— Let us speak of the man known as Wilhelm Trias.
Wilhelm was born the third son of House Trias, a minor noble family in the Kingdom of Lugnica.
The Trias household was an old, distinguished line that had long held fiefdom in
His eldest and second brothers, while unremarkable, possessed the temperament and capacity suited to ruling their domain. For Wilhelm, the third-born, House Trias offered little more than enough sustenance to keep the wolf from the door — and the welcome freedom to choose his own path.
Growing up far removed in age from his brothers, Wilhelm was spared the obligations of inheriting the family seat. And unlike them, he lacked any talent for civil administration. The one thing that pointed him toward a future worth calling his own was a chance encounter with a sword.
Hanging in the great hall of the manor was a blade engraved with heavy, ancient crests — a relic from the days when House Trias had earned renown on the battlefield. It was all that remained of that former glory, a ceremonial treasure left to gather dust in the hands of a family that could do little more than look at it.
The moment young Wilhelm drew the old sword from its scabbard, he was utterly captivated by its allure.
Before he knew it, he had taken the blade out on his own and was spending every waking hour swinging it from dawn to dusk on the hill behind the manor. It became his daily ritual.
He first touched the sword at the age of eight. By fourteen, having grown into his limbs and shed his earlier clumsiness, he had long since mastered the blade's weight and length — and there was no one left in the territory who could match him.
"I'm going to the capital and joining the royal army. I'll become a knight."
With those naively ambitious words — the sort of foolish dream any boy might entertain at least once — he stormed out of the house at the age of fourteen.
The catalyst had been a lecture from his eldest brother about "what you plan to do with your life." Wilhelm had never cared about the future. As long as the present was enjoyable, that was enough. When he swung his sword, he could feel himself growing stronger — that alone was his supreme happiness.
His brother's words were harsh, aimed at a young man who had no vision of the future whatsoever. Cornered by irrefutable logic he couldn't answer, Wilhelm spat out the aforementioned fantastical declaration. What followed was the usual exchange of angry words, the stock "What would you know about how I feel?!" — and then Wilhelm grabbed what little money he could find, took his sword, and left.
It was an unplanned departure, but Wilhelm's first journey to the royal capital was accomplished before his money ran dry. Truth be told, he had always intended to make his way to the capital eventually to test his skills. The plan had simply been accelerated, and he had set off without the blessing of his family.
Arriving in the capital in high spirits, Wilhelm marched straight to the castle gates and knocked, seeking entry as a common soldier in the royal army.
In the present era, anyone who tried to pass through the gates under such circumstances would be deemed suspicious and turned away without a second thought.
But at that time, the kingdom was mired in a civil war along its eastern border against a coalition of demi-humans, and the army was desperate for every volunteer it could get. When a young boy arrived bearing a sword and boasting even a modicum of skill, he was welcomed with open arms. Wilhelm enlisted in the royal army without a hitch.
And so Wilhelm entered the battlefield with none of the hardship or setbacks that might have tempered him. His swordsmanship, too, was brutally rebuffed by the wall called reality, and the arrogance he had carried so high was snapped in two — a bitter, unforgettable lesson that would serve as every soldier's baptism of fire.
But even then, Wilhelm's bladework far surpassed that of most veterans who had seen real combat.
"Huh. Turns out life's easier than I thought."
Piling the corpses of demi-humans into mountains on his first battlefield and driving his sword into the summit, the young soldier painted a picture that left no one in doubt about what kind of future awaited him.
From dawn to dusk, with every fiber of his being exhausted, Wilhelm continued his life of ceaseless sword practice. That went on for six years, from the age of eight until fourteen.
After joining the royal army in the capital, every spare moment he was given went to the sword. His bladework already stood among the finest even among knights who had seen real battle. A country-bred swordsman who hadn't even received a knight's commission — his name spread through the royal army as a figure of promise, and among the demi-human coalition, as an object of dread.
Unbroken by reality, yet never satisfied with himself, Wilhelm continued to挥 his sword on the battlefield, brooding with pent-up frustration.
Only in the instant of cleaving another's flesh, bathing in blood, and proving himself stronger than the life he had taken — only then did he feel a dark joy bloom in his heart.
Before long, Wilhelm had become someone who laughed while cutting people down. The name "Sword Demon" began to echo across the battlefields, spoken with a mixture of fear and hatred.
The number of military exploits he amassed far exceeded what two hands could count, yet Wilhelm was never granted a knight's commission. He refused to socialize with others, devoted himself to the sword with monastic discipline, fought on the battlefield as though completely oblivious to his allies' positions, and charged into enemy lines to paint flowers of blood before returning. Such a figure was hardly suited to bearing the noble title of knight. In this kingdom, where the old chivalric spirit still held sway, Wilhelm was treated as an aberration — useful to the kingdom, perhaps, but fundamentally alien.
And Wilhelm had no desire to change that.
He could never be a knight — one who carried honor, who brought the sanctity of life and the nobility of the soul into battle as points of pride. When people fought, people died. Blood flowed. Lives were ground to dust.
He who found the greatest pleasure in that sensation was not fit to be a knight, and if he could no longer enjoy it, he had no wish to become one.
That twisted thirst for battle gnawed at the young man's heart for a long, long time.
The first crack appeared when he was eighteen — four years of military service, by which point not a soul in the army had failed to hear the name "Sword Demon."
—She was a beautiful girl with long, crimson hair, a profile so exquisite it made one tremble to look upon.
It happened on the single day of forced leave he had been given when the expanding war front required him to return to the capital from the front lines — against his own protests that he was no longer needed.
Suddenly liberated from the world of blood and death he had been savoring, Wilhelm found himself at loose ends. With his beloved sword in hand, he slipped through the city gates.
The Trias blade he had snatched as a keepsake when he fled home had grown quite worn after a decade of use, but of all the swords he had ever held, none fit his hand better. He could use other blades, of course, but for plunging into the crucible of life-taking combat, this one was still the best.
With sword in hand, Wilhelm made his way to the abandoned development district on the outskirts of the capital. It had been in the middle of construction — though calling it that made it sound grander than it was — and he had heard the work had been halted for some considerable time. At the very least, it had already been suspended when Wilhelm first came to the capital, and there was still no prospect of resumption. The word was it would remain that way until the civil war with the demi-humans was settled.
"......"
The development district was deserted in the early morning. The few who did linger were the sort who used the place as a meeting spot for unsavory purposes. A show of intimidation was enough to send such petty crooks scurrying away without a trace.
Clearing his mind, Wilhelm stilled his qi and drew his sword — one stroke.
In his mind arose the countless wooden dummies he had slashed through across tens of thousands of practice bouts. Dodging blades, landing cuts, redirecting force, severing heads.
Years upon years of repeated sparring, carried on since childhood. His opponents grew faster and stronger with every passing year, and before long, the only person he could match blow for blow was — "Your eyes look terrible."
A dull, hollow gaze. A mouth slack with madness. An empty swordsman who seemed to have vacated every last shred of sanity — the face he saw in the mirror each morning, and nothing else.
In the shadow that dwelled deep within him, his only sparring partner was his own reflection. Rumor had it that among the elite of the royal army — the Royal Knights — there were plenty of skilled fighters, but Wilhelm never shared a battlefield with any of them. Naturally, his only opponent was himself.
Each holiday he was given, Wilhelm spent his days sparring with the version of himself he could never bring himself to kill. Before long, this corner of the development district had been labeled the "Sword Demon's territory," and eventually no one even dared approach.
"Fine by me," Wilhelm decided, and threw himself into what could only be called a world of darkness. It was there — and only there — that he could enact the kind of swordplay reality would never allow, and feel that his existence had meaning.
"Oh — pardon me."
The foreign body that suddenly intruded upon Wilhelm's private world appeared in the form of a beautiful girl.
He had come to the development district as always, ready to swing his sword, to fight to the death — but the presence of an unexpected visitor made him halt in his tracks.
The section Wilhelm used had relatively level ground and, among the abandoned plots, was an ideal space in terms of width. This intruder had, of all things, planted herself right in his sanctuary, and was tilting her head in his direction.
"I didn't think anyone would come here this early in the morning. In a place like this —"
"......"
The girl offered Wilhelm a faint smile and tossed some words his way — but Wilhelm's response was simple. He unleashed his killing intent.
To an amateur, that alone would have been enough to send them fleeing posthaste. Even a seasoned fighter would have sensed his skill and wisely taken their leave.
But this girl, incredibly — "...Is something wrong? You look so frightening."
She deflected his killing intent with nonchalant ease and continued without missing a beat.
Irritation flickered through him, and Wilhelm clicked his tongue.
An opponent unmoved by killing intent — that meant she was entirely removed from the world of martial combat. Anyone with even a passing awareness of violence would react to Wilhelm's aura in some way. But for someone cut off from that world entirely, it was no more than empty intimidation. Depending on the person, they might not even register it beyond a slight narrowing of the eyes.
The woman before him was, without question, the very embodiment of the latter.
"What the hell is a woman doing here at the crack of dawn?"
The girl's gaze still hadn't left his face. With a sigh, Wilhelm shot back his retort. The girl hummed thoughtfully and replied, "I'd love to throw that exact question right back at you, but that would be a little too mean, wouldn't it? You don't exactly look like someone who takes a joke well."
"This area is crawling with dangerous sorts. A woman wandering alone isn't exactly prudent."
"Oh my, are you worried about me?"
"For all you know, I could be one of those dangerous sorts myself."
Wilhelm responded with sarcasm to the girl's lighthearted quip, rattling his sword's hilt to assert the presence of his quarry. But the girl didn't even glance at his display. Instead, she pointed to something beside her, saying "Look."
The girl was sitting on a raised ledge, and she pointed toward the other side of the embankment — a spot invisible from Wilhelm's position. When he furrowed his brow, she beckoned him over.
"I don't really care enough to go look —"
"Oh, come on, come on. Just look."
Feeling the corners of his mouth twitch at her coaxing tone, Wilhelm closed his eyes, steadied himself, and walked over to her side. He stepped up onto the ledge, leaned over to peer beyond — "......"
Before him stretched an entire field of yellow flowers, bathed in the glow of the morning sun.
"When the development was halted, I figured no one would come here anymore, so I scattered some seeds. I came today to see how they had turned out."
The girl lowered her voice as though confessing a secret to the speechless Wilhelm.
He must have been coming to this spot for quite some time, and yet he had never noticed the existence of this flower field. All it would have taken was leaning in slightly, expanding his field of view by just a little.
"Do you like flowers?"
The girl posed the question to Wilhelm's profile, which still had not opened its mouth.
He turned to face her, studying the girl's face — where a faint, bashful smile had appeared. And then — "No. I hate them."
He twisted his mouth into a grimace and answered in a low voice.
—From that day on, Wilhelm and the girl's encounters became a regular occurrence.
On mornings when he had leave and made his way to the development district, she would arrive before him and sit alone in quiet contemplation, gazing at the flower field while bathing in the wind.
And when she noticed Wilhelm's arrival, she would ask: "Have you started to like flowers?"
He would shake his head, then lose himself in his sword practice as though her very existence had been forgotten.
He would pour out his sweat, sink into the imaginary fights within his mind, and when he finally looked up, she would still be there, lingering in that same spot.
"You sure have a lot of free time on your hands," he would quip with practiced sarcasm.
It was a ritual that became habitual.
In small increments, the time they spent talking seemed to grow. Conversations that had only taken place after his sword practice began to occur before it as well, and the post-practice talks gradually grew a little longer.
Before long, he began arriving earlier, and there were days when he set foot on the leveled ground before the girl did. When she pouted and said, "Oh — you're early today," he found himself smiling.
It took about three months from their first meeting before they exchanged names.
The girl called herself Theresia, and stuck her tongue out shyly, saying, "It feels silly introducing myself now." In return, Wilhelm told her, "Until now, I just called you 'flower girl' in my head," which earned him an offended pout.
Once they learned each other's names, they began to tentatively venture into deeper territory. What had been idle, inconsequential exchanges gradually shifted in quality.
One day, Theresia asked Wilhelm why he swung his sword.
Without a moment's hesitation, he answered: because it was all he had.
As always, his days in the army were steeped in bloodshed.
The war with the demi-humans intensified with each passing day. The same grim routine played out over and over — slipping past magic barriers, closing in on the enemy, and cleaving them from groin to jaw.
He would charge across the earth, tear through the wind, plunge into the enemy formation, and send the commander's head flying. With the sword still dripping from its insertion, he would return to his own lines, receive accolades laced with fear and awe, and finally exhale.
One day, he noticed a flower at his feet on the battlefield — battered and soaked in blood, yet still swaying in the wind.
And he realized, with some surprise, that he had been unconsciously making sure not to step on it.
"Have you started to like flowers?"
"No. I hate them."
"Why do you swing your sword?"
"Because it's all I have."
Their familiar exchange — when Theresia spoke of flowers, Wilhelm could even manage a smile. But when the topic turned to the sword, he found, without quite knowing when it had started, that reciting his rehearsed answer caused him pain.
Why did he swing the sword?
He had been running on autopilot, answering "because it was all he had." Now, for the first time, he began to seriously search for an answer to that question. And in doing so, he traced his thoughts all the way back to the very first day he had held a sword.
Back then, looking up at a blade that had never known blood, whose surface gleamed without a single blemish, and seeing its light reflected in a palm too small to hold it properly — what had he been thinking?
One day, still wandering through the spiral of a question he couldn't answer, he made his way to the usual spot. His steps were heavy, and the prospect of confronting what awaited him there filled him with dread.
This was perhaps the first time in his life his head had ached this much. Hadn't he kept swinging the sword precisely because it freed him from having to think? He was on the verge of settling for that shallow answer when — "Wilhelm."
The girl, who had arrived before him, turned and called his name with a gentle smile.
—Suddenly, his soul was shaken to its core.
His feet stopped. The dam inside him burst.
A rush of self-awareness crashed over his entire body, threatening to crush him. Everything he had abandoned — everything he had shut away by throwing himself into thoughtless sword practice — came surging to the surface.
He didn't understand the reason. He couldn't identify the trigger. But it was as though a pressure that had been building for an entire lifetime had been on the verge of breaking, and it chose this exact moment to reach its limit.
Why did he swing his sword?
Why had he started swinging it in the first place?
He had been captivated by the brilliance of the blade, its strength, the purity of living as an edge.
That was part of it. That was part of it, but the beginning must have been something else entirely.
"There was something my brothers couldn't do — and I had to be able to do it."
His brothers had been utterly impractical when it came to swordsmanship and matters of that sort.
But even so, they had tried in their own way to protect the family. And he had wanted to be of use to them, to find a different way to protect them. And perhaps that was how he had become entranced by the brilliance and strength of the sword.
"Have you started to like flowers?"
"...I don't hate them."
"Why do you swing your sword?"
"Because I couldn't think of any other way to protect anyone."
From that day on, their familiar exchange was never repeated.
In its place, Wilhelm found himself initiating conversations more often. Before he knew it, rather than heading to the development district to practice his swordplay, his purpose for going there was to talk with Theresia.
The place where he was supposed to swing his sword with a blank mind had, somehow, transformed through the meager rotation of his addled brain into a place where he swung conversation instead.
It was around this time that the "Sword Demon's" behavior on the battlefield began to change.
Before, he had been driven by nothing more than how quickly he could close the distance and how many enemy lives he could claim. But that body, which had moved on pure instinct, gradually shifted its focus toward how to fight without inflicting casualties on his allies.
Rather than prioritizing the kill, he began prioritizing disabling the enemy. Rather than chasing down fleeing foes, he increasingly pulled back to cover his comrades. Naturally, the eyes of those around him began to change.
He was spoken to more often. He spoke to others more often.
The subject of a knight's commission — something that had never once been within his sphere — was raised, and he found himself considering it with a measure of calculation.
A certain amount of prestige would lend a certain amount of polish to his ulterior motives, after all.
"They offered me a knighthood. I accepted."
"Oh, congratulations. You're one step closer to your dream, aren't you?"
"Dream?"
"You took up the sword to protect someone, didn't you? A knight is someone who protects others."
And within the image of those he wished to protect, he found her smile burned indelibly into his heart.
—Time passed once more.
Gaining the standing of a knight and encountering more people within the army, information naturally began to flow in. The civil war with the demi-humans was worsening, with countless fronts locked in a seesaw struggle. Wilhelm, too, had experienced not only victories but a fair share of defeats.
Each time, he fought desperately to protect as much as he could reach with his sword, and each time he was forced to savor the bitter frustration of those he could not.
He heard that the fires of civil war had spread to the Trias territory — and there was no doubt that the expanding web of connections he had formed played some part in bringing him that news.
The internal conflict, which had originally broken out in the eastern reaches of the kingdom, had expanded, and one of its advancing arms had reached, if only barely, into the Trias domain.
There had been no order. If he still held any loyalty to the royal army and respected the position of knight he had been given, unauthorized action was not permitted.
But for Wilhelm, who had once again taken into his heart the feelings he had harbored when he first gripped a sword, such constraints meant nothing.
He arrived at his old home to find that the enemy had already taken most of the territory.
The sight he had left behind more than five years ago — the landscape he had known so well — was fading before his eyes, and Wilhelm drew his sword, raised his voice, and hurled himself into a maelstrom of blood.
He cut down enemy after enemy, stepping over corpses, his throat growing raw from screaming, drenched in the spray of his foes' blood.
There was a demon's battle there — one who lived by the sword, who gave life through the sword, who could find meaning in nothing else.
He was vastly outnumbered. There was no reinforcement, and his original fighting force was pitifully weak.
Unlike fighting shoulder to shoulder with comrades, Wilhelm was alone, and no quarter was given. Even as he was made to realize just how much he had been fooling himself into believing he could fight on his own strength alone, wounds accumulated one after another — until he could move no more.
He collapsed atop the mound of bodies he had built, but the enemy's inexhaustible tide of soldiers crushed what remained of his momentum. Wilhelm understood that death was closing in before his eyes.
His beloved sword of long acquaintance lay fallen beside him, and he lacked even the strength to reach for it with his trembling fingers. If he closed his eyes, half a lifetime of memories would replay — and there he would be, doing nothing but swinging his sword.
It was a lonely, empty life. He was on the verge of reaching that conclusion when, in the final flicker of consciousness, faces began to appear one after another.
His parents. His two brothers. The mischievous friends he had grown up with in the territory. The comrades he had fought alongside in the royal army — they surfaced in an endless stream, and at the very last, Theresia, turning away from the flowers.
"I don't... want to die..."
He had always believed that to live by the sword and die by the sword was the natural course.
But now, at the end of that path — having entrusted everything to the blade — when the ending he thought he wanted was finally staring him in the face, the only thing that overwhelmed Wilhelm was an unbearable sense of loneliness.
Those hoarse, final words would not be forgiven by the soldiers who had lost so many comrades to his blade.
The massive green-scaled demi-human raised its greatsword high and swung it down toward Wilhelm without mercy — "......"
The beauty of the slash that erupted forth was seared into his vision — something that could never be forgotten for all eternity.
A storm of blade wind tore through the air, and with each gust, the demi-humans' limbs, heads, and torsos were mowed down as though they were grass.
Shock rippled through the enemy ranks like a tidal wave, but the speed of the flashing blade outstripped even that — death was being manufactured in批量.
A sight like a nightmare unfolding before his very eyes.
Blood sprayed into the air. The demi-humans could not even scream as their lives were harvested. The bladework was so brilliant that it extinguished the lights of their lives without even granting the victims the dignity of knowing what had killed them.
Whether it was cruelty or mercy, no one could say.
If there was one thing that could be understood, it was this: —He would never reach that realm of the sword. Not in this lifetime. Not for eternity.
Wilhelm had lived the greater part of his not-so-long life with every ounce of devotion he possessed, pouring himself into the way of the sword. And it was precisely because of that that he could comprehend, in the figure cutting down enemies before him without a shred of mercy, just how high that summit truly was.
And the fact that it was a realm his own limited talent could never reach — that truth, too, was laid bare before him.
If what Wilhelm had carved was a valley of blood, then what spread before him now was nothing less than a veritable ocean of blood. The sheer scale of the corpse mountain was beyond comparison.
The sword continued its work until every last demi-human who had invaded Trias territory was exterminated.
Witnessing the overwhelming slaughter from start to finish, Wilhelm was eventually carried away by the comrades who arrived late. As he received treatment for his wounds, his eyes remained fixed on that figure, unable to look away.
She walked away at an unhurried pace, her longsword swaying gently. Not a single drop of blood marred her person, and the sight sent a tremor through Wilhelm's entire body.
He would never reach that place. Not ever.
He heard the name "Sword Saint" upon returning to the capital.
Where the Sword Demon Wilhelm had once reigned, the name of the Sword Saint now echoed across the land in his stead.
The Sword Saint — a legendary figure who had once slain a witch.
Her blessing alone remained, passed down through the bloodline, continuing to protect the family as transcendent beings.
The name of the current Sword Saint had never once been made public — but that changed with this event.
—Several days passed before his wounds healed enough for him to make his way to the usual spot.
Gripping his beloved sword, Wilhelm walked slowly, pressing each step firmly into the earth, heading toward that place.
He was certain she would be there. And true to his conviction, Theresia was sitting in that same spot, her appearance unchanged.
Before she could turn to face him, he drew his sword from its scabbard and lunged.
The descending vertical slash was mere inches from splitting her head in two when — two fingers caught the blade's tip. Astonishment caught in his throat, and the corners of his mouth curled upward.
"A humiliation."
"Yes."
"You were laughing at me, weren't you?"
"......"
"Answer me, Theresia — no, Sword Saint!!"
He wrenched his sword free and slashed again, but she dodged with a movement that didn't so much as disturb a single strand of hair. His legs were swept from under him, and he was thrown to the ground without even the chance to break his fall.
An insurmountable wall. An immeasurable gap. It existed between them — absolute and undeniable.
"I'm not coming here anymore."
Again and again he charged, and each time he was struck down.
His beloved sword had, at some point, been wrested from his grip into her hand. She struck him flat across the blade's side, winding him so completely that he could not move a single step.
He was too far away. Too weak. He couldn't reach. It wasn't enough.
"Don't make that kind of face... and don't bother carrying a sword."
"I am the Sword Saint. I didn't understand why — but now I do."
"Why..."
"To swing a sword to protect someone. I think that's a good reason."
—He had given a reason to a girl who loved tending flowers but could never find meaning in gripping a sword. And it was because she was stronger than anyone, whose sword could reach farther than anyone's, that the act carried such weight.
If so, then to atone for the sin he had wrought — "Wait... Theresia..."
"......"
"I'll take the sword from you. The blessing you were given, the role you were assigned — none of that matters. Don't reduce swordsmanship to... don't cheapen the beauty of the blade, Sword Saint."
To her retreating back, a foolish demon who loved the sword spoke of the sword to the Sword Saint who was loved by the sword.
From that day on, the two never met at that place again.
—The Sword Demon vanished from the royal army, and in his place, the Sword Saint's name spread throughout its ranks.
One warrior equal to a thousand — Theresia's exploits embodied that phrase, and the tide of battle turned before anyone's eyes. Though an individual, her martial prowess had transcended the realm of the personal. The thunderous epithet "Sword Saint" was a source of despair even for the demi-humans who knew of the ancient legend.
The civil war came to an end approximately two years after the Sword Saint appeared on the battlefield.
The terms were settled through a summit between the leaders of both sides, and at the very least, the fighting between those who bore swords drew to a close.
To celebrate the end of the war, a modest but splendid ceremony was held in the capital.
A grand affair — the conferral of medals upon the beautiful, and above all powerful, Sword Saint was among the many events on the program.
People from across the kingdom flocked to the capital, to the royal castle, eager to catch a glimpse of her, and a fever of adoration enveloped the girl who had single-handedly ended the war.
It was then that the Sword Demon descended like a phantom, severing the tide of fanaticism with his arrival.
The guards bristled at the sight of an intruder brandishing a sword. But who was it that stepped forward to restrain them? None other than the Sword Saint herself, standing on the cusp of receiving her knighthood.
She drew her own sword and faced the intruder head-on. Everyone held their breath at the sight.
Her posture was one of refined elegance — so beautiful that the observer could scarcely bring himself to speak of it.
And yet, the figure standing across from her — what a vision of raw, almost menacing power he presented.
Clad in a weathered brown coat, every inch of visible skin was caked with dried rain and mud. The sword in his hand was a wretched thing compared to the Sword Saint's ceremonial blade — its hilt was grand enough, but the blade itself was warped, its surface mottled with rust.
On the dais, the king gestured for the knights not to intervene. With his chin drawn in, everyone watched in hushed silence as the Sword Saint's blade flashed forward.
The two blades clashed, and a piercing ring tore through the crowd.
Sparks cascaded, wind spiraled, and the two shadows began to move at dizzying speed.
Before that spectacle, the hearts of the speechless onlookers were overtaken by nothing less than overwhelming, boundless emotion.
Attack and defense traded places at ferocious speed as the two swordsmen positioned themselves on the ground, in the air, against the wall, against the sky, exchanging blow after blow. Before they knew it, some among the crowd were weeping.
This was the realm to which a human being could ascend.
This was how deeply a sword could move another soul, how beautifully it could make them feel.
Blades crossed. Guards locked. Tips flashed. They struck each other again and again.
And finally — "......"
The rusted blade snapped in half, its tip spinning through the air in lazy circles.
And the ceremonial sword that the Sword Saint had held — "My win."
"......"
"My win."
The ornate treasure sword clattered to the ground, and the broken tip of Wilhelm's blade hovered a hair's breadth from the Sword Saint's throat.
Time stopped. Everyone knew it — the defeat of the Sword Saint.
"You no longer have any reason to carry a sword. Not when you're weaker than me."
"If I don't hold a sword... then who will?"
"The reason you held your sword — I'll carry that now. All you need to do is be the reason I swing mine."
He flipped back the hood of his coat.
Beneath the reddish-brown grime, Wilhelm glared at Theresia with a sour expression.
She gave a small shake of her head at his attitude and said, "What a terrible man. All my resolve, all my determination — you've thrown it all away."
"And I'll take all of that, too. As for you — forget you ever held a sword, and just live peacefully. Grow flowers, or something. Stay behind me."
"Behind you? Protected by your sword?"
"Yes."
"You'll protect me?"
"Yes."
Theresia placed her hand against the flat of the blade he held pointed at her and took one step forward.
At a distance close enough to feel each other's breath, their eyes met. Tears pooled in her glistening eyes, rolled down her smiling cheeks, and fell — "Do you like flowers?"
"I don't hate them anymore."
"Why do you swing your sword?"
"To protect you."
Their faces drew closer, the distance between them shrank, and at last, it vanished.
They parted their lips, which had touched so briefly. Theresia's cheeks flushed crimson as she looked up at Wilhelm and asked, "Do you love me?"
"...You know I do."
He turned his face away and blurted the words out, brusque and sullen.
The frozen moment of the crowd broke, and guards came pouring toward them. Among the throng, he caught sight of comrades who had once fought at his side. Wilhelm shrugged.
His cold demeanor made Theresia puff out her cheeks — exactly like the two of them, standing before that flower field and laughing together, a scene from a single day among so many.
"There are some things I want you to say out loud, you know."
"Ugh."
He scratched his head, grimacing at the awkwardness, and then — with a resigned air — turned back to Theresia and leaned close to her ear.
"Someday. When I feel like it."
With those words, he masked his embarrassment with feigned indifference.
—The glittering treasure sword sliced through the whale's rock-like hide as though it were nothing, and a current of wind tore through the gap.
"Ooooooooooohh—!!"
With a primal roar, the old swordsman charged, and behind him, the blood spurting from the wounds he carved stained the sky crimson.
He was a portrait of devastation.
His left arm hung from the shoulder as though it might drop at any moment, and the blood that coated his body — a mingling of his own and his enemies' — had turned a dark, livid purple.
A brief application of healing magic had done little more than stanch his bleeding and restore a sliver of his strength. He remained, by any objective measure, in a condition so critical that he should have been at rest.
But looking at Wilhelm now, who could call this a dying old man?
Look at the fire blazing in his eyes. Look at the power in his stride. Look at the razor precision of every strike his blade delivered. Listen to the thunder of his battle cry. Stand before the radiance of his soul — and who would dare call the culmination of this old man's life a foolish thing?
The blade sang out. The
Trapped beneath a massive tree, unable to move, the magical beast's back was exposed to the Sword Demon's blade without mercy. The sword plunged in at the tip of the head, emerged from the back, reached the tail, and as Wilhelm touched down, he tore upward through the lower belly in a seamless return arc.
One stroke — a long, deep, impossibly keen slash that circled the White Whale's entire body and cleaved it in two.
He leaped and landed once more upon the snout of the now motionless White Whale.
Flicking the blood from his blade, the Sword Demon stared into the White Whale's right eye — the only one that remained — and saw his own reflection in it as he spoke: "I do not intend to curse you as an evil. To preach morality to a beast is pointless. Between you and me, there exists only the absolute law of death — the strong devouring the weak."
"......"
"Sleep. — Eternally."
With a final, feeble whimper, the light left the White Whale's eyes.
Its colossal body went suddenly limp, and the cascade of blood and the falling mass created a thunderous impact and a river of crimson.
The sensation of blood spreading beneath his feet left everyone speechless.
Silence fell over the Rifaus Highway, and then — "It's over, Theresia. At last..."
Standing atop the motionless White Whale's head, Wilhelm looked up at the sky.
He let the treasure sword slip from his fingers, and with his now-empty hand pressed against his face, the Sword Demon who had lost his blade spoke in a trembling voice: "Theresia, I..."
His voice was hoarse, yet brimming with an undying, all-consuming love.
"I love you —!!"
The words of love that only Wilhelm knew — words that had never once been spoken.
For the entirety of his life, from the day he lost his beloved until the very end, these feelings had never once been given voice.
Words that should have been said long ago, when she first asked him — and now, after the passage of decades, Wilhelm finally spoke them aloud.
Atop the White Whale's corpse, the Sword Demon who had cast aside his sword wept and cried out his love for the wife he had lost.
"— Here, the White Whale has fallen."
A single, clear voice rang softly through the night of the plain.
The men who had been struck dumb by the sight lifted their heads, and every one of them saw the girl advancing on foot, leading her dragon mount forward.
Her long green hair was disheveled. The decorations she wore had been ravaged by wounds sustained in the battle, and her face was stained with her own blood — a wretched appearance by any measure.
And yet, to their eyes, that girl shone brighter than any moment they had witnessed before.
If it is the light of the soul that determines a person's worth — then it was only natural.
She had lent her treasure sword and now bore no blade. She raised an empty fist to the sky, held it high where all could see, and declared: "Four hundred years it lived, threatening the world — the fog-controlling magical beast known as the White Whale has been slain by
"——OHHH!!"
"This battle is our victory!!"
Her triumphant proclamation rang out from the lips of their lord, and the surviving knights erupted in cheers.
On the plain where the fog had finally cleared, the first signs of night returned. The moonlight bathed the people of the earth in its glow, restoring the sky to what it was always meant to be.
—And here, spanning several hundred years, the Battle of the White Whale came to its end.