Platinum symbolizes the stars.

The stars shining brilliantly in the night sky are platinum, a blend of pure white and gold. Excalibur, known as the Sword of Stars, likewise has a platinum blade. And so the color often brings stars to mind.

Platinum symbolizes the stars, and it is sacred.

The Constellations in the night sky are all great beings, and the orders that worship the stars also revere starlight as sacred. Thus platinum, which resembles starlight, was considered sacred.

Something that resembles the stars, something sacred.

Thanks to that symbolism, platinum was used in all manner of places: in the lighthouse of the Order of Star Radiance, in the Platinum Tower at the heart of the Empire, in the emblem symbolizing the imperial family, and in countless precious things.

Yet there were places where it could not be used.

Flames that burn with the soul as their fuel.

Platinum mana, circles, sword aura...

Countless people longed for platinum, yet no mage, no swordsman could kindle platinum flames. In all human history, that color had been granted to only one person.

The great hero Arthur.

Only that great hero possessed platinum flames. Only Arthur could wield platinum sword aura. It was a widely known tale, a proposition cemented as truth when not a single counterexample emerged in the centuries following Arthur's death.

Surely that was true.

Surely it had to be.

Pauve's eyes trembled wildly.

She stared at Najin's sword aura blazing before her. Unless her own eyes were deceiving her, it unmistakably held the color of platinum. Faced with that vividly platinum sword aura, Pauve swallowed hard.

'A trick of the eye. A hallucination. A mistake.'

Countless possibilities flashed through her mind. But her instincts rejected every one of them.

'But...'

Pauve gritted her teeth.

Even if that truly was platinum sword aura, she knew there was only one thing she could do. Kneeling and bowing her head now would earn her nothing but death.

The Four Circles hovering above her back spun furiously.

Having ravenously devoured the mediums prepared in the workshop, Pauve's circles were ready to disgorge their spell. Feeling her mana surge, she forced the corners of her mouth upward. In the end, she had only one choice.

Kill the opponent before her.

That was her only way to survive.

Pauve pointed the tip of her staff at Najin, who was wreathed in platinum sword aura. This was the most powerful spell she could cast, and strengthened by the mediums filling the workshop, its power... would rival the Fifth Circle.

Fourth-Circle spell: Hunger of the Dead.

A wave rippled from the tip of her staff. Hands of the dead erupted along the wave as it spread outward in every direction. The hands clawed, corrupted, and crumbled whatever they touched, ultimately turning it into one of the dead like themselves.

With their flesh rotten and decayed, the dead could never sate their hunger. They could only gasp with hunger for all eternity.

Hunger of the Dead drew upon that intense fixation, using the soul resonance of corpses and living sacrifices as its medium. Its power was far from trivial. Anyone who had not received an order's baptism would find their flesh rotting the moment those hands touched them... until they became one of the dead and crumbled away.

RRRRRUMBLE!

The hands of the dead advanced, filling his vision.

Naturally, there was nowhere to dodge. Najin marveled at the spell Pauve had manifested. Fourth-Circle spells certainly had threatening effects.

"Of course they do. From the Fourth Circle onward, they're siege weapons," Merlin whispered.

"Normally, you mustn't let someone cast a spell like that."

"In a fight at this level, the moment a Fourth-Circle spell is cast, it's as good as decided."

Merlin was certainly right.

Had an ordinary mage manifested a spell of comparable power, he would have had to brace himself for a grievous injury. Even Najin found the spell threatening as it surged across a broad area, leaving nowhere to evade it.

So this was what fighting a mage felt like.

With that thought, Najin calmly settled into his stance. Though he was arguably cornered, his breathing and gaze remained cool and composed.

After all, a Fourth-Circle spell was threatening when the spell in question was an ordinary one.

His opponent was a dark mage. As was typical of dark mages, Pauve's spell did not follow the proper path; it defiled the natural order. In that case, Najin decided, it would be no problem.

TAP.

Najin stepped forward, drawing his sword high.

Rather than retreating, he charged straight at the hands of the dead. Just as the outstretched hands were about to touch him, his sword sliced through one with a sharp cutting sound.

Pauve's eyes widened.

Cutting through a spell was not impossible. But something was different this time. The hands that touched the platinum sword aura were burning away.

HISSSSS!

It was burning. The spell itself.

As Najin's sword severed the hands of the dead, starlight burned them away. Wherever the platinum sword aura touched, the hands crumbled as though they were shadows retreating.

... Platinum symbolizes the stars, and it is sacred.

The platinum sword aura that only Arthur had possessed in all human history had been called by countless names—the Dragonslaying Sword, the Sword of Stars, and more. But among demons, it was known as this:

The Sword Aura of Judgment.

It burns away evil. It severs it.

Thus it passes judgment upon wicked and malicious things. It burns demons' flesh and impedes their regeneration, rejecting corrupted mana at its very root.

"It's a matter of compatibility from the outset."

Watching the scene unfold before her, Merlin gave a disbelieving laugh. Even she found it absurd.

That day, when she first saw Najin's platinum sword aura, she had wondered if it could really be true. Unable to be certain, she had withheld judgment, intending to check again once he became a Sword Seeker and his aura revealed its nature. Now that Najin was approaching that realm... Merlin had no choice but to acknowledge it.

It held only a fragment of his mental image.

It was not yet complete.

And yet it possessed the nature of a star.

The sword aura of stars, feared by demons, hated by witches and dragons, and cursed by fallen stars. The aura blooming upon Najin's sword was the same kind as Arthur's.

'Does he have that sword aura because he drew Excalibur?'

Or was it something else?

'Did he come to possess that aura because the star he wished for, the star he envisioned, was Arthur's star?'

She could not tell which it was.

She could not tell, and yet...

Watching Najin's star shine with such melancholy, Merlin smiled bitterly. The starlight wrapped around his sword resembled Arthur's, yet at the same time, it did not.

2.

The spell was being cut apart. The hands were burning away.

Pauve's gaze wavered, and the staff she held straight out before her trembled as well. In that moment, Pauve felt fear.

A Fourth-Circle spell was being hacked to pieces.

The strongest spell she could manifest was being cut apart with utter ease. Each swing of Najin's sword swept away masses of hands, and every step he took forward closed the distance in an instant.

'How...?'

She could not understand it.

By any common understanding, this was impossible. Yet the hands burning to ash in the starlight screamed at Pauve that this was reality.

SLICE.

A chilling cutting sound rang out.

Echoing in her ears was the hiss of severed things burning away. Starlight was approaching, burning the dead as it came.

By the time she gathered her wits, all those countless hands had been severed and vanished. At the tip of her outstretched staff, the last traces of her exhausted mana merely drifted upward like heat haze.

Then came a tap.

A footstep rang out directly in front of her. Shattering the Fourth-Circle spell head-on as he closed the distance, Najin had finally reached her.

SLASH!

Najin swung his sword. It cut through Pauve's staff. Rising as it severed the staff, the sword descended at an angle. The falling blade smoothly sliced through the veil surrounding her.

There was no recoil, no repulsive force.

The sword pierced through the veil and reached Pauve's neck. Platinum sword aura, shining with melancholy even in the darkness. That was the last sight Pauve ever saw.

SLICE.

The dark mage who had dreamed of grand ambitions met a wretched end. Her severed head tumbled across the floor. Leaving Pauve's collapsing corpse where it fell, Najin let out a long breath. Weakness washed over him as strength drained from his body.

'It really is exhausting.'

"You're not a Sword Seeker yet," Merlin said.

"Your sword aura hasn't even changed into a form suited to holding a mental image. Of course forcing one into it is going to strain you."

Only half listening to Merlin's muttering, Najin gave the tip of his blade a light flick and sheathed it. Indeed, because he had not yet reached the Seeker realm, he could sustain sword aura imbued with his mental image for only a short time.

'It feels several times shorter than the white sword aura.'

The aura imbued with his platinum star ran out twice as quickly as the aura imbued with his pure-white star. This power was still difficult for him to handle. Thinking that, Najin looked around.

"What an unpleasant place."

This was the workshop of Kephalon, who was said to have planned something in this city decades ago. Najin frowned as he took in its interior. There were "objects" lying about that made even his strong stomach churn uncontrollably.

"Somehow, dark mages never change, even after centuries. They're as revolting as ever."

Merlin sounded equally disgusted.

Najin decided he should report this place separately once he returned aboveground. Nothing good could come of leaving something like this beneath the city.

"Whew..."

Exhaling at length, Najin pulled out the bone stakes embedded in his body. He sprinkled a potion for external wounds from his pouch onto the injuries, then downed a potion bearing the Dieta Trading Company's mark.

"Looks like she packed nothing but the expensive stuff."

'It does. I think I can already feel it working.'

Najin began dragging Pauve's corpse.

He needed to show it to his client. Dragging the body, he found the passage through which he had entered and headed toward it. It led upward. The door was firmly shut, but after he held Pauve's face up to it a few times, it opened with a grinding sound.

TAP.

As Najin stepped through the open doorway, the first thing he saw was Kaufman aiming a crossbow at him.

3.

Emerging from the passage, Najin met Kaufman's gaze. Kaufman soon lowered his crossbow and approached him.

"I thought Pauve would come out. But it's you."

"Didn't I say I would handle her?"

"Of course I thought you were bluffing. What lunatic charges a Four-Circle dark mage with holes all through his body?"

"This one, apparently."

Kaufman chuckled and pointed to Pauve's corpse, which Najin had dragged out.

"Looks like you won?"

"That's how it turned out."

"Well, damn. You're something else. How?"

"There's nothing special about how a swordsman fights. I charged in and cut her down."

"That's certainly straightforward."

Kaufman let out a long, very long breath.

"Well, you made things easy. With Pauve gone, the rest were easy to finish off. See them over there? The ones I put holes in."

"I see them clearly."

"Now we just need to go report that the job's done..."

Kaufman rubbed the back of his neck as though it itched. Letting his words trail off, he looked at Najin.

"Remember what I asked you before?"

"What do you mean?"

"Whether you were one of an order's covert operatives."

"I remember. Do you need an answer?"

At the time, Kaufman had said he did not need an answer. He had dismissed the question as merely talking to himself and had not waited to hear a reply. Now he shook his head.

"No need. After watching you, I don't think you are."

"What does that mean?"

"An order's covert operatives don't fight the way you do. That aside, you do seem connected to them... Mind if I ask you one thing?"

Najin nodded, and Kaufman asked his question.

"The underground city of Atman. How are things there these days?"

An unexpected question from an unexpected person.

Najin's thoughts froze for an instant. Why was Kaufman asking him? What did the man before him know, and how much? Countless thoughts flashed through his mind.

In the end, Najin reached one conclusion.

Act immediately.

Najin dropped Pauve's corpse and drew his sword. But the time it took him to draw... was one second longer than he usually took to make a decision. His mind had been thrown into confusion.

And one second—

"Somehow, I had a feeling you'd do that."

—was enough to lose the first strike.

"Fucking bastards."

An arrow sank into Najin's body.