61. The Arena (5)

Out of nowhere, Kairon, the head of the house, came to mind. He made his rounds to clear out the Abyss on a fixed schedule. One of the finest swordsmen in the Empire, and he came and went from this musty pit as though it were his own front yard, with no grand will to safeguard the realm’s peace behind it, nothing of the sort.

1. He takes charge of the Abyss, that perennial headache of the Empire.

2. A cleared Abyss regenerates once a month, so he clears it out on schedule, right on time.

3. And on top of all that, he handles whatever other lackey-work the Empire hands him that I don’t even know about.

So this is how a house that lost to the Empire survives.

What else could you do? If you wanted to survive, you crawled and you groveled.

“…Krrrrr.”
“That said, you’ve sure got some stamina.”

Cerberus stood there with two heads gone, blood still welling from the severed stumps, and went on growling. Finishing it off in this state would be no trouble at all now. But what would be the point of snuffing out its life this instant?

Either way, a month from now he’ll just respawn here good as new.

And once he had, Kairon would come around again and lop his head clean off. A fate of having his neck sawed through once a month, on and on without end. To this creature, the Abyss was a slaughterhouse with no exit, a wheel of hell that turned forever.

What if I took this mutt outside?

A flicker of curiosity took hold of me. Would the individual that revived here a month from now and the one in front of me right now really be one and the same?

Ordinary monsters scattered across the field had a fresh individual spawn the instant they died, but Cerberus, whatever else was true, bore the title of ‘mid-boss.’ Bosses stayed put, born and revived at fixed locations.

If you looked at it in game-system terms, wouldn’t bosses be assigned a unique code?

Which meant the Cerberus guarding the second gate of this Abyss was the one and only one of its kind in all the world. If my hunch held, there might well be another Cerberus in some other Abyss, but the sentinel of this place, at least, was this fellow and no other.

In truth, whether this fellow was here or not, the difficulty of the subjugation wouldn’t change much for Kairon. He’d been at this for decades already.

“Woof, woof!”

Anyway, I’d taken a strange liking to this fellow. That survival instinct of his, the way he kept trying to sink his teeth into the enemy to the very last even with two heads gone and no hope left, was just like looking at myself, dropped into the wreck of Arden’s body.

A petty curiosity played its part too. In thousands of hours of play, I’d never once tamed a monster.

“Hey.”

I looked Cerberus dead in the eye, teeth still bared and hackles up, and spoke.

“Stay here and you’ll end up dead. A human far more merciless and far stronger than me is going to come for you once a month. You’ve been through it already, so you know, don’t you?”

At my words, its growling subsided ever so faintly.

“If you promise not to harm people and to do as I say, I’ll help you get out of here. Stay here and all you’ve got is the pain of being killed once a month, over and over. You know that better than anyone, don’t you?”

Maybe he was turning my words over. Cerberus’s eyes swung left and right, and before long he drew his teeth back in.

“Good boy.”

And then he lowered his stance, padded up to my feet, and sank down as if in surrender. I took it to mean the mutt was handing over his complete obedience.

“It’s going to take some doing to train you, isn’t it.”

Even with his head bowed, the eyes he turned up at me held a wildness that promised he’d sink his teeth into the back of my neck the second he got the chance. Sure enough, a dog that’s bitten a person once doesn’t go gentle so easily.

Doesn’t matter.

But that half-obedience pleased me all the more. It wasn’t as though I’d wanted some endlessly docile puppy.

“Hey, shrink yourself down a bit. Where are you going to go with us in that body?”

At my command, Cerberus’s eyes rolled, and jet-black smoke came pouring off his body.

— Tssss—!

Like a doll with the air let out of it, the monster’s body began to shrink, grotesque to watch. The once-massive muscles drew in into lean, sleek lines, and the savagely torn stumps of the left and right necks melted into the smoke and vanished without a trace. At last, as the smoke thinned, a creature of a familiar size stood at my feet.

“…Oh.”

A gasp slipped out on its own. The hideous three-headed monster was nowhere to be seen. In its place, looking up at me, stood a finely built Doberman, sleek ebony fur over a taut, muscular frame. Its ears stood in sharp points and its eyes were keen, the very picture of a thoroughbred hunting hound. The only things that set it apart from an ordinary dog were the red glint that flashed through its eyes now and then, and the stare that still said it wanted to devour me.

“All right, much better.”

Satisfied, I gave his head a light pat and turned toward the red barrier. Reluctantly, he peeled himself off the ground and fell in behind me.

When I stepped back into view past the red barrier, Elli came running.

“Young Master!”

Her running steps stuttered to a halt at my feet, and her gaze sank lower and lower until it caught on the dog pressed tight against my calf. Elli had watched my fight with Cerberus. However much the thing had shrunk down into the shape of an ordinary Doberman, she knew this was the monster that had been spewing three kinds of breath only moments ago. Shield gripped tight, keeping her guard up against him, she asked.

“Is it really all right?”

Her voice trembled thinly.

“Ah, this guy?”

I ruffled the head of Cerberus, who was growling and glaring at Elli. The coarse, bristly fur rasped against my fingertips.

“He promised to listen to me. Isn’t that right?”

Cerberus bared his teeth and snapped at the hand petting him. I slipped the bite and grabbed him by the scruff of the neck.

“As you can see, it’ll take some time to train him, though.”

Elli’s eyes went back and forth between me and Cerberus, her face uneasy. I answered the worry with a laugh.

“Got a little breathing room, have you? Worrying about me and all.”

After Seraphina, I’d taken my win as well. But by the rules of the arena, every challenger had to win for us to move on to the next chapter. Which meant our success now rested in Elli’s hands.

At that, she looked up at me with a face caught somewhere between crying and laughing.

“I’m going to give it my absolute best, as far as I possibly can.”

Elli gripped her shield again and braced her resolve. I laid my hand over the back of hers, knuckles gone white with the force of her grip, and gently pressed the high-raised shield down toward the ground.

“Listen carefully. Giving it your best means nothing.”

“…Sorry?”

“If at any point in the fight you get even the faintest gut sense that you’re going to lose, you shout that you forfeit, right then and there. You throwing your life away here means nothing to me. It buys me nothing. Understand?”

I knew the weight the pressure was laying on her shoulders, but I didn’t want it turning into a shackle.

“We’ve got no use for any ‘good game’ nonsense.”

“‘Good… game’?”

“It means ‘I lost, but I fought well.’ Give that to the dogs. Like I told you, in this arena, if you lose, you die. So if you can’t win, then don’t lose either. Forfeiting here isn’t really losing. You’re just pulling back for now. You can come challenge again a month later.”

I drew the talk out on purpose, cold and long-winded. More than anything, I wanted to head off, whatever it took, any situation where Elli might get reckless and throw her life away.

Maybe she read what I really meant. Elli closed her eyes for a moment, opened them, and gave a nod along with a clear, bright smile.

“Yes, I’ll do exactly as you say, Young Master. If I can’t win, then I won’t lose, either.”

That was enough.

Elli stepped over the red barrier. Watching her figure recede and vanish into the battlefield, I bit down on my lip.

Just then Seraphina, standing beside me, spoke in a low voice.

“It will be better than you fear.”

The remark caught me off guard. That Seraphina, of all people, would hand me words of comfort. I turned my head and looked at her, puzzled.

“Are you comforting me right now?”

Instead of answering, Seraphina kept her gaze fixed ahead and went on.

“When you train knight-candidates in the Empire, how many do you suppose give up and walk out of their own accord?”

“Well. With your training, Sister, I’d imagine a fair few bolt partway through.”

“No. Not one of them quits of his own free will. The honor of being an Imperial knight is not a chance that comes so easily. They cling to it even as they cough up blood.”

“Then you’re saying every last trainee sees your regimen through to the end?”

“Hardly.”

Seraphina shook her head firmly.

“The will not to give up is a talent from an altogether different domain than skill with a sword. Regrettably, when someone lacks even one of those two talents, I simply cut them down myself.”

Her cool gaze drifted to the far side of the red barrier, where Elli had disappeared.

“Which is why what I am telling you is this — that child is all right.”

Wasn’t that the highest praise an Imperial Knight Commander could give? The mere fact that Elli had passed muster in the eyes of a woman who must have cut down thousands of candidates was enough to ease my anxious heart, if only a little.

But understanding a thing with my head and stilling the tremor in my chest were two different matters. I kept my eyes locked on Elli’s back as she made for the center of the battlefield. Was this what a guardian felt, watching over a small child set down at the water’s edge? Now all I could do was watch, and pray she came through safe.

Sweat beaded clammy on the palm wrapped around the shield grip. With every step I took, the grind of sand working into my shoes rang oddly loud. The warmth the Young Master had pressed into the back of my hand only moments ago still seemed to linger there, and yet my heart hammered wildly all on its own.

I can do it. I can do it, Elli.

I turned the Young Master’s words over and over under my breath.

When you face a mage, you close the distance no matter what. Driving in before you give them even a sliver of room to chant — that’s the one road a shield-soldier has to stay alive.

The strategy was simple. Force the fight to close range. Don’t let the opening instant slip; bore straight in. And never, ever give my opponent the time to finish a spell.

I’d already replayed the duel Lady Seraphina had shown me in my head well over a hundred times.

This shield I learned under Lord Valerian, clawing past death again and again, is not just a tool for blocking.

I reminded myself, over and over, that this shield was the only weapon I had. Defense alone wins you nothing. The Young Master had drummed that into me again and again.

Just get in close. If I can land a single clean, decisive blow…

Keeping my eyes trained over the upper rim of the shield, I stared hard at the red barrier shimmering on the far side.

— Tssss—.

At last the fog thinned and the barrier lifted. I gathered every ounce of strength into my knees, set to kick off the ground and spring forward in the same breath. Just as the Young Master had taught me, I had to close the distance before the mage could begin to chant.

But.

“…Huh?”

The instant I saw the figure stepping out of the fog, my body, already coiled to lunge, locked rigid, every muscle seizing solid in an instant. The fingers gripping my shield trembled faintly.

It was no old wizard with a staff, no grotesque demon-shaped thing. The figure that emerged, cutting through the dark, was a man with a massive greatsword shouldered, his eyes blazing with a fierce blue light.

“…Lord Valerian?”

Gladness and confusion tangled together in my chest. The memories of those months of training, the way he had driven me without mercy and forged me, came flooding back fresh and vivid. And seeing his face whole and unharmed on top of it, the taut strings of my nerves went slack before I even knew it. I lowered the shield I’d hauled up to my shoulder and, half in a trance, waved a hand toward him.

“Lord Valerian! You made it through safe…”

That was when it happened.

Beyond the barrier, I could see the Young Master, Arden, shouting something. Maybe it was the eerie air of the arena, but his voice reached me muffled, a buzzing blur.

“…I can’t hear you very well!”

I stepped a few paces closer to catch the Young Master’s shout. Only then did the shape of his voice, bent and barred by the wall, stab sharp into my ears.

“It’s not the real one!”
“What do you mean by that…?”
“Look behind you!”

At the Young Master’s scream-edged warning, I whipped my head around on instinct. Right behind me.

From the empty air on the far side, where Lord Valerian had been standing only a breath ago, a livid half-moon crescent of sword-energy came bearing down.

“Elli!!”