Chapter 155 - The Place to Return (3)

In a certain room, made even narrower now that he could no longer remain in the mayor's office.

Joseph stood there by the window with his hands clasped behind his back.

He was a man who always kept the sunlight at his back, but today, it seemed he wanted to look at the sun coming in.

"What will you do?"

In the scenery reflected in the window, crows could be seen flapping away.

The crows of Marcus, which Joseph had been borrowing all this time, were leaving him one by one.

"If you wish, I will transfer your affiliation even now. That would be the natural thing to do."

Because they had been given by someone other than himself, they had to leave.

The crows, the knights, and even the position of mayor of Soara.

Joseph was now letting go, one by one, of the things that had never truly been his.

"Our contract was for seven years, was it not?"

"The contract is over. I have now lost the competition to become Family Head."

For you, loyalty; for me, opportunity.

But now that he could guarantee nothing, Joseph had no right to hold on to Vlad.

"..."

In the heavy atmosphere, Vlad, who had only been chewing on his lip, looked up at Joseph out of habit.

A man with his hands clasped behind his back, gazing at the sun coming in.

The mood around him was gloomy, yet his back somehow looked light, and it held Vlad's gaze for a long time.

"Go where you want to go. I will do what I want to do."

The sun of today, which he faced wholly by himself after setting everything down.

For some reason, his expression, standing not in shadow but in sunlight, seemed as though it was smiling.

* * *

In an empty lot somewhere inside city hall.

Lamund jerked his head back in horror at the sight of the blue sword shooting toward him like an arrow.

"...!"

The age in his joints, creaking and twisting, was a bitter thing.

But Lamund had no time to lament that age, and had to hurry to meet the next attack.

"Who did you steal that from this time!"

The steps pressing in were sly beyond his years, but the space toward which his toes pointed was precisely cutting off Lamund's intentions.

A sharpness laid atop flexibility.

Looking at Vlad, who had filled another piece into his world, Lamund realized there had been yet another victim like himself.

"Where did you learn such cheap tricks!"

It was far too noble a technique to be called a cheap trick, but there was still no firm Sword Path set at the tip of Vlad's blade.

He had devoured it greedily, but had not yet properly digested it.

"Tch!"

Vlad clicked his tongue as he felt the flow of the offensive shift before he knew it.

As expected, Lamund was a strong knight.

Strong enough to have grown old without dying.

Vlad flinched at the suddenly changing Sword Path, but Lamund had already predicted his reaction.

CLANG!

His shoulder, forced between the Sword Paths, shone.

Here was the original form of the hardening technique he had learned but dared not imitate.

"Act your age, would you! You're already wheezing as it is!"

"Even wheezing, I'm still better than you!"

It had begun as a light spar, but seeing Lamund show no care for his old body, Vlad burst out in frustration.

He was at an age where if he broke something now, it would not even set properly.

"And you said you wouldn't use aura!"

"That's why I'm telling you to be careful. There are knights who trick you like this!"

Looking at Lamund's shoulder, which shone as brightly as his smooth forehead, Vlad closed his left eye.

To stand against that knight's aura, he too had to put forth something of equal measure.

"... Oh-ho."

Vlad's world, which had reached the blue moon but failed to cross beyond it, was unfolding through his sword.

Still, that struggle had not been in vain, and Lamund kept nodding as he saw the golden color flowing from Vlad's left eye.

"Come at me!"

Knowing that a single strand of his own color was mixed into that shining gold, Lamund gripped his sword as if delighted.

No matter how quickly young ones grew, the speed of the one before his eyes was astonishing every time he saw it.

"Don't blame me if something breaks."

"A young brat with nothing but a mouth on him."

There was a beast growling before him.

But that growl, which had only seemed pitiful when he first saw it, had now become a tangible threat and held Lamund's gaze.

"...!"

He was watching carefully, but his old body could not keep up with young movement.

The unpredictability that could never have been guessed from Vlad's former self finally deceived Lamund's eyes.

'Far faster than before!'

He looked not merely fast, but as if he had leaped through time itself.

Having deceived Lamund's intent through his steps and movements, Vlad burst out through that momentary gap and arrived right in front of him.

"Hup!"

A response that creaked because it was old.

Spotting that opening, Vlad shifted the balance of his power with a short breath and began cutting away at Lamund's toughness without mercy.

A strike as splendid as the color he bore.

But unlike its splendid appearance, Vlad's tenacious sword blows continued to gnaw away at Lamund's solidity.

Vlad knew well that if he could not kill with a single strike, all that remained was a dogged challenge.

"You're fighting... dirty!"

Under Vlad's ceaseless attempts, Lamund's hardening technique gradually began to peel away.

Deflect the sword, aim for the opening, and deliver another powerful blow.

CLAAANG! CLANG!

The tactic of sending out two or three more strikes than Lamund was also Vlad's intention, taking into account the difference in stamina.

Vlad was now controlling the battlefield.

"Now! Let's! End this!"

And through the opening he had finally pierced, Vlad's eyes flashed.

Feeling that something big was coming, Lamund quickly corrected his stance, but Vlad's attack was half a beat faster.

'... What?'

Right in front of him was Vlad's smooth, shining forehead.

A moment he had gained because he did not take hold of the sword that had been knocked away.

What slipped in through that moment was Vlad's forehead, wrapped in the hardening technique.

"No, you little...!"

Lamund let out a shrill scream, but Vlad's attack did not stop.

Whatever was done to you, you paid back somehow.

That was the basic attitude of those who lived in the back alleys.

WHAM!

The sound of something bursting rang loudly through the empty lot inside city hall.

It was far too loud to be called the sound of forehead meeting forehead.

* * *

"... You rotten brat. You don't even know gratitude for what I taught you, and you ram me? Well, I suppose a bastard like you would go around smashing up convents too."

"Isn't this all because I learned from such fine knights?"

Even under Lamund's rebuke, Vlad only grinned and sheathed his sword.

After all, calling a rotten bastard rotten was not going to shock him in the slightest.

"You really didn't break anything, did you?"

"Oh, gods..."

Watching Lamund roll around as if the pain had only just come rushing in, Vlad held out a hand.

It was a hand offered to help him up, but Vlad's other hand was already shining with the hardening technique.

"Don't grab my hand and ram me. I've wrapped aura around my left hand."

"... Hm."

Lamund looked at Vlad's clenched fist and smacked his lips as if disappointed.

Since Vlad had gone beyond what he had been taught, it was worth praising him, but if someone did too well, that only made him more annoying.

"Anyway, what are you going to do? Do you intend to keep following the young master around?"

"... So this is why you called me."

Old men really could not be underestimated.

As though the spar itself had never been the point, Lamund's question stabbed straight in when Vlad was at his most off guard.

"Do not do it. It is already over."

"..."

A heavy silence settled over the lot that had been so noisy only moments before.

If he had not known, there would have been nothing to do, but because he knew, Lamund had to tell him.

"Jager may be one thing, but the other knights will probably all leave Joseph's side. That is right and proper."

The old man's advice for the young man was not wrong by even an inch.

Lamund's advice, which he knew because he had already experienced it, was aimed precisely at Vlad's safety.

"If Lord Joseph bows his head even now, he should be able to preserve his life. Even if it is not some grand position, somewhere quiet..."

"He says he does not want to do that."

Vlad flopped down beside Lamund, who showed no sign of getting up.

"What?"

"He says he does not want to live like that."

He did not want to live a life that was merely given to him.

Joseph firmly believed that the reason a person named himself had been born into this world could not possibly be only that.

Because the path he had walked until now had been neither lacking nor shameful.

Even amid coughing fits, Joseph was a man who had never let go of his belief in himself.

"I thought that was a little cool."

"Haa..."

Vlad brushed the sand from his hands and smiled at Lamund.

Even when he looked up at the night sky now, the blue moonlight he had once admired was no longer there.

The path Vlad had to follow now was not in the distant sky, but the cry within himself.

Just like Joseph now.

"I've spent my life doing nothing but keeping busy, and I realized I'd never thought about what I actually wanted to do."

He stole to eat and killed to live.

But none of those things were what Vlad truly wanted to do.

"So. Is following Lord Joseph what you want to do?"

"I don't really know that either."

Not what he had to do, but what he wanted to do.

Vlad, who had reached the blue moonlight, now decided to walk that path that he, not someone else, had to find.

"It's just... I like this side a little better?"

"You madman..."

Not for the sake of chasing someone else, but solely for himself.

Only after freely pouring out his true feelings did Vlad feel as if he could finally understand why Joseph had been smiling.

* * *

A few days after the spar with Lamund.

Just as he had said, all the knights around Joseph received orders releasing them from service.

The only knights who remained by his side now were Jager and Vordan, who had nowhere to go, and Joseph was preparing, in shabby fashion, to return to Oksana.

"You're leaving tomorrow?"

"Yeah. To the Barony of Uthman."

Vlad, too, was walking around the city with Zemina as he prepared to set out on a journey.

The only difference was that Vlad's destination was not Sturma, like Joseph's, but the Barony of Uthman.

"I've finished all the urgent work now, so for the time being, I've decided to help with the Northern Orthodox Church's work. You could call it a kind of pilgrimage."

He was a knight of Bayezid, but also a knight vouched for by Bishop Andreas.

Peter, like Joseph, could not refuse a request made by a bishop of high reputation.

Knowing very well from whom the name he had received had begun, Vlad decided to leave in order to help Andreas's young acolyte purify the places that had been wicked.

"But isn't it dangerous there?"

Because the alley was narrow, Zemina's nearby eyes were trembling.

He did not know exactly what emotion made them tremble, but that trembling probably held worry for Vlad as well.

"Dangerous? The Vatican already trampled all over that place."

"Are you sure it is really safe?"

"Have I ever deceived you? Why can't you trust people?"

"Of course you have."

Though they had been walking side by side, Zemina's shadow, stopped all alone, was growing long.

As if trying to catch Vlad as he moved away, it grew that long.

"In your old letters, you wrote nothing but lies."

"..."

"All that crap about being somewhere safe and only staying beside Lord Joseph, my ass. I heard you ran off on your own and everything."

Vlad could feel that the voice coming from behind him carried resentment, along with a little wetness.

The letters he had sent to reassure her now seemed to have given Zemina only anxiety instead.

"You think I'm a joke. You think I won't know anything, don't you? From the start, with Baroness Alicia too..."

"With the Baroness too, what?"

When he turned back with a sigh, Zemina was there with an expression that said this was not how she wanted it to go.

She had tried hard to make this time because he was leaving again, yet what came out of her mouth was not encouragement or comfort, but only the hurt she had been holding back all this time.

"Anyway, you like Deirmar better than this shabby place, don't you? Because you are Lady Alicia's knight."

They were words she had blurted out by mistake, but she could not stop, and because of that, Zemina kept being hurt by the words that came out.

It looked truly foolish, the way she was being hurt by her own words, but that was how much Zemina had been enduring all this time.

"Hngh..."

Though she had been holding it in with all her might, Zemina finally shed tears from those big eyes of hers.

But watching Zemina like that, Vlad had no intention of comforting her.

"You know what? You really are a stupid girl."

"Waaah!"

As if telling her to cry more, Vlad's words and actions only made Zemina's crying grow louder.

Yes, she deserved to cry.

Red-haired Zemina was a stupid girl who did not even know why Vlad was moving so busily.

"You cry all the time, but you only ever cry in front of me. You haven't changed. Huh? You're exactly the same as before."

She was not a child anymore, but seeing Zemina cry exactly as she had in the past, Vlad tried hard to get angry, only to end up laughing.

She had been trying so hard to pretend to be Lady Zemina all this time, but Vlad was so glad to see the red-haired girl finally lift her head again.

"Let go of me..."

"A stupid girl who knows nothing should keep her mouth shut."

Lifting Zemina up easily with one hand, Vlad passed through the dark back alleys with a familiar gait.

The lights of the back alleys began to come on one by one.

Following that scenery, which had not changed at all, just like the weight of the girl he was carrying, Vlad stopped in front of a certain shop.

"... Why here?"

"Look."

It was a place that was always full of mud.

Because heat that melted the cold ground kept leaking out from within.

"You were around here."

Planting the Zemina he had been carrying into the mud, Vlad took his own place and began standing beside the girl.

"And I was around here."

Standing in the places where they had once stood, the two naturally lifted their heads and began looking at the shop before them.

It was a familiar motion because they had done it from very long ago.

CLAAANG! CLANG!

Because it was dark, the light of the smithy shone even brighter as it reached the two of them.

Though the person inside was different, it was an all too familiar sound.

"Nothing has changed. Right?"

"Hngh..."

Whether she was crying or answering, Vlad could not tell, but he felt that what he wanted to say had been conveyed.

"If I come back, where else would it be but here?"

"..."

It was a sight that had not changed.

The sound of hammers flowing out, and the light of red molten iron.

And the boy and girl standing side by side.

For Vlad, his hometown was Soara, but if there was a place he would return to, it would be right here.

"... Come back safely."

"Yeah."

Still, if there was one thing in the scene that had changed, it would be the footprints of the two, now a little closer together than before.

Though it was not narrow, Vlad and Zemina stood side by side like that for a long time in front of the old smithy.

Their footprints, deepened by how long they stood there, were gradually growing darker.