ACT 1
“Mitsuki... it’s you, right?” Yuuto asked hesitantly, staring intently at the face of the girl before him, a girl who looked somewhat older and more mature than the one in his memories.
He already knew what Mitsuki’s current face should look like, having seen it himself in the pictures she’d sent him. However, he got a completely different impression from the face of the girl in front of him now than from the one in those pictures.
Perhaps she just wasn’t very photogenic. Either way, seeing her in person like this for the first time in three years, she was far more beautiful than Yuuto had even imagined. She was so pretty that it was like she was a different person, though she still looked familiar to him.
“Yeah... it’s me. It’s Mitsuki. Is that... really you, Yuu-kun?” Large teardrops welled up in the corners of Mitsuki’s eyes.
That crying face perfectly lined up with the Mitsuki in Yuuto’s memories. She was unmistakably the girl he had grown up with.
“Yeah, it’s me! It’s Yuuto!” he cried.
“Ah...!” Mitsuki flung herself into Yuuto’s arms as soon as he answered her.
The feeling of her against him, her warmth that reached him even through their clothes, brought it home to him that this was real, and not some dream or illusion.
“I missed you! I’ve wanted to see you for so long, Yuu-kun!” she sobbed.
“Me too! I did too...” Yuuto trailed off. The two of them were so overcome with emotion that they couldn’t say any more.
Ever since Yuuto had been transported to the world of Yggdrasil, not a day had gone by that he hadn’t thought of Mitsuki.
He had waited so, so long for the day when he could finally be reunited with her.
Memories from those lonely, painful days rushed through his mind in a torrent, and the feelings all seemed to hit him at once.
He wanted to feel her even more. Circling his arms around her back, he clutched Mitsuki to himself in a tight, desperate embrace. As if in answer, he felt Mitsuki’s hands against his chest grasp his shirt tighter.
They passed a moment in silence like that, basking in the feeling of confirming each other’s existence. Eventually, Mitsuki spoke up.
“Since you were able to come back, does that mean you found somebody able to cast the spell Fimbulvetr?”
“Yeah, I... I really have made it back home, huh?”
It was only at this moment that Yuuto fully began to digest the fact that he had returned to the world he was originally from. He’d been so overcome at the reunion with his childhood friend that he hadn’t been able to spare a thought for anything else.
“Was this your idea of a surprise?” Mitsuki demanded. “That’s horrible. You could have just told me. You told me you were heading off to war, so I was worried this whole time...”
“Ah! That’s right! The fighting wasn’t over!” Yuuto gasped and went wide-eyed.
His brain had been thrown into confusion by the sudden turn of events, but now it spun into high gear, and his memories from just before his return came back to him.
He had somehow managed to drive off the allied armies of the Panther Clan and Lightning Clan, but then Sigyn of the Panther Clan, known as the “Witch of Miðgarðr,” had cast the spell Fimbulvetr on him from afar. This powerful spell, known as a seiðr (“secret art”), had caused whatever supernatural force was holding him in the world of Yggdrasil to break away.
Instantly, the world around him had wavered and fallen away, and then suddenly Mitsuki had been right in front of him.
He didn’t think it at all likely that Sigyn, his enemy, would cast Fimbulvetr on him and send him home for his own sake. Obviously, what she’d done had been for the sake of the Panther Clan.
And it was clear as day what her objective was.
He was the commander-in-chief of his army, and he had suddenly disappeared in the middle of a war. The Wolf Clan troops would likely fall into disarray. And since Sigyn had caused it, naturally the Panther Clan would be aware of this. Right now the Wolf Clan army was in danger, possibly even at risk of total destruction.
“Mitsuki! I need your phone!” Yuuto exclaimed.
“Uh, o-okay.”
Mitsuki seemed to infer the dire situation from Yuuto’s desperate tone. She hurriedly broke away from him and took her smartphone from where it had been charging by her pillow, and handed it to Yuuto.
“Thanks!”
Yuuto took it from her and opened her address book, tapping the entry that read “Yuu-kun.”
Just as he was being sent back home, Yuuto had handed his own smartphone to Felicia. He was trying to contact that phone now.
A monotone, robotic woman’s voice came through over the speaker. “The call could not be completed as dialed. The recipient phone may be in an area without reception or have its power turned off.”
“Tch, damn, so it won’t work after all, huh?” Clicking his tongue in irritation, Yuuto lowered the smartphone and tapped the “Call End” button.
In order to make calls connect between this world and Yggdrasil, the phone on that side needed to be in the Wolf Clan city of Iárnviðr, near the divine mirror housed in the city’s sacred tower Hliðskjálf.
Right now Felicia and the others were at the western edge of Wolf Clan territory, near Fort Gashina.
Yuuto had known this meant the call likely wouldn’t connect, of course. Still, he couldn’t just stand there and not attempt it.
“Please be safe, everyone...” Yuuto’s hand tightly clenched Mitsuki’s smartphone, just as the feelings of uneasiness were tightly gripping his heart. He couldn’t shake the horrible possibilities he was imagining.
“Y-Yuu-kun, are you okay? You’re sweating like crazy,” Mitsuki said.
“Yeah, I... I’m okay, but...”
“I probably don’t have to guess, but does this mean you came back right when things were really bad over there?”
Yuuto said nothing, but nodded once.
He was happy about the fact that he’d finally been able to come back home. He’d been longing for the day he could return to the modern world for what seemed like forever.
However, this was literally the worst possible timing for it. Yuuto found himself wracked by mixed feelings, unable to simply let himself be happy about this.
“I see,” Mitsuki pondered. “Even still...”
She drew in a small breath, then walked over to Yuuto and placed a hand against his cheek, smiling.
“Welcome home, Yuu-kun. Being able to see you again like this, touch you like this... I’m so, so happy.”
“Yeah... I’m home, Mitsuki.”
As he exchanged those simple words, Yuuto felt something incredibly warm well up within him.
Mitsuki’s body heat against him, her sweet scent that tickled his nose, everything about her was so familiar, so comfortable.
“Let me get a better look at your face.” Mitsuki leaned in very close, looking up at his face through teary eyes.
Yuuto felt something like a shiver run up his back, and his heartbeat sped up so much that it felt like it hurt.
This was cheating. The creature known as man is, by its nature, vulnerable to the tears of a woman. That goes doubly so for a woman the man has fallen for.
“Mm-hm, you look more manly and mature, but the old you is still in there. But compared to your pictures, you look a lot cooler... wha?!” Suddenly, Mitsuki cut herself off with a cry of surprise.
Yuuto was bringing his face even closer to hers.
For three years, he had been thinking of her, and now she was right next to him. There was no longer anything that could physically come between them. In a word, he was at the limits of his ability to restrain himself.
Naturally, if Mitsuki gave any indication that she was uncomfortable, he intended to stop himself. But though he could feel Mitsuki’s body tense up against him, she didn’t turn her face away, and softly closed her eyes.
“Yuu...kun...” Her voice a quiet whisper, but choked with emotion, she called his name.
The last thread of restraint holding Yuuto back unraveled. “Mitsuki...”
Yuuto closed his eyes, and slowly brought his face down to meet hers—
Bam bam bam!
“Mitsuki! I heard what sounded like a boy’s voice coming from in there! Open this door!”
The sudden, loud banging on the bedroom door, followed by a deep-voiced man’s panicked and angry shouts, was enough to make the two of them jump away from each other.
The living room of Mitsuki’s house was exactly how Yuuto remembered it from the last time he’d been here, almost three years ago.
There was the cupboard for plates and a rectangular dining table, both made of brightly-textured wood, and four chairs which sat around the table. Off to the left sat a large fifty-inch LCD television.
Yuuto had been over here many times through the years, and when his mother was absent to do errands or work, he’d sat at this table and eaten Mitsuki’s mother’s home cooking.
It was all so familiar to him, and once again he was filled with the realization that he was back in modern Japan.
Yuuto was brought out of his sentiment by a sharp voice.
“You really are Yuuto-kun, right?” Across the table from him, a middle-aged, stocky but well-built man with glasses sat glaring harshly at him, his arms crossed.
This was Shigeru Shimoya, Mitsuki’s father.
Shigeru had the kind of job that kept him at work all day, so Yuuto hadn’t had the chance to get acquainted with him, but according to Mitsuki he was a kind, gentle father, always smiling.
Well, right now, he was staring down Yuuto with a face like an angry god.
It was the kind of pressure that would normally cause a young man of Yuuto’s age to tremble and shrink meekly into himself. And the Yuuto before being sent to Yggdrasil would have done just that.
But Yuuto gave the man a polite greeting and bow, with no indication that he was intimidated. “I am. It’s been a long time, Mister Shimoya.”
Since becoming a clan patriarch in Yggdrasil, he had often been forced to go through difficult negotiations with people scary enough to send a yakuza running. A situation like this was no longer enough to disturb his composure. Indeed, he carried himself with confidence.
However, that same calm sense of confidence was like pouring gasoline on the fire for Shigeru, who was already nearly in a fit of anger. “Don’t you ‘It’s been a long time’ me, you...! Why were you in my daughter’s room?! And in the middle of the night!”
With a bam! Shigeru slammed his fist violently down onto the table and shouted. It was a perfectly natural reaction for a father with a teenage daughter.
“Well, you ask me ‘why,’ but...” Yuuto struggled to find a good answer.
The reason he’d appeared in Mitsuki’s bedroom when returning to this world was probably because of the divine mirror she kept with her, taken from its original shrine in the woods. But even if he said that, he didn’t see any chance Shigeru would believe him.
“I’ve heard about you from my wife,” Shigeru snarled. “Just where have you been off wasting your life for these last three years, eh? If you think I’d ever allow a delinquent like you to be in a relationship with my daughter, you can...”
“All right, that’s enough.” A middle-aged woman with eyes that much resembled Mitsuki’s cut Shigeru off, pressing a finger against his cheek to quiet his rant. “You’re getting too heated up, dear.”
“Aunt Miyo...” Yuuto knew this woman very well.
She was Miyo Shimoya, Mitsuki’s mother and a woman who was like a second mother figure to him. When Yuuto was small, she had taken care of him in place of his physically frail late mother.
“Oh, my, Yuu-kun, you have certainly grown into quite the dashing young man when I wasn’t looking,” Miyo said. “If I were only twenty years younger, I don’t think I could leave you alone, mm-hm.”
“You...?!”
“Mom?!”
Her husband and daughter both cried out at the same time, looking flustered.
Miyo smiled and gave a high-pitched chuckle, apparently highly amused by their reactions. “Both of you get way too worked up, and over such a cliché joke, too. Really, like father like daughter.”
“Ngh...” This time, both Shigeru and Mitsuki went red in the face, and glared at Miyo.
Yuuto could understand their feelings a bit. The last time he’d met Miyo was three years ago, but she hadn’t changed a bit since then. She should be at least around forty, but she still looked like she was in her mid-to-late twenties, beautiful and young-looking enough that she stood the chance of being mistaken for Mitsuki’s older sister.
“Come on now, dear,” Miyo said. “Have some tea and calm yourself down, all right?”
“...Hmph!” Shigeru scoffed with displeasure, but took the teacup offered to him roughly in his hands and began sipping at it. It seemed that, at the least, that exchange had taken the poisonous tension out of the air.
Next, Miyo gave both Yuuto and Mitsuki some tea as well, then sat down next to Shigeru.
In sharp contrast to her gentle, somewhat silly tone up until now, Miyo looked Yuuto in the eyes with a very serious expression. “Now then, I’m not going to jump down your throat like this person here, but I am going to have you tell me what you’ve been doing up until now, all right?”
She looked calm on the surface, but he could feel waves of quiet anger coming off of her.
To Yuuto, she was frankly a much more formidable enemy to deal with than Shigeru. She was someone who had looked after him over the years starting as far back as he could remember, and his feelings of respect made it hard for him not to see her as above him.
Yuuto swallowed. “Umm, I’m sure you have heard the story from Mitsuki, but...”
“Ahh, that’s right, she said you were transported to some other world.” Miyo clapped her hands as she said this, as if she were just remembering it. “So, are those clothes supposed to be an outfit from that world? You really came prepared. That’s, ah, ‘cosplay,’ they call it, right?”
As Miyo spoke, the pressure from her gaze didn’t waver one bit. Her eyes seemed to be shouting at him, Don’t think you can get off making fun of your elders!
As he suspected, Yuuto wasn’t going to be able to get anyone to believe him that easily. And he wasn’t lying or omitting the truth in any way, which made this doubly hard to deal with.
How can I explain this in a way that they’ll understand I’m telling the truth? No, to begin with, is that even possible? Yuuto was at a loss, and as he tapped a finger to his brow in thought, he felt a cold, hard sensation against his finger.
“Oh, right. Here, would you be willing to take a look at this?” Yuuto hurriedly removed his ornamental metal headband and held it out to Miyo.
It glittered golden as it caught the white light from the electric indoor lights.
“Oh, how pretty. It looks so well-made...”
“It happens to be made of pure gold.”
“P-pure?!” The look in Miyo’s eyes changed. As expected, as a woman, she held a strong interest in such ornamental accessories.
“Please feel free to examine it,” Yuuto told her.
“Y-you say that, b-but I’m not a professional appraiser, so I can’t be sure how to tell whether it’s real or a fake.”
“I don’t mind if you take it to a professional, or a pawn shop, and have it examined there.”
“This is really pure gold?” Miyo gulped. She seemed to have gleaned from Yuuto’s straightforward confidence that he wasn’t lying. She began handling the ornamental headband much more gingerly.
It was at least 300 grams or so, clearly heavier than the average smartphone model. That much pure gold, even as raw material, would normally go for around a million yen.
Added to that was the fact that it was the type of ornament typically worn by a sovereign lord. The surface of it was worked in intricate detail. If one tried to purchase something of similar make in modern-day Japan, it would easily cost at least several million yen.
The Shimoya family was a normal, middle-class household. Faced with such a valuable item in one’s hands, it wasn’t so unreasonable to be struck with a bit of trepidation at the thought of accidentally damaging it.
Yuuto pressed on. “I was a runaway child who hadn’t even graduated from middle school, with no real job, yes? In just under three years, do you really think I would be able to get ahold of something like this while also living anything like a normal life?”
“...No, I don’t think so,” Miyo said slowly. “You would be hard-pressed just to survive. You would never have the kind of leeway to afford something like this. Especially with the economy being what it is lately.”
Miyo gave a long sigh. She didn’t seem like she was ready to believe everything yet, but she was no longer set on denying the premise completely anymore.
With that, Yuuto had passed the first major hurdle.
“So then, what were you doing in that other world?” she demanded.
“Um, I guess I was basically like a king...” As soon as the words left his mouth, Yuuto grimaced.
He’d only just managed to get someone to start listening to him seriously, and he’d said something that sounded so unrealistic on its face, he might as well be back where he started.
It would have been much more realistic-sounding if he’d just said he used knowledge from 21st century Japan to make himself rich in a world without that knowledge. It wouldn’t even technically be lying.
“Hmm, that sounds pretty outlandish, and normally I wouldn’t even think of believing it...”
“...Yeah...”
“But, well, I’ve known you since you were little, Yuu-kun, and you wouldn’t be stupid enough to try to fool me with such a silly-sounding lie. If you were going to lie, you’d go with a better one, right?”
“Yes, you’re right,” Yuuto said. “I would say I had been making a living in a foreign country, or something.”
“Right, I thought so.” Miyo put a hand to her cheek and gave a long sigh.
As physical evidence, the ornamental headband was far too much effort for his story to be a simple lie. On the other hand, the story itself was too far-fetched to take as true.
If Yuuto had been in her position, he would certainly have been just as troubled by how to handle this.
“I have to say that I just can’t believe your whole story yet,” Miyo said, then let slip a little smile. The intensity had vanished from her expression, and she was back to the gentle, kind woman Yuuto knew. “But I’ll say it again: You’ve become a fine man, Yuu-kun. Earlier you stayed calm while my husband lost his temper at you, and you handled yourself well at answering my questions, too. You were splendid. I can tell, just from that, that you must have been through a lot of hardship in these last three years. You’ve really worked hard, haven’t you?”
As Yuuto received those words of praise from Miyo, he felt his eyes getting hot from emotion. “...Yes.”
He’d been thrown out into an undeveloped world, and been forced to survive with a frenzied desperation.
By death, he had been forced to part with the previous patriarch, whom he’d truly loved and respected. By betrayal, he had been forced to part with his sworn brother, whom he’d considered himself indebted to. And he’d been forced to take on the pressure of leading a nation as its patriarch. All of it was a heavy burden for a young man still partway through his teenage years. Those days had really been cruel.
That someone had recognized that for him, even if it was only in words, filled his heart with happiness and warmth.
Ding dong!
Suddenly, the doorbell chime rang, and broke through the intimate atmosphere that had formed in the room.
“Oh, it looks like he’s here.” Miyo stood up and headed towards the front entrance.
Clearly she already knew who was going to be at the door. Looking over at the wall clock, Yuuto saw that it was just past nine o’clock at night.
Just who would it be at this hour? Yuuto wondered suspiciously.
“Please pardon me for visiting at such a late hour.” As the distant voice from the entrance reached Yuuto’s ears, he shuddered, and his eyes went wide.
He knew that man’s voice.
Even after three long years, there was no way he could mistake it for another. It was, after all, a voice he’d heard in his everyday life for more than ten years.
“Dad...!”
It was unmistakably the voice of the man Yuuto resented and despised most.
Standing at the front entrance was a man dressed in simple, linen work clothes and a kerchief tied around his head, which he lowered as he spoke.
“Thank you very much for contacting me. It would seem my fool of a son has caused trouble for you and your family. I will be sure to visit again at a later date in order to offer a more proper show of thanks and apology.”
His name was Tetsuhito Suoh — but he was also known by his inherited trade name, Tesshin Suoh.
Though still in his forties, he was already praised as a master katana craftsman, the finest in his generation. In this modern era, where traditional Japanese swords were treated more as works of art rather than practical weapons, he stoically pursued an ideal of “functional beauty,” his designs focused on elegant simplicity. This had earned him an extremely high reputation amongst nihontou aficionados.
Although his face didn’t resemble Yuuto’s all that much, he was most definitely the young man’s father by blood.
“Oh, my, it’s fine, don’t worry yourself about it,” Miyo said. “He came to stay overnight here plenty of times when he was little, after all. Well, even if he does happen to cause a real incident here, as long as you agree that we can solve that at the altar...”
“Miyo?!” Shigeru yelped.
“Mom?!” Mitsuki squeaked.
“You really never change, Miyo-san,” Tetsuhito said, raising his head with a wry grin as Miyo chortled at her husband and daughter’s reactions.
Tetsuhito’s thin cheeks were covered in heavy stubble, his work clothes were full of heavy wrinkles, and the hair poking out from under the kerchief on his head was disheveled and oily. Overall, he gave off a dull, slovenly impression. This was different from the man in Yuuto’s memories, who was more sharp and put-together.
Miyo, apparently, was thinking exactly the same thing. “You have changed, though. Haven’t you let yourself get a bit too thin? Are you eating properly?” she asked, her brow furrowed.
“I am eating well enough.” Tetsuhito gave Miyo a bland, ambiguous smile. “It’s very late at night, so if you will excuse me we’ll be going. Let’s go, Yuuto.”
With a jerk of his chin, he motioned to Yuuto to follow him. He then turned around and began walking off immediately.
This left Yuuto dumbfounded. He didn’t even wait for my response, that damned selfish man!
Normally, Yuuto was not the type of petty man who would let himself get irritated over just that. In fact, he was normally tolerant enough to laugh things off and forgive little slights like that. But for some reason, when it came to his father, his antagonistic feelings always leapt in front of his ability to reason.
That being said, he couldn’t just stay here in Mitsuki’s house any longer and impose on her family. And he didn’t have anywhere else he could go, either.
“...Tch.” With a single, irritated click of his tongue and body language that clearly displayed his unwillingness to obey, Yuuto slowly began walking after his father.
He thought for a moment about the possibility of stubbornly refusing to go home and instead choosing to sleep on the streets, as it were, but he couldn’t call that a realistic plan.
He’d been a missing person for almost three years, and this was a small town. It wouldn’t benefit him to do something that would attract the attention of people in the community and make him the subject of gossip, or worse.
He was fully aware of that in his head, of course, his feelings wouldn’t play along and acknowledge that, and he steadfastly stoked his temper.
The two of them walked along the road in silence for a while, but eventually the one who couldn’t stand it anymore and spoke first was Yuuto.
“So, you’re not going to ask me anything?”
At about halfway home, he threw that question bluntly at the figure of his father’s back, moving slowly ahead of him in darkness lit only by the light of the full moon.
At this, his father finally stopped walking and turned to face him.
Standing face-to-face with his father for the first time in so long, Yuuto could see that the man looked somewhat more thin and haggard. But the thin line of his mouth and his slightly dour expression fit perfectly with the father from Yuuto’s memories. That stone-faced look made it hard to tell what he was thinking.
Yuuto’s father looked straight at him, then said, “Hm. Have you been keeping yourself healthy?”
“That’s what you ask?” Yuuto spat out.
After all, one glance at Yuuto should be enough for his father to tell that he was physically healthy.
This man’s son had just come home after being gone for three years, his whereabouts completely unknown.
The man could buffet him with tough questions about where he’d been, or angrily reprimand him along with a solid punch for good measure, or even rush to embrace him with tears in his eyes. Weren’t those the sorts of things a normal parent should do?
At the very least, this dull and detached attitude wasn’t normal.
“Well, ’course, if you suddenly tried to act all model-dad on me, it would just be disgusting, anyway,” Yuuto said with a scoff.
This was the man who had abandoned Yuuto’s mother — his own wife! — by choosing to prioritize his swordmaking work rather than come and be at her side when she was on her deathbed.
Yuuto wasn’t expecting in the least anything resembling regular human feelings out of him. No, he didn’t expect anything.
“...Is that so?”
“Ngh...!”
Yuuto gritted his teeth hard and struggled to control himself as his father simply agreed with him and backed off without any response.
To Yuuto, this father of his was the man he despised most of all in this world.
So, if this man he hated so much was indifferent towards him, why did he even have to care at this point? In fact, shouldn’t that be refreshing rather than infuriating?
But despite that logic in his head, Yuuto was beset by the angry emotions swirling deep within him.
“This place has really gone to crap, huh?” Yuuto muttered to himself in frustration, looking up at his old home for the first time in three years.
It was the archetypal Japanese-style house still pretty common out in the country, two stories tall with classic clay-tiled roofing. But, it was a bit off from the house in Yuuto’s memories.
The vegetable garden his mother had once tended as a hobby was now completely overgrown with weeds, and the metal rack for drying laundry out in the yard had rusted away into nothing more than a piece of metal junk.
The mail slot and post box at the front entrance were both overflowing with bundles of papers that looked like they could spill out any second.
Still, the edifice itself was just the same as always.
“I guess... I’m really home,” he murmured.
Ever since the death of his mother, this house had been unbearably unpleasant for him. He’d wanted to run away and go somewhere else as soon as he could.
Forced to keep depending on the man he hated for survival, he had been constantly irritated at his own powerlessness.
And yet now, he couldn’t help feeling waves of nostalgia come over him. The memories he’d made living here came back to him, one after another, and he felt the corners of his eyes getting hot.
However run-down it might become, this was the one and only home Yuuto had been raised in.
“I kept your room the way you left it. Go ahead and use it,” his father said curtly as he turned the key in the front door.
At least tell me “Welcome home,” Yuuto thought in irritation, but as the door opened in front of him, those feelings were blown away in an instant.
It was because a sharp and unpleasant smell had wafted out to him.
It was difficult to pin down, but the base of it was probably tar from tobacco smoke. It was a little bit like how he remembered his father’s car smelling. But there was something like the stench of old sweat and alcohol mixed in, too.
In a word, it stank like the home of a man.
With Yuuto standing stock still and not moving to enter the house, his father called back to him with suspicion. “What is it?”
“Don’t give me that,” Yuuto snarled. “What the hell is up with this smell?”
“Smell?” Tetsuhito took a few sniffs, but didn’t seem to notice anything in particular. As it so often happens, the smell that comes from a person living in a place isn’t readily noticeable by that person themselves.
“Right...” Yuuto gave a long sigh. Back when his mother was alive, this place had smelled so much cleaner, with the light scent of flowers in the air. It being reduced to this was just deplorable.
Just how much does this man want to denigrate his own home?!
“Forget it,” Yuuto muttered. The thought of continuing talk on the subject any further suddenly seemed like a huge pain, so he broke off the conversation quickly.
He’d spent all day today from morning until evening commanding an army on the battlefield, which had worn him down mentally. And just when he’d thought it was over, he’d been brought back to the 21st century, reunited with Mitsuki, interrogated by her family, and then forced to see his father again.
So much had happened today that honestly he felt too exhausted to want to do or think about anything else.
Seeing his old home had finally undone the tension that had been holding him up thus far.
“I’m going to bed. If you wanna talk about anything, save it for tomorrow,” he said wearily, running his fingers through his hair, and then stepped into the house.
The smell was unpleasant, but he could put up with it. After a while, he would probably get used to it enough that it wouldn’t register anymore.
That thought, of course, was also unpleasant in its own way, but right now he just wanted to lie down.
“All right. Rest well.”
“Yeah...”
His father’s words were a bit atypically kind, but Yuuto gave them an offhand response and headed for his room on the second floor. As he did, he was newly disheartened at the sight of a thick layer of dust on the stairs.
His father’s room was on the first floor, so there was likely nobody even going up to the second floor anymore.
“At least clean the damn place on New Year’s or something,” Yuuto muttered.
Similar to spring cleaning, the new year was one of the traditional times for cleaning a family home in Japanese culture. However, this level of dust wasn’t something that would happen over only a few months. This place clearly hadn’t been cleaned in years.
This level of slovenliness was just unbelievable.
The father in Yuuto’s memories was always a strict man, but an amazing one, someone who could create katanas with skill that no one else could replicate.
That was exactly why Yuuto had admired him in his younger days, and decided early on that he wanted to be a swordsmith too.
“Was he really such a hopeless and pathetic guy all along...?” Yuuto muttered.
It seemed like the man couldn’t do anything around the house now that his wife was gone, not even the slightest bit of cleaning.
In truth, it felt a bit vindicating, like it served him right.
That said, Yuuto also hated the thought of his stoic father wearing a cleaning apron and running a vacuum cleaner. He could tell there was a part of himself that didn’t want that to happen.
“Tch, what the hell is with me?” Yuuto could only click his tongue and mutter in frustration as he stomped up the stairs.
He didn’t understand his own heart. The fact that he didn’t understand it only made the irritated feelings within him worse.
And so Yuuto decided he would stop thinking about his feelings for now.
He really was more exhausted than anything else.
Right now, he didn’t want to think about anything.
“All right, I’ll just sleep!” As soon as he opened the door to his room, he dived immediately into bed.
“F-Father has returned to the land beyond the heavens?! How can that be?!” Sigrún’s shouting voice was strained, and she slammed a fist on the table in a fit of emotion.
She was a beautiful girl with long, silver hair tied roughly behind her in a long braid.
Normally she wasn’t the type to display strong emotions openly, to the point that she was known among some by the nickname “icy flower.” But now the confusion and worry were plastered all over her face for everyone to see.
This was the world of Yggdrasil, and she was sitting in the temporary headquarters set up in the camp of the Wolf Clan army’s main formation, close to Fort Gashina on the western border of Wolf Clan territory.
Every one of the other major Wolf Clan generals taking part in this campaign were present as well, all of them gathered together around a table in a space barely 40 elle (20 meters) wide on either side, curtained off from the outside.
Today they had all fought a fierce succession of battles unlike anything they’d fought before, against both the Lightning and Panther Clans. Their faces, illuminated by torchlight, were clouded with the dark shades of their fatigue.
“Shh, you mustn’t speak so loudly, Rún,” Felicia said. “What if the soldiers outside were to hear you?”
“Ah.” Sigrún winced painfully at Felicia’s rebuke, and went silent.
If news of the absence of their army’s commander-in-chief were to spread, the troops might fall into terrible confusion. Sigrún understood well just how dangerous that sort of thing would be in this current situation.
“I’m sorry,” Sigrún said in a lower voice, her face intense. “But I found it difficult to take quietly.”
Normally she would never have made that kind of elementary mistake. It was a testament to just how much the news from Felicia had flipped her world upside-down.
A man of around forty, but with streaks of white in his brown hair, spoke up, his face grim. “It’s just as Sigrún says, Aunt Felicia. We need you to give us a full explanation.”
His name was Olof, and he was the fourth-ranking officer of the Wolf Clan.
He wasn’t a flashy warrior on the battlefield like Sigrún the Mánagarmr, or like Skáviðr, the man known as the Sneering Slaughter, Níðhǫggr. Even so, since the days of the previous clan patriarch, Olof had taken on task after difficult task and delivered solid results each time, slowly building up his achievements and status in the clan.
He was also skilled at politics and administration, and was currently the governor of the city and territory of Gimlé, a crucial mission because that area had become the breadbasket of the Wolf Clan nowadays.
He was the sort of rare man who was good with command both on the battlefield and behind a desk, and so he had fittingly risen to become a figure of authority in the Wolf Clan.
Apparently the other generals present were of exactly the same mindset as Olof. They all turned to Felicia for a full explanation, with expressions filled with unrest and worry.
“Of course, I understand.” Felicia nodded once, her expression stiff.
The hard and serious look in her eyes was such that the gathered generals could tell for sure that the things she was going to tell them would contain no falsehood.
“As you all know, Big Brother arrived here in Yggdrasil three years ago, when I was performing the ritual for the seiðr Gleipnir,” she said.
“Mm, right.” Olof nodded, as did the other generals.
It was on that day that the fate of the Wolf Clan had changed, beginning its rise to prosperity.
At the time, the clan had been small and weak, on the verge of destruction. In only three years, it had grown into a large and powerful nation on par with the central Holy Ásgarðr Empire, and everyone understood that it was because of Yuuto.
Indeed, that was why everyone around this table now wore such dire expressions.
To the Wolf Clan, Yuuto was now viewed as absolutely necessary; he had become a symbol of the Wolf Clan’s glory and prosperity in the minds of everyone, their pillar of mental support.
To suddenly just lose someone so important, without any prior warning, was something that should not have been allowed to come to pass.
“The seiðr magic Gleipnir is a spell that captures things of supernatural origin, binds them, and seals them,” Felicia said. “As an effect of that spell, Big Brother, who is a resident of the world beyond the heavens — in other words, someone whose existence is not natural here — was bound to this world. That magical binding was undone, and the perpetrator was Sigyn, the woman known as the Witch of Miðgarðr.”
“Sigyn...?!” The name fell from Olof’s lips in a gasp of shock.
Just as her alias suggested, Sigyn was one of the very few people in Yggdrasil to have mastered the use of the ritual magic known as seiðr.
She was also the previous patriarch of the Panther Clan, the very enemy they were at war with right now, and she was the wife of its current patriarch Hveðrungr.
“In other words,” Olof said, “you’re saying that the enemy was the one who sent Father back to the land beyond the heavens... this is terrible. This is just too terrible.”
Olof furrowed his brow and grimaced as bitterly as if he’d just bitten down on a bug.
The others present here were all veteran soldiers, and so they knew exactly what Olof’s words meant.
To begin with, this was a crisis situation, with their commander-in-chief suddenly missing from the front, right in the middle of a series of battles.
In addition, that fact was sensitive information that mustn’t get out, yet the enemy surely already had full knowledge of it. That was the worst combination possible.
Felicia gave a heavy nod at Olof’s statement, and continued.
“Yes, so while I fully understand how much everyone here must be upset by Big Brother’s sudden return to his world, right now our Wolf Clan is in a terrible state of danger. It is likely that as soon as tomorrow, the enemy will take advantage of this opportunity to launch a fierce assault on us.”
The air around the table was tense, but no one spoke, though there was the sound of a few people gulping nervously.
As if by natural habit, each of their gazes found their way to a single spot.
It was the raised seat just to the right of Felicia.
However, the brave and wise young man, who had always guided them out of danger and toward victory and glory, was no longer sitting there.
Olof crossed his arms and thought to himself for a moment, then spoke. “Aunt Felicia, are you unable to once again summon Father from the world he has returned to?”
“Ohh, yes, that’s right!” Another clan general spoke up loudly at this, followed by several others who chimed in.
“Right, you succeeded at summoning him here once. There’s no harm in trying it again.”
“Aunt Felicia, can you do it?!”
As the other generals grew more excited, they all directed their eyes to Felicia with anticipation, and after a pause, she answered...
...with a shake of her head.
“It is impossible. For one, we do not have the divine mirror here.”
“So we need that, then?” Olof frowned. “It’s true that when Father communicated with his home world, he needed to be close to that mirror, or it wouldn’t work. Hmm... However, if that’s the case, we’re going to have to do something about this urgent situation all on our own...”
Even on a fast horse, it would take three days to reach the Wolf Clan capital Iárnviðr from here. If one factored in the return trip as well, there was no way it would be in time to help.
Yuuto was known as undefeatable, a god of war, and if he went unseen for too long, the soldiers would soon grow anxious. Their morale would start to fall apart if that happened.
The enemy would without a doubt try to strike them and shake them up even more.
Right now, the Wolf Clan was in no good shape to continue fighting this campaign.
Olof gave a long, deep sigh, and then turning his gaze to each of the other generals in turn, he spoke solemnly. “I think that right now, we should begin organizing ourselves to withdraw from the area.”
The others present listened. In truth, Olof’s judgment here was likely the most reasonable call to make.
However...
A small girl suddenly dropped into their gathering from directly overhead, her panicked voice shouting. “This is bad, this is baaad!”
The strange and sudden direction of her entrance sent the gathered generals into wide-eyed shock.
Apparently she had jumped down from a tree overhead after swinging from branch to branch through the trees like a monkey. It was as if she had been raised in the wild, but it was also an incredible display of physical skill.
“Albertina! Why do you always enter like that?!” Sigrún snapped. “For a split second, I thought you might be an attacker, and I was going to cut you down!”
“There’s no time to talk about that, Big Sis Rún! The Panther Clan, the Panther Clan are on the move! They’re headed this way super fast!”
“What?!” Sigrún cried out.
A visible shudder passed through everyone in the headquarters meeting.
A group of armed riders galloped through the wilds, cutting their way through the black night like a sharp knife.
At the head of the pack rode a man with long, golden hair: the Panther Clan patriarch, Hveðrungr. The upper half of his face was covered by an iron mask which glinted with a dull luster, and so he was feared by those in the region by the alias Grímnir, the Masked Lord.
“We’ll attack them straight away and without stopping! Hurry! Even the slightest delay will mean the difference between victory and defeat!” Hveðrungr shouted to his underlings behind him, spurring his own horse on.
He had learned from his wife Sigyn, the preeminent wielder of seiðr in all of Miðgarðr, that she had banished the Wolf Clan patriarch back to the world he had once come from.
Hearing this, he had of course been not only surprised but furious at his wife for doing such a thing without his orders and behind his back.
If, for example, the Lightning Clan patriarch Steinþórr had been in his shoes and felt those same emotions, Steinþórr would have unmistakably reacted by executing Sigyn himself on the spot, and then would have lost any further desire to fight in this war. However, Hveðrungr was a much more logical, more pragmatic man.
The battle that had been waged throughout that day had been a battle that was meant to be a guaranteed victory, planned carefully and timed so that there could be no chance of failure. And yet his army had been repelled, anyway.
His plan and the element of surprise were now both lost to the enemy, and if they had continued fighting, his chances of victory had been low. Internally, he had been at his wit’s end over that conclusion.
And that was when this unexpected opportunity had dropped into his lap.
The enemy commander, Yuuto, had disappeared. Even a fool would know that this information would be enough to send the Wolf Clan army into disarray.
Regardless of his feelings as an individual, as a commander of his army, Hveðrungr could not let this opportunity to defeat his enemy slip by; doing that was not an option.
Once that had been decided, there was naught but to take action swiftly.
He should not give the enemy any time to come up with a plan of response. If he was to attack, then the earlier the better.
By serendipity — or fate, perhaps — the moon was full tonight.
The nomads of his clan were used to living on wide open grassland steppes, and boasted better eyesight than the settled peoples of this region. And, though horses were not nocturnal animals, they had good vision in the dark.
It was no trouble navigating through the darkness, even without having torches out. One could call these the perfect conditions for launching a surprise assault on the enemy.
“Keh heh! Those Wolf Clan fools, they seem to be occupied with taking a long rest,” Hveðrungr sneered mockingly as he watched the trails of white smoke rising up in the distance.
Were they cooking, or perhaps just gathered around the fire for warmth? Either way, they had to be idly enjoying themselves, basking wearily in the victory from their fierce battle earlier today.
“Oh?” he murmured.
Upon making it closer to the camp, he could tell that things were noisy, with sounds like rapid footsteps and orders being shouted.
Hveðrungr clicked his tongue in irritation. “Tch, so they’ve already noticed us? But... it’s already too late!”
He spun around to the men behind him.
Everyone was already perched on their horses with their weapons at the ready.
More than anything, their faces were taut with determination; they were no longer the faces of simple nomadic clansmen, but of dependable and powerful warriors of the steppes.
With a wide, satisfied grin, Hveðrungr raised a hand and called out to them.
“Attack! We’ll pay them back right now for everything they’ve done thus far!”
“Enemy attack! Enemy attack! The Panther Clan has launched a surprise assault under the cover of darkness!” A Wolf Clan soldier ran in and shouted his report breathlessly.
“Kh, they’re too fast!!” Olof’s reply was practically a scream itself.
It had only been a few scarce moments since Albertina had delivered her own report on the Panther Clan’s movements.
Olof had quickly sent out orders to all troops to prepare for a sudden assault, but this was nowhere near enough time for them to prepare.
“Just how good are these devils at popping up out of nowhere?!” Olof scowled and spit out his words with disdain.
Even thinking back to the Battle of Náströnd last year, the Panther Clan army had suddenly appeared from seemingly out of nowhere to surround them with ten thousand soldiers, and had even managed to break through their ironclad “wagon wall” defense tactic.
Not only that, during the battle today, the sudden appearance of the Panther Clan in this region and on this battlefield had been completely unanticipated.
To Olof, this enemy was one that was far, far more threatening than even the Lightning Clan and their one man army Steinþórr, absurdly strong though he may be.
Steinþórr’s power and military prowess were certainly a real threat, but he was the kind of person who always attacked head-on, and one could anticipate and prepare for that.
Preparing clever tactics to defeat such a man might be beyond Olof, but Yuuto was able to make Steinþórr practically dance in the palm of his hand.
By contrast, the Panther Clan patriarch Hveðrungr had the ability to be as elusive as he wanted, appearing and disappearing like some magic trick. And so, in dealing with him, one was always reacting one step behind.
Of the two men, Hveðrungr was the one who had always pushed the Wolf Clan closest to the brink of loss, including today.
“For now I’ll run out to engage them and buy some more time,” Sigrún said. “Big Brother Olof! You’re the eldest here. You should take command of the army!”
Sensing that every second counted, she ran out of the meeting room as soon as she finished shouting.
One could expect nothing less of the woman who headed the Múspell Unit, the group of the most elite fighters in the entire clan. In this urgent moment, she had made a split-second decision that was clear and precise.
After watching her run off, Olof turned to the other gathered generals. “Is everyone else all right with it being me?”
The other generals voiced their thoughts, nodding in agreement.
“Yes, Olof would be best for the role.”
“Hmm... I suppose there’s no choice.”
“The Mánagarmr gave him her support, so...”
Among them there were a few who clearly didn’t fully go along with the idea, judging by their responses, but any time spent in debate here would just give the enemy more of an advantage, and they all knew that.
Olof began to hand out orders in rapid succession.
“Right, then send an emergency message to all troops: ‘Do not panic, and engage the enemy!’ To my brothers here, I ask that you each quickly return to your units, and quell the panic among them. We’ll fend off this assault, while looking for an opening in which to pull back into the narrow mountain pass. We’ll set up the wagon wall fortress defense there, and then begin our counterattack in earnest!”
Naturally, with the narrow pass between the two steep mountains nearby, there were limited routes of entrance and exit. If they set up their fortress wall of iron wagon carriages there, according to past experience, the cavalry riders of the Panther Clan shouldn’t be able to attack carelessly anymore.
If the enemy did choose to assault, the Wolf Clan crossbowmen would need only unleash a rain of arrows on them from behind their defense.
Considering the desperate situation the Wolf Clan was in now, Olof’s formulation of a strategy on the fly could indeed be called a good piece of work.
This was the sort of thing one should expect from the veteran general so well-respected within the clan.
“Though Father may have gone back to his home, the Wolf Clan still has all of the many things that he gave to us. Do not think things will go your way so easily, Panther Clan!”
Clenching his fists tightly, Olof glared sternly out towards the direction of the attacking Panther Clan riders.
“Hoh!” With a sharp exhale to focus his spirit, Hveðrungr released the fingers from his bowstring.
As he did, the two arrows that were simultaneously released each flew on their own arcs, piercing through the throat and chest of a Wolf Clan soldier as if they had been sucked into their targets.
This was the prized technique of Váli, the Panther Clan general who had died during the battle earlier that day.
Hveðrungr’s rune Alþiófr, the Jester of a Thousand Illusions, granted him the power to steal any technique for himself.
That was true whether it was a combat technique or the technique of how to create something, or even complicated magical techniques such as seiðr spells.
“...and bring forth the chaos of calamity... Fimbulvetr!!” Hveðrungr finished weaving the magical energy together, releasing it along with the words of power.
Instantly, the Panther Clan riders behind him had their bodies engulfed it an eerie, phosphorescent light, and their expressions twisted and changed.
Fimbulvetr. This seiðr spell carried the power to break any and all bindings and restraints, and it was the very spell that Sigyn, Witch of Miðgarðr, had used to banish Yuuto back to the heavenly realm he’d originated from.
The effect of it now was to remove the bindings of natural fear from the hearts of his men, and also to release their inner bestial nature from the restraints of rational thought.
Sigyn had used the spell for those effects before, and so Hveðrungr only needed to imitate that.
As expected, its power could not equal the effect when cast by Sigyn herself, but it was still more than effective enough.
His cavalry was completely converted into berserkers, and the soldiers poured into the Wolf Clan troop formation like an avalanche.
“Rrraaaaaghh!”
“Kill, kill, kill!”
“Reveeenge! Revenge for my comrades!”
To the Wolf Clan soldiers, already offset and harried by the sudden attack, this whirlwind of feral rage charging into them was more than sufficient to whip them into an even greater panic.
“Uwaaah!”
“Eeek!”
“S-spare me, please!”
In mere moments, the Wolf Clan soldiers were falling into a state of confused terror, and some of them began shrieking and begging pathetically for their lives. They were no longer in any condition to seriously fight back.
And the Panther Clan berserkers, their inner beasts unleashed, set about murdering their prey with savage glee.
Just as it seemed the battle would be a one-sided massacre...
“Enough! I won’t allow your butchery to continue!”
A glint of silver light cut two sharp arcs through the moonlit night, and two riders simultaneously fell from their mounts, screaming.
“Gwargh!”
“Gyaaargh!”
“Ohh, it’s Lady Sigrún!” cried a Wolf Clan soldier.
“Lady Sigrún has arrived! And she’s brought the Múspell Unit with her!”
“W-we’re saved!”
The Wolf Clan soldiers raised their voices and cheered as soon as they caught sight of the silver-haired maiden of battle.
Though at a glance she might appear thin, even delicate, this girl was currently the most distinguished warrior in the Wolf Clan army, a living legend among the troops.
So great was their faith in her that there were even some among the rank and file who whispered that perhaps she was also sent from the heavens to protect their leader Suoh-Yuuto, the Child of Victory, Gleipsieg.
Watching the Wolf Clan soldiers regain their will to fight, Hveðrungr clicked his tongue with contempt. “Tch, what a celebrity you are.”
Back when he had been the Wolf Clan’s second-in-command, Sigrún’s cool beauty coupled with her blunt and unsparing personality had left her feared by others, but certainly not loved by them.
As far as he could remember, the only person who had gotten along with the girl was his own younger sister Felicia. And now this girl was the center of such looks of admiration.
Things certainly had a way of changing.
“They do say the biggest catch is the one that got away...” Hveðrungr said aloud.
Back in his former life, he’d been extra friendly to Sigrún and given her special attention, thinking that she might make a useful pawn for him. He could see now that her growth had exceeded even his expectations.
He would have loved to recruit her to his side even now, but the peerless loyalty of the Wolf Clan’s “Strongest Silver Wolf,” the Mánagarmr, was well-known throughout western Yggdrasil. He was certain she would not be swayed.
With a spirited shout, the silver-haired she-wolf turned and headed his way.
“That mask!” Sigrún called. “I recognize you. You’re the Panther Clan patriarch Hveðrungr! I shall have your head!”
Amidst the chaotic night battle, she had managed to pick out Hveðrungr’s figure among the other riders, an impressive feat.
She had always been especially sharp-nosed when it came to that sort of thing. That was likely part of the reason for her incredible record of accomplishments in the Wolf Clan.
“It really is a shame.” Hveðrungr threw aside his bow and readied his spear to meet Sigrún’s attack with his own. “A seed I spent so much time watering, and now I must uproot it with my own hands!”
With Yuuto gone, she was clearly the greatest pillar of spiritual support for the Wolf Clan.
Flipping that statement on its head, if he could kill her here, he could deal a shocking blow to the heart of every soldier in the Wolf Clan army.
“Haah!”
“Rragh!”
Their war cries rang out as the two spears met and clashed.
Each of them had put every bit of their full strength behind the first attack... and the one who lost that contest of power was Hveðrungr.
“There!” Seeing an opportunity in her victory in that clash, Sigrún quickly moved in with a follow-up attack.
“Hah!” Without faltering, Hveðrungr tilted his neck slightly, moving his head out of the way with ease. He then responded with his own attack.
Sigrún was able to block it, but Hveðrungr piled on a second, then third strike in quick succession.
“Kuh! Hah! Gah!”
Sigrún found herself completely on the defensive.
Of course, she was the Wolf Clan’s strongest fighter, the Mánagarmr. So she aimed for the narrow gaps between Hveðrungr’s furious attacks, and tried to counter him.
However, Hveðrungr read her initial movements each time, and attacked to break her movements before she could complete them, preventing her from having any space at all to launch an attack of her own.
“He’s... completely reading my movements?!” Sigrún felt a shudder run through her.
“Heh heh heh.” Hveðrungr smiled with absolute confidence.
This girl was someone he had trained personally, along with Felicia, ever since she was little. Compared to the last time he’d trained her, she had of course grown physically, and her attacks were both much quicker and heavier, her technique more refined. However, the idiosyncrasy, the unique “quirk” of her fighting style, hadn’t changed at all.
Perhaps because of the intense trials she’d gone through over these three years, that quirk stood out much less, and it would be harder for an opponent to pick out. But it hadn’t been erased completely.
And for Hveðrungr, understanding that slight remaining quirk was enough for him to see through her movements and predict her actions.
And furthermore... in this exchange of blows between them, he’d become certain of one thing:
She was definitely not fighting in top form.
“What’s wrong?” he taunted. “Your movements are distracted. Don’t tell me: I bet the Wolf Clan’s ‘frozen flower’ has melted into a puddle of her own tears now that her beloved father is gone.”
“You... bastard!” Sigrún screamed in anger.
That anger seemed to add even more strength to her spear’s attacks.
However...
“How naive!” Hveðrungr used the hilt of his spear to parry Sigrún’s angry strikes, and by adding force at just the right moment, he made them “slip” to the side.
Sigrún was pulled off balance as the momentum of her spear was sent in an unexpected direction.
Hveðrungr didn’t waste the opportunity, and whirled his spear blade down towards her from above.
“Khh!” Sigrún managed to block that attack somehow, but her expression was full of shock.
Hveðrungr knew exactly the reason for that shock.
It was because of the “Willow Technique” he had just used on her.
The Willow Technique was a dexterous fighting technique developed and used by Skáviðr, the previous Mánagarmr. It would of course come as a shock to see someone from another clan using Skáviðr’s specialty.
“Heh heh! Well then, how about this? ???????!” Hveðrungr sang a strange melody, at odds with a battlefield, as he made his next spear thrust.
“Ah!” Sigrún gasped, her eyes wide.
That was a natural reaction. Her opponent’s speartip had suddenly appeared to blur and shift, and in a pitched duel, that made for a terrible threat.
Even so, she amazingly managed to discern the true speartip and deflect it, as expected of the one currently holding the title of Mánagarmr.
However, it seemed the experience had still made her blood run cold.
“You used the ‘Glamour’ galdr...?!” Sigrún’s face was twisted with shock, her voice strained.
Hveðrungr’s own mouth twisted into a triumphant, gleeful grin. “And I can also do this.”
He launched into a powerful, over-the-shoulder slash attack from a high stance.
The attack itself was nothing extraordinary, just a strong diagonal downward swing.
“Wha?!” For the third time in this fight, Sigrún’s face was awash in shock.
For someone as experienced in the martial arts as her, it must have been easy to tell whom that attack was imitating. Indeed, it was Sigrún herself, a perfect replication of her signature attacking motion.
Next, Hveðrungr attacked with the fighting style of Jörgen, the Wolf Clan second-in-command. Then he used an attack from Mundilfäri, the now-dead warrior of the Claw Clan.
“Khh! Hah! Guh!”
Hveðrungr’s attacks kept coming, ever-changing, living up to the namesake of his rune Alþiófr, the Jester of a Thousand Illusions. Sigrún was completely pushed into a defensive fight.
With every strike, Hveðrungr was attacking as a different person. Undoubtedly she was having trouble dealing with him.
“That voice, and the inconsistency of those attacks... You... you’re Loptr!” she shouted.
“Ha! I threw away that name long ago!” As he shouted those words, Hveðrungr finally landed a damaging blow against the back of Sigrún’s right hand with the butt of his spear.
“Guaah!” Sigrún cried out in pain and dropped her weapon.
She moved reflexively to grab the sword at her waist, but could not pull it free, perhaps still reeling from the damage of that last attack.
“It’s over, girl!” Hveðrungr was not going to let this perfect chance go to waste.
He thrust his spear forward in a killing blow...
Thwip!
Suddenly, something wrapped itself around Hveðrungr’s arm and pulled it.
Hveðrungr’s spear veered off-course, and did nothing more than make a shallow cut into Sigrún’s left shoulder.
“Who goes there... Felicia?!”
“Phew... I am so glad I made it in time.” The golden-haired young woman breathed a sigh of relief as she slackened the tension in her whip and retrieved it.
Sigrún had been spared by a hair’s breadth. If Felicia had arrived even a second later, Hveðrungr’s spearhead would have pierced through her heart.
“Sorry. I owe you one, Felicia,” Sigrún said.
“Oh, it’s fine, Rún. More importantly, you’ve bought plenty of time. Let’s withdraw.”
“But the enemy commander is right here in front of us...”
“What are you even saying with your hand like that! I don’t care how tough you are, you at the very least have a fracture!”
“Rghh... tch, all right.”
Sigrún responded to Felicia’s remarks with a glower and a click of her tongue, but still reluctantly agreed. Apparently, she’d determined she couldn’t win the fight with her main weapon hand injured.
Just as you might expect from the girl Hveðrungr had, in his previous life, called “blessed with the talent for battle.”
Though her heart was full of a warrior’s pride, she was able to suppress those emotions and retreat when it was time to retreat. Even as an enemy, Hveðrungr mentally applauded that decision-making ability.
“I’ll definitely pay you back for this!” Sigrún turned her horse and tossed that remark over her shoulder, a parting shot as she retreated.
The two of them thus began to flee, but Hveðrungr had no reason to just let them go.
Concerning his blood-related sister Felicia in particular, he felt that he needed to do whatever it took to capture her and bring her to his side. The fact that she’d come to him like this worked in his favor.
“Felicia, wait!” Hveðrungr kicked his horse into a run and tried to circle in front of the two girls.
All of a sudden, his eyes went wide as a volley of countless arrows came whistling towards him.
“Huh?!”
The arrows weren’t high-speed enough to be any real problem. He easily predicted their trajectory and deflected the dangerous ones with his gauntlet.
“Over here, over heeere!” A small girl’s voice reached his ears, eerily out of place on a tense battlefield.
It was so out of place and so sudden that he reflexively turned to look in the direction it came from.
In that instant, Hveðrungr felt a terrifying presence from right behind him.
He immediately leaned his body down against the back of his horse, and another arrow shot right through the spot where his head had just been.
“Hmph, one of those Claw Clan twins using a little sleight of hand, is it?”
He’d received reports on them both. They were young, but both Einherjar, and one had the rune Hræsvelgr, Provoker of Winds, the other Veðrfölnir, Silencer of Winds.
This was likely the power of Hræsvelgr, Provoker of Winds at work. She was using the wind to throw her voice and make it seem to come from another direction.
It was an interesting use of diversion tactics, but in the end, it amounted to nothing more than child’s play. It wasn’t enough to take him down...
“Tch! Damn it all.”
As Hveðrungr pulled himself back up, he realized what had happened and clicked his tongue. In the slight moment he’d broken line of sight with them, Sigrún and Felicia had completely vanished.
The two of them both had appearances that stood out normally, but in this darkness, it would be hard to find them.
The darkness had been working in the Panther Clan’s favor so far, but in this moment, it had given the Wolf Clan an opening.
“Hmph! Well, I suppose this is no time to be chasing after some girls, anyway,” Hveðrungr muttered to himself, and pulled on the reins, bringing his horse to a stop.
He was the patriarch of the Panther Clan, and had a duty to lead and command them. He could not afford to go off on his own to pursue the enemy.
A battle launched from a surprise attack was a fight against time. If he made errors in his command here, the golden chance that had fallen into his lap would go to waste.
Even among the meritocratic culture of Yggdrasil where practical strength ruled, the nomadic Panther Clan was especially extreme in that regard.
They’d already been forced twice in a row to suffer the humiliation of loss to the Wolf Clan. If this continued any further, there might be those who sought to oust Hveðrungr from his position.
He couldn’t let the seat of clan patriarch slip through his fingers a second time. He had to avoid that outcome, no matter what.
Politically, Hveðrungr was backed into a corner of his own, and he couldn’t turn back.
The battle had already transitioned into its pursuit phase.
Hveðrungr looked out at the battlefield and muttered to himself, “Well, that’s an impressive retreat.”
The fleeing Wolf Clan troops showed no large signs of confusion. It was a well-ordered retreat march. Which meant the chain of command was still firmly in place.
That meant Hveðrungr wouldn’t likely be able to inflict any great damage to them anymore.
Hveðrungr had been aiming to attack them during the weak moments when the army was in confusion and disarray due to the sudden disappearance of their commander-in-chief. In that sense, he’d missed his chance.
Judging by how quickly their troops had regained order, one could tell that whoever had taken over command in place of Yuuto had great potential as a leader.
“Their new commander... hmm, it’s probably Olof,” he muttered.
If it were the second-in-command Jörgen, they would probably be a bit more loose in formation as they retreated, to lure the enemy.
If it were the assistant to the second, Skáviðr, the rearguard would launch a vicious retaliatory strike as they retreated, to stop his army’s pursuit.
By that logic, this swift and thorough retreat without any wasted energy had to be the orders of that man with speckled white in his hair, Olof.
He wasn’t one for showy moves, but he used solid tactics. He never won big victories, but he never fought losing battles.
“And that means they’re planning to lock themselves up like turtles behind that wagon wall fortress again. Hmph! Don’t assume that repeating the same trick over and over means it will keep working on me.”
Hveðrungr spat out those words with heartfelt contempt.
That wagon wall formation was definitely a real threat to the armed riders of the Panther Clan. However, as great a tactic as it was, it wasn’t new anymore.
Over the course of the past winter, there had been plenty of time to think of countermeasures against it. For one thing, it wasn’t as if Steinþórr’s incredible brute force was the only move the man had. He’d just used it because it was the most certain to work.
Hveðrungr’s mouth twisted into an evil grin, and he cackled.
“I’ll show you some sleight-of-hand of my own, then — something worthy of the name Alþiófr, Jester of a Thousand Illusions.”
“Good grief, today took five years off the end of my life.” Olof, the newly appointed commander-in-chief of the Wolf Clan army, rubbed a hand against his sharply aching stomach.
The area all around him was busy and noisy, with soldiers working to set up the pavilion tents and fires for their new headquarters within the central army formation.
They had fended off the first wave of the Panther Clan’s nighttime sneak attack, and moved their forces into the narrow mountain pass leading to Fort Gashina.
Suddenly, the ground rumbled with the thunder of countless horses’ hooves.
“They’re already here?!” Olof shouted, with the force of a curse.
They were literally being given not a moment to rest.
According to what he’d heard from his sworn brothers, Yuuto had always been in the habit of saying, “Speed is the essence of war.” It seemed like the Panther Clan truly was the embodiment of that saying.
It was a terrible opponent to go up against because of that. Even a slight delay in decision-making meant falling behind in reacting to them.
“But we’ve managed to pull ourselves together. Now we’ll send them packing!”
Olof smirked as he looked out at the defensive wall of iron-plated wagons lined up together at the entrance to the mountain pass. This iron wall had repelled the Panther Clan’s ferocious assaults many times now.
Despite being taken completely by surprise in the earlier attack, in this short span of time, Olof had managed to get his army formed up defensively and ready to counter the enemy. It was a testament to his extraordinary level of skill. An average general might have already been overwhelmed by now, and allowed the ranks to collapse and scatter. But not Olof.
This speedy troop organization was the work of the man who was respected throughout the clan as a great general.
“All right, crossbowmen, ready! We’ll fill them full of holes...”
All of a sudden, there came a string of loud cries and shouts from among the wagon carriages, some angry, some surprised. There was the sound of weapons clashing.
“Gwaagh!”
“Gyaah!”
“You bastards, what are you...?!”
“What is this?! What’s going on?!” Olof shouted angrily.
But no, Olof already knew what was happening, it was just something so undesirable that his mind rejected it for a split second.
It was mutiny.
In this most important moment of crisis, the Wolf Clan soldiers manning the wagon wall defense line were fighting among themselves.
There weren’t that many of them in terms of sheer numbers, but the fact that it was unexpected worked to great effect, and in moments, one section of the wagon wall was overtaken.
Of course, thanks to the stark difference in numbers, the takeover could only last for a short time. However, that brief period of time was all that they needed.
The mutineering soldiers quickly pushed their wagons outward from the formation line, one after the other.
The special wagons used in the wagon wall formation were modified so that the connected formation could withstand impacts and pressure from the outside, but they weren’t expected to need to resist being pushed out from inside the formation.
A gap appeared in the formation, and the Panther Clan forged their way through it, as if they had been waiting for the chance.
It was as if they knew from the start that part of the formation would come apart!
Hveðrungr laughed uproariously from atop his horse, as he cut down the Wolf Clan soldiers around him. “Muah ha ha! It looks like walls made to protect from without are fragile to attacks from within!”
This was the secret anti-wagon-wall strategy he had been concealing.
In the interests of preserving the honor of the Wolf Clan soldiers, it should be noted that none of them had, in fact, betrayed their clan. Every one of them was loyal and dutiful to Yuuto.
What had broken the wagon wall from the inside was actually Panther Clan soldiers, disguised as Wolf Clan soldiers.
The former second-in-command of the Wolf Clan, Loptr, had complete knowledge of Wolf Clan clothes, customs, and dialect. Anticipating this sort of situation, he’d prepared a group of disguised soldiers ahead of time.
Of course, completely disguising oneself as an enemy soldier is incredibly difficult, but this was the middle of the night. When the Wolf Clan had still been in disarray earlier, it had been easy to have his infiltrators mix themselves in during the confusion.
With this, the majority of the battle had been decided.
If the extremely careful and thorough Yuuto had still been in command, he would have a second backup tactic for when the wagon wall defense was breached, and a third backup tactic after that. But after just having struggled to pull the army back together in the midst of such an emergency, it would perhaps be cruel to expect that much of Olof.
Even so, Olof did his best to rally the troops and push the momentum of battle back into his favor, but within an hour, the Wolf Clan defenses were all overrun by the Panther Clan’s powerful charge assaults...
...and their army collapsed.
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