Zebec The God-King Slayer (1)

‘So I thought they were complete children, but they do have patience. Their nature doesn’t seem bad.’

Azadine mounted the hippogriff and rose into the sky. As soon as he gained altitude, he saw people moving through the southern forest far away.

“Let’s see….”

Azadine sent out Arael’s Voice.

The lingering traces of mana interfering with Arael’s Voice still remained. But perhaps because the Bri sorcerers had retreated northward in defeat, it was no longer so unusable as before.

Within the dimly shared field of vision, Azadine discovered a group fleeing south.

Azadine flew ahead of that group and tried to land there after lowering his altitude. The whole area was thick with forest, leaving no proper place to descend, but Firewinter was extremely clever and landed by striking and snapping tree branches with its forelegs and hindlegs.

Since it landed while breaking through dense trees, it made a tremendous racket. It was fortunate that rain had fallen last night; had the trees been dry, it truly would have sounded like thunder and lightning.

But at the very moment Azadine was lowering altitude to land, something came flying at him from the front.

It was a spear made of bone, packed with wraiths, attacking Azadine.

From atop the saddle, Azadine threw Grimslone’s club and intercepted the incoming skeletal spear. A loud explosion erupted in midair, and the skeletal spear shattered into pieces.

“Huh? That bastard’s club?!”

The spellcaster who had cast the skeletal spear flinched in surprise when he saw Azadine casually block the attack.

“Don’t tell me it’s the boss?!”

“Scott….”

Azadine recognized that the spellcaster who had launched the skeletal spear at him was Scott McGreen, the orc necromancer who had once traveled with him.

Scott was moving around atop a necromantic construct made from Bri corpses… He had gathered four pairs of Bri legs together into something like a headless centaur and was riding on top of it.

Even though Azadine bore no particular ill will toward necromancy, and could even learn and cast necromancy through Arael, the grotesque sight still filled him with unbearable revulsion.

‘How is this guy so good at making things this grotesque and hideous? It’s amazing that he does this with no malice at all. Is this orcish taste?’

Azadine waved his hand.

“So it’s Scott. But why…?”

Before he could even ask, Why are you here?, a knight in rusted and ruined armor appeared behind Scott.

It was Zebec.

“Sir Zebec.”

“Sir… Azadine. I heard the rumors. That you had become a member of the Rescue Knights Order.”

Zebec gave a bitter smile. He looked as though he had neither eaten nor slept properly for days, and his condition was a mess.

“Are you all right? Hey, Scott. Why did you leave Sir Zebec in that state?”

Scott, who had a large amount of muscle and therefore ate a great deal, was in comparatively decent shape, but Zebec looked utterly haggard. When Azadine pointed that out, Scott gave a shrug.

“He says he won’t eat stolen food.”

Even as he said that, Scott was stuffing something into his mouth and chewing noisily.

“Let’s get out of here first.”

“On the hippogriff?”

“No. If we take people up into the sky, we’ll be discovered. We need to stay out of the eyes of the Rescue Knights Order, don’t we?”

With that, Azadine told Scott to lay traps behind them.

“Already did.”

Sure enough, Scott had already set up all kinds of obstacles behind them using necromancy.

The Celestial Fire Knights all used holy white mana, and the ceramite longswords they carried were practically deadly poison to the undead.

Even so, Scott’s necromantic creations seemed to be holding back the Celestial Fire Knights effectively at the right places.

“Good. Then….”

Azadine supported the emaciated Zebec and fled southward.

After heading south for quite a while, they soon found an empty ranch.

When Azadine got down and looked toward the barn, he saw traces that people had taken the livestock away.

The fields were full of spring pumpkins waiting to be harvested, and other crops also showed signs of having been tended until recently, so it seemed the people who had been here had left only very recently.

And there were hoofprints and traces of camp tents all over the place as well.

“This is where the Celestial Fire was stationed.”

Zebec said so.

“Then it should be fine for us to rest here for a while. First, let’s change your socks.”

Whatever else might happen, the socks inside one’s boots had to be changed on time. Azadine took off Zebec’s boots. The clothes inside his armor and his socks were all soaked in blood and in terrible condition.

Azadine fetched water from a rain barrel and washed Zebec’s feet.

“There is no need for you to do this. I can handle it myself.”

“Stop being stubborn about pointless things. You’re in no condition for that.”

Azadine made the stubborn Zebec rest and also gave him some rations.

“Eat slowly. This isn’t stolen, so you can eat it, right?”

“How embarrassing.”

Zebec felt ashamed at Azadine’s words. The reason he had refused to eat the food Scott stole and brought them was partly a matter of discipline, but more than that, it was because he had in truth fallen into despair.

Zebec felt ashamed because it seemed that fact had been exposed in an instant. All the while, Scott had thrown himself flat onto the ground and was sleeping soundly, snoring away in carefree fashion.

“What in the world happened? And why did you join up with Scott?”

“Darhan-Jadek was assassinated.”

“By whom?”

“Presumably by an agent of the Northern Emperor.”

“Presumably?”

Zebec began to explain what had happened.

Prince Darhan-Jadek had rallied the remnants of Vthuma and gathered troops, supplies, and manpower, rising to become the strongest force.

The other princes had also given up competing with him and cooperated instead, and Zebec had entered Darhan-Jadek’s retainer corps and taken part in the fighting to restore Vthuma.

But then, envoys from Cohen of the Northern Emperor arrived together with the King’s Church.

The King’s Church brought paltry support funds and supplies, and the Northern Emperor’s envoy requested that Darhan-Jadek become betrothed to his daughter.

Marry the daughter, and grant the throne of Vthuma to the child born between them.

In the face of that attitude, which made no attempt to conceal its naked ambition, Darhan-Jadek politely declined in roundabout terms, saying that he was not yet in a position to start a family.

But that very night, an assassin broke into Darhan-Jadek’s quarters and murdered him.

Zebec, who had been standing night watch that day, tried to capture the assassin, but the assassin matched him blow for blow with astonishing swordsmanship for over ten exchanges, then easily shook him off and escaped.

And then the King’s Church pointed to the fact that Darhan-Jadek’s blood was on Zebec’s sword and named Zebec as the assassin.

The royal authority of Vthuma, having lost its leader, was handed over in the name of legitimacy to Darhan-Jadek’s four-year-old daughter, Krisala, and as Krisala’s guardian and regent they named Adrata, son of the Northern Emperor.

In that process, every defense Zebec offered was ignored, his honor fell to the ground, and all that remained was the false charge of God-King slaying.

The King’s Church and the Northern Emperor had approached Vthuma from the beginning because they meant to seize it for themselves.

They had not been able to capture the assassin and force him to confess his identity, but given the circumstances, it seemed clear that the assassin too was someone under the influence of the Northern Emperor.

“And so, while fleeing, I encountered that orc. That orc was… tracking Grimslone’s club.”

“Ah. So that’s why.”

Azadine took out Grimslone’s club and the Blue Executioner, both of which had returned to his hand.

“So it had been returning to its owner.”

Grimslone’s club had the ability to return to its owner on its own. Apparently, when Azadine lost those weapons in Vthuma, Grimslone had first secured the Blue Executioner, then set out to return to Azadine of its own accord.

‘What I was trying to find was the Wendigo’s dagger, so why did this thing… Still, well, it’s good that it came back. I’d been feeling the ceramite longsword was somewhat lacking anyway.’

While feeling grateful that Grimslone’s club and the Blue Executioner had returned to him, Azadine suddenly became curious about Zebec.

“Then how did you get entangled with the Celestial Fire?”

At that, Zebec gave this answer.

“The Celestial Fire is… an enemy.”

“Huh?”

Azadine was bewildered by that sudden declaration of hostility.

The members of the Celestial Fire, the Celestials, were certainly strange beings, but he had not sensed malice from them.

He could not trust them completely, perhaps, but neither were they people he had any reason to reject as allies. Yet Zebec was defining them as enemies?

“Why?”

Zebec immediately explained why he regarded the Celestial Fire as enemies.

“When we arrived at the Hubris Peninsula, the Celestial Fire was just setting out from Saint Mallory. At that time I saw the young commander of the Celestial Fire, the one called Karna and said to be the Northern Emperor’s grandson. He was….”

“He was?”

“He looked exactly like Adrata. I mean Prince Adrata, son of the Northern Emperor, the man who seized control of Vthuma.”

“They’re blood relatives, so they could resemble each other, couldn’t they? Besides, even if Prince Adrata ranks above Karna by generation, they could still be the same age.”

So long as desire did not fade with age, a Yaegas God-King could father children as much as he pleased.

So it was common enough for a son to be younger than a grandson. For blood relatives of similar age to resemble each other too closely was not especially rare.

But Zebec shook his head firmly.

“No, it was not merely resemblance. Sir Azadine, I do not know how to express the shock I felt when I saw him. The instant I first saw him from afar, I felt as though I were drifting in a tiny skiff upon a sea where a vast sea monster lurked. A terror that some unspeakably horrific monster lay beneath my feet, and from the depths below it was preparing to swallow everything with enormous malice.”

“…Ah.”

Azadine too could understand what Zebec meant.

The formation of the Celestial Fire, knights with beautiful and noble angelic blood.

Surely they were a group made up of goodwill and good intentions, but regardless of the character of each individual among them, was there not perhaps some vast force and conspiracy behind them?

Zebec, too, had felt that same suspicion.