Pendia might be known as a kingdom of monsters, but they did not ordinarily swarm even the outskirts of its capital, Hasra, where troops patrolled regularly and travelers came and went in great numbers.

Ordinarily, that was.

While the two princes waged their civil war, the area around the capital filled with people fleeing the alarming news. The defenseless among them became prey for monsters, and the smell of their spilled blood drew still more creatures.

As a result, packs of lesser vampires now infested even this spot, barely thirty minutes from the capital’s walls. That was how Sherin and the Wievers servants had come to encounter them.

“U-ughhh...”

“Master Tata! What do we do?!”

Ten creatures in all had attacked the party as they traveled ahead without Shan. Competent warriors working together could have beaten them to death without much difficulty, but they were difficult foes for civilians who had never received proper combat training.

“Stand shoulder to shoulder! Don’t turn your backs on them! Hold your weapons straight out!”

Tata, who had at least encountered monsters during his travels, directed the party into a formation: a ring around Kalion, who lay unconscious on his stretcher.

[SCREEECH!]

The vampires encircled their formation, thrusting out hook-curved claws and shrieking to intimidate them. Like the monsters they were, they could scent frightened prey with uncanny accuracy.

“Ah!”

The kitchen assistant screamed and backed away when a claw grazed the back of his hand. Sensing their prey’s weakness, the vampires were about to rush the opening when Sherin stepped forward from behind to fill it and slashed her own forearm with a dagger.

Those beside her recoiled in horror as blood spattered.

[“Urukvakh Kruga!”]

At her incantation, the blood flowing from her pale forearm hardened into sharp spikes and shot outward. Astonishingly, the blood-red spikes swept through the four vampires on that side, tearing their bodies to shreds.

Startled by the powerful blood magic, the remaining vampires screamed and retreated far beyond what had been nearly arm’s reach.

Only then did the panicking servants recover some of their senses and exclaim in wonder.

“Wow...”

“Good heavens!”

With their limited knowledge of magic, they had no idea that the spell she had just cast was a transcendent feat nearly impossible for modern mages. They were simply delighted and amazed that, unlike their helpless selves, she possessed the means to resist the monsters.

Surely another two or three spells like that would be more than enough to kill every last vampire.

“Hah...”

Contrary to their expectations, however, Sherin hastily withdrew rather than cast another spell. Her pale face was drenched in cold sweat, and her entire body trembled as though wracked with chills.

Only then realizing how much blood she was losing, the head maid seized her arm in alarm.

“M-Miss! Your arm! Someone, quickly, get some cloth—”

Everything suitable for bandages was packed in the baggage baskets, so all she could do was press her hand against the bleeding wound.

But when the one who had unleashed that terrifying attack retreated, the vampires guessed that her strength was spent and advanced aggressively once more. The stablekeeper struck one that leaped in with his club, only for the maid behind him to scream in fright.

“Aaah!”

“Get back!”

As the vampires closed in again, hoofbeats sounded in the distance. One turned its head, spotted two green lights approaching through the darkness, and let out a warning screech.

[SKREEECH!]

Before it had finished, Shan thundered into their midst like lightning and swept off three vampires’ heads with precise strokes of his spear. Arwin made her presence felt as well, trampling two creatures in her way to death.

Watching the last survivor flee, Shan hurled his spear without leaving Arwin’s saddle. It punched squarely through the vampire’s chest with a crunch, and the creature toppled over, never to move again.

“Is everyone all right? Any injuries?”

Only with Shan’s arrival did the servants’ legs give out, leaving them slumped on the ground. Having lived in the capital all their lives, they had only heard how dangerous it was beyond the walls. Now that they had experienced it themselves, it seemed utterly unfit for human habitation.

And the boy before them, who roamed that wilderness freely and cut down terrifying vampires as though mowing weeds, scarcely seemed human himself.

After a moment of renewed awe, the stablekeeper hastily answered his question.

“We’re all fine, sir, but Miss Rin’s badly hurt her arm.”

“Yes, well. While she was using magic...”

“Let me see.”

Shan jumped down from his horse, took Sherin’s arm, and rolled back her blood-soaked sleeve to inspect the wound. The long gash across her pale forearm was deep enough to expose a glimpse of white bone.

“How on earth did you get hurt this badly?”

“The magic... I didn’t have a catalyst...”

From the servants’ chatter beside him, Shan gathered that she had used the same blood magic as the greater vampire he had once seen. Unlike monsters with their immense vitality, a human body evidently struggled to wield it; she was visibly exhausted.

“Medicine and bandages, please.”

“Here!”

At his request, the maid quickly pulled bandages from the baggage and handed them over. Shan spread on an ointment made from boiled troll marrow, which he had used himself before, then wrapped the wound. Sherin groaned in pain.

“Ugh...”

“Bear with it a little longer. Oh, that reminds me. There’s another horse I need to fetch.”

Now that he had said it, however, he could think of no good way to retrieve Kamad’s horse. Leaving the party to go back himself would be dangerous, but sending someone else would be dangerous too.

He was wondering whether they would all have to go back together when Kamad’s horse emerged from the darkness and slowly approached them. Apparently frightened of being left alone, it had followed Shan.

“Good thing it came on its own.”

Kamad’s warhorse pressed close against Arwin’s side and gave a timid whinny.

* * *

Once the treatment was finished, the party resumed its march east. Sherin, exhausted by blood loss and the spell’s adverse effects, rode Kamad’s warhorse while Shan walked beside her, supporting her so she would not fall.

“Thank you, big sister Rin. Thanks to your efforts, no one died.”

Sherin shook her head with an awkward expression at his thanks.

“I was only trying to stay alive myself. More importantly, that name...”

“Oh, I’m sorry, Your Highness. I’ve already gotten used to it.”

He had improvised the form of address to conceal her identity in front of the servants, only to use it thoughtlessly even while the two were talking alone.

“No, never mind. Keep using it. Now that I’ve heard it, it’s nicer than I expected. You can use my real name, too.”

“Big sister Sherin?”

Sherin burst into a silly little laugh.

Before long, her attention shifted to the warhorse carrying her.

“Anyway, did you take this horse from the man pursuing us earlier? Judging by that armor, he must have been a royal knight.”

“He said his name was Kamad Entor. Apparently he was another of Sir Darkal’s pupils, like me.”

“Kamad? A short-haired man with an obnoxious face?”

“Uh... yes.”

His hair had indeed been short when Shan removed his helmet.

At his answer, Sherin looked down at her mount in disbelief and murmured,

“Only a few royal knights own Horace warhorses, so I did wonder.”

“Did you know him?”

Come to think of it, they would naturally have met if he was a royal knight. Shan looked discomfited at the possibility that they had been close, but she shook her head.

“Not well enough to say we knew each other. We knew each other’s faces and names, that’s all.”

“Whew.”

“Kamad was Count Ronsh’s son. His talent was recognized from childhood, and he became a royal knight, but because of his distinguished family, he was kept guarding royalty and never had a chance to build a reputation.”

That explained it. Shan knew at least the names of the knights considered Pendia’s finest, but Kamad had not been among them.

A knight’s fame did not necessarily reflect his skill.

‘Was that why he came after me?’

If he defeated Shan—the slayer of a cockatrice and an ogre, and the champion of the capital’s jousting tournament—in single combat, he could claim all that fame for himself. It was the sort of thing a man starved for renown might attempt.

While Shan pondered his opponent’s motives, Sherin spoke with admiration in her voice.

“Still, I’m amazed you defeated Kamad so easily. Among the royal knights, he was considered second only to Marquis Abel.”

What particularly surprised her was that Shan’s armor remained unscratched after fighting such a formidable opponent. Only the shield on his left arm was dented.

“He certainly fought well.”

If two fighters of Kamad’s caliber attacked at once, even Shan would probably struggle to gain the upper hand. Against three, he would have to flee or die.

Sherin laughed incredulously at his assessment. There were scarcely five warriors in all of Pendia who could rival Kamad. How often would he ever have to face three of them together?

“In any case, you’ve made a complete enemy of Conrad now. Kamad was also his older second cousin.”

“What about you, big sister Sherin?”

“He’s related through Conrad’s mother, so he’s no relation of mine.”

“Then that’s fine. He has plenty of reasons to hate me anyway.”

Wasn’t expelling every mage and Altoan his first planned policy upon taking power? If Shan wanted to live in this country, coexistence between them had never been possible anyway.

With the conversation turning in the direction she wanted, Sherin returned to the subject that had been abruptly interrupted earlier. Tension showed on her lovely face.

“On that subject... if you have no other plans, could you stay and help me? I know I’m hardly convincing in this sorry state... but with you, I’m confident I can win. Truly.”

Before Shan could answer, Sherin clasped his hand and began laying out her plans one by one.

“My uncle’s domain is a natural stronghold, protected on every side. It also has abundant resources, so we can support ourselves even cut off from the outside.”

Thus, if she could form an elite force around a mighty warrior like Shan, neither Conrad nor Elvin, whichever won, would find it easy to invade Count Pales’s domain immediately. The terrain simply did not permit a large army to push its way in at will.

“Once we have those defenses in place, I’ll gather the Magic Society’s mages who were driven out of the capital and launch a full-scale revolution. If we can mass-produce magical devices, we’ll be more than capable of overwhelming our opponents in both domestic affairs and warfare. All we need is a few years!”

Like a merchant peddling her wares, Sherin abandoned every shred of princely dignity to argue her case. Her speech and gestures were so desperate that the servants following them watched curiously, wondering what they could be discussing with such intensity.

Shan said little and listened attentively. With his limited knowledge, he could not judge whether Sherin’s ideas were truly feasible or merely fanciful armchair theories.

After her rather lengthy explanation ended, Sherin looked thoughtful for a moment before speaking.

“Finally, your reward for helping me become queen... would be a dukedom and autonomous authority.”

“A dukedom and autonomous authority?”

“Yes. I’ll give you the title of Duke Ranpel, Conrad’s maternal grandfather. You’ll nominally be my vassal, but you’ll bear no obligations whatsoever. You could gather every Altoan in the kingdom there. I wouldn’t recommend it, but if you wished to declare independence, I could even include provisions recognizing it and promising joint defense against foreign invasion.”

Duke Ranpel, Conrad’s maternal grandfather and a great lord of the west, was so powerful that most of the lords and knights now supporting Conrad had come from his following.

Of course, if Sherin became queen, they would all have fallen already. Even so, bestowing an autonomous dukedom on an Altoan would carry an enormous political cost. It was far too great a reward to offer a mere knight, however powerful he might be.

Accepting and guaranteeing Altoan independence went beyond even that.

Having dangled that enormous prize before him, Sherin studied Shan’s face and asked with a somewhat defeated expression,

“You’ll still need to discuss it with Roden, won’t you?”

“Yes.”

Hearing the answer she had expected, Sherin sighed deeply and bowed her head. Her blue-black hair fell forward, hiding her face.

“I thought as much...”

“But...”

Her head snapped up at his next words. Her wide reddish-brown eyes made her look like a rabbit that had sensed food.

“I don’t know whether what you’re proposing, Your Highness—big sister Sherin—will really work... but if there’s no problem with it, I’d like to help.”

“... Really?”

“Yes. I don’t care about dukedoms or autonomy. I just don’t want you to lose and die, or have anything bad happen to you.”

Having come to know Shan, Sherin could tell that his words were completely sincere, without a trace of pretense. She fell silent for a moment as a fluttering sensation filled her stomach, then smiled softly.

“You flirt.”

“What? Where did that come from?”

The word had truly come out of nowhere, and Shan questioned her with a look of utter incomprehension.

* * *

After marching through the night, Shan’s party finally reached their destination village around sunrise the following day.

Naturally, the villagers initially tried to turn away the dozen or so outsiders who had arrived without warning. Some of those fleeing Hasra during the recent height of the civil war had already passed through, and there had been several incidents of refugees committing crimes for lack of food and money.

But with a boy in magnificent plate armor at their head, the party could hardly be treated as mere refugees. Especially when that boy was Shan Barendil, the Green-Eyed Knight, whose fame had reached even here.

At his request that they open the gate and let his party rest, the sturdy palisade gates swung open. The servants sighed with relief at their return to civilization at last.

“Finally...”

“I never want to go outside again.”

“Neither do I. I’d be happy living here for the rest of my life.”

The memory of being surrounded by vampires with blazing red eyes had evidently remained with them as a dreadful nightmare.

Wheat Bran Village, where they had arrived, had a population of around five hundred and was the largest village in the area. While Sherin and the others rested in the village hall they had rented, Shan consulted the chief and sought out a village priest.

Fortunately, it did not take long to find a promising candidate. There had originally been ten priests here. Seven had been taken away by Conrad’s army, leaving only two child apprentices and one elderly priest. The old man had effectively been the mainstay of the village clergy and was said to be a skilled priest, as befitted a devout follower of the Old Faith.

“Hmm? Shan Barendil? Ah, that Altoan knight...?”

The elderly priest bowed, though his displeasure showed when he learned Shan’s identity. Whatever his personal feelings, knights and priests owed each other respect, and tending the injured was his duty as a servant of the Goddess.

The trouble began when he heard how the treatment was to be performed.

“You ask me to assist a mage? And with surgery, no less? Cutting open his head? Such an act would bring divine punishment...! Absolutely not!”

The old priest’s face flushed crimson as he vented his anger at the plan for Kalion’s surgery. According to him, the only appropriate action was to bolster Kalion’s healing with the Goddess’s power.

If he then awoke on his own, the Goddess had blessed him. If his breath failed, She had called him home.

Sherin sighed in frustration and explained again.

“I told you. A large amount of blood has already clotted and is pressing on his brain. Healing and purification won’t solve this. We need to make an incision, remove it, and then use a miracle to regenerate the damaged brain tissue...”

“Silence! How dare a mere mage wench who wields the devil’s power presume to judge the Goddess’s might!”

Sherin flinched at his manner, as though he might strike her at any moment, then gritted her teeth. She wanted to demand how a mere priest dared shout at a princess, but with Conrad’s army only a few hours away, that would hardly have been wise.

As the atmosphere grew hostile, Shan stepped forward between them. Facing the knight, the priest seemed to recover himself somewhat, steadying his breathing despite his angry huffs.

“So you’re saying you won’t help?”

“Precisely! As I said, I can exercise the power of healing, but joining forces with wicked magic to perform surgery is utterly out of the question!”

“I’ll pay ten times the usual fee.”

“This is not about money! It is about faith! What use is worldly gold when my soul is being defiled?”

The bargaining Shan had learned from Roden was completely ineffective. The priest before him seemed unlikely to agree to Sherin’s treatment even if offered an entire country.

After a brief silence, Shan voiced the “bad thought” that had arisen within him.

“Even if I say I’ll kill you unless you cooperate?”

The casually delivered threat instantly chilled the atmosphere. The chief who had brought the priest spoke to Shan in a trembling voice.

“S-Sir... this priest may be set in his ways, but he’s a good man. He has done so much good for this village over the past several decades...”

“This man is my closest friend’s father, and my benefactor.”

Abandoning even polite speech, Shan addressed the priest, at least fifty years his senior, in a near shout. Though he was slightly shorter and had to look up, he radiated such peculiar menace that everyone felt he was looking down on the man.

“I don’t give a damn whether you think magic is the devil’s power. I want this man treated, whatever it takes.”

“Hmph. Kill me, then! My life is nearly spent already. I need only return to the Goddess!”

Faced with the chilling threat, the old priest stubbornly squeezed his eyes shut, refusing any compromise. Yet even he could not help opening them wide at what came next.

“You don’t care about your own life? What about the lives of the villagers?”

“What...?”

“You must know plenty of people here if you’ve spent decades in this village. Come to think of it, didn’t you have two young priests as well?”

As though confirming that the priest had heard correctly, Shan gestured with his chin at the villagers around them.

“I’ll kill them one by one until you agree to help. Women, children—it makes no difference. I can torture them if necessary.”

“H-How can a knight commit such an atrocity—!”

“If you think I can’t do it, keep refusing.”

The villagers went pale at Shan’s open declaration of slaughter. Yet none dared defy him. A heavily armed knight was already in the middle of their village.

The people of Pendia, who so often encountered monsters, revered and feared the knights who defeated those creatures in equal measure. All the more so when the knight in question was powerful enough to have slain all manner of infamous great monsters.

The threatened priest murmured in a shaking voice,

“You wouldn’t dare. More than five hundred people live here.”

“I can do it. Five hundred people won’t be stronger than a cockatrice or an ogre.”

The priest had meant that Shan’s conscience would never permit him to commit the sin of murdering five hundred innocent people. Shan, however, took it as a question of ability and gave an entirely different answer. Even an ordinary knight would have difficulty killing more than five hundred people, civilians or not.

That difference in perspective frightened the priest still more.

And these were no ordinary times. With the two princes waging civil war, law and order had all but collapsed. At a time like this, even a knight slaughtering an entire village might simply be swept under the rug...

“Besides, I’ve already seen a handful of skilled warriors destroy a village. I know exactly how to do it.”

Shan was merely describing what had happened to him, but to the priest it sounded as though the youthful knight had committed such acts time and again.

“The Goddess will never forgive you.”

“The life of someone dear to me matters more than the Goddess’s blessing. What will you do? If you refuse, I’ll kill a hundred or so first, then ask again.”

Silence followed the ultimatum. Then the priest answered in something like a sob.

“Very well...”

It was the moment one man’s faith crumbled, forced into submission by violence.

* * *

After the terrifying threats were over, Sherin looked at Shan beside her as she prepared for surgery and asked with feigned casualness,

“Shan?”

“Yes?”

“If that priest really hadn’t given in, would you have killed the villagers?”

She had analyzed him quite thoroughly in her own way, yet she could not tell whether that threat had been genuine. Considering how he treated those dear to him, he might have meant it. Considering his pity for the weak and unfortunate, it might have been an empty threat...

Shan answered her with a smile.

“Oh, surely you don’t think I’d really do that? The villagers haven’t done anything wrong.”

“I see...”

“But when I threatened him, I was thinking I really would. Roden says I’m no good at acting, so I have to fool myself into believing I mean it.”

In other words, at least while he was making that threat, he truly intended to kill every villager if refused—or at least believed that he did.

It was a terrifying method of acting, in which the slightest misstep could turn an invented feeling into a genuine one. Watching the capital’s court politics and manipulating them behind the scenes, Sherin had seen any number of people consumed by the masks they had created.

She had thought it before, but there was something perilous about this boy, like an unsheathed sword. If they were to work together, she would have to fit that sword with a scabbard and ensure it was drawn only when truly needed.

For her own sake, and for Shan’s as well.