Wortenia Senki (LN) - Volume 15 - Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Tarnished Pride

A rapid six-point thrust, moving faster than the eye could see, flowed into a sideways sweep. The sound of a blade slicing through the cold night air mingled with the huffs of labored breathing.

The moment Menea Norberg saw him perform that technique, she felt a shock run through her entire body. To her, this lethal sequence of attacks was a sight to behold. It was, in a manner of speaking, movement that bordered on art.

Impressive...

The Church of Meneos passed down martial arts techniques that employed all manner of weaponry—swords, spears, and bows—and one had to train in all of them to join the Temple Knights. It was similar to the Eighteen Arms of Wushu, a list of the eighteen weapons used in Chinese martial arts. Of the weapons included, the Temple Knights prioritized the sword. They focused on their swordsmanship, the style of which was known to only the members of the Temple Knights and their opponents who’d crossed blades with them. This in and of itself demonstrated how important the sword was to them.

It makes sense he’d start off with a six-point thrust. How many of the veteran members can even block that move? He followed it up with a thunderstorm flurry—a sideways sweep into a right slash—and he maintained his momentum and finished with an upward sweep. A deadly combination.

Menea didn’t know who’d come up with this style of swordplay, but it had been passed down through the Temple Knights for many years. There were ninety-nine forms, and members of the order diligently studied and polished each of them to perfection in battle.

The style itself was already lethal, but what made it truly terrifying was that the different forms could be strung together for a combination attack. That created hundreds upon thousands of variations, and based on the wielder’s skill and ingenuity, they could construct many different types of combination attacks.

The Temple Knights believed that mastering this swordplay style was as crucial as mastering martial thaumaturgy, so it had become a fundamental part of the order’s identity.

Menea was watching a man practice these techniques. They were in the garden of the Mars Pavilion, the lodging that Cardinal Roland had rented for himself and the church’s delegation. The building was U-shaped, and at its center was the garden, surrounded on three sides by the inn’s walls. This layout made it impossible for anyone to enter from the street or even glimpse inside the structure.

The garden’s main purpose was to offer guests peace and serenity, and they were free to enter from inside the inn and stroll through it whenever they liked. Guests especially enjoyed having lunch in the gazebo while the noon sun shone overhead. The seasonal flowers and well-maintained lawn made it the picture-perfect place to relax.

Recently, however, fewer and fewer people were frequenting the garden because Rodney Mackenna, a man affiliated with the Temple Knights, had made it his constant hangout. He wasn’t intentionally monopolizing it, though. He just needed a spacious area with enough room to train and move about with nothing in the way.

His room was rather large, so he could have trained there, and it would have sufficed because he was mostly focusing on improving his form and increasing his muscle mass. Still, the wide garden was much more ideal than a room full of furniture and fixtures. In particular, he couldn’t practice martial thaumaturgy in his room. And since the garden was full of trees and plants, the air quality was much better. Not that it was difficult to breathe in his room, but air quality made all the difference when training.

On top of that, the garden was still within the premises of the Mars Pavilion, meaning it was less likely a stranger would happen upon him training. After all, this was Pireas, Rhoadseria’s capital city, and Rodney couldn’t afford to accidentally get in trouble with Rhoadseria’s knights. Normally, Rodney would talk things out and resolve the matter peacefully if that were to happen, but in his current state of mind, he would certainly cut down whoever argued with him without a second thought.

In that regard, the Mars Pavilion’s proprietor shouldn’t have allowed Rodney to use the garden, a place of respite, as a training ground. In fact, the proprietor had already sent Cardinal Roland a few complaints, a not-so-subtle hint at just how much this troubled the Mars Pavilion. But the cardinal understood how Rodney was feeling, so he’d simply accepted the complaints without passing them along. Instead, he’d paid the proprietor a large sum for the inconvenience, and the proprietor had agreed to tolerate the situation for now.

Considering what Rodney’s doing, it’d be strange if no one complained.

Menea, hiding behind one of the garden’s trees, gazed at the ground around Rodney. The soil was disturbed and pocked. Rodney’s powerful stomps, reinforced by martial thaumaturgy, crushed the well-maintained lawn and destroyed its orderly shape, and his intense swordplay scattered and swept the seasonal flowers away.

Rodney hadn’t intended to ruin the flowers or the lawn, and there was no malice behind his actions, but the proprietor didn’t much care whether he’d done it on purpose. When the cardinal and his delegation first arrived at the Mars Pavilion, the proprietor had proudly declared that it had the best garden in the capital and that restoring it to its present glory had taken both a great deal of money and years of work.

But I can understand why Rodney’s acting like this.

Menea knew Rodney very well. He was a kindhearted man, even if he was a bit of a spoiled, overgrown boy who lacked common sense. His skills with the blade were top notch, but he could be needlessly earnest and a little blind to human malice. Worst of all, he was a sore loser. He had the strength to keep on fighting, even if his opponent was much stronger than him...so long as he believed he was in the right.

Because of his disposition, Rodney would have struggled to maintain Count Mackenna’s domain, even if he hadn’t been driven out of the Kingdom of Tarja. Nobles needed to have pride, but at the same, they needed to know when to make political compromises. That kind of flexibility wasn’t in Rodney’s nature.

Given how he is, being forced to leave Tarja wasn’t all bad.

They resented the fact that they’d had to leave, and looking back on it now still boiled Menea’s blood, but things seemed different when viewed from a noble’s perspective. Rodney was a worthy warrior, but Menea had to admit—though it pained her to do so—that he would’ve made a terrible noble. He lacked the skills necessary to make a domain prosper, and he couldn’t have assimilated whatsoever into the royal court with its cutthroat politics.

Not every noble house’s head has to be a good politician, but considering Rodney’s personality...

Neither political savvy nor managerial skills were expected of the house’s head. They weren’t undesirable qualities, of course, and if one had them, all the better. After all, it was a noble’s duty to manage and develop their domain. But lacking those skills didn’t disqualify one from being a noble.

Or rather, the head doesn’t necessarily need to have those skills himself...

In all likelihood, very few family heads were talented in both politics and military affairs. Most noble houses relied upon the history behind their names and the retainers in service to them. The only trait a family head needed was pedigree, along with the ability to effectively use his retainers. Even if the head was lacking in certain skills, he could always hire dependable subordinates to handle things for him.

Things were rarely that simple, though. If one could just control their subordinates, things could end up resolving nicely, but that sadly wasn’t the usual outcome. Sometimes it was the head’s fault. They could fail to recognize a skilled subordinate’s contributions, or even grow envious of them. It was a contradiction; they would gather the talented to serve under them, but they couldn’t stand it when others were more successful than they were. Most people would say that if they were so jealous, they shouldn’t have invited them to be their vassals to begin with. Otherwise, it would be more productive to admit their shortcomings and strive to improve themselves. But by their very nature, people sometimes made unreasonable, illogical choices. A noble could accept that they were nothing more than a figurehead ruler, but those under them would eventually lose patience and rise up in revolt. Whether their attempt succeeded depended on a number of factors.

One could guess at another’s potential based on their past achievements, and based on what she’d seen, Menea conceded that Rodney Mackenna wasn’t necessarily the right man for the job.

The Rodney I used to know might’ve been able to function, if only as a puppet ruler, but...

The Rodney now was different from the Rodney she knew. The raid on Count Winzer’s estate in Galatia had changed something within him, or perhaps it had brought to the fore some part of him that she had never seen. He hadn’t changed much in his day-to-day life, but the shadow that sometimes fell over him was darker than before.

Plus, there was that run-in with the bandits a few days ago...

Menea’s well-kept brows furrowed as she recalled what had happened a week or so ago. When they were traveling on the highway to Pireas, a scout had reported that there were sounds of swords clashing in the woods nearby. Rodney and Menea left Cardinal Roland’s safety to their comrades and took ten soldiers to follow the scout into the woods.

When they neared the source of the sounds, they found a dozen or so bandits surrounding a band of merchants. Unfortunately, by the time they arrived, the raid had ended and the bandits were preparing to eliminate their victims. The guards protecting the merchants lay collapsed on the ground, no longer able to fight. The guards who still drew breath waited for the bandits to deliver the final blow.

To the bandits, any adventurers or mercenaries guarding the merchants were a problem. The merchants could be held for ransom, but if the bodyguards were to survive, they could report the bandits to the guild or the city patrol. Then the bandits would have a bounty on their heads, and they didn’t want skilled mercenaries coming after them. Just one surviving guard would put the bandits’ lives at risk, so while finishing off the weak and defenseless was by no means an admirable act, the bandits were merely doing what they had to do.

A few of the merchants were still standing, prepared to fight, but with their guards out of commission, they couldn’t possibly escape a dozen bandits surrounding them. The outcome was all but decided.

The five merchants looked around in despair. They were only a few days away from the capital, so they were in a relatively safe area, but despite that, bandits attacked in broad daylight. This could only mean that Rhoadseria was on its deathbed. Still, given the many upheavals the country had faced in the last few years, it didn’t come as much of a surprise.

The problem is...

The problem was how Rodney reacted this time. Had he been the same Rodney Menea knew prior to this, he would have cautiously picked a solution that minimized the lives lost. He wouldn’t have simply drawn his sword and charged at the enemy. And even if he were to do that, he would have at least considered the merchants’ safety. This time, however, he didn’t.

The memory of that moment filled Menea with fear toward Rodney.

If I just look at the end results, it might look like he chose the best option he could, but...

Instead of waiting, Rodney had rushed in. He severed the first bandit’s head, then used that momentum to diagonally slash into a second bandit behind him. He then thrust his sword, too swift for the human eye to follow, into the heart of a third bandit.

The fact that Rodney had charged the bandits by himself and cut them down wasn’t the issue. He was one of the strongest members of the Temple Knights and was proficient with both a sword and martial thaumaturgy. He could have beaten twice the number of bandits just as easily. And had things ended there, everything would have been fine. He’d proved that the arm he lost to the assailant in Galatia had recovered properly; it was terrific news.

But things hadn’t ended there. The bandits had all frozen in fear, but then one of them finally came to his senses and pulled a stupefied merchant toward him, holding the merchant hostage. That was when the nightmare began.

Rodney didn’t react at all to seeing that...

In a sense, that was true, but it wasn’t quite accurate. What he did was cut the bandit down without even flinching.

Rodney cut the bandit...along with the merchant he was using as a meat shield.

That scene was irrevocably etched into Menea’s mind. The Rodney Mackenna she knew would never have done that.

Fortunately, Rodney hadn’t killed the merchant. He’d pierced his body and the body of the bandit behind him, but he had avoided any spots that would have fatally injured the hostage. The bandit, however, died on the spot.

Rodney’s skill was almost godly. To successfully accomplish something like that required a perfect understanding of the human body and precise, unerring accuracy. Naturally, after witnessing that, the remaining bandits had fled. The merchant’s injuries were thankfully minor, and he was immediately restored to health thanks to a nostrum Cardinal Roland had given them.

If one considered only the outcome, their small group had stopped a large bandit raid with minimal damages. This was worthy of praise. Nonetheless, there might have been a better choice, and that doubt weighed heavily on Menea’s heart, even days after the fact.

We could’ve hurried back and asked Cardinal Roland for permission to take his knights. If we’d done that, we could have wiped out the entire bandit group.

That option would have been risky, though. The merchants could have died in the ensuing battle. Some of them would have perished, so in that light, Rodney made the right choice. On the other hand, there was no guarantee that the bandits who got away wouldn’t go on to attack other travelers or villages. As cold as it might be, Menea wasn’t necessarily comfortable with prioritizing the lives of five merchants over countless future victims.

I’m glad they’re alive, of course, but...

The merchants had been as grateful as they could be to Rodney for saving them in their time of need—even the merchant Rodney had stabbed through the stomach. He’d thought his life was already forfeit the instant he was taken hostage. Even if he were to survive that predicament, whatever came next would have certainly been a fate worse than death. Regardless of his methods, Rodney had spared him from that fate, so he didn’t blame Rodney for what he did. Also, the other merchants promised they would donate the largest, most expensive gems in their cargo to the Church of Meneos out of gratitude.

That was fine, but Menea still felt unsettled by the whole affair.

It’s not what Rodney did in and of itself. It’s the fact that he chose to do that.

Menea wasn’t sure they’d had any other choice, and the result wasn’t as bad as it could have been. In that sense, Menea’s anxiety seemed irrational. If she wanted to claim that her anxiety was justified, she would need to come up with a better solution of some kind. But Menea wasn’t sure that any other choice would have produced a better outcome, and because of that, her feelings came across as nothing but a whim.

I’m acting like a child throwing a tantrum.

Menea realized that her emotions were unreasonable, but what truly frustrated her was that Rodney Mackenna had changed and was no longer the man she knew. No one could deny that she was right in feeling that way either. The validation of her doubts was right before her eyes, in the form of this decimated garden.

What happened that night is haunting Rodney.

When Rodney lost his arm in the attack on Count Winzer’s estate, he had changed. Rodney had tried to hide it from everyone around him, but Menea had been at his side long enough to notice it. The nostrums Cardinal Roland provided had restored his arm, but they did nothing to heal his wounded heart.

First, Rodney started drinking much more than before. He’d always had a taste for alcohol, and he was a pretty strong drinker at that. He could drink two or three bottles a night, then wake up the next morning without so much as a hangover. But now he was drinking absurd amounts. Whenever he finished his maddened practice sessions, he would drown himself in alcohol, downing nearly ten bottles a night. As far as Menea knew, he did this every single night too. This was a classic example of a man resorting to alcohol as an escape from extreme stress.

In addition, Rodney’s appetite greatly decreased, almost in inverse proportion to his increased drinking. He didn’t skip meals altogether, but he kept asking the inn’s employees to put less food on his plate, using what they served as snacks for his drinking bouts.

Menea felt that all of this cast a shadow over Rodney’s personality. Up until now, Rodney was the type to take the initiative among the knights. During feasts and nights out, he would actively participate and liven up the atmosphere.

He was different now. He would still come if invited to drink, but he never looked like he was enjoying himself. He wouldn’t participate in conversations, instead emptying his mugs and glasses in silence. He showed up out of duty as a member of the Temple Knights, but he much preferred to spend his free time alone practicing his swordsmanship.

He’s shutting himself off from everyone else.

There was only one reason Rodney was acting like this—the shadow hanging over him ever since his arm was severed that night.

As Menea leaned against the tree she was hiding behind, her mind full of these thoughts, the man she was watching suddenly barked, “How long do you plan on hiding there? If you want something, speak already.”

Menea peeked out from behind the tree and saw Rodney looking at her with displeasure, his face covered in sweat. He looked like he’d just stepped out of a downpour. His linen blouse clung to his body, and hot steam rose from his skin. His labored breathing echoed in the night.

“I’m sorry,” Menea sheepishly replied. “I didn’t mean to get in the way of your training, but...”

“I see.”

Rodney nodded curtly and turned around.

Rodney was still determined to continue training, but Menea keenly saw the way he staggered for a moment.

How many hours has he been at it?

Menea realized that warriors, by nature, pursued strength. Strength was the sum of one’s talent and effort, and as such, every second one trained was time being well spent, not time being wasted. But everything had its limits, and training wasn’t just about blindly waving a sword. Rodney was needlessly and recklessly forcing himself to train past his limits. At this point, it wasn’t even training anymore; it was punishment, perhaps even suicide. Rodney had to have realized this, yet he was still bent on swinging his sword more.

Watching his back, Menea timidly uttered, “Count Winzer’s death wasn’t your fault, Rodney...”

Rodney stopped in his tracks. Her words poked at a wound that still ached, and Menea knew it. But now that she’d said it, there was no taking it back, so she continued to put her feelings into words.

“Rodney, let me say it one more time... You did your duty that night. Cardinal Roland acknowledges that. No one is blaming you, so stop tormenting yourself.”

Rodney shivered in anger. “What do you even know?” he said with a low, dark voice. His tone was a hodgepodge of hatred, ire, and regret.

Nevertheless, Menea didn’t step down. Her restrained anger seeped into her words as she asked, “Are you that frustrated that you didn’t get killed back there too? Do you seriously think you should’ve died back at Count Winzer’s estate?”

Rodney said nothing, but his silence said everything.

“I see... So you think that man took pity on you?”

A clattering sound echoed in the garden. Rodney’s right hand, which was gripping his sword, started shaking. Menea was correct; the fact that the assailant had spared his life that night was the greatest insult a warrior like him could have received. If the assailant had just defeated him, Rodney would’ve been able to come to terms with that. So long as he put forth his best effort, even dying at the hands of a foe was an acceptable fate. Actually, he would have welcomed it as an honor. But nearly dying, just to cling to life by the mercy of his enemy... That smeared mud over his pride and honor. It made all that he’d built in his life so far collapse like a house of cards.

To a warrior like Rodney, this was a fate worse than death, and it would haunt him for as long as he lived. Spending the rest of his days with this defeat festering in his heart would make his life a living hell. And there was only one way to escape that fate.

Rodney started to walk off again, then, with his back still turned to Menea, he whispered, “I will kill him. I swear it. No matter what I have to sacrifice to do it...”

His words sounded like they’d risen up from the bottom of the earth, laced with sheer hatred and desire for revenge.

Menea sighed as she watched Rodney walk back to the inn. Her expression was a mix of regret and relief.

He went back to the inn for the night.

Rodney’s current state was bloodcurdling. If she’d left him alone, Rodney would have undoubtedly spent the whole night training, so the fact that she’d successfully stopped him from doing that was fortunate. All the same, it was merely delaying the issue.

The problem is the identity of Count Winzer’s attacker. We haven’t told Asuka about it yet, but it’s probably... 

That night at Count Winzer’s estate, Menea had given Rodney first aid as he lay bleeding on the floor. That moment was burned into her heart, never to be forgotten. The cut on his arm was shockingly clean, implying that the one who’d severed it was unusually skilled. But it was more than just that. The sword that cut him had to have been exceptional too, among the keenest Menea had ever seen. One could search the western continent up and down and struggle to find swords that sharp.

Menea had seen another equally as clean...on the corpse of a Third-Eye, a tiger monster she saw when she rescued an otherworlder girl who’d just been summoned from Rearth. The meaning behind that was clear.

Asuka was definitely inside the inn at the time. So it’s possible...

Perhaps an unrelated third party happened to have a sword just as sharp as hers, but the chances of that were close to nil. The more likely possibility was that it was Asuka’s relative, Koichiro Mikoshiba.

But if it is him, it raises another question...

As far as Menea knew, she had done no harm to Asuka Kiryuu. When Asuka was summoned to this world by the Kingdom of Beldzevia, she’d been overwhelmed by everything and hadn’t known anything. Menea had offered her shelter and guidance, and Asuka had been grateful for it. Asuka had no reason to begrudge them.

Maybe this was why he spared Rodney...

Still, severing his arm was a violent act. No person would do that to someone they were grateful toward.

And we still don’t know who attacked my side either. It’s easy to assume they’re from the Organization, but...

While Rodney was fighting the assailant, Menea had also engaged a warrior. The warrior had injured her, but she was fortunate enough to escape and reach Rodney in time. However, if her battle with that figure had continued any further, she would have been severely injured. Like Rodney, Menea was one of the Temple Knights’ elites, so her attacker had to have been skilled. In fact, given the ferocity of her opponent, Menea was lucky she’d survived that battle with just injuries. Such a warrior could have very well killed her.

I did injure my opponent too, but had the estate’s guards not hurried over when they did...

That was an honest account of that battle, though it greatly frustrated her. Yet facts were facts, and someone that skilled couldn’t have been some independent, unaffiliated figure. They had to have belonged to some country or group, and the most likely candidate was the secret society manipulating the western continent from the shadows. But if that were the case, it would imply that the Organization’s power was a match for the Church of Meneos.

And even worse...

Rodney and Menea held a grudge against the Organization for its involvement in driving them out of Tarja, so that theory would be devastating if true.

And if the attacker really was Koichiro Mikoshiba, and I’m right in assuming he’s a member of the Organization, why wouldn’t he try to take Asuka back from us?

If the Organization had a warrior that powerful on their side, surely they could have found plenty of ways to steal Asuka away from them. But the figure she suspected to be Koichiro had never once attempted to make contact with Asuka.

In the end, everything is still a mystery to me. But more importantly, right now...

Heaping theory upon theory wouldn’t bring her any closer to the conclusion. There was something else she needed to focus on now.

Ryoma Mikoshiba...a man with the same last name as Koichiro.

That couldn’t be a coincidence, but there was no one who could resolve her doubts.

Menea turned her gaze upward, as if seeking the answer to her questions in the northeastern sky.