Soujirou the Willow Sword - 1

This was the tale of one person.

For Yuno the Distant Talon, the story began with the memory of her old schoolmate Lucelles.

Lucelles was a beautiful girl. Silver hair that flowed with sunlight. Aquamarine, almond-shaped eyes peeking out from under her long eyelashes. Though a minia girl, she was more enchanting than an elf or vampire—even other girls like Yuno thought so—and she seemed to sparkle more than anyone else, not only in their training school but throughout the whole of Nagan City.

Thus, after the classes were divided up and Lucelles came over during Word Arts class to ask her for instruction, Yuno couldn't contain the joy bubbling up inside her.

Lucelles choosing her (and her slight proficiency for the Force field of Word Arts) from among all her fellow classmates and recognizing her singular talent was the first time Yuno had ever taken pride in anything.

Yuno chatted with her, straining the limits of her reticent nature.

In their conversations, Lucelles was surprisingly timid, in contrast to her glamorous appearance. Additionally, her poor grades plagued her mind with worry, the same as any other girl her age. However, her consistently thoughtful and kind manner of speaking did not betray Yuno's adoration. Before long, Yuno realized that the two shared uncannily similar ideas when it came to the field of botany.

They found themselves unconsciously spending time together more and more often, teaching each other about the names of newly discovered stars, annexations by the kingdom, and which of the boy cadets caught their eye.

Nagan City was a place of learning, built around the Great Labyrinth at its

center. It was also home to many residents with complicated personal histories. It was possible that Lucelles, too, having left her home far away and applying to the Explorer Training School, bore some complicated personal circumstances that were unknown to Yuno.

Nevertheless, even without ever broaching that subject, the two were able to remain friends.

Within the Great Nagan Labyrinth, created by the self-proclaimed Demon King Kiyazuna, remained innumerable relics and secrets, more than could ever be fully uncovered, even by the time the two girls reached adulthood. In this city, one's race or past would not be determining factors in their potential to seize honor and glory.

With the death of the True Demon King, the age of terror had come to an end. Without the fear of death and destruction hanging over every head, it was possible to dream of a peaceful future.

—And that future was now.

"Augh!"

Lucelles's body was trampled underfoot on top of the cobblestones of the flame-wreathed Nagan City.

Looming over her slender back was a massive and hollow suit of armor, its metallic luster tinted green, limbs thick and heavy. Its head was mostly buried within its body, with only the glow of a singular blue eye visible—a cogwork golem.

"An—ngggh!"

Before Yuno's eyes, Lucelles's beautiful arm was casually twisted twice around before being ripped from her body.

"L-Lucelles..."

It was mere coincidence that it was Lucelles beneath the golem instead of Yuno.

Lucelles had fled to the left and thus was caught by the golem as it flew out of the stone alley.

The golem, boasting a heavy metal carapace, impenetrable to any blade,

was strong enough to twist a horse's body in two. For the girls, confronting it was a death wish. Escape would be impossible.

That was all there was to it.

"No! It can't be! No!" Yuno cried. All she could do was look at the ravaged bone and flesh poking out from the base of Lucelles's beautiful shoulder. Lucelles wasn't even able to let out a dying scream, her whole rib cage being crushed into the ground.

She spoke in a hoarse, gasping whisper. "It hurts… I-it, hngggh…gaaah…"

Was there any greater despair than being powerless while watching a loved one die a slow, agonizing death?

…Though, perhaps it wasn't despair Yuno felt.

Perhaps there was but a small sliver of relief within Yuno that Lucelles's final words weren't a plea for rescue.

Her beloved Lucelles. The Lucelles she had adored more than any other… The golem continued, ripping her left leg out of its socket as well. The fatty membrane and threads of sinew resembled meat on a butcher's table,

and her writhing knee sagged loose in the golem's grip.

The automaton showed zero emotion as it did to the beautiful Lucelles, the object of Yuno's admiration, what it had done to all other residents of the city—dissect her alive.

She was a normal girl, surprisingly timid despite her bright and glamorous appearance.

Yuno fled from the ruined Nagan City as she heard Lucelles's agonized death throes.

"Augh…! Gaaaaaaugh!"

As she ran, the scenery melted away into a distorted heat haze.

The fact that, in her desperate and delirious escape, she had avoided being caught by any of the golems wandering through the city might have been divine misfortune.

Her bloodied legs finally stopped at the top of a hill where she and Lucelles had shared many memorable days off together.

A mixture of dirt and blood traced her brow before dripping off her forehead. She couldn't even worry about her braided ponytail, now frayed and loose.

Nagan Labyrinth City. Centered around the labyrinth of cogwheels and

iron, the city was one of learning and technology, encircled by bronze- adorned shops and schools.

Atop the hill, the scenery visible through the gaps in the thick green of the tree branches looked totally otherworldly compared to the nature surrounding it, yet strangely harmonious at the same time, providing a wonderful view.

There was nothing left. The city, the flowers… All had gone up in flames. Figures were still visible, moving around among the cruel conflagration. Immune to the heat, these were the crowds of merciless golems.

"…I should've…," Yuno mumbled, dazed by everything so unrecognizably changed.

Lucelles was there inside the flames. Old Lady Miller the baker, her classmate Zend, the seemingly invincible Mrs. Kiveera, Menov the elf, the blind poet Hill; they were all there, too.

She clawed at her head.

"I—I…should've been torn apart… I should've died, too…!" No one had known. Not a single person had realized.

Even though the appearance of the True Demon King had upstaged them, those who had once declared themselves as such, the self-proclaimed Demon Kings, were still exactly that—Demon Kings, the very worst threat menacing the people of the world.

…Within the Great Nagan Labyrinth, created by the self-proclaimed Demon King Kiyazuna, remained innumerable relics and secrets, more than could ever be fully uncovered, even by the time the two girls reached adulthood.

That fact had never been truer. That day, the labyrinth, generating golems on an unprecedented scale, sent Nagan City into ruin in a single morning.

The citizens weren't even allowed enough time to wonder what was happening and why. Her instructors, the ones who should have known the truth of the situation, were burned alive first, before they could even escape their staff building.

Qualified explorers, a status that felt totally out of reach to Yuno and Lucelles, had gone out to face the golem throng as it swarmed like ants, only to be mowed down with unbelievable ease. First-class explorers, second-class explorers, it didn't matter. Yuno saw even the twenty-fourth-class explorers, barely half her height, get dissected alive as well.

"I can't…I can't take it…"

The blue glow of the golem's eyes shined through the copse of trees. They were this far outside town. Not even a girl as broken as Yuno was safe.

Now, Lucelles was no longer walking to her left. She sensed she was going to die just like her friend.

"No… Uno io shyipice un2 lino." (From Yuno to the Fipiq arrowhead.

Second finger axel.)

"Zrk."

Together with an inorganic squeal, the golem's forward dash dug up the ground beneath it.

At that moment, Yuno shouted:

"Corro enuha, 8dihine, viradma!" (Lattice star, bursting spark, churn!)

Honed iron gravel split open from inside her sleeve. Rapidly shooting out in an arc, it sliced through the gaps in the golem's armor.

There came the metallic scrape of a direct hit, like a bird's warble.

Kreech. Krakee, krakee, kreek. "Zr-zrrk, krssht…krsk."

Having been pierced in some fatal inner part, the giant body stopped moving.

The golem was an elaborate mechanized doll, brought to life through Word Arts, engraved into a seal, the location of which differed from golem to golem. Yuno had learned that in school.

…However, her daring feat was little more than a coincidence, and a miraculous one at that. She hadn't been aiming for any point in particular. Nothing more than the Force Arts of a girl who had all but run out of options.

She could grant speed to pebbles she had sharpened herself. Her second name was Yuno the Distant Talon.

"Wh-why…? Why?!"

Using her technique to narrowly escape with her life, Yuno nevertheless recoiled in bewilderment and despair.

Among all Word Arts, she was only slightly skilled with Force Arts. That was her one redeeming feature.

"Why…? How could this, how could that kill you…?! B-back there, I…I could have saved her?!"

Yet, when Lucelles was in danger, Yuno had been unable to do anything.

Despite believing her only way to atone for escaping was to be torn apart and die just like Lucelles, she had nonetheless just used arts to try to survive.

How shameful, how base, Yuno the Distant Talon—was that all your feelings of friendship toward your precious Lucelles amounted to?

"I can't take it… Aaaaaugh…! Lucelles…"

Covering her face with both her hands, she again took off running on scarred bare feet.

No matter where she tried to hide in the forest, slowly being encircled by the blaze, she was sure to run into the terrifying golems. Still, living on, burdened by this sin and regret, was itself just as hellish.

…Sure enough, passing through the trees and into a plaza, there were six of the giant metal soldiers waiting for her.

She sent her stone projectiles flying with a shriek. However, the same miracle did not manifest itself twice, and all her attacks were repelled by her targets' fully encompassing curved armor. There was no other way for her to stand against them.

"Zrk."

"Zr-zrrrk."

"K-kill me… Hey…no matter what I say, you're going to kill me, right?!

It'll all go exactly as I want it to! I want to die! Just…just let me…"

The cohort of reapers ignored Yuno's incoherent rambling and made their move.

The directive engraved within the golems of the Great Nagan Labyrinth was an extremely simple one—to advance on anything that moves within their line of sight and dismantle them.

The six golems, following said directive, tilted their bodies forward.

At the same moment, the golem farthest to the right slid to the ground. At least…everything from its waist up did.

Krrssshunk.

Burning leaves on the ground scattered.

Everything below the golem's waist remained upright. The heavy armor that no blade should have been able to puncture had a clean and parallel slice cut through its middle.

"What…?"

Something flickered between the trees. The speed made it seem like an illusion—was it light? Or shadow?

When Yuno finally tore her gaze away from the inscrutable phenomenon, she saw that the remaining five golems had been felled as well.

One had been split in two, another had been stabbed through the shoulder, another still was missing its head. Their severed cross sections were as smooth as a mirror's surface, clearly reflecting the red flames.

The cuts were too sharp— Then. "Sup."

"Eek?!"

The sudden voice came from right beside her.

Yuno wasn't sure when he'd appeared. A hunched and short-statured man crouched at her feet.

He carried a single-bladed sword—one of the cadets' training swords—on his right shoulder. Clearly, the weapon had belonged to someone killed in the sea of slaughter.

"Oh… What's your deal? Trying to die or something?" the suspicious man continued with his back still turned to Yuno.

All of it.

The common sense Yuno had developed throughout her life rejected the reality in front of her.

It's all a dream.

The six golems had been laid low in an instant.

It shouldn't have been possible for a cadet's practice sword to bisect the armor so cleanly, when no cadet or any qualified explorer had been able to scratch it.

The golems didn't stop moving even when their heads and arms were amputated, and for them to be cut down so effortlessly, as if it were inevitable—when even Yuno herself couldn't comprehend the absurdity of how she had felled one—was wholly illogical.

It's all been a dream. From the moment the labyrinth first came to life and all the golems appeared. All of it.

"Hey, you listenin'? I asked if you're trying to die or something?" "Eep, yes—er, um, no."

"The hell's that mean?"

The man chuckled to himself, standing up from his crouch.

Even after rising, the man's back stayed unusually bent, so his eyes didn't quite meet those of the seventeen-year-old Yuno.

He was clearly a minia, but his smooth features and goggle eyes gave his face a reptilian appearance.

"Dying'd be a real waste, y'know? Being human…gets a lot more fun from here on out."

More unusual than anything else, though, were the clothes the man wore. A subdued red color, the velvety fabric had an elastic flexibility to it. On them was a white line that seemed to run down his arms and legs.

"F-fun…?"

"…Yup. In my experience anyway. Losing absolutely everything's the best place to start. Then you get to decide where you're gonna go and what you're gonna do. It's great, lemme tell ya."

Absentmindedly listening to the man's words, Yuno recalled the name for the man's attire that she had learned in class. It belonged to a different culture, from somewhere far, far away from her own world.

It was called a "tracksuit."

"…A Visitor."

"C'mon…this town calls me that, too? Whatever. Call me whatever ya want."

Someone who appeared from the Beyond—a place with a different culture, a different ecology, where even the number of moons in the sky differed from Yuno's world.

A rarely seen outsider, introduced to this world from the Beyond, who sometimes brought prosperity and ominous tidings others.

An individual from a far-off world, distinct from this one. These were known as "Visitors."

"Um, you…j-just now, with those golems…" "Hmm."

The man simply looked back down to the base of the hill. Yuno followed his gaze.

She looked at the scene spread out before her.

"N-no, impossible…! A-all of them…? By yourself…?" "Boring as hell."

Still resting his sword on his shoulders, the man turned up one corner of his mouth into a half smirk.

It was a sea of steel carcasses.

In the hollowed pit, hidden from view at the top of the hill, countless numbers of diced, inoperative golems were piled up in a heap. Their cores, hidden within their armor and with no two golems having them in the same place, had been unwaveringly and cleanly cut through, ending the creatures' animatronic existences.

It was impossible to reason out where a golem's weak point was from the outside. Was such a feat even possible?

"Didn't think you guys'd have machines in this world, too. What'd you call 'em again? Golems? I've cut down a helluva lotta 'em by now, but they don't put up much of a fight…"

"—Didn't put up much of a…fight?" Yuno blankly murmured, looking down at the carcasses.

Everyone who lived in the city, people who trained themselves hard to challenge the mechanical labyrinth, constantly and automatically rearranging its whole configuration, wasted away underneath the massive army of metal and steel.

The golems' structure was no mystery. If anything, those who challenged the Great Nagan Labyrinth and its unending stream of automaton guards were much more skilled at fighting golem opponents than warriors from other cities. Even the regular soldiers of Aureatia, the largest central nation in the land, would fare no better in the face of this disaster.

In which case, this one man—who had opposed this walking, city- destroying nightmare and bested it with a single sword—was the real monster.

The wind, carrying the heat of the flames, actually felt cool on Yuno's wet cheeks.

"Bleh."

Opposite her, the Visitor put a piece of some nearby grass in his mouth before spitting it back out.

"Seriously? This grass ain't the edible kind?"

"U-um… If that's root tussock grass, then no, it's inedible. It's actually quite poisonous."

"Figured as much. Hey, you gotta have some food on you, right?"

"Y-you…should really run while you can!"

Even when faced with an immeasurable strength completely outside her world's physics of logic and reason, Yuno couldn't find anything else to say. She already knew the truth. The Great Labyrinth, created by the self- proclaimed Demon King Kiyazuna, and the town where she and Lucelles had lived together, had become the very definition of a living hell.

"No matter…how strong you may be, this city, it's impossible…!" "Whoa now, no need to get upset. What's so impossible, huh?" "Wh-what…? Don't you see it?!"

Yuno pointed down toward the scene of Nagan below them.

She didn't point toward the endless swarm of golems, the horde of destruction blanketing the city.

Her finger was directed at the far end of the fiery haze. "You think you can defeat that with just a sword, too?!"

An enormous shadow, larger than any of the city buildings and closer to a mountain in height, was swaying back and forth.

It was shaped like a person.

…Yes, this was the real nightmare. Looking out over the city where she had grown up, she saw looming above it an impossible fantasy.

The Great Nagan Labyrinth had started to move, and a huge swarm of golems had appeared. This was a fact, not a metaphor.

No one had known. Not a single person had realized.

Perhaps the structure had served to show enormous military might. Maybe it had been created in an attempt to defeat the True Demon King, who'd plunged every corner of the world into indiscriminate fear, including the legendary golem creator, the self-proclaimed Demon King Kiyazuna.

At the far end of the blaze, the Great Nagan Labyrinth roared. It was a noise as resonant as the raging sea.

"Hey."

…Without answering her question, the man pointed his sword straight at Yuno.

The inexperienced girl couldn't yet detect another's urge to kill, but nevertheless, with the sword pointed straight at her, she had a sinking feeling death was imminent.

The sword's tip grew hazy.

"—Hi-yah!"

"Zrk."

Behind Yuno, a golem was skewered.

He had bent down even farther, stepping forward and going through Yuno's legs to make his thrust—piercing the golem's core from a position invisible to his opponent.

He had kicked the pommel of his sword hilt up through the golem. "Wh-why did you use a move…like that…?"

She didn't feel any sense of shame in having him dive in between her legs. It was over before she could even register what had happened.

His sword skills were not normal.

There was no world out there, let alone Yuno's, where his system of sword techniques made any sense. She was terrified. Terrified at this presence before her, whose existence was far outside her realm of comprehension.

Skillfully flipping up the tip of the hilt with his toes, the Visitor once again slung it on his shoulder.

"Are you sure you don't have any grub? Grass, bugs—anything's fine. I haven't had breakfast yet, y'see."

"I—I have a…um…a packed lunch. But, um, it doesn't have much flavor."

"Damn, you sure know how to make things difficult. Fine, fine, we'll trade. You, fork over the food."

The swordsman stared off at the other end of the haze.

"—In exchange, I'll go ahead and handle that giant dude over there. I was thinking of cleaning him up soon anyway."

Yuno looked at the sword. It was the same kind of worn-out, light practice sword provisioned to her. It was indeed the only weapon with which the man was equipped.

What exactly could this man do? Did he have some brilliant strategy in mind? Maybe some mighty-strong allies lying in wait somewhere? Maybe he had at least one kind of offensive Word Art at his disposal?

"Time to take 'em down. Sound good? Bet it'll be a hoot." "..."

"You're enjoying yourself."

Battle, bloodshed, being brought to the brink of death—this warrior was savoring it all.

Yuno had watched her homeland descend into chaos. Yet this small man with his unusual features was a demon from even darker depths of hell.

"What…wh-what are you?! What kind of technique is that?! Where did you come from?! Who are you?!"

At Yuno's deranged questioning, her companion's mouth twisted into an uneven smile.

This is how he replied:

"Yagyuu Shinkage-ryuu."

What would happen once she knew about this man's otherworldly origins?

Was his self-description really true or not? Yuno had no way of hoping to understand one way or the other.

"—Soujirou Yagyuu. You're looking at Earth's last Yagyuu." He came from a world other than this one…the Beyond.

A rarely seen outsider, introduced to this world from the Beyond, who sometimes brought prosperity and sometimes ominous tidings.

This master swordsman brought with him the most ominous tidings of all.