The practice yard in the middle of Kyrie’s camp.

Dawn, when everyone slept except the sentries.

“My head’s full of thoughts about the sword.”

Ching!

Feijin’s practice blade traced a crescent and cut straight through the crescent Joi had been drawing.

“Ah—my apologies.”

Joi felt cold sweat as the blunted edge halted at her throat.

She felt stronger than before, but against Feijin it was like running into the same wall over and over.

“Let’s rest a moment.”

Feijin perched casually on a log at the yard’s edge.

Joi sat a little ways off and caught her breath.

I haven’t been found out yet.

A Knight’s five senses were beyond human by a vast margin.

No matter how Joi used beeswax and every cosmetic in the box to disguise herself almost like special effects, he might still pick out her scent, her bone structure, the minute color difference between wax and real skin.

Of course, Feijin might not care at all.

Those born human who became superhuman made a habit of smashing common sense and then living just fine to flaunt their toughness.

But there was no need to gamble.

That was why Joi wore armor even in this heat.

“Adjutant—do you know the poetry culture of the Eastern Continent?”

Feijin tossed a question across.

“Sir?”

“The poetry of the East.”

“Heh. I’ve lived with the army since before I was ten. I know brave war odes and scandalous love tales, but I’ve never heard a thing about Eastern poetry.”

“There’s a line in a poem I know.”

Feijin closed his eyes, calm, and recited.

“‘The dross of forty years caked on my whole body—I wash it all away in a thousand channels of clear water. If a speck settles upon my five viscera, I’ll split my belly and send it down the flow.’”

“Eek?! Split what? That’s terrifying!”

“Well, a bit of a distorted quotation, but in any case—if you’ve got stray thoughts inside, you cut them open and let them out. If you bottle even dust, it’ll turn bad.”

“Sir, really. How could anyone vomit it up every time something snags? In this shitty world, you live long enough, filth piles up and grime sticks.”

Even with his eyes closed, Joi felt as if his gaze speared straight through her.

“You grab the sword every time something snags. Don’t you?”

“...”

“A Knight is someone who ignores sex, time, poverty, wealth, and station and can still handle the consequences of living as they please. If you want to be a Knight, live like one. What is it you have inside you that makes the moonlight around you so dark?”

Feijin asked, gentle and incisive at once.

Joi hesitated, then opened her mouth.

“Don’t laugh at me.”

“All right.”

“To be blunt—lately I think I’ve gotten stronger.”

“You have. Power, speed, reaction—steadily better. Your weight’s up too. It means nerves, muscles, bones are surpassing Retainer rank.”

“So I thought I’d gotten a little closer to Lord Kyrie… but lately Lord Kyrie’s been looking after Princess Erica and the Rykenta Navigators, hasn’t he? Seeing that made it feel hopeless. At this rate, it’s like climbing the little hill behind the village and saying, ‘Mm. Closer to the stars, so they look clearer.’”

“Pfft!”

Feijin snorted.

“You said you wouldn’t laugh!”

Joi almost swore.

“Sorry, sorry. It was just too funny.”

“Sir Feijin!”

“But think it through once more.”

Feijin smiled like the crescent she’d been tracing.

“Princess Erica is a direct, pure-blood line like Lady Andromeda of the main house. In the natural order, not only I but even my employer, Lord Kyrie, shouldn’t be able to look up to her.”

“You mean she’s beyond comparison?”

“No.”

“Then—”

“When I just said ‘Lady Andromeda,’ didn’t you flinch inside?”

Joi’s face went crimson; she bowed her head.

“You’re going well. You, and I. We were born in different places, at different speeds, and we’ll die in different places—but what matters is that we’re going in the right direction.”

Feijin was right.

She was still only strong for a Retainer, and she’d been staring too far afield.

“To say you compared yourself to a princess of Rykenta is—pfft—pffft!”

“Sir Feijin!”

“It means you’ve worked hard enough to gain that kind of confidence.”

“You’re not going to scold me as an arrogant scrub?”

“Better to die arrogant than live cringing. Isn’t that a Knight’s life?”

“...”

But Feijin said it wasn’t a bad thing.

“Look.”

Feijin opened his hand.

She squeezed her eyes shut and focused.

She sweated enough to bead more than she had during the bout.

How many seconds passed?

Bzzzt!

A tiny electric spark jumped.

“Sir Feijin?!”

Joi raised her voice without meaning to.

It was unmistakably thundercraft.

“After taking Lord Kyrie’s thundercraft baptism long enough, I can at least do this.”

Feijin opened his eyes, wearing the most pleased expression in the world.

“Of course, compared to Lord Kyrie it’s the sun versus a firefly—but either way, it started to shine.”

Joi looked at Feijin, feeling swelling pride and embarrassment at once.

“We’re going the right way. Keep going. We serve a lord who tells us where we stand.”

“Yes.”

“And, Princess Erica is probably very conscious of you.”

“Sir?”

“You’re the adjutant. The one who stays with Lord Kyrie the longest.”

Feijin curved a smile oddly ill-suited to him.

It was a smile Joi herself often wore.

Joi started to ask what he meant, then let it go.

“...Shall we continue?”

“Good.”

First came power.

At least until the day she could stand at Kyrie’s side with this damned disguise thrown off.

Around sunrise—

Dudududududu…

“Huh?”

A faint tremor rolled from the west.

“Cavalry?”

“Ordinary cavalry wouldn’t do that.”

Joi ran for the West Gate to see who it was.

Heavy cavalry on warhorses two or three times the size of ordinary mounts came thundering in, capes and pennants of many colors streaming.

“Blue Knight Necron of Tonatio Astreos, Heavy Cavalry!”

At their head, a man who looked very much like Nereus rode a black-furred two-horned steed.

Gracus had launched attacks large and small over the last few days, but got little for it.

What the hell did he take to boost his mana like that!

There was a day when, as soon as the fighting started, Kyrie dropped close to twenty Heavenstrikes, crushing morale so badly Gracus couldn’t even give the order to charge.

Of course, Governor Gracus—if he felt like it—could drop eighty, ninety bolts.

But the problem was that the man dropping them was a young Blue Knight barely into his twenties.

It’s only been a few months. And in those few months he came this far.

Worse, the other side still seemed to be growing.

First assault: seventeen Heavenstrikes. Second: nineteen. Day before yesterday: twenty-one. Today: twenty-two.

He swore by the stars—it was far likelier that the boy had been able to drop twenty-two from the start and staged the increases by one a day.

Even the most vaunted direct pure-bloods found it hard to grow fast enough to add a Heavenstrike every day or two.

“Any word from Lord Traysan?”

“No, sir.”

“The Three brothers aren’t answering either?”

“Correct.”

“The surrounding Blue Knights and knight-lords aren’t answering summons.”

“Izmael must have moved. Hold a little longer and they’ll answer with loyalty.”

Gracus stopped wasting thought on flattering his enemy and focused on the problem at hand.

“No. Spare me the flattery. You think I’m a pig happy to be praised?”

“Your Excellency! How can you say such—!”

“At least one thing’s clear. Traysan no longer backs me.”

“It’s only because Andromeda hedges him. Wait a little longer and you’ll receive the due treatment you deserve.”

“‘Won’t’ and ‘can’t’ look the same. If he really wanted to help me, he’d have come himself. The royal-collusion rumor must have been the critical hit. Even His Highness the Patriarch couldn’t let that pass.”

“Your Excellency…”

It would be hard to reinforce his Blue Knight strength.

Traysan seemed thoroughly spooked.

When former sub-patriarch Okeanos died suppressing an undead army in the Corpse Wasteland, Traysan charged at the risk of his life and brought back his sword and hair. So the image took root: the reckless direct line that ruined the plan by charging, and the cadet line that cleaned up and saved them all.

But now the rumor goes that Traysan killed Okeanos.

For a sure victory, nothing beat a personal expedition.

If he buckled on armor and took the van, he could surely win.

But do that, and the rumor that Gracus had joined the Royal Stellite Line to kill Kyrie would become fact.

He had to keep it framed as a senior disciplining an insolent junior.

“Pick the timing to shove in the common infantry. Plan for heavy casualties.”

“Sir?”

“Their Blue Knight strength is relatively superior, but their common troops are only in the low thousands. They can’t extend the line forever. If we only burn the grain and stores piled in there, it’s our victory.”

Gracus’s eyes gleamed like pearls in a clam.

“Your Excellency!”

Bang!

A scout came running, eyes round as plates.

“What’s the racket!”

“H-heavy cavalry! Heavy cavalry!”

“What?”

“Nereus has called in heavy cavalry! At least four hundred—no, five hundred lances, by the look!”

Dudududu…

The West Gate opened and the heavy cavalry rode in.

“Whoa.”

Cries of admiration rose everywhere.

Riders trained and their warhorses bred and modified to receive thundercraft Physical Reinforcement, drilled day and night.

The heavy cavalry wore armor in a single color from head to toe.

Even their capes and the horses’ barding matched, so each man stood out in sharp relief.

Intimidating.

Kyrie gauged numbers through his bio-radar.

At least a bit over four hundred; about a hundred Knights, some two hundred Navigators, and fewer than a hundred Retainers.

Here and there, perhaps ten men without helms—those were the Blue Knights.

One and all they raised their own bio-radar and canceled out Kyrie’s field.

Heavy cavalry indeed.

It meant they were strong enough to notice and respond to Kyrie’s electromagnetics.

Barring the incomparable strength of direct pure-bloods or Elders, there was a reason that, as a unit, they were called the strongest arm.

This is…not great.

Kyrie took a step back before he knew it.

Not just splitting the band in two—they might take it outright.

Ten new Blue Knights, a hundred Knights.

Even now, a few of the Blue Knights Nereus called and a few independent Blue Knights of the heavy cavalry have joined on their own. They could swarm me like that, beat me down, throw me in some underground hole, then declare I fell into a coma under Gracus’s second assassination attempt and vow my revenge.

A sure way to pin Kyrie down.

You couldn’t trust to 【True-Energy Guidance: 5%】 against that.

Better to send them away quickly.

Kyrie moved toward Nereus and his uncle, with whom he’d only just begun to speak.

Nereus’s uncle, Necron, dismounted.

“Boy!”

“Uncle!”

They hugged once and got straight to it.

“Our house has certainly had no ties with the South till now.”

“Yes. Which is why you must wear the governor’s sash—or at least acting governor.”

“We need that even just to check that brat Kyrie. If he stabilizes Spiramentaon and, on that base, drives an anti-Rykenta policy to success, he’ll be a real giant.”

The Tonatio hallmark—sea-green eyes—flashed the same vertical glint in both men.

“Sir Necron. Well met.”

Kyrie approached them.

“Well met, Lord Kyrie.”

Formally, an adoptee outranked a Constellation.

Necron and Kyrie exchanged courtesies.

“If you’re willing, I invite you to luncheon. There, we can discuss division of command authority and separation of camps. We’re at war, so forgive the lack of ceremony.”

“N-not at all! That is perfectly phrased.”

Of course, the content was far from polite.

Saying he would go on inspection, Kyrie headed for the barricade like a man making his escape.

Necron watched his back until even the shadow of Kyrie’s cloak vanished.

“Impressive.”

“Yes.”

Nereus thought the same.

“I regret scolding you when you said you were second-rank.”

“It wasn’t that much.”

“It’s like he knows everything we want and tossed it out at once. He’s saying this city isn’t even something to negotiate over.”

“...”

“Usually when a man becomes an adoptee, he broods over how much he’ll rake in from below with that authority… but that one looks higher still. I wondered why a bastard-born would clash with Traysan—of course he would. A great house doesn’t need two senior adoptees.”

Necron nodded, as if Kyrie’s ambition made sense to him.

“I’m glad you’ve met such a match.”

“...”

Nereus thought Kyrie’s ambition might be greater still.

Chapter 92

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