In written accounts, transcendent beings such as Sword Masters and archmages were often described this way:

Those who had reached the realm of gods in human bodies.

Najin realized once again that there was not the slightest exaggeration in those words. The spectacle unfolding before him was more than worthy of being called a divine miracle.

The repercussions could be felt across an entire city. The tremors easily traveled thousands of meters.

It was far too great a disturbance to have been caused by a single human. They were not called transcendent beings merely for the sake of a grandiose name. They bore that name because they could accomplish things beyond human understanding.

Most people felt fear in the face of such immense power. They revered that overwhelming might, feared it, and regarded its wielders as beings entirely unlike themselves. The inquisitors covering their ears beside Najin were no exception, nor were the dark mages who would be cowering inside the city.

But there were always some humans who felt otherwise.

The boy standing here was one such example.

Najin lowered his hands from his ears and listened to the echoing sword's cry. He straightened the knees he had reflexively bent, raised his head, and took in the spectacle before him with wide-open eyes.

The corners of his mouth naturally lifted. His eyes, opened almost painfully wide, sparkled. Whatever that expression was, it certainly was not fear.

Excitement. Anticipation. Or perhaps interest.

The proposal in Yuel's letter. There was a reason Najin had accepted it immediately, without a moment's hesitation. As he had said before, he considered this a good opportunity.

An opportunity to warm up before leaving for the Outer Lands, and to witness firsthand the battles of powerful opponents he would encounter in the future—the level he would one day have to reach.

It truly was an opportunity he could not have asked for more.

Najin stepped forward without hiding his smile. While the inquisitors huddled, overwhelmed by the repercussions of Yuel's actions, he walked toward the city's front gate.

"I'll go on ahead."

CLANG!

Najin drew his sword.

2.

The streets of Valdernos were dark.

As befitted a city straddling the Outer Lands, thick darkness blanketed the entire city, with not a single lamp to illuminate it.

A dark, damp, eerie atmosphere.

An ordinary human would surely develop a mental illness after spending just a few days here, but not dark mages. As one might guess from their proudly calling themselves "dark," they loved the darkness.

Dark, damp, eerie, and terrifying?

All the better.

Dark mages were the sort to declare just that and happily establish workshops in sewers or abandoned cities. Such places did offer the minor advantage of being convenient for hiding and escaping, but dark mages simply liked dark, humid places.

'Does studying dark magic change the structure of your brain? So you start liking damp, dark places, like mold?'

"There was a mage who wrote a paper on that."

'What? Who would write about such a useless subject...?'

"I did."

'... Hmm.'

Aging, crumbling buildings. Bricks scattered everywhere. The city, whose inhabitants had all vanished overnight roughly three hundred years ago, lay silent.

Except, that is, for the executioner's slashes ringing out in the distance.

SCREEEEEECH!

At any rate, Najin walked through the silence.

His footsteps echoed unusually loudly through the streets. He was making noise deliberately. Silencing his footsteps would have been effortless, but there was no need.

He made no attempt to conceal his presence, allowing the dark mages hiding throughout the city to notice him. The executioner who had invaded through the rear gate was literally grinding the city to pieces. The bewildered dark mages had few options.

First, kill the executioner.

Second, flee from the executioner.

Had the first option been possible, they would never have hidden in this city in the first place. Naturally, that left the second, which meant they had to get past Najin somehow. Or climb over the city walls to escape.

SCREEEEEECH!

Najin glanced toward the walls. He saw a dark mage who had been using magic to climb one get neatly severed at the waist and tumble down. The mage had escaped successfully. Escaped the world of the living, that is.

In any case, escaping over the walls appeared impossible too. Climbing an exposed wall was practically an advertisement to a Sword Master with a range of hundreds of meters: "Please cut me down."

That left only the front gate.

The only escape route was where Najin was prowling. With Yuel drawing closer by the moment, the dark mages seemed to have finally made their decision. Presences he had not sensed before suddenly appeared. Apparently, they had abandoned concealment.

An abandoned city. Abandoned structures.

The mages hiding among those abandoned things began to move.

An old building. Gaps between collapsed bricks. A narrow opening in a curtained window. The space between a roof and a chimney. Behind a pillar. Pitch-black light flashed from every corner of the city.

The signs of spells about to manifest.

The lights flashing simultaneously were the same color as the darkness, making them difficult to detect with the naked eye.

Difficult, but not impossible.

The moment they flashed, Najin's eyes darted swiftly from left to right, top to bottom. The lights lasted only about three seconds. But that was more than enough for him.

'Seventeen.'

Seventeen lights. Seventeen mages. Seventeen spells.

Identifying them took one second. Lifting his foot and stamping it down with a thud took another. As he exhaled his held breath and kicked off the ground, the final second passed.

Three seconds. The time it took for the spells to be completed and launched.

Spells shot toward Najin from all over the city. By the time they were launched, he was already running. Pitch-black stakes slammed into the spot where he had stood.

THUDTHUDTHUDTHUD!

A Blood-Red Ray melted the ground, while more than ten spells surged forward, smashing every obstacle in their paths.

Ten spells.

Najin's gaze remained calm.

Before becoming a Sword Seeker, and before experiencing his battle with the witch in the Outer Lands, he might have struggled. But now that he had experienced both, well...

It did not seem particularly difficult.

Najin sprinted. Unable to keep up with his speed, the spells struck the wrong places without touching him. With a sudden burst of acceleration, he began running along a wall.

WHOOOOSH!

The spells that had locked onto Najin rather than relying on their casters' manual aim turned to pursue him. From behind, overhead, and ahead—from every direction, spells surged toward him, yet he never stopped.

He swung his sword as he ran.

Despite his unstable footing on the wall, the path traced by his blade was clean.

SLASH!

The spells caught in his sword aura vanished without a trace. With his view cleared, Najin kicked off the wall and leaped.

The seventeen lights he had seen earlier.

The nearest of them.

Najin swung his sword as he leaped toward the dark mage hiding behind a ruined wall. That wall stood between them, but the moment sword aura flashed from his blade, it lost all value as cover.

SLICE.

His blade smoothly cut through the wall.

Since a human neck was no tougher than a wall, the dark mage's head met the same fate. Najin did not stop there.

His swing, landing, change of direction, and next leap happened almost simultaneously.

By the time the dark mage's head hit the ground with a thud, Najin had already reached his next destination: directly above the dark mage hiding between a roof and a chimney. He swung his sword as he vaulted over the mage.

SNICK.

A single line appeared from the mage's forehead to the chin. Najin did not wait for the body to pitch forward. He kicked off the roof and ran. His speed was absurd. It was difficult to track him even with magic, let alone with the naked eye.

How could he possibly be that fast?

Najin's physical abilities were impressive, certainly, but not this overwhelmingly so. The terrain played a part in the spectacle unfolding here. There were plenty of surfaces to kick off—an urban battlefield lined with buildings and cover.

For Najin, it was an environment as advantageous as he could wish for.

'A familiar environment, too.'

Remembering his street battle against the Order's covert operatives in the underground city, Najin smiled unconsciously. He had become incomparably stronger since then. Feeling his own growth, he moved a little faster.

And for the dark mages, it was nothing short of a nightmare.

A corpse with a split head rolled off a roof. Seeing his companion fall, the dark mage hiding inside the building recoiled in horror. He barely managed to swallow the scream that reflexively rose in his throat... but there was no longer any point.

Najin came crashing through the ceiling.

Where? Directly above his head.

The dark mage reflexively looked up, eyes widening. Just as a scream was about to escape his lips, Najin's blade swept across his neck. As he completed the sweep, Najin released his sword. It spun once in midair, and he caught it in a reverse grip.

The instant he caught it, he swung his arm, as though throwing a spear.

The longsword shot from his fingertips like one. Not a thrown spear, but a thrown sword. A longsword was not designed for throwing, of course, but with sufficient physical strength, that posed no problem.

WHOOOOSH!

The blade flew straight ahead, shattered a window in the building opposite, and buried itself solidly in the shoulder of the dark mage hiding behind it, staff aimed at Najin.

"Guuugh...!"

Despite screaming, the dark mage did not stop casting. It was a good decision, but not the best. The disruption caused by the pain added a second to the spell's manifestation.

One second. More than enough time for Najin to leap across to the building and arrive before the mage.

CRASH.

Najin kicked through the window his thrown sword had already broken, shattering the remainder as he entered the building. Eyes wide, the dark mage turned the tip of his staff toward him, but it was already far too late.

Once a mage allowed a swordsman to close in, the mage could not win.

CLAMP.

Najin thrust his hand forward and seized the hilt of the longsword embedded in the dark mage's shoulder. The sword aura that had faded when the blade left his hand surged up again. Using the mage's shoulder as a scabbard, Najin drew his sword.

The aura-clad longsword swept out, destroying its scabbard. Cutting through the dark mage's shoulder, the rising blade split his head.

RUUUMBLE...

The dark mages unleashed a barrage of spells at the building, as if intending to crush Najin along with it. Naturally, he was not slow enough to let those blindly fired spells hit him. He cut through an outer wall and escaped.

'This is too easy. I don't think dark mages were this much of a pushover the last time I fought them...'

The earlier operation to kill Pauve in the sewers.

He had suffered critical injuries then, and it had seemed fairly dangerous. Now, everything was effortless. Had Pauve been particularly strong? As Najin pondered that, Merlin spoke in disbelief.

"Of course not. She only managed that thanks to her artifacts and Masterpiece. She was Fourth Circle at best. The ones you're fighting now are probably around the Third or Fourth Circle too."

Merlin clicked her tongue.

"You were a Sword Expert back then, weren't you?"

'I was.'

"And you didn't have any stars."

'I didn't.'

"But now you have stars, and you're a Sword Seeker. You even have a truly great archmage at your side."

'I don't think that last part helps much.'

"What did you say?"

As the great archmage herself glared, Najin chuckled and moved on. His increased strength certainly played a part, but he knew there was another reason this operation was so easy.

The leader of the dark mages based in this city: Zarkan, a mage estimated to have reached the Sixth Circle.

He and his principal forces would be occupied trying to stop Yuel. Even mobilizing all the sacrifices and artifacts prepared in their workshop would hardly be enough to halt her advance.

As proof, the fortress believed to be their workshop was shaking incessantly.

For the dark mages occupying Valdernos, it was enough to drive them mad.

A Sword Master was running rampant at the rear gate, while some unidentified boy at the front gate was slaughtering every mage they sent to secure an escape route. The Sword Master was one thing, but what in the world was that boy?

His position changed every time they blinked. As though he could see the future, he always moved a step ahead of them. He closed the distance in all sorts of outlandish ways. Somehow, he even knew where they were hiding: he would abruptly smash through a wall, charge in, cut off a head, and leave.

He burst through ceilings, thrust his blade through walls to kill them, and even resorted to throwing his sword. Every time they chanted a spell, another companion disappeared. It defied all explanation.

'Is that bastard really an inquisitor?'

'What inquisitor acts like that?'

'Then is he a knight? No, that doesn't seem right either.'

'What fucking knight throws his sword?'

The dark mages screamed.

They were supposed to be the ones fighting dirty, yet their opponent was even more cowardly and underhanded. Now understanding how the knights they had victimized must have felt, the dark mages groaned.

Naturally, none of their troubles were Najin's concern.

He leisurely roamed every corner of Valdernos, hunting the dark mages emerging from the fortress.

BOOOOOM!

Then it happened.

The old castle at the city's center—the fortress the dark mages had occupied and converted into a workshop. With a deafening roar, a person fell from its summit. No, could that really be described as falling? There had to be a more fitting word.

Yes. The person was being "launched."

And in a straight line toward where Najin stood.

3.

"Did you know?"

"Ghk, hah, hrrgh..."

"If you divide Valdernos in a ratio of seven to three, this place where you and I are standing falls within the seven."

Yuel spoke calmly.

Her hair, reminiscent of winter's first snowfall, was smooth and pure white. Between long lashes, her half-lidded, blood-red eyes held an uncanny allure.

She was a beautiful woman. True to her place in every discussion of the Empire's beauties, Yuel was terrifyingly beautiful. Even her perpetually expressionless face seemed charming.

The dark mage confronting her at close range, Zarkan, nearly found himself thinking her beautiful too.

"Ghk, guugh!"

He would have thought so, if only this madwoman were not strangling him right now—if she had not ground every one of his subordinates filling this fortress to pieces.

Zarkan, a Sixth-Circle dark mage.

Leader of the dark mages occupying Valdernos.

His eyes trembled as he stared at Yuel, who held him by the throat. Her eyes remained indifferent as they met his gaze, as though she had not the slightest interest in him.

"And I made a promise. I would handle the seven, and you would handle the remaining three. Ah, the 'you' I mean is not you, whose throat I am currently holding."

He was not interested. Not in the slightest.

But when someone had you by the throat, and that someone was a Sword Master... you had to listen even to stories you had no interest in.

"So, according to our agreement, killing you is my responsibility. You were in the portion assigned to me. And yet, it does seem a shame."

Yuel pursed her lips with a thoughtful hum.

"I would like to watch that boy fight a little longer. I would also like to see him bleed, and win by the narrowest of margins. Yes, killing you here in front of me would certainly be enjoyable..."

She nodded.

It appeared she had made her decision.

"But I believe this will be more enjoyable."

The highest level of the fortress occupied by the dark mages.

From its summit, all of Valdernos lay in view. Yuel walked toward the edge.

"Demons are extremely resistant to physical trauma. I have tested it. How much purely physical trauma must be inflicted, without any accompanying magical means, before a demon perishes? The results were quite interesting."

Yuel spoke as she strolled leisurely.

"3,761 times. Even after a blade entered its heart 3,761 times, the demon did not die. Then did it die on the 3,762nd? Surprisingly, no. At the moment of the 3,762nd strike, the demon killed itself. A pity. I wanted to test how much it could endure."

As she spoke, Yuel tilted her head.

"I have gone on too long. This is my point: demons are sturdy. Naturally, your body must also be sturdy, since you have contracted with one. A fall from this height should not kill you."

The edge of the highest level.

When Valdernos was divided seven to three, this spot fell just barely within the seven. One more step forward would put her in the three.

TAP.

Standing on that dividing line, Yuel raised her arm.

"Humans always wish to fly. Most harbor a longing for the word 'flight.' I do hope you feel the same."

Then she swung her arm.

As though throwing a ball.

"Have a pleasant flight."

Yuel hurled Zarkan.

From the fortress's highest level toward the ground. More precisely, toward where Najin stood.

WHOOOOOOOOSH!

Setting aside the rather rough method, and the fact that his trajectory led toward the ground rather than up into the sky—and considering that "flying" meant moving through the air without one's feet touching the ground...

Zarkan was unquestionably flying right now.

"G-gwaaaaaaaagh!"

Zarkan screamed.

Sadly, no one was listening.