by Akira Kareno
“…Yeah. I heard they were that kind of people.”
“Let me add one thing. It has been passed down through my people that they tasted the most delicious out of all the races, by a long shot.”
That legend should just die out.
“One of the cornerstones of their strength was the codified techniques that we now refer to as dug weapons and the physical manifestation of that system as actual armaments for use on the battlefield.”
“…I’ve heard of them. Anala talked about them once. I think it was something like if you could find just one living dug weapon, it could earn more than enough to cover an entire salvage harvest in terms of pay…”
“Right, that’s how much the Alliance values them. I think, two hundred bradal at the very minimum, and I believe eight million was the most ever paid?”
Eight million.
It could pay off the rest of Willem’s debt (which was by no means a small amount) fifty times over and still have some left over.
“And so all the dug weapons the Alliance has collected—”
Nygglatho stopped before a door.
It was large and stout.
Fashioned of solid metal, it had rivets all around the edge, a lock in a fivefold style, and the knob was a heavy-looking handle.
It was almost unusual how this door alone seemed to exude the feeling of a military facility in this warehouse brimming with daily life.
“—are stored in here.”
Nygglatho unlocked the door with a practiced hand and pushed it open.
Fwooooom—
A deep sound resonated in the pit of his stomach.
A wet scent of mold and dust tickled his nose.
It’s almost like a tomb.
The room resembled the kind of crypt a royal family would have been enshrined in thousands of years ago, their valuables entombed with them as burial goods, but where an idiot, lured by the promise of riches, tries to steal things and winds up cursed. Willem had never seen the real thing with his own eyes, but he’d heard many funny stories of the sort. Well, he didn’t know if there were any left on the surface as it was now.
There was no light in the room. While he knew something lay beyond the dim darkness, there was no way to tell what it was.
“Sure is secure,” he murmured absently.
“This place does contain dangerous materials, after all,” came the response from beside him. “Ancient super-weapons the methods to create, repair, or even handle have all been lost to time. Long ago, a powerless race made these to stand up to the threats of the giant dragons, the Visitors. A symbol of their will to resist, the power to stand as a challenge. Even though they were meant as personal weapons, they could singlehandedly turn the tide of battles. In the long history of this world, these can be considered the upper echelon, the most reliable of trump cards against an opponent of overwhelming power—”
Willem’s eyes slowly grew accustomed to the darkness.
He could now faintly see what was in the warehouse.
“Ha-ha,” he laughed quietly.
Leaning against one wall were ten or so swordlike objects.
At the very least, they were swords judging by their outward appearance.
Many of them were much bigger than typical longswords used in ceremonies and combat. They varied in length, but most were about as tall as a person or slightly shorter. Their hilts were long, too, and were clearly meant to be wielded with two hands.
The most peculiar trait was the structure of the blades.
He picked one and approached it to get a better look. On the face of the blade, he could see something that looked like a crack running along it. When he looked even closer, he could tell the blade on either side of the crack was different in color.
Swords were usually hammered or carved out of a single ingot. But this was different. Several steel billets the size of his clenched fist had been pieced together to create the shape of a sword, like a completed jigsaw puzzle.
“A Carillon…”
“I’ve heard they were once called that long ago, yes?” Nygglatho shrugged.
When he looked around the room again, a clenching pain gripped his chest.
He recognized some of these swords.
But of course, he recognized the mass-produced Carillon, the Percival series. When he had just become a Quasi Brave and didn’t have a specialty sword, it had fought alongside him on countless occasions. Though it wasn’t equipped with any particular talents, its high basic specs and expandability—not to mention its standardized build—meant it was possible to perform emergency maintenance even in the middle of the battlefield. In short, it was incredibly easy to use. Its successor, the Dindrane series, didn’t suit Willem too well but, more stable than its predecessor, had been popular with other Quasi Braves.
Deep inside, there was Locus Solus. It was the name of the giant, beloved sword that had fought alongside a Quasi Brave against the purple dragon to the south. Its muscular invigoration talent had manifested, but as its healing powers were broken, its wielder would always experience awful pain—Willem remembered that guy complaining about it.
Beside it was Mulsum Aurea. A Quasi Brave had brought it along when called up as reinforcements to defend the Brilliant City of Ristiel. Willem had never seen its talent firsthand, but he’d heard it could actually confer temporary immortality.
“…Ha-ha.”
What a terrible kind of reunion this was, he thought.
Thud. Not caring if he dirtied the pants of his military uniform, he sat on the spot.
He activated a slight bit of magic and gave his eyes the power of Seeing. There was a sharp pain in the corner of his head, but he didn’t pay it any mind.
Yeah, that’s what he thought. All the swords were tattered and worn out. Their veins of enchantment had come loose, were cut away, completely in disorder; everything everywhere was all over the place.
Are you still fighting, despite all this?
“—Can I ask you something?”
“What is it?”
“The Carillon are man-made miracles created for emnetwiht by emnetwiht. Only people of the same race with the qualifications to be a Brave can wield them. They should be nothing but museum pieces now. So why are you collecting them? How are you making them fight?”
“Haven’t you noticed already?”
“We’re Braves, too, right?”
He ignored the voice replaying in the corner of his mind.
“Tell me.”
“Sophistry and stretching logic are the basics of magic. Since there are no emnetwiht remaining, we simply need to use a replacement. Those girls are leprechauns—the only race able to use the same tools as the emnetwiht and complete their work. That is the answer to your question.”
“…I see.”
So that was what was going on.
He lifted himself off the ground and brushed the dust off his bottom. He looked at all the sacred blades lined up in a row.
“So they’re your partners now, huh?”
Willem felt lonely but proud, yet sad.
He murmured, a strange mix of feelings inside him.
What am I? Willem thought.
Several things came to mind.
Someone who once wished to be a Legal Brave.
Someone who once lived with a Carillon as a Quasi Brave.
And someone who’d lost that capability at the end of a battle and now lived as an empty shell.
One needed the appropriate background to become a Legal Brave.
Perhaps it would be more appropriate to call it persuasiveness.
Someone born with divine blood, or the descendant of a past Brave, or born on a night of prophecy, or a person whose hometown had been destroyed by a dragon, or the only child who’d inherited a secret martial art, or somebody with a powerful demon sealed inside them.
Real Braves all had backgrounds like that. The only people who could actually gain superpowers were those who others looked at and murmured wi
th a nod, “I wouldn’t be surprised if that guy had superpowers.”
That’s why Willem could never become a Legal Brave.
No matter how much he wished, he would never be qualified enough for that.
His birth parents had been ordinary cotton workers. He’d grown up in an orphanage. His life was somewhat unlucky but also somewhat lucky. It was only matter of course that such an unimpressive background would yield him nothing but unimpressive powers. That was something he had no control over and couldn’t do anything about.
If only there had been classes for secret sword arts that were easy to learn in his neighborhood, but alas, the world wasn’t that convenient.
“You got no talent.”
His master at the time had laid it out for him bluntly.
“That Brave salvation system is basically just for the elite. Legendary heroes, half man / half gods, created this system to fight off greater gods and whatever other threats. It’s on a total different dimension than things that look for victory in the smallest limits, like our battle techs. Something for people who carry the world’s trouble on their own shoulders, people with extraordinary jobs and destinies.” He shook his head. “Those arcane arts, too, aye. Decent folk can’t even activate ’em, and they wouldn’t be able to handle the reaction even if they forced it… Only breaks their body and ends with ’em in no state to fight at all. And Willem, I hate to tell you this, but you’re decent folk.”
A short silence.
A deep exhale.
“Don’t make that face. I’m not giving you a death sentence because I want to. It’s a truth I have to tell you and a reality you have to understand. That’s all.”
He had rejected those words back then.
He’d still refused to give up.
Looking back on it, it might have been childish retaliation. But he had been serious. Willem had not made the decision lightly when he chose to oppose his master, right up until the very end.
He remembered the twentieth Legal Brave, appointed by the Church of Exalted Light.
She had a breathtaking, impressive history.
Not only was she a descendant of the very first Legal Brave, but she had also been born heir to a country of knights. In her ninth autumn, an army of gloom elves attacked her country. Everything precious to her—her parents, her friends, her home—was burned to ash. A loyal retainer spirited her away from the crumbling castle, bringing her to a retired old general who lived in a village far away in the borderlands, where she learned lost sword techniques.
When he’d first heard her story, he could only say, “Is that so?”
He had been oddly calm, seeing what kind of person was chosen to be a Legal Brave.
Even when he learned that one of the only five oldest holy blades in the world, Seniorious—the beloved blade of the eighteenth Legal Brave—would be given to her, he’d felt neither happiness nor envy for her.
He stopped thinking about how the more he compared these tales of another world to himself, the more miserable he became.
It was only a long time afterward that he came to realize.
There was a reason these people could fight. They had a reason to fight. They had reasons they had to fight. That’s why no one had noticed, including themselves. They’d taken it as a given and had never even imagined it.
That girl. The twentieth Legal Brave.
She who had been born with the power to strike down demons, who concealed the sadness of losing her family and home, who had taken up a mystical job that had been created long in the past, who carried a shining, holy blade that could even reach the Visitors.
She had never once wished she could fight.
Events had simply created a situation where she had to, so she thrust herself into a war of revenge. Those around her expected it of her, so she’d stood up to the dragons and the gods. She had simply been controlled by the demands of those around her—a puppet with no will.
The moment he realized that, Willem hated her.
He’d thought he could never forgive her.
And in truth…even now, those feelings still lingered.
The sun was setting.
A light rain began to fall.
“Should’ve brought an umbrella…”
Though those words quietly escaped his lips, he didn’t feel like taking shelter from the rain or returning to his room.
Island No. 68, the harbor.
Everything necessary for airships to come and go was stored there—the doorway to the island.
He stood by the edge as droplets pelted his body.
Several torn cotton clouds were visible floating below him. And spreading out far beneath that, he could see what had once been the surface. The green of the trees, the azure of rivers and oceans, even the yellow of sand and stone no longer existed. All he could see was a strange, muddied gray dust that covered everything.
He’d come out here to see this view. He wanted to confirm the things he had lost and could never get back.
But even that gray was melting into the darkness of night as though being chased by the setting sun.
Several things now made sense.
For example, venenum handling.
Venenum was like heat.
By calling the flame of magic into his heart, he could set it ablaze, and returning that to the outside world was how he used his power. This heat, however, taxed the user’s body. Even if the user tried to gain an even more powerful fire, their own life force would hold them back. That was what decided the upper limits of how much venenum any person could wield, and it varied between races.
That was why odd life-forms unconcerned with their personal well-being could wield such immense power that no other race could replicate.
That power, which probably wasn’t kept in check, could go destabilize and detonate. The resulting explosion would be big enough to blow away both the user and their enemies, creating a gigantic crater in the battlefield and leaving behind nothing but a single Carillon in the center.
“Sure makes for excellent weapons—”
They were entirely disposable bombs.
It might not be an entirely efficient way of using this energy, but there was a great meaning and value in having that option itself.
There was one other thing that made sense.
Willem had thought, Man, I bet these guys are strong, when he first heard about them.
A race that specialized in war. A life-form whose destiny was simply striving for victory.
What excellent persuasiveness. That was the only job they carried with them, and he had no room to complain.
Those girls would be perfect inheritors of the title of Legal Brave.
Though he could never become one, they could do it for him.
Wonderful. What a joyous thing it was. They must surely be hoping for the same, too. In that case, he should be happy for them. He should give them his blessing.
Woo-hoo, that’s great!
I’ll leave everything to you, good luck!
“—I wanna die.”
Of course, he knew. He wouldn’t grumble about this.
The ugly side of his warped disposition, swollen to the point of oblivion, was running around in circles inside his mind.
He was thinking peculiar things only because he was alone in that place. It would be more gracious of him if he just went to the girls—rather, the faeries—and told them how he felt.
But he couldn’t do something like that. Unrelated outsiders should never complicate the battles for which the Braves were preparing.
“—Hmm?”
A light pierced the sea of clouds above his head and entered his vision.
An airship was approaching.
The light was so bright, he couldn’t make out the silhouette very well. But he could at least tell it wasn’t a commuter airship or a ferryman’s airship.
It was small, but it was probably a military transport ship.
The heavy sound of metal resounded as the vehi
cle moored at the port.
The impact deck groaned slightly. Three anchor arms were fixed in place, from back to front. The two rotor blades gradually came to a stop. The booming, running sound of the enchanted combustion furnace slowly grew quieter.
The exit hatch opened with applied air pressure.
Two figures emerged from inside the ship.
“You—”
The two figures were girls…leprechauns he knew.
Chtholly and Ithea.
Both of them wore clothes he didn’t recognize—a woman’s informal military uniform.
Something was strange. Ithea wore a grim expression on her face while an exhausted Chtholly leaned on her as they walked.
“…Well, well. Good evenin’, Second Enchantments Officer Willem.” Ithea looked at him, only her speech reminiscent of her usual self. “This is a strange place to meet. Out for a walk in the rain?”
She was mostly right. Maybe she’d purposefully said something off topic as a joke, as a way to gloss over the situation.
But regardless, he honestly couldn’t let them deceive him now.
“You two, what in the world are—?”
“Well, I suppose you could say the same for us. We just went for a little stroll off the island…but you wouldn’t believe me if I said that, huh?”
“You’re damn well right. This is—”
Willem faltered.
He hesitated as to whether or not he should ask now. Yet—
“You were off fighting, weren’t you? With the Seventeen Beasts.”
“Nya-ha-ha, so you knew? How embarrassing.”
Chtholly didn’t respond. When he tried to approach, wondering if she had been hurt that badly, there was more.
“Um, no thank you. There’s nothing for you to do, Officer. If you’re going to ask, then if you could please, take care of this.” Ithea’s eyes briefly flitted behind her.
He saw a mountain.
The mountain was covered entirely in milky-white scales. It wore a military uniform. Slowly, it shrunk down and squeezed itself out of the airship.
Eyes near the top of the mountain peak peeled open and glared down at Willem.
—I’ve seen this guy once, this lizardfolk.