A Monster Without Fangs

Serius Brad Mūzeg had just descended from the Sacred Mountain of Lindholm, and was now waiting for the Mūzeg troops to assemble.

He had already issued orders to several units and dispatched a report to the homeland.

What Serius was waiting on, in particular, was the return of the spell-corps he had sent ahead on reconnaissance-in-force.

"They got it badly, by the sound of it."

"My deepest apologies, sir."

"You're not the one who got it."

— a young man in the imperial guard, answering Serius's quiet aside.

"Mihai. How old are you, this year?"

"Sir. — Sir? Ah — nineteen, sir."

Serius's question came out of nowhere; the young guardsman gave a startled little jump and squared his collar in a hurry.

His silk-fine blond hair swung with the motion — a fitting indicator of his fluster.

Serius watched, faintly amused.

"Hmm. Young indeed. Imperial guard at that age."

A deliberately theatrical inflection. Mihai, the guardsman, replied —

"Serius-sama. You selected me, sir…? I would have been content to remain your attendant. Accompanying you to the field is, of course, an honour — but the other soldiers must hardly find it sitting well…"

Mihai, troubled-faced.

He had been Serius's exclusive personal attendant. Younger than Serius, but a couple of incidents in their respective childhoods had led to him taking over Serius's day-to-day care.

That Mihai — whose work had been comfortably distant from any battlefield — had been recently moved into Serius's imperial guard.

The reason was clear.

"You have rare talent with the sword. The other soldiers will bite their tongues. In Mūzeg, at minimum, anyone who serves the country and has strength is respected. — And, in any case, you've already shown the others what your sword can do."

"S-still…"

His face — the kind of beauty that, on first glance, could pass for a woman's — bent into a troubled shape; his eyes went to the floor.

"That worried about it? — If something happens, tell me."

"I cannot trouble Serius-sama with private matters of mine. I shall handle it on my own."

"You waver between meek and defiant in a way I cannot place."

Serius laughed.

---

After a while, the captain of the spell-corps finally returned to the foot of the mountain.

Wrapped in his black uniform, blackened blood crusted in patches across his exposed skin, the man stood before Serius. Serius opened with the polite line.

"Well done."

"My deepest apologies, sir. I will accept any punishment you see fit."

"A bit early, that. — You're alive. Don't simply throw the life away. Mūzeg uses what it can. As long as you have a life, spend it for Mūzeg."

"Sir…! I shall make good on this mercy on the next occasion."

"Good."

The exchange done, Serius moved at once to the matter.

"Lift your head, Captain. The report."

"…Sir."

It troubled Serius that the captain's face seemed perceptibly aged from before the scouting mission.

"…A 〈Demon God〉, Your Highness. There was a 〈Demon God〉 living at the summit of Lindholm."

"— Demon God."

The image of the snow-white-haired man who had blown apart his 〈Hammer of the Earth King〉 came up in Serius's mind.

"A man with white hair?"

"Sir! — That man, sir!"

The captain shuddered as he answered. His fear was all over him.

"That man traced our 〈White Light Cannon〉 in an instant — and, of all things, cancelled it."

"…What."

Trace. Cancel.

That sequence put one specific man in Serius's head. A figure from before. Long before. From before he was even born. And yet — somehow close.

"— Reverse formula, near as makes no difference."

The signature of the 〈Technique God〉 Flander Crow.

Strictly: it wasn't only tracing a formula and shooting it back. It was something more remarkable. Read the opponent's formula on the wing, weave a corresponding formula yourself, fire it. The forms tend to look similar because the cancelling formula is often near-identical to the original — but, in fact, what's happening is far more complex than imitation.

The only person who could do that was a holder of the 〈Magic Eyes〉 specialised in reading formula-events — and, more critically —

"Is there someone in this age with formula-creation power on Flander Crow's level?"

A practitioner with general formula creation and processing capacity off any normal scale.

The work of unmistakable genius. Few phrases fit that art so cleanly.

The 〈Magic Eyes〉 were dangerous, certainly — they read any formula's properties — but the Technique God had been the Technique God on the strength of his individual formula ability, abnormally high. Even without the 〈Magic Eyes〉, he would have anticipated an opponent's slower spell mid-weave and shot a pre-woven counter-formula at it.

"And he fired before our 〈White Light Cannon〉 even completed, sir…"

"Ah."

I see, Serius thought. The captain's voice had broken hardest on that line. That was where his self-confidence had cracked.

"He was a monster, Your Highness."

If the report was sound, Serius doubted monster was overstatement.

— Could he, in fact, be the son of Flander Crow and Leilas Lif Lemuse?

He knew the timing didn't add up. He couldn't help thinking it.

"…Or — were there really spirits at the summit?"

If he was going to force a justification onto his hypothesis, the summit was the only place to anchor it.

"— Were there figures, other than the Demon Lords, on the summit?"

"No, sir."

"Spirits?"

"None at the summit. Only—"

"Only?"

"— a great number of grave markers. They appeared to bear inscriptions, but I had no time to read. We were carrying our wounded down."

"— Hm."

Serius looked up at the summit from the foot of the mountain.

A white haze obscured it; he couldn't see that high.

A second ascent now wasn't on the cards. Especially given the report that nothing but markers stood up there.

But — privately — the markers themselves were of interest. Time was the issue. Eventually, a survey would be in order.

"— Understood. Good report. I'd like to hear from your other men in the corps. Permitted?"

"Certainly, sir."

"Good."

Serius was waiting for the response to the dispatch he'd sent home. Already, several units were running east in pursuit of the Demon Lords. He intended to chase as well — but his method differed somewhat from those of his subordinates.

While he waited for the key to that slightly heretical method to arrive, he intended to draw out as much information as the men could give him.

And in doing so, Serius — with the ferociously sharp observational eye that was the very reason people called him the prodigy of an age of war — saw a fact that the others had not yet seen.

---

Serius walked among the spell-corps, thanking each man individually and asking for detail.

In particular — anyone bearing abnormal wounds — he questioned closely on how those wounds had been received.

"— Anyone bisected, then, was killed outright."

There were not, here, many living with sword wounds. Most who had taken sword wounds had died at the summit.

The captain had decided, when descending, to leave the corpses behind so the wounded could be brought down faster. So the dead were not present.

"Your decision was correct, Captain. Their funerals — I shall conduct, in due course."

His face, briefly, sank.

Serius typically held to a cool, even expression; for that one moment the sadness was unmistakable. To the captain — to whom Serius was an object of reverence — that he should grieve like that for a fallen subordinate was salve enough on its own. He prayed the dead had felt it too.

After a beat, Serius's face returned to its severe normal, and he resumed.

"Sword cuts — that points to the 〈Sword Emperor〉."

"Sir. The descendant of the Eluiza house, as it turned out — and a serious operator. The demonic sword cuts through formulae themselves, so once she got into close range, she was a real problem—"

"And the entire point of the spell-corps was to keep the engagement at distance and put her down before she closed. The other Demon Lords disrupted that, evidently."

A man with an unnaturally darkened jaw was speaking. Serius hummed.

"I want it. The demonic sword, in the right hands, accomplishes a great deal in a single stroke. Phenomenon-cleaving alone is enormous as a battlefield asset. — Beyond which, the 〈Seven Imperial Weapons〉 are said to have larger, hidden capabilities."

In the prior age of war, weapons of that family had briefly flooded the world.

When the human side of war — combat capacity, strategy, group tactics — had peaked and diffused enough that distinctions of strength alone no longer showed cleanly, the more advanced war-states had begun to invest, again, in weapons as the next axis of differentiation.

The pattern in the evolution of war had cycled.

From fist to club, from club to arrow, from arrow to sword. Combatants' attention swung back to the most basic axis humanity had iterated on, in the first place: the weapon. From that turn came the so-called demonic weapons — instruments imbued with special properties — and the 〈Sword Emperor〉 family, which handed the demonic sword down across generations, was born in roughly this period.

Among them, the artisan-line that produced what came to be called the 〈Seven Imperial Weapons〉 was singularly accomplished. Carried through eras and incidents, they were eventually all recognised — every last one of the seven — as Demon Lords. The 〈Seven Imperial Houses〉.

Those Mūzeg currently knew of were the 〈Sword Emperor〉 house Eluiza, the 〈Spear Emperor〉 house Kasaris, the 〈Mace Emperor〉 house Goz, and the 〈Bow Emperor〉 house Sil — four. Of those four, Serius had personally crushed the Kasaris.

The full capability set of each of the Seven was still not fully understood, but they all — in broad strokes — interfered with phenomena. Demonic sword: phenomenon-cleaving. Demonic spear: phenomenon-piercing. Demonic mace: phenomenon-shattering. Tools that, just by being swung, could counter spell-formulae — and the more spell-formula art prospered, the more proportionally precious those tools became.

"I'd like to know how they're made — but even I, with the demonic spear in hand, can only use phenomenon-piercing on it as yet…"

He had taken the demonic spear from the Spear Emperor when he killed him. He used it occasionally — but the abilities beyond piercing he had not unlocked.

He knew there were other capabilities. The texts said as much. But the texts were almost uniformly abstract about it, and useless for actually mapping the Seven.

"Spear Emperor refused to talk to the very end. — Anyway. We can park that. No time to research it now."

Serius switched tracks.

— and then the unnatural blackness on the practitioner's jaw caught his eye again. The mark looked burned.

"That wound?"

"— From the white 〈Demon God〉, sir…"

"…"

A wrongness clicked.

By every report so far, the white Demon God was a high-tier formula user. He had stopped Serius's 〈Hammer of the Earth King〉; reports also had him transforming into lightning. And on top of that, he had shown extreme close-combat skill.

When he stitched those facts together, a question shot out of his mouth before he chose it.

"You—"

A note of pure curiosity.

"— why are you alive?"

---

The practitioner's mouth dropped open. He visibly chewed on the line.

"Eh — ah — well — I—"

Have I said something to displease him? — that was where the practitioner's mind went.

Serius's words had carried no rebuke at all — only a clean, pure curiosity. The practitioner did not hear them that way. He read them as how dare you come back alive after that disgraceful performance.

It didn't help that Serius held his solemn expression naturally, and unconsciously gave off a quiet pressure from his back at all times. The handsome statue-like sourness, in the moment, did half the work of frightening the man.

"Y-Your Highness, this man was struck the blow, then I stepped between — sir—"

The captain, hurriedly, brokered the answer.

"— I see."

Serius stroked his chin, still not quite convinced.

His eyes moved on at once, hunting for another practitioner with the same kind of burn-mark.

The other men, twitching, glanced at him sideways. He found his next subject quickly.

"— You. Why are you alive?"

The same line.

The man Serius had pointed at had a burn-mark on the neck.

The captain stepped in again.

"Y-Your Highness—"

"Wait. This one, alone, makes no sense. — Impossible."

After Serius said that in that tone, the captain couldn't continue.

The pointed-at practitioner was breathless, frozen — like a frog under a snake's eye.

"For the jaw, I'll grant the captain's account. Or — perhaps that strike to the jaw was a setup for a finishing second. But this. — That's the neck. The mark looks like a grip. A grip alone there is fatal. A monster who can wrap himself in lightning got a hand on this man's neck — and yet — he is alive."

A grip on the neck. From the other reports — the lightning-form thing — the wound was, almost certainly, made by a hand that had been wrapped in lightning at the moment of the grip.

"You had your neck taken by that Demon God, didn't you."

"Y-yes…"

As suspected.

"B-but my comrade got there in time—"

The line was no longer reaching Serius's ears. Even if it had, impossible would have crushed it on contact.

The instant a hand closed on that neck, the throat should have been crushed. There was no window in which a comrade could have intervened. The narrative the report painted was one that ate seconds; the Demon God could have done it in instants. Which meant the intervention itself didn't fit.

Serius scanned the rest of the spell-corps. Multiple men had wounds that, by their location, should have been fatal.

A single answer rose.

"— Don't tell me—"

Far too many burn-marks. That a single man had landed that many strikes against that many opponents was, on its own, a measure of his danger. But to Serius, it was the proof of a different fact.

The dead had been left at the summit. By rights, given the tier of the man who'd struck these blows, most of them should have died, and few of them should have walked off the mountain. Yet here they were.

The others didn't seem to be finding this strange. The shock of having seen the Demon God's raw power up close was, presumably, still drowning their analytical capacity.

But Serius had his read.

"This man—"

A smile lifted the corner of his mouth, almost on its own.

The captain and the other practitioners watched it. A cruel smile.

---

"— He can't kill."

---

The eyes of a predator. A smile of advantage seized — won. A frightening smile. Not the smile of the man who had, moments earlier, been thanking his subordinates one by one. That smile was the smile of a fighting man.

"This monster has no fangs.

— Hahaha! A monster without fangs! Hah. Hahahahaha!"

The reason the people called him the prodigy of an age of war — the soldiers around him saw it again, vividly.

"Hh."

The laughter, having gone on a little, simply stopped.

"— No. Wait. Considered the other way around — that he can afford to hold back this completely means there's a corresponding gap in the strength. A comfortable gap."

Serius held, as a working creed, that the human animal would bare its fangs when cornered. No exception.

So in the moment of recognising that a monster had no fangs, an estimate of where on the strength-ladder that monster sat dropped into him almost automatically.

— Upper. He's a long way up.

Not the front-line corps, granted. But Serius's spell-corps were no rabble — they were elites by his own assessment. And the man had reduced them to this without showing his fangs. The corps had not even been able to provoke the bite.

"…"

If they'd cornered him, would the fangs have come out?

If they had — what scale of fang would it have been?

He could not — picture it.

"— That's dangerous."

The man who had thought he'd found an opening had, in the same beat, the feeling of having found a landmine he must not press.

"Your Highness. It's arrived."

— Mihai's voice at his ear, breaking him out of his own thoughts.

What he had been waiting for had arrived.

"Right. I'll come."

— The rest, after I see him in person.

Serius intended to chase. The Demon Lords who had escaped east — he intended to overtake them. The framework was already in place. The remaining question was who held the strategic edge.

"You twenty-odd Demon Lords — don't presume to oppose Mūzeg."

The trace of awe that the Demon God had put in him was offset, briefly, by a wave of his own competitive fire.

Demon God or otherwise — monster or otherwise — he had no intention of facing it head-on and losing.

— I carry a country on my back.

That was Serius's pride as a fighting man. And as a prince.