Chapter 1 - Prologue

Fire and steel, blood and death. Those are the words I would use to sum up my life.

I was originally a shepherd in Heiden, in the northern Empire. Like so many people in those days, I was an orphan who had never known his parents.

I do not know when I first became a shepherd, but for ten years I lived almost entirely cut off from the world, moving from place to place across the fields of Heiden to graze my sheep.

Just as flowers of every color bloomed in the fields with the changing seasons, stars blossomed in profusion across the black sky at night. Cool breezes blew in summer, and in winter, snow filled the world.

I wanted nothing, knew nothing of boredom, and was neither happy nor unhappy.

As stars shone at night, flowers bloomed in the fields, and snow fell when winter came, I simply lived my life tending sheep.

Then one day, something extraordinary happened in that place where every day was the same. The lord rode through the fields of Heiden.

I knelt, and he smiled down at me from high above, the sun behind him like a halo.

“Shepherd, how old are you?”

“I cannot say, for I do not know the day I was born. I have been tending sheep for ten years.”

“Then you must be at least fifteen? Should you not take a wife?”

“I do not know any women.”

“The village headman will arrange it. Live happily, you who are like a star.”

With those words, the lord rode across the fields and vanished as suddenly as a scattering cloud.

Not long afterward, the village headman did indeed arrange my marriage to a young widow in the village.

Once I had a wife, I gave up shepherding and became the village miller. Just as the lord had said, I came to know happiness for the first time in my life.

A few more years passed. Then, one day, a cavalryman carrying a red flag came to the village.

He said he was recruiting able-bodied men for the eastern expedition. The strong men of the village drew lots, and I was chosen.

I told my wife I would return without fail, and that until then I would send her my pay, so she need not worry about making ends meet.

I followed the cavalryman from place to place. At each village we visited, another two or three men joined us, and together we trudged endlessly eastward.

One day, two days, three days, more than a month—we went east like autumn leaves carried down a river.

The eastern expeditionary front was like a land of steel and corpses surrounded by forest. When I first arrived, I never dreamed I would spend ten years there.

If anyone asked me where I learned to wield a sword, I would answer: war.

Thrusting, slashing, hacking men apart. I would say I was tempered by the barbarians’ hatred, by courage I never knew I possessed, by my comrades’ sacrifices, and by the luck that let an arrow graze my cheek as it flew past.

“Where’s Thomas?”

“Dead.”

“Damn it. What about Falke?”

“This morning.”

“...”

Once in a while we had a good day, but most days were hard. Uncomfortable beds, moldy bread. Men dying of disease, dying of infected wounds, being devoured by monsters, being dragged off by barbarians to be flayed and hung on display.

At night, the soldiers plagued by nightmares or trembling with fear were no different from babies. They seemed to need mothers, not brutal veterans or stern commanding officers.

Then, before I knew it, I realized that everyone I had met on the day I arrived was dead. I alone remained.

On a front where seven out of ten men were killed or badly wounded whenever battle broke out, I had survived dozens upon dozens of battles. Why wouldn’t I die? Surely it was about time.

My comrades called me “Lucky” Riki, sometimes in jest, sometimes in earnest. They said they felt they might survive too, if I stayed beside them. Yet none of the comrades I grew attached to survived.

My first commanding officer was a count’s second son. An exceptionally brave young man with a cheerful disposition, he would often lead the soldiers in a charge on horseback when battle broke out.

To be honest, even in that dreadful war, charging after him sometimes felt exhilarating. Even fun.

But that brave young man fell from his horse and died in his fourth battle.

My second commanding officer feared the enemy and was cruel to his own men.

Sometimes defending a garrison means going out to fight, but he wanted us to stay inside and hold our ground, no matter what.

Anyone who found the courage to tell him this would not do was beaten. After watching a comrade sicken and die from a savage beating, I kept my mouth shut. I was a coward.

We were surrounded. After starving for days, we lost the garrison to an all-out barbarian assault spearheaded by tame trolls.

I fought to the bitter end, as ready to die as I could be. Only when I saw a troll lift our incompetent commander, tear off his arm while he was still alive, and bite off his head did I flee.

There was nowhere much to go after fleeing a lost battle. Unless you wanted to starve, you had no choice but to make for the rallying point. Yet getting there was no easy task, either.

By the time I had killed the barbarian pursuers and reached the rallying point, I was alone. The others had not run home. They were dead. They had starved, been eaten by monsters, or been caught by our pursuers.

At the rallying point, I was assigned to a unit led by Chaldebert, the fourth prince of the royal house of Adelorn.

Chaldebert looked like a bookish sort. Beautiful blond hair, a rather delicate body that seemed barely capable of bearing the weight of chain mail.

And yet the commander ordered him to retake the garrison. Perhaps that was why he asked me all sorts of questions about the terrain, the situation there, and what the barbarians were like.

Oddly enough, I found it easy to talk to Chaldebert, perhaps because we were much the same age. Easy enough that we soon became friends, despite a gulf in status as vast as that between heaven and earth.

He liked hearing about my home and listened patiently even to my accounts of the dull, peaceful work of tending sheep.

“Riki, you have the makings of a poet. Listening to your stories puts my heart at ease, even in this savage place. I had always thought northerners were all rough folk.”

“Well, I can’t even read.”

“Surely the first song was not composed in writing.”

Such lofty words. Sometimes the language nobles spoke sounded like a foreign tongue.

Once preparations were complete, Chaldebert led his troops out to retake the forward garrison. I fought alongside them.

Chaldebert was the finest of commanders. Thorough and meticulous in planning, he was brave in battle as well.

Risking encirclement, he made the bold decision to advance deep into enemy territory and strike their rear, driving them far back before defeating them piecemeal and racking up victories.

But the barbarians could not bear to lose the garrison they had only just managed to reclaim after nearly ten years. They made a final, desperate stand.

Chaldebert, too, had staked everything on his plan. Retreat would leave him in danger instead, so he could not withdraw.

Both sides fought with everything they had, and the battle was truly harrowing. Half-severed limbs dangling loose, corpses piled like mountains, torrents of blood, screams of agony, men crying out for their mothers with their dying breaths.

Amid it all, Chaldebert threw himself into the fighting. Then his life was in danger, and I fought with all my strength to save him.

But as I grabbed him by the back of the neck and hauled him up from the ground, a thunderous shout rang out.

“Riki, Reaper of Steel! I challenge you to a duel! You and I will end this war here!”

The man who had suddenly appeared to challenge me was named Veszprim, famed among the barbarians as a legendary warrior. The imperial troops called him the Meat Cutter.

He was twice the height and bulk of an ordinary man, clad in iron armor from head to toe, his face covered as well. Dozens of ears cut from imperial subjects were strung together around his neck like a necklace. Skulls with flesh still clinging to them dangled from his belt.

His enormous axe consisted of a broad blade lashed crudely but firmly to a haft. He was renowned for using its crushing weight to hack a man apart in a single blow.

Riki and Veszprim had known of each other only through rumors that circulated on the battlefield. This was their first meeting.

Perhaps that was why he singled out Riki as the leader rather than Chaldebert, the newly appointed commanding officer.

In the midst of that life-and-death battle, the nearby soldiers stepped back to make room. Friend and foe alike briefly forgot their fighting to watch the two men face off.

Though it could not match Veszprim’s axe, Riki’s sword was a greatsword, larger than an ordinary blade.

The ground was as sodden as a swamp, and the air was thick with the smell of iron and blood.

A duel with fate at stake? I thought of nothing of the sort. I simply threw my entire being into following wherever my sword’s point led.

After a standoff that seemed both long and short, the duel ended in an instant.

I precisely deflected Veszprim’s monstrous axe swing, stepped to the side, and brought my sword down hard. At that moment, sacred golden flames sprang up along the blade.

Falling sideways, Veszprim raised an arm to block. With a loud metallic clang, his arm was severed. Blood poured out. And that was the end of the contest.

The duel was one thing, but the golden flames rising from Riki’s sword left the onlookers stunned and speechless. What was that? A warrior sent by the gods.

But at the time, I paid little attention to any of that. I looked only at Veszprim’s blue eyes, visible through his helmet. They were trembling with fear.

At the sight of those eyes, the fire in my chest swiftly cooled, and the flames on my blade died away with it.

As friend and foe watched with bated breath, everyone thought all that remained was for Riki to execute him.

Yet what happened was the opposite. In some ways, it was even more shocking than the flames on the blade moments earlier.

I slowly lowered the sword I had raised above my head as though to cut off his head at any moment, and spoke.

“Go. Forget the war. Return home and live in peace.”

Why did I do it? I do not know myself. Perhaps I saw myself reflected in those fearful eyes. Perhaps this man, too, had been innocent before he left his home. That was all that crossed my mind.

The imperial soldiers watching could not understand, but they dared not object. For at that moment, in that place, Riki’s authority was absolute.

And just like that, the battle ended. Their spirit broken, the barbarians withdrew of their own accord, and the imperial army did not pursue them. It was as though a temporary truce had been called.

These were two sides that had fought with the bitterest hatred for the past ten years.

With the garrison retaken, my war came to an end as well. I asked Chaldebert for a discharge and told him I wished to go home.

Chaldebert looked as though he had much to say, but he set it all aside and simply granted my request.

I was the first man discharged with all his limbs intact. On the eastern expeditionary front, there was normally no way out of service except death.

And so, after ten years, I returned home. To the fields of Heiden. To the place where I tended sheep. Though I was no longer a shepherd, was I? I would probably look after the mill. Not a bad life.

But when I reached home, my wife had already started a new family. She had a new husband, and children too.

I will never forget her cold gaze, or what she said to me. What have you ever done for me? Don’t act like you know me.

What did that mean? What about my pay? What had I spent ten years slogging through that hell for?

The thing that had driven me to endure those ten years was so very flimsy. Once the truth was revealed, it tore as easily as a sheet of paper.

Shaking with betrayal, I drew my sword and slaughtered the entire family in an instant. Before I even had time to restrain myself, the sword honed by ten years on the battlefield had acted ahead of me.

But it turned out the village headman had been pocketing my pay all along. So I killed that bastard and his entire family too.

In the course of killing the headman, I learned that even the drawing of lots had been rigged. What choice did that leave me? I killed everyone in the village.

Just as I had on the battlefield, I first killed the children slowly and painfully in front of their parents, then locked the rest in storehouses and barns and burned them to death. This was all I had learned, and I carried out every step with astonishing skill.

And so I became a wanted man, not merely in the kingdom, but throughout the Empire. I no longer knew what was what. Let them all die.

Many came to kill me. Bounty hunters, adventurers, thugs, thieves, robbers, wandering swordsmen, renowned knights.

Sometimes a select few came. Sometimes many came at once.

Even after several brushes with death, I survived to the bitter end and killed them all. More than I could count. And all the while, my skill in combat grew without limit.

I was neither a wanted man nor a fugitive. After all, I was the one who went looking for them and killed them all.

I stormed castles alone and killed their lords. I smashed famous swordsmanship guilds and adventurers’ guilds alike.

With a sword burning golden in my hand, I looked down upon the world from a mountain of corpses.

And so people called me the Demon King. A devil among devils, a murderer among murderers. Riki. Even the emperor trembled in fear.

After ten years of that, absurdly enough, I gained a following. They said a human capable of such strength must surely have been chosen by the gods.

But my body was already ruined. I had countless wounds cauterized with heated blades, and several fingers would no longer straighten or bend properly. My mind, too, was ravaged beyond measure, and my life was drawing to its end.

Ten years as a shepherd, ten years on the battlefield, ten years as a killer infamous beyond compare. I decided to go somewhere no one knew and meet my death in peace.

Wandering without a destination, I found myself in the fields of Heiden before I knew it. The shafts of sunlight falling between the dark clouds looked like spears thrust into the earth.

Far away, white sheep grazed, scattered like tufts of down. A young shepherd sat in the field, simply gazing at the scenery, just as I once had.

Then, once again, someone approached on horseback. As before, the sun was at his back, leaving his face hidden in black shadow.

This time, I did not kneel to him. I merely planted my sword in the ground and sat sprawled where I was, lowering my head as I spoke.

“Liar.”

“About what?”

“There’s no such thing as happiness.”

“Nor is there unhappiness. Both are like mirages. And so it all depends on what you choose. You were the one who cursed yourself and burned yourself at the stake.”

“... I don’t know. I’m tired now.”

“Then rest. But after your rest, another task awaits you. Even I can do nothing about that.”

My eyes slowly drifted shut. Was I dying? Or merely falling asleep? As my consciousness faded, I asked him,

“... Who are you? A god, or a devil?”

At the very edge of consciousness, I heard the man’s reply.

“As you watched the stars, I watched you.”

I think my first life ended with those words.

Fire and steel, blood and death. Those are the words I would use to sum up my life.

Prologue – Memories That Can Never Be Cherished. End.