A rapturous golden aura cleaved through the black fog.
The hard shell shattered, and only then did the figures of those who had been carrying on a fierce battle within come into view.
An inflexible knight and a strange mage.
And...
“My loathsome old friend.”
A tremendous force erupted from Vitalianus’s body as though exploding outward.
It was pure, dreadful killing intent.
Because of it, the lion’s golden mane whipped about wildly, and his eyes, too, began to be dyed gold.
—Vitalianus.
At that, Ataolf’s gaze also turned toward Vitalianus.
—Yes. You haven’t changed. That revolting gold of yours.
His gaze passed beyond Vitalianus, toward the space behind him.
—Still the same, Vitalianus.
What entered his eyes were the knights approaching from afar, those called the Royal Knights.
And the countless people cautiously following behind them.
—You are still a hero, and you are still receiving the respect of so many. Yes.
A dense killing intent flickered around Ataolf’s eyes as well.
It was not the indifferent attitude he had shown while facing Hio, but rather one overflowing with intense excitement and hatred.
“Don’t even think of doing anything foolish, Ataolf.”
Golden aura blocked that gaze, that hatred.
—Foolish, you say. Yes. When I do it, it is foolishness. When you do it, it is a heroic act.
Kwaaaang—!
Golden aura collided with the black fog.
Even the sheer volume of the sound was different from before.
It was a clash of forces that were just that taut, that immense.
Ataolf, too, was facing Vitalianus with all his strength.
The range of the fog shrank, and the power concentrated by that much struck back against Vitalianus’s sword.
Kwaaaang—!
Of course, there was one more knight he had to deal with.
—...Annoying...!
Theordo swung his sword, spewing streams of Death Aura.
A knight of death who had returned even stronger thanks to the thick miasma of death.
Kwaaaang—!
He could not pierce the absolute barrier that protected Ataolf directly, but it was enough to grate on his nerves.
After all, he had to keep Theordo in mind and maintain a curtain of fog.
Nor could he kill Theordo.
He was already a dead knight.
No matter how many times he killed him, that damned Hio Pavlenko would simply bring him back again.
“It seems our stubborn bond ends today, does it not, Ataolf?”
At Vitalianus’s words, spoken as he calmly deflected the fog,
—Krk, krk, krk...
Ataolf let out a laugh.
—Yes. You are still arrogant. Do you decide even such things as you please?
Kwaaaang—!
“I should be the one to decide. Since it began because of me, is it not right that I be the one to end it?”
Kwaaaang—!
—That is exactly what I mean by arrogance, and that is exactly what irritates me, Vitalianus.
Kwaaaang—!
Endless explosions of tremendous force erupted.
Between them, Theordo’s black aura darted in, seeking an opening.
Kwaaaang—!
A frantic succession of slashes continued.
Golden aura shattered the fog. Clinging, viscous fog wrapped around it and seeped into every gap.
Kwaaaang—!
Force collided with force.
The earth rumbled, and the sky trembled.
* * *
“Damon, stop doing useless things.”
At Melissa’s words, spoken without even looking back, Damon flashed his usual smile.
“Hahaha. The growing sprouts are curious, aren’t they? It shouldn’t be a problem to tell them this much.”
“I’m saying it because you create problems where none existed, Damon.”
Even at Melissa’s words, as cold as her impression suggested, Damon merely laughed as if it did not bother him at all.
“But, well, there wasn’t really anything to say. You need to know something to talk about it.”
“As if you don’t know anything. We heard he was a great man who ended a war all by himself.”
The ten Royal Knights, including Damon Liefte. The first mission given to them was that.
Bring back the newly appointed great shield and sharpest sword.
Bring back the empire’s guardian knight.
Because it was the first public command issued by Sylvia, who would ascend to the imperial throne, the Royal Knights and the Sword Saint themselves moved for such a simple mission.
To show that they acknowledged Sylvia as the new emperor.
And, at the same time, to make known to the world that imperial authority remained powerful.
“That new guardian knight, I mean. Have you ever seen him?”
Damon asked Melissa, but Melissa did not answer.
She had grown annoyed now.
Knowing that, for her, she had already humored him in conversation quite a lot, Damon tapped the knight beside him.
“Hm? Mathis. From what I’ve heard in passing, he sounds like a bit of an eccentric... You don’t know either?”
A knight at least two heads taller and broader than Damon.
The knight called Mathis gave no response to Damon’s question.
Even so, Damon waited patiently, and after some time had passed.
“...Don’t know.”
Mathis slowly shook his head.
Damon let out a deep sigh.
“Still, you answered faster than usual today. Did something good happen?”
Seeing Mathis about to sink back into thought at that, Damon quickly waved his hand.
“No, that wasn’t a question, so you don’t have to answer!”
Mathis slowly nodded, then moved on.
“Phew. Every last one of them is a weirdo.”
The empire’s strongest military group, led by the Sword Saint.
Though they could not receive titles, they served only the emperor and obeyed only the emperor’s commands, making them the most honorable order of knights.
What would those who knew them that way think if they saw this?
In Damon’s eyes, they were nothing more and nothing less than a group of eccentrics.
For starters, even their commander, Sword Saint Vitalianus, was a monster obsessed with the sword...
“Hurry up and come already!”
“Yep!”
Hoping that the new guardian knight they were about to meet would at least be someone normal, someone who would respond properly when he spoke, Damon broke into a run.
* * *
The ten Royal Knights.
Their heights and builds, their genders and personalities, even their abilities were all different, but they had one thing in common.
Their strength.
Kwaaaang—!
“...So that’s the sound of our commander fighting right now?”
Even they shuddered at the thunderous roar that reached them.
Because they could feel the tremendous power contained within it.
“No wonder he suddenly ran off alone.”
The closer they got, the more clearly the scene came into view, and it was savage beyond measure.
Black fog blanketed the sky, and within it flashed golden aura.
Kwaaaang—!
A powerful shockwave burst out from the collision of force against force.
“That black fog... I had a feeling, but still.”
They had heard it from the academy students evacuating.
Black Fang had attacked.
And when Vitalianus had suddenly rushed out, they had suspected it might be the case.
There were not many reasons for him to leave in such a hurry.
But now, black fog was truly covering the sky.
The continent’s strongest man and its worst criminal.
Ataolf of the Black Fog had appeared.
“That is... the power called the strongest on the continent.”
And when Damon even heard Melissa mutter that, he finally could not endure it any longer.
How could he hold back when the worst criminal he had only heard of in stories was right before his eyes?
How could he simply stand there and watch when such a grand battle was unfolding before him?
So.
“Hoo...”
Gripping the sword hilt at his waist, he lowered his stance.
His eyes gently closed as he focused his mind.
“...Damon, I clearly told you not to do anything useless...”
Sensing something suspicious, Melissa belatedly turned to Damon.
“Ha.”
But Damon had already vanished.
His brown hair and face flickering with fighting spirit appeared in the sky, in the very midst of the battlefield.
To be exact, he suddenly appeared right beside Ataolf of the Black Fog.
“Hahahaha! So you’re Ataolf!”
At the same time, his sword was drawn.
It was so fast that, for an instant, it looked like a flash of light.
Damon Liefte.
A knight who had mastered an extremely swift quick-draw technique and a skill that seized the space behind his opponent.
With that troublesome ability and a draw so fast it was almost invisible, he was a powerhouse who could scarcely remember losing in a one-on-one fight.
That was why it was extremely rare for his sword to be blocked, and yet...
Kaang—!
It was caught all too easily by the black fog.
“Huh?”
Ataolf did not even spare him a glance.
As though an annoying insect had come buzzing near, the black fog seized his leg.
“Uwaaak!”
And then flung him straight toward the distant ground.
Watching the earth rush rapidly closer, Damon curled up and wrapped himself thickly in aura.
He tensed all his muscles, preparing for the coming impact.
And then, at that moment, a low voice reached him.
“Feather Fall.”
His speed, which had been plunging downward at an incredible rate, dropped sharply, and by the time he reached the ground, he landed softly.
With a bewildered expression, Damon dropped lightly onto the ground on his rear.
“What was that?”
Still in that posture, he looked around.
And his eyes met someone else’s.
A person looking down at him steadily from the rooftop of a tall building.
He knew at once.
That figure, standing in what could be called the center of the battlefield.
The strange hat and the flashy staff.
That was...
“An eccentric.”
At a glance, he was clearly not normal.
* * *
“The Royal Knights have arrived.”
It seemed the Sword Saint had not come alone after all.
He did not know for what reason they had headed toward the academy so late at night, but this was certainly an opportunity.
With the level of strength possessed by the Royal Knights, they would surely be of help in battle.
In other words, this was a perfect chance to kill a giant like Ataolf.
And Ataolf felt that as well.
—Worms keep crawling in.
The Sword Saint before his eyes. Theordo, circling around him and pouring out sword energy that could not be ignored.
And now, the newly arrived ten Royal Knights.
Everything grated on him, but if he had to name those that posed a direct threat, there were only two.
Vitalianus, whose golden aura surged.
His golden aura, imbued with will, could even cleave through his fog and strike his body directly.
He was an opponent who allowed not even the slightest carelessness.
And the other was...
—Hio Pavlenko.
Hio Pavlenko, who had at some point stopped moving entirely.
And the red-eyed reaper beside him. That presence, surging with ghostly energy, kept grating on his senses.
—What are you plotting?
The reaper’s scythe had clearly pierced through the black fog as if it were nothing and aimed for his neck.
Even though the fog had carried all his power, it had slipped through it like a joke.
Only, nothing had happened afterward.
But precisely because of that, he was certain.
Hio Pavlenko was preparing something.
Through that inhuman reaper, he was preparing something enormous.
Impatience gnawed at him.
He had to interfere with that quickly.
He had to stop it, but perhaps the Sword Saint before him had noticed as well, for he kept clinging to him persistently.
“Where do you think you are going? Leave the mage be and speak with me instead, Ataolf.”
—...Vitalianus.
The Sword Saint’s attitude only made his certainty deepen further.
He had to stop that Hio Pavlenko first.
Those wormlike things below were not the problem.
Even the knight of death swinging black sword energy was not a major problem.
In the end, the only ones who could truly threaten him were these two.
He knew the Sword Saint’s abilities well, but he had no idea what Hio Pavlenko was preparing.
Why was he watching this place with such a relaxed expression?
What was he aiming for with that red-scythed ghost standing beside him?
What was he trying to do under the name of magic?
For an instant, he concentrated all his power and pressed Vitalianus back greatly.
Kwaaaaang—!
Then he used that force to put distance between them.
It was somewhat—no, considerably—reckless, but this seemed to be the only way.
His instincts were telling him.
That this was one of the few crises in his long life.
—Hio Pavlenko.
In an instant, the fog thickened with a whoosh. Its range spread even wider.
Fog boiled up from Ataolf’s body.
Behind him, floating in midair, black fog spread wide and covered the entire sky.
—Do you think I do not know what you are scheming?
A low rumble spread, tearing sharply through space.
A bizarre, spine-chilling voice that seemed to rise from hell shook the space through the black fog.
Along with it, the presence of the fog swelled even further.
“Insane...”
Though it had been enormous before, Damon looked up at the sky in shock at the presence of that power growing even larger.
Not only him, but all the Royal Knights raised their tension to the extreme and took battle stances.
“Royal Knights, fall back!”
Vitalianus’s ringing shout awakened their minds.
It was a kind of pronouncement that they would not survive within the intensifying flow of battle.
“Commander, but...!”
“I will not say it twice. Fall back and deal with the aftermath. Protect the citizens of the empire. This place is sufficient with only me and the mage.”
As if to prove those words, Vitalianus, too, expanded his presence even further.
The momentum soaring up behind his back was so intense that the aura he emitted formed the shape of a golden lion.
That was none other than Vitalianus’s will.
The path he had upheld, the path he had walked, and the path he had to advance upon.
Once they had confirmed even that, the Royal Knights had no choice but to withdraw.
Their pride was wounded badly enough to make them grind their teeth, and it was an experience they could have called the first of their lives.
But in this place, they were undeniably the weak.
Amid all that, the gloomy voice that seemed to gnaw at their eardrums rang out once more.
—Hio Pavlenko. If you do not stop at once, only ruin will remain.
A solid gold light blocked that resonance.
“Mage. Pay it no mind and continue. Though I may be old, do you think I cannot protect even one man like you?”
—What a sight, relying on a mage’s power. Where has the great Sword Saint’s honor gone?
“If I can kill you, there is nothing I would not do. The mage possesses that much power and worth.”
As though squeezing out all its strength, the black fog continued endlessly increasing its power, its overwhelming presence covering the night sky to a staggering degree.
Against it, the aura of the golden lion blazed brilliantly.
A sharp golden sword of light that would pierce the darkening space in a single stroke without the slightest hesitation.
And in the midst of that hair-trigger situation.
“Ha...”
Hio quietly muttered as he pressed a hand to his forehead.
“What the hell is wrong with them... fuck.”
He had been standing still, and they had suddenly started making a fuss all on their own.