Chapter 11: Morning Star (1)
When he thinks of the Hero Maximilien, there’s a memory that surfaces first.
Namely, the “Sky-Splitting Contest.”
It began like this. Maximilien got up energetically as always, wearing that idiotic expression, and swung his sword.
Fwoom. Fwooom……. Whish— Shhhkraaaak—!!
Whatever enlightenment he’d suddenly attained, the moron went and split the sky. Literally, the sky.
With one stroke the clouds were cut into pieces and shoved aside, a gale surged in, and a tremendous roar shook the earth.
As recounted earlier, a Hero’s Party is fundamentally an “assassination squad.”
The sort that burrows deep into enemy lines aiming for the Demon King’s Army’s head and waits for the moment, buying time at the cost of the lives of soldiers falling at the front even now.
Which meant, therefore, that one must not commit such a flamboyant act.
Has he actually lost his mind?
Enrique gasped in horror and threw a dagger at the Hero. (The Hero laughed brightly and took the dagger on his body. Naturally the blade struck his bare skin and bounced off.)
Why don’t you just go around shouting? That the hope of the United Kingdoms is right here. It’s fitting for a Hero, isn’t it. Hm?
Beolgrin spoke icily and swiftly completed a spell. He immediately sat in the lotus position and began detecting demonfolk approaching the vicinity.
Meanwhile, Gilbert. This aristocratic knight wore a decidedly provocative expression and swung his sword.
Shkraaak—!!
Both of you, honestly!!
The clouds the Hero had cut scattered into fragments. Gilbert broke into a refreshing laugh and swept back his hair.
As it happens I cut more than he did. A suitable warm-up for the wrists. Um…… your wrists are so warmed up they’re currently fractured? Sorry, Patricia. Rub some heal on it. I think that phrasing is a little insulting…….
Einar, who had been watching that spectacle for a while, snorted, rose, and lifted his axe.
Don’t. Do not. I really wish you wouldn’t……. The men of Droan live always leaving their traces upon the world. What nonsense is that, all of a sudden. Put down the axe and talk.
Even at Enrique’s wary words, Einar paid no mind whatsoever and stepped forward.
However well you cut the sky, no trace remains. But what if I could leave it eternally recorded that Ulrik’s son, the great Einar, was here! No, no, hold on. Listen to what people are say—
Kabooooom!!
Einar, having declared his grand ambition and raised his axe—
—went and split a mountain before him clean in two.
They wasted a full week fleeing from the Seven Dragon Generals and the Demon King’s Army that came pouring out afterward like a kicked hornet’s nest, but—
—the Hero.
The man called Maximilien laughed and said this, so the story goes.
I split the sky. I split more of it. Ahem, We have split a mountain! Surely splitting a thing with form is a loftier feat than splitting a thing without form? Rattling off difficult-sounding words at random doesn’t make you smart, little boy. Crone. You’re really asking to die.
Why he was so fixated on the sky, he doesn’t know. But Ivan remembers that absurd escape vividly.
What Maximilien wanted to see that day, splitting the night sky, was probably—
—that even amid the vicious storm clouds ringing the Demon King’s territory, the Morning Star was still shining in its place, merely unseen. Perhaps he wanted to confirm that.
Thus the Hero’s Party was, all of them, a den of lunatics and madmen, of the mentally ill and the paranoid.
The Hero was the maddest among them—and the one who shone brightest.
Gilbert, who wished to surpass others, was invested as Lord Protector of the Tiless royal house.
Einar, who wished to leave behind great deeds, conquered his homeland and forged Droan’s first unified kingdom.
And the Hero, Maximilien, had probably only wanted to confirm that hope still remained.
That is why Ivan does not like the Hero.
He merely admired him.
Even after Maximilien turned his back on the world and went into seclusion. Still.
“Did he retire having realized his hope, or—”
—or did he let go because no matter how he cut away the storm clouds, he could no longer see the Morning Star?
It has been over 4 years since that cheerful man disappeared. The world still remembers the Hero, but it is forgetting the one person called Maximilien.
***
2 weeks passed in an instant. Thinking that the way it vanished before you knew it, without feeling like you’d done anything restful, was just like terminal leave, Ivan gazed at the scenery flowing past the window.
He was bound for Tiless. And this time, he was not alone.
He was accompanied by 5 men who kept glancing at him nervously.
Wow, an attack really did happen! How did you know? Time, date, and place, pinned down exactly!
They were agents belonging to Krasilov’s Counterintelligence Command. A hand forced into his grip by that irksome junior, Dmitri.
When he had returned from interdicting the attack on Esidis, Dmitri had made a great fuss, seized his hand, and pumped it up and down. As if to say, sorry for doubting you.
But the fellow’s eyes weren’t smiling at all. Only natural.
That a man who had retired and lived quietly like a half-vegetable for 4 years suddenly predicted a terrorist attack on a state figure would be a problem in itself.
Others might have let it pass with a wow, that’s amazing!—but this fellow belongs to Krasilov’s Counterintelligence Command. He’s a senior officer wearing the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the Investigation Bureau, no less.
Accordingly, the fellow’s eyes were plainly saying this:
You planted someone. Be honest. I’m genuinely curious. How were you able to build an intelligence network behind our backs? Won’t you pass on the know-how?
Without an appropriate explanation, he’d have to pass through countless verifications and suspicions going forward. Because the process of resolving the academy formula couldn’t be explained by anything other than a monopoly on information.
But.
Trifling.
There was no need to disclose it. Authority, after all, arises from mystique. Ivan made no particular effort to shake off the suspicion that he had a secret supranational intelligence organization backing him.
Hence this present state of affairs. He had been “supported” with 5 clumsy agents.
Ivan let out a short sigh. Do I have to play nursery-school teacher even out here?
At his sigh, the agents all flinched in unison.
“Sir Petrovich, is something perhaps not to your liking……?”
“All of you.”
Ivan decided he might as well take this chance to instill some proper discipline.
Recruit training wasn’t his purview, but in any case, if the agents of the motherland (his motherland is the Republic of Korea) were this slipshod, could he retire with any peace of mind?
Why on earth had intelligence agents dressed in matching outfits in the first place? What is that meant to suggest?
And with the seats this empty, they were even clustered together closely enough to look suspicious to anyone?
This was simply unendurable. Of course, these fellows’ true objective was information about Ivan. But wasn’t that espionage work all the same?
At this rate he couldn’t just stand by.
“Listen well.”
The orphanage director (formerly of the Annihilation Corps, 18 years of military service, has conducted operations with the Hero’s Party, has a record of dispatching a Seven Dragon General), bored with train travel—his edifying lecture begins!
18 hours until arrival at Tiless’s capital, Saint Mathilenne.
The agents’ sense of time froze solid.
***
“He isn’t coming after all…….”
Isabelle scanned the platform over and over right up until the moment she boarded the train for Krasilov.
The higher the expectation, the greater the drop into disappointment.
But though she had only ever been disappointed, she still searched the crowd with hope in her chest.
One by one, meticulously, anxious that he might be hidden somewhere among them.
Chhhhh—!
Even as the train let out a long exhalation of steam, the person she was waiting for did not appear.
“My lady, do not distress yourself. That gentleman always holds my lady in his……”
“Thoughts? Sure, perhaps.”
Isabelle answered icily and turned her head away, slapping aside the hand that had been patting her shoulder.
This tidy knight, assigned to her by the Tiless royal house under the pretext of being an escort officer, wore an awkward smile and withdrew.
Moron. Cretin. Useless creature.
A contemptible animal who can’t so much as get angry when insulted, who tries to paper over hurt feelings by forcing a smile.
To her, most people are animals. Not in the biological sense, but in the sense of being nothing more than beasts.
Father.
Her memories of the Hero, Maximilien, are only faint. The Hero spent most of his time on the battlefield, and during that time she stayed in the court with her mother.
Each time the Hero’s renown rose higher, the expressions of the people approaching her grew simpler.
Nothing but good-natured smiles from those wanting to curry favor with the protagonist of the future.
Only natural. If one supposes the Hero might actually strike down the Demon King—
—then after the Demon King’s death, the entire political landscape would turn on the Hero as its axis. They say individual power cannot defeat the collective, but if one holds power and achievements that overwhelm the collective, then even a nation comes to belong to the individual.
Accordingly, the Tiless royal house strove to win her favor. Because with the Hero unreachable, that was the only way to make a good impression on him.
However venomous the words she spat, however she heaped abuse on them, they only smiled.
Every visible face wearing the same expression, as though at a masquerade ball—
—does not, at the very least, exert a particularly positive influence on a child’s emotional development.
“Get lost. I can’t stand the sight of you.”
“But my lady, I……”
“Shut your mouth.”
At Isabelle’s words the knight edged back. He bowed with a gentle smile and left the compartment.
Alone at last in the compartment, Isabelle muttered with a bitter smile.
“Moron.”
Remembering clearly the way the knight’s expression had twisted like a vengeful spirit’s the instant before the door closed—that is, when he had turned his head and looked away.
The Hero’s blood relative, Isabelle, possessed senses unmatched by others. Enough that a change in someone’s expression, even glimpsed for the briefest moment, could be caught in an instant.
Which is exactly why she’s like this. Because she learned far too early that everyone around her always found her unpleasant.
Therefore—
“Cretin…….”
She sneered at herself and sank into her seat.
A girl who doesn’t know how to express anything but anger and derision.
A self-destructive lunatic who is only reassured once she has finally seen others lose their temper.
Severe affection deprivation, believing only others’ hatred to be sincere.
Separation anxiety, endlessly waiting for a father whose memory has already grown faint, and resenting him at the same time.
That was the self-diagnosis she had rendered.
***
“We’ll be taking our leave now, Sir Petrovich.”
“Still using the expression ‘we,’ I see. Do you intend to boast that you all came together?”
“Th-that…… uhh…… ummm…….”
“Did I not tell you that expression must be precise, action decisive, and intent always concealed in the deepest place.”
“Uuuhh, sss-so……”
The agents were, to a man, screaming internally.
Lieutenant Colonel Dmitri!! You said this man was extremely taciturn!! You’re a monster, Petrovich!! I hate you, Ivan. Forever…….
As the crisis of an 18-hour edifying lecture with a special supplementary duty-training course tacked on drew near, the agents went pale, offered perfunctory farewells, and departed.
The mission handed to them was to protect Oscar, the son of the Knight Gilbert.
Ivan, who had applied himself to the instruction half to shake off those shackles Dmitri had attached and half in earnest, watched Isabelle boarding the train from the station platform and thought:
Lucky.
Because shaking off the Counterintelligence Command’s agents and protecting Oscar meant catching 2 rabbits at once.
Ivan boarded the train lightly, feeling as though he’d thrown off 2 burdens.
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