Carr

I’m not gonna lie, I’m actually incredibly pissed.

Valle duelled an assassin who hypnotized, zombified or what have you a crowd of wealthy nobles and then we left the theatre accompanying a crying princess who we were known to have kidnapped. And in spite of all that, not a single damned assassin came after me. Did I have to be content with the Longswordsman? Was that seriously all I was getting? I wanted to test my new sword so badly.

I’m fucking insane. This isn’t a game. If I lose a match, I die. I can’t be getting jealous that I didn’t have to risk my life today. That’s absurd.

I decided to be mature. We had all returned to our ship—though the ship was still inside the Arcship—to retire for the night and discuss our findings. I had decided to be mature about this.

“It’s so fucking unfair, I wanted a fight!” I shouted.

Just because I had made a decision didn’t mean I could stick to it, though.

Everyone turned to face me with understandably annoyed expressions on their faces. Fedal had flirted with death, Valle had collected a number of wounds from his duels against Mauro and Johan, and Isabella had returned as if she had bathed in blood. At their angry and perplexed stares, I shrugged and said, “Look, I wanted a duel goddamn it!”

Before my words could infuriate them further, Celle cut in and said, “Let’s—let’s just talk about what our current situation is instead, how about that?” There was a general murmur of agreement, and then she said, “How are we doing as far as assassins go?”

“I have to say we haven’t exactly been stealthy,” I said. After bidding farewell to the crowd, Valle and I frankly just walked back to the ship with the crying princess and attracted much attention in the meantime. Yet we weren’t attacked. “So how come they haven’t just ganged up and assassinated us?”

“You know Johan better than any of us,” Valle replied, in a vague tone of someone too tired to care. “Why does a demon play with his food? Only he knows.”

“You don’t have any guesses?”

“Do you?”

I considered it for a moment. “Johan isn’t the type who wants to win through numbers.” I thought back of his old strategies in team matches. There were many times we would have achieved a simpler win through just overwhelming our opponents, but Johan had insisted upon crushing them in such a way that their confidence would be damaged.

“It makes them easier to deal with in the future. Look beyond just the current match,” Johan had said.

“He might be trying to make examples out of us,” I said, after a long pause. “Defeating us instead of simply assassinating us stealthily…it might be something he thinks he benefits from.”

The princess spoke up. “It’s because I am with you.” Her voice was quiet and trembled slightly, but in spite of its shakiness there was a quality of certainty to it. “Because in the eyes of many, law and tradition be damned, Johan is a monster and I am the Emperor’s blood. Not to mention the collateral damage…I doubt it was the monster’s intention to have Mauro put so many wealthy nobles under his direct control in that theatre. He doesn’t want a hostile takeover, he wants to be handed the power as if it is his divine right.”

“Johan does love his routine,” I said bitterly.

Isabella’s hand shot up, as if awaiting for a turn. When we all turned to face her, she said, “Gilder and I talked to Reven—from what I understood, he is one of Johan’s most trusted subordinates. Whether it’s due to Johan’s orders or his own desires, he seems to have wanted us to have a fighting chance against every assassin we faced so far.”

“Reven?” I asked. “That name sounds familiar…”

Celle laughed. “Remember when we kidnapped those merchants back in Cresna? The merchant told us to look for a blacksmith named Reven to make your new sword. Then we stumbled upon Gilder before we could get around to that.”

“Wasn’t that the name of Gilder’s master as well?” I asked.

Gilder stirred in his seat. “That…that’s correct. We met with him today.”

“Ah. How did the revenge go?”

“It didn’t,” Gilder replied solemnly.

There was an abrupt silence that came after this, as I had hoped there would be. I regarded the room suspiciously—there was much chaos abound the Arcship today, and though I hadn’t run into a fight, I had run into many rumours. The Executioner is aboard the ship…I hope the princess doesn’t hear about that. That Isabella and Gilder had stormed Reven’s building was also well-known—I heard there was an arrest made of some poor fellow to take the blame for the incident. If I had to guess, it was done to appease the nobles aboard the ship and this reinforced our earlier assumption: Johan, for whatever reason, wanted us to die in a very specific way and being merely executed didn’t appear to be enough.

Fedal’s hand shot up. “As far as reports go, Celle got her [Skills] swapped as she intended and I duelled one of the assassins.” He gestured at his torn, blood-stained clothes. “As you can see, it was an easy fight.”

I nodded. “We can go over the details of the fight later to analyze what you could have done better, if you’d like.”

“That would be great,” Fedal replied, smiling.

Celle sighed. “By the time I was done the church had become a bloody battlefield. The assassin was dead, and Fedal was…well, he was alive. I healed him just enough to not attract too much attention and we made our way here.” At this point she winced slightly, as if trying to forget a rather concerning point. “The priest acted like he didn’t see anything.”

“So…we had two assassins target us directly. Fedal and Valle each fought one. If we count the ones not aboard the Arcship, we had three—the Longswordsman fought me too. But…he wasn’t really meant for me, but for the princess.” I shrugged. “I’m sure that means something, but I’ll be damned if I know what. I know how to stab people, not how to deal with all this shit.”

Valle and Celle exchanged a look—the one smart people do when they notice something. To be frank I’m sure I could have followed their reasoning if I tried, but I knew Celle would tell me all about it later, so I allowed myself to be lazy. After that, we talked about our upcoming match a bit longer—two days until our team match…I wondered how that was going to turn out.

Isabella

“Doing alright, Gilder?” I asked when Gilder entered his room. “Thought you had run away again. That’s sort of your specialty.”

“How—“ Gilder looked behind him at the door, then at his own pockets as if to confirm the key was still there, as if I hadn’t made a copy of everyone’s keys days ago. After shutting the door behind him, he shook his head and said, “Doesn’t matter how you got here, I guess. Look, I’m fine just—“

“Are you pissed I kept you from fighting your master right there? Not gonna lie, you would have died if you tried, and I don’t hate you enough to let you do that.”

“I—so am I supposed to just let him go?”

After our negotiations concluded, Gilder had reached for his blade and only stopped at my glare. I had intended to cut off his hand if he tried attacking Reven, and my murderous intent stopped him short. Perhaps he had taken my eyes spelling out murder to be an insult, which is rather understandable. Still, I had done it out friendship, surely he would see that?

「REASON」

You know that’s not likely.

“I honestly went into that tower with the full intention of murdering him for you,” I said.

“You…have a funny way of doing that.”

“Once I looked at him it seemed like just murdering him wasn’t going to be enough,” I exclaimed. I couldn’t believe I had to explain myself. “Seemed like just murder would be too petty. There’s something worse than death.”

“And…you have a plan?” Gilder asked, hesitantly.

I nodded and smiled at him. “Just wait until the team match.”

Gilder was reaching for something deep in his mind—a way to express a hesitating thankfulness, I presumed. He smiled back, and started saying, “I really appreciate—” before I said, “—So, you were a Jack, what’s up with that?”

Color drained from his face. His smile faded and he shook his head a few times, eyes wide and a raised index finger half-pointing at me. “You—you don’t have any tact, do you?”

「FLEXIBILITY」

If you tried really hard, you could maybe find some tact. But you didn’t.

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“I wanted to talk to you about that since we left Reven’s building. But it seemed like you were in a bit of a haze after he said that.”

“I…I appreciate you not bringing it up in front of Carr. I don’t know how he’s going to react. I honestly didn’t really put everything together until recently. I mean I had my suspicions, strong ones, but I didn’t want to believe that…” Gilder trailed off. “Must’ve been pretty damn optimistic on my part, huh? Expecting it to

He explained Johan’s absurd system to me in broken sentences, occasionally stopping to laugh bitterly as if it were all some sort of sick joke. Johan hired people as servants and forced them to mold their personalities after old friends of his—to ensure this ‘embarrassing’ secret never got out, servants were never allowed to leave the castle.

“What happened when your term ended?” I asked.

“It…it depends. Some people were allowed to go back to live with their families, once Master Roger was in charge. Before that, and sometimes even after, you just…suffered an accident on your way home and your family would be richly compensated. Not that anyone knew. I…I thought I was going to be rich afterwards. But when I overheard what was going to happen to me I—I ran.”

“And Johan never found out?”

“Oh, he did. But Master Reven, he—he saw talent in me and kept me alive. Made some sort of deal with him…I imagine me being used to forge the Emperor’s will later on was part of that deal. Even back then, Master must have been planning…” He trailed off. Such was the terror in his face that for the first time since breaking the red sphere I was overcome with a strongly human emotion—empathy. The sheer betrayal in his face appeared to overwhelm him, and saying it aloud made it more real to him than ever before, even if the thought wasn’t unfamiliar. I wrapped my arms around him before his first tears had finished rolling down his face.

“I—I always admired him. Even before I worked in the palace. Had a small job at Reven’s manor before, but he never noticed me any more than the other junior blacksmiths. Occasionally heard a word or three from him and I kept working at my craft, hoping it would make him pay attention to me. When I thought I had reached the peak of my abilities and he still didn’t give me a second look I took the palace job. I thought, what was there to lose, right?” He laughed bitterly. “When he saved me from Johan I thought—I thought…I thought he cared. For just that one moment he seemed like a father to me.”

“If…if I can ask, what happened to your biological father?”

“He died,” Gilder replied slowly.

「MUSCLES」

Good. After we crush his spirit, we’ll make sure Reven has more in common with him still.

“We didn’t have pictures of Carr, only stories so I—I thought it was just a coincidence. Same name. And Johan’s stories didn’t quite match up with him, so I wasn’t sure. Then when I saw him fence against the Executioner…there was so much I didn’t know what to do with. I…I know I should tell him, but how is he going to react when he finds out what Johan has done with the memory of their friends?”

Valle

In my cabin, I was conducting what was now a strange routine and brushing Princess Nevada’s hair before bed. Her reaction back in the theatre reminded me of what I already knew—the young girl was trying to put up a strong front, but she had not the fangs to fight in a world where beasts like Johan roamed. What would happen to her after we killed him?

“You were amazing today, my lord,” Nevada said softly. Her voice was full of admiration, nearly a giggle. “The way you defeated that assassin—I have never seen something more splendorous. You destroyed that evil man so easily and made it all so entertaining too!”

“A Champion’s duty is to be en-ter-tai-ning,” I said, enunciating each syllable. I thought back of Estella and Cresna. Absently, I went on, “What’s the point of a Champion that isn’t admired?”

“Not every Champion can be like you, Lord Valle. Some have a sharper steel than wit.”

“Then the title ill-befits them. Strength isn’t all a Champion needs, only the bare minimum.” You need to be able to defend your ideals against whatever comes your way, even if it means your death. “I’m glad to serve you, Your Highness.”

There was a comfortable silence that followed. It was raining now, and I heard the sound of the raindrops gently brushing against the glass windows in my cabin, occasionally punctuated by the crackling of our fireplace. It was a gentle silence that I hadn’t experienced much since first raising my blade against Johan.

“Lord Valle?”

“Yes, Your Highness?”

“I would like to bathe before bed.”

That annoyed me slightly. We had just finished her hair and I had done a most wonderful work there. Still, I smiled and didn’t let it show on my face. She was sitting down, looking at the mirror as I arranged her hair, and it would not have done to show my displeasure. “Of course, Your Highness. We can work on your hair once you are done with your bath.”

“Actually.” It was the kind of word you used to start a sentence, yet she spoke it as if it was the whole thing. There was a long pause, but the way she moved her neck and shoulders indicated she was not yet done—there was something she was trying to find the words for. Then, finally, she whirled her head toward me, a shy smile about her, and said, “Actually, Lord Valle…I was wondering if you would care to join me in the bath?”

“I—“

I had not expected her to say that, yet the moment the words came from her mouth a thousand possibilities ran through my head.

If I were to become romantically involved with the princess, this could be beneficial. I could declare Cresna’s independence or at the very least have a much stronger political position pushing for reforms…if we could get an autonomous legal system…that would be a start. A split-second later, a different thought came to mind. This poor girl had been through a lot and she had latched on to me as her saviour. Taking advantage of her was—

Yet another thought interrupted me. I am Valle of Cresna. It’s not weird that she’s interested in me. But there is something weird about this. There was something almost too innocent about her flirting, and despite my treatment of her, the girl—no, the woman was not young enough for that schoolgirl crush to add up. She was younger than me, true, but she was over twenty, if only barely. Insane thoughts ran through my mind, and I found myself asking aloud, “You want to use me, Your Highness?”

At first she appeared offended, but a moment later, as if considering the question, she smiled mischievously and said, “Why, yes, Lord Valle.”

“Why?”

“Your…political preferences aren’t exactly something you keep close to your chest. While your father might share your ambitions, he isn’t as proud of your hometown as you. Valente of Cresna has the love, but neither the will nor the might to push for a Cresnian independence. You do.”

That those were my ambitions was hardly public knowledge, albeit I would not deny them if asked. “You have me at a disadvantage, Your Highness. What do you desire?”

“An unbroken Empire.”

Her eyes blazed and for the first time it felt as though I truly saw her for who she was. Young, but not as young as she led me to believe. Beautiful, but not as vain as she would have led others to believe. Inexperienced, but not nearly as much as we all had thought. Johan wants you dead because you know what you’re doing. “And you think entangling yourself with me would keep me from fighting for Cresna’s independence?”

“I think that your goal is absolutely impossible and you know it too. Only,” Nevada hesitated here, “if you achieve our goal—killing Johan and restoring order to the Empire—you will be incredibly popular among the people if you play with your cards right. And as I just witnessed in the theatre, you have more than enough charisma. The next Emperor would not dare attacking Cresna, most soldiers would rather desert the army than face you. If you best Johan, you will achieve your goal. Don’t tell me you hadn’t thought of that.”

I thought about lying in the name of properness—would she find the truth rude? “I would never lie, Your Highness.”

“But if you were to marry me, then I would be able to quell the unrest in Cresna while also having enough of a case to push myself onto the throne.” At my surprise, she raised an eyebrow. “Pray tell, Lord Valle, did you think that because the throne isn’t hereditary that I did not dream of it? That I did not think of myself worthy of it?”

“You want to marry me because my charisma and fame would give you good cause at the throne once Johan is dealt with,” I started slowly. “Princess Nevada, only daughter of the former Emperor, valiantly rescued from Johan’s assassins by Lord Valle, Champion of Cresna…who overcomes the shame of his loss against Carr the Swordsman of Zero by defeating Lord Johan in single combat. I must admit, it’s a strong point to sell to the people. But I must ask, Your Highness…”

She laughed. “You’re wondering what you would get out of this, are you not? My own logic means your dreams of independence are easily achievable without me, and that marrying me would mean your land would not become truly independent.”

“And your smile tells me you have something to offer.”

“A country,” she replied, without hesitation. “Cresna would remain part of the Empire, but it would be an autonomous country—you would have control over its taxation, military, and legal system, provided you still bent your knee to the Lusobritanio Empire and provide it with troops and taxes.”

“What about the rest of the Terra Inglesa? Portna, for example?”

Nevada flinched and we both knew why—the story of her brother, the Executioner, then known as the Sun Wolf, fighting for its independence from the Empire was well known to all. Under her own proposed terms, her brother’s dream would become impossible. Full independence would be preferable. But near complete autonomy…combined with a friendly Empire…that might be more practical for now. But would she be willing to cede Portna to Cresna? “I would be willing to discuss which cities I would be willing to cede to Cresna,” Nevada said, in a careful and slow tone. “But I promise you that Portna would be one of them.”

I considered this all for a moment. “You are willing to put yourself in a political marriage with me for the sake of your ambitions? Does that idea not sound unappealing?”

To my surprise, Nevada laughed. “Lord Valle, you seem to be thinking I am a trained actress. Let us be honest with each other. Do you think that I have exaggerated my dislike of Carr, the Swordsman of Zero?”

“No.”

“Indeed. I really am quite mad at his insane actions—if only he had thought for a single second instead of…” She shook head. “Do you think I care not for my brother?”

Your disregard for Portna would suggest so. “I believe you do, Your Highness.”

“And do you really think I was exaggerating the fact I find you rather attractive?” Nevada smiled slyly at me, but her blush was unmistakable. “I am as bad at flirting as you probably think I am. That I want to use you goes without saying. But that I do sincerely think you are attractive and a good man is also true. I…I actually watched most of your duel against Johan from the ship, you know? It just seemed better to pretend I hadn’t. Your honour was impeccable.” She smiled, then added, “What about you, Lord Valle? Am I not to your liking?”

“Your Highness—that is not the point. Political marriages as a whole are…”

“Disgusting? Your expression tells me so. You barely know me, true. That’s the risk with it all. You base it on what you have to gain and only a vague understanding of the person you are marrying. Still, you have much to gain here, and I dare say we get along decently well, what say you?”

There was much unspoken here. To accept this proposal would mean having the greatest shield Cresna had ever known, but I felt somewhat used in the whole matter. Still…Cresna has never had a chance like this before. If I fail in killing Johan, Cresna is likely dead anyhow. But if I succeed and marry the princess…

“If you agree with my proposal, Lord Valle, I was not jesting when suggesting we share a bath before night fall. It would be as well for us to get to know each other better, if we are to share lives and ambitions with each other, no?”

Do I want to agree to this because it would be best for Cresna or because I am interested in what lies beneath her dress? It was hard to think clearly and I knew this was part of her suggestion as well. “May I have time to think about it, Your Highness?”

“You may,” she replied. “But not much. I could make the same offer to Carr the Swordsman of Zero, much as I loathe the man. Or even Fedal the Hero, though I doubt him to be capable of besting Lord Johan. Isabella, granddaughter of Duartes…well, it would be slightly unusual, but I could always share my throne with her instead.”

I looked at the way she smiled at me. There was something about the fact she had her own goals that fascinated me. Back when I thought she was merely a starstruck princess, I cared little for her. But now that I saw the extent of her greed, everything about her seemed more alluring to me. “I thought about it. I’ve made my decision.”

She smiled when I picked her up and walked toward the bathtub.