Chapter 2: The Younger Sister’s Determination
The sound of tableware clinking together could be heard.
“…”
Despite the many astonished looks focused on him, Tohru continued his meal without saying a word.
He wasn’t by nature a polite eater, but this was far worse; he ate as if he was being cornered. It definitely didn’t look like he was enjoying eating his meal.
Cram in a mouthful. Chew. Gulp it down. Take a swig of water, then cram more inside. Repeat.
Over and over again, as if he were performing a simple mechanical operation.
It wasn’t delicious, nor was it disgusting.
There was probably no greater insult to the chef that made it, but Tohru wasn’t even tasting the food. He was eating for the sole purpose of replenishing nutrients.
“…”
It had only been a little over three hours since then.
While gathering wild plants in the forest, he had come across a girl who was all by herself, and then came face to face with a Feyra unicorn. He had ran around trying to protect the girl from the unicorn, buying time so she could use her magic while losing quite a bit of blood and stamina in the process, and then on top of that used a technique that he hadn’t used in about two years, “Iron-Blood Transformation”.
In particular, this “Iron-Blood Transformation” consumed a bizarre amount of stamina.
To be honest, after all that it was a miracle he had managed to keep from collapsing. He had dragged all the natural strength out of his body by force, and was now walking the tightrope called “limits”.
As a result…Tohru found himself to be ferociously hungry, and the instant he had set foot back in Del Solant, they headed to a diner. By now, there were enough empty plates stacked on top of each other in front of him to hold portions for more than five people.
It was already afternoon, so business was booming.
At first, the people around Tohru didn’t pay him any mind, but after a while they could no longer ignore the fact that a young boy was downing all this food, stacking plate after plate without a word.
“…Chef.”
After cleaning his sixth plate, Tohru raised his head and spoke.
“One more just like that.”
“…Yeah, yeah.”
Through a small window that connected the kitchen with the dining room, the chef nodded, though he looked annoyed.
But…
“Eat, too much,” muttered the silver-haired, purple-eyed girl as she furrowed her brows, looking at Tohru.
Chaika Trabant.
That was what she had told Tohru to call her. He did not yet know her background, but right now the important thing was that she had said she would pay for the meal. Tohru didn’t have an ounce of pride, and he was completely penniless.
“Unreasonable. Eat, too much. Stomach, shocking.”
“More importantly, you have money, right?”
“…”
Chaika gave a nod, but didn’t look happy about it.
“Then there’s no problem. I did some work, and I got hungry afterwards. That’s all.”
“…”
Well, she had said she would treat him to breakfast if he guided her this far. But she was probably also thinking that not precisely confirming the amount, or rather, the budget beforehand was a mistake.
After that, Tohru picked up a bread basket next to him and began to eat the contents of it as well, tearing the bread into small strips.
He wasn’t just eating anything and everything randomly. Actually, Tohru had been taught that in order to replenish nutrients most effectively, the order in which he ate mattered. The brain sent signals to the stomach to release digestion enzymes based on the stomach’s current state, and he was coinciding his eating habits with when he thought his stomach would be releasing those enzymes. So this manner of eating was actually pretty effective.
Tohru had just consumed the last piece of bread in the basket, when—
“…Nii-sama.”
He froze in place.
For some reason, out of the blue, every patron in the restaurant froze as well.
No, for it to be “out of the blue” meant that there was absolutely no reason for it. It was more like an instinct. When a rabbit comes face-to-face with a tiger, it instinctively cowers, and this was pretty much the same thing. The rabbit probably isn’t aware of why it does such a thing, but that’s just how it is.
“You didn’t come back, so I was worried.”
“…”
“What on earth is my Nii-sama doing here?”
“…”
Tohru mustered up his willpower, and turned around to face the entrance of the restaurant.
Standing there was—just one girl.
She had a long, lean figure, and black hair that was tied up at the back of her head. Her eyes narrowed into long slits were beautiful, but—when she stared at you with those half-closed eyes, there was an intimidating air about her.
Akari. Tohru’s younger sister.
“Nii-sama.”
She briskly made her way through the restaurant, toward Tohru and Chaika’s table.
Instinctively, the restaurant’s patrons moved out of her way, making a path for her. They didn’t know why she was here. She was only walking—her eyebrows weren’t raised in anger and her face wasn’t red, but she still gave off heat. None of them were able to hide their fear.
“Akari, no, well, this is…”
In a panic, Tohru struggled to find the words.
Come to think of it, it was already the middle of the day—he had left the house with the intention of procuring breakfast, and it was way too late for that. With no thought to the sister who he had left waiting at the house without food, he had put down enough for six people, and was about to pick up his seventh plate. There was absolutely no more room for excuses.
Conclusion: All he could do was earnestly apologize.
“…Sorry. I forgot.”
“…”
Rather than considering her brother’s grandiose apology, Akari narrowed her eyes at him, and then looked behind and noticed Chaika, whose eyes were wide in surprise.
Then—
“…I smell blood,” she murmured.
“…Ah.”
Tohru grimaced.
For the time being, Tohru’s back, which had been sliced open by the unicorn’s tusk in a single blow, had been stitched up with some needle and thread which Chaika had on hand—both the clothes and the skin—so he had thought he was pretty inconspicuous. As expected of a sister, she seemed to have noticed something unusual about her brother immediately.
Then—
“Nii-sama.”
“Ah, no, this is just…”
“It might be unbecoming for someone like me to say this, but…”
“Huh?”
“Just what do you think you’re doing, deflowering this girl that looks to be a child?”
“…”
Tohru looked at Chaika.
Chaika didn’t seem to know what she meant, since she was just staring blankly.
“Akari.”
“What is it, dear Nii-sama?”
“There are all sorts of things I’d like to say to that, but now’s not the time. Point is, you’re wrong.”
“Is that so?”
Akari tilted her head, devoid of expression.
“Then what am I misunderstanding? Please enlighten your stupid sister, Nii-sama. This scent clinging to you is without a doubt the smell of blood, of a girl on the cusp of womanhood whom you’ve deflowered.”
“Suspect a wound first!” Tohru shouted as he struck the table.
But Akari tilted her head to the other side and spoke.
“But that would be strange.”
“What’s so strange about it?”
“It’d be strange if my Nii-sama got injured just by going to the mountains.”
“…”
Tohru heaved a sigh.
Well, the fact that she had faith in him to that extent made him somewhat glad.
“Moreover, assuming you led around a girl you didn’t even know, I doubt you’d be able to keep your sexual desires in check.”
“Don’t say disgraceful things like that!”
After all, they were currently in a restaurant full of people.
“But if that’s the case, you always have your non-blood-related younger sister right here, so it would be more logical for you to express your sexual desire towards me first. I might not be to your liking, but the desire of man is—”
“Shut up. Just shut up already,” Tohru said with something like a moan. “Or rather, just take a look at this.”
Tohru reached around to his back and lifted his clothing up just a bit.
The entire wound wasn’t visible, but even Akari could see the remnants of a sewing job.
“This is–”
She seemed to be as surprised as one would expect, as her eyes went wide.
“Do you understand now?”
“Yes. I understand. It seems I’ve made a grave misunderstanding.”
“If you get it, then good. If you get it. Oh yeah, since you’ve come all this way, your food is also—”
“This girl.”
Without even hearing Tohru’s words, she fixed her gaze upon Chaika.
“I will kill her.”
“Eeep!?”
Akari determinedly walked towards Chaika, and Tohru automatically stopped her by twisting her arms behind her back. Right now she didn’t have the hammer; but that didn’t mean he could relax. Akari could crush an apple with her bare hands. It wasn’t like she was particularly muscular, but since she was a member of the Acura clan she was certainly no novice.
“You don’t get it at all, do you!?”
“Of course I do. This girl did you in. And she gave my respected Nii-sama that wound, so my gentle, understanding self might not be able to hold back, either.”
“Exactly what part of you is ‘gentle’ and ‘understanding’? And are you respecting me or insulting me? I can’t tell!”
It seemed like Akari thought Chaika gave him that wound.
“…Am I mistaken?”
Still held back, Akari turned her head and looked at him over her shoulder as she asked that.
“You are.”
“But there is no other way to hurt Nii-sama than by distracting him with his fetish for young girls.”
“Exactly what kind of person do you think I am?”
Tohru groaned.
Then—
“It was a Feyra.”
He lowered his voice as he said this, and changed his words. If word got out on this side of town that a destructive beast had appeared, it would cause a huge uproar. They would probably say things like, “That guy encountered a beast of destruction and lived to tell the tale? Just what in the world is he?” If it came to that, there would no longer be any point to going so far out of his way to keep his family name secret and hiding himself within the refugee district of Del Solant.
“…”
Akari immediately narrowed her eyes.
“For whatever reason, I met a Feyra. By chance, I happened to meet this girl, Chaika, and I got her to help me defeat it. She’s a wizard, and there’s a Gundo in that coffin there.”
In the town of Acura, there were code words that were only the Acura clan knew of. These words made it so that anyone around them would have no idea what they were talking about, but at the same time, using these words also indicated to Akari that this was a serious matter.
“And so this girl’s actually my benefactor. But even though now it’s lunch, this girl offered to pay for our breakfast in return for me guiding her. We’ve eaten enough wild plants already, so eat up.”
“…I see…”
Akari nodded her head.
At the same time Tohru released his hold on her.
“I’m sorry, Nii-sama.”
“I’m glad you finally get it.”
“I had thought that since Nii-sama has been out of work and lying around all day, his sexual desire was—”
“Just shut up already.”
Tohru scowled.
“Anyway…since you went through the trouble of coming here, we can both get fed. Her treat.”
“Hm?”
Akari looked in Chaika’s direction, and after a long sigh, Chaika nodded.
“I see. Then I’ll have the special of the day, enough for four people.”
“Hey now…”
“When you didn’t come back, I got worried, used my hidden technique, and ended up looking all around town for you. As such, I am quite famished.”
“…Wait, you shouldn’t use the technique like…ah, never mind. Whatever.”
Well, it was true that Akari could also use the “Iron-Blood Transformation” technique.
“Well, sorry, but I guess that’s how it is.”
“…Resignation.”
Chaika nodded.
“…”
The man was standing in front of the Feyra’s corpse.
It looked like his entire body was covered in brown and green, but that might have just been the clothing he was wearing. At any rate, he blended into the scenery around him. His head had been shaved completely bald, and he had spread some sort of dye all over it to camouflage it in the same color as his clothes. When he closed his eyes, from a distance it would probably be difficult to recognize him as a human.
“Ohh…”
His face contorted tightly.
It was difficult to discern his expression because of all that paint, but in the next moment big tears started to flow down his face.
“Ooooooooh…”
The man dropped to his knees, and clung to the Feyra’s corpse with his entire being. Its remains had been bisected from head to rear as if filleted by an enormous knife. So much blood had poured out from its large, dark body and been absorbed into the ground that; this magic-wielding monster that once had the potential to scare an entire nation seemed to be a whole size smaller.
“It must have hurt…You must have suffered so…ooh…oooh…poor thing, poor thing!”
The man sobbed for a while on top of the Feyra’s dead body.
It was as if a member of his own family had been slaughtered.
Then—
“But, it’s inconceivable.”
The man muttered in a composed tone, as if a switch that completely changed his personality had been flipped.
“The unicorn was in this forest and on the offensive, and yet a wizard was able to defeat it. No matter how you look at it, the unicorn had the advantage in this terrain. Against a young girl wizard, carrying her luggage, no less, there should have been no contest.”
The man released himself from the unicorn’s corpse, stood up, and tilted his head.
“I had expected some setbacks when taking on this task, so I borrowed some eyes and ears. But could I have overlooked something…?”
The man surveyed the area, and in the next moment, he once again dropped to the ground and roamed about on all fours, as if he had transformed into a beast.
Narrowing his eyes and sniffing around, he prowled around the Feyra’s corpse for a bit, and—
“Was there…someone else besides the target?”
He muttered.
The man’s eyes zeroed in on trampled leaves and snapped twigs.
That was most likely the limit of what normal human eyes could see, but—
“Footprints…other than the target’s…they appear to be those of an adult male…one set. Oho. Ohoho. It appears we have quite the master. But what in the world kind of person was he? But wait, up until now that girl has always been by herself. Did she meet someone here? But then again…”
The man tilted his head.
“I see. As I thought, it seems that acting on my own was poor judgement. If the target had a partner, then certainly, it might have been too much for me to handle alone. Perhaps it would have been best to wait for Gillette-dono’s arrival after all…”
The man stood up—and turned his head in a certain direction.
“At any rate, it’s a safe bet they’ve arrived at that town by now.”
The man continued to stare in that direction.
The direction—of the town of Del Solant.
* * *
At the entrance to the diner, Chaika parted ways with the siblings.
Though they had fought together, originally she and Tohru had been nothing more than coincidental passing acquaintances.
Tohru guided the lost Chaika to Del Solant. Chaika treated him to some food as a reward. With that, they didn’t owe each otheranything else. As for the Feyra incident, it wasn’t like one of them saved the other one since neither of them knew who was targeted.
However…
“Nii-sama?”
Akari’s voice reached Tohru, and in a panic he turned around to face his sister.
“What is it?”
“Nothing. You keep turning around for some reason.”
“Oh, that’s…”
Something was strange.
That girl named Chaika Trabant.
Tohru really didn’t know why, but there was still something on his mind.
“Does that girl really concern you that much?”
“Ah? Nah—well, I mean, I did think she was pretty strange.”
“…”
Akari let out a strange sigh that sounded forced.
Because she didn’t express herself very often, it was even more obvious that she was faking it. Ever since she’d lived in the village of Acura, she had always been bad at acting, which people had pointed out to her on many occasions. Incidentally, for saboteurs, who used hindrance tactics to catch the enemy with their pants down, acting ability was an indispensable tool, practically another weapon at their disposal.
“What’s wrong?”
“Oh, just thinking about how Nii-sama is a pervert that gets turned on by little girls.”
“You’re determined to treat me like one no matter what, huh?”
“Nii-sama, don’t misunderstand.”
Akari shook her head.
“Even if you are a pervert, I will never stop cherishing and respecting you.”
“Your words of ‘respect and affection’ are somewhat inexplicable,” Tohru muttered while walking.
It wasn’t until a little later that Tohru realized that a seed inside him had sprouted, and a certain change had occurred within.
* * *
With a dull yet powerful sound, a vehicle continued down the main road.
In these last few years, machines with engines that ran on magical energy had already become prevalent, even amongst the common folk. However, it was still rare to see commoners with vehicles; mostly just the “upper crust” had them, like nobles, royalty and wealthy merchants. In the long run, vehicles were far more convenient and cheaper than carriages drawn by horses and oxen in terms of maintenance, but the vehicles themselves were also incredibly expensive. As a result, the number of people who could afford one was extremely limited.
And so, this vehicle stood out quite a bit–not to mention that it was painted a pure white and heading down a country road, which made it all the more conspicuous.
As various horse and oxen-driven carriages passed by,all the coachmen’s and passengers’ eyes went wide, turning their heads and following it with their eyes until it was out of sight.
“…Would it have been better to avoid traveling in the daylight after all?”
Inside the vehicle, a young person spoke with a sigh.
This model of vehicle, named “April”, was quite spacious and large. However, anyone passing by it could guess just from its outward appearance that there was more to it than just being roomy. It looked like a small mobile home, and,with the exception of the coachman’s cabin from where the April model was controlled, there were four private rooms, two cargo holds, and a central cabin where all the members of the crew could meet and talk.
The young person was currently in that cabin.
Except for one man, a number of young men and women were also sitting next to each other at a roundtable.
The color of their hair, eyes, and skin and their expressions were all over the place, as if there was no sense of unity in the group.
They gave off the impression of a group of mercenaries, but on the other hand, no matter how you looked at it,the youths looked too elegant and refined for that. They looked like a bunch of aristocrats.
“According to the reports from our scout Mattheus, it has to be that girl. If we let her out of our sight again here, who knows when we’ll be able to catch her,” said a person sitting across from the youths, shrugging his shoulders.
He was a broad-shouldered, middle-aged man. He was clearly much older than the rest of them, yet he more or less humbled himself towards the young ones, so his social status and position was probably different from theirs.
“Yet here we are, recklessly standing out.”
“Well, yes, it’s as you say.”
The middle-aged man gave a bitter smile.
The youth had a point.
If a large white vehicle continuously drove down a country road, of course it would catch the eyes of the public.
“So much for ‘secret mission’, huh…”
“Well now, a vehicle belonging to aristocrats driving down a country road, will,as you said, draw the public’s eye. But they don’t know why we’re here, or even who we are.”
“Well, that is true.”
“More importantly…”
The middle-aged man turned his head towards the direction of the coachman’s cabin.
“Zita, about how long until we arrive in Del Solant?”
“Should be another half hour,” said the voice of a young girl from the coachman’s cabin.
“…So she says. The problem is what happens after that, don’t you think?”
“Have we been in touch with Count Albert?” the voice apparently belonging to a young girl named Zita replied.
“More or less. Though I didn’t divulge the reason we’re here.”
“That’s just as well,” the middle-aged man muttered. “After all, this probably isn’t something we can get through using normal means.”
He made a face like he was chewing on something bitter.
* * *
Considering they had been neglected for quite a while—they were still where they had last been left, in the same condition.
In one of the wooden boxes that had been piled up in an abandoned house, amongst some tools used for maintenance, they were there, almost as if waiting to be picked up once again.
“…”
Frowning, Tohru took them out of the box.
They were—two small swords that could be attached to a leather belt.
They weren’t as long as longswords or as short as shortswords. Perhaps one could say they looked to be somewhere in the middle, or perhaps that their size was such that they conveniently had the advantages of each.
However—
“…”
Placing the two small blades, along with a girdle, on top of one of the nearby wooden boxes, Tohru removed the thin gloves covering both his hands. In case he was seen by anyone other than Akari, he never removed these, even when entering the bath—it was a necessary measure to keep living as an ordinary commoner.
Tohru examined the palms of his hands.
A design with complex markings had been etched onto both palms.
It was the same design as the one on the hilt of each sword.
He once again wrapped the girdle around his torso and brought his hands near the swords’ hilts.
The swords fit naturally in his hands, as though they had not been inactive for almost a whole year.
Lightly gripping them, he tested them out.
“Huh…”
It didn’t feel uncomfortable or out-of-place at all.
Rather, he felt like the hatchet he’d used this morning had been much more unwieldy, even though ever since he had drifted to Del Solant it had been his weapon of choice.
“It might be possible,” Tohru muttered.
Exactly why he had chosen now to pick up these weapons again wasn’t too clear, even to him. Using them as a replacement for his broken hatchet wouldn’t work as an excuse. Living as an ordinary commoner, there was clearly no need for that sort of thing.
With Akari, she didn’t even blink at using her favored weapon for a bunch of different things, but because it was quite clear that Tohru’s two blades weren’t used for ceremonial or work purposes, as long as peace continued to thrive in Del Solant he had no opportunity to use them.
Well, it was true that normally,this wasn’t a place for Akari to use her iron hammer either, and she rarely took it out of the house.
“This might actually work.”
Tohru undid his girdle without unsheathing the swords.
He was about to put his once-favored weapon back in the box—
“…”
His hand stopped.
He stared at the blades for a while and then, dexterously attaching them to his shoulders with his leather belt and stretching his hand out, picked repair tools up out of the box. He grabbed powder that kept up a sword’s durability, oil, a wooden hammer to remove rivets, and various other things. He bundled all of this stuff up, and inserted them in the leather bag on his belt.
With these items in his possession, Tohru went to the next room, where he arranged his swords and the repair tools on top of an old table that had been left alone there for quite some time.
There—
“…Nii-sama?”
Like she was just casually passing through, Akari’s voice came from the door that was still open.
“That’s…”
“Huh? Oh. Well…”
Tohru fumbled his words for a bit, and then heaved a sigh.
“Somehow it ended up like this.”
“…”
Akari entered the room, and she stared at the swords beside Tohru.
“Repair tools, huh?”
“Well…yeah.”
It wasn’t like he had a specific goal in mind for using them again.
But—
“I’m not really doing anything else.”
“…”
He thought she would say, if that’s the case then shouldn’t you be working?,but for some reason, Akari didn’t say anything. She only gave a small nod, and promptly left the room.
“Doing something, huh…could this be something I want to do?”
There could no longer be anything like that.
The battlefield was the only place where a saboteur thrived.
It was now a period of peace, and those kind of techniques, no matter if used with a saw, a kitchen knife, or an oddly-sized pair of small swords, no longer had any place.
However…
“…”
What had happened earlier was nothing more than a trivial occurrence.
You couldn’t really even call it a “battle.”
The encounter with the Feyra in the mountains— he and the wizard he had met in a chance encounter and had killed it. That was all. It probably wasn’t going to happen again. And even if it did, he couldn’t guarantee that he’d have the same feelings.
And yet—
“I—”
It wasn’t just using the “Iron-Blood Transformation”.
Having come that close to falling into the ravine of death, throwing away all unnecessary thoughts, and pushing himself to the limits of what he was able to do, a feeling had been created inside him.
It was—
“Well, it’s fine.”
What exactly was fine?
Tohru wasn’t sure himself, but nonetheless he began his repair work on the small swords.
“Nii-sama.”
When he opened his eyes the next morning, his sister’s face was so close to him that their breath touched—the same situation as the previous one.
And it should also be said that the iron hammer was again eating into his pillow in the same fashion.
“Good morning.”
“…You,” Tohru mumbled. “What the hell are you playing at?”
“You say ‘what am I playing at’, but…”
Akari tilted her head.
The hammer remained sunk into Tohru’s pillow.
“It’s the same as yesterday. I’m here to wake you up.”
“That’s why I’d like to hear why you’re using the same method as yesterday.”
“Because this is the same situation as yesterday.”
“…”
Tohru was at a loss for words.
Sure, thanks to Chaika they had obtained breakfast for yesterday—well, it was basically lunch. But when you thought about it that was only for one day, and since he wasn’t working they were still penniless. Or rather, what little day-to-day income Akari did earn from working at various stores in the neighborhood had all gone to last night’s dinner.
For you see, they had both used “Iron-Blood Transformation.” So for not only lunch but also dinner, they ate many times more than a normal human would.
As a result, the money that had originally been intended to last them for three more days was spent on a single dinner.
So basically, the situation was indeed the same as yesterday morning’s.
“…I haven’t even recovered from my wound yet.”
“But you can still do simple jobs, can you not?”
“I thought I told you, I’m not planning to make this “working” thing a habit,” Tohru said with something like a groan. “Besides, you’re not doing all you can do either. Find some suitable guy and marry him already. If you learn how to fake a smile it’ll probably be all right. And even if you still haven’t had sex, you’ve learned a few techniques—”
“But if the man I married didn’t do any work either, wouldn’t it eventually end up the same way?”
“Well, sure, I guess.”
Tohru didn’t like to brag, but there weren’t many men like him. The postwar period was a “period of chaos”, so to speak, and though everyone was still getting by it was an era of desperation. People like Tohru who said things like “If I work, I lose” in this era would have to be either very eccentric or very stupid.
Basically, it would be like saying “Well, it’s okay if I die.”
“In any case…”
Akari began.
“I’m almost at my limit.”
“Limit?”
“The limit of my patience.”
She said.
In the next instant—
Tohru leapt from the bed.
Akari had thrust her hand forward with vicious speed.
She wasn’t playing around this time. If Tohru hadn’t seriously tried to avoid it, her right hand would most certainly have pierced right through his stomach and out his back.
“—Akari!?”
When he had jumped, Tohru had kicked off of the wall with an unnecessary amount of force, then kicked off the ceiling and landed on the floor. It was a pretty run-down house, so that caused a chorus of creaking and groaning, as if it protesting being treated so cruelly.
“I think I said it already.”
As she said it, Akari raised up.
“If Nii-sama refuses to work, then I’d rather he be stuffed.”
“…Seriously?”
Tohru groaned.
Akari took out her hammer, but instead of swinging it around like yesterday, she pointed it straight at him. There wasn’t any hint of it being just a meaningless bluff. She was intending to kill.
Well, I guess she has a point, Tohru thought despairingly.
As she had said, she had reached the point where her patience had run out. Naturally—after enduring day after day of him lying around the house doing nothing with no future prospects to speak of–rather than having to call that kind of existence “family”, it wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility for her to think that erasing it once and for all and starting afresh would be a better option.
The war had ended, and not much time had elapsed since then.
A human’s life was a trivial thing. The registers for the residents of the town were not kept up, much less those of the refugees. They had no clue who was where. It was for this reason that Tohru and Akari were able to blend in with the commoners so innocently.
At any rate—
“!”
Without warning, Akari’s hammer went flying towards him.
Tohru avoided it—just barely. The attack grazed his head as it passed him, and it went right through a wall that had already looked like it was on its last legs.
Rolling to the floor, he grabbed the belt with his swords that was lying on the bed and jumped, evading a second attack. When their eyes met each other once more, Akari had already returned to her original position.
There existed a sword-drawing technique called iai where one sheathed their sword after cutting down their opponent, and this was much the same thing.
If its user was tired, a hammer would have no strength. A hammer was different from an edged weapon in that a when a hammer wasn’t moving, it had no destructive force. So in order to use consecutive attacks, either centrifugal force from swinging it around or something like iai, which allowed for the constant acceleration of a single strike, was necessary.
I’m not good against these hammer techniques…
While thinking that, Tohru slowly stepped back, and, checking if there was some sort of blind spot, equipped the two swords to his waist.
Then, leaping through a hole in the destroyed wall, he made it outside.
Akari followed him.
Perhaps it was due to the noise from the wall being destroyed or something else, but he could see heads poking out of their houses. However, there wasn’t anyone capricious enough to want to intervene. Faced with Akari’s serious killing intent, no commoner would entertain the notion of jumping into the fight.
“…If you’re joking, it’s time to knock it off,” Tohru said as if delivering an ultimatum. “It isn’t funny anymore.”
“Nii-sama.”
Akari said.
“I have never joked even once in my entire life.”
“Wait, is that really true?”
“Of course.”
“…”
There were all sorts of things he could have said about that, but he decided to leave it be for now.
“…No choice, then.”
Tohru prepared himself, gripping the hilts of his swords. As he squeezed them, the etchings on his palm and the etchings on the swords’ hilts became linked. At the same time, he flicked back the snap fastener on their guards and drew them out.
“…Heh.”
The feeling in his hands…no, his legs, had changed in an instant.
Tohru’s favored double blades might not have had a name, but they weren’t just any old blades. They were comblades, which were often used by soldiers on the battlefield. Its hilt and blade were set up so that its user could activate it by using the “key” of the seal on his hand.
In that moment…the comblades literally became a part of Tohru.
When used, they felt completely natural. Even though he was gripping swords to kill the enemy, it was as if they were merely an extension of his hands. As he was now, Tohru could get a read on the feeling of the wind and temperature of the swords like his own skin. He even felt that his arms had extended to resemble swords; there was no longer any sensation of “holding” them.
Then—
“—I am steel.”
Tohru and Akari both muttered it simultaneously.
“Steel knows no fear. Steel knows no doubt. When faced with my enemy, I hesitate not. I am a weapon to destroy them.”
The hidden technique, “Iron-Blood Transformation.”
With the chanting of the keywords, both saboteurs’ bodies underwent the optimum changes for them to become weapons.
Tohru became one with the comblades, meaning in that moment he existed only for the purpose of wielding them. He was a part of them. His body had become the comblades.
A blade didn’t feel.
A blade wasn’t frightened.
With those keywords, his only purpose now was to destroy any and every enemy without hesitation.
In the next moment, Tohru and Akari both simultaneously kicked off of the ground.
However, they didn’t leap at each other; they were merely gauging each other’s agility. A careless leap into the air could lead to being scooped up by an attack from the ground. It didn’t matter how much “Iron-Blood Transformation” they used—there would be no way of avoiding an attack like that while in midair. At the very most, one could change their stance by using their limbs, but they wouldn’t be able to avoid an attack aimed at their center of gravity.
Tapping noises hit the ground.
Metal screeched on metal, again and again.
The two saboteurs dropped their upper bodies and ran, almost crawling along the ground. When they met each other, they kicked off the ground mightily, putting all their power into their stretched muscles before releasing.
“Ugh…!”
Tohru groaned.
He was just barely able to avoid her attack.
The hammer had flown towards him from the left, and by crossing his swords he was able to block it. Of course, if he had tried to block the pointed part of the hammer, his blades would have been done for, so Tohru had aimed for the grip of the hammer. When there was centripetal acceleration the hammer’s destructive force was at its strongest using its pointed end, so basically, the closer the part was to the user, the weaker it was.
But, that also meant that a rather dangerous opening could be created. A normal human would use the opportunity to pull back and gain some distance, but then they would fall prey to the hammer. Furthermore, the hammer would just continue to attack by accelerating in a circle. Deliberately entering her space was the only correct option.
Tohru showed no sign of fear or hesitation in his transformed state.
The optimal retooling of his body for battle had even killed his instinct for fear.
However, Akari was the same way.
At once, she drew her hammer back.
Due to that movement, the swords that had been grinding against the hammer’s grip were pulled away, and he lost his balance. At the same time, using the recoil from pulling the hammer back, she rotated her body instead of her hammer and gracefully outstretched her legs, sending them, like another hammer, towards Tohru’s undefended right and forehead.
“—!”
There was iron in various places in both Tohru and Akari’s boots. Fundamentally it was for self-defense, but when that much force was added they could be used as a weapon. Of course, that kick had the weight of her entire body put into it, so if it had been a direct hit Tohru’s skull would have caved in—after all, the forehead was the thinnest layer between the cranium.
But, with no regard to his own balance, he invaded Akari’s space once more, barreling into her.
He was able to avoid the toe of her boot colliding with his forehead, but her knee smashed into his cheek, and both of them rolled onto the floor, becoming entangled.
“Uuu…”
He immediately pushed Akari aside, rolled away, and sprang up using the force of the roll.
He glanced at her, and saw that she was also getting up.
She’s strong, Tohru thought unconcernedly.
They had had plenty of skirmishes back in the village of Acura, but up until now they had never fought seriously.
Her ability is on par with mine. So muscle and endurance alone won’t cut it…
He had shirked his training for a whole year, so his abilities had diminished somewhat. Akari, however, seemed to be even better than before. Not to mention…
Did my wound open up again? he thought, as if it was somebody else’s problem.
Akari had done a more proper job of sewing up the wound on Tohru’s back, but it hadn’t had the time to heal completely yet. In everyday life there was usually no danger of straining spinal muscles, but all the leaping and bounding he was doing now was taking its toll.
Even in stamina, Tohru had no chance of victory against Akari.
So—
It’ll be a sudden death match then.
Preparing his swords, Tohru came to a decision.
If there was one advantage to be had, it was the difference in their weapons. Akari’s weapon excelled in destructive power, but its attack patterns were limited. For its rotation to be effective, all of its movements had to be large and pronounced.
Tohru’s weapons, on the other hand, could thrust as well as slash, but far and away their most important advantage over the hammer was that they were light, making them easily maneuverable. Also, since he had two of them, the number of skills he had at his disposal doubled.
If he could make use of that difference, he might be able to turn the tables.
“—!”
Tohru exhaled, then entered the fray.
Kicking off the ground, he glided toward Akari. He put up his left sword like a shield and tightened the right sword under his arm.
Akari’s hammer flew towards him.
A sweeping diagonal strike from the ground, meant to scoop up its opponent.
His reach with his left arm was too short,so it was hard to judge an attack that had come from the right. If he used his right sword to defend, Akari would only have to bend her body backwards, fine-tuned her trajectory, and execute a horizontal strike. He wouldn’t be able to handle it. Therefore…
“…!”
He immediately crossed his swords, and used them to block as he had before. But this time, he was late in crossing the left sword with the right one. There was no way a half-assed method of guarding like that was going to stop the force of the hammer, so with a shrill sound, the two swords were knocked high into the air.
“…”
Akari’s gaze went straight to the swords in an instant.
But the hammer kept on its path, undisturbed, straight towards Tohru’s side. If it turned out to be a direct hit here, a vital organ like his kidneys or something could be destroyed. It probably wouldn’t be instant death, but a few days later it would definitely prove fatal.
But—
“Heh.”
Tohru reached out.
For the hammer itself.
Akari opened her eyes wide in surprise.
Tohru and Akari had both been taught how to catch a blade between their hands. However, that was a technique meant for a sword, not a hammer. A hammer’s centrifugal force was much too great, so Tohru catching a hammer between his bare hands was completely out of the question. If he did a poor job of it, the hammer would slip right through his hands and score a direct hit. And even if he did manage to stop the attack, his arm joints would be damaged and he wouldn’t be able to deal with the next attack at all.
But—
“…”
Tohru just caught the hammer. Well, just for clarity’s sake, when he grabbed hold of it he had jumped backwards in the same direction the hammer was traveling. After the hammer had already bounced off the swords and had its momentum reduced somewhat, the pointed end of the hammer was much easier to take hold of.
So Tohru didn’t end up stopping the attack, but since he had jumped to match it, the force the hammer had was close to zero, relatively speaking. In fact, because he had done so, Tohru’s own body weight was acting as a momentum killer.
And so—
“…Ku!”
Letting out a short breath, Akari let go of the hammer.
In this situation, continuing to hold it would be more disadvantageous.
But—it was already too late.
She and the hammer thrust forward into the air, but Tohru twisted his body and hooked his leg into Akari’s long hair.
“Ah!”
He pulled his leg downward and dragged Akari down to the floor.
With the hammer now in his possession, Tohru switched the hand holding it and thrust it forward at Akari’s temporal lobe.
“Had enough?”
Tohru glared at his sister, who was crawling around on the ground as if entangled.
The hammer was Akari’s favored weapon, just as small swords were Tohru’s. Akari was the only one that could wield it with maximum efficiency, but no matter who wielded it, its weight and the sharpness of its pointed end remained unchanged. If Tohru felt like doing so, a blow to Akari’s temple would definitely kill her.
However…
“I’ll ask you again. Are you serious about fighting like this?”
“…Of course I’m serious.”
Akari said without any trace of timidity.
Then—
“OK, that’ll be enough!”
A sound like someone clapping their hands together reached Tohru’s ears.
Tohru stepped away from Akari and threw the hammer to the ground. He turned to face where the sound was coming from.
It was—
“…!?”
Two people he recognized stood next to each other.
One of them was—
“You…”
After muttering that, Tohru briefly chanted the keywords that released him from his “Iron-Blood Transformation” state, and ended his battle.
There, standing in front of him, was an elderly man.
Small and thin, the man looked neurotic. He belonged to the guild. Tohru had seen him before when he had been dragged by Akari to join, so he recognized him. He was pretty sure his surname was Barton. His first name, he didn’t remember.
“Enough, enough. Well, I was surprised. I didn’t think you’d be able to stop yourself after going that fast—”
“What’s going on?” Tohru asked as he furrowed his brows.
“Never mind. Tohru-kun, as a representative of the guild, I must say we are considering your expulsion,” Barton said. “You see, people who are only a name on a list lose credence within the guild.”
He was basically saying that people like Tohru who registered for the guild but didn’t show any sign of receiving jobs and refused the ones that did come to them were like dead weight.
Well, it was a completely respectable idea.
Even Tohru had no reason to raise any objections.
But—
“So, if you try to turn down this last mission and choose not to accept it, your expulsion will be imminent. However, this mission might make it difficult for the guild to kick you out.”
“…?”
“Ah, well, all I heard from the client was that it’s a difficult job, or rather I should say its terms are strict. So we thought it’d be best to check to see if you had the ability to do it.”
“…Wait, for starters, there should be all kinds of registered people in the guild,” Tohru said, frowning. “Putting aside my talents, there should be plenty of others who—”
“No. The truth is, the client specified you as the first candidate of choice.”
Barton indicated the figure beside him.
It was a petite girl with silver hair.
It was Chaika.
“And so—well, actually, we wanted to ascertain what sort of abilities you had. So we asked your sister here for some help.”
“…”
Tohru got up, turned around, and glared at his sister.
But of course she was not in the least bit intimidated, and returned his gaze coolly.
“Were you not serious?”
“Of course I was. I am always serious.”
Akari clenched her fist tightly and nodded.
“This may have been a farce, but me wanting to stuff you is no falsehood!”
“Don’t say that so matter-of-factly!”Tohru shouted, and then let out a long sigh.
“Ah, shit. Guess I gotta work, then.”
He had never thought about taking any path other than a saboteur’s.
And actually, he thought the same way even now.
He just wouldn’t be good with anything else.
But…
Is she offering me work?
Tohru turned to look at Chaika.
With a big nod, Chaika said—
“Employment. Employment. You both, capable.”
Looking triumphant for some reason, Chaika pointed at both Tohru and Akari.
“Akari too? Wait, what in the world kind of job is it?”
Barton and the others in the guild probably didn’t know from the powers they displayed that Tohru and Akari were saboteurs.
But Chaika knew Tohru was one.
And people like saboteurs were children sent from the heavens for war that were useless in this era of peace. Their skill in battle was high, but there were many kinds of battle abilities. The deception natural for saboteurs was limited in where it could be used. For instance, in the case of a guard at a shop or the guards to the city, strength would be more desirable. Guarding a rich person was the same—they would prefer a group of people that were trained in proper, refined martial arts.
To be blunt, saboteurs were the handymen of the battlefield, specializing in winning battles by using anything and everything that was at their disposal. They weren’t known for wiping large swaths of people out, but they were known for using less-than-savory ways to get their jobs done, which often made them hated.
“Discussion,” Chaika said with another large nod.
“Well then, it looks like you have a lot to talk about. I’ll be off, then,” Barton said, looking satisfied. He walked out, leaving Tohru and the others behind. It didn’t seem to matter to him exactly where they were going; for better or worse, this man’s work was simply finding the right people and dispatching them.Most likely he had already received his monetary compensation from Chaika.
“…Why me?”
“Mm…”
Chaika tilted her head slightly, and then spoke.
“Fate?”
“Fate, huh…”
That was a rather vague thing.
But—
Perhaps she also felt something from yesterday’s events.
Walking a tightrope between life and death.
In that moment, he had felt a since of fulfillment—and also…
“Nii-sama.”
Akari’s urging voice came back to him.
Tohru made a sour face and—
“Okay, okay, I get it. By naming me and Akari, that means you don’t want someone like a cleaning lady or a farmer, right?”
“Of course.”
Chaika nodded.
“Want, saboteurs,” she said, clearly.
Chapter 2, Part 4
The residence of Count Abarth was a lord’s mansion located in the center of the fort town of Del Solant.
The Abarths had a military background, and as a result he had many subordinates and all sorts of knights at his disposal. The end of the long campaign of the warring era—in other words, when the Gaz Empire of the north was obliterated—owed a lot to the present head of the family, Roberto Abarth, who had played a large role in the Gaz Empire’s demise and was often called a hero as a result.
It was said that nowadays he devoted himself solely to calling over engineers specializing in magic for the restoration of Del Solant and expanding the influence of the Abarths. Originally the they should have been nothing more than a group of rural nobles, but their pedigree was such that they were a hot topic even within the Couvre Empire.
“Dearest guests, welcome to my humble abode.”
Inside a vehicle named “April”, there were several people. They had traveled to Del Solant to visit his estate, so Roberto Abarth himself came out to greet them at his doorstep with an amicable, charming smile.
The April belonged to Alberic Gillette, a knight who represented his home of the kingdom of Vemac while traveling incognito to Del Solant under the pretext of “martial arts training”—at least, that was the story the Abarths came up with.
In other words, the Abarths believed that this could turn into an opportunity to form a secret alliance with neighboring nobles, useful for expanding their influence within the kingdom.
“I am Roberto Abarth.”
Said the blond-haired man with all the makings of a hero as he bowed.
He definitely looked like a noble—his sophisticated and well-groomed face sat atop a lean, well-toned body with broad shoulders. Though physically both Roberto and Alberic had the appearance of nobility, Alberic gave off the sense of being somewhat plain when compared to Roberto—Alberic’s unrefined nature made it seem like he was from a military family.
On the other hand, Roberto, the one lauded with the title of “hero”, looked flashy, almost to the point of discomfort. His garments were laced with plenty of gold and silver thread, and incorporated the Abarth family crest as a design—from head to toe he looked extravagant; much closer to royalty than nobility.
“I am Alberic Gillette,” Alberic said, returning the bow.
Accompanying him from the rear were two people that seemed to act as his attendants, named Zita and Vivi, two unintimidating teenage girls. Among the personnel inside the April, this pair looked the most harmless, but Alberic chose them precisely because they wouldn’t seem threatening to any important people he met with. Of course, when Alberic made his visits he often ended up giving others the impression that the girls were his “special servants”, but there was no helping that.
Both Alberic and his two female attendants followed Roberto towards the parlor.
Passing by a seemingly endless number of works of art lined up in the corridor on the way, Alberic began to study the current head of the Abarth family’s nature.
It’s pretty clear that this guy craves the limelight.
The works of art were things like paintings depicting Roberto himself smiling and many sculptures based on his image. Sculptures of historic heroes and famous paintings also lined the corridor, which gave the impression that the value Roberto put on himself was equal to that of the heroes and paintings.
But…did he really come from a military family? Is he really a hero?
Alberic was also a knight. By observing the way Roberto walked—not to mention his appearance from behind—Alberic was able to grasp a sense of his true ability. His movements were…well, he didn’t get the feeling he was well-versed in martial arts. Actually, they were closer to that of a complete amateur.
However, there was no doubt that in the last war Roberto had been named a “hero”.
If that wasn’t the case, Alberic and company wouldn’t have visited his estate to begin with.
Perhaps it’s just that his ability dulled over the five years…?
He was the region’s feudal lord, and he had been crowned with the title of “hero”. Now, he seemed fine with the idea of not forging his body further or accumulating any more deeds of arms.
“Please, come in.”
Roberto invited the three of them into the lavishly-decorated parlor and sat down on the cushy-looking sofa.
They dispensed with the standard few obligatory pleasantries that were exchanged when nobles talked with other nobles.
But then—
“Now then. What’s your objective behind visiting the estate of the great Count Abarth?”
“…”
In that instant, Alberic hesitated over how exactly to begin.
Normally, nobility and royalty inviting Alberic’s group in were amicable up to this point.
But even so, he spoke—
“Count Abarth. While I am aware that such an impromptu visit exceeds the limits of propriety…I have something to ask of you.”
“Oh?”
Roberto blinked.
“I would like to borrow something from you may have unofficially obtained from the imperial capital of the Gaz Empire.”
“…What?”
Roberto’s eyebrows went up.
It was a natural reaction. In an instant his demeanor changed from that of welcoming a guest to being cautious of an opponent.
“You want to borrow that?”
Roberto didn’t even ask what it was he wanted to borrow.
Truthfully, Alberic and the others originally had no idea whether or not Roberto actually had what they were looking for, but now there was no doubt.
“It is as you say. I can’t divulge the details, but we of the kingdom of Vemac are currently in the process of accomplishing something rather special, thanks to the efforts of the post-war reconstruction agency Kleeman, which cooperates with and builds up various regions.”
“…”
Roberto’s eyes narrowed, looking at Alberic, and then behind him to the two girls, Zita and Vivi, who were standing in the back, partially obscured by the sofa.
“The Couvre Empire is also affiliated with the Kleeman organization. Therefore, if you’d rather think of this as a request not from us but the emperor of Couvre, that would be fine.”
“If you’re telling the whole truth,” said Roberto. “Why do you all want it?”
“That I cannot disclose,” replied Alberic. “The conditions of our special goal deem it necessary that I not answer.”
Roberto screwed up his face, glaring hard at Alberic and the girls.
Then—
“You.”
He rose from the sofa and issued a command to his one of his maids, who were stationed around the edge of the room.
“Our guests will now be leaving. Please show them to the front door with the utmost courtesy.”
“…”
Alberic gave a deep sigh, and stood up.
This was pretty much what he had expected. If you thought about it normally, what Alberic was asking for was very strange. He might as well have been asking someone he had never met before to hand over a family heirloom.
“Count Abarth.”
As he was being shown to the parlor entrance, Alberic turned back and spoke.
“Naturally, I understand why you would not want to hand it over. But this is a matter that threatens the peace of the entire continent of Verbist.”
“…”
Roberto didn’t reply.
He merely fixed his blue eyes on Alberic and the others silently.
Alberic sighed, and left the parlor behind.
* * *
It was roughly half an hour after Tohru and Akari’s “fight”—the examination to determine Tohru’s true strength.
Inside their ruined house, Chaika had explained the mission they were being hired to take on.
Which was—
“True heart?”
“True heart.” (1)
Chaika affirmed and nodded, like it was completely obvious.
She seemed to have an unexplainable amount of self-confidence, but—
“No matter how you put it, that’s impossible.”
“Not impossible.”
Chaika shook her head, her long, silver hair fluttering about.
“Necessary. At any cost. If so, is possible.”
Tohru and Akari looked at each other.
Naturally, even Akari seemed to be surprised at what this request turned out to be. Perhaps Barton had already known the gist of it, and that was why he had been so quick to dismiss it with only “this matter is unrelated to the guild,” and left without even hearing a little bit of the details.
However—
“Feudal lord’s house, will attack.”
Chaika said decisively.
“Then, take it back.”
“Take what back?”
“Very important, thing,” said Chaika after a moment of hesitation.
Chapter 2: The Younger Sister’s Determination
The sound of tableware clinking together could be heard.
“…”
Despite the many astonished looks focused on him, Tohru continued his meal without saying a word.
He wasn’t by nature a polite eater, but this was far worse; he ate as if he was being cornered. It definitely didn’t look like he was enjoying eating his meal.
Cram in a mouthful. Chew. Gulp it down. Take a swig of water, then cram more inside. Repeat.
Over and over again, as if he were performing a simple mechanical operation.
It wasn’t delicious, nor was it disgusting.
There was probably no greater insult to the chef that made it, but Tohru wasn’t even tasting the food. He was eating for the sole purpose of replenishing nutrients.
“…”
It had only been a little over three hours since then.
While gathering wild plants in the forest, he had come across a girl who was all by herself, and then came face to face with a Feyra unicorn. He had ran around trying to protect the girl from the unicorn, buying time so she could use her magic while losing quite a bit of blood and stamina in the process, and then on top of that used a technique that he hadn’t used in about two years, “Iron-Blood Transformation”.
In particular, this “Iron-Blood Transformation” consumed a bizarre amount of stamina.
To be honest, after all that it was a miracle he had managed to keep from collapsing. He had dragged all the natural strength out of his body by force, and was now walking the tightrope called “limits”.
As a result…Tohru found himself to be ferociously hungry, and the instant he had set foot back in Del Solant, they headed to a diner. By now, there were enough empty plates stacked on top of each other in front of him to hold portions for more than five people.
It was already afternoon, so business was booming.
At first, the people around Tohru didn’t pay him any mind, but after a while they could no longer ignore the fact that a young boy was downing all this food, stacking plate after plate without a word.
“…Chef.”
After cleaning his sixth plate, Tohru raised his head and spoke.
“One more just like that.”
“…Yeah, yeah.”
Through a small window that connected the kitchen with the dining room, the chef nodded, though he looked annoyed.
But…
“Eat, too much,” muttered the silver-haired, purple-eyed girl as she furrowed her brows, looking at Tohru.
Chaika Trabant.
That was what she had told Tohru to call her. He did not yet know her background, but right now the important thing was that she had said she would pay for the meal. Tohru didn’t have an ounce of pride, and he was completely penniless.
“Unreasonable. Eat, too much. Stomach, shocking.”
“More importantly, you have money, right?”
“…”
Chaika gave a nod, but didn’t look happy about it.
“Then there’s no problem. I did some work, and I got hungry afterwards. That’s all.”
“…”
Well, she had said she would treat him to breakfast if he guided her this far. But she was probably also thinking that not precisely confirming the amount, or rather, the budget beforehand was a mistake.
After that, Tohru picked up a bread basket next to him and began to eat the contents of it as well, tearing the bread into small strips.
He wasn’t just eating anything and everything randomly. Actually, Tohru had been taught that in order to replenish nutrients most effectively, the order in which he ate mattered. The brain sent signals to the stomach to release digestion enzymes based on the stomach’s current state, and he was coinciding his eating habits with when he thought his stomach would be releasing those enzymes. So this manner of eating was actually pretty effective.
Tohru had just consumed the last piece of bread in the basket, when—
“…Nii-sama.”
He froze in place.
For some reason, out of the blue, every patron in the restaurant froze as well.
No, for it to be “out of the blue” meant that there was absolutely no reason for it. It was more like an instinct. When a rabbit comes face-to-face with a tiger, it instinctively cowers, and this was pretty much the same thing. The rabbit probably isn’t aware of why it does such a thing, but that’s just how it is.
“You didn’t come back, so I was worried.”
“…”
“What on earth is my Nii-sama doing here?”
“…”
Tohru mustered up his willpower, and turned around to face the entrance of the restaurant.
Standing there was—just one girl.
She had a long, lean figure, and black hair that was tied up at the back of her head. Her eyes narrowed into long slits were beautiful, but—when she stared at you with those half-closed eyes, there was an intimidating air about her.
Akari. Tohru’s younger sister.
“Nii-sama.”
She briskly made her way through the restaurant, toward Tohru and Chaika’s table.
Instinctively, the restaurant’s patrons moved out of her way, making a path for her. They didn’t know why she was here. She was only walking—her eyebrows weren’t raised in anger and her face wasn’t red, but she still gave off heat. None of them were able to hide their fear.
“Akari, no, well, this is…”
In a panic, Tohru struggled to find the words.
Come to think of it, it was already the middle of the day—he had left the house with the intention of procuring breakfast, and it was way too late for that. With no thought to the sister who he had left waiting at the house without food, he had put down enough for six people, and was about to pick up his seventh plate. There was absolutely no more room for excuses.
Conclusion: All he could do was earnestly apologize.
“…Sorry. I forgot.”
“…”
Rather than considering her brother’s grandiose apology, Akari narrowed her eyes at him, and then looked behind and noticed Chaika, whose eyes were wide in surprise.
Then—
“…I smell blood,” she murmured.
“…Ah.”
Tohru grimaced.
For the time being, Tohru’s back, which had been sliced open by the unicorn’s tusk in a single blow, had been stitched up with some needle and thread which Chaika had on hand—both the clothes and the skin—so he had thought he was pretty inconspicuous. As expected of a sister, she seemed to have noticed something unusual about her brother immediately.
Then—
“Nii-sama.”
“Ah, no, this is just…”
“It might be unbecoming for someone like me to say this, but…”
“Huh?”
“Just what do you think you’re doing, deflowering this girl that looks to be a child?”
“…”
Tohru looked at Chaika.
Chaika didn’t seem to know what she meant, since she was just staring blankly.
“Akari.”
“What is it, dear Nii-sama?”
“There are all sorts of things I’d like to say to that, but now’s not the time. Point is, you’re wrong.”
“Is that so?”
Akari tilted her head, devoid of expression.
“Then what am I misunderstanding? Please enlighten your stupid sister, Nii-sama. This scent clinging to you is without a doubt the smell of blood, of a girl on the cusp of womanhood whom you’ve deflowered.”
“Suspect a wound first!” Tohru shouted as he struck the table.
But Akari tilted her head to the other side and spoke.
“But that would be strange.”
“What’s so strange about it?”
“It’d be strange if my Nii-sama got injured just by going to the mountains.”
“…”
Tohru heaved a sigh.
Well, the fact that she had faith in him to that extent made him somewhat glad.
“Moreover, assuming you led around a girl you didn’t even know, I doubt you’d be able to keep your sexual desires in check.”
“Don’t say disgraceful things like that!”
After all, they were currently in a restaurant full of people.
“But if that’s the case, you always have your non-blood-related younger sister right here, so it would be more logical for you to express your sexual desire towards me first. I might not be to your liking, but the desire of man is—”
“Shut up. Just shut up already,” Tohru said with something like a moan. “Or rather, just take a look at this.”
Tohru reached around to his back and lifted his clothing up just a bit.
The entire wound wasn’t visible, but even Akari could see the remnants of a sewing job.
“This is–”
She seemed to be as surprised as one would expect, as her eyes went wide.
“Do you understand now?”
“Yes. I understand. It seems I’ve made a grave misunderstanding.”
“If you get it, then good. If you get it. Oh yeah, since you’ve come all this way, your food is also—”
“This girl.”
Without even hearing Tohru’s words, she fixed her gaze upon Chaika.
“I will kill her.”
“Eeep!?”
Akari determinedly walked towards Chaika, and Tohru automatically stopped her by twisting her arms behind her back. Right now she didn’t have the hammer; but that didn’t mean he could relax. Akari could crush an apple with her bare hands. It wasn’t like she was particularly muscular, but since she was a member of the Acura clan she was certainly no novice.
“You don’t get it at all, do you!?”
“Of course I do. This girl did you in. And she gave my respected Nii-sama that wound, so my gentle, understanding self might not be able to hold back, either.”
“Exactly what part of you is ‘gentle’ and ‘understanding’? And are you respecting me or insulting me? I can’t tell!”
It seemed like Akari thought Chaika gave him that wound.
“…Am I mistaken?”
Still held back, Akari turned her head and looked at him over her shoulder as she asked that.
“You are.”
“But there is no other way to hurt Nii-sama than by distracting him with his fetish for young girls.”
“Exactly what kind of person do you think I am?”
Tohru groaned.
Then—
“It was a Feyra.”
He lowered his voice as he said this, and changed his words. If word got out on this side of town that a destructive beast had appeared, it would cause a huge uproar. They would probably say things like, “That guy encountered a beast of destruction and lived to tell the tale? Just what in the world is he?” If it came to that, there would no longer be any point to going so far out of his way to keep his family name secret and hiding himself within the refugee district of Del Solant.
“…”
Akari immediately narrowed her eyes.
“For whatever reason, I met a Feyra. By chance, I happened to meet this girl, Chaika, and I got her to help me defeat it. She’s a wizard, and there’s a Gundo in that coffin there.”
In the town of Acura, there were code words that were only the Acura clan knew of. These words made it so that anyone around them would have no idea what they were talking about, but at the same time, using these words also indicated to Akari that this was a serious matter.
“And so this girl’s actually my benefactor. But even though now it’s lunch, this girl offered to pay for our breakfast in return for me guiding her. We’ve eaten enough wild plants already, so eat up.”
“…I see…”
Akari nodded her head.
At the same time Tohru released his hold on her.
“I’m sorry, Nii-sama.”
“I’m glad you finally get it.”
“I had thought that since Nii-sama has been out of work and lying around all day, his sexual desire was—”
“Just shut up already.”
Tohru scowled.
“Anyway…since you went through the trouble of coming here, we can both get fed. Her treat.”
“Hm?”
Akari looked in Chaika’s direction, and after a long sigh, Chaika nodded.
“I see. Then I’ll have the special of the day, enough for four people.”
“Hey now…”
“When you didn’t come back, I got worried, used my hidden technique, and ended up looking all around town for you. As such, I am quite famished.”
“…Wait, you shouldn’t use the technique like…ah, never mind. Whatever.”
Well, it was true that Akari could also use the “Iron-Blood Transformation” technique.
“Well, sorry, but I guess that’s how it is.”
“…Resignation.”
Chaika nodded.
“…”
The man was standing in front of the Feyra’s corpse.
It looked like his entire body was covered in brown and green, but that might have just been the clothing he was wearing. At any rate, he blended into the scenery around him. His head had been shaved completely bald, and he had spread some sort of dye all over it to camouflage it in the same color as his clothes. When he closed his eyes, from a distance it would probably be difficult to recognize him as a human.
“Ohh…”
His face contorted tightly.
It was difficult to discern his expression because of all that paint, but in the next moment big tears started to flow down his face.
“Ooooooooh…”
The man dropped to his knees, and clung to the Feyra’s corpse with his entire being. Its remains had been bisected from head to rear as if filleted by an enormous knife. So much blood had poured out from its large, dark body and been absorbed into the ground that; this magic-wielding monster that once had the potential to scare an entire nation seemed to be a whole size smaller.
“It must have hurt…You must have suffered so…ooh…oooh…poor thing, poor thing!”
The man sobbed for a while on top of the Feyra’s dead body.
It was as if a member of his own family had been slaughtered.
Then—
“But, it’s inconceivable.”
The man muttered in a composed tone, as if a switch that completely changed his personality had been flipped.
“The unicorn was in this forest and on the offensive, and yet a wizard was able to defeat it. No matter how you look at it, the unicorn had the advantage in this terrain. Against a young girl wizard, carrying her luggage, no less, there should have been no contest.”
The man released himself from the unicorn’s corpse, stood up, and tilted his head.
“I had expected some setbacks when taking on this task, so I borrowed some eyes and ears. But could I have overlooked something…?”
The man surveyed the area, and in the next moment, he once again dropped to the ground and roamed about on all fours, as if he had transformed into a beast.
Narrowing his eyes and sniffing around, he prowled around the Feyra’s corpse for a bit, and—
“Was there…someone else besides the target?”
He muttered.
The man’s eyes zeroed in on trampled leaves and snapped twigs.
That was most likely the limit of what normal human eyes could see, but—
“Footprints…other than the target’s…they appear to be those of an adult male…one set. Oho. Ohoho. It appears we have quite the master. But what in the world kind of person was he? But wait, up until now that girl has always been by herself. Did she meet someone here? But then again…”
The man tilted his head.
“I see. As I thought, it seems that acting on my own was poor judgement. If the target had a partner, then certainly, it might have been too much for me to handle alone. Perhaps it would have been best to wait for Gillette-dono’s arrival after all…”
The man stood up—and turned his head in a certain direction.
“At any rate, it’s a safe bet they’ve arrived at that town by now.”
The man continued to stare in that direction.
The direction—of the town of Del Solant.
* * *
At the entrance to the diner, Chaika parted ways with the siblings.
Though they had fought together, originally she and Tohru had been nothing more than coincidental passing acquaintances.
Tohru guided the lost Chaika to Del Solant. Chaika treated him to some food as a reward. With that, they didn’t owe each otheranything else. As for the Feyra incident, it wasn’t like one of them saved the other one since neither of them knew who was targeted.
However…
“Nii-sama?”
Akari’s voice reached Tohru, and in a panic he turned around to face his sister.
“What is it?”
“Nothing. You keep turning around for some reason.”
“Oh, that’s…”
Something was strange.
That girl named Chaika Trabant.
Tohru really didn’t know why, but there was still something on his mind.
“Does that girl really concern you that much?”
“Ah? Nah—well, I mean, I did think she was pretty strange.”
“…”
Akari let out a strange sigh that sounded forced.
Because she didn’t express herself very often, it was even more obvious that she was faking it. Ever since she’d lived in the village of Acura, she had always been bad at acting, which people had pointed out to her on many occasions. Incidentally, for saboteurs, who used hindrance tactics to catch the enemy with their pants down, acting ability was an indispensable tool, practically another weapon at their disposal.
“What’s wrong?”
“Oh, just thinking about how Nii-sama is a pervert that gets turned on by little girls.”
“You’re determined to treat me like one no matter what, huh?”
“Nii-sama, don’t misunderstand.”
Akari shook her head.
“Even if you are a pervert, I will never stop cherishing and respecting you.”
“Your words of ‘respect and affection’ are somewhat inexplicable,” Tohru muttered while walking.
It wasn’t until a little later that Tohru realized that a seed inside him had sprouted, and a certain change had occurred within.
* * *
With a dull yet powerful sound, a vehicle continued down the main road.
In these last few years, machines with engines that ran on magical energy had already become prevalent, even amongst the common folk. However, it was still rare to see commoners with vehicles; mostly just the “upper crust” had them, like nobles, royalty and wealthy merchants. In the long run, vehicles were far more convenient and cheaper than carriages drawn by horses and oxen in terms of maintenance, but the vehicles themselves were also incredibly expensive. As a result, the number of people who could afford one was extremely limited.
And so, this vehicle stood out quite a bit–not to mention that it was painted a pure white and heading down a country road, which made it all the more conspicuous.
As various horse and oxen-driven carriages passed by,all the coachmen’s and passengers’ eyes went wide, turning their heads and following it with their eyes until it was out of sight.
“…Would it have been better to avoid traveling in the daylight after all?”
Inside the vehicle, a young person spoke with a sigh.
This model of vehicle, named “April”, was quite spacious and large. However, anyone passing by it could guess just from its outward appearance that there was more to it than just being roomy. It looked like a small mobile home, and,with the exception of the coachman’s cabin from where the April model was controlled, there were four private rooms, two cargo holds, and a central cabin where all the members of the crew could meet and talk.
The young person was currently in that cabin.
Except for one man, a number of young men and women were also sitting next to each other at a roundtable.
The color of their hair, eyes, and skin and their expressions were all over the place, as if there was no sense of unity in the group.
They gave off the impression of a group of mercenaries, but on the other hand, no matter how you looked at it,the youths looked too elegant and refined for that. They looked like a bunch of aristocrats.
“According to the reports from our scout Mattheus, it has to be that girl. If we let her out of our sight again here, who knows when we’ll be able to catch her,” said a person sitting across from the youths, shrugging his shoulders.
He was a broad-shouldered, middle-aged man. He was clearly much older than the rest of them, yet he more or less humbled himself towards the young ones, so his social status and position was probably different from theirs.
“Yet here we are, recklessly standing out.”
“Well, yes, it’s as you say.”
The middle-aged man gave a bitter smile.
The youth had a point.
If a large white vehicle continuously drove down a country road, of course it would catch the eyes of the public.
“So much for ‘secret mission’, huh…”
“Well now, a vehicle belonging to aristocrats driving down a country road, will,as you said, draw the public’s eye. But they don’t know why we’re here, or even who we are.”
“Well, that is true.”
“More importantly…”
The middle-aged man turned his head towards the direction of the coachman’s cabin.
“Zita, about how long until we arrive in Del Solant?”
“Should be another half hour,” said the voice of a young girl from the coachman’s cabin.
“…So she says. The problem is what happens after that, don’t you think?”
“Have we been in touch with Count Albert?” the voice apparently belonging to a young girl named Zita replied.
“More or less. Though I didn’t divulge the reason we’re here.”
“That’s just as well,” the middle-aged man muttered. “After all, this probably isn’t something we can get through using normal means.”
He made a face like he was chewing on something bitter.
* * *
Considering they had been neglected for quite a while—they were still where they had last been left, in the same condition.
In one of the wooden boxes that had been piled up in an abandoned house, amongst some tools used for maintenance, they were there, almost as if waiting to be picked up once again.
“…”
Frowning, Tohru took them out of the box.
They were—two small swords that could be attached to a leather belt.
They weren’t as long as longswords or as short as shortswords. Perhaps one could say they looked to be somewhere in the middle, or perhaps that their size was such that they conveniently had the advantages of each.
However—
“…”
Placing the two small blades, along with a girdle, on top of one of the nearby wooden boxes, Tohru removed the thin gloves covering both his hands. In case he was seen by anyone other than Akari, he never removed these, even when entering the bath—it was a necessary measure to keep living as an ordinary commoner.
Tohru examined the palms of his hands.
A design with complex markings had been etched onto both palms.
It was the same design as the one on the hilt of each sword.
He once again wrapped the girdle around his torso and brought his hands near the swords’ hilts.
The swords fit naturally in his hands, as though they had not been inactive for almost a whole year.
Lightly gripping them, he tested them out.
“Huh…”
It didn’t feel uncomfortable or out-of-place at all.
Rather, he felt like the hatchet he’d used this morning had been much more unwieldy, even though ever since he had drifted to Del Solant it had been his weapon of choice.
“It might be possible,” Tohru muttered.
Exactly why he had chosen now to pick up these weapons again wasn’t too clear, even to him. Using them as a replacement for his broken hatchet wouldn’t work as an excuse. Living as an ordinary commoner, there was clearly no need for that sort of thing.
With Akari, she didn’t even blink at using her favored weapon for a bunch of different things, but because it was quite clear that Tohru’s two blades weren’t used for ceremonial or work purposes, as long as peace continued to thrive in Del Solant he had no opportunity to use them.
Well, it was true that normally,this wasn’t a place for Akari to use her iron hammer either, and she rarely took it out of the house.
“This might actually work.”
Tohru undid his girdle without unsheathing the swords.
He was about to put his once-favored weapon back in the box—
“…”
His hand stopped.
He stared at the blades for a while and then, dexterously attaching them to his shoulders with his leather belt and stretching his hand out, picked repair tools up out of the box. He grabbed powder that kept up a sword’s durability, oil, a wooden hammer to remove rivets, and various other things. He bundled all of this stuff up, and inserted them in the leather bag on his belt.
With these items in his possession, Tohru went to the next room, where he arranged his swords and the repair tools on top of an old table that had been left alone there for quite some time.
There—
“…Nii-sama?”
Like she was just casually passing through, Akari’s voice came from the door that was still open.
“That’s…”
“Huh? Oh. Well…”
Tohru fumbled his words for a bit, and then heaved a sigh.
“Somehow it ended up like this.”
“…”
Akari entered the room, and she stared at the swords beside Tohru.
“Repair tools, huh?”
“Well…yeah.”
It wasn’t like he had a specific goal in mind for using them again.
But—
“I’m not really doing anything else.”
“…”
He thought she would say, if that’s the case then shouldn’t you be working?,but for some reason, Akari didn’t say anything. She only gave a small nod, and promptly left the room.
“Doing something, huh…could this be something I want to do?”
There could no longer be anything like that.
The battlefield was the only place where a saboteur thrived.
It was now a period of peace, and those kind of techniques, no matter if used with a saw, a kitchen knife, or an oddly-sized pair of small swords, no longer had any place.
However…
“…”
What had happened earlier was nothing more than a trivial occurrence.
You couldn’t really even call it a “battle.”
The encounter with the Feyra in the mountains— he and the wizard he had met in a chance encounter and had killed it. That was all. It probably wasn’t going to happen again. And even if it did, he couldn’t guarantee that he’d have the same feelings.
And yet—
“I—”
It wasn’t just using the “Iron-Blood Transformation”.
Having come that close to falling into the ravine of death, throwing away all unnecessary thoughts, and pushing himself to the limits of what he was able to do, a feeling had been created inside him.
It was—
“Well, it’s fine.”
What exactly was fine?
Tohru wasn’t sure himself, but nonetheless he began his repair work on the small swords.
“Nii-sama.”
When he opened his eyes the next morning, his sister’s face was so close to him that their breath touched—the same situation as the previous one.
And it should also be said that the iron hammer was again eating into his pillow in the same fashion.
“Good morning.”
“…You,” Tohru mumbled. “What the hell are you playing at?”
“You say ‘what am I playing at’, but…”
Akari tilted her head.
The hammer remained sunk into Tohru’s pillow.
“It’s the same as yesterday. I’m here to wake you up.”
“That’s why I’d like to hear why you’re using the same method as yesterday.”
“Because this is the same situation as yesterday.”
“…”
Tohru was at a loss for words.
Sure, thanks to Chaika they had obtained breakfast for yesterday—well, it was basically lunch. But when you thought about it that was only for one day, and since he wasn’t working they were still penniless. Or rather, what little day-to-day income Akari did earn from working at various stores in the neighborhood had all gone to last night’s dinner.
For you see, they had both used “Iron-Blood Transformation.” So for not only lunch but also dinner, they ate many times more than a normal human would.
As a result, the money that had originally been intended to last them for three more days was spent on a single dinner.
So basically, the situation was indeed the same as yesterday morning’s.
“…I haven’t even recovered from my wound yet.”
“But you can still do simple jobs, can you not?”
“I thought I told you, I’m not planning to make this “working” thing a habit,” Tohru said with something like a groan. “Besides, you’re not doing all you can do either. Find some suitable guy and marry him already. If you learn how to fake a smile it’ll probably be all right. And even if you still haven’t had sex, you’ve learned a few techniques—”
“But if the man I married didn’t do any work either, wouldn’t it eventually end up the same way?”
“Well, sure, I guess.”
Tohru didn’t like to brag, but there weren’t many men like him. The postwar period was a “period of chaos”, so to speak, and though everyone was still getting by it was an era of desperation. People like Tohru who said things like “If I work, I lose” in this era would have to be either very eccentric or very stupid.
Basically, it would be like saying “Well, it’s okay if I die.”
“In any case…”
Akari began.
“I’m almost at my limit.”
“Limit?”
“The limit of my patience.”
She said.
In the next instant—
Tohru leapt from the bed.
Akari had thrust her hand forward with vicious speed.
She wasn’t playing around this time. If Tohru hadn’t seriously tried to avoid it, her right hand would most certainly have pierced right through his stomach and out his back.
“—Akari!?”
When he had jumped, Tohru had kicked off of the wall with an unnecessary amount of force, then kicked off the ceiling and landed on the floor. It was a pretty run-down house, so that caused a chorus of creaking and groaning, as if it protesting being treated so cruelly.
“I think I said it already.”
As she said it, Akari raised up.
“If Nii-sama refuses to work, then I’d rather he be stuffed.”
“…Seriously?”
Tohru groaned.
Akari took out her hammer, but instead of swinging it around like yesterday, she pointed it straight at him. There wasn’t any hint of it being just a meaningless bluff. She was intending to kill.
Well, I guess she has a point, Tohru thought despairingly.
As she had said, she had reached the point where her patience had run out. Naturally—after enduring day after day of him lying around the house doing nothing with no future prospects to speak of–rather than having to call that kind of existence “family”, it wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility for her to think that erasing it once and for all and starting afresh would be a better option.
The war had ended, and not much time had elapsed since then.
A human’s life was a trivial thing. The registers for the residents of the town were not kept up, much less those of the refugees. They had no clue who was where. It was for this reason that Tohru and Akari were able to blend in with the commoners so innocently.
At any rate—
“!”
Without warning, Akari’s hammer went flying towards him.
Tohru avoided it—just barely. The attack grazed his head as it passed him, and it went right through a wall that had already looked like it was on its last legs.
Rolling to the floor, he grabbed the belt with his swords that was lying on the bed and jumped, evading a second attack. When their eyes met each other once more, Akari had already returned to her original position.
There existed a sword-drawing technique called iai where one sheathed their sword after cutting down their opponent, and this was much the same thing.
If its user was tired, a hammer would have no strength. A hammer was different from an edged weapon in that a when a hammer wasn’t moving, it had no destructive force. So in order to use consecutive attacks, either centrifugal force from swinging it around or something like iai, which allowed for the constant acceleration of a single strike, was necessary.
I’m not good against these hammer techniques…
While thinking that, Tohru slowly stepped back, and, checking if there was some sort of blind spot, equipped the two swords to his waist.
Then, leaping through a hole in the destroyed wall, he made it outside.
Akari followed him.
Perhaps it was due to the noise from the wall being destroyed or something else, but he could see heads poking out of their houses. However, there wasn’t anyone capricious enough to want to intervene. Faced with Akari’s serious killing intent, no commoner would entertain the notion of jumping into the fight.
“…If you’re joking, it’s time to knock it off,” Tohru said as if delivering an ultimatum. “It isn’t funny anymore.”
“Nii-sama.”
Akari said.
“I have never joked even once in my entire life.”
“Wait, is that really true?”
“Of course.”
“…”
There were all sorts of things he could have said about that, but he decided to leave it be for now.
“…No choice, then.”
Tohru prepared himself, gripping the hilts of his swords. As he squeezed them, the etchings on his palm and the etchings on the swords’ hilts became linked. At the same time, he flicked back the snap fastener on their guards and drew them out.
“…Heh.”
The feeling in his hands…no, his legs, had changed in an instant.
Tohru’s favored double blades might not have had a name, but they weren’t just any old blades. They were comblades, which were often used by soldiers on the battlefield. Its hilt and blade were set up so that its user could activate it by using the “key” of the seal on his hand.
In that moment…the comblades literally became a part of Tohru.
When used, they felt completely natural. Even though he was gripping swords to kill the enemy, it was as if they were merely an extension of his hands. As he was now, Tohru could get a read on the feeling of the wind and temperature of the swords like his own skin. He even felt that his arms had extended to resemble swords; there was no longer any sensation of “holding” them.
Then—
“—I am steel.”
Tohru and Akari both muttered it simultaneously.
“Steel knows no fear. Steel knows no doubt. When faced with my enemy, I hesitate not. I am a weapon to destroy them.”
The hidden technique, “Iron-Blood Transformation.”
With the chanting of the keywords, both saboteurs’ bodies underwent the optimum changes for them to become weapons.
Tohru became one with the comblades, meaning in that moment he existed only for the purpose of wielding them. He was a part of them. His body had become the comblades.
A blade didn’t feel.
A blade wasn’t frightened.
With those keywords, his only purpose now was to destroy any and every enemy without hesitation.
In the next moment, Tohru and Akari both simultaneously kicked off of the ground.
However, they didn’t leap at each other; they were merely gauging each other’s agility. A careless leap into the air could lead to being scooped up by an attack from the ground. It didn’t matter how much “Iron-Blood Transformation” they used—there would be no way of avoiding an attack like that while in midair. At the very most, one could change their stance by using their limbs, but they wouldn’t be able to avoid an attack aimed at their center of gravity.
Tapping noises hit the ground.
Metal screeched on metal, again and again.
The two saboteurs dropped their upper bodies and ran, almost crawling along the ground. When they met each other, they kicked off the ground mightily, putting all their power into their stretched muscles before releasing.
“Ugh…!”
Tohru groaned.
He was just barely able to avoid her attack.
The hammer had flown towards him from the left, and by crossing his swords he was able to block it. Of course, if he had tried to block the pointed part of the hammer, his blades would have been done for, so Tohru had aimed for the grip of the hammer. When there was centripetal acceleration the hammer’s destructive force was at its strongest using its pointed end, so basically, the closer the part was to the user, the weaker it was.
But, that also meant that a rather dangerous opening could be created. A normal human would use the opportunity to pull back and gain some distance, but then they would fall prey to the hammer. Furthermore, the hammer would just continue to attack by accelerating in a circle. Deliberately entering her space was the only correct option.
Tohru showed no sign of fear or hesitation in his transformed state.
The optimal retooling of his body for battle had even killed his instinct for fear.
However, Akari was the same way.
At once, she drew her hammer back.
Due to that movement, the swords that had been grinding against the hammer’s grip were pulled away, and he lost his balance. At the same time, using the recoil from pulling the hammer back, she rotated her body instead of her hammer and gracefully outstretched her legs, sending them, like another hammer, towards Tohru’s undefended right and forehead.
“—!”
There was iron in various places in both Tohru and Akari’s boots. Fundamentally it was for self-defense, but when that much force was added they could be used as a weapon. Of course, that kick had the weight of her entire body put into it, so if it had been a direct hit Tohru’s skull would have caved in—after all, the forehead was the thinnest layer between the cranium.
But, with no regard to his own balance, he invaded Akari’s space once more, barreling into her.
He was able to avoid the toe of her boot colliding with his forehead, but her knee smashed into his cheek, and both of them rolled onto the floor, becoming entangled.
“Uuu…”
He immediately pushed Akari aside, rolled away, and sprang up using the force of the roll.
He glanced at her, and saw that she was also getting up.
She’s strong, Tohru thought unconcernedly.
They had had plenty of skirmishes back in the village of Acura, but up until now they had never fought seriously.
Her ability is on par with mine. So muscle and endurance alone won’t cut it…
He had shirked his training for a whole year, so his abilities had diminished somewhat. Akari, however, seemed to be even better than before. Not to mention…
Did my wound open up again? he thought, as if it was somebody else’s problem.
Akari had done a more proper job of sewing up the wound on Tohru’s back, but it hadn’t had the time to heal completely yet. In everyday life there was usually no danger of straining spinal muscles, but all the leaping and bounding he was doing now was taking its toll.
Even in stamina, Tohru had no chance of victory against Akari.
So—
It’ll be a sudden death match then.
Preparing his swords, Tohru came to a decision.
If there was one advantage to be had, it was the difference in their weapons. Akari’s weapon excelled in destructive power, but its attack patterns were limited. For its rotation to be effective, all of its movements had to be large and pronounced.
Tohru’s weapons, on the other hand, could thrust as well as slash, but far and away their most important advantage over the hammer was that they were light, making them easily maneuverable. Also, since he had two of them, the number of skills he had at his disposal doubled.
If he could make use of that difference, he might be able to turn the tables.
“—!”
Tohru exhaled, then entered the fray.
Kicking off the ground, he glided toward Akari. He put up his left sword like a shield and tightened the right sword under his arm.
Akari’s hammer flew towards him.
A sweeping diagonal strike from the ground, meant to scoop up its opponent.
His reach with his left arm was too short,so it was hard to judge an attack that had come from the right. If he used his right sword to defend, Akari would only have to bend her body backwards, fine-tuned her trajectory, and execute a horizontal strike. He wouldn’t be able to handle it. Therefore…
“…!”
He immediately crossed his swords, and used them to block as he had before. But this time, he was late in crossing the left sword with the right one. There was no way a half-assed method of guarding like that was going to stop the force of the hammer, so with a shrill sound, the two swords were knocked high into the air.
“…”
Akari’s gaze went straight to the swords in an instant.
But the hammer kept on its path, undisturbed, straight towards Tohru’s side. If it turned out to be a direct hit here, a vital organ like his kidneys or something could be destroyed. It probably wouldn’t be instant death, but a few days later it would definitely prove fatal.
But—
“Heh.”
Tohru reached out.
For the hammer itself.
Akari opened her eyes wide in surprise.
Tohru and Akari had both been taught how to catch a blade between their hands. However, that was a technique meant for a sword, not a hammer. A hammer’s centrifugal force was much too great, so Tohru catching a hammer between his bare hands was completely out of the question. If he did a poor job of it, the hammer would slip right through his hands and score a direct hit. And even if he did manage to stop the attack, his arm joints would be damaged and he wouldn’t be able to deal with the next attack at all.
But—
“…”
Tohru just caught the hammer. Well, just for clarity’s sake, when he grabbed hold of it he had jumped backwards in the same direction the hammer was traveling. After the hammer had already bounced off the swords and had its momentum reduced somewhat, the pointed end of the hammer was much easier to take hold of.
So Tohru didn’t end up stopping the attack, but since he had jumped to match it, the force the hammer had was close to zero, relatively speaking. In fact, because he had done so, Tohru’s own body weight was acting as a momentum killer.
And so—
“…Ku!”
Letting out a short breath, Akari let go of the hammer.
In this situation, continuing to hold it would be more disadvantageous.
But—it was already too late.
She and the hammer thrust forward into the air, but Tohru twisted his body and hooked his leg into Akari’s long hair.
“Ah!”
He pulled his leg downward and dragged Akari down to the floor.
With the hammer now in his possession, Tohru switched the hand holding it and thrust it forward at Akari’s temporal lobe.
“Had enough?”
Tohru glared at his sister, who was crawling around on the ground as if entangled.
The hammer was Akari’s favored weapon, just as small swords were Tohru’s. Akari was the only one that could wield it with maximum efficiency, but no matter who wielded it, its weight and the sharpness of its pointed end remained unchanged. If Tohru felt like doing so, a blow to Akari’s temple would definitely kill her.
However…
“I’ll ask you again. Are you serious about fighting like this?”
“…Of course I’m serious.”
Akari said without any trace of timidity.
Then—
“OK, that’ll be enough!”
A sound like someone clapping their hands together reached Tohru’s ears.
Tohru stepped away from Akari and threw the hammer to the ground. He turned to face where the sound was coming from.
It was—
“…!?”
Two people he recognized stood next to each other.
One of them was—
“You…”
After muttering that, Tohru briefly chanted the keywords that released him from his “Iron-Blood Transformation” state, and ended his battle.
There, standing in front of him, was an elderly man.
Small and thin, the man looked neurotic. He belonged to the guild. Tohru had seen him before when he had been dragged by Akari to join, so he recognized him. He was pretty sure his surname was Barton. His first name, he didn’t remember.
“Enough, enough. Well, I was surprised. I didn’t think you’d be able to stop yourself after going that fast—”
“What’s going on?” Tohru asked as he furrowed his brows.
“Never mind. Tohru-kun, as a representative of the guild, I must say we are considering your expulsion,” Barton said. “You see, people who are only a name on a list lose credence within the guild.”
He was basically saying that people like Tohru who registered for the guild but didn’t show any sign of receiving jobs and refused the ones that did come to them were like dead weight.
Well, it was a completely respectable idea.
Even Tohru had no reason to raise any objections.
But—
“So, if you try to turn down this last mission and choose not to accept it, your expulsion will be imminent. However, this mission might make it difficult for the guild to kick you out.”
“…?”
“Ah, well, all I heard from the client was that it’s a difficult job, or rather I should say its terms are strict. So we thought it’d be best to check to see if you had the ability to do it.”
“…Wait, for starters, there should be all kinds of registered people in the guild,” Tohru said, frowning. “Putting aside my talents, there should be plenty of others who—”
“No. The truth is, the client specified you as the first candidate of choice.”
Barton indicated the figure beside him.
It was a petite girl with silver hair.
It was Chaika.
“And so—well, actually, we wanted to ascertain what sort of abilities you had. So we asked your sister here for some help.”
“…”
Tohru got up, turned around, and glared at his sister.
But of course she was not in the least bit intimidated, and returned his gaze coolly.
“Were you not serious?”
“Of course I was. I am always serious.”
Akari clenched her fist tightly and nodded.
“This may have been a farce, but me wanting to stuff you is no falsehood!”
“Don’t say that so matter-of-factly!”Tohru shouted, and then let out a long sigh.
“Ah, shit. Guess I gotta work, then.”
He had never thought about taking any path other than a saboteur’s.
And actually, he thought the same way even now.
He just wouldn’t be good with anything else.
But…
Is she offering me work?
Tohru turned to look at Chaika.
With a big nod, Chaika said—
“Employment. Employment. You both, capable.”
Looking triumphant for some reason, Chaika pointed at both Tohru and Akari.
“Akari too? Wait, what in the world kind of job is it?”
Barton and the others in the guild probably didn’t know from the powers they displayed that Tohru and Akari were saboteurs.
But Chaika knew Tohru was one.
And people like saboteurs were children sent from the heavens for war that were useless in this era of peace. Their skill in battle was high, but there were many kinds of battle abilities. The deception natural for saboteurs was limited in where it could be used. For instance, in the case of a guard at a shop or the guards to the city, strength would be more desirable. Guarding a rich person was the same—they would prefer a group of people that were trained in proper, refined martial arts.
To be blunt, saboteurs were the handymen of the battlefield, specializing in winning battles by using anything and everything that was at their disposal. They weren’t known for wiping large swaths of people out, but they were known for using less-than-savory ways to get their jobs done, which often made them hated.
“Discussion,” Chaika said with another large nod.
“Well then, it looks like you have a lot to talk about. I’ll be off, then,” Barton said, looking satisfied. He walked out, leaving Tohru and the others behind. It didn’t seem to matter to him exactly where they were going; for better or worse, this man’s work was simply finding the right people and dispatching them.Most likely he had already received his monetary compensation from Chaika.
“…Why me?”
“Mm…”
Chaika tilted her head slightly, and then spoke.
“Fate?”
“Fate, huh…”
That was a rather vague thing.
But—
Perhaps she also felt something from yesterday’s events.
Walking a tightrope between life and death.
In that moment, he had felt a since of fulfillment—and also…
“Nii-sama.”
Akari’s urging voice came back to him.
Tohru made a sour face and—
“Okay, okay, I get it. By naming me and Akari, that means you don’t want someone like a cleaning lady or a farmer, right?”
“Of course.”
Chaika nodded.
“Want, saboteurs,” she said, clearly.
Chapter 2, Part 4
The residence of Count Abarth was a lord’s mansion located in the center of the fort town of Del Solant.
The Abarths had a military background, and as a result he had many subordinates and all sorts of knights at his disposal. The end of the long campaign of the warring era—in other words, when the Gaz Empire of the north was obliterated—owed a lot to the present head of the family, Roberto Abarth, who had played a large role in the Gaz Empire’s demise and was often called a hero as a result.
It was said that nowadays he devoted himself solely to calling over engineers specializing in magic for the restoration of Del Solant and expanding the influence of the Abarths. Originally the they should have been nothing more than a group of rural nobles, but their pedigree was such that they were a hot topic even within the Couvre Empire.
“Dearest guests, welcome to my humble abode.”
Inside a vehicle named “April”, there were several people. They had traveled to Del Solant to visit his estate, so Roberto Abarth himself came out to greet them at his doorstep with an amicable, charming smile.
The April belonged to Alberic Gillette, a knight who represented his home of the kingdom of Vemac while traveling incognito to Del Solant under the pretext of “martial arts training”—at least, that was the story the Abarths came up with.
In other words, the Abarths believed that this could turn into an opportunity to form a secret alliance with neighboring nobles, useful for expanding their influence within the kingdom.
“I am Roberto Abarth.”
Said the blond-haired man with all the makings of a hero as he bowed.
He definitely looked like a noble—his sophisticated and well-groomed face sat atop a lean, well-toned body with broad shoulders. Though physically both Roberto and Alberic had the appearance of nobility, Alberic gave off the sense of being somewhat plain when compared to Roberto—Alberic’s unrefined nature made it seem like he was from a military family.
On the other hand, Roberto, the one lauded with the title of “hero”, looked flashy, almost to the point of discomfort. His garments were laced with plenty of gold and silver thread, and incorporated the Abarth family crest as a design—from head to toe he looked extravagant; much closer to royalty than nobility.
“I am Alberic Gillette,” Alberic said, returning the bow.
Accompanying him from the rear were two people that seemed to act as his attendants, named Zita and Vivi, two unintimidating teenage girls. Among the personnel inside the April, this pair looked the most harmless, but Alberic chose them precisely because they wouldn’t seem threatening to any important people he met with. Of course, when Alberic made his visits he often ended up giving others the impression that the girls were his “special servants”, but there was no helping that.
Both Alberic and his two female attendants followed Roberto towards the parlor.
Passing by a seemingly endless number of works of art lined up in the corridor on the way, Alberic began to study the current head of the Abarth family’s nature.
It’s pretty clear that this guy craves the limelight.
The works of art were things like paintings depicting Roberto himself smiling and many sculptures based on his image. Sculptures of historic heroes and famous paintings also lined the corridor, which gave the impression that the value Roberto put on himself was equal to that of the heroes and paintings.
But…did he really come from a military family? Is he really a hero?
Alberic was also a knight. By observing the way Roberto walked—not to mention his appearance from behind—Alberic was able to grasp a sense of his true ability. His movements were…well, he didn’t get the feeling he was well-versed in martial arts. Actually, they were closer to that of a complete amateur.
However, there was no doubt that in the last war Roberto had been named a “hero”.
If that wasn’t the case, Alberic and company wouldn’t have visited his estate to begin with.
Perhaps it’s just that his ability dulled over the five years…?
He was the region’s feudal lord, and he had been crowned with the title of “hero”. Now, he seemed fine with the idea of not forging his body further or accumulating any more deeds of arms.
“Please, come in.”
Roberto invited the three of them into the lavishly-decorated parlor and sat down on the cushy-looking sofa.
They dispensed with the standard few obligatory pleasantries that were exchanged when nobles talked with other nobles.
But then—
“Now then. What’s your objective behind visiting the estate of the great Count Abarth?”
“…”
In that instant, Alberic hesitated over how exactly to begin.
Normally, nobility and royalty inviting Alberic’s group in were amicable up to this point.
But even so, he spoke—
“Count Abarth. While I am aware that such an impromptu visit exceeds the limits of propriety…I have something to ask of you.”
“Oh?”
Roberto blinked.
“I would like to borrow something from you may have unofficially obtained from the imperial capital of the Gaz Empire.”
“…What?”
Roberto’s eyebrows went up.
It was a natural reaction. In an instant his demeanor changed from that of welcoming a guest to being cautious of an opponent.
“You want to borrow that?”
Roberto didn’t even ask what it was he wanted to borrow.
Truthfully, Alberic and the others originally had no idea whether or not Roberto actually had what they were looking for, but now there was no doubt.
“It is as you say. I can’t divulge the details, but we of the kingdom of Vemac are currently in the process of accomplishing something rather special, thanks to the efforts of the post-war reconstruction agency Kleeman, which cooperates with and builds up various regions.”
“…”
Roberto’s eyes narrowed, looking at Alberic, and then behind him to the two girls, Zita and Vivi, who were standing in the back, partially obscured by the sofa.
“The Couvre Empire is also affiliated with the Kleeman organization. Therefore, if you’d rather think of this as a request not from us but the emperor of Couvre, that would be fine.”
“If you’re telling the whole truth,” said Roberto. “Why do you all want it?”
“That I cannot disclose,” replied Alberic. “The conditions of our special goal deem it necessary that I not answer.”
Roberto screwed up his face, glaring hard at Alberic and the girls.
Then—
“You.”
He rose from the sofa and issued a command to his one of his maids, who were stationed around the edge of the room.
“Our guests will now be leaving. Please show them to the front door with the utmost courtesy.”
“…”
Alberic gave a deep sigh, and stood up.
This was pretty much what he had expected. If you thought about it normally, what Alberic was asking for was very strange. He might as well have been asking someone he had never met before to hand over a family heirloom.
“Count Abarth.”
As he was being shown to the parlor entrance, Alberic turned back and spoke.
“Naturally, I understand why you would not want to hand it over. But this is a matter that threatens the peace of the entire continent of Verbist.”
“…”
Roberto didn’t reply.
He merely fixed his blue eyes on Alberic and the others silently.
Alberic sighed, and left the parlor behind.
* * *
It was roughly half an hour after Tohru and Akari’s “fight”—the examination to determine Tohru’s true strength.
Inside their ruined house, Chaika had explained the mission they were being hired to take on.
Which was—
“True heart?”
“True heart.” (1)
Chaika affirmed and nodded, like it was completely obvious.
She seemed to have an unexplainable amount of self-confidence, but—
“No matter how you put it, that’s impossible.”
“Not impossible.”
Chaika shook her head, her long, silver hair fluttering about.
“Necessary. At any cost. If so, is possible.”
Tohru and Akari looked at each other.
Naturally, even Akari seemed to be surprised at what this request turned out to be. Perhaps Barton had already known the gist of it, and that was why he had been so quick to dismiss it with only “this matter is unrelated to the guild,” and left without even hearing a little bit of the details.
However—
“Feudal lord’s house, will attack.”
Chaika said decisively.
“Then, take it back.”
“Take what back?”
“Very important, thing,” said Chaika after a moment of hesitation.
