Blood mingled with the scent of steel armor and earth.
A scene more familiar than any other — the wreckage left behind on a battlefield.
Pits had been blasted open as if by meteor strikes; flagstaffs jutted through broken bodies; banners draped half across the faces of the unclosed eyes of the dead. Hundreds — no, easily a full thousand of them lay sprawled here.
Red graffiti was everywhere. Nanoda did no more than absent-mindedly let her hand brush against the trunk of a tree, and it came away coated in a little stickiness.
"..."
She flicked the bloodstains off her hand, then masked her presence and stepped out from the concealment of the thicket, beginning to make her way across this corpse-strewn plain.
Her Mana Perception and her gaze swept across her surroundings, and Nanoda let out a breath of relief: there was no residue of Yuna's Mana here at all. She had to be safe — she could not have been caught up in this brutal war.
As she walked toward the abrupt, gaping pit at the center, the faint sounds she had picked up at first gradually grew clearer.
Down in the pit were three figures, their attire torn and tattered.
Their fine, sumptuous outer dress had been smeared over with bloodstains and filth, and the dignified appearance they had once worn was now shredded apart — just like the rents in their clothes.
"How much longer do we have to hide out here?! That damned red-haired mongrel is infuriating! Aah, I really do miss the steak back at my mansion."
As his round belly let out a hungry rumble, the pot-bellied nobleman — his limbs unexpectedly slender for so corpulent a frame — grew even more agitated. His face contorted, and he carried on bellowing furiously.
"I am going to chop that mongrel's head right off! I'm going to ravage it just the way I ravage those whores!"
"Shut your mouth! You worthless piece of filth!"
The brawny nobleman simply could not stand to hear another word, and slapped the loud-mouthed one across the face right there and then.
The blow was strong enough to flatten the man to the ground, leaving him to thrash and whimper without pause.
The brawny noble couldn't for the life of him work out how a craven, repulsive creature like this had ever become a noble in the first place. He was only one rank below the brawny man himself, but the very fact that they shared the noble class made him sick to his stomach.
"Haaa — Anhadī III…"
As if infected by the foul mood from earlier, the brawny noble's own state of mind began to waver. He ground his teeth, anger and fear bleeding through his expression all at once.
The hermit assassin he had earlier coaxed and dispatched had likewise gone silent — not a single word back.
He had lost his fortune, lost his mansion, lost his country — and even the royal house he had served had been hunted to the very last man.
All he could do was hide here on an abandoned battlefield, playing dead to scrape out a miserable existence.
"This is retribution! Wahhhhhh, oh God! I'll repent! Please, forgive my sins!"
From off to one side came another strange cry. The originally tall and imposing nobleman was now huddled on his knees, gripping a crucifix pendant that he had pried off of who-knew-which corpse, smashing his head into the mud over and over in penitent kowtow.
"I should never have! I am a sinner! Please, punish me no more! I will repent every single day!"
"Thud — thud — thud," came the dull sound of bone against earth, mud flying. Tears streaked down that filthy face, and at this point no one could tell whether it was piety or madness.
"Damn it all — one is useless, the other is a lunatic!"
The brawny nobleman felt himself going mad as well. He should never have dragged them along in the first place — his idea had been to use them as a token of fealty for Anhadī III if things went badly enough.
But once he had seen the man with his own eyes, he had realized: Anhadī III was simply, utterly, beyond all reason — a madman.
All the scheming and the maneuvering counted for nothing. If you didn't fight, you died.
Just as he was contemplating his next way out, a shadow appeared at the edge of the pit.
"Who's there?!"
The brawny noble shouted upward, and beside him the nobleman writhing on the ground and the one beseeching God came to a halt.
The atmosphere instantly grew taut.
"Ah — pardon me. I'm only passing through."
A crisp, clear woman's voice rang out. Cloaked in her black robe, Nanoda had stopped at the pit's edge.
"…?"
The brawny noble stood there blankly for several seconds. Once he realized it was only a girl passing by, he released his grip on the hilt of his sword.
"Woman, get lost! Can't you see we're in the middle of something? You'd better pretend you saw nothing and walk away — before I change my mind."
The nobleman's vicious tone carried the full weight of menace and authority.
"Mm-hmm."
With hardly a thought, Nanoda nodded, didn't bother taking another look below, and turned to leave at once.
One glance and you could tell it was nothing but trouble.
A truly ordinary, run-of-the-mill passerby. Shortly after Nanoda had gone—
"Phew — that scared the life out of me."
"Aahhhh, oh God!"
"Shut up, every last one of you!"
Down in the pit, everything went back to the way it had been.
On and on, until it was nearly dusk—
The loud-mouthed noble seemed to have worn himself out cursing, and had collapsed onto the ground, snoring away. The tall noble still knelt where he was, calling upon God and muttering of atonement and the like.
The brawny noble had settled himself idly on a corpse, staring blankly into space.
"Should I just give it up?"
The royal family was gone. What did it matter anymore if he lost his standing as a noble of a fallen country?
That was an unconquerable enemy.
All he had to do was conceal his name and survive. Better that than the lot of those blindly loyal fools who had marched to their deaths. To preserve a single ember for the Moss Kingdom… surely there could be nothing wrong with that?
"At the very least, I too made my effort to restore the country. Our entire army was wiped out — that thing is a monster the likes of us will never overcome. My King, surely you will forgive your servant?"
Having thus convinced himself, the brawny noble's resolve had hardened. And just as he was about to rise and abandon these two dead weights—
A round object suddenly came into his field of view, and a warm, red liquid splashed across his face. The smile on the brawny nobleman's face began, by slow degrees, to change.
Up in the sky, two strangers floated.
"Master, let's carry out justice together."
"Lois… haa… never mind."
One voice old, one voice young, sounded in succession.
The aged Wilhelm, and a young silver-haired boy — a rare sight indeed.
At this moment the brawny nobleman's eyes had gone slightly glazed.
The headless corpse of the assassin, slumped on its knees, had turned into a fountain from the stump of the neck. Whether it was the soon-to-set sun or that great gout of spraying liquid, the sky in his field of view turned an extraordinary red.
"Hey, hey — you have got to be joking… that idiot!"
The way out — severed in a single instant.
"Master, the ones below are the conspirators who murdered His Majesty the King, aren't they?"
"Mm."
"They refuse to submit, refuse to seek peace, and even now still hunger after power and strife — corrupt nobles, every one of them, yes?"
"Mm."
"They are presences the kingdom of the future cannot tolerate, are they not?"
"…"
"Then we, who are wiping them out now — aren't we carrying out justice? We are the side of righteousness."
The silver-haired boy, Lois, laughed in clear, bright laughter, paying no mind whatsoever to the three former Moss Kingdom nobles down below — the one only just waking, the one with a face turned ashen, the one muttering deliriously to himself.
"You bastards! Justice?! You are the ones who started this war in the first place!"
The brawny nobleman drew the longsword at his waist, his breathing turning ragged. His glare was fixed dead on Wilhelm's wrinkled, ancient face. His bloodshot eyes signaled that he was already on the brink of running berserk.
"Justice will not turn a blind eye to evil. Just like the Hero hunting down the Demon King — we must strike first!"
Standing beside Lois, Wilhelm simply felt his ears were taking a beating. This disciple of his, with the word "justice" forever on his lips and a screw or two loose in his head — set aside the boy's talent for magic, and he was, as ever, exhausting to deal with.
But this was fine, this was fine…
Wilhelm swallowed back his words of rebuttal, his icy gaze sweeping over the figures below.
"My apologies — this old one has heard rather too many last words. Let us make this swift."
Not far from the pit—
Nanoda tilted her head, glanced back with a hint of puzzlement, and quickly drew her Mana Perception back in.
Just back at the place she had passed through, two great surges of Mana had come down from above.
But none of that mattered.
"Yuna… where on earth have you gone?"
____
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🔥 New history: A Martial Arts Master Will Never Be Humiliated
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