Chapter 162: Past (12)
TL/ED – Miso
“…”
The knight silently leveled her sword.
Of course, she was clearly not in any normal state. The arm holding the sword was trembling, and blood was seeping out from beneath the helm.
Even so, she was a knight. Sharmia gulped and cautiously backed away.
She had learned the bare minimum of self-defense before. But the self-defense she’d practiced under perfect protection was closer to gymnastics than actual combat, and naturally it would never work against a knight.
Watching the knight advance slowly, like a wounded grizzly bear, Sharmia carefully conjured a flame behind her hand.
It had been less than two days since she’d learned magic. A flame with less lethality than a dagger was the only means of resistance she had, and if it didn’t work, she would simply be captured.
‘…Will it even end at just being captured?’
A knight dispatched by the Imperial Household would never kill a Princess like herself. She knew that as a matter of course, but… for some reason, the murderous intent in the knight’s gaze didn’t seem like this would end with a simple arrest.
The knight bent her knees. The sword traced a trajectory aimed precisely to pierce Sharmia’s throat, and…
Sharmia flinched, even knowing her resistance was meaningless.
And then.
“…Kuh, hk…”
-Thud.
The knight collapsed face-first onto the ground and vomited black blood. All the force that had been loaded into the sword was spent as it embedded itself in the ground a few meters from the knight’s hand.
“…Huh?”
Sharmia tilted her head, then observed the knight from a distance without approaching.
Looking more closely… the violently heaving back, and the leg bent at an unnatural angle.
The knight’s condition was far worse than what she had initially seen.
“What on earth did he do to you…?”
It was most likely the work of that unidentified man, but…
Knowing that he used only Telekinesis, she couldn’t begin to understand it.
Even with her limited knowledge of magic, she’d heard enough to know that Telekinesis was nothing more than a feeble magic unsuitable for combat. Granting freedom and power to an invisible force was supposed to be impossible.
And yet it was a magic versatile enough to earn the title of high-level magic, but… to reduce a knight to this state with Telekinesis alone?
Not even the master of the Magic Tower could easily accomplish such a thing.
Sharmia felt goosebumps prickle her skin as she backed away again.
In any case, this was an opportunity.
“I’m sorry. I have somewhere I need to be.”
Having said that to the knight, Sharmia gave a brief bow and began to retreat.
She wasn’t sure how long the Assassin she’d seen could keep that monster of a mage occupied. But it probably wouldn’t be very long.
Now was likely the only chance she had to escape, but…
“…Cough.”
“…”
As if to seize Sharmia by the ankle, the knight coughed up blood once more.
The rise and fall of the knight’s back, which had been moving until now, was growing fainter.
Soon, her breathing would stop.
It was a fact so obvious that even someone without experience could tell.
‘This is none of my concern.’
Sharmia steeled herself and turned away.
Perhaps this was for the best for that knight.
Live long enough, and you’ll witness terrible things. It might be better to just die.
Perhaps that was the best solution. Become the Princess, kill every person in the Empire so that none would have to witness the calamity.
What she herself was trying to do wasn’t all that different. It was just that she didn’t want to die…
“…Ngh.”
She faltered for a moment, realizing the contradiction in her own logic.
Telling others that death was better for them, while searching for a way to avoid death herself.
After a moment of inner conflict, Sharmia clenched her jaw and glanced back over her shoulder.
“…”
In the end, she let out a sigh, turned around, and went back to the knight.
-Riiip! She rolled the face-down knight onto her back, tore her skirt into makeshift bandages, and began removing the knight’s Armor piece by piece.
And then her eyes went wide.
“Y-you’re a woman.”
And a girl-soldier, not a boy-soldier, who looked only a little older than herself at that.
Remembering the knight’s movements, Sharmia tilted her head. As far as she knew, there was no knight talented enough to reach the level of Heaven’s Judgement Knight at such a young age.
But her contemplation stopped the moment she saw the bruises that had turned not just purple, but black.
“No, seriously, what did he do to you…”
Pulling a nearby tree branch to use as an emergency splint, Sharmia provided first aid, and the more she treated the knight, the more she realized the absurdity of it all.
These injuries weren’t from being beaten with Telekinesis. They looked more like the knight’s entire body had been crushed in some massive press. That was the kind of wound this was.
What would someone even have to do to make this possible? Hold the entire body with Telekinesis and compress it? She kept tilting her head in bewilderment, but her hands never stopped.
One small mercy amidst the misfortune was that, since the damage was closer to being compressed and crushed rather than beaten, there were no major external wounds aside from shattered bones throughout the body and pulverized organs.
Of course, for an ordinary person, injuries like those wouldn’t merely be called “major wounds,” they would simply mean instant death.
But for a knight, as long as there were no severed or burned parts and the bleeding was simply from crushed organs, emergency treatment alone would bring a swift recovery. Knowing this, Sharmia focused not on stopping the bleeding, but on getting the body into a state where it could heal naturally.
“…Hah, kuh, gack…”
Indeed, simply laying the knight flat on her back and wrapping some bandages was enough for the knight to regain the ability to feel pain, and she clenched her teeth.
“If you can hear me, open your mouth.”
“…”
“Quickly. You don’t want to die of dehydration, do you?”
Once the knight realized Sharmia was treating her, she hesitated briefly, then parted her lips just slightly.
Trickle, trickle, trickle. As Sharmia poured water in, like feeding a baby bird, the knight’s expression finally eased. She tilted her head back and breathed softly.
At this point, recovery would take care of itself. As Sharmia let out a breath of relief and stood up…
“Kh, why…”
“Pardon?”
The knight, who had been eyeing Sharmia, posed a question.
“Why are you helping me… cough…”
“…It’s not like you did anything deserving of death.”
“I was trying to kill you. Did you not realize that?”
At the blunt declaration, Sharmia’s eyes went wide, and she froze in shock for a moment.
She was really trying to kill her?
Of course, she had sensed something was off, but… Sharmia backed away, then slowly nodded as her gaze fell on the Armor.
“So that’s why I didn’t recognize you.”
“…”
“You weren’t really a knight, were you? No, then how did you get that Armor…”
“I don’t know either. I received it from my Master.”
“Your Master? You mean that Assassin?”
“Yes.”
That was… unbelievable.
“Why, why?”
“…?”
When Sharmia voiced her bewilderment, the knight looked back at her as if she couldn’t understand the reaction.
“That Armor aside, judging from your movements, you must have skill close to a Heaven’s Judgement Knight, no, incomparably greater than any ordinary Assassin.”
“I fail to see what that has to do with anything.”
“What I mean is, why do you live as a slave when you have that kind of power?”
“…”
Sharmia simply couldn’t comprehend how someone with the strength to do anything she wished could live as a slave with a leash around her neck.
On top of that, participating in a Regicide against the Princess… that was no different from being ordered to commit suicide.
Why would she obey such an order when she possessed that kind of power? Seeing the look of disbelief on Sharmia’s face, the knight managed a strained smile.
“What would be left after I killed my Master?”
“Freedom to do anything you want.”
“Put another way, there would be nothing.”
The knight murmured, gazing up at the sky with dimming eyes.
“Without my Master, I am nothing but a purposeless killer.”
“So you’re saying that even though you have the power to resist, you’ll just keep going around killing people?”
“After I was sold from the Orphanage, the only thing I ever learned was how to kill and cut. The only ways I know to earn money are killing people for pay, stealing, or taking things by force.”
In her words, there was no burning hatred, only resignation.
As if she had given up on herself.
“The only way I know how to survive is by killing. If I don’t work for my Master, I’ll end up killing someone for money, or I’ll eat something and then kill someone because I can’t pay for it.”
“…You could become an Attendant to a knight. With your skill, surely…”
“My sword is not a knight’s sword.”
“What?”
“Once, I infiltrated as an Attendant for a knight assassination mission. The knight who had been silently watching the other Attendant candidates’ swordwork during the first test immediately drew his sword and tried to kill me the moment my demonstration began.”
Her tone was detached now, almost serene.
“Things went a bit differently than planned, but before I cut off his head, I asked him. Why did you try to kill me? Just like that.”
“…What was the reason?”
“He called it a demon’s sword. He said only those who target nothing but vital points, who kill people, who grip the sword in reverse, who have trained their entire lives for the sole purpose of killing their opponent even at the cost of their own life, only they wield a sword like that…”
“…”
“That is my nature. No matter how skilled I am with a sword, it is a sword that exists only to kill. It has been that way since birth, since I first began to train, and it can no longer be changed.”
Having finished, she glanced at the bewildered Sharmia.
“I volunteered for this Regicide.”
“…”
What the knight had first meant when she asked why Sharmia had helped her…
It was not a question of why Sharmia had helped her out of goodwill.
It was closer to fury, asking why Sharmia had kept her alive.
Sharmia was perceptive.
She could tell what this knight wanted.
“…”
Sharmia quietly drew a short blade from her waist.
The knight closed her eyes.
As if this was all she had been waiting for.
***
If there was even one good thing about Sharmia having fled…
It was that I no longer had to worry about her getting caught up in things.
-Crash!
“Hoo…”
Every tree in the vicinity had been crumpled, as if a typhoon had swept through.
Seeing the unconscious Assassin fall from midair and tumble across the ground, I felt a slight twinge of unease and surveyed the surroundings.
Somehow, I felt like I was becoming less of a human and more of a living natural disaster lately.
Strictly speaking, it had been that way for quite some time. Could something that observes and comprehends everything within a radius of several hundred meters, ready to intervene at any moment, truly be called human?
…Now was not the time for such rumination. Rummaging through the fallen Assassin’s belongings with Current Sense, I found a small mirror and pulled it out.
It was the hand mirror the Princess had been carrying. After glaring at it for a moment, I threw it against a nearby rock and shattered it.
“Tch.”
As expected, the future Sharmia had intervened.
Was the goal to turn Sharmia hostile toward me?
Just as I was about to act before she could erase the memories, I felt something register on my Current Sense.
“?”
Sharmia’s objective was approaching.
…This way.
“Well, well, you’ve already made quite the mess.”
A flippant old man’s face, cackling with amusement.
Azrael had followed my trail and tracked me here.
“Why are you here?”
“Just hold on a moment, would you?”
The moment I took a single step forward, Azrael flinched and raised his hands.
“I may have a reputation as a madman, but I have no intention of picking a fight with someone capable of this and hastening my own death. I’m not here to fight, so calm down.”
“I have no intention of killing you either. Just tell me why you’re here.”
“I’ve come to keep a promise.”
“…A promise?”
“Let me say this upfront: I don’t know anything. Beating it out of me would be pointless.”
Azrael opened with those cryptic words, then continued.
“I’ll give it back to you. Start with your name.”
“I have no idea what you’re offering to give back.”
“What do you think I’d be carrying around inside my own head?”
Azrael replied as if the answer were painfully obvious.
“Your memories, of course.”