The Skeleton Soldier Failed to Defend the Dungeon-Chapter 319: The Empires Blade (7)

Leandro remembered it clearly. His mother had hunted the twelfth-generation Garbera, one hundred and twenty years old. However, the one he had just killed was a newborn. A fresh sprout born after the lineage had been severed.

How strange. If the special commission that returned his mother's sword had truly annihilated Garbera, there should have been no seed left to sprout here. If they had failed to finish it and only lost the trail, then what emerged now should have been a matured one of one hundred and twenty years.

Neither possibility fit. The feeling stuck under his skin like grit.

Afterward, Leandro searched the entire forest, but no adult Garbera appeared.

***

Just in case, Leandro spent several more months in the woods, then wandered the world for a year. Other forests yielded nothing. In the end, he went to find Laura. Perhaps this was what he meant when he said revenge was never simple.

By then, Leandro had learned what he was: head of the Imperial Shadow Commission, the Empire's foremost sword, a power behind the throne.

"Well now... you've finally come to me!"

Once Leandro gave his name, meeting Laura was easy. The man had scattered bait for him everywhere.

"Is your old offer still good?"

"Ohoho... but of course! Fresh and springy, that offer. Do you have a post in mind?"

"I wonder... What about the imperial guard?"

Laura's expression, which seemed ready to agree to anything, dimmed a fraction. "Ah... that branch is a bit difficult. My influence does not yet reach what occurs inside the imperial household. You'll have to forgive me that much."

"..."

As expected. Rumor said Laura manipulated the imperial family from the shadows, but he had no intention of letting Leandro into his core. What if Leandro asked to join the commission itself? Laura had refused him once already.

Of course, Leandro wasn't tactless enough to demand answers about the events ten years ago under these circumstances. First, he would settle nearby and gather information. In that case, it would be easier to build something from scratch.

"Then, the Blue Lion Knights."

Laura's eyes widened in surprise. It didn't look like a refusal this time.

"Oh? Those children?"

"Is that a problem?"

"No. But if you take them, you'll shoulder a burden. We've been using them to launder funds and hand out titles. Hoho."

"I want full authority."

"Very well. I'll back you."

Laura demanded nothing in return and delegated complete control of the Order to Leandro.

***

A year passed. Leandro remade the Blue Lion Knights from the foundation up. He stripped every original member of their titles. Those who wished to become external trainees did so, but the patrons continued to pay, every coin extracted as before.

Whenever there was official pushback, Laura smothered it. Unofficial assassins were no threat, as identifying the clients only solidified Leandro's position.

Two years passed. With the housecleaning done, Leandro poured the amassed budget into cultivating talent. He asked no one about their birth. The wellborn already had more choices than they could spend. Instead, he went to the capital's slums.

Every great city bred them, and the capital's shantytown dwarfed all others. With neither infrastructure nor constables, crime, sickness, and fear choked every alley. They served the state, but the state did not serve them in return.

Leandro could not redeem that place overnight. All he could do was lift out those children whose talent and ferocity aligned with his purpose.

Three years passed. Leandro looked over the people assembled before him. Three hundred had come, drawn by his notice and the rumors that preceded him. He could not accept them all.

"You've heard the terms," Leandro said. "I've wasted your time. Most of you will return with nothing."

A murmur rippled through the crowd. Running the Blue Lion Knights had taught him there was no second Leandro. Nevertheless, he had stumbled upon another talent: teaching. Those Leandro trained grew faster than seemed possible.

"One might endure this trial. Perhaps none of you will. Most of you will feel you've been lied to by nobles yet again, and drag your tired bodies back home."

Leandro intended to distribute a small amount of food to every participant. It was not meaningful comfort, but the rumor had already spread. He even saw a boy whose eyes asked only to hurry this along and give him bread. It didn't matter. If bread was bait, so be it. He would test talent, not attitude.

When one was crushed where food and shelter fail, their attitude toward life fell to pieces anyway. Infant mortality was ten times higher in the slums than in the city center. To demand earnest expressions from a boy who had watched his siblings die was abuse.

"I won't sell the lie that willpower can do anything. I will test only talent."

The bar was high. After all, Leandro was not starting a charity. The capital's nobles were scandalized that he recruited regular knights from the poor. To persuade them of the poor, he required candidates whose gifts were undeniable. He scanned the hundreds once more.

At least one of you will make it.

With that thought, he repeated the cycles of selection and training. Surprisingly, the Blue Lion Knights drew a high proportion of highborn youths. Among knights of other orders and nobles well-schooled in swordplay, many came tempted by the rumor that Leandro had crossed blades with the Empire's foremost sword at nineteen.

Outwardly, they cared less about birth. They wanted to be judged by skill, to show a self unburdened by pedigree. Since they had talent to match, Leandro had no reason to turn them away. Thus, he remade the Blue Lion Knights with the poor he had chosen through ruthless testing.

The former admired him despite being his near peers in age; the latter clung to him as their lifeline.

Leandro hurled the Order into monster-hunting. He watched from the side, stepping in only at the instant before death. With arms folded, he grasped every beat of the fight.

The training efficiency was overwhelming, with losses near zero. Loyalty went without saying. Meanwhile, they accumulated merits on numerous secret missions.

In Leandro's fifth year as commander, when he was twenty-five, he spotted something circling the imperial palace. A snake-like creature with small wings. It was as fast as Miyu at a sprint, nearly impossible to sense. Most would take it for a hallucination even after spotting it with their own eyes.

Alone, Leandro chased the direction it vanished. It flickered in and out, leaving no presence. Tracking it was guesswork, every step resting on intuition. But its course was clear: the palace. The farther northwest he went, the fewer lights and people there were.

Always like this...

The approaches to the palace were a maze, impossible to solve without a guide. A heavy mist forever hung for reasons unknown. Leandro sensed the guards of the outer palace in the alleys, men he could cut down five at a time if he wished, yet not keen enough to detect him.

Even as he swept through the lanes without slowing, the snake was nowhere. Leandro remembered Laura's warning: enter the palace only on the appointed days.

Should I turn back?

Until now, there was only one quarry he had ever lost after catching his trail: the self-declared Laura, Duke Lawrence Tartier.

Pat!

He only hesitated briefly. Leandro leaped like a swallow from wall to wall. Nevertheless, even after slipping past the maze of alleys and breaching the outer palace, the serpent was nowhere to be seen. Only the ancient groves remained, and the ponds thick with the fragrance of geraniums and broad-leaved, ornate bellaro plants.

A strange unease pressed against him. He stepped past the stair of Ilien's divine rank—said to reject any who lacked permission—and reached the inner palace's entrance.

"Stop."

The voice was dry, its tone high, edged with steel. Leandro froze. No one had ever barred his way before. Whoever could sense him like this was no common guard.

"Who are you?"

"Who are you? To set foot upon the sacred stair with your presence concealed?"

Leandro looked between the steps beneath him and the one who spoke so firmly.

"The sacred... what, then? Are you saying something truly sensed me?"

Shrrk.

The armored figure drew a sword. "State your name. There was no minister scheduled to enter tonight."

"..."

Late, but confident. He likely believed in his own skill. Leandro hadn't even raised a hand to his hilt and simply watched him.

"Hn?"

Then, Leandro noticed a familiar, unmistakable insignia on his armor. The sigil of the imperial guard. In chasing the serpent, he had wandered straight into their domain.

"If you do not give your name by the count of three, I will strike."

"You are the one guarding this stair?"

"One."

The cold voice cut across the night.

"If I cross here, will anything, whatever it is, be detected?"

"Two."

Odd, how much Leandro found himself speaking to a palace guard.

"Have you seen a snake?"

"Three."

The guard closed the distance in a single breath, sword thrusting for Leandro. Not a killing stroke, as the blade sought his shoulder. Leandro tilted aside and struck the flat of the sword with his hand.

Even against such force, the guard did not lose his grip. Two hands clamped firm, he drove the weapon forward again, adapting as though this were no surprise. Leandro gave ground, two steps down the stairs. One exchange was enough to determine that his opponent was a rare fighter with sharp instinct.

Leandro was about to ask his name when the guard pulled a whistle from his breast and blew hard.

Fweeeet!

The cry of alarm. Imperial guards flooded in from every side, surrounding him.

One knight, recognizing him, called out, "Ah! Commander! What brings you here?"

"..."

"Commander? Then... you mean..."

The gatekeeper's cold voice trembled now.

"Yes," Leandro said. "I was pursuing a suspicious intruder toward this place. You truly saw nothing?"

Every gaze turned toward the whistle-blower. The gatekeeper removed her helm. Sweat slicked her pale, unpainted face, spent from the clash they'd shared in those brief seconds. Catching a glimpse of his own mother in her face, Leandro couldn't help but stare for an instant. The memory of her laughing with him in the courtyard rose sharp as a blade.

Impossible...

Leandro studied her again, carefully. Like a fleeting mirage, the resemblance disappeared without a trace. A skilled swordswoman, yes, but nothing compared to his mother, who had been the greatest of the imperial guards. The memory was too precious to overlap.

If it had been her, she would not have barred him. She would have slain the beast whose trail he had lost. Yet still, Leandro's gaze clung to the short-haired woman before him.

She bit her lip, flustered, and said softly, "I saw nothing..."

It didn't sound like a lie.

"Isabelle, were you doing your duty properly?" a superior scolded her, the same man he had seen more than once in Duke Lawrence's company.

"I was."

"His Excellency felt something, didn't he? Then it must have been your failure."

Just then, another voice rang. "Oh my! What brings you here?"

Ring, ring.

Bells rang as they struck against each other in the mist. A man walked toward them, long hair down to his waist, clad in flowing garments that fluttered as if he'd drift away.

"My, meeting you here makes my heart race. Such a thrill."

His voice was soft, tender. The tiny bells tied to his hair chimed together as he approached. All bowed to the duke.

"Has no monster slipped inside?"

Since coming to the capital, Leandro had addressed Duke Lawrence with formal respect.

Duke Lawrence widened his eyes and nodded. "Oh, I caught it just now on my way back. Hoho... as expected of you. Even you struggled to sense it, didn't you?"

"..."

Something was off. The same dissonance he had felt five years ago, after slaying the juvenile Garbera, crawled along his skin. But to question him openly would have been foolish. This man had shielded him from countless rumors. Without him, Leandro would have been unmasked tonight and forced to fight the entire capital.

"Understood."

Leandro glanced once more at the guard who had drawn steel against him. Could she truly guard this gate? Perhaps she could not even guard herself. And again, unbidden, his mother's memory rose.