65. The Company Commander Was Disappointed

Vines burst up out of the earth and wound around us like enormous snakes, coiling themselves into a wall. A heartbeat later, the black cloud overhead turned into a rain of arrows and came pouring down on them.

— Tudu-tutututuk—!

The archers’ arrows were sinking into the vines even as I watched, yet not one of them could get through the rampart the vines had become.

“Arden!”

It was Lillian, running toward me and calling my name.

“You’re way too late, Big Sis!”
“At a time like this, you’re supposed to say thanks for coming when it counts.”

She pursed her lips, but a small giggle slipped out too, so I could tell she’d got some of her composure back.

“Anyway, what happened to those two?”

I asked because Leo, our emergency runner, wasn’t with her, and that bothered me. Her eyes wavered, just barely.

“…Those two are fine.”
“What do you mean, fine?”
“Argh, fine means fine! Do I have to explain every little thing at a time like this?”

The way she shoved the subject aside told me at once she was hiding something. But the fact that she’d been able to come as reinforcements at all proved, at least, that nothing immediately dangerous had happened to Lucius or Leo. So rather than press her, I sorted out the situation in front of us.

“Fine, I’ll trust you. First, get Big Brother over to Elli.”

I handed the collapsed Valerian over to her, and a vine that had sprouted arms and legs lifted him up and carried him off toward Elli. Call it clearing away as much as I could, so Seraphina could cut loose without worry.

“And you? Arden, you look like you could keel over any second.”
“…I’ve got something to do.”
“What do you mean, something to do?”

I copied her earlier tone and threw it right back at her.

“Argh, if I’ve got something to do, then I’ve got something to do. Do I have to explain every little thing at a time like this?”

“…”

I left her dumbfounded look behind me and called up the robed man’s last words.

— At last I can kill you.

That didn’t sound like the robed man I’d known until now. It carried an unmistakable malice I’d never have expected from him. His timing was very different from before, too.

The instant Elli had abandoned the challenge, the red barrier had vanished and Seraphina had rushed in. We’d only been spared because she shot out the moment it lifted and blocked Valerian’s greatsword. One wrong move and Valerian would have murdered Elli, so that catastrophe had come very close to happening, hadn’t it?

And that wasn’t all. The arena’s prearranged duels were already over, yet the robed man hadn’t appeared even during the savage fight between Seraphina and Valerian that followed. He’d shown himself at the very moment Valerian fell and we were about to head back. In other words, he’d aimed for that one sliver of an opening, when we were most off our guard and our strength was spent.

“In this next fight, the enemy’s probably going to come fully prepared for Sister’s frost magic and your vines, Big Sis.”
“Who’s the enemy?”

I was certain. The robed man who relayed the master’s words wasn’t over there at all.

…The puppeteer.

The one controlling that man’s body right now was, beyond doubt, the puppeteer who’d worn Eve’s face. Nothing else could explain that malice and that acting alone.

I hesitated, then told her the truth.

“…The one who fed you poison when you were little, Big Sis.”

Lillian’s pupils contracted in an instant. The color drained from her face, her expression crumpled, and her clenched fists began to tremble beyond her control.

“…Is it true? Arden, is it really him?”
“Yeah. I’m certain.”

The ground under Lillian’s feet shook.

To Eve, telling her the truth at this exact moment might seem like a foolish thing to do. But I knew. The enemy was a puppeteer who understood Lillian perfectly.

“Calm down, Big Sis. Listen to me.”

I gripped her shoulders hard and forced her to meet my eyes.

“That bastard was wary of your power. That’s why he planted that horrible poison in you ahead of time.”

Her pupils blazed red with hatred.

“That poison was his fear of your talent. The moment you get full control of your power and awaken — that’s what he’s most afraid of.”

“…”

“And yet you didn’t die. You earned the power to control that poison. If someone like you shows up and he still won’t run, it means he came with a sure way to finish you off.”

Ignorance was a fatal weakness on a battlefield. Luckily, her vines were holding off the rain of arrows, and that had given us a little breathing room, but I hadn’t used it only to catch my breath.

Was it really chance that he let slip a hint about his own identity?

Weighing it coldly, the robed man might be doing nothing more right now than carrying out the arena master’s sudden order to kill. The puppeteer hijacking his body might be just a paranoid delusion the crisis had wrung out of me. But a response always begins by assuming the worst possible moment, and there was no harm in being prepared.

“You’re going to fall apart in front of that bastard all over again?”

I started to say something more, then closed my mouth.

“…Hah.”

Lillian’s ragged gasps gradually steadied. Her fists were still clenched tight, but she looked at Seraphina, standing beside her, and murmured low.

“Emotion can be fuel for power, but it’s an impurity that throws off your trajectory… that’s what Sis told me.”

It struck me how much steady growth she’d managed while she was left in the second gate.

“Are you really the same person who threw herself at Sister back then? I can’t believe it.”
“This is all—huh?”

That was as far as our banter went. An unpleasant sound was spreading through the air, and not just a sound.

“What’s that smell?”

The source didn’t stay hidden for long. The vines blanketing the arena ceiling went up all at once in scarlet flames and began to crumble down. I breathed in smoke laced with smoldering ash and murmured low.

“Fire arrows.”

What I’d just told Lillian flashed through my mind. They knew her magic so well that they’d prepared its hard counter, fire arrows, to burn us alive. The vines that had blocked the rain of arrows were becoming a scorching prison.

“Withdraw all the vines.”
“…But.”
“Quickly.”

Lillian pulled her hands back at Seraphina’s command, and the vines protecting us scattered. Then, as if they’d been waiting for exactly this, thousands of fire arrows rained down on us.

“Sis!!”

Lillian screamed, but Seraphina didn’t so much as twitch. No, she was already moving. A huge glacier surged up like a spike from the ground beneath her, and riding that pillar of ice, she was launched into the air in an instant.

“Tide of the Blue Butterfly.”

It was a colossal wave, like blue gathering with blue and crashing out at the world. For a moment I even wondered if I was seeing an illusion.

The blue wave reached for the arena’s heights and gathered the scarlet arrows blotting out the sky into its embrace. Mere arrows, loosed by humans to kill humans, could never defy the trajectory of a wave that bore down like some vast law of nature. The ones that struck it gave their bodies up to the current. No, they rode the wave and became blades of vengeance aimed back at their masters.

Thousands of blue butterflies.

The rain of arrows swept up in their wingbeats poured down on the archers in the spectator stands.

“Gyaak!”
“Kueok!”

The death-screams of men run through by the very killing intent they’d loosed filled the whole arena. The frost Seraphina had laid into each and every arrow froze their hearts solid, and once every arrow had found its owner, not a single archer was left standing on two feet in the stands.

The only one still alive after that pandemonium was the robed man who’d ordered the slaughter. Seraphina leveled her sword, gleaming with a radiance bluer than moonlight, at him and spoke.

“Summon your master.”

“I yield.”

The robed man meekly raised both hands in surrender and came down out of the air.

A moment later, a huge fissure split the sky above the arena, and a grand, grotesque voice that seemed to rip space itself apart came crashing down. At the same time, a curtain of red light spilled from the sky and wrapped itself precisely around Seraphina.

“…An audience, alone?”

She drew up her sword-aura as though she’d slash the curtain apart on the spot, but then she turned her head and looked at me. I shrugged and waved a hand.

“What are you waiting for? Get going. When the master himself calls, it’d be rude to stand him up.”
“…The situation is not good.”
“What’s not good about it? You already wiped out all the archers, Sister, and all that’s left is that robe-wearing bastard.”

I went on with a sly grin.

“And isn’t taking the master’s head yourself the fastest way to settle this?”

“…”

At my brazen attitude, Seraphina pressed her lips together for a moment, then nodded.

“Live.”

She left that one short word behind, and the red light sucked her in and she was gone.

So the arena had lost our team’s most overwhelming asset. In the hush that followed, the robed man, silent all this while, stared blankly into the air and murmured low.

“…How did I fall this far. Causing all this trouble because I can’t handle one wench like that.”

His voice was steeped in deep self-loathing and an anger beyond words.

“A wench like that, huh? That wench happens to be the Empire’s Knight Commander, you know.”

At my jab, his head cranked toward me at a grotesque angle, and the eyes beyond the robe flashed with hatred. The instant his gaze fixed on me, I deliberately let a thin laugh slip and shot back.

“You wouldn’t happen to be that bastard who liked playing with dolls, would you?”

“…!”

He swallowed his words for an instant, and that reaction, unable to deny it outright, only drove the wedge of my certainty deeper. He gripped a fold of his robe with a trembling hand and gritted his teeth.

“I’m nothing like him! My name is Gamma!”
“Uh, um… did anyone here happen to ask your name?”

Gamma suddenly drew a black staff from an inner pocket and slammed it against the ground.

— Kwarrrrrreung—!

“I’m not like him! I’m going to make sure I kill you and rack up the results!”

He traced something with the staff, and the whole arena heaved as though a massive earthquake had struck it. The frozen archers’ corpses twisted grotesquely and rose, while the dust and dirt on the ground clumped together and began molding themselves into new shapes. Hulking shield-bearers, cavalry leveling sharp lances, and behind them, mages beginning their incantations.

“I’ll cut off your head and offer it up to That One!”

A legion had appeared from every direction, and it surrounded us.

“Well, of course you wouldn’t just sit still.”

With Seraphina gone, this was the best chance there’d ever be to wipe us out. I let out a sigh and gave Lillian a short order.

“Big Sis, go protect Elli and Big Brother. I’ll take these things out.”
“What? But Arden, there are way too many of them!”
“Hurry!”

Once I’d sent her off, I hurled myself straight at the enemy ranks.

“Normally, that’d be the textbook play.”

I dodged the bolts flying straight at me with a mocking tilt of my head, as if I were laughing at them. Flame bolts, lightning bolts and frost bolts came first, then paralysis bolts and stun bolts after them. Mana in every color tore through the air and grazed past my ears.

“Wha— what?! How is he dodging them?!”

Gamma cried out, flustered.

“You should’ve come more prepared.”

To anyone watching, it would have looked like a hair’s-breadth acrobatics act, dancing along the line between life and death, but from where I stood it was easier than eating rice cakes lying down. The trajectory of each spell, the speed of each bolt, even the cast time: all of it was within my predictions, without a hair’s breadth of error.

And that was why I was disappointed.

I’d assumed they’d come with something far more vicious and meticulous than before, which was exactly why I’d made such a fuss warning Lillian.

So you could say the company commander was very disappointed today.¹