65. The Company Commander Was Disappointed

Vines tore up through the earth and twisted around us like enormous snakes, coiling into a wall. A heartbeat later, the black clouds that had blotted out the sky turned into a rain of arrows and poured down onto them.

— Tudu-tutututuk—!

The archers’ arrows buried themselves in the vines in real time, yet not a fistful of them could pierce the rampart those vines had become.

“Arden!”

The one sprinting toward me, shouting my name, was Lillian.

“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 the little giggle that slipped out told me she’d gotten some of her composure back.

“Anyway, what happened to those two?”

I’d asked because Leo, our emergency runner, was nowhere in sight, and that gnawed at me. At the question, Lillian’s 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 right now, in this situation?”

Watching Lillian shove the subject aside, I knew at once she was hiding something. But the fact that she’d been able to come as reinforcements at all was proof enough that nothing immediately dangerous had happened to Lucius or Leo. Rather than press her, I took stock of where we stood.

“Fine, I’ll trust you. First, move Big Brother to where Elli is.”

I handed the collapsed Valerian over to Lillian, and a vine sprouted arms and legs, hoisted him up, and carried him off toward Elli. Call it clearing everything possible out of the way, so Seraphina could cut loose without worry.

“And you? Arden, you look like you could keel over this very second.”

“…I have something I have to do.”

“Something you have to do?”

I threw Lillian’s own earlier tone 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 right now, in this situation?”

“…”

Leaving Lillian’s dumbfounded face behind me, I called up the robed man’s last words.

— At last I can kill you.

Coming from the robed man I’d known up to now, the words carried a malice I’d never once have expected from him. And the timing of his appearance was nothing like before.

The instant Elli abandoned the challenge, the red barrier vanished and Seraphina rushed in. Only because she’d shot out the moment it lifted and blocked Valerian’s greatsword had we been spared. One wrong move and the catastrophe of Valerian murdering Elli would have come within a hair of happening.

And that wasn’t all.

The arena’s prearranged duels had all concluded, and yet through the entire savage fight that broke out afterward between Seraphina and Valerian, the robed man never showed himself. He’d appeared in the very moment Valerian fell and we were about to head back. In other words, he’d aimed for the one sliver of an opening, the moment we were most off our guard and our strength was spent.

“In the fight that’s about to break out, the enemy’s probably going to come fully prepared to counter Sister’s frost magic and your vines, Big Sis.”

“Who’s the enemy?”

I was certain.

The robed man who’d relayed the master’s words wasn’t really over there at all.

…The puppeteer.

The one working the man’s body right now was, beyond any doubt, the puppeteer who’d worn Eve’s face. Nothing else could account for that malice, that performance.

After a moment’s hesitation, I told her the truth.

“…The very one who fed you poison when you were a child, Big Sis.”

Lillian’s pupils shrank in an instant. The color drained from her face, her expression crumpling all at once, 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’s mind, telling Lillian the truth at this exact moment probably looked like a foolish move. But I knew better. The enemy was a puppeteer who understood Lillian down to the bone.

“Calm down, Big Sis. Listen to me.”

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

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

Hatred set Lillian’s pupils blazing red.

“That poison was his fear of your talent. The moment you mastered your power completely and awakened — that’s the very thing he dreads most.”

“…”

“And yet you didn’t die. You won the power to control that poison. The fact that someone like you came and he still won’t run means he’s prepared a sure way to finish you off.”

Ignorance was a fatal weakness on a battlefield. Luckily, while Lillian’s vines held off the rain of arrows, we’d bought a little breathing room, and I hadn’t spent all of it just catching my breath.

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

Weighed coldly, the robed man might be doing nothing more right now than carrying out the arena master’s sudden kill order. The idea that the puppeteer who’d worn Eve’s face had hijacked this body might be nothing but paranoia wrung out of me by the crisis. But a response always begins by assuming the worst possible moment, and there was no harm in being ready.

“Are you going to crumble before that bastard all over again?”

I started to add something more, then shut my mouth.

“…Hah.”

Lillian, who’d been breathing in ragged gasps, slowly steadied herself. Her fists were still clenched tight, but she looked at Seraphina 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 Lillian had managed while she’d been left behind in the second gate.

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

“Is that all you—huh?”

That was as far as our banter got.

An unpleasant sound spread through the air. And not sound alone.

“What’s that smell?”

The source of the sound and the smell didn’t stay hidden for long. The vines blanketing the arena ceiling were all at once swallowed in scarlet flame and began crumbling down.

I breathed in the smoke laced with smoldering ash and murmured low.

“Fire arrows.”

The very words I’d thrown at Lillian a moment ago flashed through my head. Knowing her magic that well, they’d readied fire arrows, its hard counter, to burn us alive. The vines that had just blocked the arrow-rain were turning into a scorching prison to cage us in.

“Withdraw all the vines.”

“…But.”

“Quickly.”

When Lillian pulled her hands back at Seraphina’s command, the vines shielding us scattered. And then, as if they’d been waiting for exactly that, thousands of fire arrows rained down on us.

“Sis!!”

Lillian’s scream tore out, but Seraphina didn’t so much as twitch. No. She was already moving.

From the ground beneath her, an enormous glacier surged up like a spike, and riding that pillar of ice, she was flung into the air in a heartbeat.

“Tide of the Blue Butterfly.”

A colossal wave rose, blue gathering into blue and crashing out toward the world. For a moment it even made me wonder whether I was seeing things.

The blue wave climbing toward the arena’s heights gathered the scarlet fire arrows that had blotted out the sky into its embrace. Mere arrows, loosed by humans to kill other humans, stood no chance of defying the path of a wave that bore down like some vast law of nature.

The arrows that struck the wave surrendered their bodies to the rushing current. No. They rode it, turned into blades of vengeance aimed back at the ones who’d fired them.

Thousands of blue butterflies.

The arrow-rain caught up in their wingbeats poured down on the archers in the arena’s 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 worked into every last arrow froze the archers’ hearts solid.

Once each arrow had found its owner, not a single archer was left standing on two feet in the stands. The only one still alive in the wake of that pandemonium was the robed man who’d ordered the slaughter.

Seraphina leveled her sword, its radiance bluer than moonlight, at the man and spoke.

“Summon your master.”

“I yield.”

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

A moment later, an enormous fissure split the sky above the arena, and a grand, grotesque voice that seemed to tear 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?”

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

“What are you doing, not going already? When the master himself calls, it’d be rude to stand him up.”

“…The situation isn’t good.”

“What’s not good about it? The archers are all dead — Sister wiped them out — 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 a moment, then nodded.

“Live.”

Leaving that single word behind, Seraphina’s figure was sucked into the red light and vanished.

The arena was stripped now of our team’s most overwhelming asset. In the hush that settled over it, the robed man, silent all this while, stared blankly into the air and then murmured low.

“…How did I fall this far. To cause such trouble, unable to handle a single wench like that.”

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

“For a wench like that, she’s a wench who serves as the Empire’s Knight Commander, mind you.”

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

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

“…!”

The man choked his words back for an instant. That reaction, unable to deny it outright, only drove the wedge of my certainty deeper. He clutched a fold of his robe with a trembling hand and ground his teeth.

“I’m nothing like him! My name is Gamma!”

“Uh, um… did anyone here happen to ask your name?”

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

— Kwarrrrrreung—!

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

When Gamma traced something with his staff, the whole arena heaved as if a massive earthquake had struck. The frozen archers’ corpses twisted grotesquely and rose; the dust and dirt on the ground clumped together and began molding itself into new shapes. Hulking shield-bearers, cavalry leveling sharp lances, and behind them, mages already starting their incantations.

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

A legion conjured from every direction closed in around us.

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

With Seraphina gone, this was the best shot they’d ever get at wiping us out. I let out a sigh and gave Lillian a short order.

“Big Sis, go and protect Elli and Big Brother. I’ll handle taking these things out.”

“What? But Arden, there are way too many of them!”

“Quickly!”

After sending Lillian off, I threw myself straight at the enemy ranks.

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

I dodged the magic bolts streaking straight at me with a mocking tilt of my head, as if laughing in their faces.

Flame bolts, lightning bolts, frost bolts. Then paralysis bolts and stun bolts on their heels. Mana in every color tore through the air and grazed past my ears.

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

Gamma cried out, rattled.

“You should’ve come more prepared.”

To anyone watching it would have looked like a knife’s-edge acrobatic act dancing along the line between life and death, but from where I stood it was child’s play. The path of every spell, the speed of every bolt, even the cast time. All of it sat well inside the range of my predictions, without a hair’s worth of error.

And that was why I was disappointed.

I’d assumed they’d show up with something far more vicious and meticulous than last time, which was the whole reason I’d made such a fuss warning Lillian.

And so, the company commander was very disappointed today.¹