Just as the sun was about to set.
At the hour when the horizon glowed brightest, beneath the fortress standing loftily at the center of a city dyed orange.
———CRASH!
A single black dragon ran wild.
- KRAAAAAAA!
"The outer ward's been breached! Tell the whole Second Corps to get here!"
"What about the priests in the colonnade?!"
Even the voices carrying from a distance were enough to tell how desperate the situation had become.
'What a mess.'
However strong Formel might be, in the end he was nothing more than a beast of some four meters.
The sight of two entire knight corps being committed just to bring down that one Formel was, put kindly, thrilling, and put unkindly, like a swarm of ants.
With this, the rumor would spread that a beast had suddenly entered the city and gone on a rampage.
It would reach Findel's ears as well, but a rumor that a mercenary was hunting for him and a rumor that a beast had run wild were of entirely different orders.
Because of that, the chance of Findel going to ground was slim.
'Formel, focus on wrecking the buildings.'
Our purpose was not battle but commotion.
The more paladins of the Order that fixed themselves to Formel, the fewer troops would naturally remain in the inner keep.
Slip through that gap, make contact with the chapter master, and once the business was settled, pull Formel out before it was too late. That was the plan in rough outline.
Formel was not a beast that would go down easily, but the opponents were bad.
If several paladins granted Talios's divine power came at him all at once, even Formel would be in danger.
Soon the Third Corps, which had been stationed in the outer ward, and then the Second Corps within, both surged entirely toward Formel.
Only after confirming that did I cross the outer ward's wall and head for the inner keep.
I passed buildings that looked to be the quarters of soldiers, the scouts and the transport units among them, and went through a great colonnade.
At the end of the colonnade was a broad plaza, and it was empty.
Passing that as well, I came in sight of the inner keep's wall.
It was far higher than the outer ward's, and climbing it looked difficult.
Getting through it, however, was not a particularly hard matter.
That was because the guards defending the inner keep belonged to the Second Corps.
'So even the sentries abandoned their posts.'
The Talios Order's obsession with battle was at times enough to make the skin crawl.
I walked in through the gate of the inner keep, now a mountain without a master.
Every time my plate boots met the wooden floor, they made a clanking sound.
The inner keep, and the central fortress in particular, had a far more complicated structure than I had expected.
Following the colonnade, I came upon a single large door.
'A large room on the first floor.'
It would be the chapel.
Since I had no idea where the Order's chapter master was, the reality was that I would have to search room by room.
I opened the chapel door.
In the room, which must originally have served some other purpose, the Order's emblem now hung, and chairs for prayer stood in rows.
There was one person at the far end of the chapel.
"This place is closed to outsiders, however."
Light clothing over chain mail, and a sword at the waist.
Since he was ready to fight at any moment, I wondered whether he was a squire knight, but the Talios Order was a place where even priests wore chain armor, so in the end his dress told me nothing of his post.
"Devout, aren't you? Didn't you hear the commotion outside?"
Above all, he was quite young.
Perhaps just turned twenty.
That was the reason I had thought him a squire rather than a paladin.
"My faith is nothing so impressive."
"Why is that?"
The man rose slowly.
I had not realized it while he was seated, but when he straightened his back completely, his height surpassed mine.
"Lord Talios does not teach us to pray. He tells us to take up the sword. So in faith, those out there fighting the beast stand higher than I do, praying here."
The man smiled.
It was a smile without a speck of cloud in it, yet for some reason I thought that smile unnatural.
"Wasn't an order handed down? To subdue the beast outside."
"Yes. It was."
"Then why aren't you going? That's not a matter of faith but of the chain of command, isn't it?"
"Because I am the one who gave that order."
Only then did I understand why the man's spotless smile had been unnatural.
It was the smile of a madman.
A madman's smile without peer even among that congregation of madmen called the Talios Order.
"Commander of the Second Corps, then. Impressive, at such a young age."
"Even if one is young, even if one's faith is thin, so long as one swings a sword well, Lord Talios puts one to precious use."
The man drew the sword at his waist.
It was a fine blade, keen and well maintained.
"And however low my faith may be, it is enough to deal with an intruder."
A small sound tapping the floor, and the lamps on the wall swaying.
That alone was enough to notice that the man had vanished from my sight.
———CLANG!
The instant the man's form blurred, the sword I had drawn threw sparks.
The man had closed at a speed beyond perception, and his strike had landed on my blade.
"......Astonishing. This is the first time my sword has been blocked."
"Do you think I got this far by being good at hide-and-seek?"
I tried to shove the blade away, but the man showed no sign of moving.
Physical ability surpassing the human, the classic mark of paladins who had taken Talios's divine power into themselves through baptism.
I pulled my sword sharply toward my own body.
Aiming at the neck of the man whose balance was collapsing, I brought the blade down.
The man was not there.
The moment I recovered my sword and guarded my flank, sparks flew once more.
Before the strikes could continue, I kicked out at the direction the man would appear from.
Struck, the man was driven far back.
"Something is a little strange."
"What is?"
The man frowned.
"You are not fast in body, and yet you counter as though you can see me. Can you see the future?"
I could not help letting out a snort of laughter.
How many opponents faster and stronger than me had I faced?
If centuries of accumulated experience produced an effect much like seeing the future, then in the end the man was not wrong either.
"Let's say that I can."
The man's form blurred once more.
A heavy weight transmitted itself to the hand gripping the sword I had brought around behind me.
The man's blade did not end there.
Countless strikes invisible to the eye came pressing in.
An onslaught that stabbed, cut, and swung at every vital point that could not be surrendered without a fatal wound.
I blocked them all.
Attacks that aimed at vital points with such honesty were, if anything, easy to block.
But the strikes that did not aim at vital points butchered my body.
Then, at the moment the sword buried in my shoulder twisted and tore my right arm away.
Seizing that brief instant when the man's blade had stopped, I slammed into him.
At the same time I caught my flying right arm with my left hand and swung it at the man as he was knocked back.
The severed right hand was still gripping the sword firmly.
"Guh!"
Even as he fell, with monstrous reflexes the man fended off that abnormally long-reaching attack.
"A shame."
I had thought it a decisive blow that caught him off guard, in its way.
Watching the man take it so simply, I was less deflated than dumbfounded.
"What in the world am I fighting?"
"Who knows. An intruder, isn't it?"
"The intruders I know do not swing arms that have been torn off."
I brought the right arm, still holding the sword, to the cut surface at my shoulder.
Soon the shoulder, joined to the arm, was fully regenerated.
It was the method I mostly used when there was no time to grow the limb anew.
"Listen, all I need is to know where the chapter master is. I don't want to fight you."
"A monster who reattaches a severed arm in an instant, and you expect me to give up my superior's location."
I swung the reattached arm about for a moment, then shrugged.
"Is that so."
He was not the chapter master, but the man before me held a post high enough to give orders to the entire knight corps.
A chicken in place of a pheasant, then. I took out the Apostle's Sigil and showed it to the man.
"Do you recognize what this is?"
"I do not."
Fifty years.
Time enough for one generation to turn over.
However high his post, it was no wonder that a man who had lived so few days failed to recognize the sigil.
I let out a small sigh and gestured lightly.
"Come at me, quickly. There's no time."
———BOOM!
It was a sound unlike any until then.
Those who see that I am the Undying generally show one of two reactions.
They lose the will to fight, or they try to kill me in a single stroke.
The man was the latter.
Appearing in an instant, tearing the air apart, the man brought his sword down.
Already knowing he would aim for my head, I raised my blade crosswise and blocked it.
———CRASH!
With a roar impossible to believe had come from an edge meeting a flat, the floorboards I stood on caved in.
Ominous sounds came in succession from the joints of both my arms.
"So you press down with brute strength. Crude."
"I shall take that as an insult to the Talios Order."
Pure force without a shred of technique.
The classic method of the Talios Order, which held to crushing an opponent with overwhelming power.
The man's center of gravity ran from above to below.
When I set the flat of my blade at an angle, the man's sword slid along mine and threw sparks.
Just as I was about to sweep the neck of the man cutting through empty air.
"What is this commotion?!"
Behind me, the chapel door opened.
I hastily halted the blade that had reached the man's neck.
"Chapter Master?"
The man standing opposite me let out a shrill sound.
The moment I heard it, I turned and thrust the sigil forward.
"Chapter master of the Talios Order of Pirberg, hear me. I am the Apostle of Talios who received you fifty-six years ago in Branskholm March, in the north of the Empire. In the battle against the allied domains of Teldrogin, Durheim, and Mordiram, I stood at the very vanguard of the crusade to deliver you, and now, after long years, the heretics who have crept into Pirberg......."
"Wait, wait a moment."
The man, who had been listening blankly to the words I poured out like gunfire, came to himself with a start and examined the sigil in my hand closely.
Stroking the iron sigil with trembling hands, the man at last knelt and bowed his head low.
"I greet the Apostle of Heaven's Conquest."
Very fortunately, the chapter master held a post high enough to recognize the sigil, and he was well along in years.
At that ticklish apostle business I had not heard in a long while, I promptly changed the subject.
"Chapter master, pull the troops back from the outer ward."
"With respect, there is a beast there, O Apostle. Where there is a beast there is crusade, and where there is crusade there is no retreat."
"That beast is the steed I rode in on. Do you intend to kill an apostle's steed for the crime of being a beast?"
"......It shall be as you command."
The chapter master rose at once and left the chapel.
That the man who had watched this entire process was struck dumb went without saying.
"Th-that, no, what in the......."
"What am I, you mean?"
I sheathed my sword, then peeled off the severed right-arm section of my leather armor like taking off a sleeve guard.
"As you can see, your apostle."
The lamps swayed in the strong wind blowing through the door the chapter master had left open.
But for now, nothing was shaken so greatly as the man's heart.
"The, the Apostle of Heaven's Conquest......actually exists......."
"Yes. That apostle out of legend."
It did not take long for him, the paladin and commander of the Second Corps who had driven me hard, to bow his head to me.