Chapter 29

Chapter : 29

If one were to summarize the conversation I had with Agares, it would be fair to say that I had achieved a result of some significance.

Originally, Agares had insisted that under no circumstances would he cooperate in capturing Dimagen, but that resolve had now bent.

On top of that, he said that if I could prove myself more useful than Dimagen, he would lend me his hand.

Convincing myself that the situation had clearly improved, I launched into a long explanation for Ian.

“So, that’s how it went. I really did my best, but I came up just a little short. Still, it’s basically the same as having almost caught the fish already. We’re nearly there.”

“I see.”

“Yeah.”

“I see.”

There were many ways to pressure a person, and an attitude like Ian’s could be an excellent weapon.

“The thing is, I really was trying. I did my best in my own way, thinking hard, trying to soothe him, trying to coax him, trying everything I could. It just didn’t work out. I need a little more time.”

“I see.”

Crunch.

I clenched my fist hard.

Ian was right. Excuses like I worked hard or I tried my best were useless.

We weren’t children, and what we were dealing with carried weight. We needed results.

“All right. I’ll try one more time. This time, I’ll secure his cooperation.”

“There’s no need to push yourself that far. I know you’re doing your best.”

As if he meant a word of it.

I forced a smile and thanked him.

At a glance, it looked as though Ian was looking out for me, but the reality was nothing of the sort. His expression alone made that clear.

A blank face that looked as though it held no emotion at all.

Ian might be dull when it came to feeling emotion, but he had at least learned them.

He ought to know the appropriate response when comforting someone, so why act like this? He was pushing me forward.

“I’ll go speak to him again tomorrow.”

“There’s no need to overdo it.”

“Ah. Right.”

---

The burden Agares Ingrid carried on his back was heavy.

All those countless people of his territory whom he bore there.

Their lives and deaths, their happiness and misery, depended entirely upon his hands. A single mistake in his judgment, and many people died. Many suffered.

He inherited the position of lord at a young age.

He was young.

Very young.

At that age, he made mistakes again and again. Some froze to death because of them. Some starved. Some were torn apart by monsters.

Those failures clouded his judgment, and he used people rashly. The result was even greater damage. Foolish sympathy was nothing but baggage.

And so Agares came to this conclusion.

At all times, in all places, he had to make the right judgment, and the exact judgment.

Only then could he protect his people. He tried to kill his emotions.

The lives of his people were precious. They were jewels that could be exchanged for nothing.

Next.

The lives of imperial subjects outside his territory were less precious than that. For the sake of the people of his own land, some sacrifice could be tolerated.

And last.

The lives of humans who were not of the Empire were not all that precious.

Then what of the lives of those who were not human?

They had no value at all.

Set an example.

When nonhuman races hiding in the North caused trouble, he exterminated their bloodlines.

It was common in war to spare children and the elderly, but he ignored such conventions.

If he showed weakness, it would only become a vulnerability. He killed, and killed, and killed.

Infamy followed behind his name. Even to his own ears, the rumors were fearsome enough to make him laugh. That was fine. It would help him rule the territory.

That was how Agares protected and governed the North through fear.

The problem was monsters and demon beasts.

They knew no fear. When they encountered a predator stronger than themselves, they fled, but that was all. If food grew scarce, if a hunt failed, if they had nowhere to run, they threw themselves into battle with their lives on the line.

They ignored fear. Those things, truly without emotion, killed the civilians and soldiers of his territory. Agares sought a way to solve that problem.

Demon beasts arose in nature for reasons no one understood.

Their varieties were many. Sometimes an ordinary beast suddenly turned into a demon beast. Sometimes demon beasts of different species bred with one another. Sometimes they appeared out of nowhere.

The cause was difficult to identify, but the places where they emerged were consistent.

Usually they were far from human settlements, in barren lands where people could not live. Agares sent soldiers on patrol and ordered them to kill such creatures the moment they were found, but it was a bitter task.

Soldiers died while standing watch.

Soldiers died while patrolling.

Soldiers died while fighting demon beasts.

For that reason, Agares began making plans to kill demon beasts not with people, but with another means.

With the help of a Dark Mage.

A capable Dark Mage was said to be hiding in his territory.

Raphael had asked him to help kill that man.

Ridiculous.

Agares refused at once.

Then Raphael said that if Agares would help him, he in turn would help kill the demon beasts.

It was a proposal that showed some thought, but Agares rejected that as well. Raphael did not seem as though he would be of any help.

That was certainly how it had seemed.

And yet, look at this bastard.

“Why not put it to the test and see? Isn’t it possible I might be of some use?”

Raphael drew his sword in front of him.

It was laughable. Had their levels at least been close, Agares might have treated him seriously, but Raphael was not worth that.

Top Entrant in the Swordsmanship Department? What of it?

It was a meaningless crown. A place like that meant nothing.

Raphael, perhaps embarrassed himself, scratched his head while still holding the sword. Then he smiled awkwardly and said,

“Well, let’s be careful not to hurt each other. Shall we give it a try? I might be stronger than you think. Or perhaps... are you afraid?”

Judging by the childish taunt mixed into it, he seemed rather desperate.

“Ah.”

That was right. There had been rumors.

His parents had supposedly died at the hands of a Dark Mage.

Hmm.

If that was the Dark Mage he was chasing, then it made sense.

“Fine. Then I’ll humor you. Come at me with everything you’ve got.”

---

Could I defeat Agares?

The answer changed depending on what exactly one meant by defeat.

Kill him?

At present, that was not something a human being could accomplish.

Subdue him?

Even if I severed his limbs, they would regenerate at once, so that too was impossible.

Then?

There really wasn’t anything.

No. I couldn’t beat him.

Instead, the most I could do was show him that I was useful. Especially if it was a matter of producing explosive force in a short instant.

I activated the gloves.

Along with the sensation of mana boiling, strength flooded into my muscles. I tightened the mana, then made it explode in a single moment.

And then I swung my sword toward the opposite side of Agares.

BOOM!

The ground shattered, and fragments scattered everywhere. Thinking that should have been enough to show my strength, I glanced at Agares.

He said, as though the whole thing were absurd,

“What are you doing?”

“Ah, well. At first I thought we might really fight, but that didn’t seem right after all. This isn’t with wooden swords. If we fight with real blades and hurt each other, what then?”

“I’m perfectly capable of controlling my strength.”

“But if there were even a small mistake, it would hurt. For both of us.”

“Both of us? You, perhaps. Not me. There’s no chance you could injure me.”

“Well, one never knows.”

At that, Agares’s eyes flashed.

His black pupils gleamed strangely, and he raised only one corner of his mouth in a mocking sneer. At the same time, his thick dark brows drew together.

“By the look of you, you’ve never killed anyone.”

“Yes. Well. That’s true.”

“And looking more closely, it seems you’ve never even wounded someone.”

“Probably not.”

“So, a coward.”

Agares turned his palm upward and crooked his index finger at me.

“You’re afraid that if you swing your blade in earnest, I might actually get hurt, aren’t you? I’ll beat that soft-headed thinking out of you first.”

He attacked me without warning. There had been enough intent there for me to react, but the force behind it was terrifying.

WHOOOOM!

Wind followed in the wake of his fist, and the pressure alone shoved my body back.

“If you don’t want to die, then swing with everything you have!”

Agares attacked me with both hands and feet.

Compared to Jefrin, the speed was pitifully slow, but he was limiting my movements. He predicted where I would move to evade him and drove me in as though casting a net. At this rate, getting hit was only a matter of time.

There was only one way to break that.

Counterattack.

I had to swing a real blade at a real person.

“Haa…”

The moment I fell into this world, I set down my guiding principle.

My life came first.

If necessary, if it was to survive, I would even accept harming another person’s life.

And yet, just as Agares said, perhaps I really was a coward.

Not when it came to frightening someone, but when it came to wounding and killing with a blade, something inside me still recoiled.

“What are you doing!”

Seeing my hesitation, Agares pressed even harder. The speed of his fists continued to increase.

CLANG!

I knocked one of his punches aside.

At that, he laughed loudly.

“Hah! You fool. I deliberately left my chest open, and you still abandoned the opportunity? I threw away the emotion of pity when I was nine! What are you doing, calling yourself a lord!”

Aagh!

He accelerated all at once.

A fist flew toward my chest several times faster than before. I couldn’t dodge it, and I couldn’t block it. I shut my eyes tightly and braced for the impact.

“There are many things a lord must accept when governing a territory. If, every time, you let pity or fear of killing sway your judgment, then more people will die without fail!”

Instead of pummeling me, Agares seized me by the collar and shouted loud enough to tear my ears apart.

Then he flung me to the ground and said,

“Again.”

Why was he doing this?

This hadn’t been what I intended at all.

I was flustered by the sudden change in Agares, but in the end I decided to give him what he wanted and stab him once. It wasn’t as though he could die from it anyway.

“So you’ve steeled yourself at last.”

“Just try not to cry because it hurts.”

I thrust the sword.

Agares also threw a punch toward me, though a little slower this time. He seemed to be slowing deliberately, as though to give me a chance to truly stab him without fear.

Crunch!

The blade pierced straight through Agares’s chest.

People said blue blood flowed within him, but the Agares before me spilled vivid red blood in thick drops. One might have said I was glimpsing something human in him after all, but what I felt was a shiver crawling over my skin.

The sensation of piercing skin, tearing muscle, and crushing bone was horrible.

More than anything, Agares’s expression was grotesque.

He was smiling like a clown.

“Good. Keep going.”

He did not stop punching.

WHOOONG!

His fist passed right over my head. He clearly intended to continue.

Why?

For what purpose?

Judging by the way he kept grinning, it was no more than a passing whim.

I activated the gloves and glared at Agares. His chest, pierced straight through, kept pouring out blood without pause.

He was deliberately halting his regeneration, almost as though he wanted to teach me what it felt like to wound and kill a person.

The gloves flashed with light. Strength many times greater than usual surged through me.

BAM!

I met Agares’s fist with my own.

Even with a hole through his chest and in that awkward state, he still sent me flying.

BOOM!

I was thrown a full three meters and slammed back-first into a tree.

Distance opened between us.

I pulled out Star Lily from my pocket and swallowed it. Strength rose through my body.

Force Release was a technique for generating greater force in a single instant. This time, I used it to drive off the ground and charge.

Breaking through the wind at a speed that felt as though rockets had been strapped to my back, I closed in on Agares.

Using that speed, I thrust out my sword.

A stab.

Agares reached out to stop it with his hand, but the blade pierced clean through his palm.

I could have stopped there.

Ordinarily, that would have been a disabling wound.

But Agares would not stop.

So I stepped in one pace farther and stabbed him.

“Huff... huff…”

I was out of breath. My arms and legs felt heavy. At the sensation that it was finally over, exhaustion came rushing in.

“Well done.”

Agares, who had already restored his body, came toward me and said that.

And in that very instant—

CRACK!

A white thunderbolt struck.

It slammed into Agares.

One of his arms was torn away, and, electrocuted, he dropped to one knee on the spot.

Agares immediately spread his wings and transformed into a demon, regenerating his body, but the current still made him tremble.

“So that’s what it was.”

A sudden voice rang down from the sky.

It belonged to Ian.

Standing on the air itself, he cast down a red glow from his eyes. In a tone strangely light for the expression on his face, he said,

“After hearing Raphael’s story, I wondered what kind of idiot you were. A complete imbecile, apparently. A despicable criminal intrudes into your territory, and you mean to let it pass with a laugh? As if.”

“Who are you!”

Ian seized control of the mana in the surroundings.

Through his own Mana Hole, he drew in the mana around him and absorbed it. The gravity in the area grew heavier, and even the air itself seemed to thin.

This shouldn’t be possible.

There was no denying that Ian’s talent as a mage was extraordinary. It was also true that, by the author’s own word, he was the greatest genius of all time.

But this was too early.

Especially in areas so deeply tied to training time, like the quality and quantity of mana.

He shouldn’t have been this strong yet.

I fixed my gaze on Ian’s eyes. They were glowing scarlet.

So that’s why.

This was originally an event from much later in the story.

When Bishot fell into danger, Ian flew into a great rage and awakened a new trait. Frenzy. Berserk fury. Anger-control disorder. My sister had called it by a different name every day.

That power by which his Magical Power grew stronger the angrier he became.

“So you’re one of that Dark Mage’s lot as well.”

A vast current of Magical Power gathered around Ian and formed a storm centered on him. He was preparing a single overwhelming blow.

And the end of that blow would be Agares.

“Wow.”

This is insane.