The Knight Of Prophecy (3)

“An unusual wraith, aren’t you?”

“So that’s why you’re alive. You’re of the Messenger Clan, aren’t you? Among those who killed me were Messengers as well. If I were an ordinary wraith, you wouldn’t have survived.”

“……”

“So—will you tell your story, or not?”

“Of course I should. But first… I need to eat something.”

“Ah, if it’s that, don’t worry.”

Plank stepped to the water’s edge. When he swept his blade over the shallows, shrouded in the chill of death, fish shocked by the cold floated to the surface.

“Cook them as you like.”

“Understood. Then—”

The youth gutted the fish Plank had provided, set them to grill over the fire, and began his tale.

When Azadine came to, he was in the middle of the open sea.

The little lifeboat he rode drifted of its own accord along the currents, and a faint, sorcerous mist wrapped the boat, shielding it from what lay around.

Azadine cracked the ship’s hardtack left in the locker and ate, caught rainwater to drink, and waited for the boat to reach land.

Isolated on the sea, he inevitably had ample time to think—and thinking brought remorse.

He recalled Arael as a child.

Arrogant, insolent, cruel—and beautiful.

Even if that had been a mask to protect herself from threats around her, Azadine had no obligation to understand it. He had been the victim, and Arael the perpetrator.

However…

Looking back, Arael then had been a child not yet even ten years old.

Now that he thought of it, Azadine had misunderstood Arael as well—assuming she was a flawless prodigy from the start, believing her heart to be stone, devoid of blood or tears.

“Uraaah!”

When his thoughts cornered him and anger boiled up, Azadine shouted at the sea for no reason at all.

He hated the Aragasa that had cast Arael and Azadine into a fate to kill one another, hated the arrogant Hathir, hated Arael for handling everything alone out of obstinacy.

But more than anything, he was sick of his own powerlessness.

When people feel the five vices and seven emotions, they naturally wish their dignity to be respected—but this world trampled the dignity of the powerless.

The problem was Azadine’s current state.

Thanks to Arael’s sacrifice, his permanent wounds had healed and he could move again, but the mana within his body had become snarled into chaos.

From the beginning, the Kazas Grimoire was a double-edged sword—the method of Kazas, famed as the Demon King who devoured grimoires.

By nature, Azadine had wielded strength by triggering the colorless-mana grimoire he had learned from Kazas against the incomplete Flowers, Birds, Wind, Moon grimoire he was born with, converting the resultant mana into raw physical power.

Later, when he obtained a copy of the Heavenly Kings’ Grimoire, he crammed that in as well, making the system even more complex—but the magic Arael had mastered went beyond even that.

Alongside a Flowers, Birds, Wind, Moon vastly stronger than his own, there were intricate colorless-mana grimoires, and even other multicolored-mana grimoires said to be too difficult for humans to handle—lining up one after another.

As all that flowed into Azadine, he had, paradoxically, become someone who could no longer control mana at all.

A bowstring that had once felt light as a feather now felt so heavy to draw that cold sweat broke out.

“Mm.”

He had avoided becoming a total invalid, but at least until he could put the grimoires inside his body in order, he could hardly call himself of the Messenger Clan anywhere.

Azadine immediately sank into himself to try to put the grimoires in order, but governing stored grimoires without learning their principles was anything but easy.

He could now understand why Kazas, who killed and devoured others to steal their grimoires, had used the brutal method called the Kazas Grimoire to force mana from them.

But should he crush the Arael-derived grimoires together with the Kazas Grimoire?

He could not.

Do that, and the mana of the many grimoires already packed inside him would tear his body to pieces. He could not unleash an uncontrollable storm.

“Good gods. I need a master. This… is more than I can handle alone.”

Azadine felt a chill of dismay. With the Aragasa Senate fallen and Azadine branded their traitor, who would teach him magic now?

The lifeboat made landfall at a fishing village of the Arangi Kingdom.

Surviving on fish and rainwater, Azadine asked the villagers for food and was able to get some.

But strangely, people were too kind. Most would not even take money from him.

At first he didn’t understand why, but soon he realized.

Arael’s eyes had formed in his face, and the scar across it was gone.

Many who saw Azadine—now bearing the striking violet eyes of the peerless beauty Arael, the eyes of Harkonia, first chief of the Messengers—took him for noble blood: they feared him—and were enthralled.

The more he was seen as beautiful, noble, and not to be treated lightly, the more terrifying he was to them.

For Azadine—once shunned as a hideous, eyeless monster—it was a bizarre reversal.

But he felt ashamed of those eyes. A sister might have said she was returning what she had taken, yet to Azadine, they were Arael’s, unmistakably.

It was proof that he had taken not only Arael’s life but even her flesh, and he pulled on his mask again.

He resolved that he would repay, without fail, all he had eaten and received from the people.

And as it happened, monsters were appearing nearby and harming folk.

“But my strength had waned more than I expected, so I failed to deal with the monsters—ran—and collapsed when my vigor ran out.”

“Hah! The rebel who ruined the Messenger Clan can’t handle such trifling beasts? It seems you have grown weak.”

Plank burst into open laughter.

Indeed, from the first moment he saw him, Plank had thought Azadine would not last long.

Though he had survived by fusing with Arael, both Azadine and Arael had had little life left; it seemed clear they had fused while at death’s door.

And yet… a youth of uncanny fate.

Born under a curse, named with names of ominous destiny, and saved from death by taking his sister’s flesh—above all, the fact that he was a sincere believer of the Rescue Knights and had received a miracle gave Plank pause.

‘And he craves a master of magic. Hm. Should I teach him? But that…’

Plank recalled the prophecy given him: the last one he appointed would become the Flower of Chivalry.

That a soulless, impious clansman of the Messengers would become the Flower of Chivalry—nonsense. The boy has spent too much of his life-force. Even if he taught him now, how many days had he left?

Plank was of royal blood. He could not help but harbor ill feelings toward the Messenger Clan; even now, betrayed by his disciple and made a death knight, he remained conservative at heart.

But Plank was being tortured by boredom.

“You, then.”

In the end, Plank spoke first.

“You said you needed a master, didn’t you?”

“Eh? Ah—yes, elder.”

“If you wish, I will teach you. I’ll help tidy the grimoires within you and regain your strength. I was the Knight of Wisdom; I don’t think the task is beyond me.”

“Eh? Truly?”

“Of course, I won’t do it for free—you must grant me a wish.”

“Ah—yes. O-of course.”

“Heh. In a hurry, are you, young man? I haven’t even said what I want. What if my demand is excessive?”

“Usually people demand a ‘yes’ first without saying what they want.”

“Call me Sir Plank. And I’ll call you Azadine.”

“Yes, Sir Plank.”

“Now then, Azadine—first, fetch us a proper tent. As for a tent… when the sun rises soon, those monsters won’t be out. If you search that brush over there, you’ll find an abandoned one.”

Plank pointed to the place where Cohen Lioneir had killed him.

“Yes.”

“And it will take some time—so bring, besides the tent, whatever is needed to live here for a while.”

“Understood.”

Hearing Plank’s words, Azadine rose at once to make ready—but then stopped.

“Ah—Sir Plank.”

“What is it?”

“Is Arael’s ghost still here?”

“No. She’s gone.”

“……”

“Do you wish to see her, even as a ghost?”

“I—I’m not sure. I hope my sister has found rest… but I do want to see her again. We hardly spoke at all, for blood. Far… too little.”

While Azadine returned to the village, Plank was left alone again in the waste.

At first sight of Azadine, he had assumed him one of the Messengers who had ambushed him, and disliked him inwardly; but when the youth was gone, he realized how long he had lived in a loneliness and tedium that scraped the bones.

Azadine’s life story had been anything but short.

It had taken long enough to burn a mountain of firewood to ash through the long night—and yet Plank could recall it all as vividly as if it were his own.

As he chewed on that tale to stave off boredom, Azadine returned.

“Elder.”

“Sir Plank!”

Plank snapped, reacting irritably; Azadine, flustered, spoke.

“Yes, Sir Plank. By day your body turns transparent, I see. As the sun set, you began to show.”

“Astonishing—so not ‘gone by day,’ but ‘transparent,’ is it.”

“Ah—yes. My sight is… rather unusual.”

“You said you could perceive things even without eyes, didn’t you? Then what if you close them now?”

“I can still see.”

“Then that special vision remains. Good. You won’t be blinded by light-burst lamps and the like.”

As Plank marveled, he glanced aside—and started.

“……”

At some point, a tent had been raised. Timeworn now, but unmistakably the very tent Plank had owned when he was slain. But when—?

He felt Azadine’s worried gaze upon him.

‘So. My mind is drifting. I think myself sound, but in truth, much time passes by. Of course—being a death knight. I must not trust that my mind and being are wholly my own. And if so…’

Azadine calling him “elder” hadn’t been forgetfulness of Plank’s request; it must have been that, while Plank sometimes lost consciousness and wandered, Azadine tried various address forms until one stuck.

Even so, Azadine kept a humble bearing without a word of self-justification. Was it because he hailed from the Messenger Clan, with its strict hierarchies?

‘…A pupil worth teaching, perhaps. A pity—neither master nor disciple is whole.’

Thus began a strange bond of master and disciple between a death knight and a dying youth of the Messenger Clan.