CHAPTER 148. The Sword God (劍神) Sleeps Here
“Tch, what’s gotten into him again?”
Leaving Aster trudging off, Shine moved on.
He had no idea what had twisted Aster’s mood this time. Then again, the guy always looked at the world crookedly—how would anyone know what was going on inside him?
“Tch. On a day this monumental, when the hierarchy is being properly reestablished.”
Shaking off the regret, Shine headed with light steps toward the Sword God’s Tomb.
“Hmm. So this is it?”
“Yes.”
The attendant bowed politely.
Before entering the Sword God’s Tomb, Shine took in the scenery.
“It’s more shabby than I expected.”
The Sword God’s Tomb looked exactly like an entrance leading down to an underground prison.
A miserly, paltry exterior for such a grand name as “Sword God’s Tomb.”
But perhaps he noticed Shine’s impression—because the attendant guiding him in silence added awkwardly,
“There was quite a lot of talk even within the family, but… in any case, it was the 13th Head of House’s last will, so…”
Even as he spoke, the attendant wondered why he was making excuses at all—then he quickly understood why.
“Of course.”
“…Pardon?”
“He had an unpretentious temperament.”
“What do you mea—”
“No. Just nonsense.”
The attendant looked up at Shine with unfamiliar eyes.
Dusky, sooty armor.
His face couldn’t be seen, but his presence somehow felt lonely.
Along with the natural, effortless way he commanded people, the attendant found himself swept along by that strange air.
Once that thought took hold, the attendant realized that Shine’s demeanor had been odd the whole way here.
He hadn’t said much, but… yes. It was as if he were recalling memories from a long time ago.
“By any chance… have you visited Rortel before?”
The attendant only realized after blurting it out that it was a ridiculous question, and Shine, too, gave a small smile.
“As if.”
And yet, why was it?
His answer looked unusually lonely—as if he were yearning for time that would never return.
As the attendant’s doubts deepened in that strange atmosphere, Shine spoke.
“Let’s go in. Are you coming in with me?”
“Ah, no. This is as far as I go.”
The attendant withdrew his gaze from Shine and shook his head.
“Ah, and you must keep what I mentioned earlier.”
“No damage to facilities, no recording, and don’t stay longer than a day, at most. Is that right?”
“Yes.”
“Understood. I’ll keep it in mind.”
“Yes, then…”
The attendant unlocked the door with the key he’d brought and stepped aside.
Shine stood before the stairs and stared down into the pitch-black darkness.
For a moment, he simply looked.
“Ah—can you get me a single flower?”
“I can, but why a flower—”
“No. There’s no need to go out of your way.”
Shine snapped off a wildflower growing beside the entrance.
“I’ll be going.”
Holding a single wildflower loosely, Shine stepped into the darkness.
It was quite shabby, but with his personality, he wouldn’t mind.
“……”
The attendant quietly watched Shine.
It didn’t take him long to grasp the meaning of that flower.
“Someone carrying a condolence flower (弔花) into the Sword God’s Tomb… that’s a first, isn’t it?”
At least, it was the first time during all the years he had managed the Sword God’s Tomb.
As widely known, the Sword God’s Tomb—meaning the Hall of Trials—was composed of three stages in total.
The first of them.
Stepping stones.
Shine stood in a space filled with water like a swimming pool and looked ahead.
“You really… put work into this.”
He’d wondered why a perfectly fine name like Sword God’s Tomb was set aside in favor of “Hall of Trials,” but seeing the scene in front of him, he understood.
This was less a “tomb” and more a gate.
Anyway.
Shine shifted his gaze to the platforms floating at regular intervals.
How to pass the first gate seemed clear enough.
“Do I just step on the floating stones and cross?”
Probably. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have placed these pointless floating stones here.
Of course, someone like Shine could have simply leapt across without using them, but instead of jumping at once, he stood still and carefully studied the spacing between the stones.
He saw a pattern that felt familiar.
After a while—
“…Tch.”
Shine clicked his tongue as if something displeased him.
“What a petty bastard.”
He kicked off the ground and sprang forward, stepping from one floating stone to the next over the water.
His movement was unhesitating.
He didn’t step on the wrong stone and fall in—he moved as if he knew the sequence by heart.
When he reached the far side, Shine glanced back.
- Hahahaha! You idiot. How is it you can’t even step Rortel’s footwork as well as I do? Hm? Now watch. This genius will improve it for a dullard like you.
“Even if you beat me to death, you refused to step like that…”
After chewing on the memory for a moment, Shine left the first gate behind and moved on.
Then, the second stage.
Shine stared at a stone chamber with a circle drawn at its center.
Magic circles and Artifacts were mounted along the walls, and this stage, too, was not difficult to understand.
Stand inside the circle and endure for a set amount of time.
“This… is training I did quite a lot.”
Shine took his place within the circle.
Not long after, mana arrows shot out from the Artifacts in all directions.
Pibibibibit!
Shine took in the arrows pouring in from every side.
Blue trajectories reflected in crimson irises.
Chaeng—!
Shine’s sword cut through the air.
The opening was a gentle curve.
A flowing, waterlike arc sliced through mana arrows, sometimes batting them aside, sometimes letting them slip past.
There wasn’t even a hint of hesitation in that flow.
As if… it were a single sword dance (劍舞).
And when that flurry of blade-dance ended—
Click, thud—!
With a harsh metallic sound, the door leading to the next stage opened.
But Shine didn’t move right away. He stood still and looked around.
A memory from some day brushed past his mind.
It had been a moment he’d forgotten completely, but as he swung his sword along the flow of the mana arrows, the memory came with it.
- Ah, that’s not how you swing a sword. Here—watch. I’ll personally broaden your eyes. It’s Rortel’s swordsmanship, but I reinterpreted it, so… yes. Call it the Shine style.
Looking back now…
“I really did torment you a lot.”
Whenever there was exchange between Rortel and Lehmann, it was usually like this.
I’d steal the swordsmanship he’d learned with nothing but a glance, then add my own interpretation and demonstrate it.
Childish.
“I couldn’t even pierce the core of the secret art… I just made the surface look flashy.”
With that embarrassing past rising up anew, Shine spat a curse.
“Damn bastard.”
Shine gave his head a short shake and moved to the next stage.
Now, the long-awaited final stage.
To be honest, the first and second were gates anyone—not just a trainee—could pass if they had enough persistence.
Of course, if you didn’t know the secret embedded in the placement of the floating stones, or the route the sword should take within the arrows, even that wasn’t easy, but still, they lacked the discernment to separate true trainees.
So.
“So this is the real one…”
Shine stood in the last stone chamber and looked around.
There wasn’t anything especially notable about the chamber.
“There’s nothing.”
There was no specific trial given like the previous two gates, and there was no door leading onward.
It was simply empty.
If there was anything unusual at all, it was the sun emblem carved into the wall directly opposite the entrance. Even that wasn’t particularly unusual.
Rortel’s symbol was the sun.
“Hmm…”
As Shine let out that low hum—
A structure rose from the center of the empty chamber in that very moment.
Grgrgk—
“This is…”
After examining the stone slab closely, Shine tilted his head.
“Is this telling me to put my palm on it?”
As Shine was about to place his hand on the palm-shaped imprint on the slab—
A line of text caught his eye.
The sun does not set.
“……”
The sun does not set.
It was a phrase Rortel’s family members commonly used as a metaphor meaning, “Rortel’s might is eternal,” but Shine tilted his head.
“What? And what am I supposed to do about it?”
For now, he placed his palm on the slab and injected Aether.
Immediately after, hot air surged up through the room.
Tsuzuz—
The sun emblem began to glow, and the space heated up, scorching hot. The heat was so intense that even Shine found it hard to endure.
The more Aether he poured in, the more the temperature climbed without end.
Shine reverted his heated armor back into shadow, pulled his hand away from the slab, and scowled deeply.
“Don’t tell me this bastard…”
Is he telling me to go to hell?
“Because I teased him so much?”
But that thought lasted only a moment.
“Hoo… you’ve been tainted by that crafty one.”
The world wasn’t rotten.
No—maybe it was rotten, but not everyone was the same as that crafty one. Could it be that, with a Demon Sword (魔劍) entrusted to him, all he did was some stubborn, childish nonsense like “Rortel is great!”?
But—
“It’s… plausible, though.”
Even if he gave what needed to be given, teasing someone wasn’t exactly out of character.
Shamid in his memory wasn’t like that, but you never knew how someone’s personality might change.
“I really should’ve beaten him more thoroughly—no, wait.”
A memory suddenly flashed through Shine’s mind.
- The sun does not set.
“Did that bastard ever say that?”
He searched through his memories, but no.
As a child, he’d chanted it like a spell whenever he lost… but yes, after a certain incident, he stopped.
- The sun does not set.
- But you lost.
- …….
“I just… didn’t like the look in your eyes.”
So I hit him.
Taking advantage of the moment when the elders of both families had stepped away, I said I’d fix his habit and beat him down properly.
One beating for every time he talked back.
“And then… what did I say?”
Ah. That’s right.
- If you talk that ‘sun’ bullshit in front of me one more time, you’re going to die. Got it?
- …….
- Answer.
- The sun do—khk!
A memory from when both he and Shamid were very young.
When that surfaced—
Shine lifted his gaze to the sun drawn on the wall.
“……”
If Shamid were in front of him now… and if he started spouting that sun nonsense to his face again, what would he do?
He didn’t know now.
He was a vampire who’d crash-landed into the future, and Shamid was a Head of House lying in a tomb.
But if it were the past, about two hundred years ago, then probably…
Step. Step.
Shine stood before the sun emblem and stared at the wall.
A short, deep breath.
And—
Bang!
A fist exploding into the wall.
It didn’t stop at once.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Until the wall carved with the sun collapsed completely. Again and again—punching, punching, and punching, a destructive barrage.
“Yeah. This is it.”
If Shamid were in front of him, he would’ve grabbed him and beaten him down like this.
When the wall finally crumbled completely—
Pasaseu—
Through the drifting stone dust, a new space was revealed.
“As I thought. This was the answer.”
Smiling in satisfaction, Shine stepped into the space.
Two stone markers stood before his eyes.
“Two markers…?”
Shine sprayed Aether to clear the hazy dust, then focused on one of the markers. And when he read its first lines—
“……”
Shine’s eyes returned to the beginning again.
And he read it again.
Shine von Lehmann.
My friend who shone the most brilliantly.
The Sword God (劍神) sleeps here.
As if engraving it onto his retinas—
Endlessly, endlessly.
