasured sword, Crusch’s scabbard was currently empty.
Accordingly, she thrust her fist toward the heavens, as if to show her closed hand to all present as she announced:
“The Demon Beast of Mist that menaced the world across four centuries of life—has been slain by Wilhelm van Astrea!!”
“—Aye!!”
“In this battle, we are victorious—!!”
With their lord loudly proclaiming victory, the surviving knights raised shouts of joy.
With mist clearing over the plains, signs of night returned once more—a proper night, with moonlight illuminating the people on the ground far and wide.
And there, after four hundred years, the Battle of the White Whale came to an end.
No Comments Yet
Post a new comment
Register or Login