Left Behind, Forgotten, and Returned (2)

A long time ago, before this land was called the Kingdom of the Lions, I had selected men and women of excellent character and qualities. I gave them special mana hearts as well as the swordsmanship to match those hearts.

Over time they became the swords that protected the king, and when the king set out to kill Gwangryong, all of them went with him. A battle fiercer than any in the kingdom was fought, and countless knights and soldiers died. The Royal Knights suffered the greatest damage, and this was not unexpected.

The king they served was always at the forefront of any battle.

A whopping ninety Royal Knights fell while fighting to protect their king on Mt. Seori, which meant that ninety percent of the hundred knights were slain. The ten surviving knights served as precursors to the current palace knights, while the ninety who had died were consecrated as paladins. The Death Knights before me were these paladins.

Although the truth of their spirits could be felt, the bluish, frozen corpses they inhabited were not theirs. I had recognized their true talent and character, them being out the forms that I had known so long ago.

“Knight of Gwangryong, tell me where the king is,” one of the undead demanded.

The Death Knights did not recognize me, and this was natural.

I had been just a sword at that time, so they still believed that their mana hearts and swords had come from their king. No, even if they had known that it had come from me, they still would not recognize me. Time does not flow along normal lines for the dead.

“If you answer truthfully, I will go back,” a Death Knight said. They seemed to be replaying a specific span of time that occurred four centuries ago.

“That is the only way in which you can preserve your fortress.”

Perhaps they see me as one of the mercenaries that follow the great dragon, Gwangryong, or something like that. I could not answer them. I did not know how to reply to their empty questions. Still, my answer seems to have been pre-determined nonetheless.

“King’s Knights,” I spoke.

“Speak, Gwangryong’s knight.”

I looked at these corpses, these undead knights, and said, “The war is over.”

Then I told them the truth. I told them a tale unknown to them: I told them what had happened after their deaths. The expedition had won, with Gwangryong defeated.

“The king has finally done it?” one of the Death Knights asked with a cheer. Even if he cheered, his words sounded empty and vain.

“A while, Ekion,” another Death Knight said as he stepped forward. “Do you really believe all this? What if this man is lying? What if the king is anxiously awaiting us?”

“Eus is right! We have only parted from the king for a single day. In that short time, it does not make sense that the war has ended.”

Words full of nostalgia and doubts flowed from their frozen lips. The moment that I heard their names, I could identify them readily. How did I not recognize the souls of these dear brothers, who had so swiftly been selected as the first among the Royal Knights?

“The honest Ekion, the cheerful Eus, and the careful Edar.”

“You know us?” asked Eus.

“Look! Something is suspicious,” stated Edar in a low tone.

“All will become certain once we see the king in person,” Ekion stated, drawing his sword as he approached me. I then told them a truth that only I could tell.

“Four hundred years have passed since the end of the war. You are not only separated from your king – You are unable to follow him.”

“He’s talking nonsense! Ekion, how long will you listen to this bullshit?”

“He is truly an emptied person.”

“We have to catch up with the king. Even at this moment, the king …”

As I listened to the three Ekyon brothers converse, I recalled their final states of being.

Eus, whose flesh was rotted from his bones by the necromancer’s spells.

Edar, whose legs got amputated while he fought a Death Knight.

Ekion, whose body was cursed to slowly freeze until he was frozen solid.

Their final words entered my mind with such clarity: “You go on! I’ll follow soon.”

“Is that what you wish?”

“Wasn’t that what I had just said?”

Did they truly want to follow the king until the moments of their death? One was struggling on, with his flesh rotting, the other crawling forwards with his arms due to a lack of legs, while the third struggled to walk, his body half-frozen.

A warm emotion welled up inside me. These loyal knights followed their king, suffering such miserable deaths in the process.

“You were poisoned by the necromancer. The Death Knight severed your legs, and you were cursed with frost. None of you could follow the king,” I told them of the last time I had seen them, pressing that terrible truth onto their hearts.

“We are dead?”

“Are we truly dead?”

In the end, they had to recognize the fact of their own deaths.

“Us?”

“The dead.”

“You mean…?”

Their tones had been solid and monotonous up to now, but that suddenly changed. Their voices were full of humanity, but now they also turned gloomy, like a breeze flowing through a dark valley at night.

“Ooh… Ugh?”

Their completely red eyes now stared down at the snow – and their own bodies.

“Ooh! Ah… Aaaaah! Aaaaah!”

The three brothers, now Death Knights, let loose terrible screams and drew their swords. The dark-black energy coalesced around them and tangled into their swords.

The half-elven swordsmen surrounded me.

“Get back!” I ordered them.

“Ninety dead knights. It’s impossible… we are alone?” one of the brothers lamented. I saw someone beckon to me, so I looked back at Winter Castle for a while. The rangers on the walls had their faces distorted like demons as they drove spears through the corpses of old comrades.

Some knights had amputated limbs, and they stared with vague and blank faces as the bodies of their old fellows tumbled from the walls.

“This is my fight,” I stated.

This is the holy funeral of old comrades, long put off. There was no choice. I will remember all the fallen, along with the soldiers of winter.

Faces stared at me, and I softly said to an unknown half-elf, “Go on.”

“Please be careful,” Adelia said, and after giving me a short wave of her hand, she and the swords-elves disappeared. A dark energy surrounded me when my companions left. It was corrupted and sinister, and so cold. Yet inside, I could feel that it was sorrowful.

I held my sword out in front of my chest, and I looked at the King’s Knights.

“Honor to the knights of the king!” I exclaimed and sparked a flame at the tip of my sword.

I recited the poetry within my mind. It was a tribute to the ninety knights who had fought and fell for their king. I stepped into the middle of that unclean and ominous energy and channeled mana into Twilight.

Dozens of black blades met my brilliantly shining Aura Blade.

‘Zbang!’

I felt a terrible shock as the corrupted spirit energy penetrated my body. I drove it away by deft blocks and vigorous turns of my mana. Then I slashed out with my sword again. The black blades flew in for another sortie.

Dodge, block, and slash.

Fragments of pure darkness scattered in all directions. Black flames became black ashes.

Dark fire became smoke as I shattered the darkness, fighting like crazy.

And how maddening was the battle not!

Suddenly – The world turned white.

The light was too brilliant to be named dawn’s twilight and far too sudden to be called morning.

“Oooh, ugh,” the Death Knights groaned as they stepped back. As I caught my breath, I threw a glance toward Winter Castle. The fighting had ceased in the fortress. A woman stood on the tallest tower, her pure-white robe fluttering in the wind.

She was Ophelia, the white night mage.

“I know that you have no intention of participating this time,” I said, knowing that she would hear me. This was because her essence was the same as this darkness, the same as the undead. Words of darkness can not extinguish a greater darkness, and eternal redemption or complete cessation of undeath cannot be brought about by its like kind.

“The wailing of the dead and the cries of the living,” Ophelia’s answer slid into my mind. It wasn’t an easy thing to hear, but I knew she wanted me to save them. I fixed my sword before me as I saw the knights and candidate knights storm out of the gates as they defeated the last of the undead.

“Where is this?”

“Why are we…?”

The chaotic thoughts of the Death Knights poured from their minds countless times.

“Who are you? Where is the king?”

Once more, they asked me where the king was, as they had when we first met. They seemed to have completely forgotten everything that had just happened. Still, not everything was the same.

“What are you talking about, Ekion? The king is in front of you.”

“What are you saying, Edar? There is the king.”

“You mean you can’t sense the king’s energy?”

The three brothers started to grumble over the fact of my existence.

“What I feel from him is definitely the energy of the king.”

“But it’s different.”

“It’s not entirely different.”

“It’s not exactly the same.”

Other Death Knights also emitted such confused notions.

“Are you our king?” Ekion asked me amid all those frantic thoughts.

“I am not your king,” I stated, and this made the Death Knights murmur.

“All be quiet,” Ekion told the other death knights as he raised his hand and calmed them.

“But this energy we feel is definitely his,” he stated, then asked me, “It has to be. Don’t you have the same mana heart?”

Both the king they had served and I had the will of a true dragon within our hearts.

“Who are you then, to have the king’s soul?”

I laughed – it was all too formal for my tastes.

Ekion’s question was the exact same one I had asked myself countless times while breaking down the wall that separated me from the Sword Master level.

Probably, if I were the man I had been some time ago, I would have already stumbled and failed.

At that time, I could not be called a sword or a human being.

“I am…”

But not anymore.

“…Adrian Leonberger.”

They figured me to be the majestic Gruhorn, who had existed hundreds of years ago.

“I am a prince of the country that your king has established.”

I was the human Adrian Leonberger.

What wicked turns fate can have in store for us.

The first beings I openly identified myself to as Prince Adrian were not the living, but these Death Knights.

“What does that mean?”

As I watched the ninety Death Knights stare at me with vacant faces, I said energetically, “The war is over. Gwangryong was slain, King’s Knights.”

Again, they couldn’t believe me. I drew the sword I had sheathed and then recited a verse of the poem. I recited the holy triumph of their king, a song about his brilliant achievement.

“I cut scales from a dragon, a dragon that no sword could cut, and I drank its steaming blood!”

It was [The Poem of the Dragon Slayer].

Upon reaching the level of master, my mana vessel had become incomparable to the previous one.

This vessel now screeched, as if it would break, and the mana contained in that big bowl quickly emptied.

‘Lrool lrol lrool!’ cried Twilight at that moment, a bizarre sound indeed. It was the roar of a wild beast that had bitten into a dragon’s neck. It was the resonance of my soul and sword, in harmony, both having reached master level.

It was not enough to sing a full [Mythic] poem. Still, it would be enough to prove Gruhorn’s achievement in killing the dragon. I didn’t even need to recite an entire poem; one passage from the second half was enough. The Royal Knights were also part of the poem.

“Aah! Aaaah, ah, ah!” the Death Knights groaned – for a long time.

Their collective thoughts rose like a tsunami and washed into me: The joy of the honest Ekion, the despair of the cheerful Eus, and the emptiness of the prudent Edar.

The indescribable emotions of those ninety knights penetrated my soul. I endured their stormy thoughts with my teeth clenched and waited for their joy, emptiness, and despair to subside.

“Aaah?”

Their thoughts, having thrashed wildly forward, now faded little by little. Only one emotion remained, then.

“The king has finally succeeded!”

And lo: All that was left was their sense of relief.

The three Ekyon brothers looked to me and asked, “Then we are dead?”

“Yours was an honorable death,” came my reply.

“Did the king think so?”

“All ninety Royal Knights who died on Mount Seori were consecrated as paladins.”

When I asked if that was not enough for them, Eus burst into laughter.

“If we were named as Paladins, we might just as well have been born peasants and died in peace.”

“It was a very good life.”

“If there is a regret, it is that I did not get the chance to once more hold a woman’s hand before I died.”

For the first time in my life, I could only laugh as I felt their bitterness.

“Descendant of the king, why don’t you tell us a little more?” one asked.

“I’m so curious about the transformation of the kingdom,” added another.

“What about the empire?”

I looked around for a while as I considered the questions of the Death Knights. Dawn was approaching from afar.

The Death Knights also noticed the lifting of the darkness as a new day dawned, but they sat down on the snow as if ignoring it, and then stared at me.

I sincerely answered their questions.

In turn, they all listened to my story. When my tale of the fallen kingdom was at last over, we all stared at each other.

The thoughts of the dead, which I could never know, came and went. As I stood watching the Death Knights, knights from Winter Castle came running to me.

“Your Highness!? Highness!”

“Your Highness!”

It was Arwen, Adelia, and the ex-palace knights, and they urgently called as they came running.

“What are these doing here?” Bernardo Eli growled menacingly at the Death Knights as he pulled out his sword. Behind the first group, I saw Gwain and the other knight candidates, who looked a right mess after the night-long battle.

“They are not the enemy. Sheathe your sword.”

At my words, Bernardo clucked his tongue as he looked at the Death Knights and said, “So, you were playing games with the dead all night long?”

“Stop talking! Bernardo Eli!” Arwen shouted.

“No? Someone had to be fighting for something,” came his glib response.

Arwen looked at Bernardo and then said with a snarl, “Watch that mouth.”

And with that short order, Bernardo shut his mouth.

“Tchu,” I clucked as I viewed the pathetic spectacle. The Death Knights had been sharing their thoughts, and one of them looked at me and said, “We will not leave.”

“What?”

“There is still work to be done,” came the deadpan response of one, which added, “We will only be able to rest after we finish that work.”

At these sudden words, Bernardo and other knights instantly drew their swords.

“Look! I knew they would do this!” Bernardo cried.

I ignored him and told the death knights, “The war is won. Your mission is over.”

They shook their heads – they had more to do.

“The war is not over yet.”

I frowned at their words. I wished that I could hold them here and ask what they were talking about. But I couldn’t. Morning would soon be here, and there would be no time left for the dead.

“See you again, descendant of the king.”

As they spoke those words, their corpses fell to the snow, and their heads split open.

Ghosts flowed from the corpses and passed me by. I turned my head and saw that the spirits were heading to Gwain and the other candidate knights. These were the men with the same Royal Knight mana hearts and swords that the Death Knights had held during their lives.

“Well?” Gwain asked as he tilted his head, noticing that I stared at him.

It seemed that the knights could not see the ghosts; the undead spirits were invisible to them.

But I saw it. I watched as the ghosts – the three Ekyon brothers included – flowed into the bodies of those knights.

“When the time comes, we will meet again.”

Ekion’s promise penetrated my mind.

“I see you again, Prince!”

As I heard Eus’s cheerful words, spoken from Gwain’s lips, I was struck completely and utterly dumb.