Avenger Of Vengeance (2)

“That’s right. I am Azadine, imperial messenger and trainee knight of the Rescue Knights Order.”

“Y-you….”

She moved as if to swing her weapon, but Azadine stopped her.

“Wait a moment. You understand what it means to raise a weapon against me, do you not? The Rescue Knights Order has accepted me as one of its own. Surely you do not intend to attack a Rescue Knight….”

“You are my father’s killer!”

“And your father committed the crime of murdering civilians. No, for that matter, was it even a lawful father-daughter relationship to begin with?”

“Shut up! Do not slander my father with false charges! More enraging to me than my father being killed is hearing you and the traitor Zebec defile his honor with such filthy lies!”

Gone was the calm composure Sir Maya had once shown; now only madness and obstinacy remained as she shouted in fury.

Originally, it was only after hearing Sir Zebec’s words that she had accepted the fact that her father had committed the crime of killing civilians.

But after Sir Zebec was expelled from the Holy Knight Order of the King’s Church, she came to believe that Zebec had actually been in league with Azadine all along, and that his testimony had merely been deception meant to fool her, since she was bent on avenging herself upon Azadine.

And so she once more set out upon the road of vengeance. This time, not only against Azadine, but against Zebec as well!

That was why she had come all the way from Salasma to Saint Mallory.

In the end, the real problem was that rumors had spread too widely for no good reason.

“Azadine! I challenge you to a duel! If you are any sort of man, you will accept a proper duel!”

“Mm. No thanks.”

“Of course, since you have become a member of the order after all. Uh… what?”

For a moment Maya was taken aback. Ordinarily, if someone came seeking vengeance for a parent, how could refusing even make sense?

Besides, though she did not acknowledge Azadine, had he not still entered the Rescue Knights Order? A man bearing the name of a Holy Knight of the Rescue Knights Order, and he refused a duel?

“To begin with, have you even been sleeping properly lately? Your hair is disheveled, your eyes are bloodshot, and yet you talk about dueling. What kind of nonsense is that?”

“You have no reason to concern yourself with my condition, do you?”

“No, you are mistaken. You already challenged me once in the past and lost, yet you were allowed to keep your life and depart. From my point of view, when an opponent whose victory and defeat have already been decided comes back at me in a ruined state like this, I have no desire to stain my blade with such an act of suicide.”

“You are my father’s killer! I have the right to vengeance! You, a murderer, have no right to refuse my duel!”

“Do I not? Did not the King’s Church already turn your father into a Revenant Knight? Since he admitted his guilt in accidentally slaughtering civilians, is that not precisely why the King’s Church made him into a Revenant Knight? Or what is it, then? Is the King’s Church some lawless organization that dishonors the dead bodies of those who fell while carrying out their duties honorably?”

“Ugh….”

Maya could find no answer to Azadine’s words.

If she insisted upon her father’s innocence, she insulted the King’s Church. But if she admitted her father’s guilt, then her very request for a duel became an act of villainy.

Every word Azadine spoke struck the mark. More than anything, her mind was clouded.

Her memories were hazy, as though her head were full of fog. So though she had no answer to give, her emotions only became more hurt and inflamed.

“Do not make me laugh. Do you think your little silver tongue can talk its way out of this?”

“But that is the truth, is it not? It was Sir Ject who made your father into a Revenant Knight. Was it not?”

“No, that… ugh.”

Maya suddenly clutched her head and staggered.

For someone who, as adjutant to the Bishop of Salasma, had at least once been neat in appearance, to now stand there staggering like a madwoman with hair in wild disarray was no ordinary sight. Azadine’s words, with their cutting precision, goaded and sawed away at her madness and fury.

“This will not do. Stop doing pointless things, step aside, and get some rest. In any case, I have already sent a carrier pigeon to Sir Ject. I neither intend to flee nor hide, so come find me after you have had a good long sleep. Or, if you prefer, you may come at me together with Sir Ject.”

Azadine gestured for Maya to stand aside. But then, in an instant, a flash shot before his eyes.

It was a fearsome thrust. Maya had stabbed at Azadine with the flag she was carrying.

At the end of the flag was a small ceremonial spearhead, not meant for actual combat. Even as it was, the flag wavered in the wind, and if a true battlefield spearhead had been fixed to it, the weight would have made it unmanageable.

However… even if it was only a ceremonial spearhead, that changed nothing when it was thrust with such speed and force.

Startled, Azadine twisted his body and evaded the strike.

Seeing Azadine stumble for a moment because he had been off guard, Maya pressed him hard, stabbing at him again and again with the flag.

“Gah!”

“Aah!”

Other travelers crossing the bridge cried out in panic, and chaos broke out. Azadine slapped aside the flag-spear aimed at his throat with his hand…

-Thoom!

With a heavy, booming sound, the foot Azadine was bracing himself with smashed through the bridge deck and sank into it.

“Ghk?!”

A tremendous force had traveled through the spear shaft, trying to tear apart Azadine’s body.

Azadine had tried to let the shock flow away, but in doing so he had stamped down so hard that his foot broke through the bridge and lodged in it.

‘What is this? How did she improve so absurdly fast? Did she drink dragon’s blood while I wasn’t looking?’

Azadine, flustered by the suddenly strengthened Maya, tried to pull his foot free.

“Die!”

Maya missed no such opening, closing the distance to strike Azadine down.

But at that moment Azadine’s left hand opened.

-Whoooom!

Within Azadine’s grasp, Grimslone’s club—or rather, its axe form—began to spin.

The axe rotated in the air on its own like a windmill, and the azure-steel axe head, the Blue Executioner, turned into a disc of light.

That disc of light shot out, smashed into Maya’s blade, and then struck her with the rear end of the axe haft.

-Crack!

“Ah.”

He had intended to subdue her without killing, but it had landed too hard. Azadine was startled, wondering if he might have killed Maya.

“Huh?”

Even with blood running from her head, Maya gave a chilling smile. Even a bear would have reeled from that blow, yet astonishingly, she endured the brutal strike.

‘This is not human.’

Using that moment, Azadine pulled his foot free and retreated.

“My father’s killer!”

With a loud scream, Maya came at Azadine with spear and sword.

Disregarding all the rules of swordsmanship, her spear and blade rained down in a reckless storm.

Azadine blocked the attacks with the Blue Executioner, but the impact was enough to leave his hands numb and nearly paralyzed.

‘Impossible. Even if my Kazas Grimoire techniques have weakened, how am I being pushed back like this?’

At that moment Azadine realized that Maya’s body had grown larger before his eyes. The leather straps fastening together her plate armor were tearing apart with sharp snapping sounds.

The muscles within her body were swelling grotesquely, and the armor could no longer endure the strain, crying out as it failed.

“A boar-man??”

Before he knew it, wire-like reddish-brown bristles had begun sprouting across her smooth face. Maya had transformed into a gigantic boar-man, a wereboar, and was using that strength to drive Azadine back.

Azadine, fending off Maya’s relentless assault, was flustered. Now he understood why she had come here in a form that no longer looked human.

‘This is beyond merely having become stronger because she turned into a wereboar.’

Among Azadine’s subordinates was Rijen, a half-elf and a werewolf. Comparing Rijen’s strength before and after transformation, Maya was abnormally strong even by those standards.

In other words, there was a secret behind Maya’s strength beyond the mere fact of becoming a wereboar.

Azadine drew his ceramite longsword, Aurelia Dawn. With that blade, he diverted the spear Maya swung to smash him and then struck upward into her armpit with the sword edge.

-Slash!

Then, as he spun his body, Maya’s arm was severed and flew up into the sky. Someone without experience might lose their own reason in excitement when faced with an opponent gone mad with blind assault, fail to display their true skill, and be killed.

But Azadine was a man already hardened by countless battles against every kind of monster.

“Ghk….”

Maya snatched up her own severed arm and pressed it against the wound to stanch the bleeding.

The wound had been burned by the flame of the ceramite longsword, so it would not regenerate at once, but the blood stopped swiftly. If she kept it pressed there, she would probably recover enough that even the arm itself could move again.

But no matter that she was a wereboar, she could not fight in this condition.

“I spared you because it seemed too cruel that, after I killed your father with my own hand, I should also send his daughter off with my own hand… but becoming a wereboar has crossed the line.”

Azadine had clear principles when it came to permanently maiming or killing an opponent.

Until now, Maya had not crossed that line, so he had not killed her, but becoming a wereboar had clearly gone beyond it. There was no guarantee that, where Azadine could not see her, she had not killed and devoured civilians.

“You….”

Maya ground her teeth as she watched Azadine draw near, sword ready to cut her throat. The wound where her arm had been severed had already stopped bleeding thanks to the dreadful vitality of the wereboar, but that did not mean she was in any state to fight.

The shock from the severed arm, from the violently disrupted nerves, still racked her body. Lights flickered before her eyes, and it was hard even to make out objects properly.

But at that moment an arrow flew in.

Azadine knocked aside the arrow hurtling toward him, but the arrow had magic cast upon it.

The Yellow Crane of Flowers, Birds, Wind, Moon—its fearsome magical shock numbed Azadine’s arm and kept pressing inward, aiming for his throat.

Azadine turned his head and evaded the arrow, then threw his body backward. In the meantime, another arrow struck Azadine’s hippogriff, Firewinter.

Kreeee!

As Firewinter thrashed wildly, Scott, who had been riding on top of it, fell off, and everything descended into chaos.

Taking advantage of that opening, Maya snatched up her severed arm and hurled herself away. And in her place, assassins of the Messenger Clan revealed themselves upon the bridge.

“Traitor to the clan! Azadine! Prepare yourself!”

“We will kill you and avenge the enemy who obstructed the clan’s long-cherished wish!”

“…You must be joking.”

Azadine clicked his tongue as he watched the still-young Messengers, of rank lower than his own, rush at him.

There were now so many people who considered Azadine their enemy that those seeking revenge on him might well have needed to consult one another and assign turns.