Chapter 1:
The Threat of the Fighting God
Sandor
MY NAME IS Alex Kalman Rybak. I am the son of North God Kalman by blood, heir to his arts and his name. North God Kalman I… Well, we don’t use the numeral when we talk about him; we just call him North God Kalman, but regardless, North God Kalman I was my father. As North God Kalman II, I traveled the world on a quest to become a true hero to bring glory to the name of Kalman. I defeated dragons and a gargantuan behemoth, an evil priest who’d seized control of a nation and a giant man-eating monkey that haunted the hinterlands of the central continent, as well as a foolish tyrant and the guardian of a labyrinth that had wiped out many of the clans of the central continent… With the world’s strongest magic sword, the physical toughness I inherited from my mother, and the ultimate sword-fighting techniques developed by my father, I destroyed everyone who stood against me. I gained the title and reputation of the strongest swordsman around. That won me the people’s gratitude and their highest esteem. Thanks to my immortal demon blood, I retained my vigor and was able to continue as a hero even though long years went by. I felt elated. As far as I was concerned, I was invincible. I went on, crushing all my opponents, drunk on my own power.
One moment stood out. A moment that convinced me that I really was a hero.
One day on the road, a young boy, not yet of age, stole my magic sword. He took it to a backstreet tavern full of washed-up nobodies. Their leader, a student of Sword God Style, picked up the sword—he was a Sword Saint. Usually, I would’ve wiped the floor with a Sword Saint. I could have taken him with my bare hands.
…You wouldn’t believe how that fight went. The fearsome power of the magic sword elevated the abilities of that washed-up nobody to those of a Sword Emperor—perhaps even greater. It didn’t matter that it was the first time he’d ever picked it up. I barely managed to defeat him, but the experience left me deeply shaken. It also left me with a question.
Am I truly strong?
While I stood there, consumed by shock after the battle, that nobody swordsman said, “It’s all your fault these parts are such a mess.” That jogged my memory. I was in that country. The one where I’d defeated the evil priest who’d seized power and the foolish despot. The priest had been evil, but it was religion that’d kept this nation stable. The king had been a tyrant, but his iron rule had preserved national unity.
Things were different now. Now, these lands were known as the Conflict Zone. Once one great nation, it was now divided into a multitude of smaller countries all fighting amongst themselves. As one fell, another was born in an endless cycle. All were bogged down in a war in which not even the victors were spared. Larger nations went on preying upon them; people went on dying. And it was my fault. I’d decided their ruler was evil and defeated him without ever bothering to consider what anyone else thought about it. My actions had robbed these people of their peace. Acknowledging this, I was left with another question.
Am I really a hero?
For some time, I carried these questions with me. I put down the magic sword, and I gave up being a hero.
In other words, the answer I arrived at for both questions was “No.”
Don’t get the wrong idea. I love heroes. I love listening to all those glorious heroic epics. I still find myself wishing I could be like them, even now. Alas, I didn’t have a talent for heroism, but I still liked to think maybe, with just a little luck, when the right moment came… I’m sure you understand. You know that people aren’t simple like that. When I gave up heroism, I stopped straining to force myself into the hero mold. After contemplating it, I traded out my sword for a staff and focused my efforts on training others. I chose the staff because I thought it was the best of all weapons. It’s simple, and you can find a staff like mine anywhere, so it doesn’t matter if it gets stolen, and it’s only as good a weapon as you are a fighter. From a tactical perspective, there’s also an advantage to a weapon that’s a little longer than a sword. Honestly, though, anything would have done so long as it wasn’t a magic sword.
As for why I wanted to train other people, I think a lot of that might have come from…how to put it…a desire to atone for my sins? It seemed to me that I’d been horribly contemptuous of the people around me. That makes it sound like I thought of them as expendable, but it was more that I divided the world into the main character (me) and the supporting characters (everyone else). I deluded myself that I was the protagonist, which was why I found it so easy to call people evil and pass judgment on them without a thought for the consequences. It’s mortifying to recall. Everyone is the protagonist in their own life, everyone has their own desires—just like me. Because I admired heroes so much, my deeds seemed righteous, but the truth wasn’t so grandiose. I was no different from the rulers I’d struck down. My dream of becoming a hero was, in short, mere ambition. It was when I realized that that I started to think maybe it would be better to be a supporting character in a true hero’s story rather than a hero in my own right. That was how it was with my father, North God Kalman. Yes, he fought alongside Dragon God Urupen and Armored Dragon King Perugius as one of the Three Godslayers, but if you think of it like a story, he wasn’t the protagonist. He’d always be the protagonist in my eyes, of course—to me, he was a hero through and through. But my perspective wasn’t the only one.
Point being, that was why I tried putting myself in the same position as him. Though I must admit, I also thought being a mentor to a hero sounded pretty smooth…
Taking on all those students turned out to be unexpectedly interesting. It gave me a glimpse into how much more there was to North God style. Things I’d never realized. Some warriors were born with physical disadvantages—some had lost their arms, some were blind since birth—but they all devised their own workarounds, carving out their own ways to win. The North God style that I had learned was what my father taught my mother. Immortal demons’ sword fighting relies on brute force, employing their immortality as much as possible, so that’s what I thought North God style was all about. But really, North God style was created so that those without strength or who had lost something could still survive on the battlefield. It was taking on all those students that taught me that. Aside from that, things I’d only thought I’d understood came into real focus one after another, my perspective broadened, and I won the respect of many. That respect was a little mellower than what I’d experienced when I was being held up as a hero, but for some reason, it made me happier. At the same time, though I only came to use it by avoiding anything like a magic sword, I grew proud of my staff, my choice of weapon. I’d realized that I’d become steadfast in living my father’s philosophy. The thought, I recall, brought tears to my eyes. After that, I became less interested in doing heroic deeds myself.
All sorts of things happened after that, until I ended up in the service of Queen Ariel. In her, I saw that same quality I’d seen in Hero King Gauniss. My assessment wasn’t wrong. I entered Ariel’s service, then before I knew it she had assembled a group of remarkable advisors and laid a rock-solid foundation for the governance of Asura. Despite this team she had assembled, Ariel didn’t start any wars. Instead, she set about making policies to increase national prosperity. She invested a particularly large amount in magical technology and appointed young people to her ministries. When I asked her why she was doing so much, even to the point that she faced opposition, her answer surprised me. She told me she was doing what she could in her lifetime to oppose Laplace when he was resurrected some decades hence.