The night after the first match.
Toroa the Awful was carried to the city's central clinic for treatment. A visitor from outside of Aureatia, Toroa didn't have a regular Life Arts doctor with him, either. It was unknown if the severe destruction of both his knees could be fully healed.
"Maaaan. What a bummer."
The young boy sitting at his bedside looked like he might've been more heavily wounded than Toroa.
He was the one who'd backed Toroa as a hero candidate and shared his defeat, Mizial the Iron-Piercing Plumeshade.
"So you weren't the strongest after all, Toroa." Mizial smiled, in contrast to his tone.
"…Sorry. That I couldn't become the strongest. I wasn't able to make you win, either."
"I just want things to be fun! Ow!"
With his big stretch, Mizial reopened one of his wounds. A child who acted in such a way without thinking of any of the consequences. Toroa was grateful for his usual carefree demeanor, unconcerned with the seriousness of all his wounds.
"But… You probably shouldn't get too close to me from here on out." "Why?"
"I lost. Everyone here in Aureatia knows this. They'll be ones like those Sun's Conifer types we met before coming to steal these enchanted swords from me."
Perhaps that itself had been one of the reasons for placing Toroa the Awful's match right at the beginning of the Sixways Exhibition. Supposing he did lose in the opening match, anyone devising up a way to steal his swords would be in a very advantageous position.
Because at that point, he wouldn't be a hero candidate anymore—and thus forbidden from being attacked.
"…C'mon, you could smack those guys around even if all your limbs were
broken, right?"
"They won't be the only ones. There have to be some who knew the extent of my power and never made a move because of it. Those are the real dangerous ones."
He didn't say it clearly in front of Mizial, but Toroa was likely going to be killed.
Even when limiting considerations to powerful players he knew about, if Alus or Mestelexil, for example, stormed in to attack him, in Toroa's current state, there'd be nothing he could do about it.
Also, there had to be someone behind the scenes of this battle working out schemes too in depth for Toroa to possibly fathom.
He suddenly thought back to the Gray-Haired Child he met in Toghie City. The face of the mastermind who sent the bandit Elgite to fight him and who likely sent Toroa into the Particle Storm turmoil on purpose.
A guy like him… Does he know about those sorts of behind-the-scenes conspiracies, too?
The Gray-Haired Child had talked big about being able to make up for the power Toroa lacked. He had to admit that, right now, that boy was probably the only one he could turn to for help in the current situation.
It'd be utterly absurd if he had gotten in contact with me, knowing this was how things would end up.
By his bedside, Mizial had, in a rare move, been keeping silent, until he finally raised his head.
"In that case, I'll transport you out of Aureatia. The authority of the Twenty- Nine Officials can make that happen. That way…"
"And how many days will the preparations for that take? Besides, if the person after these is serious, they wouldn't hesitate to chase after me outside the city. You don't need to be so concerned with me. You're not my sponsor anymore, right?"
Toroa hadn't given up. If anything, he needed to keep Mizial at a distance in order to fight it out until the end. It was possible that a marauder could show up in his hospital room at any moment.
"I don't wanna. I'll come by when I want to."
"…Listen to me. I'm saying that you have no obligation to do that." "We're friends, right?"
"..."
He had always lived together with his father. He had never been deeply
involved with anyone else besides him.
His father suggested that when he was old enough to live by himself, he should go down the mountain and find a settlement to live in, but he couldn't leave his father on his own.
Mizial was the first person he had been involved with for this long—and talked to this much.
Maybe he could've counted him as a friend. "…Scared—"
Suddenly, a completely different voice came to the hospital room.
"—that your enchanted swords'll get stolen? The sword-stealing monster?" "...!"
Toroa had prepared himself for a fight, but when he looked at the man's face standing in the doorway, he lowered his sword.
A dark-brown coat, draped over a man shorter than a child. Blue eyes, dimly peeping out from underneath a flat cap.
Mizial mumbled, taken aback in surprise. "Kuuro the Cautious."
"Haven't seen each other since the operation at Gumana Trading Post, eh, Mizial the Iron-Piercing Plumeshade? But the one I have business with today—"
"Hey! Been a while, Toroa. We got to see each other again!"
Without waiting for Kuuro to finish talking, a creature resembling a blue songbird flapped and fluttered around Toroa.
Its size and wings were exactly like a songbird's, but every other part of her was that of a minian girl, shrank down to a miniature size. Cuneigh the Wanderer. The guests were acquaintances of Toroa's, after all.
"…With Toroa the Awful there."
"What…do you want with me? A sympathy visit for an enchanted sword monster?"
He had let himself drop his guard the instant he saw their faces, but he recognized again that he couldn't be optimistic.
During the defense against the Particle Storm, Kuuro had been a spotter working as part of Aureatia's operation. There was a possibility he had come to steal Toroa's enchanted swords on Aureatia's orders. If indeed that was the case, he had to fight him.
"I still haven't repaid my debt to you, see. The debt I owe you for saving my life that day. Here I was, thinking I'd try to get out of Aureatia fast, but…"
"U-um. Me too! Me too, Toroa! I wanted to thank you!"
Kuuro the Cautious. He wasn't a participant in the Sixways Exhibition himself, but he wielded the eyes of Clairvoyance, extreme supernatural senses that saw through any and all intrigue and made it impossible to catch him by surprise.
"Until you're fully recovered, I'm going to act as your bodyguard. Any problem?"
"No way!"
Mizial replied instead of Toroa.
"You're amazing, Toroa, seriously! Getting helped out by the Clairvoyance wielder himself? That's incredible! Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha! Look at you; you have a ton of friends!"
"W-wait… I didn't agree to any of this…"
"Agree or not, I can't have you dying on me, see." Kuuro gazed at Cuneigh happily flying around.
"Toroa. You're still planning on fighting Alus the Star Runner, aren't you?" "…That's right. The Sixways Exhibition is nothing more than a method to do
that. When it's all over, if he's still alive, I'll take him down, of course. If the enchanted light sword is passed along into someone else's hands, then I'll take them down instead. I think that maybe it's not part of any grudge…or some obsession, but…I just have to do it. In order for me to live my own life."
The strongest enchanted sword, severing any and all matter it touched, Hillensingen the enchanted light sword.
To Toroa, it was a symbol of his beloved father's death.
Until he gripped the enchanted light sword in his hands, perhaps it meant he'd remain unable to accept his father's death as well.
Even now, after his defeat, he remained Toroa the Awful. "Alus might lose."
Kuuro declared, persistently levelheaded.
"His first opponent is Lucnoca the Winter. If there's one among the sixteen that is truly the strongest of all, it's got to be her. That wyvern…also ended up drawing the worst opponent possible for his first match."
"…You really think so?"
Toroa the Awful, to him, always was and would be the strongest. Surpassing the skills of any enchanted sword user in the land, he had continued to stain his blades in battle, until his own existence had passed beyond just legend and into fearful superstition.
"Strongest. Legendary. Champion. Invincible. If there happened to be anyone
out there that those words could be applied to... You already know, don't you, Kuuro?"
In which case, by getting vengeance on the person who killed that strongest of all enchanted swordsman—by fighting against Alus the Star Runner, what was Toroa hoping for?
Did he hope for victory? Defeat?
Even Toroa himself remained unsure of the answer.
"All of those are the exact types of opponents Alus the Star Runner has continued to win out over."