48. To The Final Trial

Sadly, I never got to see Seraphina’s face soaked through. Her sword had frozen the rain over her head before a single drop could land.

Impressive, just in a different sense.

I leveled the words at Seraphina, who kept that blank expression even under a surprise water-gun assault.

“Come on up.”

It was my turn now, just as she’d once done to me, and I aimed the tip of my sword at her.

All I’d done was clear the trash mobs. I hadn’t crossed blades with the real boss yet.

I never figured it’d end at just this much anyway.

But then.

Huh?

Contrary to my expectations, Seraphina slid her drawn sword back into its sheath.

“That’s enough.”

At her words, the chill fighting spirit that had been coiling inside her ebbed away like a receding tide. Caught off guard, I couldn’t even lower my sword.

“Don’t tell me you’re satisfied? We haven’t even started a proper spar yet??”

Brushing me off, Seraphina stepped up onto the training floor. She looked down at the soaked ground, then knelt and pressed her hand gently to the pooled water.

“What are you doing right now?”
“Watch closely.”

The instant her fingertips touched it, frost bristled up across the cold streams spread over the floor. The puddle congealed in a heartbeat, and out of it rose a palm-sized ‘mini ice knight’ that went bustling around the training floor like a wind-up doll. Everywhere it passed, the scattered droplets rushed to it like iron filings to a magnet and clung to its body. The more water it drank in, the more dramatically its bulk swelled, until at last it had perfectly rebuilt the enormous figure I’d just smashed apart.

Rising to her feet, Seraphina went on, calm as ever.

“This way, you can keep a summon sustained while spending the bare minimum of mana. It is a touch cumbersome, though.”

“I can’t use mana, though?”
“Since when were you any good with a sword?”

I couldn’t argue with that.

True enough — one day I’ll lift the curse anyway.

Put that way, I couldn’t help being floored by the sheer ingenuity of what Seraphina had just done with her mana.

“The ways of using magic divide broadly into two.”

Just like that, Seraphina’s magic lecture had begun. Bailing wasn’t an option, so I got dragged into the class whether I liked it or not.

“One is to fire off magic directly through incantation.”

A magic circle can only hold so much mana, so this method is reserved mainly for high-output spells. Its drawback is that you can’t do anything else while chanting, which leaves you wide open and defenseless. For that reason, a mage who leans on incantation absolutely needs a guard.

“The other is to discharge magic through a magic circle drawn in advance. I mostly take this route.”

True to her word, Seraphina hadn’t chanted.

“It has the advantage of being usable instantly, without an incantation, but it carries the fatal drawback that you have to draw each magic circle out beforehand, and if the formula is off by even a hair, it won’t activate. The power is generally weaker than an incantation, too.”

“Like summoning the ice knight through a magic circle?”
“Yes. After I returned to the Empire, I devoted myself entirely to finding ways to make use of summoned beasts.”

She said it gazing at the restored ice knight.

“Since mana can’t be infinite, I focused on reinforcing these fellows.”

They’d been incomparably trickier than in our first training session. Tricky enough, in fact, to shed the trash-mob label.

“Simply pouring mana in to harden them was meaningless. No matter how hard, a lump of ice is still just a lump of ice.”

Hers was the conviction that there was nothing a blade couldn’t cut, a philosophy you could only arrive at by living a life honed on the sword alone. And that brought me to the part I couldn’t follow.

“Why did you spend more than half a year devoted to reinforcing your summons rather than yourself?”

Somewhere along the way, I’d ended up earnestly debating with Seraphina.

“I was amazed at the idea of momentarily liquefying to let an attack flow right through. But still….”

I gave the ice knight’s head a couple of light taps as I spoke.

“High-level swordsmen will do what I did — send a blade-wind to blow away the liquefied part, or vaporize it with sword aura.”

Seraphina had been a Knight Commander of the Empire. Set against the raw martial might of her true self, no ice knight, however intricately its patterns were tangled, would ever amount to more than an irritating swarm of flies.

“Shouldn’t you be focusing on your own strength? I’d have thought you of all people would think that way, Sister. You’re the type to grind and refine yourself, after all.”

At my question, Seraphina fell silent a moment, then looked up at the sky. I tilted my head back to follow her gaze. Blue clouds drifted and swelled, swimming across the open sky.

It really was no different from the sky we looked at every day. But Seraphina must have seen something there that ordinary folk like us couldn’t, because then she spoke.

“The world is vast. The Empire is a great power, true, but this land teems with countless strong figures besides the Empire.”

“‘Countless strong figures’ sounds like a bit of an exaggeration.”

I wasn’t trying to flatter her; it was the plain truth.

If there were swarms of people stronger than you, would this world have crumbled so easily?

I bit down hard and swallowed the words. Oblivious to my thoughts, Seraphina went on.

“Among them there are surely swordsmen stronger and faster than I am. When I cross blades with them in a pure contest, can I close that gap through effort alone?”

“…”

Seraphina’s gaze was earnest.

“Unless they’re sitting idle, that is. While I’m putting in bone-grinding effort, they won’t be loafing about either. In the end, time is fair, and round and round it goes, until I’m right back where I started. The physical limits of a human being are clear-cut.”

Maybe it was exactly that mindset that had carried her to the seat of the Empire’s Knight Commander.

A posture worth emulating.

Even from a position where she could have flaunted her own strength, not a sliver of conceit crept into her voice.

“A summoned beast is, in the end, a part of me. Born of my mana, it can be seen as my strength and an extension of my body.”

When she clenched her fist, the ice knight raised its sword at the very same instant.

“Training the body has its limits, but there is no limit to the application of mana. The reason I tangled these fellows’ patterns and built in variables is simple.”

Seraphina’s eyes glinted.

“So that when someone stronger than me appears, I can tie up their feet, or divert their attention, for even one second more.”

For a single second. For one fleeting, momentary second, Seraphina had poured in half a year of her time.

“Of course, I’m still far from there. Seeing how I lost to you, who can’t even use mana.”

Wearing a wry smile, she touched the ice knight, and it melted away like thawing snow.

“The road ahead is long, but this is the answer I found. What about you, Arden?”
“Sorry?”
“How will you face the final trial?”

Taciturn as she was, Seraphina had clearly unspooled all that explanation today just to ask me this one question.

I turned her question over in my mind. It wasn’t an easy thing to answer on the spot, and all the more maddening because it had no set answer. Still, brushing off someone’s sincerity as a joke would have been rude.

In the middle of mulling it over, my eyes met Eve’s.

Right. Since when had I ever agonized over things that hadn’t even happened yet? A single word from Eve, and my chest felt a good deal lighter.

“Well, who knows. If I just throw myself at it, won’t it work out somehow?”
“You have no intention of making a plan for that throwing-yourself-at-it?”
“No, none at all. Life’s taught me that the things I took for granted turned out not to be givens at all. Just look at today — one slip and my nose nearly got blown clean off! Your little brother very nearly had to live out his days unable to smell a thing.”

I clutched my nose and hammed it up. Seraphina didn’t so much as smile at my clowning; she stepped down off the training floor and walked on ahead, taking the lead.

“Then let’s go.”

I had no idea where we were headed, but I decided to follow her anyway and fell in behind.

“Go where?”
“We must go and tell the head of the house that you intend to attempt the final trial, do we not. Surely you are not unaware of it — that a guardian undertakes the final trial together with the candidate.”
“…I know that. But — right this minute?”
“Didn’t you say it yourself. That you have no intention of making any plan.”

Seraphina turned around and looked at me standing there dumbstruck, and a faint smile spread across her face.

“Surely a knight is not one to say two different things out of the same mouth.”

We headed for the tower floor of the west wing, to Lillian’s study.

Two sisters, reunited after ten years apart. I’d worried it might be awkward, but the worry proved needless.

“Sis!”

The moment Lillian saw Seraphina, she rushed over and threw herself into her arms.

“…I missed you.”

Seraphina gently patted Lillian’s back.

“It’s been a long time. I’m glad to see you looking well.”

Those words didn’t just prick Lillian’s tear ducts; they burst them. Still wrapped in the embrace, Lillian wept for a good long while.

Watching from the side, Eve made a show of pulling out a handkerchief.

The grown-up Eve and I watched the peaceful scene we hadn’t seen in a while.

“Let’s go. The head of the house is waiting.”

Soothing the still-sniffling Lillian, Seraphina rose to her feet. Now we’d really go and announce our challenge.

The instant we knocked on the door of the head of the house’s chamber and stepped inside, the three of us froze in unison.

Someone was already in the room. In front of the enormous ebony desk stood a man, arms crossed, dressed in a crisp formal uniform instead of armor. He slowly turned his head and looked at us.

“It’s been a while, Brother.”

Valerian gave no reply to my greeting, only flicked a glance my way. But that glance was different from before. The contempt that had once made him regard me like some bothersome insect was gone. What replaced it was harder to name, the kind of look reserved for a rival, threaded with wariness and a strange, grudging acknowledgment.

Could just be my imagination, though.

It didn’t feel half bad. Having someone mark me as a rival was proof that all the work I’d put in this whole time hadn’t been for nothing.

Just then the inner door of the study opened and Kairon stepped out. The moment he took his seat, the air in the room sank heavy.

“Everyone’s here.”

Kairon looked us over one by one. Seen all together like this, the elite of the house had gathered in a single room.

“There is but one reason I called you. To inform you of the contents of the third and final trial.”

Valerian’s gaze and mine collided.

“The theme of the third trial is ‘subjugation.’”
“Subjugation?”

The word was so unexpected that I echoed it right back.

“You have all passed the trials of arms and of wisdom. You have proven your qualifications amply; now is the time to put that strength to use for the house.”

Kairon rose from his seat and pointed to a spot on the enormous domain map hanging on the wall. It lay not far from the domain itself, yet no mountain range or sea sat there, only a region the map marked as empty wasteland.

“Isn’t that a barren stretch where no one can live?”

Lillian, unable to hold her curiosity, was the one who asked. Kairon’s answer came soon after.

“The reason our house receives such special treatment from the Empire, and is permitted to maintain an independent military force, lies right here.”

Kairon strode over, drew something out, and set before us a gemstone that glowed red like a diamond.

I knew the worth of that gem better than anyone. Down the line, it would become a core crafting material, one no weaponsmith or armorer could ever leave out.

“A headache the Empire can scarcely handle. It is because our house takes sole charge of managing the ‘Abyss’ — the rift that joins this world and the Demon Realm.”

Honestly, it caught me off guard.

The Abyss was the place first discovered when the world began to be devoured by demons. Yet judging by their reactions, Seraphina and Valerian already seemed to know about it.

“For the past several years, I have been cutting them down there.”

Only Lillian wore the face of someone hearing it all for the first time.

“‘Them’? No — a rift that joins to the Demon Realm, what on earth are you talking about!”

Kairon looked down at the gemstone glowing red.

“Demons truly exist. At this very moment, even now.”