56. Dance Of The Blue Butterfly

I’d spent most of the Trial of Wisdom inside a prison cell.

That cell was where I got my information, all of it through ‘Beron,’ who’d been locked up alongside me. There was the Arne army, which came back to the next battlefield perfectly intact even after taking fatal wounds. There was the grim rumor that the prisoners they hauled away never returned. And in among all that, there’d been something rather peculiar.

— It was about a year ago, I’d say. He appeared like a comet and turned the whole battlefield upside down.

That “Blue Lion” was none other than Valerian, who’d even come to find us in person after we failed to assassinate the Saintess.

But I’d missed one decisive piece of what Beron told me back then. No, I’d brushed it off as nothing.

— It was only a few months ago. When a hero showed up who blocked the blade of that haughty Blue Lion.

I’d simply taken him for a hero the Empire never recorded, because history isn’t the story of those who survived but of those who were written down.

— A massive man, carrying a shield like a mountain to match his frame.

The Empire called him the “Black Bear,” apparently. Even as Beron went on praising him, I hadn’t paid it much mind. If I’m being honest, the most I’d felt was that it’d be nice to get a look at him sometime, if the chance came up, and in the end I never met him before the trial was over.

“…So you’re telling me that the ‘Black Bear’ who stopped Brother Valerian in his tracks during the Trial of Wisdom — that was really you?”

At my question, Elli nodded.

“I ended up possessing the body of an Imperial soldier named ‘Mountain.’ He was huge and terrifyingly strong, but it turned out he was so timid he was always on his own.”

Listening to her explain it so matter-of-factly, I felt a strange sense of dissonance.

The name ‘Kael’ was something I made up on a whim, too.

Regrettably, I hadn’t even known the name of the man I’d possessed, nor had I particularly cared to. He’d been a single-use consumable for clearing the quest, no more and no less.

…And here she figured all of this out.

Unlike me, Elli hadn’t looked at the Trial of Wisdom as a mere consumable.

“Mountain wrote in a diary every day. I know I shouldn’t have, but I snuck a peek at it.”

A frail woman’s body had turned into a giant of a man and been flung out onto an unfamiliar battlefield, yet even in a panic that would have made an ordinary person lose their mind, she hadn’t buckled.

“Mountain wanted to make friends. So much that he wrote down all the names and habits and little quirks of the soldiers around him in that diary. As payment for peeking at it, I tried to make that wish of his come true.”
“How?”
“I worked really hard to make friends with them! I helped with their work and made absolutely sure they noticed!”

If anything, she’d struck up those conversations with that signature cheerful brazenness of hers.

So this is what an unbreakable heart really looks like.

She could smile like that now, but when I thought back on how things had been at the time, it must have been almost impossible to endure.

“I’m sorry.”

My mouth tasted bitter. I was the one who’d dragged her into the Trial of Wisdom against her will.

“I won’t make excuses. I’m sorry.”

Once the trial had actually started, I’d buried myself in clearing it. Never mind looking after her, I hadn’t even tried to find her.

“The truth is, I resented you so, so much, Young Master.”
“…”

“The training the Imperial army put me through was harder than I could ever have imagined. Every day, the second it ended, I’d collapse into bed dead on my feet.”
“That really is…”
“But then I thought about it, and I was training all day long, so how on earth were you ever going to find me? So you don’t have to apologize. I didn’t go looking for you either, after all.”

Elli fiddled with her shield, head bowed.

“That’s one thing, but when you kept trying to send me off to Master Valerian, that really hurt. Who do you think I went through that hellish training for!”
“…I’m sorry.”

At my apology, Elli finally lifted her head. The fresh wave of hurt had left the corners of her eyes damp, but that signature plucky smile of hers was hanging on her lips.

“Hmph, I’m only letting it slide this one time! Anyway, this whole thing really made me realize something.”
“Realized something?”
“Yes! If I don’t get stronger, I can’t do anything at all!”

I couldn’t claim to perfectly understand everything she’d gone through. There were bound to be parts she’d left out to spare my feelings, and even if she’d told me, the fine details of what she’d felt belonged to her and her alone. Still, that kind of change in her made me proud.

“So that’s why you asked Brother to train you himself?”

Leo, who’d been packing the bags, cut in at my guess.

“Believe it or not, Master Valerian summoned Elli before she ever went to him.”
“…Seriously?”

At my question, Elli scratched the back of her head, looking bashful.

“I’ll tell you that story in more detail once we’re back at the house.”

I nodded.

“Yeah. Sounds like we’ve both got a whole lot to talk about.”

There was even more I wanted to say, but for now, let’s just head home.

Once she’d gathered the last of the luggage, Elli spoke up.

“Senior Leo. It’s really all over now, right?”

Leo didn’t answer right away. He mulled it over, glanced at me for a moment, and only then answered.

“It’d be fine if we took the Young Master along, wouldn’t it?”

One thing leading to another, just like they say. The two of them were having a conversation only I wasn’t in on.

“What? What is it now? What’s left?”

A bad feeling was building in me, so I asked, but instead of answering, Elli pointed at the sleeping Lucius.

“I’ll keep watch over Lord Lucius. Senior Leo, you go along with the Young Master.”
“Sure.”

The two of them were briskly settling everything between themselves without bothering to ask for my agreement.

“…Go? Go where?”
“You’ll see when you get there.”

With no other choice, I followed Leo.

It was neither near nor far when I caught sight of Seraphina’s face in the distance. I drew a breath to call out to her, but in the next instant the sound wouldn’t come, and I clamped my mouth shut. Thorned vines were sprouting up all around her in real time, and a few of them had the same vicious shape I’d seen before, lined with sharp teeth. Even so, Seraphina stood there expressionless.

I turned my head in the direction Eve pointed and found the owner of the vines, who was glaring at Seraphina as if to kill her.

— CRASH! CRASH!

The nearest vine slammed down on the ground with all its might, trying to flatten Seraphina.

Why are those two suddenly going at it like this?

Before my confusion could deepen, Seraphina began moving, light and graceful.

— CRASH! CRASH! CRASH!

The attacks were indiscriminate, yet she serenely dodged them all.

I went closer to get a better look, but—

One of the vines growing nearby spotted me and came at me, so I drew my sword in case things went south, but—

Huh?

It pulled its thorns back into its body and started rubbing itself frantically against the back of my hand.

So I sheathed my sword again, stroked the vine, and walked over to the two of them.

“Looks like this is the best seat in the house.”

I plopped down wherever and settled in to watch them fight.

Seraphina dodged the falling vines, gliding as smoothly as a figure skater. It was her stage, and she moved across it in silence through the booming roar of the bursting vines.

“Beautiful.”

I marveled at the sight. It felt like watching a stage that had been exquisitely put together.

“…Arden. You are awake.” Hearing my voice, Seraphina had cast her gaze toward me.

“Yeah, I slept like a log. So what’s going on here?”

Why were the two people who’d been my guardians turning their blades on each other? What I’d missed over these two days, I realized, wasn’t simply time.

“The nerve of you!”

— CRASH!

The vine descended on Seraphina once more, but—

“You are a slow learner. Once you realized the downward smash did not work, you should have chosen a different method.”

This time, too, Seraphina slid back gracefully and gave ground.

“Shut up!”

Standing off in the distance, Lillian had her face scrunched up in a deep scowl, so unlike her.

“Both of you, stop it!”
“I can’t do that. Not when it’s for your sake.”

Lillian focused back into her incantation and summoned a far greater number of vines, along with the bees and acid clouds I’d seen in the forest.

“Leo, what in the world is going on here?”

Leo, who’d arrived late, hesitated a moment before answering me.

“While we were watching to see how things would go, the Young Master’s right arm turned pitch-black. And when Lady Seraphina saw that, she drew her sword.”
“Her sword?”
“Yes. She said cutting off the contaminated arm before the Young Master was completely eroded would give him the best odds of survival, so…”

My forehead throbbed. A coldly rational, ruthless judgment, exactly the kind Seraphina would make.

“The moment Lady Seraphina actually moved to cut off the Young Master’s arm, Lady Lillian threw herself in to stop her.”
“Don’t tell me they’ve been at it like this ever since?”
“…Yes.”

Maybe she’d been listening to our conversation, because Lillian shouted.

“Sis wasn’t trying to cut off his arm. She was clearly aiming for his heart!”
“Because if I had said I was going to kill Arden, none of you would have stood by quietly.”
“How can you even say that!?”
“It was obvious it would come to this. That is the only reason I said it that way.”
“Why? You should’ve just run him through and killed me along with him!”

Seraphina didn’t answer, and Lillian, watching her, flushed redder and redder, like a beet.

— KA-KA-KRASH!

The redder Lillian’s face grew, the more savage the attacks became.

“Do you want Arden to attack us? Removing the risk was the first priority.”
“Risk? Is your little brother a risk to you? Of course — that’s why you didn’t go looking when Big Bro Lucius went missing!”
“That was out of respect for Lucius’s choi—”
“No! You were the same way ten years ago, when I left the house! Respect? You knew everything I was going through, as young as I was, and you call that respect? You just didn’t care. I was a nuisance. Have you ever, even once, truly thought of me… of us… as family?”

“…”

“Leaving Big Bro Lucius to rot until he ended up like that, trying to kill Arden without batting an eye — none of it means a thing to you! Because to you, family has never meant anything at all!”

Once Lillian’s fury had burst loose, it was hard to recklessly stem it.

Because her anger was justified.

“Lady Lillian’s head—?”

A crimson flower bud forced its way up through the crown of Lillian’s head.

Condensed mana gathered above Lillian’s head into an enormous flower bud.

“Sis, stop!”

My danger sense instinctively flagged the magic packed into that flower as dangerous, but Seraphina still didn’t so much as twitch.

Lillian bit her lip with resolve, and the petals flipped inside out and bloomed in full.

— KU-WAAAAANG—!

From the heart of the flower, from that gap gaping open like a maw, a violent beam steeped in dark-red venom erupted.

“Sister!”

Seraphina didn’t waver. She slowly took hold of the hilt at her waist.

“…Nothing at all, you say.”

Her voice was a low murmur, yet it carried clearly even through the roar of light.

The blade of her sword, set in its draw-stance, was dyed blue, and a blue mist began to swirl.

“Dance of the Blue Butterfly.”

Seraphina cleaved the empty air horizontally, and everywhere the tip of her sword passed, thousands of phantom butterflies glowing blue sprang into being. They swarmed in a great flock toward Lillian’s huge oncoming beam of mana.

It wasn’t a collision of attacks. Everywhere the butterflies alighted, the beam turned to white ice crystals and began to crystallize.

— KWA-RRR, CRACK! CRRR-ACK—!

The dark-red mana cannon that had been surging in to swallow her whole came to a halt right before Seraphina’s nose. The spot where the thousands of butterflies had settled was already frozen solid into a colossal ice sculpture.

“…!”

Lillian’s eyes filled with shock.

When the butterflies stopped beating their wings and scattered, the frozen pillar of mana crumbled to powder with the sound of shattering glass.

“Emotion can be fuel for power, but it is also an impurity that throws off your trajectory.”

Seraphina lightly shook off the frost-wreathed sword and fixed her eyes on Lillian.

“If your grief amounts to no more than this, then it truly means nothing to me.”