18. The Trial Of Arms (2)

With Lucius’s arrival, every heir-candidate was finally in one place, and a heavy silence settled over the underground training hall. It had to be ages since Seraphina had seen her younger brothers all together, yet she didn’t say a word.

“So you’ve come to humiliate yourself again, have you.”

It was Valerian who broke the silence, standing there with his arms folded.

“I can’t tell whether you’re incapable of learning or have nothing left but sheer obstinacy.”

He looked Lucius over from head to toe and laughed in open scorn.

“Not a thing about you has changed. Decided to throw your lot in with luck this time?”

As far as Valerian could see, Lucius’s odds of clearing this trial were zero.

“You witless fool.”

The barbs kept coming.

“…”

Lucius’s face went red, and then, burning with shame and rage, he struck back.

“Shut your mouth. It’s different this time.”

But Valerian didn’t give an inch.

“And what is so different, exactly? A man’s sword bears the imprint of his life.”

His arms stayed folded as he looked down at his younger brother.

“Not one lesson in the sword from the head of the house, and you actually think a thin layer of trickery will let you surpass the heroes of the past? …There’s no helping you.”

— Whish!

Lucius couldn’t hold it in any longer. He pulled a hidden weapon from inside his coat and threw it, a surprise attack with no warning, but Valerian didn’t even blink.

— Ting!

One light wave of his hand, and a violent burst of wind pressure drove the hidden weapon straight into the floor.

“Still obsessing over hidden weapons and poison. That is why you’ll never make any real progress.”
“…If Father had given me a chance too, the result would have been different.”

Lucius ground his teeth as he growled it.

Eve was left astonished.

Brothers, when they’re still growing up, knock each other around — that’s just how it is.

Well, in this house, knocking each other around the wrong way gets somebody killed, but still. The worst hatreds are always the ones between blood relatives.

And besides — so Kairon really did only teach swordsmanship to Valerian, huh.

The question came to me out of nowhere. Why hadn’t the head of the house taught Lucius the sword? A gap in talent, or something else? Back when this was only a game, I’d never thought too hard about settings like this, and now they were playing out for real right in front of me. But only the head of the house himself could answer that one.

“What’s a brat who doesn’t even know his place doing here?”

Smacked down by Valerian, Lucius had gone looking for someone to take it out on, and the sparks landed on me.

“This isn’t a place for the likes of you. If you don’t want to die from a stray blade while gawking, get the hell o—”
“Lucius!”

Seraphina’s sharp rebuke rang across the training hall. Lucius flinched and looked at her.

“…Sister.”

Whatever history this broken family carried, the two of them stood glaring at each other in silence for a long time. The elder sister who’d left the house, and the younger brother left behind. Between them there seemed to lie a grudge as deep as the years gone by.

Just as the mood threatened to turn ugly, Bato stepped in again.

“Young Master, it’s time. Please, calm yourself. On the battlefield, an agitated mind only raises the odds of making the wrong call.”

With Bato mediating, Lucius forced his ragged breathing under control. He raked his bloodshot eyes over each of us in turn, then turned on his heel.

“Just you watch. I’ll prove that I’m not wrong.”

He wouldn’t engage Valerian any further, so he walked over to the massive stone door, which was shut tight. Above it hung a plaque inscribed Sanctum of Struggle, with an oppressive weight all its own.

— Rrrumble.

The moment his hand touched it, the door swung open with a ponderous grinding, and a chill, heavy mana drifted out from within. It was the breath of the abyss itself, the resting place of the souls of heroes past.

Lucius vanished into the mist, and just as the door was about to close —

— Tap.

I leaned my back against the wall right beside it. To anyone watching, I must have looked like I’d appointed myself doorman, with one ear tilted to the gap. Valerian raised a puzzled eyebrow, and Seraphina, looking troubled, called out to me.

“Arden. What are you doing over there? It is dangerous. Come back this way.”
“I’m fine. I’m more comfortable right here. If I can catch even a bit of Big Brother Lucius’s thunderous battle-cries, I figure I’ll get pumped up too.”

I cracked the joke and pressed myself closer to the door. To everyone else it had to look like the bizarre antics of the household runt, but in my head, things were a little different.

Eve’s chat messages were scrolling up my vision in real time. In the split second Lucius had opened the door and stepped through, Eve, stuck to his back like a sticker, had slipped in right after him. Nobody could see her but me, so I’d push her through the doorway and get a live broadcast of what was happening inside.

That was my plan.

The catch was that Eve couldn’t go past a fixed radius from me, which was why I had to plaster myself this close to the door.

And just like that, her frantic play-by-play began.

Golden armor, with a spear?

I tore through the database in my head at full speed. Among House Arne’s heroes through the ages, one had fought mainly with a spear and had a flashy taste for golden armor —

— KA-BOOM!

At that same moment, an explosion thundered on the other side of the door.

Eve’s voice quivered with excitement.

I crammed her live intel into my head as fast as it came.

— KER-KRRRA-BOOM!

A vibration huge enough to rattle the door itself rolled through me.

I clicked my tongue without meaning to. An assassin-type like Lucius, insisting on a straight-up frontal duel.

It was self-doubt.

Valerian’s sneer about “all trickery” had lodged in him like a splinter, and now he was overcompensating, trying to prove himself through brute force.

— KRAAAA-BOOM!

The thunder shook the very floor of the training hall. Then, after a moment, silence.

Eve’s report was terse, and the outcome was clear.

— Cre-e-eak.

The massive stone door swung open again, and Bato emerged from the cloud of dust. In his enormous arms hung Lucius, bloodied all over and limp.

“…”

Valerian clicked his tongue and gave his fallen brother the sort of glance you’d give a piece of trash.

“As expected. The clay just doesn’t measure up.”

Then he turned his head toward me, a smirking glint in his eye, and with it the unspoken pressure of and you think you’ll be any different?

Bato handed Lucius off to the physicians waiting outside and came back, his face full of worry.

“…Young Master Arden. Are you truly going to attempt the trial?”

The tremor in his voice told me he didn’t want me taking this on.

But with Eve humming away this confidently, I had no reason to back down. After all, there’s no easier opponent than a boss whose patterns you’ve mapped out.

“Don’t worry.”

I straightened my clothes and stepped up in front of the door. That line hadn’t been meant only for Bato.

“You should be looking forward to this.”

I shot a sharp grin at Seraphina and Valerian behind me. Seraphina nodded with a tight expression, and Valerian gave a derisive snort.

“I’ll take the trial.”

— Rrrumble.

The massive stone door swung open once more, and without hesitating I stepped forward into the dark.

— Thud.

The huge stone door opened, and Bato and I stepped into the darkness. In the dead center of the empty training hall, a single huge magic circle had been drawn, all by itself. We walked toward it side by side, the weighty echo of our footsteps carrying through the empty space.

“The rules are simple.” Bato spoke as he walked. “You step onto the summoning circle in the middle. The circle will then resonate with your mana, Young Master, and manifest a past hero whose level matches yours.”

Resonate with my mana, huh.

Then, out of nowhere, a very basic question hit me.

Hold on. Do I even have mana?

The curses still rooted deep in Arden’s body had left the mana circuits inside me a tangled mess. Resonance needed flowing mana, and my body right now wasn’t so much flowing mana as imitating a thoroughly clogged drainpipe.

“Sir Bato.” I raised it carefully. “Does the magic circle ever… just not respond?”
“Pardon?”
“I was bedridden for a long time, so I may have almost no mana left in me. If nothing happens at all….”
“Ha-ha-ha!”

Bato burst into a hearty belly laugh and, as if my worry were the most baseless thing in the world, thumped my shoulder with his thick hand.

“How could such a thing happen? No matter how much your body has weakened, Young Master, you are blood of House Arne. The ancestors will answer you without fail. Have no fear.”

He was completely certain, but I couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling.

Even with Eve this cheerfully optimistic, a bitter smile was the best I could manage. In my experience, a bad gut feeling is never wrong.

“We’ve arrived.”

Before I knew it, we were standing in front of the magic circle. Bato took a step back and gestured politely.

“If you would, Young Master.”
“Hhh.”

Eh, screw it. With that mindset, I put one foot on the circle.

— Wuuum.

The instant I did, a strange vibration ran up from the sole of my foot.

Guess I just couldn’t feel it — there was mana in me after all.

I was just about to let out a breath of relief —

— KU-KU-KU-KOOM!

But the vibration didn’t stop. No, it only grew more violent, until the floor itself was shaking, and a black, ink-thick, sticky crimson light began to fill the circle.

“Y-Young Master!”

Bato’s panicked voice came from behind me.

Eve let out a soundless scream, and I retreated behind Bato just in case. At that moment the circle went haywire, and a black pillar of flame shot all the way up to the ceiling.

“What in the world is this?”

From Bato’s reaction, this was clearly an emergency. He and I drew our swords at the same moment.

The pillar of flame scattered in all directions, and out of the acrid smoke strode a massive figure. It was no golden-armored hero like the one Eve had described. This was a boss clad head to toe in jet-black, thorn-studded plate armor, with only its red eyes glaring out through the slits of its visor.

I looked at Eve, because only she could tell me what this thing was. She read my gaze and hurried to report its identity.

“…What?”

That couldn’t be right. Knowing the trial pitted you against a past hero, I’d memorized every scrap of House Arne’s history, and Arne VII had been a noble hero. The records said he’d devoted his entire life to the house and, in old age, closed his eyes in peace.

Demonification? Falling to corruption? Of every figure I knew, he was the furthest from those words.

Eve, who’d studied that history right alongside me, was just as bewildered, repeating the same words.

“Stand back, Young Master!”

Bato shoved me behind him and stepped forward to block the way, a ferocious fighting spirit bursting from his broad back and shoulders.

“How dare such a vile aura befoul the hallowed altar of our forebears! Identify yourself!”

He roared and raised his greatsword high. The momentum was fierce, but the fallen hero didn’t so much as twitch. It simply stared down at him with those red eyes.

And in that moment —

— Flash.

The hero’s silhouette blurred, moving too fast for the eye to follow.

“…Wh—?”

A stunned sound burst from Bato’s mouth, and in the next instant the boss was right in front of him. There wasn’t even the motion of a sword being swung. It merely tapped the back of its hand, lightly, against Bato’s breastplate.

— KA-BOOOOM!

The roar erupted as though he’d taken a direct hit from a siege weapon, and Bato’s massive frame went flying backward like a paper doll.

“Gurk—!”

He slammed into the training-hall wall with a sickening, splintering sound. A spiderweb of cracks spread across the stone wall, a cloud of dust billowed up, and he spat out a thick mouthful of blood and went limp where he lay.

“…Sir Bato?”