Chapter 113
One evening, a week after Princess Tsetsilia's stay had come to an end, Einhart Berger of the Imperial Guard was wandering around near the Kingdom of Riddle's castle. He was off duty today.
After calling out to the flower shop owner's daughter and buying a single white flower, Einhart walked slowly down the road, humming to himself.
Before long, he spotted his friend ahead and stopped, lightly waving the hand holding the white flower.
"Hey, over here. Over here."
The white flower was their signal.
His friend noticed Einhart at once, ran over, and lightly lifted the brim of his hat, which was pulled low over his face.
Beneath the hat was a rugged, intimidating face softened by kind eyes.
"It's been a long time, Einhart."
His friend of ten years, the First Prince of the Kingdom of Riddle, Lionel Brem Eduart Riddle, said this with a gentle smile.
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Einhart had met Lionel ten years earlier, when Einhart was still serving in a platoon of the Imperial Knights' Order.
At the time, Einhart was a hot-blooded sixteen-year-old.
He was handsome, skilled with a sword, and to top it all off, the son of one of the Empire's foremost great noble families.
The only reason Einhart was in the Knights' Order was his atrocious conduct.
In short, his father had ordered him, "Go learn discipline, patience, and common sense in the Knights' Order, you idiot son!"
Though he had been thrown into the Knights' Order for a reason he found utterly distasteful, Einhart made use of his natural knack for things and managed reasonably well.
Above all, his father couldn't keep an eye on him there, so he was free to cut loose as much as he pleased. There was no way a misbehaving man like Einhart would obey the Knights' Order's regulations.
Then, one day, while he was enjoying that relative freedom, a joint military exercise with the Kingdom of Riddle was scheduled.
The joint military exercise with the Kingdom of Riddle, with which the Empire had once been at war, was ostensibly meant to deter the surrounding nations. Everyone knew that in reality, it was nothing more than the late emperor's vanity.
A large-scale exercise that involved inviting other countries naturally cost a great deal of money. The late emperor wanted to flaunt his authority before other nations, even if it meant spending money like water.
Thinking that an exercise held for the sake of bigwigs' vanity was ridiculous, Einhart had been slacking off as much as he could. Then, on the afternoon of the third day of the exercise, disaster struck.
A pack of dragons had been spotted near the exercise grounds.
Apparently, some earth dragons that had awakened from hibernation a little late had raided the feeding grounds of the fire dragons that had already woken up, sparking a conflict.
It would have been simple if the dragons had just crushed one another, but dragons that lost such conflicts often descended upon human settlements in search of new feeding grounds. This time, the fire dragons defeated by the earth dragons had fled into an inhabited area.
One or two would have been bad enough, but more than a dozen were naturally a grave threat.
Those taking part in the joint military exercise put aside their national affiliations and hurriedly joined forces to confront the pack of dragons.
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When faced with the fear of death, people become surprisingly poor at finding words.
(Oh craaaaaap...!)
Faced with the threat before him, sixteen-year-old Einhart could do nothing but repeat "Crap" endlessly in his head.
Standing before him was a fire dragon with a body twice the size of a bull, its scales a reddish brown. And it was an especially large specimen.
Fire dragons were vicious creatures famous for breathing fire when driving off intruders. For that reason, the usual way to kill one was with magic, without approaching it recklessly.
But the platoon Einhart belonged to had no mage. Their primary weapons were swords, which were not suited to dragon-slaying the way spears were.
As far as Einhart knew, the only person reckless enough to confront a dragon head-on with a sword and accurately pierce its brow was Henrik Blanke, the Sword Saint's grandson.
Einhart's platoon had been moving solely to protect civilians and guide them to safety, but during the evacuation, they had unfortunately encountered a fire dragon that had become separated from its pack.
The platoon's members had already scattered, and the two companions who had been near Einhart had been swept aside by the fire dragon's tail and knocked unconscious.
Einhart, the only one nearby who was both unharmed and conscious, was torn.
Should he save the two unconscious comrades, or tell the comrades waiting behind him what had happened? To minimize casualties, the right thing to do was to abandon the two and inform the others of the situation.
...And yet, Einhart's feet would not move.
(Abandon my comrades... Me?)
Einhart gripped his unsheathed sword and roared.
"How could the Empire's handsomest man, Einhart Berger, pull some lame-ass stunt like that? Idiot!"
Einhart's sword could not reach the fire dragon's brow.
In that case, he would act as a decoy and lure the fire dragon away from his comrades, then hide somewhere high up and strike its brow when an opening appeared. That was his only option.
"Hey, over here! Come on!"
Just as Einhart shouted, swinging his sword around, the fire dragon slowly drew in a breath.
Ah, right. Even through the fog of his paralyzed thoughts, Einhart remembered.
Fire dragons breathed fire when driving off their prey.
(Oh crap...!)
By the time he stopped, an enormous flame was already bearing down on him.
This was not the flame of a campfire, which simply burned in place. It was a flame with a will of its own.
The hot wind stirred Einhart's bangs, and then, before the sparks could catch in his hair, an invisible wall blocked them. It was a defensive barrier cast by a mage.
But where was the mage?
"Give it."
A voice spoke immediately behind him. It was not Imperial; it was the language of the Kingdom of Riddle. Before Einhart's brain could register that fact, someone had snatched the sword from his hand and risen into the air with flight magic.
"Hey, you! My sword!"
Shouting, Einhart looked up at the person who had snatched the sword from him.
It was a young man with chestnut hair tied back in a ponytail. He looked a little older than Einhart, perhaps in his late teens.
He wore a high-collared uniform and a cloak, so he was presumably a member of the Kingdom of Riddle's Magic Corps.
But why would someone from the Magic Corps need to take a sword away from a knight?
As Einhart stood there in confusion, a thunderous voice shouted from behind him, "Are you all right?!" A large blond man in splendid armor was running toward them, dragging an empty cart that rattled and clattered along behind him.
The chestnut-haired mage frowned when he saw the blond giant.
"Ah, honestly. What are you doing going to the front lines yourself, Your Highness?"
"We need manpower to carry the injured!"
When the giant answered in a powerful voice, the mage shrugged while floating in midair.
"Good grief... In that case, let's finish this quickly so that nothing can harm Your Highness."
With that, the mage looked down at Einhart.
He was a slender, handsome man with somewhat feminine features. With a refined smile on his beautiful face, the mage spoke.
"Your Highness, would you kindly tell that dullard-faced dullard in Imperial, in a suitably refined manner... 'Small fry, kindly stay out of this'?"
The fire dragon spat out flames for a second time. But every bit of the fire was repelled by the defensive barrier and dispersed.
(...What an incredibly sturdy barrier!)
To withstand the flames twice without recasting the barrier, its strength and duration had to be extraordinary.
While maintaining such an advanced barrier, the young mage flew straight at the fire dragon with flight magic. With his slender arm, he thrust Einhart's sword into the dragon's brow.
But it was a thrust made from an unstable position while using flight magic. Though the sword pierced the fire dragon's brow, it had gone in a little too shallowly to be fatal.
The fire dragon let out a roar that shook the air and brought its enormous claw crashing down at the mage.
The mage easily dodged the claw with flight magic, landed on the dragon's head, and raised one leg...
"Raaah!!"
With a sharp cry, he kicked the hilt of the sword that was only shallowly embedded.
The sword sank deep like a stake driven by a hammer, piercing the dragon's head.
The fire dragon convulsed with its mouth hanging wide open, then collapsed onto the ground.
(What is this guy...?)
What kind of mage challenged a dragon with a sword, then delivered the finishing blow by kicking the sword? One was standing right here.
Behind the dazed Einhart, the blond giant loaded the injured into the cart he had dragged over. He did not forget to tell each one in Imperial, "I'll take you to the base right away. Hang in there."
Before long, the mage who had been floating in the air descended, and the giant furrowed his caterpillar-thick brows as he spoke.
"Louis, couldn't you have fought a little more safely? Used attack magic, perhaps...?"
"By the time I confronted the fire dragon, I was already using two spells: flight magic and a defensive barrier. To use attack magic, I would have had to cancel one of them and start chanting from the beginning again. If I had been attacked during that time, I would have been utterly helpless."
"Hmm... I see. That is true."
It looked as though he had been talked into it, but the giant seemed convinced.
The giant did not press the mage any further. Instead, he turned toward Einhart and spoke in Imperial.
"Are you injured?"
His Imperial was exceptionally polished and courteous. So, the giant was fluent in Imperial, while the mage apparently was not.
Einhart looked from the giant to the mage, then answered in an elegant upper-class accent of the Kingdom of Riddle.
"Yes, you have my thanks. I am Einhart Berger of House Morgenstein. You are His Highness Prince Lionel of the Kingdom of Riddle, if I am not mistaken...?"
"This is an emergency. Please, don't stand on ceremony, Lord Berger. First, let's get the injured somewhere safe."
Einhart bowed deeply to Lionel.
"You have my heartfelt thanks for your assistance... And you there, delinquent mage. I heard every word of that insult just now. You're paying for my sword, got it?"
The delinquent mage clicked his tongue while maintaining his refined smile.