The fierce surge of sword pressure filling the room made one's skin prickle—no joke about it.
"—Wilhelm Trias."
Rolling the name across her tongue, Yae heightened her guard with quiet intensity.
They had exchanged only a single clash, but her opponent's opening kick had landed squarely, putting Yae at a disadvantage.
Even after leaping backward to absorb the impact, the kick's damage still lingered heavily in her slender frame. Had she not retreated, the blow had enough force to have punched a boot-shaped hole clean through her abdomen. To deliver such a kick to a woman without a shred of restraint—he was no gentleman, as he himself had claimed.
The proper title for this old swordsman had been prepared in this country for over forty years now.
Namely— "—So it's the great 'Sword Demon' himself! I'm so honored to meet a celebrity~! The tale of how you avenged your late wife is the pride of the kingdom's swordsmanship, isn't it~?"
"— — —"
"Oh my? But if I recall correctly, there was also an unexpected reunion with your wife after that! The incident at the Watergate City must have been so painful for you. My deepest condolences~"
"— — —"
Yae pressed a finger to the corner of her eye, mimicking tears while observing her opponent's every movement through her crimson gaze.
Against those calm blue eyes, her brazen attempt to trample on his emotions and rattle him proved a complete failure—she realized she had merely succeeded in playing the part of an ill-tempered woman.
"…From what I'd heard, I expected more of a hot-blooded type~"
Apparently that information was unreliable too.
Her source had been none other than Heinkel, so if even her own father's intelligence on his own flesh and blood was questionable, what could she possibly expect from him? She should have just assigned him as
And if Heinkel had then lost track of Felt, it would have simultaneously given her grounds to eliminate both Felt and Heinkel.
—The reason Yae had been entertaining such thoughts was also because— "Nobody should be able to detect my concealment technique except the Village Chief—Felt-sama, did you perhaps do something naughty?"
"Now that's just picking a fight for no reason. You know better than anyone that I can't do a damn thing, don't you?"
"— — —"
"All I've done is talk to you. That's my wholehearted dedication right there."
Retreating to the corner of the room, Felt answered with a tinge of self-frustration in her voice.
It wasn't an act of anger—her personality wasn't clever enough for that level of manipulation. If someone were skilled enough to control even the tremor in her voice with such precision, Yae would have considered it an impressive display of skill.
Therefore, Yae merely gave the steel wire looped around Felt's neck a light tug, just enough to remind her of its presence.
"Don't even think about running away~? I wouldn't want to separate your adorable little neck from your torso."
"One more on the butt. Also, not that I'm one to talk—"
"What is it?"
"You ain't got time to be lookin' elsewhere, with how you are right now."
Felt stuck out her tongue with the most endearingly graceless gesture imaginable. But needless to say, Yae had not once let her guard slip from Wilhelm. He was standing in the same position as before—and for good reason.
—Most of a shinobi's techniques specialized in exploiting the gaps in an opponent's awareness.
That was precisely why, unlike a warrior's battle skills meant for fighting, a shinobi's techniques meant for killing were called "jutsu." Yae's steel wire art was the quintessential example.
The more experienced the warrior, the more cautious they were in how they fought. And during those pauses, it was the shinobi's forte to set trap upon trap, layering them ten or twenty deep like a spider's web— "—Four moves."
"—Hm? What did you say?"
Wilhelm's lips had parted to utter that single word, and unable to parse its meaning, Yae furrowed her brow.
To Yae's unspoken question, Wilhelm offered no reply. —The answer came, however: his eyes narrowed ever so slightly, and the razor-sharp sword pressure he unleashed slashed across Yae's entire body.
"—!"
The instant she thought "here it comes," Yae mobilized all ten fingers without hesitation—not to suppress, but to unleash a killing blow of steel wire at the Sword Demon. Arl's standing order to take no lives could be honored if it happened to work out that way. If she tried to kill and the opponent survived, so much the better—but if she attacked with the intent to merely wound, would that work against this man?
Therefore, from all directions—and further subdivided into sixteen, then thirty-two—the steel threads closed in with nowhere to escape, a crush of annihilation. Against this, Wilhelm flashed the twin blades in both hands— "Oooh—!!"
The gust of sword wind raised by his twin swords literally kicked away the converging killing threads.
The sword speed was so overwhelming that the sounds of steel clashing against steel wire were heard all at once, and the resulting sparks of blade-fire gave Yae the illusion of being blinded. The first assault was rebuffed by that crushing sword pressure, but her wire art was far from finished.
She slackened the steel threads flowing from her ring, and prepared to launch the next subdivided attack—but in that split second, the room's floor was slashed upward before Yae's eyes.
What rose up was a section of flooring that had been cut and kicked upward from the edge—a piece large enough to be a luxurious bed, blocking Yae's view of Wilhelm.
"— — —"
With a heavy stomp, that section of floor was kicked straight at Yae.
In the confined space with limited room to dodge, there was no gap to slip through. Yae redirected the angle of her left hand's wire and met the incoming floor—not to cut it, but to bind, deflect, and bounce it back.
The counter carried the full momentum of the original kick and then some, hurtling back at even greater speed and danger—and slammed into the Sword Demon standing in its path.
And then— "Hah?"
A sharp piercing sound rang out as Yae watched the floor board stopped dead in midair, and her eyes went wide.
The momentum should have been accelerating; the power should have doubled with the weight. The Sword Demon had driven his sword point with pinpoint precision into the exact center of that mass, nullifying the force in midair.
This was a feat beyond the reach of human hands—a divine technique.
Yae had spent much of her life being praised as a prodigy beyond mortal limits, so she understood. —Even in his old age, the Sword Demon's swordsmanship still dwelled in the realm of the divine.
"Three moves."
In Yae's bated-breath field of vision, Wilhelm spoke from behind the hovering floor board.
Hidden behind the wide and tall piece of flooring, Wilhelm's figure was invisible to Yae. However, the advantage of steel wire was that it could reach places she couldn't see.
She sent a thread around the floor board to flush the Sword Demon to one side.
In either direction he might break through, threads were already strung— —And then, an instant later, the sword point pierced through the suspended floor board and shot straight for Yae's nose.
The sound of steel striking steel rang out as the blade was launched at a speed that would shame even a powerful bow. Wilhelm had stabbed the sword through the floor board, then struck the pommel, driving the blade clean through.
Rather than unexpected, this was off the charts—a projectile beyond all calculation. Abandoning any attempt to snare the blade with wire, Yae deflected its trajectory slightly and tilted her slender neck to avoid the lethal blow. The sword tip passed just beside her neck and plunged into the wall behind her with a resonant clang.
She had dodged. And even in this instant, Yae never once took her eyes off the Sword Demon.
That was why she immediately realized her miscalculation.
The sword had plunged deep into the wall just to the right of her neck. —Her escape route was now limited to the left.
And from that direction— "Rraaagh—!!"
A slash came crashing down—the Sword Demon had launched himself from the floor board as a foothold, kicked off the ceiling for acceleration, and descended upon her.
The overhead vertical cut aimed straight for her life, cleaving deeply into Yae's left shoulder.
△▼△▼△▼△
During the battle against the
Even Felis, bearing the title of "Blue" as the kingdom's foremost healing mage, had been unable to ease her suffering—a dire situation that only recently showed a glimmer of hope.
Crusch's condition had not dramatically improved. But there was news—word that the path to a method that might unlock her recovery had been opened: the
If they could borrow the power of
"If it means saving Crusch-sama, then we have to cling to even a stone!"
Felis had seized upon that news with desperate hope, and Wilhelm had no words of restraint to offer.
For nearly a year now, Felis had been supporting and helping the Crusch whose memories had been stolen by the Witch Cult, leaving her profoundly changed from the person she had been before. In the process of rebuilding her relationship with Crusch from scratch, Felis must have known great struggle and confusion.
That struggle had persisted for close to a year, and only recently had trust been established between them—a bond different from what they had before, but no less unshakable for being different.
And the Sin Archbishop of Sloth,
Crusch's subsequent suffering has been described above, but watching Felis endure alongside her was equally agonizing to witness.
Therefore, when Wilhelm and the others received word that the group led by Subaru, who had set out for the Pleiades Watchtower, had arrived and produced results—the hope that seared through Wilhelm was even more poignant than mere relief.
Though there was some puzzlement over the fact that Subaru's group had not brought this news back personally, they could not dig too deeply into the movements of other factions.
However, they had heard that trial visits to the tower were being conducted to ensure reliable access. Unable to sit still, and wanting to petition to join the next expedition if possible, Wilhelm and Felis had come to the royal capital.
And there, in a room of the royal estate prepared for visiting dignitaries— "—There is something I need to tell you, and something I need your cooperation with."
So said a young official from
"Rraaagh—!!"
He kicked off the ceiling and brought a vertical overhead strike down upon the red-haired girl—the supremely skilled shinobi.
Her razor-thin wire weapons were far too versatile, scattering threats in irregular trajectories. To avoid giving her openings in a drawn-out fight, he had committed to a swift decisive battle.
His cutting blow had entered through her left shoulder and was meant to continue in a single diagonal slash through to her right ribs, severing her life clean in two— But— "—!"
In that split second, the girl gritted her teeth hard and her body sank into the floor—no, it wasn't sinking. The floor itself had been sliced apart by wire and scattered. Her body dropped into the darkness below first, and Wilhelm plunged in after her.
He reached out reflexively, pulled his sword from the wall where it had pinned her movements, and secured his twin blades.
He had not managed to shear away her left shoulder entirely, but the wound was deep. The moment she vanished from sight, a shinobi became five, even ten times more dangerous than when visible.
That was— "—Finish it here—!"
It was not a coordinated call, but their voices overlapped in perfect unison.
Falling into the pitch-black hole yawning open below, Wilhelm caught the reflection of light threading through the darkness and glimpsed a flash of thread for just an instant. —It was the deadly web of lethal wires strung throughout that subterranean shaft, dense as a spider's nest.
△▼△▼△▼△ Falling back-first into the depths, Yae used steel wire to bind her left shoulder and staunch the bleeding.
The blade had penetrated deeply into her young, supple flesh, but the purity of her life had not yet been scattered—so she conso herself with a defiant "safe enough," all while marveling at the terrifying power of the Sword Demon's blade.
His first move had blocked her steel wire; his second had kicked the severed floor board back at her; his third had stopped the rebounded floor board in midair; his fourth had driven his sword through it as a feint and slashed at her—as he had declared at the start, four moves had nearly been enough to kill her.
"Nothing but terrible old men…!"
The most depraved "Vicious Geezer" she'd known up close, the elderly giant from the plains who had nearly brought Arl to his knees, and now this age-defying master who had reached the pinnacle of the sword—the Sword Demon. Every old person Yae could conjure up in the spur of the moment shared one trait: they refused to soften with age.
In truth, the way of the world was that any old person's candle of life could be extinguished at any time. Yet simply by surviving to old age in such a world, they had already won the selection of life itself.
"Y'know, old folks are real trouble. You go thinkin' they're weak or frail, and you'll be the one six feet under before you ever get to be one yourself. Ah, but what would I know, bein' a long-lived shinobi—exception among exceptions?"
That hearty laugh of the Village Chief, who had walked an especially brutal path, resurfaced in Yae's mind, making her cheek twitch.
To steal the opponent's eye, bewilder their mind, lock their feet, and take their life—that was the ultimate art of the shinobi. Yae excelled at the mind-bewildering techniques as well, but she acknowledged she was outmatched in that regard by the Village Chief's decades of experience.
Yae probably wasn't twisted enough in personality, and probably wouldn't live long enough, to become as warped as him. In fact, Arl had nearly killed her once.
She didn't expect that kind of luck to happen again. —The whims of a gentle monster were nothing short of miracles.
"— — —"
Wilhelm, who had pursued the falling Yae and pulled his sword from the wall, dropped into the same hole.
Filled with the confident certainty of a man who had clearly fought shinobi before, his movements spoke of experience against those from the Volachia Empire—who had sent shinobi, and whose predecessor among them had failed to kill Wilhelm when they'd had the chance. A bitter grudge compressed into a single breath and expelled.
Inside Yae, a switch clicked, and her visual field expanded in the subterranean darkness, seeing almost as clearly as in daylight.
The fruit of her training to acclimate to darkness—a form of physical manipulation that controlled the blood flow around her eyeballs to alter her perception.
In her vision, now shifted from black to gray, the white figure of the Sword Demon materialized, and Yae spread her hands wide—she had finally brought him into her domain— "—Finish it here—!"
The same words rang out simultaneously from both of them, yet neither smiled nor showed surprise.
They had each resolved to kill the other. With psychic attacks ruled meaningless as well, all mind-bewildering techniques were abandoned, and both now poured their wholehearted sincerity into striking the other's life.
This was the killing field Yae had prepared—Crimson Sakura's killing field.
—The underground cavern beneath the Barielle estate had not been prepared by Priscilla when she had the building renovated. It was a remnant from the previous owner,
Leip, Priscilla's late husband, was said to have harbored a morbid distrust of people and a bottomless paranoia. Not only the royal estate he had built in the capital, but every mansion and hideaway in his own domain had been outfitted with contingencies for the worst.
This underground passage was one such precaution—originally meant to function as an escape route to the outside—but Yae had sealed it beforehand, worried it could become an enemy infiltration point, though she had thoughtfully left the deep shaft intact.
Yae personally felt nothing but revulsion toward Leip, whom she had never met—a man who had forcibly married a young and beautiful bride like Priscilla and then tried to use her as a puppet to seize control of the kingdom. But she empathized with the instinct to prepare for every possible calamity, and was happy to take advantage of it.
Steel threads strung in every direction— an execution platform crafted solely for killing, where only Yae could move freely.
The reason she had infiltrated the royal capital to be ready to assist Arl at a moment's notice, and had planted Felt in that room under the guise of surveillance, was precisely to keep this failsafe functional.
Therefore— "—From here on, I'm done holding back."
With those words, Yae folded her knees, slipped her feet from her shoes with fluid grace, extended the toes wrapped in her black bodysuit, spread the five toes of each foot—and launched steel wire from rings set on each one.
With no holds barred, literally controlling all twenty fingers and toes with expert precision, Yae Tenzen's perfected art of annihilation ran rampant through the darkness— "— — —"
For both of them, a swift decisive battle was exactly what was desired.
Falling, Yae caught one of her pre-strung wires with her knee, breaking her descent and flipping over. Within the enormous well-like cylindrical shaft, she used the tension of her wires to bounce and launch her attack.
Employing the nimbleness of an acrobat, Yae danced like petals caught in the wind.
Trailing her was the silver thread that lured the mesmerized to their deaths—and wherever her dance touched, flowers of blood bloomed on those caught in its wake. Hence, Crimson Sakura.
A crimson cherry blossom, beautiful and cruel, that bloomed feeding on the blood flowing from fallen corpses.
"—!"
That fearsome power—worthy of the reputation behind the name—was unleashed without mercy. Wilhelm's entire body, surrendered to freefall, was carved apart, and beneath his well-tailored garments, flesh and blood scattered into the void.
The sword wind from his twin blades, even while falling, whipped back his hair, and Yae was almost exasperated by the Sword Demon's visual acuity.
Unlike wire, a sword could only reach as far as the arm wielding it could extend. On this prepared execution platform, that meant Wilhelm was forced into a purely defensive position.
And naturally, while Wilhelm was hampered by gravity, Yae—who could traverse the darkness freely using her wires—would never allow him to close the distance.
She maintained a mid-range gap where his sword could never reach, unleashing one-sided attacks with her steel threads. Before her dance reached its finale, and before the Sword Demon could reach the surface and reclaim his freedom.
Yae's arm rose in a languid arc. —Blood sprayed.
Yae's slender leg traced an arc through the empty air. —Blood sprayed.
Yae's supple body twisted, bending to its limit. —Blood sprayed.
With each step the dance drew closer to completion, the Sword Demon—unable to guard against every wire strike—grew more drenched in blood.
On his legs, his torso, his shoulder, his neck, his cheek, his forehead—sharp wires traced their marks, and bleeding freely, the Sword Demon was lured toward death.
But— "—What a nasty look in those eyes."
That terribly clear gaze, housing razor-sharp sword pressure, showed no clouding of fighting spirit whatsoever.
"— — —"
In addition to the wires Yae wielded with both hands and feet, there were the threads already strung throughout the underground shaft.
It went without saying that if Yae were careless—distracted only with dealing with his offense—and accidentally let a taut wire touch her limbs, they would be severed; if it caught her neck or torso, her life was over.
For Wilhelm, this great shaft was now tantamount to the jaw of a beast that had leapt in without thinking—where flesh would be scraped away by fangs, blood would be lapped by a tongue, and in the end he would fall into the stomach to have his life dissolved. —But his eyes showed none of the futile resistance to that despair.
"But there aren't that many options for you, are there?"
Setting aside that piercing gaze, Yae did not underestimate the Sword Demon enough to think this was over. She had long since discarded Heinkel's assessment of Wilhelm and instead evaluated the man she had observed with her own eyes in a contest of lives.
Therefore, against the Sword Demon still falling with no apparent recourse, she remained alert for two possible attacks.
One: a sword strike launched by kicking off the shaft wall, the same caliber as the blow that had sent Yae plummeting underground. The other: hurling his sword directly at Yae's life, just as he had done on the surface.
And which of the two it would be was answered in the instant that followed—too quick even to blink.
"—Six."
She extended her black-stockinged toe in a circular motion, carving three cuts across Wilhelm's cheek—and in the same breath, the Sword Demon hammered his foot against the wall in a rhythmic cadence, having just deflected her wires downward with a sweep of his twin blades. His powerful legs, slightly bent at the knee, coiled with enough force to propel him hurtling through the void of the shaft.
—And then, from his raised arms, both swords were hurled, blazing toward Yae's life.
Two streaks of silver light raced through the air. Yae evaded them through the fluid sequence of her dance, using the strung wires as footholds to flip and twist—letting the blades pass between her spread thighs and arched back by a hair's breadth before striking back. She drove both feet's worth of steel wire at the Sword Demon, who had followed the swords through the air.
Wilhelm, now disarmed and with no means to block the wires, twisted his body and shielded his head—the minimum damage to thread through the mesh. But Yae was no longer in his charge path, having bounced away on her wires, and his bare hands could not reach her.
Both attacks she had guarded against had been thwarted—but it was too early for relief.
"Oooh—!"
Wilhelm kicked off the wall and hurtled toward the opposite side of the cylindrical shaft, where his previously thrown swords were embedded. Grasping them, he kicked off again.
Pursuing Yae, who had fled diagonally upward, he rocketed upward at bullet speed. —Then, still airborne, he kicked off the opposite wall and bounced to the other side, repeating the maneuver over and over, rapidly ascending toward Yae as she danced her way upward.
"You're kidding…!"
That Wilhelm was pursuing her through sheer physical force as well sent a tremor of astonishment through the back of Yae's throat.
To kick off the walls and ascend using triangular jumps—that alone was something Yae could do. Not particularly impressive. What was impressive was that Wilhelm was executing it in a space where Yae had strung countless steel wires with her own hands.
Obviously, if he flew without careful calculation, he would hit the wires and be torn apart.
But Wilhelm feared them not. Why? —Because having fallen through this space once already, he had memorized the positions of the strung wires and was leaping in a way that avoided them all.
An abnormally exceptional combat instinct and observational acuity, combined with the decisiveness to wager his life without hesitation on what he had confirmed with his own eyes—this was a terrifying warrior.
Welcoming the Sword Demon as he boldly plunged into the silver storm while she herself fluttered and danced, Yae had no choice but to reach for her trump card— "U—YA!"
Using a wire to propel herself, Yae launched high into the air, extending all four limbs in an inverted position, and entangled the twenty threads shooting from her fingers with those she had pre-strung, pulling her limbs tight.
Yae's masterful wire technique—using the way threads intertwined and exploiting surrounding objects—was capable of binding over a hundred roughneck fighters at once, as she had demonstrated in the forest battle. And yet, even Yae had to pour enough force into the maneuver to feel as though every bone and muscle in her body might be torn apart, wrenching all the wires taut in a single violent motion.
In that instant, the severed steel wires ran wild through the cylindrical shaft in a chaotic frenzy.
A mechanism that worked like wire-cutting through sausage links, combined with the tension of taut wires snapping loose—a slash-wire attack that even Yae could not predict in trajectory or count, tearing apart the very space itself.
And to top it all— "—A good maid always adds an extra touch!"
From above the space about to be crushed by countless wire strikes, Yae drew both ringed hands to her lips and kissed them. —An instant later, flames raced along the wires extending from the rings, and after a brief delay, an explosive inferno erupted.
On top of the raging wire storm, searing hellfire that would burn everything to ash—Yae had played her second trump card, an merciless shinobi technique that wrapped the Sword Demon's form in crimson light and scorched him.
"As I thought—"
She was vexed that she had been unable to maintain the no-killing order.
But that was what she had felt from the very first instant. This was not an opponent she could beat while holding back. Only by fighting with genuine intent to kill could she choose between life and death.
Therefore— "I'll keep it secret from Lord Heinkel—"
"—That's fine. He should know that I came here."
In that instant, a sword flash burst through the inferno and swept across Yae, suspended in midair.
"Ugh—"
Her torso was bisected by the refined sword light, and unable to deflect the force, Yae tumbled in a different motion from her dance, spraying blood as her eyes flew wide open. She gasped in bewilderment, unable to comprehend what had happened.
What had occurred was clear. The enemy had survived both the storm of steel wire and the additional explosive flames. The question was how.
Wilhelm's final leap had gone straight upward—a different trajectory from the diagonal wall-kicks before. And to execute that movement within this shaft, he would have had to use the same method as Yae—to bounce off the steel wires as footholds.
"How did you use my wires…—"
"I saw it many times. —Your wires are terrifyingly sharp weapons, but at a specific angle and with the right amount of force, they can bind rather than cut."
Wilhelm's answer demonstrated a precise understanding of the properties of Yae's steel wire.
What was strange was that he had figured this out during the heat of battle in such a short time, and—once again—was willing to stake his life without hesitation on something he had no certainty about.
And beyond that, the inexplicable part was— "Then what about the fire?"
"I cut it."
The answer was so terse it was almost absurd, and Yae let out a sigh of exasperation.
It was probably not a lie. The answer had been delivered with that much conviction. Accepting it, a certain phrase suddenly surfaced in the corner of Yae's mind.
It was something she had once dismissed as useless— "—Dad's strong. Crazy strong. You or Aldebaran, you're both something else, I'm sure, but even so, Dad scares me more. That's what the Sword Demon really is."
Moody to the last, but Heinkel's assessment had been correct.
She could not concede that he was stronger than Arl, or that he was more frightening—but at the very least, he was more terrifying than Yae herself.
—At this moment, Yae Tenzen had made a miscalculation.
It was that, judging from Heinkel's opinion, she had estimated the reliability of his information at roughly half. And above all, that Wilhelm's skill had sharpened even beyond what Yae had researched from his
Therefore, the battle between Crimson Sakura and the Sword Demon that had begun at the Barielle estate— "—Zaahh!!"
The Sword Demon prevailed, his sword flash interrupting the completion of her dance and dyeing the crimson sakura in blood.