Chapter 93
“Attack! Bring me that bastard’s head!”
Harol shouted, but no knight moved.
It was because they knew all too well that moving now would mean throwing their lives away.
Although the black knight known as Mask was still here, they thought it was impossible for one man to turn the tide.
“Now even you are disobeying me?!”
Clang!
Seeing that the knights remained motionless, Fifth Prince Harol drew the sword at his side.
Then he generated sword aura and swung it.
He intended to kill one of them as an example.
But even if he had drawn it abruptly, they were still knights.
There was no way men who had trained with swords all their lives would be defeated by Harol’s sword, which he had practiced merely as a hobby.
One knight frozen like a stone statue raised his shield to block the sword approaching as if to sever his neck.
“How dare you! How dare you!”
“Stop harassing the knights and come down here. You know it too, don’t you? The war is over. So stop disgracing yourself and come down.”
“Shut up! The war isn’t over yet! I’ll kill you and the Crown Prince, then swallow the Polstein Kingdom whole! Sir Tallein!”
“Hmmm.”
Harol stared at the masked black knight with a beet-red face.
He had no one else to rely on.
Though he was the only one left of the five, Harol still believed in him.
He believed Mask could turn this situation around completely.
People did not know, but he did.
Tallein was the strongest of the five.
Yet despite his call, Tallein gave no answer.
“I never imagined things would turn out like this.”
“S-Sir Tallein?”
Harol called out to him once more.
But Tallein did not answer Harol’s call.
No, he did not even spare him a glance.
Instead, he glared at Jade with sharp eyes.
“Getting tangled up with you always ruins my plans.”
“Why don’t you take off the mask? There’s no need to hide our faces from each other when we already know them, is there?”
“Huh?”
Arelia, as well as Lloyd and Haines, was startled by Jade’s words.
They all wore similar expressions at the mention that the two were acquainted.
“Oh-ho, how did you know?”
“Anyone could tell at a glance. But it seems serving princes is your hobby. You served the Second Prince before.”
“Kukuku!”
“You were called Tsen back then. Are you using the name Tallein now?”
At the words Second Prince and Tsen, Arelia and Haines’s eyes lit up.
They had belatedly realized who Tallein was.
“Well, well. I didn’t expect you to recognize me so easily.”
“W-what are you talking about? The Second Prince? Tsen?”
“Shut up, you idiot.”
“W-what did you say?”
“I said shut up. Stop babbling and making a racket.”
Harol looked dumbfounded.
The abrupt change in Tallein’s attitude had left him momentarily stunned.
But soon, he felt a terrible fear.
Though he was mad, he had not lost his wits entirely, and Harol trembled involuntarily.
“How did you know?”
“I’ve got a good eye for these things.”
Jade grinned as he watched Tallein slowly remove his mask.
Then Silestin’s voice sounded in his ear.
-I noticed right away! I’m a spirit, but I’ve got an incredible sense of smell, too!
-You were born with a bloodhound’s nose.
-A bloodhound’s nose?!
Silestin leaped up in indignation.
He could not believe Jade was comparing his superb sense of smell to that of a bloodhound.
“Impressive. I never thought you’d recognize me.”
“There was only a difference in timing; you would have figured it out eventually. Ria would have taken off that mask, after all. But I didn’t expect you to become a Sword Master in this short time. Last time, you had only just reached the highest level.”
“……You were already a Master back then?”
Tallein’s gaze sharpened.
It was because memories of the civil war had come rushing back.
If Jade had not been there then, the Polstein Kingdom would have been seized by the Second Prince instead of Lloyd, just as planned.
And he himself would never have had to come this far wearing a mask.
“Is that what matters right now? I think you should worry about your life first.”
Flash!
The instant Jade sneered, Arelia moved.
She had drawn both swords, unable to restrain herself any longer.
But Tallein’s response was unexpected.
Rather than fight Arelia as she charged recklessly at him, he chose to flee.
-He’s running away again.
-Maybe running away is his specialty. He fled without hesitation last time, too.
-You could say he’s quick to assess the situation.
Seeing Tallein flee without the slightest hesitation, Elestra and Silestin, perched on Jade’s shoulders, let out quiet chuckles.
They had not expected a Sword Master to flee without even trying to fight.
But Arelia was no pushover, either.
Despite the completely unexpected turn of events, she did not panic and raised aura blades on both swords.
Sssshk!
Two aura blades shot out like lightning.
They streaked toward Tallein like rays of light, aimed precisely at both his legs.
Yet amazingly, Tallein dodged the attack, which had flashed toward him.
He avoided it by leaping high, as though he had anticipated that his legs would be targeted.
Whoosh!
Not only that, he used the shock waves created by the aura blades to fly even farther away.
He had used Arelia’s attack against her to widen the distance even more.
Arelia bit her lip at the sight.
‘Just a little more……!’
Meanwhile, Tallein, who had reinforced his armor with aura to minimize the impact of the explosion, sprinted at full speed with an anxious expression.
Knowing the Mage Corps had come along, he tried to put as much space between himself and them as possible.
Since they obviously would not let him use the warp magic scroll unimpeded, all he could do was keep extending the gap.
Besides, Jade was on the other side, wielding spirit arts beyond reason.
‘If it weren’t for that bastard, the plan wouldn’t have been ruined so utterly!’
The more he thought about it, the more his anger boiled over.
Everything had gone awry because of Jade alone.
Yet he could not face Jade by himself.
‘Next time, I’ll tear you limb from limb and kill you!’
Last time, he had been defeated because he had underestimated Jade’s spirit arts; this time, he had been defeated because he had not known Jade was a Sword Master.
But next time would be different.
Now that he knew everything about Jade, he intended to devise tactics accordingly.
‘I must tell them as well. That bastard is an advanced spirit mage and has the abilities of a mid-level Sword Master!’
Rumble!
As he ran without looking back, his eyes fixed straight ahead, a massive earthen wall suddenly surged up before him.
Streams of aura blades brimming with killing intent came streaking in from behind, and the way ahead was blocked in an instant, but Tallein did not panic.
He had anticipated a situation like this from the moment he decided to flee.
Since Arelia was also a spirit mage who could freely control intermediate spirits, Tallein swung the sword brimming with aura blades.
‘I’ll smash through it in one blow!’
It did not need to be a large opening.
It only needed to be large enough for him to escape.
If it was too small, it would close immediately, so Tallein intended to make a crack of moderate size, opening it quickly and forcefully.
And the moment he cleared the earthen wall, he intended to tear the magic scroll bearing a warp magic circle from inside his clothing and leave this place entirely.
Bang!
But an unexpected variable arose.
The earthen wall that should have split apart was completely intact.
Tallein stared blankly at the sight for an instant.
Sssshk!
Then a terrifying sound of something ripping through the air pierced his ears.
He heard the sound of something sharp, entirely unlike an aura blade, piercing through the air.
“Gasp!”
At the sound, Tallein reflexively turned around.
He could break through the earthen wall later, but if a hole was punched through his body, there would be no later.
So Tallein gritted his teeth, spun around, and concentrated mana into his small round shield.
He formed a large aura blade over it.
Boom! Bang! Bang!
Like his armor, the specially treated shield was sturdy enough to block even a Sword Master’s aura blade if mana was infused into it.
Yet the shield was blown to pieces by a volley of arrows.
But that was only the beginning.
“Kugh!”
Hands rose from the earthen wall and seized him in multiple places.
No matter how much mana he summoned, his limbs would not budge, and arrows pierced him all over.
“That’s why you shouldn’t have run. If you’d just let us subdue you, you wouldn’t have ended up like this.”
“Aaaaaah!”
At Jade’s taunting tone, Tallein bared his teeth and howled.
Even as he did, he tried desperately to wrench himself free, but it was useless.
Four advanced earth spirits were holding his body, so his resistance was futile.
When Tallein instead lashed out at Jade, the Noeses snorted and tightened their grip on his body.
“Enough. He can’t die yet.”
“He’s mine.”
Arelia approached as she put the bow Jade had given her into subspace.
Unlike usual, her eyes were steeped in killing intent.
Tallein had killed Clora, who was both her own kind and practically family, so Arelia made no attempt to hide her killing intent.
“I know.”
“Can I do whatever I want?”
“Yeah. There are still three left. Four if you count the Fifth Prince.”
“Thank you.”
If Jade had not intervened at just the right moment, Arelia would very likely have lost Tallein, no matter how capable she was.
Her spirit arts alone could not stop Tallein.
They had been able to capture him because four advanced spirits had seized him; if only one intermediate spirit had tried to stop him, Tallein would have split through the earthen wall in one blow and used the magic scroll.
“Don’t mention it.”
“If you’d let him escape, I wouldn’t have been able to face Clora.”
“I have a connection to her as well.”
“True.”
Arelia nodded.
It was not a deep connection, but Jade had met Clora as well.
Then she looked down at Tallein, whose limbs were bound and whose body was covered in blood.
By then, she had drawn a sword.
“Nothing ever works out because of you and that bastard.”
“Don’t talk nonsense. You’re the one who caused this trouble. I’m the one who was wronged. Because of you, I lost my older sister—my family.”
“Heh-heh! What more is there to say? Kill me. The defeated have no words left.”
“Apologize to Clora when you reach the underworld.”
Arelia’s sword slowly pierced his heart.
To make him suffer as much as possible, she deliberately put no energy into the sword, stabbing him with only her physical strength.
“Ugh!”
Tallein gritted his teeth at the pain of the cold blade slowly boring into his chest.
Even so, he glared at Arelia with murderous eyes to the very end.
As if to say that although he was dying like this, he would never forget this grudge.
Yet Arelia held Tallein’s gaze and pushed the sword all the way in.
“You won’t find peace even in the underworld. A sinner like you will suffer even after becoming a soul.”
Arelia spoke as she stared down until the very end at Tallein’s pupils, which were slowly losing their light.
A short while later, Tallein’s head drooped limply.
“Hmm.”
While Arelia avenged Clora, Jade retrieved Tallein’s sword.
He had a use for it later.
He was also personally curious what it was made of.
-Let’s take the magic scroll, too! If we bring it to Steven, couldn’t he find out where the warp magic led?
“Good idea.”
Jade looked mildly surprised.
He had been so focused on the black sword that he had forgotten about the magic scroll.
-Because you seemed so focused on the sword.
-See? Silestin is useful sometimes.
-What?!
Jade tuned out the bickering of the two spirits as he retrieved the magic scroll lying on the ground.
He had heard plenty about it, but had never seen one in person, so Jade examined it with an intrigued expression.
“I was going to take it anyway.”
“Do you feel a little better now?”
“Yeah. I think all that’s left is to give her a proper funeral. Though I don’t know if there’ll be anything left of the body. I wish we had even a single strand of her hair.”
Arelia murmured with a dark expression.
It was because she wanted even a small trace of Clora to remain, if not her whole body.
“Let’s go for now. It looks like things haven’t been settled over there yet, either.”