Celestial Fire (8)

“Yes.”

The silver-haired girl stroked Azadine’s cheek and looked straight into his eyes.

“Waaah.”

“What does it seem like?”

“You’re not a Celestial?! How can that be? But then why are you so pretty?”

“Pretty?”

Azadine was flustered by the girl’s absurd way of speaking, using a description unsuited to a grown man.

He suddenly looked at the gazes being directed at him. Every one of the beautiful boys and girls wore the same expression.

A sudden sense of fear came over Azadine. Ignorance and innocence—when taken too far, they even became alien. It felt as though he were looking at another race incomprehensible to humans.

‘So Sir Izmilla was relatively knowledgeable about the ways of the world.’

Azadine felt a grotesque disconnect in realizing that, despite how young they looked on the outside, their minds were even younger still.

Then Izmilla clapped her hands.

“What are you all doing to our guest?! Step back and let him eat.”

“Tch.”

“Sir Izmilla gets to have all the fun to herself.”

“No I don’t.”

Izmilla chased the other Celestial Fire members away. They all returned to their places, but they still kept glancing at Azadine.

“You were startled, weren’t you? Since my brothers and sisters have spent all their time in monasteries, they do not really know much about the ways of the world.”

“It’s more than that. But why has the Celestial Fire come this way?”

“We came to protect the grain being requisitioned for Fireglyph. And recently there have been many people in various places attacked by monsters, so part of it is also to subdue them and steady the hearts of the people.”

In other words, these Celestial Fire members were envoys demanding grain requisitions for Fireglyph.

But on the roads to and from, they defeated monsters and saved the residents. Though from Fireglyph’s perspective they were nothing but tax collectors imposing absurd levies, to the villagers there could hardly be greater heroes than these.

They would firmly imprint the existence of the Celestials on the common people and inspire loyalty toward the knightly order.

“Which brings me to something, Sir Azadine. Have you perhaps no thought of joining us?”

“Join you? I’m not a Celestial.”

“That’s not what I mean. As you can see, we use a mass cavalry operating system. But if we do that, then there is no one to command the infantry or archers.”

Cavalry had to gather with cavalry to be swift and meaningful as a tactical unit.

Then the problem became the need for a commander to lead the infantry… and they were asking Azadine to take that role.

“Are you asking me to become a retainer?”

“You would become the commander of the retainer corps.”

“You can’t possibly be proposing that to me?”

“Ah, of course, nothing has been decided yet. It is not for me to decide, but for Commander Karna. But your reputation among the soldiers is anything but ordinary, you know?”

The soldiers here had seen very clearly how Azadine saved the sentries, held back the initial assault alone, and fought with all his might.

What left a deep impression on the villagers were the Celestial Fire members charging with angelic wings spread wide, but the soldiers remembered Azadine, who had fought while disregarding his own life in order to save them.

“So I was thinking of recommending you to the commander. Would that be all right?”

“Hmm? Commander of the Celestial Fire’s retainer corps.”

From a political perspective, it was a startling proposal with no reason to refuse.

The eyes of the world and its praise would concentrate on the Celestials, who had angelic blood and angelic wings, but the position overseeing the infantry formation of archers, infantry, and heavy infantry would in practice be second only to the commander.

The support and worship of the populace, and the real power of the Rescue Knights Order, would obviously all gather around the Celestial Fire—yet they were asking him to take on a position of major responsibility within that Celestial Fire?

“Hahaha.”

At that moment, laughter was heard.

“Sir Izmilla. You are quick-tempered too.”

Karna, commander of the Celestial Fire, was approaching. The villagers started in shock, rose to their feet, and bowed their heads to him, but he merely gave a light wave of the hand once and walked forward at ease while receiving their reverence. It was the bearing of a king inspecting the conduct of his people.

“Sir Azadine. As Sir Izmilla said, I wish to propose to you the post of commander of the retainers. Would you accept it?”

“Would that truly be acceptable? As you know, my birth status is….”

“I have heard testimony from the soldiers that you were the one who led them in the crisis. That without the alarm lines you ordered to be set up, none of them would have survived the enemy’s night raid, and that you gave appropriate commands in all the right places according to the situation. All of that is your achievement. To be honest, while Sir Aramis’s ability as a warrior was one thing, as a commander he had been rather unsettling, had he not? Yet you filled that empty place. It was admirable.”

“Haa… you flatter me.”

Azadine let out a sigh.

This fellow named Karna before him was a handsome young man with blazing red hair and not a single flaw to be found.

His personality was gentle as well, and he did not take issue with Azadine’s birth status.

He was aware that his own rank was high, and though he subtly looked down on others, was he not in fact royalty?

Azadine himself usually did not speak deferentially to others unless there was good reason, yet he was unconsciously using polite speech with Karna.

It was probably because he himself acknowledged that Karna had rescued him.

‘But why do I feel such fierce resistance to him?’

Azadine had disliked the very concept of Celestials from the beginning.

The belief of the Rescue Knights Order was… that by keeping to virtue, one might attain salvation.

But if beings with angelic wings stood directly before the people and rescued them, then the virtue of each individual person lost its meaning.

Until now, the Rescue Knights Order had become an object of ridicule to others partly because their holy knights were weaker than the holy knights of the King’s Church, but also because they had neglected virtue.

Yet the existence of the Celestial Fire Knights crushed down that mission of virtue with their power, their beautiful appearance, and their noble bloodline worthy of worship, and called forth nothing but worship alone.

That was why Azadine felt repulsion toward the Celestial Fire Knights.

An organization deliberately created to inspire the worship of the people—if the glory of victory were added to that, individual humans would disappear, and only worship of sacred blood would remain.

For Azadine to take part in that would be a betrayal of his convictions.

‘But perhaps I am merely being stubborn under the excuse of conviction.’

As Azadine hesitated, Karna gave a bitter smile.

“Hmm. Since it concerns your future course, it seems difficult for you to answer?”

“Yes. It is a bit… hard to answer immediately, here and now.”

It was just as Azadine was saying that. Suddenly, a commotion broke out to the southeast.

“Catch it!”

“No, what is that?!”

The soldiers stirred in alarm, and when Azadine turned his head, a bluish disc of light was flying toward him.

“Huh?”

When he instinctively stretched out his arm, the disc stopped spinning and was drawn into Azadine’s hand.

“What?”

Azadine was momentarily bewildered as he looked at this familiar weapon that had suddenly flown to him.

It was… the head of a halberd made of azure steel. Attached beneath the blade of the halberd was a mutated wooden shaft swollen with sap.

The weapon Azadine had once used, the Blue Executioner, and Grimslone’s club had fused together and transformed into a large axe, and it was precisely that axe which had flown to Azadine.

Why was this here?

Well, of course Azadine had used the “fated to find weapon” magic. But it had been no more than a trivial prank he himself had not expected anything from.

‘What I was trying to find was the Wendigo’s dagger, so why is this the thing that comes flying to me?’

But to those who did not know the circumstances, it could only look as though someone had thrown an axe to kill Azadine.

“Who is it?!”

Izmilla, seated beside Azadine, rose in anger. Not only her, but all the other Celestials also prepared their weapons at once against the sudden attack.

At that moment, things grew noisy outside.

“Commander! That God-King Slayer bastard….”

A retainer shouted that as he came rushing in, then flinched in surprise.

“God-King Slayer?”

At those words, Azadine gave a bitter smile.

“No, that isn’t what I meant….”

The retainer who had spoken looked flustered and made excuses.

“What I mean is the wanted man Zebec.”

“Zebec?”

“Yes. The fallen Holy Knight who murdered the prince of Vthuma and fled! I absolutely had no intention of insulting Sir Azadine.”

“…Hmm.”

Azadine had mixed feelings and did not know what expression he ought to make.

The Celestial Fire Knights, having driven off the Bri army, had sent scouts northward to see how far the Bri had retreated.

But the figure causing the commotion this time had appeared from the southeast, that is, from this very place.

“It is Zebec the God-King Slayer! Be careful. He is no ordinary dangerous man.”

“Dangerous?”

“Do you not know? He is the man who assassinated Prince Darhan-Jadek of Vthuma and fled! A fallen Holy Knight who betrayed his lord. Surely it must be because he received wicked power from a Death Messenger that he was able to murder Prince Darhan-Jadek, the Yaegas God-King!”

Azadine knew Zebec’s character well.

There was no way that rigid man, who even endured serving someone who was utter human trash as his lord, would kill Darhan-Jadek and run away.

But how could he make the people here understand that fact? Persuading or convincing them would not be easy.

“Firewinter!”

Azadine called his hippogriff and mounted it.

“For the moment, I’ll fly ahead and cut off his line of retreat. Then we can talk.”

“Talk?”

Karna was curious.

“Yes. I happen to be somewhat acquainted with Sir Zebec.”

“What?”

“You know the God-King Slayer?”

The expressions of the Celestial Fire Knights grew strange.

Azadine, a man from the Messenger Clan, knew Zebec, the fallen Holy Knight. Was it some sort of sympathy between God-King Slayers?

Even for those who did not wish to insult Azadine, the fact that the two of them were both categorized as God-King Slayers inevitably came to mind on its own.

Azadine knew that as well, and because of that, he thought highly of them for not voicing the thought aloud.