Clatters of wood being hammered against wood echoed in the manor's garden.

"Just because I promised Mathilda I wouldn’t hurt you doesn’t mean I would go easy on you, Young Lord," Syrius said, striking a rather provocative pose.

Hearing these words, I leaped forward, thrusting my wooden sword at him, but it was deflected away before he, using the same sword, landed it with a "plok" sound on my head.

"Aie."

"I warned you."

"Eat this," I shouted, my hand firmly gripping my sword. I, once again, lunged at Syrius with a second attempt, only to achieve the same result as earlier.

"That hurt, Maa, Why don’t you say anything?" I complained to Maa, who, from a corner of the garden beneath a parasol, was sitting on a chair, knitting something while simultaneously watching over us.

"What do you want me to say, Young Lord? You’re the one who insisted on being allowed to partake in this.

A few days have passed since our little trip to Syrius and I to the forest.

For now, with all that happened that day and the reason monsters were able to get so close to the barrier remaining unknown, Syrius and I decided to put our forestry-venturing to an end. Instead, as a shared activity, we settled on something less gory and bloody: sword-training.

The suggestion was initially Syrius’s. Not only would it be a ludique activity that would keep my mind busy; it would, apparently, also be quite age-appropriate for a noble of my ranking and lineage, my great-grandfather being a well-known celebrity across the continent for his strength. Alternatively, even though Syrius did his best to not mention it, it struck me as obvious that the purpose of the sword was to keep me away from the forest—or at the very least, to prepare myself for it.

And though I, at first, assumed that Maa, being herself, would stand her ground against the proposition, which she did, at first, once Syrius had revealed to her that I apparently had awakened my ability to use aina, which at my current age, despite still being quite early, wasn’t scarcely rare either for a noble, she, somewhat anticlimactically, allowed us to proceed with it.But Maa, being herself, is still keeping a close eye on us, which is why, despite having received permission, we stuck to not using aina at all and only doing basic, Maa-friendly sword training. At least for the time being.

"So you’re fine with me being hit?"

"I'm fine with what you were fine with, Young Lord," she shrugged, shaking off the guilt she most likely felt, "unless, of course, you expect me to take the sword and go against Syrius."

Though the reaction came to me rather belatedly, it caused me to burst into laughter.

"What is it?" She asked.

I tried, I really did, to imagine Maa wielding a sword.

"Nothing... Hahaha."

It felt so strange that my mind couldn't picture it.

And it seemed that I wasn't alone in thinking so, for behind me, I heard a dramatically repressed, "pffft" being released by no one else but Syrius. A reaction, which in turn made it even worse for me.

I knelt on my knee, hugging my aching belly but still unable to stop laughing.

It was there, rolling on the ground, that I saw Maa putting aside what she had been doing so far, standing up from her seat, and approaching me, requesting, "Could you give me that sword, Boy?"

Her request sounded more like an order than a request, so I complied without comment.

She took it and walked over to Syrius, adopting a swording stance that, as much as it pained me to admit it, was quite a clean one, even to the eyes of an amateur like me.

"Really?!"

"Yes, really." She said, dead-serious, "I might not look like I don’t, but younger, I have beaten way more confident opponents, so you’d better take this seriously," she warned.

Syrius fell silent in response to her words before declaring, solemnly, "I believe it is safer for you to set aside, Young Lord. This could get out of hand. "

It was only an impression, but I discerned something changing in Maa, and the next thing I knew, a similar phenomenon was occurring on Syrius.

Swallowing saliva, I did as I was told and prepared myself to witness what was about to happen. Looking toward the source of an audible commotion, I noticed countless eyes fixed on Maa and Syrius from the manor's door and windows.

It would be my first time seeing a fight between two Aina users.

Unexpected though this duel might be, it certainly was a welcome one.

Somewhere in the northeastern part of this world, way beyond the church’s barrier.

Two men were standing there in the middle of nowhere, in front of a huge gaping hole.

Though their facial features suggested they were in their sixties, their physiques and statures suggested they were still men in their prime.

One of the two had golden hair, while the other had completely white hair.

They were dressed in nothing else but white. They were wearing the same uniform, a long-sleeved white coat, with the same emblem adorned on their shoulders of a sword engulfed in a fiery fire.

With a stifling sound, the blonde man sheathed his sword back into its scabbard.

Holding a ridiculously large white halberd in one hand, the white-haired man casually tossed something heavy into the large hole in front of them with the other.

For these two men, today was a day like any other day. Today, they were doing the same thing as they did the day before and surely the day after.

They were just silently and casually accomplishing a daily task they set for themselves. And as silent as they were, their faces harbored an obvious look of boredom.

"You know, lately, I’ve been thinking of going back home," said the blonde man in an attempt to break the silence.

"The Fortress?"

"No, I wasn't referring to the Fortress, but to Beaumont-Beaufort."

"Home, huh? Wasn’t it you who said that the Northeast Fortress is our true home?" retorted the white-haired man, in a rather derisive tone.

The blonde man rummaged through his memories, trying to recall when he said those words, which he did not long after.

"It is true that I indeed once said that, but... but lately this place has been very... you know what I mean."

Both men glanced contemplatively at what was surrounding them.

A green wasteland that seemed to spread endlessly across the horizons was what was around them.

"Peaceful? boring? I get what you mean, but it’s not like we can do anything about it. "

"This is exactly why I’m thinking of going back. I think I’ve made my time here. This place doesn’t need me anymore.

Setting eyes on the hole in front of them, or more precisely, what was inside, the blonde announced, "It's time for the old carcass that I am to go back where I truly belong."

"You’re speaking like an old man."

"Because I am and so are you. What about you? Have you ever thought about returning to your family yet?"

"Which one ?"

It was a weird thing to ask, but the blonde man understood the white-haired man's current and quite complicated familial situation, he understood clearly what he meant by that question.

"The one you truly consider your family."

"You know, every time I return to the Holy City, I pay each of my two families a visit. I'm not like a certain deviant who only sees his family once–like what– every twenty years. "

"It’s complicated."

"It, always, is with you. –Ah, now that I think of it, I just heard the news that you had your first great-grandson, Felicitation Armand. Why not use this as an opportunity to leave this place and pay them a visit? I'm sure it will be appreciated by your son and grandson. "

"Just so you’d know, you’re very late on your update, It’s been two years already since he was born."

That great-grandson born was in no way the blonde man, namely Armand’s first and only great-grandchild. His grandson had already given him a great-granddaughter seven years earlier, but it was only two years ago that he finally had his first great-grandson.

"It's still a very hot topic for me. Two years is nothing for old geezers like us. "

"If you say so..." Trying to change the subject, Armand asked, "Now that I think about it, did you get any news from the Pontiff?"

"Nothing since that summon for that ‘Faty Adidy's' order on that nameless and faceless person seven years ago."

"Hasn’t the individual been found yet?" Armand asked, curious.

"You didn't even try to find him? Didn’t you?"

"No, I didn’t. I don’t see why I would be looking for a man … are we even sure it’s a man?"

"I, personally, don’t know... The only lead we have to that ‘person’ is that magic signature, so... Sighing, the white-haired man confessed, "To be honest, I too didn’t even try to look after him. I believe this kind of work is better suited for clergymen than for Paladins. I heard that Whiteley and Medvedik were really dedicated to the task, but even now, seven years later, not a thing or a single clue has been found yet about that person.

"I see, that’s sad for them," Armand said in a tone that made it clear that I definitely wasn’t sad at all for these people.

"Now that I think of it, I heard that amidst the clergy, that person, whoever he or she is, has been given a nickname that I admit I find quite fitting."

"What nickname?"

"Faceless One... yes."

"Yes, because we don’t know anything about him, not his name, gender, and even less about what he looks like."

"I admit, that’s quite fitting."

"See—Anyway, if you ever really plan to leave the fortress, I would appreciate it if you let me know at least four or five months in advance. You know, for me to get ready for the amount of paperwork I’ll have to endure after your departure."

"Don't worry. Even if I decide to go home, it won't be for at the very least two years."

"That's reassuring, so which one of us takes care of it today?" the white-haired man asked, pointing with his halberd at the bottom of the hole.

"I will," Armand announced proactively, before proceeding to put his hand right above the hole, a fiery ball of lava hovering just above his palm.

The orb of smoldering lava grew bigger and bigger, ultimately reaching the size of a meter-radius boulder. It was only then that he withdrew my hand, allowing the lava to make a descent into the giant hole in front of them. As it descended, it illuminated the hole’s interior, and what was an instant earlier cloaked in the dark, slowly became perceptible.

Corpses

Not ordinary corpses. Monster corpses,

They were of all kinds, from scaly to furry, rampant to winged.

These bodies belonged to magical beasts that Armand and his white-haired companion had hunted and killed here in the middle of nowhere on the monster continent, as they did every morning when they could find the time.

When the orb of lava reached the bottom, it immediately engulfed all of the monsters' corpses in fire, causing the hole to emit a pungent roasted smell.

"So, old friend, let us go back to the place that ‘I’ consider to be my true home, the North Fortress," the white-haired man announced cheerfully before leading the way southward toward the barrier.

The blonde man, Armand Aubrecht, threw a last glance at the smoking hole before following the white-haired man, namely Gunther Freshet, Gunther Thundersnow of the North, a fellow Holy Paladin of his, and one of the thirteen people. He, as a Holy Paladin of the Church, would qualify as his equal.