Dean Molsen. That was the count's name. From childhood, Dean had possessed extraordinary talent.

"He has a gift for sensing mana."

"He picks up swordsmanship quite readily, too."

"His intellect would qualify him to serve as an administrator in the capital."

Exceptional talent, a family to support him, and excellent teachers. That was how Dean grew up.

He lacked for nothing. His world held magic, his father, and his mother, and almost everything went his way. To a young man so gifted, the world was a very easy place.

His twenties passed. His thirties slipped by.

He killed two uncles who coveted the position of head of the house. He did it with a sword, not magic. It was nothing particularly remarkable, but his father marveled.

"You truly are extraordinary, even if you are my son."

After that, Dean learned that taking a human life was all too easy as well.

How far into his thirties had he been? He inherited the position of head of the house. His father would look at him with fear in his eyes.

Why?

It had started after he began involving himself in the family's affairs, large and small. His father kept making the wrong choices in matters that required only a little thought. Dean corrected them behind the scenes. To his face, he spoke bluntly. Sometimes he let something like contempt show.

The eyes that had once regarded him with pride gradually changed. Then came the time Dean openly challenged one of his father's decisions. Dean knew he was right, but his father shouted at him.

"It is for our dignity as nobles!"

A crude pretext. An excuse. Was he supposed to play along when he knew better? Dean did not.

"How despicable."

At those emotionless words, his father relinquished the house. His mother had never been one to offer affection in the first place.

That was how Dean became head of the house. Several years later, his parents fell for a neighboring domain's scheme and incurred an enormous debt in Krona. For his mother, it was gambling. For his father, drink.

Nobles were usually given some leeway in such matters, but the neighboring lord offered none. He drove Dean's father to the brink, and his father hanged himself. His mother followed him in death.

'Was I too indifferent?'

But there was no rule saying one had to love someone simply because they were one's parents. Still, shouldn't he avenge them? He decided he would.

Half a year was all it took.

"Have mercy."

The neighboring lord knelt, but Dean cut off his head. The revenge brought him no satisfaction.

House Molsen had been no more than a middling count's house until then. It began to grow, and exactly three years later, Dean saw people gathering around him. Through his own actions, the house's military might and political power were expanding as never before.

That was what prompted the question.

'Why should I remain confined here?'

The instant he asked himself, the answer came. There was no reason he should. A bird must leave its egg to fly. Dean decided to broaden his world a little. Beyond the egg lay a wider world.

'The throne.'

That was when his hunger for power awoke. Everything in the world had come easily to him, so he expected this to be easy too. And it truly had been one easy thing after another, right up until a man broke through ten thousand wraiths to stand in his way.

* * *

"Quite well."

Encrid answered the question of how without much thought. His arms were shaking, but he could still move them. That was enough.

"Hah."

The count let out a sigh. He could see the men behind Encrid.

The barbarian soldier stared quietly at him, his axe head resting on one shoulder. The bored-looking swordsman held a sword snapped in half and was shaking blood from his hair. Beside him, a huge soldier was tending to his twisted forearm with a gentle smile. He set the bone without losing that smile, as though it did not hurt at all.

Last came the assassin who had attacked him before he summoned the wraiths. The man held a short stiletto in his right hand. He looked as though he were asking whether the count was ready to die.

The count raised a hand to his chin and surveyed them again. He had never anticipated these men.

If everything failed and he died, he had expected to die surrounded by three knights or so. He had expected Naurilia to fall as a result, too. This was entirely unexpected.

His bewilderment was brief. A hollow sense of futility took its place, enough to make him laugh. The count laughed aloud, then asked,

"Is it not only natural for the most capable to stand at the very top?"

He was asking why they stood in his way.

"That's why we're here."

At Encrid's answer, the count wanted to seize his tongue and stretch it out. The bastard seemed to keep every answer so short. It made him wonder what would happen if he forcibly lengthened that tongue.

"Yes. Words were never going to settle this."

The count reached out as he spoke. Black soot gathered in the air along the path of his hand, then became a bird and flew at them. It took longer to describe than to happen: the moment he raised his hand, the bird appeared and flew.

Had Esther been there, she would have recognized the spell as Charlner's Vitality-Stealing Crow, a form of necromantic summoning. But no one present knew its name.

Rather than identify it, they reacted. As the black bird swooped toward Encrid, a dagger flew into it.

BANG!

The bird exploded in midair. The dagger shattered into three pieces that flew off to either side. The count frowned.

'An artifact?'

No. What mad enchanter would inscribe a spell like that on a throwing dagger? That went beyond wastefulness into insanity. A scroll had been wrapped around the dagger before it was thrown.

An unusual method. Naturally, Jaxon had thrown it. He held several similar daggers.

"I will be the one to sit upon the throne."

Even now, the count remained resolute. They might have broken through the wraiths, but of course he would not simply let them defeat him.

He kept sending out Charlner's Vitality-Stealing Crows while casting another spell. Dark-red masses appeared in the air and became living blades. They flew of their own accord toward Encrid.

A bear of a man stepped into their path.

"Poor souls, unable even to reach the Lord."

Murmuring, he set his hands and feet in motion. His strikes were astonishingly swift for his size, and the dark-red blades burst in midair beneath them.

'These bastards.'

The count reclaimed some of his wraiths. Several groups of Wraith soldiers attacking the troops crumbled to the ground and vanished, dissipating into the air like fading mist.

"Rise, Wraith General!"

It was a spell formed by reclaiming and combining wraiths. A mass wielding a black greatsword took shape before the count. It was even larger than Audin.

Ragna stood in its way. No one had noticed him shuffle forward, dragging his feet, before he raised his head. With his half-broken sword, he struck without a word.

Before the creature with the black greatsword could react, Ragna's blade slit its throat, split its chest, and severed it at the waist.

Encrid almost found himself marveling at Ragna's talent all over again. What had he just done?

He had swung three times in a single breath. All three cuts had traveled in different directions, yet they looked like a single movement. He had eliminated the recovery between swings, calculating and minimizing the blade's path as he moved.

A high horizontal cut flowed into a vertical downward cut, followed by a final mid-level horizontal cut. Every stroke held the Will of Scission.

It was like drawing a picture with a sword, but so swift and bold that the opponent could never have hoped to block it. Encrid doubted he could have blocked it himself.

After those swings, Ragna took two steps back and dropped to a sitting position. He had clearly fallen, yet...

"Whew. Time to watch for a while."

He spoke with perfect composure, saying it as though he had sat down on purpose.

The count nearly gaped. What was that man? A Wraith General that could devour most proto knights had died in a single swing? To the count, it had looked like just one.

Something like alarm filled his chest. He felt at a loss, too, but forced the feeling aside. He still had means at his disposal, didn't he?

The count bit down on his tongue with his molars.

CRUNCH.

The metallic smell of blood rose from his severed tongue. The count opened his mouth, and bright-red blood streamed down from its corners.

He drew his left hand in front of his chest. Rather than falling, the blood flowing from his mouth gathered above his hand.

"Come forth, Guardian Clot."

The count spoke as he swung the staff in his right hand. At his call, the clot above his left hand began to writhe and swell. In the blink of an eye, it grew to human size, and arms and legs sprang out.

Once he had given the summon form, he naturally had to fill it. To do that, he had to reclaim more of the Wraith soldiers he had sent across the battlefield.

Naturally, the battlefield grew quieter. More soldiers were saved at the very brink of death. Most of those possessed by wraiths returned to normal as well. In his urgency, the count was pouring everything into this spot, the rest of the battlefield be damned.

Soon a blood golem stood before him, its entire body blood-red save for two eye sockets.

"You've worked some freakish spells into this thing too? Judging by those tricks, you were in bed with the Ageless Madman, weren't you?"

It was the barbarian warrior speaking. When the count looked at him, the man was taking something from inside his clothes.

From behind the golem, the count watched. It was not hard to guess what the object was, since the barbarian had begun spinning it over his head.

He had taken out a sling, loaded it with a spherical bullet, and begun whirling it. The motion he had started as soon as the golem began to appear now announced itself with a sound.

WHUM, WHUM, WHUM, WHIRRRR.

For ammunition, Rem had used the orb talisman, the last totem he had taken from the Ageless Madman. He had never expected to use it as a bullet, but this was the perfect occasion.

WHIRRRRRRRR!

The noise sent a chill down every spine that heard it, friend or foe. The golem turned toward the sound of the sling cutting through the air.

The spell-born golem brought its hands together, intending to unleash a stream of blood. Watching it, Rem moved his arm.

WHIRRR, WHUM!

The noise above Rem's head stopped abruptly. At the same moment, another sound erupted.

BANG!

It came from the blood golem's head.

Ordinarily, a physical blow alone should have done nothing to the golem. But the projectile was very special: a crystallization of the spells the Ageless Madman had accumulated over more than a decade. It detonated, annihilating itself along with the golem's vitality. That was what caused the explosion.

"Urgh."

The count clutched his chest with his left hand and planted the staff in his right against the ground. A sudden sense of loss and emptiness struck him so hard that his heart seemed to stop.

He knew the golem was dead. An endless tide of loss washed over him, stirring bleak emotions. He had woven the summon from his own blood and heart. It should never have been defeated so easily.

"You bastards!"

The count shouted in fury. Having used his last shamanic tool, Rem felt all the strength drain from his body.

'Am I going to die like this?'

Surely not. But he felt weak enough for the thought to cross his mind. The price of using talismans imbued with someone else's shamanic power was coming due.

Rem lost his balance and swayed backward, landing hard on his backside. He glanced at Ragna, who happened to be right beside him, and said,

"Time to watch."

Ragna nodded. Their eyes met in understanding. Neither had the strength to insult the other, and this was no time to be at odds. For once, they seemed entirely of one mind.

Audin, too, had been unable to destroy the dark-red blades unaided. He had briefly endured his bindings to imbue his blows with divine power. Compared with the blood golem, the flying swords were no easy opponents either.

They were, in fact, magical life-forms normally seen only in the Demonic Realm, manifested through spells. The count's ability was truly remarkable.

There was no avoiding the pain of the bindings now.

'Father, forgive me.'

Audin briefly drew up his divine power, containing it to protect his body rather than radiating light.

'My left hand is a treasured blade, and my right is steel.'

With bare hands, it was sword and stone. Now that he held even a little divine power, it was a treasured blade and iron.

Audin's left hand met an incoming blade.

CLANG!

The dark-red sword broke against his treasured blade. Then his right hand struck.

BANG!

The mangled dark-red blade lost its power, flew aside, and buried itself in the ground. Bent at a right angle, it crumbled like dust as the wraith inside it lost its strength and vanished.

He crushed every dark-red blade that way, one by one. Then the pain of the bindings raced through his entire body. It seemed he would be unable to move for a while.

His limbs trembled violently. Soon his body stiffened like a log, leaving him no choice but to stand there blankly.

"Tch."

Watching him, Rem clicked his tongue. Why wasn't that bastard falling over?

"Hmm."

Ragna glanced at him too and frowned. It was an irritating sight. The religious nut should have fallen too.