The First Match - 1

When it came to Mizial the Iron-Piercing Plumeshade's nomination as Twenty- Second General of Aureatia, there may not have been a single soul who could explain the reason why.

He was all of sixteen years old. He was bold on the battlefield and would express his candid opinions during council sessions, but unlike Hidow, for example, he wasn't someone who possessed acumen from the start of his tenure among the Twenty-Nine Officials. At first, he had social standing, and then he was simply driven by that position to acquire the abilities demanded of him.

Around the time the wartime regime known as the Aureatia Twenty-Nine Officials was born, he was merely there occupying his seat. There was some sort of political adjustment between the three kingdoms, and as a representative in name only of a certain family, whose leader died right before the formation of the Twenty-Nine, it was young Mizial who sat in the seat.

It was a ludicrous story, but at the time, there were also rumors that he may have been the illegitimate child of the royalty from the True Northern Kingdom, first to be ruined by the revolution of madness. In any case, at that time, there had been a powerful backer supporting Mizial behind the scenes.

However, during the chaotic, drawn-out war with the True Demon King, the powers supporting him disappeared one after another, and before anyone knew it, they had all vanished entirely.

With this, only Mizial remained. In the Twenty-Nine Officials, even when compared to Hidow the Clamp or Elea the Red Tag, he stood out as young, the youngest bureaucrat of all.

"Pardon me for calling at this late hour! I'm with the Miroffa Farming Tools Co."

"Okay, okaaaay! Gimme a seeeec!"

Mizial replied to the voice outside the mansion, still sunk back deep into the soft chair in his spacious room. He didn't plan on going himself. A servant would head for the door before long.

The other man in the room, sitting down by the fireplace, listened to the exchange, confused.

"Do you have a farm somewhere?" "Nooope. Why, something bothering you?"

"Well, it's a farming tool salesperson in the middle of the night. Not really the time of day to summon 'em here, is it?"

This dwarf's whole body could be mistaken for a weapon storehouse, his dangerous dress enough to make those who saw it tremble in fear. Even inside the residence of his own sponsor, he showed no intentions of letting a single one of his swords leave his side.

A living legend—he went by the name Toroa the Awful.

"Ah! Hey so, Toroa, tell me. You ever cultivate a field before?"

"It was a daily chore. I'd always wake up early in the morning and begin with tending the vegetable garden."

"Wooow! That's a surprise. What d'you eat? Did you really kidnap bad children, tear off their heads or whatever, and gulp them all down?"

Toroa couldn't suppress a wry grin. How exactly was that tiny father of his supposed to gulp down an entire minia's head?

The legend his father left behind had turned into a genuine fear and taken root in populated settlements. However, parts of that legend included such preposterous rumors and anecdotes that he couldn't hold back his laughter.

The citizens of Aureatia used such stories to frighten children who misbehaved—and even enjoyed fabricated verses that spoke of Toroa the Awful's adventures.

Some sort of fiction, far removed from their daily lives. A monster associated with the fantasy known as enchanted swords. They were all stories totally uninvolved with the citizenry going about living their daily lives.

In the end, Toroa the Awful had been unable to become genuine terror, like the True Demon King.

Contrary to expectations, though, Toroa didn't dislike these diverse range of stories. It made it feel like his father truly had lived in this world—and that even if his path had been one of butchery and regrets, there was a totally unknown someone out there who accepted his existence, too.

"Nothing that could compare with food in Aureatia, but the stuff I ate was probably a lot better than you're imagining. Boar meat soup… Now, that's a favorite. The kind simmered with moonstalks. When potato season rolls around, I'd mash them up and mix them with goat cheese. Then you wrap that in potato leaves. That was another favorite of mine…"

"Hmmm. Kinda boring, huh?"

A bit taken aback from the response, Toroa looked at Mizial.

Still sprawled out on the couch, he was gazing up indifferently at the ceiling. Even when speaking to the legendary symbol of fear, Toroa the Awful,

Mizial didn't show an ounce of self-humility or denigration.

"I mean, c'mon, Toroa the Awful can't be eating normal stuff like that." "What do you want me to say, then? I can't help it if that's what I actually

ate."

"Awww, who cares about the truth. No one's gonna know either way, right? What about saying, like, you dived in the ocean and killed krakens with your bare teeth. Or like you have some enchanted meat sword that sprouts these berries every day that are dripping in blood!"

"…Or that I boil down mandrake poison and drink it with my alcohol?" "Yeah, yeah, that type of stuff! It's cool!"

Aureatia's Twenty-Second General gleefully cackled.

"It's gotta be stuff like that; I'm serious. I mean, you're Toroa the Awful, after all… Toroa the Awful even came back from hell, right?"

"... Yeah."

Toroa pictured it. Somewhere out in Wyte was this terrifying monster, and every day he trekked down to the sea to eat krakens. With his mouth split from ear to ear, he'd drain his cup of boiled mandrake poison wine with a broad grin.

That awful monster would roam the night, kidnap bad children—and come back to life even after death to kill those who dared to wield enchanted swords.

"What was hell like?"

"Hell…hell was... Let's see. Terribly cold, and everywhere I stepped there were blades. A hell where…the ones who accumulated sins of the sword in life were dropped."

With it was one other sight only he was able to imagine.

The image of his tiny father tackling the ordeals of that vast, endless, and far- off world.

For instance...holding on to a single enchanted sword, just like he did when he was alive.

"Powerful and wicked dragons, and terrifying self-proclaimed demon kings…the kind that left their name in the histories—they were there, too. That's why, in order to rise back in this world, I was forced to cut them all down one by one."

"Hee-hee-hee…! So, Toroa, you're saying you were able to beat all those guys?"

"I sure am."

Toroa the Awful cut down enemies far larger than himself, one after another.

The enchanted sword streaking though the air like the wind—and that tiny body jumping from the rocky ground surface of swords, racing upside down, and continuously cutting down the fiends of hell all by himself.

This sole answer was the only thing he always firmly believed in, more than anyone else.

"Because Toroa the Awful's the strongest out there."

Deep down in their hearts, the boy and the dwarf were both the same. The two of them liked the tales of Toroa the Awful.

Toroa the Awful knew the reason why Mizial chose to sponsor him.

The dead of night. At an hour when all were asleep, a single-rider carriage departed from Mizial's mansion.

Just as Mizial had requested, its cargo remained loaded.

When he first gained his seat within the Twenty-Nine Officials, everyone around him had viewed it as a nominal position.

It wasn't only a matter of his ability. They didn't think it'd be at all possible for him to bear the heavy responsibilities of being a politician.

However, it was not so. The Twenty-Second General was a mediocre child in most senses of the word, but in one particular way, he possessed talent that far exceeded anyone else. It was clearly this talent that kept his heart true while surrounded by schemes and trickery—and what guided him to military exploits beyond his physical stature on the battlefield.

"…All right, now. No one's around here, right?"

He stepped out of the carriage into a deserted old town plaza.

It was the location where Toroa the Awful and Psianop the Inexhaustible Stagnation agreed to have their showdown.

A match at close quarters where both combatants could display the full extent of their abilities. Aureatia had marked this plaza as a potential location for the Sixways Exhibition's matches, and the shops tasked with furnishing the event proper had chartered the surrounding residences as seats for the audience.

As he checked the condition of the sand he felt under the sole of his shoe,

Mizial unloaded the cloth sacks piled up in the carriage bed.

He didn't have much time to prepare. He needed to complete everything before the night was over.

"Hmm, hmm, hmmmm, hmm-hmm, hmm."

Nevertheless, the preparations simply involved scattering the white powder inside the bags over the battleground. Large-scale schemes weren't in his nature, and it was too much of a pain to push the responsibility for making it all happen onto someone else. As a result, Mizial had thought up an act of sabotage that was possible just with his own individual strength.

Something Mizial could handle while humming to himself, while also fully aware he should be making sure that no one nearby found out about his actions. He was a mediocre child in most senses of the word, but in one particular way, he possessed talent that far exceeded anyone else.

It was the talent of self-assurance.

When he attended the Twenty-Nine Officials meetings, surrounded by a silent pressure that tried to make the young boy conform, he had never once showed any diffidence or atrophy.

Unafraid of powerlessness or futility, he was able to gain knowledge on the power he needed as it interested him.

Even on the battlefield, facing off against a self-proclaimed demon king, he was capable of charging alone deep into the enemy's camp, like a runaway carriage, cutting his way through and taking the enemy general's head with his own Aureatian general hands.

It was because of this talent that Mizial the Iron-Piercing Plumeshade continued to be the youngest, and in some senses the most peculiar, general among the Twenty-Nine Officials.

"...Ah."

The voice didn't belong to Mizial. It was a faint voice, like the whispers of a butterfly, that he could hear from the darkness of an alleyway.

Mizial's hands stopped moving, and he shifted his eyes in its direction. "Hmm? Is someone there? Heeeello?"

Even after being witnessed in the middle of his sabotage, he showed, what was a fair thing to say, no sense of tension whatsoever. His talent of knowing no fear made even his apprehensions toward his own safety extremely diluted.

If anything, the person who appeared out of the shadows was the frightened one.

"U-um, that's you, Mizial, right?" the voice asked, feeble, like a frail

birdsong or an infirmed person on their deathbed.

"I—I wondered what you were doing, um...o-out in a place like this… I- it's late at night, so…"

"Oh. Awww, shoot. It's you, Qwell. Shucks."

He could make out her long bangs that covered half of her face—and the large eyes peeking out through the gaps in her hair. Tenth General of Aureatia, Qwell the Wax Flower.

In complete contrast to Mizial, she was a woman with a feeble demeanor, as if she was always terrified. She was the sponsor of Toroa the Awful's opponent tomorrow—Psianop the Inexhaustible Stagnation.

"…Um, so. That bag. What is it?" "Lime."

Mizial replied without any hint of guilt. Ultimately, she would figure it out if she traced things back to the Miroffa Farming Tools Co. What he had planned on mixing into the sand on the battlefield was calcium oxide, used as an ingredient in soil conditioner.

"It's been on my mind for a while, actually. What'd happen to an ooze if you poured lime over it? Would it dry up alive, after all? Maybe it'd get burned? Makes you wonder, doesn't it, Qwell?"

"Huh…? Wait, but there, that's where Psianop's going to be fighting, right…? Hold on. Th-that's against the rules, right…? A-am I wrong…?"

The reason he had agreed to fight here in the old town plaza instead of the castle garden theater lay in the characteristics of the soil. The sand was fine enough that he could inconspicuously mix calcium oxide in with it.

Even if the opponent was a martial artist beyond all reason, without a minian body shape, the starting base for his techniques was always going to be the earth beneath his feet. The calcium oxide reaction, producing heat by absorbing moisture, would prove fatal to an ooze during both parts of the process.

"I mean, it won't hurt any of the citizens, right? What's the big deal? Wanna help me, Qwell? It's gonna be fun, trust me."

There was no deceit in his words. Nor did he doubt that Toroa the Awful would come out victorious, either.

It was pure curiosity. He wanted to see if things would play out that way, even for the unrivaled ooze champion. That was his sole reason.

Having spent his formative years with a cold and distant elder, even now at sixteen, Mizial was more childish than other kids his age, and he never corrected his immature behavior.

"Um, well, I—I don't think you should do that…"

"Why? Actually… What're you doing here yourself, Qwell?"

Their positions were of a criminal and an eyewitness, but his attitude made it seem like the exact opposite. At the very least, Mizial didn't think that being seen by her would deal him a significant blow.

Exactly as she appeared at first glance, Qwell's personality wasn't one fixated on gaining power. She shouldn't have been overly concerned about whether Psianop won.

"Huh…? Wait. Th-they said traps and ambushes were all fair game, right?

Wh-what then, um…is weird about me being here…?" "..."

Mizial realized he had misjudged her entirely. A loud clang reverberated around them.

Mizial finally became aware of the fact that Qwell was holding a weapon. In other words, she came there with the possibility of combat in mind from the start.

The thick blade, seemingly capable of slicing through heavy armored cavalry, horse and all, glittered on top of the stone pavement. It was a long-handled silver ax, boasting such a colossal size that a person of ordinary strength wouldn't possibly be able to lift its handle.

"Um, well, s-so that means…I—I can do that stuff, too, right...?" "...C'mon now, Qwell! Let's not do this."

Mizial was half smiling while he took out his balance-weight-like weapons, which were suspended from strings.

Holding them between both fingers, the weapons traced slight arcs before they began to spin.

"The Twenty-Nine Officials…can't be fighting among themselves, right?"

He had the gift of self-assurance. He gave his remark knowing well enough the gap in fighting strength between the two of them.

Mizial was in an unusual position among the Twenty-Nine Officials, but Qwell was an exceptional case, in a different sense.

A breeze came, brushing aside Qwell's long bangs, and he got a peek at her other eye for just a brief moment.

It was then he learned that the big, round iris emitted a silver glow.

…She was a minia, the same as the rest of the Twenty-Nine Officials. At the very least, her outward appearance and government registry dictated as much.

"Ah…M-Mizial. Um...don't tell me…you think, just because we're both members of the Twenty-Nine, you won't get killed? Oh dear…"

"Huh? What...? What're you talking about?"

Qwell's tone still maintained the same shaking helplessness to it, but the ax she gripped in both hands as she spoke took a sharp path upward, instantly raised over her head.

Mizial took a single step backward. Now that he had made an enemy of her, the probability of his sabotage's success was essentially zero.

Below her bangs, she flashed a bashful smile. "...Tee-hee… Just kidding. I was joking." The Tenth General, Qwell the Wax Flower.

Excluding Rosclay the Absolute, she was said to have the greatest individual fighting strength among all the Twenty-Nine Officials.

"I promise I won't kill you."