Ever since I was a child, there was a story my father used to tell.
“Elias,” he would say, “our Valerius family, though we now live in this tiny backwater estate, wasn't always like this.”
A joyous light would enter my father’s eyes whenever he told that story. Though he was a man in his middle years, they shone with the brilliance of youth, and his voice, usually measured, would ring with boyish excitement.
“Two hundred years ago, the Valerius family was one of the great houses that defended this kingdom. The king favored them above all others; they were righteous wardens, revered by everyone.”
When he reached this part, my father would gesture to the large portrait hanging in the mansion. It depicted an old man, his hair bone-white with age, yet his gaze was as sharp and dignified as a lion's. Beside that portrait hung an impressive sword.
“In those days, the Ardevons produced Swordmasters for generations. That is why everyone feared the Ardevons, and at the same time, respected them. They were invincible guardians who could protect the kingdom from any foe, and righteous watchers who punished the wicked.”
“……”
“Of course, that’s all in the past now. It’s been over a hundred years since the Valerius family last produced a Blademaster……”
My father’s gaze would drift to the sword beside the portrait, his expression distant.
It was the Valerius family’s treasure. The sword was said to have been wielded by Gareth Valerius, the founder of our house, its greatest head, and a man known as the most powerful Blademaster in history.
From what my father said, the sword had to be at least five hundred years old, yet its edge remained impossibly keen. Its gleam seemed to hum with a cutting intent, as if it could sever the very air.
When I looked at that sword, I didn’t feel awe at its preservation. I felt suspicion. How could a blade remain rust-free and razor-sharp after so long? Common sense dictated that iron simply didn’t do that.
My doubt led me to a simple conclusion.
The stories my father told were lies. It was a common enough practice for fallen noble families like ours. They would invent a glorious past to bolster their pride, to keep the last embers of aristocratic dignity from fading. Though fallen, they were still noble, still exalted—or so the stories went.
It was the same way historical figures are often exaggerated into myth. Yet for some reason, my father sincerely believed in the Valerius family’s fanciful history.
“You, who will one day inherit this house, must remember this glorious era. Always be proud to be a member of the Valerius family, and remember that the blood of steel runs through your veins. Then someday, you will reclaim that glory. Yes, someday…”
His words brimmed with a pride so fierce I could never bring myself to tell him the truth.
A blade hundreds of years old could not logically remain unblemished. The old man in the portrait bore no resemblance to my father or anyone else I knew. Our family treasure was a fake, and the portrait was clearly some anonymous painter’s romanticized vision of a great swordsman. No matter how many history books I consulted, I could find no mention of the Valerius name, nor any record of a Blademaster called “Gareth.”
The objections died in my throat. Instead of voicing them, I would force a smile.
“Yes, I will.”
The reason was simple. My father, so completely captivated by the lies of our ancestors, looked happy. His smile was more boyish than my own, his eyes sparkling with a dazzling light. I did not have the heart to steal that joy from him.
Sometimes, recounting the glorious days of the Valerius family was my father’s only pleasure. It was all a fabrication, but what did that matter? If it made him happy, it made no difference to me whether our history was true or false.
My father called this place a tiny backwater, but I liked our village. I wouldn't have traded the small, ordinary days and the quiet happiness I felt here for anything.
I liked my father, who told his tales as if they were simple bedtime stories; my gentle mother; the clumsy but kind cook; and the slow but unfailingly loyal steward.
Sometimes the routine was boring, but I was happy. My ambitions were small and lazy: meet a decent woman on this estate, start a family, one day inherit my father’s title, and grow old in peace. I prayed that life would go on like that forever.
But life never goes as one wishes.
When I was fifteen, everything changed.
A Blademaster visited our estate.
“This estate must be erased.”
The Blademaster who had come to our village—an unremarkable place with no attractions or special goods—spoke this strange pronouncement. The villagers were bewildered by the incomprehensible command, but the Blademaster refused to answer any questions. He only repeated the same words. After the third time, he added something else.
“I only do as I am commanded.”
After that, the Blademaster ceased to be a man and became a natural disaster. He was an incarnation of death, something an ordinary person could not possibly resist. Like the storms and floods I had seen in my childhood sweep away the fields, the Blademaster swept away the villagers. From my vantage on the hilltop, I watched his work with horrifying clarity.
It was no different from the autumn harvest. He moved like a farmer reaping grain; every swing of his sword was the sweep of a scythe, cutting down villagers who had lived and breathed with stories of their own. Heads fell and rolled across the ground as red blood stained the earth. No one could stop it.
“Elias, you must run!”
The Blademaster was advancing from the village entrance toward our mansion, walking as if on a leisurely stroll. In the wake of his unhurried steps, no living soul remained. My mother grabbed my hand and pulled me back, forcing me to flee.
But no matter how hard we ran, there was no escaping him. Despite our desperate flight, the Blademaster eventually found us. He hadn't been running, just walking with that composed gait. He said,
“I will return in a month. Until then, take everyone and leave this place. If you want to live.”
That day, more than half the village died. By some miracle, my family survived.
But our life could never be the same again. Never. After that day, my father went mad.
My mother, my father, and the surviving villagers offered countless theories for the horror that had befallen us. Some said it was fallout from the war between the kingdom and the empire. Some said the newly crowned king was unbalanced. Others whispered that the Swordmasters were using force to consolidate their authority.
None of those explanations mattered. Could such pathetic reasons justify the complete ruin of my world?
My father’s fury burned far hotter than my own. The once-robust man withered, his frame shrinking until his bones were stark beneath his skin. Our once-happy mansion filled with an oppressive, heavy silence, a silence born from my father, who had become a broken shell of himself.
After discovering a book in his study, my father did nothing but read it. He would finish the last page, close the cover, then immediately open it again to the beginning. He skipped meals and never went outside; his entire existence became the endless reading of that single book.
I don’t know how many times he repeated this cycle before his mind finally shattered.
He began uttering bizarre, nonsensical words, as if his head had been emptied of all reason.
“I will take action myself and correct this world full of sin and wrongdoing! I am a great knight who inherited the blood of Valerius; I will be your judge!”
My father stopped reading. I saw the book’s title on the table where he’d left it: 「The Knight of La Mancha」.
My father, after reading a chivalric novel by some anonymous author, began to cast himself as its hero. He could no longer distinguish fiction from reality. He was a madman.
“I am a great knight who hunted the evil dragon, an iron-blooded guardian who defends the kingdom! I cannot tolerate injustice. I will judge the sinful Blademaster when he returns. I am the righteous watcher who inherits Valerius blood!”
He donned an old, dented helmet fit for a trainee and declared it a golden helm bestowed by the king. He called his rusted armor a suit of mithril blessed by a patron deity. He held a dull, wooden training sword and proclaimed it a blade that had once sliced through dragon scales.
“I will not retreat! I will personally judge my unjust enemies!”
His eyes burned with an intensity that seemed to swallow the sun. For a fleeting moment, my father truly looked like the invincible knight from his stories. Even as the other villagers tried to reason with him, to force him to leave, he refused to abandon the estate.
Then, late one night, my mother came to me.
“Elias, you must run away,” she said. “Leave this place and save yourself. Go anywhere.”
“Mother, come with me.”
“I can’t.”
I had never seen such profound sorrow in my mother’s eyes.
“I must stay by your father’s side. I can’t leave him to die alone. But I cannot watch you die, too. So… so please, go.”
She squeezed my hand, her grip so tight it felt as if it might crush the bones.
“Promise me one thing before you leave.”
“……”
“Whatever happens, do not dream of revenge. Promise me you will never seek it.”
“……”
“Swear you will not take up a sword as long as you live, and that you will never return here.”
Her voice was chillingly serious.
“You must keep this promise. Everything your father told you was a lie. The steel blood, the great heroes—it was all invented. You are an ordinary person. Your father was ordinary, and you are ordinary…”
Her voice broke into sobs. I answered her.
“Yes. I swear.”
A wave of relief washed over my mother’s face. That night, I left the village in a carriage, one day before the Blademaster had vowed to return.
I rode the carriage to the nearest town and spent the money I had saved on a crossbow and bolts.
I bought other things, too—enough weapons to kill a man. I bought cooking pepper to throw in his eyes and fast-acting poisons favored by hunters. I never intended to abandon my family. My plan was to acquire what we couldn’t find in our village and return to stand with them.
Even if he called himself a Blademaster, he was still just a man. I refused to run away alone.
After gathering my supplies, I hitched a ride on a cart heading back toward the estate, then broke off and ran through the nearby forest as fast as I could. The sun was just beginning to rise, chasing away the last of the dawn.
When I reached the estate, all that greeted me was blood and the grotesque stillness of the dead. At the highest point of the estate—the very peak of our mansion’s roof—the flag bearing the Valerius family’s wolf emblem flew. My father’s head was impaled upon the flagpole.
He had died with his eyes wide open. My mother lay in the yard below, her body still, as if she were peacefully asleep. My father’s helmet, armor, and sword were shattered around her, torn apart like paper.
I saw the Blademaster standing blankly among the corpses. The moment I saw him, I fired the crossbow. He made no attempt to dodge or parry. The bolt struck his body and simply bounced off, unable to leave so much as a scratch.
His gaze turned toward me. The instant our eyes met, my body froze solid. He spoke, his face as blank and emotionless as a doll’s.
“You are not yet eighteen. Fortunately.”
“……”
“I will spare you. Forget what happened today and live your life. In a place like this village.”
He calmly wiped the blood from his sword and muttered to himself. I didn’t know whose blood it was.
“Curse your house. I did not expect the ‘Valerius’ to still exist on this continent.”
“……”
“Hide your surname. And do not sire children.”
He looked at me with cold, dead eyes.
“If you pass on the Valerius blood, I will find you again, no matter where you hide.”
It was a warning.
Pathetically, I couldn’t even manage a semblance of revenge. Our eyes had met for only a moment, and it had been enough to paralyze me. I remained frozen there until he had walked leisurely away. So pathetic. So utterly pathetic.
I had lost everything.
After the funerals, I did nothing. I wasted my days, truly and completely. It was then that I learned more about the Blademaster who had taken everything from me. His name was Silas, and he was hailed as a great hero for his deeds in the war against the empire. Unlike the fanciful Valerius Blademaster my father had babbled about, this one was real.
A genius born once in a hundred years, the most powerful Blademaster in history, a guardian who would protect the kingdom, a righteous watcher… The man my father had described with boyish wonder actually existed. And with a sickening irony, that same great Blademaster had destroyed everything I held dear. I crawled into my cold, empty bedroom in the mansion, in a village where everyone was dead.
Whenever I thought of him, something hot and vicious would boil up in my chest. Why was the man who ruined my life praised as a hero? If the gods worshipped by the kingdom truly existed, why had he not received divine punishment? Instead of punishment, the chorus of those who praised him only grew louder with time.
I couldn’t understand it. Silas’s legend only grew as the years passed. Soon, there was no one in the world who did not know the name of Blademaster Silas. He was the Blademaster of Swordmasters, his great deeds making him the foremost blade on the continent.
“Master, you must forget. It is the only way to live. Only then…”
The old steward, who had fled and later returned, told me to think of it as a natural disaster. But I couldn’t. How could I? I had seen it with my own eyes. The memories still clawed at me in my sleep.
My hatred and my desire for revenge deepened with time. I thought endlessly of killing him, of making him pay. I couldn’t bear it. But it was impossible.
There was one simple reason.
“A Blademaster can only be killed by another Blademaster, Master.”
I had never properly held a sword in my life. I had no talent for it. I bought a fencing manual with what little money I had left and tried to train, but I lacked any sense for the blade, or even for moving my own body with grace.
The irony was crushing. If I was truly the descendant of such a great house, why was I so insignificant?
Why did I tremble and freeze before the man who had taken everything? Why…
After many hard days, I reached a decision. Was it right to live out a worthless life and grow old, just as he had told me to?
That might have been the wisest choice. But it was not a choice I could make.
The very fact that I lived in the same world as that man was unbearable. How could that demon still be praised? Why was the world so wrong? No matter how I thought about it, I could not accept it.
There were too many things I could not accept.
My conclusion was clear. I would break the final promise, the oath I had sworn to my mother.
I decided to become a Blademaster.
The moment I made that decision, a strange voice echoed in my head. Every time I looked at the large portrait hanging in the ruined mansion’s parlor, the voice rang in my ears. Or, more precisely, it came from the long, sharp sword hanging beside it—the Valerius family treasure that had not lost its edge in five hundred years.
「Eat me.」