Chapter 26

Distances were usually expressed in terms of an ordinary adult’s walking pace: a day’s journey, half a day’s journey, and so on.

Naturally, estimates varied from person to person, and anything a local told you needed to be taken with a grain of salt. That was especially true in forests and mountains.

Ricard therefore estimated that getting out of the forest would take around two days. Besides, they had an injured person with them and could not make much speed.

The forest path seemed to undulate rather than run level. It climbed a little, dipped again, and was studded with thick, protruding roots. No carriage or cart could possibly pass along it.

Molty insisted that he could walk on his own, but a firm word from Ricard persuaded him to accept Volka’s support.

And so the party spent another night in the forest. An owl hooted, and branches hid most of the moon. Two campfires burned in the pitch darkness.

It was the sort of night when some unknown terror seemed to lurk beyond the reach of the firelight.

They sliced up the salted meat they had received in the village and shared it out. It was so thoroughly caked in salt that they had to eat it in tiny bites with their hard bread.

The students tried to hide it, but their unease was plain. Funnily enough, they steadied themselves by watching the composed Ricard. How could he be so unruffled? It was so extraordinary that they could never quite get used to it.

“The enemy will probably come along the road we took.”

Ricard spoke as he wiped the dagger he had used to slice the meat. He had not asked for their attention, but everyone turned to listen.

“If they’d gotten ahead of us to lie in wait, we’d have run into them around the village. The far end of this road is too far away for them to wait there. They’ll probably waste time searching the area before they come after us. Then we’ll have to fight.”

He made himself perfectly clear. Running away or choosing some other option was not on the table. They had to fight.

“There are three groups of us, so let’s have three people take on one enemy each. You already know you won’t remember your training anyway, right? Just think about cutting or thrusting whenever you see an opening. With three against one, there’s bound to be an opening.”

It might hurt their pride, but pride meant nothing when their lives were at stake. Having experienced it once, the students understood that perfectly. There was just one problem.

“But they outnumber us, don’t they? There are nine of us, and one of us is wounded. There must be at least thirty of them. How can we fight three against one?”

One of the girls spoke up. Now that they were talking to one another more, she seemed comfortable offering her opinion.

“That’s why the opening attack matters. If we strike all at once and kill a few in an instant, they’ll think we outnumber them. Momentum. We overwhelm them with momentum. Don’t think about anything else—just kill one at a time. Sweep right through them. I’ll handle the stronger ones.”

Even if Ricard was right, and even if they trusted him as their leader, their lack of actual combat experience left the students doubtful.

Ricard tapped the bandage wrapped around his left hand.

“The cuts on our palms haven’t even healed yet.”

Only a day had passed since they had sworn to fight rather than run, and to avenge anyone who died in the fighting.

Their palms still stung, the pain a vivid reminder of their oath.

But human hearts were fickle. There was no telling what they would do once the moment came.

Ricard looked at Ice. His almost unreal silver hair and perfectly proportioned features seemed to shine even after three days without a proper wash.

Yet his usually cool, indifferent eyes looked somehow melancholy now. Or perhaps afraid.

Ricard thought he still did not understand the boy. He had left to complete the commission? Was that sincere, or merely a coward’s excuse? Ricard could not tell.

“It’s better to fight. Running away can become a habit, too. And then things get truly miserable...”

He murmured the words as though to himself—or perhaps for everyone to hear.

The campfires blazed, and the students remained silent. Whether they were strengthening their resolve or simply trembling with fear, there was no way to tell.

Ricard thought that being used to fighting himself was one thing, but it did not give him the right to force the students to risk their lives.

At the same time, he felt a kinship with their situation. He had been about fifteen or sixteen when he had been all but thrown onto a battlefield in his previous life.

As he raised his head and slowly studied their faces, the thoughts, the trembling, the worries, and the unease of those days seemed to come back to him.

That was why he could never say anything like, “Run and I’ll kill you.” Even if they fled, all he could do was take them back and tell them it was all right.

But he could hardly encourage them to run, either. He decided that he had done all he could.

As the night deepened, Ricard felt an inexplicable sadness. Because nothing had changed.

The next day, after following the forest road a little farther, Ricard decided to lay an ambush along the way. Preparing for a fight was far better than walking on defenselessly until one broke out without warning.

The students wondered whether they might escape the forest if they went just a little farther, and whether they might find guild adventurers once they reached Torweil. Even so, they trusted Ricard’s judgment and followed his lead.

And that was what Ricard intended. This was not simply about gaining an advantage in the fight. Lying in wait beforehand would change their mindset. Human nature would make them accept that they really were going to fight.

Like a truly capable field commander, Ricard knew how to choose the time and place of battle himself.

“But wouldn’t it be better to attack from both sides?”

Volka asked because all the students were hiding on the same side of the road.

“That takes coordination, too. You’ve experienced it yourself. Once the swords start swinging, you can’t tell what’s happening. You might hurt a friend coming out from the other side.”

“True...”

Under the extreme strain of a life-or-death struggle, there was no room in one’s head to distinguish friend from foe.

That was why formations mattered so much when armies fought. All a soldier had to do was stab the man in front of him.

The larger the force, the harder it was to command, while the soldiers doing the actual fighting needed only to repeat simple actions. In smaller engagements, however, the abilities of each individual fighter mattered much more.

Ricard and the other students drew their weapons in advance and waited in hiding beside the road. The wait proved more tedious than they had expected. All sorts of thoughts passed through their minds, from idle distractions to attempts to steel themselves.

Then, around the time the sun stood high overhead, a scream rang out far back along the road they had traveled.

“Aaaaaaagh!”

Everyone’s eyes widened. What was that?

Then it came again.

“Aaaaaaagh!”

The party flinched once more. Ricard was just as bewildered. What was happening?

The screams continued intermittently. Don’t leave me. Help me. I’m sorry...

Then, at some point, a faint breeze carried the smell of burning. A fire? What? What was going on?

“You fucking bastards! You think I’m some fucking pushover?!”

They did not know what had happened, but it was clearly something very serious. The screams drew closer and closer. Then—

“Hah! Hah! Hah! Hah!”

Someone came running, panting wildly, his hands empty of any weapon. From his appearance he seemed to be an adventurer, and an enemy, but two arrows protruded from his back. Huh?

He was fleeing headlong, his face that of a man who had seen a ghost.

Ricard understood instinctively. The enemy had gotten into some sort of dispute with the locals, and a fight had broken out. And they were being beaten without putting up much of a fight.

In unfamiliar territory, particularly rough terrain such as forests and mountains, there was no beating the locals. Rangers skilled at hiding and archery were like poisonous frogs: best left alone.

The students stirred. Should they charge out now? What should they do? But Ricard raised an arm to stop them. For now, they needed to watch.

They gripped their weapons tightly. Blood seeped through the bandage around one student’s hand. Their tension rose to a fever pitch.

The screams came ever closer, and before long another group came running up, gasping for breath. They too had arrows sticking out of their arms and bodies. One man with an arrow in his thigh limped frantically along.

Ricard sprang at the one who looked least injured. Caught in mid-flight, the man flailed his arms in shock.

CRUNCH!

Ricard’s sword came down hard, splitting his head. At that, the students surged out of hiding.

“Vengeance!”

Someone shouted it. Without being told, all the other students took up the cry.

“Vengeance!”

The enemy had no fighting spirit to begin with, and they were not even properly armed. What followed was an almost entirely one-sided slaughter.

“W-wait!”

“I surrender!”

They made a final plea for mercy, but the students spared no one, hacking them all to death. One student grew so frenzied that he had to be stopped from slashing at a corpse.

“Hah! Hah! Hah! Hah!”

It was hard to see what they had done to leave them so breathless, but the flood of adrenaline had left them half out of their minds.

More fleeing men appeared after that. The sight of Ricard’s party and their own comrades’ bodies strewn around them nearly frightened them senseless, and they fled into the trackless forest.

Meanwhile, the smell of burning was growing stronger. Thick gray smoke could be seen rising in the distance.

“Let’s go. The fire might spread faster than we think. Molty goes first. I’ll take the rear.”

Ricard deliberately put the wounded member at the front. He intended to get everyone out alive, without losing a single person. The students understood, and with their newfound confidence, they nodded their agreement.

With his scabbard slung diagonally across his back and his sword drawn, Ricard walked at the end of the column.

Perhaps an hour had passed since they set off. As Ricard drove away men who were more fugitives than pursuers, a dense cloud of gray smoke suddenly engulfed the party. They had not even felt the heat of the flames yet.

The smoke swept over them in an instant. His eyes stung, and after only a few coughs in the acrid air, the companions walking right in front of him had vanished as if by magic. The same thing happened to the other students.

“Cough! Cough!”

Smoke swirled left and right, back and forth, destroying their sense of direction. They could barely see the path beneath their feet. From then on, the students simply kept walking straight ahead.

Then someone burst through the smoke at Volka. A chilling sound swept past his ear.

WHOOSH!

Startled, Volka twisted aside on reflex. But his foot caught on a root and he fell. Blood ran down his cheek where the sword tip seemed to have grazed him.

Firelight glowed through the thick smoke. A man glared down at Volka, his wide eyes gleaming with madness.

His disheveled appearance and wildly tangled, chin-length hair made him look like a fiend risen from hell. Arrows bristled from his back like a hedgehog’s spines. His leather armor, which had given its life in place of its owner, hung in tatters.

He snarled like an animal.

“These little shits really think I’m some fucking pushover...!”

It was none other than Lorenz. He had needlessly stirred up a hornet’s nest and suffered so badly at the rangers’ hands that he seemed to have lost all reason, consumed by venomous rage. He looked ready to kill anyone who crossed his path.

He was also the one who had started the fire. Watching his men die helplessly at the rangers’ hands, he had set the forest alight in a final act of desperation.

Volka scrambled up and tried to get away. He had dropped his sword when he fell and could not fight.

Off the path, with no idea where he was going, he found the terrifying killer closing in fast, about to stab him in the back.

CLANG!

Metal rang out. Volka fell again and looked back. A black cloak fluttered. Astonishingly, it was Ice. He could not believe it. Why...?

“That way. Go.”

Ice spoke dispassionately, then stood in Lorenz’s way.

Thick smoke still swirled around them, acrid enough to sting their noses. Heat pressed in, as though the flames were drawing closer.

Without exchanging a word, Lorenz and Ice swung their swords at each other. As Ice’s blade swept through the air, pure white crystals bloomed along its path like snowflakes.

For an instant, there was a genuine chill. By the Rubens Guild’s classification, it was unmistakably a Bloom-stage sword.

Startled, Lorenz deliberately avoided meeting the blade, leaning aside and hastily widening the distance.

“It was you! You’re the one who caused all this! Heh heh heh... Yes, if I kill you, I can make up for everything! You son of a bitch! I’ll kill you!”

He had clearly been told that a young boy in a red cloak had killed the guild’s promising swordsman, but the sight of a Bloom-stage sword seemed to drive everything else out of his head.

Regardless of his ranting, Ice focused entirely on his opponent.

Lorenz’s sword came at him again. Ice extended his own blade, intending to block with the guard. He had already pictured the moves that would follow, but the difference in their practical experience showed.

His sword met no resistance. Lorenz flicked his wrist, circling his blade away, then suddenly flung dirt at him.

Ice hastily turned his head, but even that brief opening was dangerous in a fight between skilled opponents.

His side burned. The cut seemed fairly deep. Even so, he gritted his teeth and counterattacked, striking at the blow meant to finish him. But once again, his sword cut only empty air.

It was over. The thought flashed through Ice’s mind. The outcome of a fight to the death could not be judged by swordsmanship alone.

Unless it was a formal duel between knights, what fool would fight fair? And the setting introduced far too many variables: acrid smoke stinging the nose, burning eyes, searing heat, uneven ground, blurred vision.

In a contest of pure swordsmanship, Ice might have won easily. But here, life and death hung in the balance. Here, one had to use every means available.

Snowflake-like mana blossomed beautifully along Ice’s sword as it swept uselessly through the air, but that was all. Lorenz had already shifted slightly to one side and raised his sword like an executioner.

Ice pitched forward, catching himself on his hands. He quickly twisted around to look up at Lorenz, but all that seemed to remain was for the sword to descend—on his neck, his head, or his chest.

Then someone came flying through the firelight. Like an angel with wings of flame. That was how it looked to Ice.

Ricard raised his sword over his head and brought it down. But Lorenz was no ordinary fighter; his reflexes were almost animal-like.

He hastily sprang away from Ricard. Having seized the initiative, however, Ricard gave him no time to recover his stance. Blow followed blow.

SWISH! WHOOSH! SWISH!

His sword was neither fast nor slow. At first glance, it even looked ordinary. Yet strangely, Lorenz kept being driven backward, unable to find an opening to counterattack. A sense of wrongness ran down his spine.

It was only because Lorenz was so skilled that he sensed anything wrong at all. A lesser fighter would have met the blade, had his sword broken, and died long before he could feel it.

Then Lorenz noticed Ricard’s cloak. A red cloak... Wait, that was strange. The other boy had just used a Bloom-stage sword.

Step by step, Ricard claimed his opponent’s space, controlling what fighters called the angles. By the time Lorenz realized his mistake, he had nowhere left to retreat.

He tried the trick he had used against Ice, feigning a counterattack and taking the offensive to provoke a mistake. But Ricard’s eyes, at once burning and cold, did more than see through the deception. They pierced it completely.

WHOOSH!

CHOP!

Lorenz flicked his wrist to avoid a clash of blades, but Ricard had already closed the distance. Unable even to block, he lost half his head. Everything above the lower jaw was cleanly severed.

THUD.

The headless body collapsed. Tongue and teeth were exposed at the cut. One eye in the severed head twitched for a brief instant, while the body, separated from its brain, writhed for a while. At last, both halves lay lifeless.

Ricard immediately sheathed his sword, slung it around his neck, and approached Ice.

“Can you move?”

Ice could not answer. He looked up at Ricard like someone who had seen the impossible. Or someone who had experienced a miracle.

Ice felt as though time had stopped. In the forest, amid billowing smoke and surging firelight, it seemed that the whole world was ending and a being descended from heaven was looking down at him.

He stared blankly for a moment before coming to his senses and speaking. Blood was welling from his side.

“J-just go...”

Just go? Was it because of his wound, or shame at having abandoned Ricard before?

Ricard studied him for a moment, then spoke firmly.

“You may abandon me, but I won’t abandon you. That’s the difference between us.”

Ice lowered his head and spoke in a pleading, almost desperate tone.

“... Even you can’t save me... Just let me die...”

“Keep talking shit and I’ll knock you out and carry you. Come on, get on my back. And put this over yourself, unless you want to ruin that pretty face.”

Ricard stripped off his cloak as he spoke, as though there was no time to waste on words. The cloak was already soaking wet.

He pulled Ice’s arm and forced him onto his back. Then, covering him with the wet cloak, he plunged into the flames. Ice buried his face against the boy’s shoulder.

How long had he run? When they emerged from that hell, an unbelievably cool expanse of open fields spread before them. Clear sunlight and a refreshing breeze welcomed the two boys. It was hard to believe heaven and hell could lie so close together. At last, they had reached the end of the forest.

There they found all the other students, who had already made it out, along with adventurers from the Beringen Guild who had received word belatedly and come to meet them.

The students had been waiting in agonizing suspense. When Ricard finally emerged with Ice safe, they rushed toward him, cheering before they knew it. Overwhelming relief washed over Volka. His face crumpled, and he sank to the ground where he stood.

All nine had survived. On top of that, they had killed a rival guild’s Clan Master.

Nothing like this had happened since the academy’s founding: students surviving an initial ambush, counterattacking, and killing the enemy leader.

Mere students had accomplished something that even skilled, seasoned adventurers would find difficult.

The active adventurers of Beringen were at a loss as to how they should report this preposterous outcome.

But for now, all that could wait. It was time to rest and simply enjoy the sunshine and the breeze. These boys and girls had more than earned it.

In any case, Ricard laid Ice down and moved to give him first aid. The adventurers stepped in and took care of it, washing the wound, using potions generously, and stitching it closed.

Outside the forest, it was so peaceful that what had just happened scarcely seemed real.

Lying on Ricard’s cloak, Ice watched white clouds drift slowly across the blue sky and felt the potion drawing him toward sleep.

Nearby, he could hear the students talking excitedly. There was no awkwardness or wariness between them anymore. They were all united.

As though he were lying all alone in some distant place, Ice gazed at the clear sky and began to drift off. Then Ricard’s face suddenly appeared, blocking his view.

“Are you all right? Do you need anything else?”

Ricard asked. But he was quite a sight. Passing through the flames had left his skin flushed red, and his singed hair curled tightly like broccoli.

“Heh heh... heh heh heh...”

Despite the pain, Ice could not help laughing.

Ricard’s eyes widened at the sight of a boy who never laughed doing just that. Then he realized why, and began to chuckle himself.

Cool weather, warm sunshine, a nap stealing gently over him, and a friend he could feel at ease with. There was nothing else he needed.

End of Part 6 — When a Frozen Heart Thaws.