Dietrich reflexively drew his sword.
"Do not come any closer."
"Fine. Let us say I am a Death Knight. Then, since my identity has been exposed, I suppose the next step is to kill you and silence you?"
"Th-that is……."
Dietrich faltered in panic and took a step back. In that instant, an opening appeared, and Damon charged in without the slightest hesitation. A sound like a leather drum bursting followed.
"Urk."
Damon looked down at Dietrich, who had crumpled while clutching his abdomen, and growled savagely.
"By rights, I ought to kill you and silence you. I am a Death Knight, after all. But since I still have business to attend to, I have decided to let you live for now. Because I have absolutely no idea how to get to Feldrian."
His breath knocked out of him, Dietrich spoke in broken gasps.
"D-do you think I will tell you willingly?"
"It has long been said that a club is the best medicine for those who will not listen. I am certain that if I beat you enough, you will tell me. If not, well, there is nothing to be done……."
Faced with this outrageous Death Knight(?) who could not be reasoned with, Dietrich could only gape.
The principle that no man could withstand a beating held true in both the Central Plains and Truvenia.
Only after being beaten until his face was a swollen mess did Dietrich become obedient. In the end, he had no choice but to respectfully guide Damon to Feldrian. Even so, he seemed truly curious about Damon’s intentions. At last, unable to contain his curiosity, he spoke up.
"But may I ask one thing? Why on earth are you trying to go to Feldrian?"
"Hah! You certainly talk a lot. Think about it. What would a Death Knight acting under the Demon King’s orders go to the capital to do?"
"Assassinate important figures, create chaos, things like that?"
"Assassination……."
Damon sank into thought for a moment. In truth, his purpose was to go and hold one man in Feldrian responsible for his master’s death. Sergei, the commander-in-chief of the allied forces.
Of course, Damon’s own antipathy toward Sergei played a part as well. Just thinking of him was enough to make rage boil up inside him.
"That damned bastard!"
Had things been as they should, Damon would not have been satisfied even if he had cut Sergei into ten thousand pieces. Because of him, Doyle and MacMillan had left his side, and even eighty thousand innocent soldiers had been buried with them on the Carnatic Plains. But he could not kill him. Unfortunately, he was bound by the Chiljong Dangeumsul. Moreover, since he now had a debt to collect from the Red Dragon Verkis as well as Sajunhwan, he had to preserve his life until he took his revenge.
"Well, I do not intend to kill him…… I merely plan to give him a little retribution for the resentment of the eighty thousand soldiers who died on the Carnatic Plains."
Dietrich’s eyes went round.
"Retribution?"
"I think my anger will ease a little if I beat him to my heart’s content. No more and no less—just until he is half-dead……."
Perhaps because it was so absurd, Dietrich let out a hollow laugh.
"You truly are a difficult person to understand."
"Try being driven into that situation yourself! Would you not feel wronged?"
After thinking for a moment, Dietrich smiled faintly.
"Would you allow me to take part in that retribution as well?"
"………."
"It is not as though I felt nothing. In any case, I was also a unit commander. Though they were not many, most of the soldiers under my command must have died as well."
"Well, there is no reason you cannot…… But I wonder if you really have the courage. Especially together with a Death Knight."
"With those words just now, you have proven that you are not a Death Knight. A Death Knight would have no reason to take revenge for human soldiers. And you have proven as well that you are a man of great courage and chivalry."
"Ahem! Such flattery from you……."
Feeling oddly embarrassed, Damon waved his hand dismissively and turned away.
After that, the two continued their journey in relative peace. Unlike before, Dietrich treated Damon with great courtesy. He seemed to pay no mind whatsoever to his own status as a noble.
Damon, too, had changed somewhat from before. Of course, given his innate nature, his attitude toward Dietrich had not changed completely. He still scolded him, cuffed him, and treated him bluntly, but there was an unmistakable warmth somewhere in his manner. One could tell easily enough from the fact that, from time to time, he took the trouble to instruct Dietrich in swordsmanship.
"You idiot! You still do not understand after I have explained it that much? Swordsmanship done only by the manual is already dead swordsmanship. If someone attacks even a little unconventionally, your posture will collapse at once……."
"B-but my father said that the unorthodox can never defeat the orthodox……."
"Of course, that is not entirely wrong. But if you fight only by the orthodox method, you will never defeat someone stronger than you, not even if you die and come back to life. You must mainly employ the orthodox, but mix in the unorthodox at the right moments. Only then can you fight effectively."
Dietrich scratched his head awkwardly.
"I really have no idea what you mean……."
"You blockhead! Raise your sword."
Watching Dietrich take his stance, Damon lifted a wooden sword. It was a crude stick he had carved to serve as a cane in preparation for the long journey. It could hardly be called a wooden sword, but at times like this, it served quite well as a teaching tool.
"Here I come."
With a shout, Damon rushed in and attacked. As the wooden sword struck toward his waist in a middle stance, Dietrich raised his sword at an angle to block the blow. Since it was a real blade with a sharp edge, the roughly carved wooden sword seemed likely to be cut in two at once. But the instant the wooden sword and the blade met, Damon twisted his waist sharply. His arm naturally turned with it, and the wooden sword, still touching the side of Dietrich’s blade, slid straight along the sword’s body. Like a trout swimming upstream against the current.
Crack.
"Ow!"
Seeing Dietrich drop his sword and clutch his fingers as though in great pain, Damon put on a triumphant expression.
"If this had been a real sword, you would already be dead. A man who has lost his hand cannot win in battle. Is that not so?"
"Th-that is true."
Even as he clutched his swollen fingers, Dietrich looked pleased. It was no wonder, for the things Damon was teaching him were thoroughly practical techniques. They were completely different from the swordsmanship he had learned until now. Each and every technique could be used immediately in actual combat.
Of course, Damon was not a swordsman who had trained in the sword. However, through his experience fighting countless experts until now, he had already established a unique system of unorthodox attacks in depth. Techniques for subduing an enemy in the most effective way.
Damon raised his head and looked at the sky, grumbling.
"Damn it. At this rate, who knows when we will arrive."
"We should probably arrive around noon tomorrow."
"Good. I will trust you on that."
When the sun set, the two decided to spend the night in a small village from which all signs of people had vanished. After searching the houses thoroughly and filling their stomachs with what little they found, the two began sword training again. Of course, in exchange for learning several techniques, Dietrich had no choice but to take a thorough beating. Looking down at Dietrich, who had collapsed, Damon shook his head.
"Good grief. What a weakling."
Judging by the way he lay there drooling, he did not seem likely to wake until morning. A faint laugh appeared on Damon’s face.
"What a sight he is."
Dietrich’s face was so swollen that his originally handsome features were nowhere to be found. That was because Damon had passed on an attack method he had recently realized to be deadly.
"Generally speaking, young knights treasure their faces a great deal. I do not know whether it is to look good for women, but in a duel, this can become a fatal weakness."
"Y-you are not going to attack the face, are you?"
"Why would I not? It may not be especially useful when the opponent is wearing heavy armor, but when dueling or wearing only a light helm, it is plenty effective. When you attack the face, most fools instinctively dodge because they do not want to get scars on their faces. Once that happens, you can easily spot an opening."
"Wow! That really is a dirty way to attack."
"Ahem! Then take that handsome face of yours and brag about it in the afterlife…… It is a face that will rot anyway once you are dead, is it not? Let the dead complain in the next world."
In the end, Dietrich had no choice but to concede to Damon’s logic. And once they entered practical training under the pretext of overcoming that weakness, Dietrich had to allow countless attacks to his face. Of course, with his skill, it was impossible to avoid Damon’s countless petty tricks. In the end, Dietrich could not escape the fate of fainting with his face battered into a swollen mess.
Sitting cross-legged beside the sprawled Dietrich, Damon gazed silently up at the sky. Suddenly, thoughts of his homeland came to him. His life in the Central Plains, which he truly did not even want to remember. Yet it was also the place he had to return to for the sake of revenge.
"If I keep learning magic, I should be able to return to the Central Plains, right? In any case, I came here through dimensional transfer magic……."
Suddenly, the face of his master Doyle came to mind. Damon’s eyes began to redden with bloodshot veins.
"Master……."
When he thought about it, the happiest moments in Damon’s life might have been the days he spent with his master. Of course, the memories he shared with the Guardian Demon King Army had been good times as well, but having someone beside him whom he could trust and rely on was a happiness he had never experienced before.
The emptiness left by his master’s departure pierced deeply into his heart at that moment. Without even realizing that moisture had gathered at the corners of his eyes, Damon began to murmur quietly.
"Master. I, Damon, will never betray your hopes. No matter what it takes, I will become the strongest necromancer, avenge you, and find your blood kin without fail. And I will look after them for as long as my strength allows."
Damon silently renewed his resolve regarding his master’s request. And so the night deepened.
"Who goes there? Halt!"
When two shabby travelers covered head to toe in dust approached, the gate soldiers drew their swords and growled fiercely. The figures approaching Feldrian’s imposing gate looked, at a glance, like nothing more than beggars.
Because of the defeat on the Carnatic Plains, the atmosphere in Feldrian was extremely grim. Troops were being conscripted on a large scale, but anxiety that the nation might fall as it was had covered the entire capital. The more that happened, the stricter the security forces became, and citizens who misspoke were dragged to the execution grounds under the pretext of restoring order. The smell of blood was constantly thick in the central square. Some unlucky souls even lost their heads despite having committed no crime, so the soldiers guarding the walls had no choice but to be on edge.
Under such circumstances, suspicious figures had approached, so it was only natural that the gate soldiers’ nerves were strained…… Travelers had long since stopped coming because of the war.
"Identify yourselves!"
At the guards’ unhesitatingly insolent tone, Damon’s eyebrow twitched.
The travelers who had arrived at Feldrian were none other than Damon and Dietrich.
"You damned bastards……."
Just as Damon was about to explode, Dietrich stepped smoothly forward. He had sensed that if they rashly beat the guards, they would not be able to enter Feldrian. Giving Damon a look, Dietrich unfastened the sword at his waist and held it out. The crest of his house was clearly engraved upon it.
"I am Dietrich von Brix, eldest son of the House of Marquis Brix. I served in the Carnatic Defense Force as the commander of the 14th hundred-man unit of the 6th Corps, and have returned alive by a hair’s breadth."
No sooner had Dietrich finished speaking than the guards snapped to attention. The House of Marquis Brix was a high-ranking noble house beyond anything they could imagine.