Chapter 32

When he came to his senses, he had been defeated.

At least for Philip of Brandenburg, that sentence was not a lie.

By the time he joined the fray, the right wing cavalry had already been crushed, and both Milbas and the entire Order of the Oath Knights had fallen. Baron Pucker’s left wing had long since been breached, and the enemy cavalry, having broken both flanks, easily encircled the entire main force after a simple flanking maneuver.

The black cavalry encircling them from all sides was tightening the noose.

In contrast, the fate of the Knights of Saint Magdalene, having lost their core strength and with morale utterly shattered, was too grim to behold. With each thrust of the lance, soldiers were pierced and killed, tangled together, crushed to death as they stumbled backward, blood and entrails scattered everywhere. Death was everywhere.

“Ah, ahh…”

The battlefield is where even the wisest grow foolish. How much more so for one who is foolish even in ordinary times?

The crushing fear of defeat, the finger-pointing of others, his father’s cold gaze directed at him—and above all else… Dale’s piercing stare and icy sneer as he looked down on him wouldn’t leave his mind.

“Prince Philip! Please make a decision!”

In his agitation, Philip clenched his jaw.

“…Retreat.”

Philip murmured his decision.

“Wh-what did you say?!”

“──Jade shatters!”

“Huh…?”

Leaving the knight behind, blinking in disbelief.

“The sword of our proud Order of Saint Magdalene may break, but it shall never be defeated!”

Philip shouted as if he could never yield.

“Total annihilation, complete annihilation! Gather the remaining cavalry and reorganize the formation! Follow me! Prepare for the final charge!”

“But, my lord! If we do that, we will all be annihilated…”

“Do you dare defy the supreme commander’s orders?!”

Charge, charge, charge! Philip shouted like a parrot.

Jade seal. It shatters beautifully like jade. To die cleanly for honor or loyalty. Truly, it was a beautiful phrase to hear.

Gathering their last reserves of strength, the Knights of Saint Magdalene under Philip launched their assault, and the encirclement was broken more easily than expected.

‘We did it…! I did it!’

But just as the life-or-death breakthrough succeeded, and the resolve to die turned to hope…

“Charge!”

As if waiting for this moment, the Saxon House’s ‘Ogre Knights’ appeared there.

Having withdrawn to the rear early to conserve strength, change armor, and swap out exhausted horses for fresh warhorses.

“Crush everything that stands in your way!”

There was no need to disguise himself as one of Baron Greenbelt’s rabble knights.

The jet-black armor symbolizing the Black Cavalry. A destroyer of the battlefield, charging like a tank. The Black Cavalry galloped forward, intimidatingly displaying the ‘enormously large greatsword’ held in the Oru Knight’s hand.

The Zweihänder, a two-handed sword nearly two meters long. And the jet-black aura enveloped that massive blade without a single gap.

“For the House of Saxony and Prince Dale!”

Whoosh!

Saxony’s Black Sword swept through like a storm, tearing everything that stood in its path apart like paper.

Necks were severed, bodies crushed, armor shattered and torn apart.

“Ah, ahh…”

The hope of breaking through the enemy encirclement and opening a path was fleeting. The Knights of the Order of Saint Magdalene, prepared to die defending the fortress, were being literally crushed.

It was a perfect annihilation, as if they had been waiting for this moment, and it meant only one thing.

The breakthrough had not succeeded. They had deliberately been allowed an escape route. Like the defeated mole in a game of whack-a-mole.

A glimmer of hope faded away, utterly and irretrievably.

“Prince Philip. I beg you, even now, to surrender…”

Was it fear? Or the betrayal of the half-held hope that lingered until just before?

“As long as the commander lives, we haven’t lost!”

Philip barked at his subordinate’s almost pleading request.

“Hold them back! Hold them back and protect me!”

“But my lord…”

“Silence! I care not for the lives of mere soldiers! Protect the commander even at the cost of your own lives! Protect this body, I say!”

From the commander’s resolve to defy even death, one man was thus excluded.

The battle that began as the dawn twilight rose in the eastern sky only ended after the dusk twilight settled beyond the western horizon. Darkness was rapidly descending along the horizon.

“Everything from start to finish went exactly according to Confucius’s plan! The operation was a complete success!”

“As expected of Lord Dale!”

“This Baskerville’s Veil—I cannot help but feel awe at the depth of Lord Dale’s strategy!”

“……”

Amidst the Knights of the Night Crow, unable to contain their joy at victory and their loyalty, the enemy commander—captured in disgrace after fleeing—knelt there.

Behind him lay the blood-soaked battlefield of the Knights of Saint Magdalena, spread out like a carpet. Before him stood a monster whose prowess a dullard like himself could never hope to match, even in a hundred years.

“Seems you’re quite reluctant to surrender, aren’t you?”

Dale addressed Philip, the eldest son of the Count’s household.

Beneath the banner bearing the Saxon House’s raven crest, he stood commanding knights clad in jet-black armor.

“You may win through base tricks or cowardly stratagems…”

Philip shouted defiantly.

“We may be broken, but we have not been defeated!”

At those words, Dale glanced behind him. Along the horizon stretched an endless mountain of corpses and a sea of blood. It was the proud result of a noble resistance that refused surrender to the very end.

“Quite a noble speech for someone who fled to save his own skin.”

“I, as the commander of this battle, have a duty to survive until the very end!”

“Ah, I see.”

Dale replied as if it were someone else’s concern.

“Well, since the battle’s over, I suppose there’s no need for you to stay alive now.”

Swish.

Placing his hand diagonally over the hilt at his waist.

It was right then.

“Good!”

Seeing Dale’s movement, Philip flashed a momentary, triumphant smile.

“I gladly accept your ‘challenge to a duel’!”

“……?”

Dale tilted his head at the unexpected words.

“I, Philip of Brandenburg, gladly accept Saxony’s Dale’s request for a one-on-one duel where the fate of the battlefield is at stake!”

That’s nothing but a childish, stubborn claim.

Swoosh!

Philip hastily rose to his feet and boldly drew the knight’s sword from his waist.

And just as the Saxon knights moved to stop that absurd action.

“Fine.”

Dale stretched out his arm to restrain the knights and nodded without hesitation.

“I accept the challenge.”

The moment he nodded, Philip flashed a bitter smile. With that smile, he thrust himself off the ground and charged forward.

Before Dale could even draw the sword from its belt, it was a truly despicable charge.

Thwack!

The blade swung, producing an incredibly unrealistic sound. Along with a scream like a pig being slaughtered.

“Aaaah! S-spare me! No, please spare me! I beg you, I beg you, please spare me! I’m begging you!”

“Even if you die soon, you won’t become a jade.”

It happened before the second hand of the clock had even moved a few ticks.

“Prince Dale is approaching!”

“The young master has returned victorious from battle!”

The herald had brought the news of victory early, and coincidentally, Dale’s eleventh birthday was approaching.

The entire Saxony region was swept up in the atmosphere of a grand festival.

The Black Knight and the Holy Sword. A proxy war between two Archdukes, borrowing the names of mere barons.

The battle fought on the Greenbelt Plains ended in an overwhelming victory for House Saxony and the Knights of the Night Raven. It was as the triumphant general who secured that very victory that Dale returned to his own lands.

He led the endless procession of Saxony’s proud Night Raven Knights, accompanied by the few prisoners of the Knights of St. Magdalena, including Philip, the eldest son of the Count’s house.

“They successfully executed the ultimate encirclement and annihilation tactic against the Knights of Saint Magdalena!”

“Even if a flock of crows pecked at them day and night for a week, the enemy corpses scarcely diminished!”

Leaving behind the people’s flattering whispers about his exploits,

The Grand Hall of the Saxon Duchy.

Dale, clad in custom-made black armor and a surcoat, crossed the hall’s marble floor.

“Brother!”

“Riese.”

His two-year-old sister, Liese, who had only just begun to speak, called his name innocently.

“Dale.”

Seated upon the throne in the hall, the duke and duchess smiled at their son’s majestic triumphant return.

“Congratulations on your first battle victory, Prince Dale!”

“Thank you, Sir Helmut.”

Lord Helmut, along with Charlotte and the elf mage Sepia. Leaving the familiar faces behind, he crossed the hall.

“Dale of Saxony, I hereby formally report our victory to His Highness the Duke.”

Before the Black Duke’s throne, Dale knelt and paid his respects. The Duke of Saxony smiled, unable to hide his pride as a father.

“You led the victory most splendidly.”

“This victory was only possible because of the sword of House Saxon.”

“Sir Veil, thank you for guiding Dale well.”

“It was entirely due to the young prince’s efforts!”

Under the Duke of Saxony’s command, Sir Bale, the knight who served as Dale’s aide-de-camp, bowed his head.

“You must be exhausted after just returning from battle.”

Following him, his mother Elena spoke without hiding her concern for her son.

“First, get some rest.”

“Thank you, Mother.”

Dale bowed his head once more before rising to his feet.

Duchy of Saxony. Months of battle had ended, and it finally felt real—as if he had returned to where he belonged.

His home, his family.

It was a very strange feeling.

“My lord, Milbas and O’Rourke Knight, along with the entire Order of Saint Magdalene, have all perished in battle…”

It was truly news like a bolt from the blue.

“Prince Philip was captured along with a few retainers, and a… a huge ransom was demanded…”

“That damned Saxon brat…”

The moment the messenger delivered this near-despairing report of defeat, a pure white aura coiled around the blade of the Sacred Sword. As if it were craving an innocent scapegoat to vent this hatred upon at any moment.

Before the aura, brilliant as an angel’s feather, the messenger’s face froze, turning ashen white.

“Do you remember my death?”

The man asked. It was a corpse with a blade piercing through its chest from behind.

“Remember our deaths.”

Ten-year-old Dale, clad in black armor and a surcoat, nodded. The dead man spoke again.

“Remember death (Memento mori).”

With those words, the man vanished from sight. Yet the blade that had been embedded in the man’s body moments before now protruded from Dale’s chest.

Every mage possesses their own world, and a mage’s training is the process of perfecting that world.

That night.

After safely leading the first battle to victory and closing his eyes in the duke’s bedchamber, what came to Dale was not an easily recognizable nightmare.

The Abyss of Thought.

“……”

That day, the darkest landscape of his mind, forcibly opened to form the Third Circle. The true world of himself, from which there was no escape.

Sitting quietly in the lotus position on the bed, he stared at his own palm. A bitter cold and the refined darkness of magic power tangled together, mimicking the double helix structure of DNA.

‘……I couldn’t actually use it in real combat.’

Leaving the swirling currents of magic behind, he clenched his fist with all his might.

Clang!

As if a glass had been shattered, fragments of cold and darkness scattered.

Mastering and refining one’s inner world is both the beginning and the end of a mage’s journey. Yet, to have that very ‘world’ disturbed, to be constantly plagued by loneliness that stings like a knife in the side—

It was a pathetic spectacle, not even remotely amusing.

‘Still lacking.’

The power to control his world more completely. The power to elevate his status as a magician to a higher level.

Where?

Only one answer immediately came to mind.

Just as a renowned knight is paired with a renowned sword, it was something that accompanied an exceptional mage.

‘Grimoire…….’

After thinking it through, she simply turns her head away. Without meaning to, Sepia’s face came to mind. The elf with the crystal-clear eyes who always believed in her, her gentle smile.

After recalling that, he asks himself again.

‘……After turning 11, I’ll look more like a boy too, right?’

It was truly an 11-year-old boy’s way of thinking.