Chapter 267: Drawing the Holy Sword (1)

“First of all, thank you for saving the Mercenary King. Without you, he would have died to the demon,” Dreigan said.

The Guildmaster of the Mercenary Guild spoke with the gravity of a man who understood what that rescue meant. The guild’s reach owed much of its present weight to a single figure at the top—the Mercenary King. If anything happened to the Mercenary King, the guild’s influence would be cut in half overnight. For the guild, Ketal’s intervention was not merely helpful; it was a debt that would take years to balance.

“I do not make a habit of letting comrades die,” Ketal replied, light as ever, as if he had taken a walk rather than dragged someone back from the edge.

“Even so, you are a benefactor to the guild, and a debt deserves repayment,” Dreigan said as he set a velvet-lined coffer on the table and opened it.

Inside lay jewels. They were not a handful, not a scattering, but a small trove, each stone large and flawless under the lamplight, the facets throwing clean fires across the wood.

Ketal let out a low, pleased sound despite himself. He did not pretend to know gems, yet even an untrained eye could see value here. If he had known the exact worth, he would have been the one to snap the lid closed; the contents could have bought a fortress, walls, and banner besides.

“This is a personal token of thanks,” Dreigan said. “Please do not refuse it.”

“In that case, I will accept it with thanks,” Ketal said, and took the coffer without ceremony.

Dreigan’s eyes brightened.

“You did not come only to deliver gratitude,” Ketal said, amused. “Shall we speak plainly?”

“There is no fooling you, Ketal.” The Guildmaster chuckled. His voice dropped a notch. “You are registered as a mercenary, yes?”

“I am,” Ketal said.

He still had his C-Rank badge, though he had not been taking contracts lately.

“Have you considered leaving the guild?” Dreigan asked him.

“No. I have not. I may not be working as a mercenary at the moment, but if the time and the job suit me, I intend to take up work again at any point.”

“Truly,” Dreigan said, and the relief in his tone made the word lift. He pressed ahead before the moment could shift. “So you consider yourself a mercenary. I am glad to hear that. It has simply been some time since you took a job, and I wanted to be sure. Good, then it is confirmed. You see yourself as one of us.”

There was something odd in the way he repeated it, like a man setting a pillar where others could see it.

“I think I understand,” Ketal said with a faint smile. “The jewels were to hold me in place. A kind of signing bonus.”

Dreigan flinched and then managed a rueful chuckle. “You noticed.”

“I am not naïve enough to misjudge my own value,” Ketal said. “I do not intend to leave the guild, so you need not worry.”

“In that case, there is one more matter. You are currently a C-Rank mercenary,” Dreigan said, and when Ketal nodded, he continued, “Allow me to correct that. I will promote you to S-Rank.”

“Can you do that?” Ketal asked him, more curious than skeptical.

“The real question is why you are not already S-Rank,” Dreigan said. “Anyone who reaches the Transcendent level can be recognized at S-Rank. You are beyond that. It is only right.”

“There must be procedures,” Ketal said. “I have not done much mercenary work. Will that not be a problem?”

“Under ordinary circumstances, there would be evaluations,” Dreigan said, smiling with practiced candor. “In your case, there is no need. As Guildmaster, I can exercise discretion.”

He added, as if placing a seal where Ketal could see it, “The Mercenary King has already signed off. He said there would be no issues with promoting you. There is nothing you need to worry about.”

Ketal made a small sound that could have been agreement or amusement; it was hard to say. S-Rank carried a particular shine. It was a place of respect, the top rung in the profession he had signed his name to.

He did not like the feel of taking it this way.

To accept a rank that high on strength alone, without the miles and jobs that usually paved the way, felt like using a cheat code in a game he otherwise enjoyed playing straight. He weighed it for a moment and then asked a question that had been pressing at the edge of his thoughts.

“Can an A-Rank mercenary receive permission to challenge an S-Rank Dungeon?” Ketal asked Dreigan.

Currently, he was interested in clearing S-Rank Dungeons. He wanted to get his hands on the catalysts that would amplify his Myst reserves.

“Yes,” Dreigan said. “If the gatekeepers sign off, there is no problem.”

“Good,” Ketal said. “Then make me A-Rank.”

“Would you be satisfied with that?” Dreigan asked him, blinking. He had not expected a refusal.

“I have done very little as a mercenary,” Ketal said. “It would prick my conscience to be counted at the same rank as the Mercenary King when I have not earned it in the same way.”

“I... I understand,” Dreigan said. The surprise lasted only a heartbeat. The Guildmaster set it aside and nodded. “Very well. I will change your status to A-Rank. If you visit the guild office later, we will issue a new badge.”

“Thank you,” Ketal said, and the smile he gave then had the simple lightness of a thing done properly. The conversation felt settled.

Dreigan bowed low. “Then I look forward to working with you.”

“As do I,” Ketal said.

When Dreigan left and closed the door behind him, his face broke open with a grin he had kept under careful control. Back in his suite, he pumped a fist like a boy who had won a race.

“Good. Very good!” he said to the quiet room. “Running into him here was unexpected, but this is a windfall.”

He had the answer he needed. Ketal saw himself as a mercenary. In this world, what a strong person chose to stand with mattered as much as where they stood in strength. The guild had grown so powerful because a man like the Mercenary King wore its colors. Ketal, who had fought Materia and sent her back, stood not merely at Hero level but in a space beyond the easy labels. A person like that belonged on a ledger. To claim him outright would be impossible and wrong. To confirm that he was one of theirs by his own word was everything.

Dreigan could not and would not sell Ketal’s name or spend it like coin in a market. Even so, the simple fact of his affiliation would add weight to anything the guild attempted. He was satisfied. Then he gulped, remembering the edge he had walked.

“It was a little dangerous,” he admitted to the empty room.

He had said the jewels were gratitude for rescuing the Mercenary King, which was true enough, but there had been a second purpose. He had wanted to lay a gentle debt across Ketal’s shoulders, light enough not to irritate, heavy enough to settle in memory. It would make it easier for Ketal to keep his status and, perhaps, more likely for him to think of the guild when choices arose.

However, Ketal had seen through it. If he had disliked the implication, the day might have gone differently. As it was, the outcome had turned out well.

“Tell me what you saw,” he said, turning to his secretary.

The fairy hovered near his shoulder like a pale lantern, wings a shimmer of glass in the lamplight.

Elves were creatures of the wild. They felt the currents of nature and the wrongness of a place as a hawk feels the shape of a wind. The fairy was something else altogether, no less a child of myth, her senses tuned to essence rather than air.

“What did you see?” he began again, and then stopped. “What is wrong?”

The fairy’s face had drained to the color of paper. She was pale to begin with. Now she looked like a page scraped clean.

“W-what is that?” she whispered.

“I told you,” Dreigan said gently. “He’s the Hero who started appearing in reports. Did you forget?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head hard enough that her hair rippled like water. “That is not what I am asking.”

“Then what?” Dreigan asked her.

“He is... mimicking,” she said, and then flinched and corrected herself. “No. That is not right. He is overlapping. How...? That is impossible. Things do not overlap like that. They cannot. How is he doing that?”

Dreigan felt the old unease stir, the one that had nothing to do with guild politics or money. “What do you mean by overlapping? What is he?”

“I do not know... Do not ask me,” she said, and shut her eyes as if that could keep the sight at bay. Her hands clenched in her hair. “If it were not overlapped, if it were not covered, I think I would have seen it all, and then I would have...”

Her voice curled in on itself. She squeezed her head with both hands and made a sound that was almost a sob. Simply looking at Ketal’s essence, even through whatever veil blocked it, had brought her to the edge of breaking.

“Hey. Easy,” Dreigan said, startled.

He had met monsters and other strong individuals before, but he had never seen her recoil like this. He moved with exaggerated care, the way you move near a glass of quicksilver, and did what he could to comfort her until the trembling eased.

***

The next day dawned bright, and Cretein gathered the chosen in the inner court.

“The time has come,” he announced, and his voice carried to every corner of the stone. “The gate of the Holy Sword is now open.”

A tide of breath rose from the crowd, half cheer, half prayer. Men and women who had kept their excitement in check let it bloom. At last, they would walk into the chamber where the sword waited. Ketal’s eyes lit with the same anticipation he had kept politely tucked away.

“All of you here are Advanced or above,” Cretein continued. “You will be the first to attempt to draw the Holy Sword. There must be some distinction in order, but at the very least, within this group we will proceed as fairly as we can.”

“What does fair mean?” someone called.

“We will draw lots,” Cretein said, and a knight set a plain wooden box on a table. “Each of you will take one slip of paper. The number written there is your turn.”

People moved at once to form a line, eager without shoving. Ketal joined the end, reached in when it was his turn, and unfolded his slip.

Seven.

“That is my number,” he said to himself, amused at the symmetry of it.

“Then we will begin,” Cretein said. “Whoever drew number one, step forward.”

“I will go,” a mercenary called, and strode out with the square shoulders of a man used to being watched. He followed one of the acolytes toward the inner door.

Those who stayed behind watched with faces that mixed hope with nerves, some already rehearsing the feel of a hilt in their palm, others calculating how they would adjust if someone else left with the crown.

“Does one take the sword at once?” Ketal asked Cretein, keeping his voice even.

“Anyone may, if they pass the trial,” Cretein said.

“A trial,” Ketal said, and the word tasted good. “Do you know what shape it takes?”

“I do not,” Cretein said. “The content changes each time. Sometimes it lasts an hour for a single person. Sometimes it is finished in a minute.”

Before they could say more, the mercenary returned. His face had the slack look of a man who had walked toward a dream and found nothing he could touch.

“Five minutes,” Ketal said softly.

“This trial seems on the shorter side,” Cretein observed, eyes narrowing without judgement.

“Next is me!” someone barked, and a mage in bright robes stood with confidence and went in. Five minutes later, he came back with the same bruised expression.

One by one they went, and one by one they returned with empty hands and thin lips. No one smiled.

“My turn,” Ketal said at last when the sixth man stepped aside.

Cretein’s voice softened. “Come back safely.”

𝗳𝚛𝚎𝚎𝘄𝕖𝕓𝕟𝕠𝚟𝚎𝕝.𝗰𝕠𝐦

“Thank you,” Ketal said, and rose with a grin that did not care about the outcome so much as the fact that there would be one. He let the acolytes lead him along a quiet corridor until they stopped before a narrow door banded with iron.

“Please enter,” one said, and the group withdrew to leave him alone.

Ketal took the latch, opened the door, and stepped through.

A spacious chamber spread out before him, broad as a football field, the floor polished to a pale sheen. In the exact center, a blade stood embedded in the stone, the metal the color of moonlight, the hilt plain in a way that mocked ornament.

He drew breath without meaning to. “So that is the Holy Sword.”

The words came out in a whisper that sounded like someone else speaking.

He stood and looked, and as he looked, the sword shivered, a small convulsion that ran along the metal like a chill. If a weapon could flinch, it had flinched, as if it had recognized something that did not belong here and could not look away.

At the same instant, lines of light sketched themselves into the air; a second sword appeared, not in steel but in gold, inscribed along the emptiness by a hand too steady to be human. Another followed, then another, and in a heartbeat, dozens of golden blades hung suspended around him like a halo given shape. The room filled with a hum that pressed against the skin, the sound of holiness made into a single long note.

Ketal smiled as if he had been waiting for exactly this.

“A trial,” he said, and the delight in his voice was entirely human. “Good. Let’s enjoy it.”