18. The Trial Of Arms (2)

Lucius’s arrival brought the last of the heir-candidates together, and a heavy silence settled over the underground training hall. It had to be the first time in ages that Seraphina had seen all her younger brothers in one place, and yet she said nothing.

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

Valerian broke the silence, arms folded.

“I can’t decide whether you simply lack any capacity to learn, or whether all you have left at this point is sheer obstinacy.”

Valerian raked his gaze down Lucius from head to toe and let out a contemptuous laugh.

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

As far as Valerian was concerned, Lucius had zero chance of clearing this trial.

“You witless fool.”

The sharp-edged jabs kept coming.

“…”

Lucius’s face went beet-red with shame and rage, and he hit back.

“Shut your mouth. It’s not the same as before.”

But Valerian didn’t budge an inch.

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

Arms still folded, he looked down at his younger brother.

“You, who haven’t received a single lesson from the head of the house — you actually think a thin layer of trickery is going to let you surpass the heroes of the past? …There’s no helping you.”

— Whish!

Unable to hold back any longer, Lucius drew a hidden weapon from inside his coat and hurled it.

A surprise strike, with no warning.

But Valerian didn’t even blink.

— Ting!

He waved a hand, and a violent burst of wind pressure slammed the hidden blade 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 even a single chance too, the result would have been different.”

Lucius ground his teeth and growled.

Eve clicked her tongue in disbelief.

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

Well, with the brothers of this house, knocking each other around the wrong way means one of them dies, but still.

The fiercest hostilities, after all, are always between blood kin.

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

The question hit me out of nowhere. Why had the head of the house never taught Lucius the sword? A gap in talent? Some other reason? Backstory I’d never bothered to think too hard about, back when this was just a game, was now unfolding in front of me as reality.

Only the head of the house himself would know the answer.

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

Put in his place by Valerian, Lucius cast around 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 reprimand rang across the hall, and Lucius flinched and looked at her.

“…Sister.”

Whatever history this broken household carried, the two of them just stood there, glaring at each other in silence for a long stretch.

The elder sister who had left the house, and the younger brother left behind. Between them lay a grudge as deep as the years that had passed.

The moment the mood threatened to curdle, 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.”

At Bato’s urging, Lucius wrestled his ragged breathing back under control. He raked his bloodshot eyes across each of us in turn, then spun on his heel.

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

Done with Valerian, he strode over to the massive, firmly shut stone door. Above it, a plaque reading Sanctum of Struggle hung with an oppressive weight.

— Rrrumble.

The moment Lucius laid his hand on it, the stone door swung open with a ponderous, grinding groan. A chill, heavy mana wafted out from within.

The breath of the abyss itself, where the souls of heroes past lay at rest.

Lucius vanished into the mist, and the door began to swing shut.

— Tap.

I leaned back against the wall, right beside the door. To anyone watching, I’d have looked like a self-appointed doorman, ear tilted to the gap.

Valerian raised an eyebrow, puzzled. Seraphina, too, called out to me, her expression troubled.

“Arden, what are you doing over there? It’s dangerous — come back this way.”

“I’m fine. I’m more comfortable right here. If I get to hear even a fragment of Big Brother Lucius’s thunderous battle-cries, I figure I’ll feel pumped up myself.”

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

Eve’s chat messages scrolled up across my vision in real time. In the split second Lucius opened the door and stepped inside, Eve had clung to his back like a sticker and slipped in right after him. Since she was invisible to anyone but me, I’d pushed her through the doorway to get a live broadcast of what was happening inside. That was the plan. The catch was that Eve couldn’t stray beyond a fixed radius of me, which was why I had to plaster myself this close to the door.

And just like that, Eve’s 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 down the ages, only one had favored a spear as his main weapon, with a flamboyant taste for golden armor to match.

— KA-BOOM!

At the same moment, an explosion thundered from the far side of the door.

Eve’s voice quivered with excitement.

I crammed her real-time 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 before I could stop myself.

What would drive an assassin-type like Lucius to insist on a straight-up, head-on duel?

Self-doubt.

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

— KRAAAA-BOOM!

The roar shook the very floor of the training hall.

And then, after a moment, silence.

Eve’s report was clipped, the outcome obvious.

— Cre-e-eak.

The massive stone door swung open again, and Bato emerged from the cloud of dust.

Lucius hung from his enormous arms, his whole body bloodied and limp.

“…”

Valerian clicked his tongue and looked at his fallen brother the way one looks at a piece of refuse.

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

He turned toward me, a smirking glint in his eye. The unspoken pressure of it: and you think you’ll be any different?

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

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

From the tremor in Bato’s voice, I could tell: he didn’t want me to take this on.

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

“Don’t worry.”

I straightened my clothes and stepped up to the door. And this wasn’t a line meant for Bato alone.

“You should be looking forward to this.”

I shot a sharp grin back at Seraphina and Valerian behind me. Seraphina nodded, her expression tight; Valerian only snorted in derision.

“I’ll take the trial.”

— Rrrumble.

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

— Thud.

The huge stone door opened, and Bato and I stepped into the darkness. Dead center of the empty hall, a single huge magic circle had been drawn, all on its own.

We walked side by side toward it, the heavy echo of our footsteps rolling 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.

Out of nowhere, a very basic question hit me.

Hold on. Do I even have mana?

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

“Sir Bato.”

I broached the topic carefully.

“Is there a case where the magic circle… simply doesn’t respond?”

“Pardon?”

“I was bedridden for a long time, so there may be almost no mana left inside me. If there’s no reaction at all….”

“Ha-ha-ha!”

Bato burst into a hearty belly laugh. As if my worry were the most baseless thing in the world, he gave my shoulder a thump with one 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.”

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

Even with Eve being so cheerfully optimistic, I could only manage a bitter smile.

A bad gut feeling, in my experience, 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, I set one foot onto the magic 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!

The vibration didn’t stop.

No. It only grew more violent, until the floor itself was shaking.

A sticky crimson light, black as ink, began to fill the magic 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.

In that moment the magic circle went haywire, and a black pillar of flame shot all the way to the ceiling.

“What in the world is this?”

Bato’s reaction made it clear: this was an emergency. We drew our swords at the same moment.

The black pillar of flame scattered in all directions, and from the acrid smoke a massive figure came striding out.

There was no golden-armored hero of the kind Eve had described.

A boss clad head to toe in jet-black, thorn-studded plate armor, nothing but red eyes glaring out through the slits of its visor.

I looked at Eve. Only she could tell me what this thing was.

Reading my gaze, Eve hurried to report the entity’s identity.

“…What?”

That couldn’t be right.

Knowing the trial pitted a candidate against a past hero, I’d memorized every scrap of House Arne’s history.

Arne VII had been a noble hero. By the records, he’d devoted his entire life to the house and, in old age, closed his eyes in peace.

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

Eve, who had pored over that history 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 burst off his broad back and shoulders.

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

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

In that instant.

— Flash.

The hero’s silhouette blurred. The movement was too fast for the eye to follow.

“…Wh—?”

A stunned sound burst from Bato’s mouth.

In the next instant, the boss stood right in front of him.

No sword-swing had even been visible. It had merely tapped the back of its hand, lightly, against Bato’s breastplate.

— KA-BOOOOM!

A roar erupted as though Bato had taken a direct hit from a siege engine. His massive frame went flying backward like a paper doll.

“Gurk—!”

Bato slammed into the training-hall wall with a sickening, splintering crunch. A spiderweb of cracks spread across the stone, and a cloud of dust billowed up.

He spat out a thick mouthful of blood and slumped limply to the ground.

“…Sir Bato?”