**Chapter 32**
—
When he finally came to his senses, the battle had already been lost.
At least for Philip of the Brandenburgs, that statement was no lie.
By the time he had joined the fray, the right-wing cavalry had already been crushed.
Sir Milbas and every last Aura Knight under his command had fallen in battle.
The left flank under Baron Perker had long since been overrun, and the enemy cavalry that had shattered both wings completed their easy flanking maneuver, surrounding the main force from all sides.
All around them, the black cavalry tightened their encirclement.
Having lost its core power and its morale in shambles, the fate of the St. Magdalena Order of Knights was self-evident.
With every approach of an enemy spear, soldiers were pierced, trampled, crushed, and mangled—blood and entrails splattering across the mud.
Death was everywhere.
“Ah… ahhh…”
The battlefield is where even the wisest turn foolish.
So what could be expected of a man who was never wise to begin with?
The suffocating terror of defeat… the mocking fingers of men… the cold, disappointed gaze of his father…
But above all—
Those eyes, and that icy smirk from Dale as he looked down on him, refused to leave Philip’s mind.
“Lord Philip! Please, you must make a decision!”
Grinding his teeth in desperate agitation, Philip spoke through trembling lips.
“…We shall shatter.”
“What—what did you say, my lord?”
“—We’ll die with honor!”
“Pardon…?”
Leaving the dumbstruck knight behind, Philip shouted with a voice filled with false pride.
“The proud swords of the St. Magdalena Order may break—but they shall never bow to defeat!”
He screamed as though sheer defiance could make up for his failure.
“All units—prepare for annihilation! Gather the remaining cavalry and reform our lines! We charge, one final time!”
“B-but, my lord! If we do that, we’ll all be wiped out—!”
“Are you daring to defy your commander’s orders?!”
Charge. Charge. Charge.
Philip parroted the word like a madman.
To “die beautifully like jade”—what an elegant phrase it was, to mask the stupidity of throwing away lives in the name of honor and loyalty.
—
—
Rallying his last remaining forces, Philip led the remnants of the St. Magdalena Order in a desperate charge.
And surprisingly, the encirclement broke more easily than expected.
*We did it…! I did it!*
But just as that suicidal breakthrough began to feel like victory—
just as resolve hardened for death turned into the faintest spark of hope—
“Charge!”
—The Aura Knights of House Saxen appeared, as if they had been waiting for this very moment.
They had long since fallen back to rest and recover their strength, changed into fresh armor, and mounted new warhorses.
“Crush everything that stands in our way!”
There was no longer any need to disguise themselves as Baron Greenbelt’s ragtag knights.
Clad in black armor that gleamed like obsidian—the insignia of the Black Cavalry—they thundered forward, destroyers of the battlefield.
In their hands, they raised massive two-handed swords, *Zweihänders* nearly two meters long, their blades completely sheathed in black aura.
“For House Saxen and Lord Dale!”
Whoooosh—!
Saxen’s black swords swept across the field like a raging storm.
Everything before them was torn apart like paper.
Heads flew.
Bodies burst.
Armor was crushed and shattered to scrap.
“Ah… ahhh…”
The fleeting hope that they had broken free vanished in an instant.
The knights who had vowed to die gloriously were now being *literally* crushed to pieces.
It was a flawless trap, sprung with cruel precision.
They hadn’t *broken* the encirclement at all—the enemy had *opened* it for them.
They were no more than moles whacked back into their holes.
All that hope… extinguished without a trace.
“L-Lord Philip… please, I beg you, surrender while you still can…”
Was it fear, or the betrayal of that fleeting hope?
“A battle is not lost so long as its commander yet lives!”
Philip roared, silencing his pleading subordinate.
“Hold the line! Protect me! Protect your commander!”
“But, my lord—!”
“Silence! I care not for the lives of foot soldiers! Even if you must die, guard your commander! Guard *me*! Do you hear?!”
So it was that, in the commander’s grand resolve to face death… there was no person exempt from that noble sacrifice.
—
—
The battle that began at dawn only ended when twilight bled into dusk.
Darkness descended swiftly over the plains.
“Every step of it unfolded just as you predicted, my lord! The operation was a total success!”
“As expected of Lord Dale!”
“The enemy fell exactly as you planned, my lord—your brilliance humbles me!”
“……”
Amid the jubilation of the Raven Knights—unable to contain their pride and loyalty—a single figure knelt in defeat before Dale.
Behind him stretched a sea of corpses and blood: the annihilated St. Magdalena Order.
And before him stood the monster he could never hope to equal, not in a hundred years.
“You seem to have a particular aversion to surrender,” Dale said softly, looking down at the eldest son of House Brandenburg.
Beneath the banner of Saxen, surrounded by black-armored knights bearing the mark of the raven, Dale stood impassive.
“You may have won with your cowardly tricks and deceit,” Philip spat, “but we have not *lost!* We may break—but we never bend!”
At those words, Dale glanced over his shoulder.
All across the horizon, corpses lay piled high in a vast red sea.
The prideful result of that so-called *beautiful death.*
“For someone who ran to save his own life,” Dale said, “you speak remarkably well.”
“I—I am the commander! It is my duty to live to the end!”
“Ah. Is that so,” Dale replied flatly. “Then now that the battle’s over—there’s no need for you to live any longer.”
He placed his hand on the hilt at his hip.
Then—
“Wait!”
Philip’s eyes lit up in sudden inspiration.
“Very well! I accept your challenge to a duel!”
“…?”
Dale tilted his head, caught off guard.
“I, Philip of Brandenburg, accept Saxen’s Dale’s honorable proposal for a one-on-one duel to decide the fate of the battlefield!”
It was the sort of absurd declaration only a child would invent.
Swiing—!
Philip leapt to his feet and drew his sword in a bold flourish.
The Saxen knights moved to stop him—
—but Dale raised a hand.
“It’s fine.”
He nodded calmly. “I accept your challenge.”
As Dale inclined his head, Philip’s lips twisted into a sly smile—and he lunged.
Before Dale could even draw his sword, Philip’s blade slashed forward in the vilest, most dishonorable ambush imaginable.
*Thwack!*
A wet, sickening sound—like a pig being slaughtered—filled the air.
“AAAHH! S-spare me! Please—please spare me! I beg you! I beg you, my lord!”
“…You really aren’t suited to dying beautifully, are you?”
It was over before the second hand of a clock could tick thrice.
—
—
“Lord Dale has returned!”
“He’s back victorious from battle!”
The messenger had long since delivered news of his triumph—and with Dale’s eleventh birthday fast approaching,
the city of Saxen was alive with celebration.
The “Black Duke” and the “Holy Sword Count”—a proxy war between two of the Empire’s greatest lords.
The Battle of the Greenbelt Plains had ended in an overwhelming victory for House Saxen and the Raven Knights.
The victorious general of that war—Dale—returned home in glory.
At his back stretched the endless ranks of the Raven Knights, and among the prisoners marched the defeated Philip of Brandenburg and the few survivors of St. Magdalena.
“They say he pulled off a perfect encirclement and annihilated the enemy!”
“The ravens pecked at their corpses for a week straight, and still the bodies didn’t run out!”
Ignoring the whispers of flattery that trailed behind him, Dale pressed on.
—
—
Inside the grand hall of the Saxen ducal castle.
Dale strode across the marble floor, clad in his custom-made black armor and surcoat.
“Brother!”
“Lize.”
His two-year-old sister, who had only just begun to speak, called out his name with innocent delight.
“Dale.”
From the ducal throne, his parents watched their son’s proud return with warm smiles.
“Congratulations on your first victory, Lord Dale.”
“Thank you, Sir Helmut.”
With Helmut, Charlotte, and the elven mage Sephia watching on, Dale crossed the hall and knelt.
“I, Dale of Saxen, formally report victory to Your Grace.”
Kneeling before the Black Duke’s throne, Dale bowed deeply.
The Duke smiled, unable to hide his paternal pride.
“You led your forces splendidly.”
“It was only possible thanks to the blades of House Saxen.”
“Sir Vale—thank you for guiding him so well.”
“It was entirely Lord Dale’s doing!” replied Vale, bowing respectfully.
“You must be weary after such a battle,” said his mother, Lady Elena, her voice tinged with maternal concern.
“Rest well, my son.”
“Thank you, Mother.”
Dale bowed once more and rose.
The long campaign was finally over.
At last, he was home—where he belonged.
His house.
His family.
A strange, indescribable feeling welled up within him.
—
—
“S-Sir Milbas and the Aura Knights… all of them are dead…”
It was news like a thunderbolt from a clear sky.
“Lord Philip has been captured alive, along with a handful of retainers. The ransom… it will be enormous…”
“That damned brat from House Saxen…!”
The Holy Sword Count’s radiant blade flared with pure white aura, the embodiment of fury seeking something—*anything*—to cut down.
The messenger froze, pale as death before that angelic yet murderous light.
—
—
“Do you remember my death?”
The voice came from a man impaled through the chest, a sword jutting from his back.
“I remember *our* deaths.”
Ten-year-old Dale, clad in black armor and surcoat, nodded solemnly.
The dead man spoke again.
“**Remember Death (Memento mori)**.”
And with those words, he vanished.
Only the sword that had impaled him remained—now buried through Dale’s own chest.
—
—
Every mage possesses a world of their own.
And the path of a mage is the process of perfecting that inner world.
—
That night.
After his first victory in battle, when Dale finally closed his eyes in the ducal castle’s bedchamber,
what came to him was not a simple nightmare.
It was *the abyss of thought.*
“……”
It was the same dark landscape he had forcibly opened to complete the Third Circle—
his inner world, the place from which there was no escape.
Sitting cross-legged on the bed, Dale gazed at his palms.
Cold energy and pure darkness intertwined, mimicking the double-helix of DNA.
*…And yet, I couldn’t even use it properly in the field.*
He clenched his fist, and the surging mana scattered.
*Clink—!*
Like shattering glass, fragments of frost and darkness fluttered in the air.
To control and refine one’s inner world—
that was both the beginning and the end of a mage’s path.
And yet, to have that “world” disturb his sleep and haunt his solitude like this—
It was almost laughable.
*Still not enough.*
He needed more—
Power to master his inner world completely.
Power to ascend further as a mage.
But from where?
Only one answer came to mind.
As a great knight has his sacred sword,
so must a great mage possess—
*A grimoire.*
The thought made him pause.
Unbidden, the image of Sephia surfaced—her serene, crystalline eyes, her gentle smile, her unwavering faith in him.
And then Dale wondered to himself:
*…Once I turn eleven, will I finally start looking a bit more like a man?*
A thought as perfectly fitting for an eleven-year-old boy as any.
