Anyway, I’m Not A Guy (1)
The dark gray sword had a blade which was about a half hand wide above the guard, from where it tapered to the point. That was exactly the same as I had been, as well as the rubies and sapphires set into my pommel. The black and white wing-shaped guard was the same as I had been in the past, as well as the leather grip. Nevertheless, I felt uncomfortable. I did not sense the energy that I had built up over my centuries of existence. No… I felt it, but it was so faint that I had to really concentrate just to become aware of it. After I had drunk the blood of so many powerful beings and sinister things, my body had risen to great and mythical heights of power. Now, it felt changed, as if it had been freshly forged.
It was an unexpected change, and it made me feel nervous.
I had wanted to recover Gruhorn’s blade, which was a magical sword, sharp and beautiful, with ages of power stored in it.
“Nonsense…” I murmured, almost fainting after sighing many times at the reality that faced me.
“Your Highness, look, don’t touch!”
“Get back,” I said as I involuntarily reached for my sword. The palace knights who guarded the Dragon Slayer barred my way, and cast warning glances at me. My anger was great at that moment.
It’s my body, my precious body! And there is something wrong with it! I was fuming that these knights dared block my way, dared to prevent me from tending to my form and confirming its status.
‘Can’t get out…’
Before I had even started to reprimand the knights, an unfamiliar voice entered my head.
‘Whose a highness here? I’m the only highness, you knights hear me? Hear me!’
It was a frivolous, critical, cynical, and indolent voice.
“Your Highness acts just like before,” the old knight, Nogisa, scolded me.
“Shhhh!” I commanded him into silence.
He raised his hand to his forehead but at least shut his mouth.
‘Is there any guy like my little parasite of a brother? I hate him, oh, I hate him.’
That casual, self-satisfied voice continued to buzz around inside my head.
“You really don’t like it, do you? Standing around all day long.’
As I listened to the sound of that voice, I stiffened, for I remembered it well: “From now on, I am the master of this sword!”
It was the voice of a boy I had heard when I had woken up.
“Shut up! There’s nothing I can’t touch in this country!” – these were the words that had led to my current existence.
“With this sword by my side, His Majesty and the other nobles will have no choice but to follow me!”
That voice that had so brimmed with arrogant egotism, perhaps due to some ingrained inferiority complex.
“Great Dragon Slayer! Give me strength!”
The voice that had disgusted me the moment that I had heard it.
“Gruhorn!”
An utterly obnoxious sound.
“Ugh-woo-oh-oh-oh!”
It was the voice of the idiot that had so over-eagerly swung me about until he had pierced his stomach with me.
‘Look at that now, that old thing. It looks like an unlucky baby with a beard.’
The voice that babbled on in my head was an exact match for the one that I remembered.
“The first prince!?” I blurted out, and the voice inside of my head paused for a few moments.
‘No way! You…
More silence, and then the voice started crying and wailing.
“Can you hear my voice!? Tell me! You can hear my voice, I know you can, I know you can! Answer me! Right now, you better answer now! Get me out! Get me out of this thing, please, save me, quickly! Hurry!’
His raw and unrefined thoughts crashed into my mind, disturbing me greatly.
‘Go and tell my mother right now! I am Adrian Leonberger, and I am trapped in a sword!”
That desperate and pleading voice came right from the first prince’s mind, the original owner of the body that I now inhabited.
His mere presence in my mind, and my original body, devastated me to my very core.
“The king’s orders were clear, and sternly voiced,” Nogisa said with great determination.
“So? Go and ask him.”
I continued to press my demand, stubborn as can come. I ended up sending palace knight after palace knight to convey my request to the king.
“His Majesty has accepted your request, Your Highness. However, he said that you will not leave this room with the sword, and that you won’t have long to be with it.”
It was only after one of the knights had finally acquired the king’s permission that Nogisa granted my request.
“There is only one entrance to this enclosure, so don’t get strange ideas,” the old knight informed me, then shut the door.
I was finally left alone. I strode forward, grabbing my body.
‘Who the hell are you? No! Take me out of here first! Just take me out and don’t listen to what anyone says!’
It was a terrible frustration t hold onto my true body, as its inhabitant was kicking up a ruckus.
Still, I ignored the idiot within and studied myself.
“Ah…” I sighed in relief. The energy I had thought to have completely dissipated flowed into my hand. Even though it wasn’t much, feeling almost frozen, it certainly still existed.
It seemed that my body had fallen into a state of hibernation, just as I had been sleeping for the past four hundred years.
I tried with all my will and might to awaken that energy, but I could feel that my body never so much as considered the possibility of waking up. I knew why it was hibernating like this, and I knew why it had not given a sign of its great power: It did not recognize the person that held it as its owner – or didn’t see me as qualified.
“Does that really make sense?” I asked myself. I had been keenly looking forward to the day that I would hold my original form once more, yet this impediment was unforeseen.
My body had rejected me.
It was greatly embarrassing, and I almost slumped to the floor, defeated.
My head was throbbing and aflame, for the situation was truly unexpected.
‘Take me to my mother right now!’
And all the while, the idiotic boy had kept moaning loudly, which had made my head hurt even more.
“Shut up.”
What? What!? You can say anything, but you tell me to shut up? Hoho, this guy! Do you even know who I am? Huh? Huh!? I am..
And that fat pig’s soul yammered and screamed on and on.
My head even grew cold with the pain as he started whining in earnest.
“I know who you are. You are an idiot who spitted your body with a sword, and became trapped in that sword after doing nothing but evil through your entire life.”
“Yes! Who are you? Huh? And why doesn’t anyone help me!?’
“See, no one but I can hear your voice.”
‘So, what are you waiting for, guy! Go ahead and pull me out of this thing. If you save, you will be the savior of this country! You will be the benefactor of the kingdom!”
“Be the benefactor of a horny traitor dog, you mean,” I growled at the prince and his indecent shouting. “From now on, you speak only when spoken to, say nothing if I ask nothing.”
Do you dare to order me, Adrian Leonberger!?’
“I guess you haven’t figured out the situation, then. Go ahead, keep making noise, and I’ll just turn around, walk right out, and leave you here. Then you will have to rot beneath the palace for your entire sorry life, staring only at the backs of palace knights who can’t hear you talking even if you talked for a hundred days straight.”
It was a childish threat to make, but it worked wonders.
‘Oh no, no! Okay, okay. I’ll be quiet, just don’t go!’ the prince begged as he realized his situation.
It was natural for him to be so desperate, and it must have been terrible for him to exist all this time, alone and unheard, in a place where nothing much happened. I knew that sensation better than anyone, so I could fully understand Adrian’s feelings. Still, just because I understood his loneliness did not mean that I sympathized with his situation. The harm had he had inflicted on this world in his short life was enormous. On a lesser level, he had made life difficult for the ‘underprivileged class’, as he had called them. He had insulted, assaulted, molested, and plainly tormented them. On a larger stage, he had ruined the lives of hundreds of knights and had destroyed the only hope the kingdom had for a more independent future.
Even after all those things, and being stuck in a sword for more than a year, the guy had not reflected on his actions and his personality at all. How can anyone sympathize with such a man? It might sound selfish and shameless for me to state this from within his body, but I believed it better for him to be stuck inside a sword instead of being unleashed upon the world. And no, I didn’t want to return to things as they were. Looking at my body, I didn’t want to go back to being a sword at that moment.
“Since when have you been in there?” I asked him, to gain a more factual understanding of the situation and the nature of our transference.
‘I was swinging this sword, and then the fronts of my eyes turned all white, and when I woke up, I was inside the sword.’
His process exactly resembled my own when I had entered his body. 3333
“Did you see any strange or special signs, or experience unusual feelings?”
‘No! I was just trapped in here, waiting for someone to come and help me.’
I asked a few more questions but gained very little concrete information from them.
‘I don’t know. It’s been so long that I’ve been in here. I don’t know what this is, or how this happened.’
He obviously knew nothing. The fact that we had fallen asleep and then awoke in different bodies, our souls which had been switched, the reason for such a thing happening: Adrian knew nothing at all. He had just woke up, the same idiot as always, in my body.
“You’re not really helpful.”
Uh… okay, you know, maybe that guy, the ambassador of the empire, knows something.’
What he said was truly unexpected.
‘See, that Marquis of Montpellier told me where the Dragon Slayer was, and told me how to get to it.’
Montpellier’s filthy name had sprung up from a truly unexpected source.
‘If I had the power of the Dragon Slayer, I would have been able to recover everything that I had lost after my father said I was a royal enemy.
His words made me feel as if I had been whipped across the back.
“Tell me more, tell me everything.”
‘A few days before my accident, the Marquis of Montpellier came to me… wait guy, so, will you bring me out of here if I tell you all of this?’
“I’ll listen to you and think about it, so just say what you were about to say.”
The idiot spoke on then, talking about all the events for a long time. And when I had heard all his stories, I was wracked by outrageous laughter.
I kept laughing at the vanity and absurdity of it all, laughing so much that I became embarrassed. The stupid prince carefully asked me a question.
‘But who the hell are you anyway? I’ve never heard of a guy like you being in the royal family.’
“Oh, who am I?”
pondered his question for a moment, being in his body as I was.
“I am just a simple shit-cleaner.”
‘What is that, guy? But you
“My lord, your time is up!”
Before I could solve the final questions that haunted my mind, Nogisa’s call came from beyond the door.
“My lord, I’m coming in,”
It was a statement rather than a request, and the door swung open as the old knight and the palace knights came in.
“Put the sword back.”
I took turns looking at the knights, then at my body, and finally, let go of it.
“Come now, wait! Wait!’
“I’m coming back soon.”
‘No! You promised, you promised!’ came Adrian’s urgent cry, but I had already turned away.
I guessed that it was beyond my ability to pull the first prince from my body, but it would surely not be so difficult to at least get him out of that dark room.
Of course, I had to pass the king’s test first.
Gwain’s mind swam with complicated considerations. After he had arrived at the palace, he had no idea what exactly his mood was. He had endured many hard days. All the while, he had believed there to be a strong king who would never yield before foreign powers – and loyal and wise nobles who followed this king. Gwain had imagined him and his comrades standing so proudly before that king.
The reality was a stark contrast to his imagined world.
Even though the king still sat on his throne, the imperial dog had acted as he pleased, and no one had disagreed.
There had been no loyal and wise nobles, as he had imagined. The people who he had found were weak and succumbed before the prestige of the empire.
Even the king… even he was corrupted.
The imperial ambassador freely interfered in the domestic affairs of the kingdom, intimidating nobles before Gwain’s very eyes. All the while, the king upon his throne did nothing.
When the ambassador had announced the unsealing of the Spire, the king had even rejoiced. As if he was a dog that had been thrown a bone from its master.
Gwain was able to grasp such things in his mind. It was indeed a tremendous change, to once more train wizards and employ the unsealed lore of the tower. Any king would be glad to gain such an opportunity to make his realm prosper.
It was in his heart that Gwain could not understand and tolerate the king’s attitude
Gwain had not broken his rings while vomiting blood to see the terrible sight of a weak man on the throne. No, he had wanted to be as strong as the king, for he had believed the man to be so.
But that was not the case.
Gwain had seen with his own eyes how delighted the king had been with the bones that the empire had so casually tossed his way. For a man who once loved the king, such images were disrespectful, irreverent ideas. He had tried to erase them from his mind, but that gaping portal of the true state of affairs could not be closed once it had opened in his brain. His comrades had also been silent.
Just by looking at their faces, Gwain knew that the same windows had been cut into their souls.
I should have died that day. If I had ended my life rather than breaking my rings… I would never have had to bear such a rotten heart as now beats inside my breast!
The first prince had looked over the walls of the first palace with a gloomy cast to his face and had then gone off, saying that there was something he had to do. He returned.
Prince Adrian’s expression was hard as stone, as always, yet somehow it was harder still.
“Your Highness, what happened?” greeted a palace knight with a graceful appearance and an anxious face.
Didn’t he say that his name was Carls Ulrich?
“Send someone to fetch the Marquis of Montpellier.”
“Highness?”
“I want to see him, now.”
When Carls Ulrich simply stood wide-eyed after the prince had given the order, it was repeated.
“Make sure he comes here right now.”
Not even the king could so carelessly treat the empire’s ambassador, yet the first prince was summoning the man as if he was his subordinate.
“Your Highness would like him to come, here?” Carls asked the First Prince, obviously having the same concerns as Gwain.
“Oh, he will come,” said the first prince without hesitation, “if he doesn’t want to die.”
Surprised by the fury and bluntness of such words, Carls Ulrich cast nervous glances around him, worried about who else had heard the prince’s words.
“Well,” Carls mumbled as his gaze fell on Gwain.
Gwain pretended to have heard nothing and watched as a butcher was carrying a slaughtered sheep by the hook in the capital’s distant streets.
One of the palace knights left the First Palace, and not long after that, he returned.
The ambassador of the empire had come with him.
The face of the ambassador, a man who could dare to challenge the king openly, was terrified.
“Carls,” the first prince softly said as the marquis entered, “close all the doors.”
‘Gdoof!’ came the heavy sound as the palace knights closed and barred the entrance to the First Palace.
“Well, Your Highness?” asked Montpellier as his pale face stared alternately at the sealed doors and the first prince.
“I will give you your last chance,” came the prince’s cold voice as he studied every line and crinkle upon the ambassador’s face.
“Your Highness, what are you saying?”
“What did you hide from me?”
The prince settled his hand on his sword’s pommel.
“What more do you know? Tell me everything.”
The first prince’s voice had grown even softer, sounding ever bloodier.
“Your Highness, I don’t know what Your Highness is talking about!”
“The royal sword.”
The imperial ambassador visibly stiffened at those words.
“Tell me what I was trying to do when I held the Dragon Slayer.”
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