Episode 32
* * *
When I came to my senses, I was defeated.
At least for Philip of Brandenburg, that sentence was not false.
By the time he joined them, the right wing cavalry had already been crushed, Sir Milvas and all of the Auror Knights had been killed. Baron Pucker’s left wing had long since been broken through, and the enemy cavalry, having broken both wings, had easily surrounded the entire main force after a flanking maneuver.
The black cavalry surrounding them on all sides is tightening the encirclement.
In comparison, there was no need to see the end of the Knights of St. Magdalene, who had lost their core force and whose morale had fallen to the ground. Every time the spear blades came near, soldiers were stabbed to death, entangled, crushed to death while backpedaling, and blood and entrails were scattered. There was death everywhere.
“Ah, ahh… … .”
The battlefield is where even the wisest of men become foolish. How much more so will the usual foolishness show itself on the battlefield.
The fear of defeat that seemed to squeeze his heart, the fingers pointed at him by people, the cold gaze of his father that would be directed at him, and most of all… … Dale’s gaze and cold sneer looking down at him, did not leave his mind.
“Prince Philip! Please make a decision!”
In his impatience, Philip clenched his lips.
“… … Break it.”
Philip muttered as he made his decision.
“What, what did you say?!”
“──It’s a Jade Smash!”
“yes……?”
Leaving the article behind, he blinked as if he was dumbfounded.
“The sword of our proud Knights of St. Magdalene may be broken but will never be defeated!”
Philip shouted as if he could never bend.
“All hands on deck, all hands on deck! Gather the remaining cavalry and reorganize your ranks! Then follow me! Prepare for the final charge!”
“Ha, hao na, lord! If you continue like that, we will all be destroyed… … .”
“Do you dare to disregard the orders of the Supreme Commander!”
Charge, charge, charge, Philip parroted.
Jade Death. It shatters beautifully like jade. Dying cleanly for honor or loyalty. It was truly beautiful to hear those words.
* * *
Gathering their last strength, the Knights of St. Magdalene under Philip charged, and broke through the siege more easily than expected.
‘I did it… …! I did it!’
But the moment when a life-threatening breakthrough turns into success, and the determination to face death turns into hope.
“Charging!”
As if they had been waiting, the ‘Auror Knights’ of the House of Saxony appeared there.
Retreat to the rear early to conserve energy, change armor, and replace your tired horse with a new war horse.
“Trampling everything that stands in your way!”
There was no need to disguise himself as one of the ragtag knights of the Baron Greenbelt.
The pitch-black armor symbolizing the Black Cavalry. A destroyer of the battlefield that charges like a tank. The black cavalry charged, showing off the ‘enormously large greatsword’ in the hands of the Auror Knight.
Zweihänder, a two-handed sword that is just under two meters long. And a pitch-black aura envelops the large sword without any gaps.
“For the Princes of Saxony and Dale!”
Phew!
The black sword of Saxony swept through like a storm, tearing apart everything that stood in its path like a sheet of paper.
Necks were cut, bodies were crushed, armor was crushed and shattered.
“Ah, ahh… … .”
The hope of breaking through the enemy’s encirclement and opening a way out was short-lived. The Knights of St. Magdalene, who had prepared to die, were literally being crushed.
It was a perfect strike that seemed to have been waiting for, and it meant only one thing.
It wasn’t a successful breakthrough. It was a deliberate opening of a way out. It was like the mole that lost the game of whack-a-mole.
A glimmer of hope faded away in an instant.
“Prince Philip. Please surrender now… … .”
Was it because of fear, or was it because the hope I had vaguely held until just before was betrayed?
“It is not a defeat unless the commander dies!”
Philip shouted at his subordinate’s request, which was almost a plea.
“Stop them! Stop them and protect me!”
“Oh, Your Majesty… … !”
“Shut up! I don’t care about the lives of my soldiers! Protect the commander even if it means sacrificing my life! Protect this body!”
In the commander’s determination to fight even to the death, one person was excluded.
* * *
The battle, which began as the dawn twilight began to rise in the eastern sky, ended only after the twilight of the day had begun to fall in the western sky. Darkness was quickly falling along the horizon.
“Everything from A to Z went according to Confucius’ plan! The operation was a complete success!”
“As expected, it is Prince Dale!”
“I dare not help but be in awe of the strategy of the Vale of Baskerville, Prince Dale!”
“… … .”
Also, among the Night Raven knights who could not suppress their joy of victory and loyalty, the enemy general who had been captured after fleeing was kneeling there.
With the bloody sea of the Knights of St. Magdalene spread out behind him, he stood in front of a monster that a dullard like himself could not catch up to even after a hundred years.
“It seems like you really don’t want to surrender.”
Dale opened his mouth to the eldest son of the Earl’s family, Philip.
Under a banner bearing the Saxon night raven emblem, with knights in pitch-black armour at their head.
“You may win the battle with your mean tricks and cowardly schemes… … .”
Philip shouted proudly.
“We may be broken, but we are not defeated!”
At those words, Dale glanced behind him. He saw a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood stretching endlessly along the horizon. It was the result of a proud death that did not surrender until the very end.
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“For someone who ran away to save himself, that’s a pretty plausible story.”
“I, as the commander of this battle, have a duty to survive until the end!”
“Oh, is that so?”
Dale answered as if it were someone else’s business.
“Well, now that the battle is over, there is no need to stay alive.”
Swish.
With his hand placed diagonally over the hilt of the sword at his waist.
It was just then.
“good night!”
Seeing Dale’s actions, Philip smiled with a sense of conversion.
“I will gladly accept your ‘offer to duel’!”
“… … ?”
Dale tilted his head at the unexpected words.
“I, Philip of Brandenburg, willingly accept the ‘one-on-one duel requested by Dale of Saxony with the fate of the battle at stake!’”
It’s a claim that’s just like the stubbornness of a child.
Sreung!
Philip quickly got up and boldly drew the knight’s sword from his waist.
And just as the knights of the House of Saxony were about to stop this outrageous act.
“great.”
Dale extended his arm to stop the knights, and nodded without hesitation.
“I accept the challenge.”
The moment I nodded, Philip smiled faintly. With that smile, he kicked the ground and ran.
Before Dale could even draw the hilt of his sword belt, it was a truly vile onslaught.
Phew!
The blade swung, and there was a very unrealistic sound, along with a scream like a pig being slit.
“Ahhhhh! Sa, save me! No, save me! Please, please save me! I’m begging you!”
“Even if you die soon, you won’t be able to become jade.”
This happened before the second hand on the clock had even moved a few times.
* * *
“Prince Dale’s procession!”
“The Master has returned victorious from battle!”
Because the messenger had brought news of victory early, and coincidentally, it was nearing Dale’s eleventh birthday.
The entire Saxony region was in the midst of a grand festival.
The Black Knight and the Holy Swordsman. A proxy war between two great lords who borrowed the names of mere barons.
The battle that took place on the Green Belt Plains was an overwhelming victory for the House of Saxony and the Knights of the Night Raven. Dale returned to his territory as a triumphant general who had won the battle.
With the endless procession of the Knights of the Night Raven, the pride of the House of Saxony, and a few prisoners of the Knights of St. Magdalene, including the eldest son of the Count’s house, Philip.
“We have successfully completed the ultimate siege and destruction against the Knights of St. Magdalene!”
“Even if a flock of crows pecks day and night for a week, the number of enemy corpses never decreases!”
Leaving behind the people’s hot praise and gossip about his achievements.
* * *
The Great Hall of the Duchy of Saxony.
Dale, wearing custom-made black armor and a surcoat, strode across the marble floor of the hall.
“Hey, brother!”
“Lize.”
Her two-year-old sister, Lize, who had just begun to speak, innocently called her brother’s name.
“Dale.”
The duke and duchess, seated on the throne in the synagogue, smiled before their son’s majestic triumph.
“Congratulations on your victory in your first battle, Prince Dale!”
“Thank you, Sir Helmut.”
Sir Helmut, Charlotte, and the elven sorceress Sepia. I crossed the hall, leaving behind familiar faces.
“Dale of Saxony, here I formally report the victory to His Majesty the Duke.”
Before the Black Duke’s throne, Dale knelt and bowed. The Duke of Saxony smiled, unable to hide his fatherly delight.
“You led the victory very well.”
“It was a victory possible because there was the sword of the House of Saxony.”
“Thank you, Lord Bale, for leading Dale so well.”
“It was all Confucius’s doing!”
Under the Duke of Saxony, Sir Bale, the adjutant knight who assisted Dale, bowed his head.
“You must be tired, having just returned from a battle.”
Following this, his mother Elena opened her mouth without hiding her worries about her son.
“First of all, I want you to get some rest.”
“Thank you, Mother.”
Dale bowed his head again, then straightened up.
The Duchy of Saxony. After months of fighting, it finally felt like we were back where we belonged.
Your own home, your own family.
It was a very strange feeling.
* * *
“All of the Knights of St. Magdalene, including Sir Milvas and Auror Knight, were killed… … .”
It was truly shocking news.
“His Majesty the Prince Philip was taken prisoner with a few of his servants, and a huge ransom was paid… … .”
“That damn Saxon brat… …!”
As I was terrified to hear the news of defeat that the messenger brought, a pure white aura wrapped around the blade of the holy sword. As if it was longing for a scapegoat who could explode this hatred at any moment.
The messenger’s expression froze white before the aura that was as splendid as an angel’s feather.
* * *
“Do you remember my death?”
The man asked. It was a corpse with a blade sticking out from behind, tearing through the chest.
“Remember our deaths.”
Dale, ten years old and clad in black armor and a surcoat, nodded, and the dead man spoke again.
“Remember death (Memento mori).”
With those words, the man’s figure disappeared from sight. However, the blade that had been stuck in the man’s body just a moment ago had already torn through Dale’s chest and was sticking out.
* * *
Every wizard has his or her own world, and the training of a wizard is the process of completing that world.
* * *
That night.
After leading the first battle safely to victory and closing my eyes in the duke’s bedroom, what came to Dale was not an easy nightmare.
The abyss of thought.
“… … .”
That day, the darkest landscape of the mind that was forcibly opened to form the 3rd circle. The world of one’s true self that cannot be escaped.
He sat cross-legged quietly on the bed, staring at his own palm. The cold air and the refined dark magic were intertwined, mimicking the double helix structure of DNA.
‘… … I actually couldn’t use it in real combat.’
I clenched my fist with all my might, leaving behind the swirling flow of magical power.
Clang!
Shards of cold and darkness scattered, as if a glass had been dropped.
The practice of controlling and refining one’s own imaginary world is the beginning and end of being a magician. But in that very ‘world’, one’s sleep is disturbed, and one’s side is aching from loneliness all the time.
It’s such an embarrassing and not even funny.
‘It’s not enough yet.’
The power to control your world more completely. The power to further upgrade your level as a wizard.
where?
There was only one answer that came to mind immediately.
As a renowned sword accompanies a renowned knight, so it is with a great magician.
‘Grimoire… … .’
After thinking about it, he turned his head. Sepia’s face came to mind without thinking. The elf with the crystal-colored eyes who believed in him as always, and her gentle smile.
After thinking about it, ask yourself:
‘… … After I turn 11, I’ll probably look more like a man, right?’
It was truly an idea worthy of an 11-year-old boy.
