The air in the room sank heavier still, and the tension settled so thick that it was hard even to swallow a breath. Everyone in the dining hall but Raizel was trembling.
Not even Alicia, the Grand Duchess, could defy him.
But she could stand in his way.
"Don't do this. What's wrong with you?!"
Close to tears, Alicia grabbed the Grand Duke's arm and clung to it.
But one-armed or not, the Grand Duke had once been one of the finest knights in the Empire.
For Alicia to hold back a man like that was like crossing the ocean on a raft.
Meanwhile, the servant knelt before the Grand Duke and presented the sword.
Kailan looked at Alicia and spoke firmly.
"I do not mean to harm Raizel, my lady. Let go."
"I-if that's a lie...... I will never forgive you."
"There is only something I must show him."
Unconvinced, Alicia kept demanding his word. Again and again she asked the same thing and heard the same answer.
Only after she had drawn the promise from him several times did she let go of Kailan's left arm and step back.
Only then could Kailan take up the sword the servant had brought. Raising the sword in his left hand, he spoke.
"Watch closely."
He thrust the sword straight out toward Raizel. At the menacing air, as though a hail of strikes might pour down at any moment, Alicia flinched.
Only a single step separated the two of them.
But Kailan came no closer to Raizel than that.
He only released mana through the sword.
Along the white-gleaming blade, bluish mana wavered and blazed up.
That blue energy did not merely wrap the blade; it cut through the air and swelled several times larger than the sword itself.
Sword energy.
It was not a mere display of force, but an art that manifested only at the pinnacle of will and training.
And now Kailan Esselklein, the finest knight of the North, poured out that sword energy.
He, who for so long had shrunk even from gripping a sword, now broke his silence and raised his sword high.
That single motion was stronger than words, and it resounded louder than silence.
The fear and tension that had filled the dining hall soon turned into awe and held everyone's gaze.
Of course, his stance was not perfect.
A body missing one arm, a stance somehow off, that had to lean a little at the waist to keep its balance.
Yet that very flaw made the sword energy he gave off all the more dazzling.
Because it was incomplete, it was all the more intense, and all the more precarious.
A knight of that caliber had lost an arm.
No one could dare to fathom the depth of that despair.
For one who had lived with the sword as part of his life, losing an arm was not merely the loss of flesh.
It was the collapse of his reason for being, a crack in his sense of self.
He must have crumbled every single day, and had to learn how to rise again from within that collapse.
Every night he must have raised an empty arm toward air he could never cut, going over his own wound again and again.
Yet even in that state, Kailan had once been able to look to the future. He had been able to hope, and to dream of a revival.
Because he had Raizel.
Having sent him away to the Imperial Capital, he could not watch him up close...... but he had believed the boy was surely doing well.
The boy took after him so completely that he had believed he would grow up as fine as his father, no, finer, and come home.
He had never doubted it for a single moment.
Not for a single moment.
Not for the briefest instant.
But what was the reality?
A flame both icy and hot was burning in Kailan's eyes.
It was rage and resentment, burning with despair for fuel.
Resentment aimed at himself more than at anyone else.
"......Do you understand?"
At length, Kailan went on.
Before anyone knew it, his gaze had regained its resolve, and his lips were pressed shut without a tremor.
What remained where the rage had died down was a quiet but merciless resolve.
"Raizel Esselklein. My son......"
Beyond the blue energy on the blade, a stern look slowly returned.
"This is...... No matter how many times you go out to the training ground and swing your sword......"
Kailan could not go on and paused for a moment.
His throat moved slowly, and pain showed on his face.
As if blood were seeping onto the tip of his tongue, bringing out the next words seemed an ordeal.
But in the end, enduring as though he were swallowing that pain, he spoke.
"......It is the reason your efforts can never bear fruit."
One who could not wield sword energy could never become a knight.
No matter how exquisite the martial skill one honed, it could not replace the destructive force and the menace that sword energy created.
And one who could not become a knight could not become heir to the Grand Ducal House either.
For the Grand Duke of Esselklein, who had to defend the North, must be one who held the right of the sword.
"You...... no matter how desperate you are, no matter how badly you want it."
Kailan's voice gradually grew faint.
A sigh mingled with it, and at last he finished as though hanging his head.
"......All of that effort is meaningless, I tell you."
Kailan's voice was quiet, but that quiet, if anything, pressed down on every chest all the more heavily.
Those words were neither anger nor scorn.
They were only resignation, drawn toward a despair that would never be erased.
"And so, your efforts cannot help but be worthless......"
Everyone had seen the same scene and heard the same words, yet the faces watching Kailan were all different.
Even so, a strangely unified current enveloped the dining hall.
No one spoke, but what that silence held was clear.
They felt it.
Beyond Kailan's gaze, a sob he could not let out had spread far and wide.
Because it was unspoken, it came through all the more deeply. Everyone present was sunk together in wordless misery.
Only one person.
Save for just one.
Raizel.
And yet he, the one at the center of every word, alone sat there unshaken.
'......So he did shut me in my room because he thinks I cannot use qi?'
An unreadable face. His gaze was calm.
Raizel quietly looked around.
And at length, he picked up a silver knife from the table.
"Y-Young Master!"
Vestia reacted at once with a sharp intake of breath.
Could Raizel be about to lunge at Kailan with that knife?
Or was he going to hurt himself?
In that brief moment, the air in the dining hall went so still that even breathing seemed to stop, and every eye was fixed on that one small blade, unable to look away for even an instant.
But what happened next was something no one expected.
Shhhhh—
At first the energy was as thin as a thread, but soon it spread over the entire knife like blooming frost flowers.
The cold, clear energy seemed to freeze even the air, and within it the silver knife began to lose its original shape.
In an instant, that milky energy spilled past the edges of the knife.
An enormous energy swelled around one tiny table knife.
"......Huh?"
"Wh-whoa......?"
Flustered breaths escaped the lips of those watching.
Exclamations bursting out as if people were talking to themselves, a stir of disbelief.
Their eyes were clearly seeing one reality, but their minds could not yet keep up with it.
But Raizel paid them no heed.
Quietly, he drove mana deeper into the silver knife in his hand.
The white mana surrounding the knife swelled greatly for an instant.
But it was different from Kailan's sword energy.
Its shape was unstable, and its density uneven. The milky sword energy wavered constantly, as if it might scatter at any moment.
It fell far short of being called finished sword energy.
And yet, it was unmistakable.
Right now, Raizel had one foot over the threshold of a 1-Star Knight.
"Ah, ah...... Ahh......"
"Hhhk......"
It was an astonishing sight.
The eyes of those watching grew red.
Sniffling could be heard even among the servants.
"Ahh, ah......"
The white light of sword energy was reflected in Kailan's eyes, too, as he stared at Raizel, frozen in place.
Soon his eyes reddened, and a hot tear streamed down.
The tear ran down his rough cheek and fell.
Clang!
The moment the teardrop fell, Kailan's treasured sword also slipped from his grasp and dropped to the dining hall floor. But he paid it no mind.
"M-mana...... Sword energy...... Ahh...... Ah......!"
Alicia spoke in a voice full of emotion. Because she was close to tears, her words kept trembling at the end, and no matter how many times she caught her breath, she could not string them together.
But that emotion was not hers alone.
Everyone in the dining hall was watching the unbelievable scene, caught somewhere between astonishment and wonder.
What Kailan held was a longsword.
What Raizel held was nothing more than a table knife.
Comparing the sizes of the two weapons, the difference was overwhelming.
Kailan's sword was a weapon made to be wielded with both hands, while Raizel's was a piece of cutlery no bigger than his palm.
What was more, Raizel's sword energy was not even as stable as Kailan's.
It scattered and warped time and again, barely holding the shape of a blade.
But what mattered was not how finished it was.
It was the fact that Raizel, whom they had believed a mana cripple, had clearly produced sword energy by his own strength.
"Raizel, my child......!"
Alicia came toward him in tears. Arms outstretched, she kept coming until she threw her arms around Raizel.
Having nearly stabbed Alicia, Raizel hastily pulled the knife back and frowned.
"Ahh, Raizel. Oh, heavens. A miracle...... a miracle has happened. I could die right now without a single regret."
"......Why would you say something like that, Your Highness? You have to stay by the Young Master's side for a long, long time."
Vestia came over. She was close to tears too.
His whole body pinned in Alicia's embrace, Raizel turned only his head to look at Kailan.
Kailan could not easily find his words.
He stared at Raizel with dazed eyes, trapped in a long silence.
Kailan's eyes trembled wildly. As if his throat were blocked, his lips opened and closed again several times.
He looked as though he were fighting himself just to get a single word out.
And at last.
Breaking that long silence, a single line of permission was granted.
"......The training grounds, you may enter."
The moment those words reached the air, the dining hall was engulfed in silence, as if a bell had rung.
No one spoke, and no one breathed a sound.
Soon Alicia and Vestia smiled brightly through tear-streaked faces. Their wet faces glistened.
Only Raizel's face was impassive.
***
The dinner ended in jubilation, and the next day Gowen Elden came to Raizel's bedchamber.
Opening the door and stepping in, he found Raizel and Vestia sitting side by side on a blue sofa on one side of the spacious bedchamber.
Gowen looked even more tired than usual. Hunched as though wary of every direction at once, he took a seat in front of Raizel.
"I have heard some very...... very strange news."
At that, Vestia spoke.
"What news?"
After last night, Vestia had been beaming all day.
The only Young Master of House Esselklein, the one they had longed for day and night, was not a mana cripple after all.
What joyous news that was. She could not keep the corners of her mouth from shooting up.
"I heard the rather unbelievable claim that the Young Master used sword energy."
Gowen said, eyeing the brightly smiling Vestia with suspicion.
"Who told you that?"
"The head butler did. Though surely there is some misunderstanding."
"Misunderstanding, indeed!"
Vestia narrowed her eyes a little. It was playful.
"Does the head butler seem like someone who talks nonsense?"
"No, he does not. But it is absurd......"
Vestia wiped the smile off her face and folded her arms.
Gowen tried to read whether this was a joke too. But the mood was out of the ordinary.
"......Is it true?"
"Of course!"
Gowen looked at Raizel with trembling eyes. When their eyes met, Raizel thought.
'......Must I prove that I can use mana?'
Raizel pulled a single flower that had not yet fully bloomed from the vase on the low table in front of the sofa. Then he held it out toward Gowen.
Gowen recoiled.
"......You are giving this to me?"
Raizel shook his head. Instead of handing the flower to Gowen, he poured mana into its stem.
The next moment, pure white flames rose from the pale blue blossom.
It looked as though the flower were on fire.
But unlike flames that burn everything to nothing, Raizel's mana made the drooping flower's life force all the stronger.
Gowen could not take his eyes off the petals, blooming wider with the mana.
He simply raised a hand, rubbed his eyes hard, and blurted out a question full of shock.
"Am I seeing things? This is not a dream, by any chance?"
"Hahahaha!"
At Gowen's words, Vestia burst out laughing. Laughing until tears came, she looked truly happy.
"Th-this cannot be......"
Stunned, Gowen reeled back against the sofa. But soon he sprang upright again as if on a spring.
Then he looked again at the flower Raizel was holding.
The flower that had bloomed so fully for a moment had now spent all its life and withered dry.
Naturally. At its core, sword energy was a violent force.
"This is absurd."
"But it's true. You saw it, didn't you?"
Raizel, who had already withdrawn his sword energy, tossed the withered flower onto the table. Even so, the afterimage of the flower in full bloom still lingered in Gowen's eyes.
Gowen nodded.
"Yes. It is true. Hmm. It is true, and yet."
Gowen nudged his glasses up with a finger.
"This is worth studying. Are you truly using sword energy without a mana heart, Young Master? Or has your mana heart recovered? Both possibilities are absurd...... By my common sense, at least, I cannot understand it at all."
At that, Raizel raised both hands. He crossed his two index fingers to show him. It was a sort of sign he and Vestia had agreed to use for no.
"Neither is correct? Ah, you mean you have no mana heart?"
Raizel nodded.
"Could you perhaps explain how it works? I earnestly beg you."
Raizel thought for a moment, then mimed writing in the air. Quick on the uptake, Vestia hurried to bring pen and paper.
Raizel began to draw a human body on the paper. Then he drew a circle on the lower belly, where the qi center was.
"The lower belly......?"
When Gowen asked, puzzled, Raizel let out a small sigh and began writing an explanation beside the drawing. Thanks to the Heavenly Slaughter Star's arrangement, he knew how to write this world's script.
When he had finished writing, Raizel held the paper out to Gowen.
Pushing up his glasses, Gowen read down Raizel's explanation.
"Qi center......? The human body has three qi centers. The lower qi center, the middle qi center, the upper qi center...... The one used to deliberately control mana is the lower qi center, and mana can be gath...... No, what is this supposed to mean?"
Raizel shrugged. He had told him everything he could.
"I am very bewildered, frankly."
Gowen swept his hair back with one hand.
A strange madness peculiar to researchers gleamed in his eyes. Somewhere along the way, his weariness had vanished without a trace.
"Is this method used in the Imperial Family?"
He had no way of knowing that. Raizel shrugged again.
"Forgive me, but your mana heart was damaged beyond use, Young Master. Is it still in the same state?"
When Raizel nodded, Gowen let out a long sigh.
"May I take this with me? There is something I would like to study."
As you like. Raizel nodded readily.
"......If this is how you use mana, Young Master, ah, I see. That is why I sensed your mana but could not detect its source. Because I never thought of this, I gave His Highness the wrong impression."
Muttering, Gowen rummaged through the bag he had brought.
What he took out of the bag was a medal made of orbikite. It was proof that he had graduated from the Imperial Tarisen Academy.
"I do not say this often, but today I feel truly pathetic."
He lamented, gazing at the medal.
"Don't say that, Sir Elden. Didn't you say you graduated second in your class?"
"That was long ago."
While the bag was open, Raizel glanced sidelong at what was inside. He was checking for any elixir worth using.
There were a few things that looked like elixirs, but none met his standards.
'Shoddy. For a man supposedly the best physician in the Grand Duchy, he carries nothing better than that.'
Raizel wrote a question on the paper left on the table and held it out to Gowen.
It read as follows.
[What is the best elixir you can get in this domain?]