Chapter 15
—
That dawn.
Dale went out alone into the inner courtyard of the duke’s manor and set his magic turning through his heart.
“Rise, wall of ice.”
He erected an ice wall as a test, stepped back to a comfortable distance, and took aim with his fingers.
“Ice Bullet — ‘12-gauge 00 buckshot.’”
At the same instant as the verbal component, ice-bullets formed at the tips of Dale’s fingers──
Bang!
A large block of ice that served as a shot-shell exploded into shards, scattering eight icy pellets like buckshot.
“Ice Bullet — ‘Barrett M82,’ ‘.416 Barrett (10.6×83mm).’”
Bang!
Next: a large-caliber round meant for anti-material sniping.
There was, of course, not just one type of bullet. For suppression or killing, for non-lethal use, for different situations — there were countless varieties: from .22 Long Rifle up to 12.7×99mm NATO (.50 BMG). For birds, for people or beasts, for light armor or anti-tank roles, even rounds designed to take down kaiju. The gun and the caliber had to change with the objective.
One didn’t need to become an engineer or scientist; it was enough to conjure the landscape of that world in one’s mind.
Adding a few more formulations, Dale continued to test his power against the ice wall.
A second-circle mage. Yet by adding only one more circle, the portion of “Dale’s world” he could project into this realm multiplied many times over.
As a painter, Dale had already reached a near-perfect mastery. What remained was simply to expand the palette of instruments he could use.
Here, at the heart of this nation, in the very center of the duchy — without a single embellishment — he intended to overlay the hellish canvases of the battlefield he had experienced.
And it was then.
“Dale?”
A voice called out from a distance. He turned his head; Charlotte stood there.
She held a rapier in her hand.
Her breathing was heavy, her cheeks flushed. Sweat poured off her as if it were rain. Apparently she had remained alone, training with the sword until this late hour when everyone else slept.
“You were practicing magic here.”
“Mm.”
Dale nodded and, with a flick of his hand, dispelled the towering ice wall.
“Charlotte—are you practicing swordplay too?”
“Yes.”
Charlotte nodded and slid the rapier back into its scabbard.
“I’ve been practicing the steps Sir Helmut taught me.”
Since that day, Charlotte’s swordsmanship under Sir Helmut’s tutelage had improved by leaps and bounds. It wouldn’t take long before she could match Dale in a pure, unarmed blade duel.
“Is learning the sword enjoyable?”
“Ah — yes.”
Charlotte nodded at Dale’s question.
“Um, well—about earlier…”
After nodding, Charlotte hesitated as if she had just realized something. Finally, stumbling over her words, she spoke in a halting voice.
“…I’m sorry for being willful.”
Like a child confessing a wrongdoing.
“Like, in front of you, Lord Dale… I didn’t behave properly or show proper manners… I was rude…”
“You were hardly just polite.”
Charlotte bowed her head as if she didn’t know what to do. Dale held back a laugh that was on the verge of bursting out and continued.
“All right — I’ll forgive you this once.”
“R-really…?”
“And it’s awkward as heck, so you don’t have to be so stiff.”
Dale said this and finally let the laugh out. It was an easy, unforced laugh, and at it Charlotte’s face went bright red.
The pale moonlight of dawn was dim.
“…I like the weather here.”
Charlotte said, eyes fixed on the moon. The remark surprised Dale; he cocked his head in curiosity.
“This cold?”
The frozen lands of the Saxen duchy were notorious enough to make people in the Empire shiver at the name.
“Even after swinging the sword and working up a sweat, the cold cools you down right away.”
That was the one benefit of this climate: it quickly chilled the sweat streaming down like rain. It made cooling off effortless.
“I never thought anyone else besides me would think that.”
Dale inwardly felt pleased — he had secretly thought the same — and a small wall between the two of them seemed to lower.
—
—
Around the same time.
Contrary to Dale’s assumption that everyone was asleep, the Black Duke stood by a window in the duke’s bedchamber, gazing down.
He watched his son building ice walls alone in the courtyard and projecting magic at them.
From Dale’s fingertips all manner of ice bolts erupted without restraint.
When Sephia had once said, “he has a talent for stealing life,” the Black Duke had dismissed it as typical elven fussiness.
He had been mistaken.
──He thought of the deep darkness accumulated by the ancestors of the Black Tower.
Unforgivable deeds committed in the name of seeking truth. The fear most people felt toward black mages was not an irrational terror born of nothing.
A root-deep darkness of an old age.
Even the current Black Duke owed a great debt to that darkness. And when that darkness combined with Dale’s ‘talent,’ he could imagine the abyss that would be painted by his son’s fingertips.
A spectacle even the Black Tower’s lord could scarcely imagine.
It was then.
“What are you staring at like that?”
Elena, back from her shower, approached her husband. She wore a wet nightgown, hair damp.
Around that time Charlotte, having finished her sword practice, appeared before Dale.
“Oh my!”
Elena laughed in surprise to see them.
In the deep hours of dawn, a boy and a girl standing together in the courtyard of the duke’s manor.
“Even our son’s reached that age already,” Elena said.
Unaware of the full circumstances, she saw only one possible meaning in the scene.
The Duke of Saxen did not bother to correct her misunderstanding; he remained silently quiet.
“Didn’t our Dale ask you to accept the lady of the Orhart family?” Elena giggled with delight.
“Has he fallen in love at first sight?”
“Wouldn’t they make a fine pair?” the duke asked, without much thought.
“Well…” Elena shrugged and let the sentence trail off.
“A mother’s duty is to guide her son toward honesty with his feelings,” she said, then reached for the duke’s nape.
“And a wife’s duty is to wish for her husband’s happiness,” she added.
Understanding her meaning, the Duke turned and kissed her. After the kiss, he murmured, forcing himself a little shyly,
“I always love you, Elena.”
“Hoho, you too.”
Like a wife wishing for the happiness of a loved family, Elena performed her duty as the duke’s spouse.
—
Elena’s decision after witnessing her son and Charlotte’s little rendezvous(?) triggered an unforeseen butterfly effect.
—
Not long after, on the outskirts of Saxen city: the slums where vagrants and beggars, refuse and animal entrails lay scattered.
Thanks to a new urban relief program that had begun some time before, however, the area was gradually regaining vigor.
Initiated in the name of the Duke’s wife, Elena.
She took the ducal supply unit to the streets to distribute necessities to the starving and the naked. She personally visited the slums every week to hand out food to children, give blankets to the needy, and arrange negotiations with guild representatives to help vagrants find jobs.
──And that day, the party from the duke’s household who came to the slums did not come with Elena alone.
Of course, Elena’s maidservants and the manor’s guards accompanied her.
“Dale, escort Miss Charlotte properly.”
Saying that it was a noble’s duty to take care of a lady, she ordered her maid Charlotte to be looked after directly by Dale.
“Yes, Mother.”
She used their duties as an excuse to get the two to act together.
“Thank you so much, Madam!”
“Madam, you look healthy as always — we’re so glad!”
“Was your trip here uncomfortable?”
“Thanks to Lady Elena, we’ll get through winter warm!”
The slum-dwellers treated Elena as if she were a saint of mercy.
‘This is a mother’s work,’ Dale thought, and followed his mother to set an example.
“Oh! M-My Lord!”
He took the hand of a hungry vagrant personally, thinking about ways to help them stand back up.
Charlotte too smiled kindly and extended a consoling hand.
“Oh, young lady, why would you bother with scum like me…”
“Please don’t say that.”
As the two began to move a little farther from where Elena’s gaze could reach, a sobbing child suddenly ran up to them.
Barely four or five years old, perhaps.
“What’s the matter?”
Charlotte patted the child’s head and urged him not to cry, to tell them what had happened.
“Help me, miss! My mother—my mother—”
The child tugged at Charlotte’s dress and pointed toward a darker, more secluded alley at the rear of the slum.
“Oh—what should we do?” Charlotte gulped in alarm.
“First, let’s call some of the others over and—”
“Not the time! Hurry, hurry, please come see my mother!”
The child’s urgent crying echoed loudly.
“……”
While Charlotte was flustered, Dale’s mind remained remarkably calm.
‘This is suspicious.’
Imagining the secluded alley where the manor guards’ eyes could not reach, Dale narrowed his eyes for a moment to examine the odd feeling.
At that instant the thought of one dark possibility flashed through his head.
And as he noticed the hidden gaze fixed on him from a distance, that possibility hardened into certainty.
‘A high-ranking member of the Thief Guild.’
Though dulled compared to his previous life, the battlefield instincts he’d honed over a lifetime didn’t vanish easily.
‘They’re probably aiming for the Sacred Sword’s daughter and were hired by a holy knight.’
So Dale smiled quietly.
‘What a fine chance to test my abilities.’
This would not be a fair mock duel between knights. Nor would it be a battle against some green-blooded orc. It would be, under the pretext of self-defense, the perfect opportunity to fight without concern for others’ gazes and to use full force.
A chance to sharpen the true edge of his talent to kill living flesh.
It wasn’t about boasting of victory or defeat.
‘How far can I overwhelm them?’
He was simply curious. After forming a second circle and repeatedly refining his spells for practical combat, and with a new technique expanded into the second form of his shadow mantle that he had not revealed to anyone, he wondered how decisive he could be.
Bringing the manor’s knights along might be one approach.
But if two unguarded young people, drawn by the innocence of a child, went forward without a single knight, the opponent would surely bite the bait.
They would believe absolutely that they were merely walking into a spider’s web.
“Let’s go, Charlotte.”
Dale grabbed Charlotte’s hesitating hand and pulled her along.
—
—
‘They took the bait!’
Thanks to Elena’s relief efforts, it was providential that the manor’s people had started to appear in the slums from time to time.
A senior operative of the Thief Guild “Kaleidoscope,” Jade, twirled a handkerchief into his palm and reversed his grip.
“Don’t even leave a scratch on the Saxen heir.”
Their target was not the lord himself but a mere maidservant, and they knew better than to touch the duke’s household without great care. Still, when the price promised was a fortune, reason did not always prevail.
“Subdue the brat and leave the duchy quickly.”
They planned to trick the prey deeper into the mire of the slums and then spring the trap, certain of their web and confident the bait would be taken.
