Chapter 92
Leon confronts the Imperial Knights after sending Renoa away.
Aiter walked out alone toward him.
There was neither caution, anger, nor resentment in Leon's gaze toward Aiter. They simply exchanged calm looks.
“So because you're a prince, you can go around using the Emperor's name?”
“His Majesty the Emperor is a broad-minded man. For the greater good, he'd gladly overlook a bit of unfilial conduct like this.”
“If he's that broad-minded, can't he overlook our young lady a little too?”
“He's not that broad-minded.”
“He's a petty man, isn't he?”
“I can't deny that he has that side.”
Aiter brushed off Leon's sarcasm with an easy teasing smile.
“Move aside, Leon. You still have some room for leniency. I can choose not to charge you.”
“I'd love to move aside right now, but an order to guard this place has my body refusing to obey me.”
“So I can take that as the young lady defying the Empire's will, then? I really can't let that go unpunished, can I?”
“That's a lie. I'm blocking you of my own accord, actually.”
As if to prove it, Aiter shrugged with a smile playing at his lips.
Leon sighed.
He never lost an argument.
Leon started loosening up his body.
They had been fighting for a long time, all the way from the mansion.
He'd been injured protecting Renoa from Lowell's self-detonation, and he had also spent a great deal of energy taking out the Magic Knights in one blow.
He wasn't in peak condition. He had no idea how long he could keep fighting.
Even so, he'd do as much as he could.
“Let me ask you one last time. You're really not going to move?”
“Wasn't it called sacrificing the lesser for the greater?”
“That's the weight one should bear when standing above others.”
Aiter gave the answer of a ruler without the slightest wavering.
In the face of that unwavering justification, Leon snorted.
“Then we were born opposites.”
Leon, having warmed up, readjusted the sword that had been hanging loosely at his side.
“If crushing the lesser for the greater is the role of those above.”
Golden haze began to rise.
“To preserve the lesser by gladly sacrificing the greater. Even if the master I serve is a villain the world points fingers at, I would still blindly give my life.”
Leon's eyes swept over the entire knight order.
“That is the role—and the reason for existence—of a slave.”
“...That, too, is true.”
A reply that left no room for compromise.
Since they were offering different interpretations of the same thing, any further conversation was meaningless.
“Step back, Aiter. If you get caught up in this, I can't take responsibility.”
Aiter didn't let his pride get in the way.
“Please.”
He left the rear to the knights and moved far away from the battlefield.
Once Aiter withdrew, the elderly knight who had stayed by his side slowly stepped forward.
A face deeply carved with the storms of time.
Yet his sturdy frame and keenly shining eyes were so vivid it was hard to believe he was an old man.
“A pleasure to meet you. I am Aslan.”
A low, rumbling voice that seemed to echo from inside a cave.
Leon had never seen the old knight before, but he remembered having seen his name.
It had been in the history books he had searched through in the academy library to learn about Sercia.
“Commander Aslan of the Imperial Knights.”
“To be precise, the former commander.”
The subjugation campaign against the witch Sercia, who once drove the empire into terror.
Commander Aslan, who had led the Imperial Knights on the front lines of that subjugation campaign.
It was a living legend—someone who should already have been off the front lines—stepping forward in person.
“What brings an old man like you all the way out here? You should be home resting and looking at your grandchildren.”
“Just because I'm old doesn't mean I can retire in peace. The remnants of the witch I failed to finish off during my tenure still remain on this land, so I came here personally to put an end to them.”
Even Leon's barbed joke was met by Aslan with a smile that never lost an elder's composure.
“Slave knight. I've heard the rumors about you. I'd always wanted to meet you someday, and now seeing you in person... the rumors didn't do you justice.”
Aslan narrowed his eyes at Leon.
A level of mastery attainable only by someone who had honed a single sword to its absolute limit over decades flowed from Leon.
It was impossible to believe it was the spirit of a young man who had only just passed twenty.
“Why would someone like you stand on the witch's side?”
“Why else? Because I'm a slave, aren't I? Don't you know what a slave is?”
Leon tapped the restraint collar around his neck with one finger, as if to show it off.
“My role is to bite when my master tells me to bite. What noble belief or grand cause could a slave possibly have?”
“The fate of a warrior robbed of freedom, so blindly devoted... truly a pity.”
“Don't worry. This blind obedience is worth far more than the likes of you, who rush in en masse just because the prince gave the order, only to hurt a helpless woman.”
At that brazen provocation, Aslan didn't look offended; instead, he gave a faint, bitter smile.
“That's true enough. In the end, we too are nothing more than hunting dogs who've closed our eyes and ears beneath the lofty name of the greater good.”
Aslan gripped the sword hilt with a hand full of calluses.
He slowly drew his sword.
That was all.
Yet that one insignificant motion changed the entire atmosphere.
The bleakly whispering forest held its breath. The natural mana drifting in all directions sank heavily to the ground.
A pressure so intense that every hair on his body stood on end.
Far too fierce to be the aura of a retired old knight.
‘What an unnecessarily energetic old man.’
Leon was a veteran knight himself, hardened by battle and hardship, but the old man in front of him was stronger than anyone he had ever faced.
One wrong step, and the outcome would be irreversible.
Buying time for Renoa to escape was his top priority, but he still hadn't given up on living.
He would struggle to the limit and somehow survive.
-Wooooong.
A golden ring formed beneath Leon's feet. With one hand he gripped the blade, drawing it taut like a bowstring.
The rule of fighting one against many.
Before a full-blown melee broke out, pour on overwhelming firepower and cut the enemy's numbers down as much as possible.
This coming strike was the maximum power Leon could muster.
“Try to endure it if you can.”
With that brief warning, the sword compressed to its limit in Leon's grasp was released.
The blade sliced horizontally through the air. Space itself screamed as it was torn in two.
-KWAAAANG!
A golden flash lit the pitch-black forest as bright as day.
A golden slash, as if hundreds, thousands of blades had been compressed into one, swallowed the forest whole.
“Kraaaah!”
“Mages, put up a barrier...!”
They couldn't even finish their dying scream.
Before the knights at the vanguard could even form a defensive formation, their shields crumpled like scraps of paper and were flung into the air.
The imperial assassins who had been sneaking in to strike from the blind side were also swept away by the slash.
It was only a single slash.
The forest in the area had been grotesquely carved open.
The mages did deploy barrier walls to reduce the damage, but even so, half of them were rendered unable to fight.
“I can't believe it...”
Where the golden tide had passed.
In the very center of it, Aslan surveyed the devastation with a dumbfounded gaze.
Aslan had driven his mana to the limit and barely split that strike apart.
Even then, because he hadn't been able to completely disperse it, he was only able to stop after being pushed several steps back across the ground.
“This is... the power of nothing more than a slave?”
Even after blocking the attack himself, he still couldn't believe it.
It was a power too great for a slave to wield, and too great to leave in a slave's hands.
“However.”
Aslan instantly settled his disordered breathing.
One step.
He sprang lightly into the air.
“After an attack of that magnitude, do you still have enough left to keep following up?”
Before he even finished speaking, Aslan's figure shot forward.
At the same time.
Leon burst out through the haze of dust, tearing through the dirt.
-KAAANG!
Leon's sword and Aslan's slender sword collided.
The shockwave born from the two blades locking together drove every last bit of dirt and dust back in all directions.
Leon's feet slid backward as if slipping on ice.
But he didn't stop.
In that twisted posture, he dragged his sword up at an angle.
A diagonal slash aimed at Aslan's flank.
-TING.
The flat of Aslan's blade lightly knocked the path aside.
As soon as he defended, Aslan's sword dropped downward.
Offense and defense flowed seamlessly into one another.
The slender sword lunged for Leon's thigh.
But it hit nothing. Leon had already slipped out of the sword's line before then.
“......”
The corners of Aslan's eyes trembled ever so slightly.
There was no time to think.
He twisted his wrist at once and thrust his arm out.
In the darkness, the silver slender sword struck out dozens of points.
-KANG! KAKAKAKANG!
Aslan's barrage came down like rain.
Yet Leon's movements were free of all waste. He blocked every attack without a single wound.
“I can't get in...”
A blur-fast exchange of blows impossible to follow with the eye.
Only the occasional spark flashing in the darkness gave any clue to their positions.
The knights didn't dare to jump into the fight between the two.
If they did, they'd only end up getting in Aslan's way.
-KAANG!
The battle continued.
Aslan gave him no room to breathe.
He chained together precise thrusts as if measuring the space itself.
Sometimes as points.
Sometimes as lines.
The slender sword drew supple, snake-like trajectories. Silver lines were embroidered across the air like stars.
The moment you dodge, the next thrust is already there.
Yet no matter how Aslan unleashed his swordsmanship, he still couldn't land a hit on Leon this time either.
Everything missed by a hair's breadth or was lightly diverted aside.
‘No way...’
Aslan's expression hardened.
The thought he'd deliberately pushed to the back of his mind raised its head again.
‘He's reading my sword path perfectly?’
Before the thrust was completed.
Before the path was even decided.
Leon was already no longer there.
As if.
As though he were stepping over lines that hadn't even been drawn yet.
A realm even Aslan, who had swung a sword all his life, could not reach.
“What are you spacing out about with a person right in front of you? Are slaves not even people to you?”
In an instant, Leon had closed to point-blank range with Aslan.
He didn't give him space to thrust the slender sword. He swung his blade as if to batter it aside.
Aslan hurriedly raised his sword upright and supported the blade with his other hand, but he still couldn't block it cleanly.
-Thunk!
Aslan's body floated up and then came back down in an arc.
He landed safely, but then thudded to one knee. The arm that had blocked the attack trembled violently from the impact.
“Sir Aslan, are you all right?”
“Mm... maybe because I'm old, but I'm running out of strength.”
“Please rest for a moment. We'll take over.”
“I'm counting on you.”
Aslan caught his breath.
A priest placed a hand on his back and restored his stamina.
While Leon and Aslan were fighting, the knights reorganized their formation.
“He's the one who pushed Sir Aslan back. Don't let your guard down! Go all out!”
“Mage corps! I need enhancement magic!”
As soon as the order was given, the robed mages waiting in the rear cast their spells.
A blinding, multicolored ribbon of mana poured down like a waterfall, wrapping around the knights layer upon layer.
“What a bunch of cowardly bastards.”
Leon caught his breath, the praise dripping with sarcasm.
In that fleeting instant, he'd exchanged dozens of blows with Aslan. It had taken a fair amount of concentration and stamina.
He was a little short of breath, but it was still far too early to collapse.
Leon put strength back into his sword.
He drew a golden circle beneath his feet.
“Come here.”
Everything, for the sake of the pitiful villainess.