Her mother had been an unfaithful woman. And she was the product of her mother's sin.

Her father knew it, too, but could not cast her mother out.

Her father was a knight of common birth, while her mother was the daughter of a noble house—an undistinguished one, but noble nonetheless. He desperately needed her family's standing to overcome his comrades' contempt and his master's veiled disdain.

So he chose to cover up her infidelity.

That decision made everyone miserable.

Whenever her father drank, he flew into a rage at her mother. Rather than bow her head and apologize, her mother disparaged his birth and reviled him in turn.

Every day, they hurled venom and hatred at each other. At those times, the little girl felt it was all her fault. Not knowing what to do, she could only wail.

No one comforted her. Her father could barely manage his own feelings, and her mother cared for nothing but adorning herself.

Her father channeled his anger and hatred into training. His passion and talent for the sword had been exceptional enough to earn him a knighthood despite his common birth, and he soon became his lord's most important knight.

Naturally, he spent more and more time away from the estate.

Her parents' quarrels gradually grew less frequent, until she no longer had occasion to cry helplessly over them.

But that did not mean her childhood became peaceful.

Her mother blamed the discovery of her infidelity on the girl's subtly inhuman features. Afraid that others might learn of it, she locked her daughter inside the estate. Cruel insults and beatings came with the confinement.

Confined to a small building on the estate, she withered under her own mother's abuse.

Then, when she was thirteen, her mother came to see her.

She was terrified. Only later did the girl learn that the family that had protected her mother had incurred a great lord's enmity and been destroyed.

"Let's run away. If we stay here, that man won't leave either of us unharmed."

Before fleeing the estate, her mother had come to ask her to escape with her.

It was not out of maternal love.

"Even if he doesn't recognize me, he'll recognize his own child. You look just like him."

It was for the sake of someone who might no longer recognize her, now that she had grown old and plain.

And so, without understanding anything, she was led by the hand into the world beyond the estate for the first time in her life.

But before she could discover how vast that world was, the pursuers her father had sent found them. Not even half a day had passed since their escape.

"H-he'll come to save us."

Even as her father's men dragged her away, her mother babbled like a madwoman.

When they were brought back to the estate, all that awaited them were scarlet flames and mangled corpses.

A group of figures in green cloaks greeted them from amid the bodies.

"Ah! He must have sent them to save me!"

Her mother spoke in rapture, as though intoxicated by the fresh fragrance emanating from the strangers.

Then one of the strangers threw back her cloak and revealed her face. She was so beautiful that even her long ears could not be considered a flaw.

The woman looked at the girl, then raised a hand. The strangers vanished from sight in an instant, and her father's men fell, spraying blood.

"I knew it! Did he tell you to save me? Where is he now?" her mother asked joyfully.

"I want to see him again as soon as possible. Please take me to—"

Her head was severed while that excitement was still on her face, killing her.

THUD!

The head rolled across the ground. The girl watched her mother's head roll.

No tears came.

While she stared blankly at her mother's head, someone arrived.

Her father.

"How dare you..."

Seeing the burning estate and his decapitated men, he drew his sword. Brilliant light bloomed at its tip.

"A knight who can wield an Aura Blade, in a rural estate like this? How surprising."

The beautiful woman's eyes widened at the light. Her expression was exaggerated, more mocking than genuinely surprised. Her father rebuked her sternly.

"Get away from that child!"

"Surely those ears told you she was another man's child. Does raising a child matter more than blood?"

"Shut your mouth, you wicked creature! Get away from her!"

"Oh dear. For all your lofty swordsmanship, you know nothing of how to treat a lady. Though I suppose that explains why your wife lay with another man."

Unable to endure the insult, her father lunged at the woman.

Without warning, she seized the girl by the scruff of the neck and hurled her at him.

"Hah!"

Her father caught her with a sharp gasp.

It was the first time he had ever held her.

SPLASH!

Before she could even take in the feeling of his embrace, hot liquid covered her face.

"Urk."

A moment later, an ugly groan reached her ears. She looked up.

A sword had pierced her father's chest. The woman twisted it and smiled brightly.

"What a pity. If not for my mission, I could have savored this a little longer."

"What... do you intend to do... with the child...?"

"You're still worried about her, even in this state?"

"Shut up and answer me."

"Don't worry. Her father is the noblest of all our people. In human terms, you could call him a king."

Her father coughed up blood and looked down at her.

She had never seen that look on his face before.

"At least... that's... something."

Relief crossed his face.

But only for a moment.

"Not that she's anything more than a mongrel tainted with filthy human blood."

Her father's eyes went wide.

"You..."

The woman laughed shrilly at his contorted face. She looked as sated as a well-fed cat.

As he tried to speak again, the woman twisted her sword.

SPLASH!

His flesh tore apart, spilling blood. It drenched the girl as she stood there blankly.

Whatever pleased the woman so much, she laughed for a long time.

Then she abruptly stopped and peered at the blood-soaked girl.

"Oh, you poor thing. You lost both your mother and father before your very eyes. Though he wasn't your real father."

She sounded genuinely sorrowful.

"Aren't you sad? Or are you too sad even to cry?"

The woman asked, but the girl could not answer.

"Well, that isn't important right now."

With that, she ordered the stranger beside her, "Tell the Sword-singers waiting nearby to erase every trace."

The stranger vanished without a sound.

"Tsk. All this trouble because of that philanderer of a king."

After grumbling discontentedly, the woman turned back to the girl.

"Come along with me, now. There are plenty of children just like you."

She dared not refuse. Killing intent still gleamed in the woman's eyes, not yet cooled.

She nodded.

And so the girl, Gunne, was collected by the Elves.

That was how she first met Sigrun.

Afterward, Sigrun visited several more places, collecting Half-Elves and sending them to the forest. Gunne was among them.

Many Half-Elves were already there when she arrived. Some were adults, while others were children around her own age. She was told they had all come to the forest through circumstances similar to hers.

Alongside them, she learned the Elves' swordsmanship and a handful of melodies.

Through their horrific training, instinctive obedience to pureblood Elves took root in their hearts. Fear of the High Elves, above all, was branded deep into their souls.

Stripped of every emotion but obedience and fear, they became Sword Maidens.

They were secretly dispatched across the continent in place of the pureblood Elves, fighting and dying. Newly arrived children filled the places of those who died.

Eventually, none of the Half-Elves who had arrived before Gunne remained. She became the first sword among the nineteen Sword Maidens.

After spending some time shut away in the forest, she received a new mission: to rescue a young boy from a battlefield overrun by Orcs.

In the midst of that battlefield, where Orcs rampaged in a frenzy, Gunne and the Sword Maidens found a dying boy—a young prince who would not release a shabby horn even as he lay unconscious, covered in blood.

That blood-soaked young prince became their master.

In truth, who their master was mattered little to Gunne and the Sword Maidens. They did as they were told, and died if ordered to die.

They obeyed him simply because the Elder High Elf had told them to.

Even when their tongues were cut out, they dared not harbor resentment. They were nothing more than livestock.

Gunne and the Sword Maidens were mere puppets, driven by obedience and fear.

That was how it had been at first. Certainly, it had been.

Then, at some point, things changed.

The moment their young master sang and brandished his sword before the King of Orcs—

CRACK!

—the brand of subservience engraved upon their souls shattered.

Nothing had remained within them but fear of and obedience to the High Elves. Now even those were gone.

Their souls were utterly empty.

Into that emptiness seeped profound grief and regret, unfiltered: the emotions of the prince sobbing before the dark-green king's corpse.

The Sword Maidens' empty souls began to fill once more.

Thus, when they regained the emotions they had lacked, even if those feelings were not their own, the creatures who had been mere livestock could at last become human again.

Not subservience, but resonance.

Perhaps that was why the Sword Maidens, who had never acted without orders, stepped forward of their own accord when the Elder High Elf threatened the young prince.

They even refused his command to withdraw.

They were prepared to do far more if it meant saving him from that wicked Elder High Elf.

Even if it ended in their deaths.

The Sword Maidens could not withstand even a moment of the Elder High Elf's playful sword strokes. Before Gunne's eyes, they died horribly, each of them a comrade, a friend, a sister.

To her surprise, she felt sorrow.

She could not tell whether it was the prince's emotion or truly her own. She was simply grateful that she could grieve another's death.

Following the other Sword Maidens, she too offered her life for the prince.

She was happy.

Their end was one they had chosen for themselves. And the knowledge that someone would grieve for them felt so very good.

But she did not show it.

["Revenge."]

When the prince asked why they would go so far for him, she told him it was merely revenge.

The young prince never turned away from the deaths around him, but shouldered every one of them. She did not want him to take on their deaths as yet another burden.

When the cunning Elder High Elf shattered her sword to shred the prince's body, Gunne threw herself forward without hesitation.

Through the agony of her body being torn apart, she saw the prince.

Enraged as never before, he brought his sword down at the Elder High Elf. Then he lost consciousness.

Enduring the pain of her torn body, Gunne hoisted the prince onto her back.

She fled desperately. Until she could no longer sense the Elder High Elf's presence. Until she found somewhere to hide him.

At last, she reached a rocky area and concealed the prince. Then she, too, lost consciousness.

Ever since then, the prince had treated Gunne and the Sword Maidens with unconditional trust and affection.

His deliberate choice of Gunne as his messenger to the High Elf came from that same sentiment.

He must have wanted her, once worked like livestock by the Elves, to stand proudly before them, even if she had to borrow her master's name to do it. He must have hoped she could thereby shake off the last vestiges of fear in her heart.

That was why she had wanted to carry out his command flawlessly.

But she had failed.

The moment she confronted the High Elf's distinctive presence, her limbs froze like a frog before a snake. Though she knew that shrinking back would diminish her master's dignity, she had behaved so pitifully.

And so she felt guilty. She loathed herself for failing to repay his trust.

Yet her master did not blame her. Instead, he even patted her shoulder and thanked her for her efforts.

That only made her guilt worse.

But that was not the end of it.

She heard that her master was going to cross swords with the High Elf. Startled, she rushed straight to the training grounds and found him there.

Before the match, he gave her a small smile.

As though to say, "I'll avenge you."

She had to stop him.

Her master's strength came from his poetry. Using it before a High Elf could do him no good.

They were monsters who could weave another's poem into their own melody on the spot and perform a Sword Dance to it.

But she was too late.

The High Elf began tapping out a rhythm with light kicks against the ground. The distinctive energy that heralded the start of a melody spread in every direction.

She could no longer intervene.

"Ah..."

As she let out a distressed sigh, her master suddenly stamped hard and drove his foot down.

CRUNCH!

The sound of solid ground shattering rang across the training grounds.

At that moment, the High Elf's expression changed. That foot had merely shattered empty ground, never even touching him.

"You were going to pretend you'd fallen for my taunts and take home a few lines of poetry, weren't you?" her master said.

"Unfortunately for you, you won't get a single line."

As though he had known everything from the start.

The High Elf picked up the rhythm. Her master stamped hard several times, disrupting it.

The High Elf's expression stiffened.

"An interesting trick."

But that lasted only a moment. Soon he was prattling away again with an untroubled expression.

"Surely you don't imagine you can defeat a Sword Dance with that childish footwork?"

The High Elf curled his lips in a smile of blatant mockery.

Gunne clenched her fists in dismay. She had thought her master's improvisation might be a way to break the melody.

"Orcs roar fiercely and thunderously. Giants take great, powerful strides. The Dwarves' iron guns and weapons are no less noisy than Orcs or giants. Yet none of that has ever allowed them to defeat our people's Sword Dance."

With that, the High Elf swept his sword gracefully through the air.

HUMMM!

The Elf's sword began to ring with a clear note.

"If mere noise and clamor could defeat our secret art, our people would have perished along with the Sword Dance long ago."

"Just as I thought."

Her master answered the High Elf's arrogant words without concern. Only then did Gunne look back at his face.

"Well, I wasn't really expecting much. I was only testing it."

He was smiling.

"I've got something else for the real thing."

It was that arrogant smile peculiar to her master, as though everyone else were beneath him.

He raised his sword and extended it. The brilliant light that had slaughtered countless foes gathered upon it—the purest of energies, drawn from a single heart.

Brimming with sword light, his blade began to sing.

"I woke up from a little nap and found an interesting art making the rounds."

But the sound and pulses were unlike those his sword usually produced.

HUMM, HUMMMM!

It sounded as though several sources of energy, rather than one, were resonating together.

It was like...

"The Mana Chain, they call it."

...something a Knight of the Ring might use.

"Whatever else it can do, this thing is astonishingly good at resonating with someone else's mana."