Ch.786The Master of the Holy Sword

“Um… should I say I pulled it out…?”

Demian, who rushed to my side, muttered while incredulously tapping the massive crystal chunk that had been uprooted along with the holy sword. As if he couldn’t have imagined things would turn out this way.

“Pulled out my ass.”

I let out a deep sigh, calmed my startled heart, then stood up while lightly dusting off my clothes that were covered in crystal fragments.

“How is this pulling out the sword? The pedestal just got destroyed.”

Instead of pulling out the sword, I’d pulled out the map. It was truly an absurd result, even though I was the one who caused it.

“Didn’t I tell you? I didn’t think I could pull this out.”

After thoroughly brushing all the crystal fragments from my clothes, I pointed mockingly at the massive structure lying on the ground and smirked.

“See? It’s been proven.”

Joyeuse, which had been uprooted with an enormous crystal the size of more than a dozen massive trees combined, now looked less like a sword and more like a giant’s club.

“Well… you did pull something out… so maybe we could just use it like a hammer now?”

“How would that work?”

Swinging around a rock bigger than a dragon’s head with a sword stuck in it? That’s not possible by any common sense.

Actually, swinging it might be possible, but I had no reason to do so.

Rather than carrying around an unbalanced rock hill as a weapon, wielding a proper longsword with the same strength would be several times more effective.

Besides…

“Look at those chains. It’s obvious that not only will it not function properly, we can’t even carry it out of here.”

Though the holy sword embedded in the rock had been literally uprooted, the chains of light that sprang from the sacred runes and bound to all sorts of crystals above hadn’t broken at all, still tightly wrapped around the pure white blade.

Probably, to take the holy sword out of the lake, we’d have to break all those crystal chunks that were hanging from it.

It seemed to mean that using the holy sword through such an abnormal method wouldn’t be permitted.

“So, why don’t you try pulling it out?”

“You think I can pull it out?”

“You should be able to.”

Of course you can pull it out. Who else could pull out a sword buried in such a remote place in such a manner?

“You said you felt some strange attraction, right? Following that feeling, we found the holy sword just sitting here. So that feeling must be… the sword calling to its master, something like that, right?”

“You think so…?”

Demian tilted his head and muttered.

“What’s wrong with you? We went through all this trouble to get that thing, and now you don’t want to take it?”

“No, it’s just… how should I put this…”

Demian hesitated for a moment, then sighed deeply before answering.

“I just have this ominous feeling.”

“Ominous?”

What’s ominous about it? The pure white blade, the golden hilt, even the sphere of light set in the center of the blade. To me, it looks like holiness itself.

“It’s like… if I pull out that sword, a path of hardship incomparable to anything we’ve faced so far will unfold…”

Ah, so that’s what he meant by ominous.

If so, his intuition was accurate.

There was a fundamental difference in the burden between remaining an ordinary hero and standing tall as the master of a holy sword. The duties given, the expectations of people.

A hero’s role is at most to face enemies that Master-level fighters cannot defeat, but drawing a holy sword means shouldering the responsibility of saving a world heading toward destruction.

Demian wouldn’t know this since I never explicitly told him… but he must have realized it intuitively.

That the moment he draws this sword, hardships incomparable to anything before will begin.

“…”

Suddenly, my conscience is starting to prick me.

I brought him here with the mindset that as the original protagonist, he should naturally bear the protagonist’s duties…

But thinking about it now, what I’m trying to do is force responsibilities that even I would avoid if possible onto a young man who isn’t even twenty years old.

Though it was his role… in the original story, he was at least past twenty. Right now, he’s really just a kid who should still be attending the academy.

But… it couldn’t be helped. As far as I knew, only Demian could pull out the holy sword, and the current world couldn’t leisurely wait for him to come of age.

…Right. It couldn’t be helped.

“Haaa…”

If that’s the case… I should at least give him some advice.

I sighed softly, then grabbed Demian’s shoulders, turned him to face me, and belatedly offered the advice that was already much too late.

“You’re right, Demian. If you become the master of that sword, you’ll live a thorny, arduous life far from peace. Being recognized as the master of Carlos the Great’s holy sword means you’ll be forced into situations where you must achieve feats as great as Carlos the Great himself.”

It was an obvious statement. Unless there was a danger approaching that could only be overcome by the master of the holy sword, why would a sword so thoroughly sealed allow itself to be drawn?

“Maybe even more than that.”

“Wait, is that why you want me to pull it out instead of you, Haschal?”

Demian asked accusingly. Does his tone sound accusatory because I’m now feeling a bit guilty?

“No, I swear that’s not it. If I could pull it out myself… I wouldn’t have passed it on to you. But look at this. In the end, it was impossible for me.”

If I could have pulled out the holy sword, would I have willingly taken on the hero’s burden in Demian’s place? Maybe I would have… or maybe not.

That’s something I couldn’t say for certain without actually being in that situation.

The only thing certain now was one thing: as I had expected, I wasn’t qualified to pull out the holy sword.

“And I can?”

“Without trying, we can’t know for sure… but I think you can. Like I said earlier.”

Was my answer unsatisfactory? Demian lowered his head briefly in thought, then raised it again to look at me and spoke almost in a murmur.

“Was this your plan from the beginning when you brought me here?”

“What?”

Startled by the sudden question that hit the mark, I reflexively asked back, my lips barely moving.

“Everything fits together too perfectly. A descendant of the Great’s Twelve Knights wants to search the Sky Mountains for the holy sword, and coincidentally, there’s someone who can search with him—me, right by your side. As your friend and subordinate knight.”

Demian continued, looking straight at me.

“When you started wandering, surprisingly I began to find the holy sword on my own… and the holy sword I found is nothing but a monstrosity that brings hardship, and the person who’s supposed to become its master isn’t you but me. Isn’t that too convenient to be a coincidence? How is that possible?”

Indeed, it couldn’t be called a coincidence. That the person who could find and pull out the holy sword was right beside the person looking for it.

And that these two people became friends, half-forcibly, during their academy days. Doesn’t it feel contrived to anyone looking at it?

I didn’t expect him to question this aspect now.

“Your approach to Millia and me during our academy days, intensively training only me saying I needed to get stronger, bringing me to these snowy mountains. Was all of that to lead to this moment, so I could become the master of that sword?”

“That’s…”

A piercing question that was essentially fact.

As I hesitated, struggling to find a response, Demian seemed to take my hesitation as confirmation of his theory and nodded.

“Amazing. You’ve been doing all those things for this very moment. As if you knew what would happen in the future. Is this some kind of saintly intuition?”

It was truly a sharp deduction. Almost unbelievable coming from Demian’s mouth.

“…I don’t know the future.”

Except that I was able to act as if I knew the future not because of saintly intuition but because of my knowledge of the original story.

“You don’t?”

“That’s right. I thought I knew at one point… but it was an illusion.”

I forced a smile, struggling to answer the difficult question.

“Think about it. If I could know the future, wouldn’t I have prevented incidents before they happened, rather than resolving them with force after they occurred?”

In fact, I did try to prevent them. It just didn’t work out well.

The Great Fire of the Islands that spiraled into catastrophe because I failed to anticipate the butterfly effect of my exile to the islands and moved too leisurely thinking there was time left.

The Imperial Succession War that got completely tangled when, feeling guilty about the fire and becoming too hasty, I tried to preemptively remove Isabella who would have needed years to subjugate.

After that, everything changed from the original story, filled with unpredictable events.

The only thing I could rely on was my own strength.

Knowledge of the original story was no longer an answer sheet revealing the future, but had long since been reduced to a small signpost providing minimal guidance.

If Demian fails to pull out the sword here or refuses after hesitation, it would just add another layer of illusion to the mountain of illusions I’ve built.

“…Then that’s fine.”

“Fine?”

Demian nodded once, then turned and began walking.

Toward the holy sword Joyeuse, which still emitted a brilliant white light as it lay on its side.

“Yes. If you knew the future and were trying to use Millia and me, and because of that deliberately allowed many catastrophes to happen… that would have been unforgivable.”

“…”

How long has it been since my conscience hurt this much?

Though it wasn’t quite exploitation, it was an undeniable fact that I had approached Millia and Demian because of my knowledge of the original story.

“But if that’s not the case… then you’ve just been trying hard to prevent disasters right in front of you, right? Even surviving near-death experiences multiple times.”

Reaching out toward the golden hilt, Demian turned his head to look at me and smiled.

“If that’s the case… I should try too. You said I’d be walking a thorny path, but you won’t let me walk that path alone, will you?”

A smile so natural it was hard to believe it came from someone who supposedly couldn’t understand emotions.

“…That’s right. I won’t.”

I smiled back in response.

That’s why I’ve trained my own strength to its limits and brought in trustworthy people to help them become stronger.

“That’s all I need. That’s…”

Demian’s fingers firmly grasped the golden hilt.

And then.

– FWAAAASH!

A pure white holy light like the sun swept through the entire cavern, bright enough to blind.

“Kuh…!”

I reflexively raised my hand to shield my eyes.

Staring almost glaring with half-closed eyes at the shadow of the young man who had drawn the sword, visible beyond my field of vision.

Yes, as expected, you could pull it out.

– CRACK!

The chains of light that had been wrapped around the crystal rocks all came undone at once, being sucked into the sacred runes engraved on the blade as if shrinking.

Writhing like snakes, they shrank and shrank until they wrapped around Demian’s entire body as he held Joyeuse.

Looking at Demian standing silently with chains of light wrapped around his entire body, I exhaled a long breath like a sigh and tensed my whole body.

[Is that alright? He’s not moving at all…]

Becoming the master of a holy sword wasn’t just about pulling it out.

‘Well… let’s put that worry aside for now. This isn’t the time for that.’

[Not the time? What do you… wait, this unpleasant sensation…]

Even Hersella, who had been unexpectedly worried about Demian, seemed to gradually understand what I meant.

Well, how could she not understand?

– GROOOOOWL!

The smell of dark mana, as dense as miasma, bursting out like water from a broken dam from all over the suddenly darkened underground cavern.

Haven’t you ever thought it strange?

That while the whole world, even the lands of the werebeasts, was plagued by magical beasts, not a single one could be encountered here in the Sky Mountains.

The reason was here.

“GROOOOAAAR!”

“GYAAAAH!”

“KIAAAAK!”

Dozens, hundreds of black holes opening everywhere—on the ground, the cliffs, even reaching to the sky.

Countless magical beasts poured out from those holes, screaming with hatred-filled roars.

Thousands of magical beasts that had been bound by the power of the holy sword, unable to descend upon the Sky Mountains for hundreds of years.

All those magical beasts, as if they had been waiting for this moment when the holy sword was finally pulled out, rushed toward us.