Chapter 48 : Chapter 48
Chapter 48. I Will Set Her Soul Free (3)
If Blanc hadn't stepped up and cut the black rope connected to Ciella, she wouldn't have been able to escape easily from the Evil.
The monster, having absorbed human negativity through the host named Ciella for a long time, became an existence that wouldn't be easily exorcised no matter which priest from the Goddess Order came.
It was possible because it was Ciella, the brightest flower in the Felix Kingdom. Because the stronger the light, the darker the shadow hiding in it.
However, the light approaching the monster now was rushing fiercely with the momentum to burn even such shadows.
"……!"
The monster, feeling an unusual energy from Blanc, had already gathered its tentacles and placed them by its side.
However, it was impossible to block Blanc’s Single Point Breakthrough containing the world with just that.
Moreover, the essences dwelling in Blanc’s sword and body right now were all things standing at the antipode of Evil. Things that did not allow the existence of Evil in this world.
The White Thunderbolt riding only a straight line as if it didn't care about any obstacles.
Blanc’s charge forcibly pierced even the Gravity Field Berger made and stretched out in a straight line toward the monster.
It looked as if a white lightning bolt jumped over the ground and rushed in.
"Wicked thing!"
The monster twisted its body this way and that trying to hide its true eye, but Blanc’s left eye burning black had already accurately captured the target.
The White Thunderbolt poured down like a meteor shower and accurately pierced the monster’s true eye.
SCREEEEECH!
The monster screamed in pain as its existence itself was pierced by Blanc’s sword, but Blanc did not even give time for that scream to spread into the air.
"Hwaaaap!"
Blanc not only stabbed the gathered essence toward the monster but fired it with all his might.
"……!"
The monster swung its tentacles trying to escape as if in pain, but that ended merely as a wish.
Because the essences formed on Blanc’s sword were already splitting the monster’s tentacles and burning its flesh.
"Disappear!"
The pure white light emitted by Blanc’s will filled the laboratory and, unable to overcome that energy, pierced through the wall and went out.
The white light destroyed Berger’s solidly built laboratory, left the Neudorf mansion, and stretched endlessly toward the moon in the night sky.
***
"Haa…… Haa……"
Thick drops of sweat flowed down Blanc’s chin.
With the strike just now, Blanc exhausted all his energy.
And the monster had the ‘reason’ it could exist in the real world destroyed.
Indeed, it was as Tarania said.
"The words that it manifests again if not accurately pierced were true."
The monster trembling while pierced by Blanc’s sword.
Despite being hit by such a tremendous attack just now, it was reconstructing its body again.
Precisely, it was failing to reconstruct.
The monster was rapidly repeating its body being constructed and then crumbling again, becoming smaller and smaller.
The dark gray body that had hundreds of eyes became smaller and twisted, now having less than ten eyes.
"You look pathetic."
Blanc tried to detach the monster pierced on the sword by swinging it.
But at that moment, black mist began to escape from the few remaining eyes of the monster.
And that mist floated into the air.
"……!"
And was rapidly absorbed into Tiday’s Brand engraved on Blanc’s left shoulder.
"Oh no!"
Blanc always observed situations with a cold gaze, but not right now.
As the energy of Evil entered his body, even Blanc couldn't help but be flustered.
Fortunately, it happened so instantly and the group lost their vision momentarily due to the light Blanc emitted, so no one saw that scene, but.
"……Baron."
Only Tarania was looking straight at that scene.
Blanc’s flustered gaze and Tarania’s astonished gaze met in the air.
Today, Blanc liberated Ciella’s soul from Evil.
"……It seems we need a conversation. Baron."
And obtained the energy of Evil he did not want.
***
In the late night after the nightmare-like event ended.
Blanc was carrying the unconscious Ciella and heading to her bedroom.
And Berger and Tarania were following behind.
Although he couldn't easily entrust his precious daughter to a strange man, all the Neudorf knights were injured, and since what happened in Berger’s laboratory just now shouldn't be known to others if possible right now, there was no choice but for Blanc to carry the unconscious Ciella.
To settle this situation smoothly, it would be possible only after creating an excuse and a story that could at least explain the situation.
"……Baron Blanc. Is your body okay?"
"Do not worry. It is more than enough to escort Lady Ciella."
At Blanc’s answer, Berger smacked his lips and was gauging his reaction.
Berger, the Meritorious Noble of the Felix Kingdom and the head of the Alchemy School, was doing so.
Berger was agonizing.
No matter if Blanc swore a knight’s oath through Aselheit’s sword, he was a body that had to raise a family.
Since Blanc had two positions as a knight and a noble, he could sufficiently waver between them.
How many humans in the world said two things with one mouth?
Berger had seen countless people who betrayed promises for their own benefit.
After agonizing for a long time like that, Berger barely opened his mouth only now when they reached the front of Ciella’s room.
"Baron Blanc, about today’s matter……"
He confessed his anxiety.
Although Blanc had long figured out what Berger wanted to say right now, he waited for him to finish his words.
"I hope…… you keep the secret. Can you do that?"
Berger looked at Blanc with earnest eyes.
If this matter spread outside, the Neudorf family would suffer irreversible damage.
Ciella Neudorf. Because there was almost no one in the Felix Kingdom who didn't know she was Berger’s cherished daughter.
Even if Berger and the Neudorf family feigned ignorance, all the aftermath resulting from this would become a burden Ciella had to bear.
If that happened, his daughter would fall into a deep abyss carrying a heavy burden she couldn't handle.
Furthermore, the moment the fact that Evil was sleeping inside her body became known, not only would the Neudorf family’s face and prestige, and the various businesses they were conducting falter greatly, but it was obvious that the two families Ciella married into would rise up.
To marry them to Neudorf’s precious daughter, they must have offered the most precious sons in their families.
If the families who lost precious sons akin to heirs found out this fact, it would be no different from giving them a justification to start a war against Neudorf without any complaints.
To smooth this over, Neudorf would have to give them very many things and give up just as much.
If it came to that, it was the best and supreme move to somehow persuade and embrace Blanc right here and bring him into their fold.
Blanc opened Ciella’s door without answering Berger’s question immediately.
Then he carefully laid Ciella on her bed as if handling a young child.
The moonlight shining through the window was illuminating her face. Although it was a pale face, perhaps because the Evil was removed, it felt as if the gloomy and ominous feeling coloring one side of her face had disappeared.
Bathed in moonlight, her radiant face exuded a charm truly befitting her former title as the number one beauty of the Felix Kingdom—the God-blessed daughter of Berger.
"Count."
Blanc, who was looking at that face for a moment, turned his body toward Count Berger.
"I am a body that has already sworn a knight’s oath to keep the secret."
The backlight of the moonlight shining through the window colored Blanc’s face looking at Berger darkly.
Thus, what was visible were only Blanc’s two eyes flashing even in the darkness.
Blanc had not yet fully recovered from the excitement of fighting a life-threatening battle with the Evil that escaped from Ciella’s soul just moments ago.
In Berger’s view, Blanc’s gaze had not yet calmly settled down, reminding him of a beast’s gaze.
So he was momentarily overwhelmed.
By Blanc’s gaze shining while harboring darkness in his face.
"I fully understand the Count’s feelings, but please know that if you harbor doubts about the oath I made any longer, it is the same as shaking the roots of my soul."
"Under…… stood."
Although Berger was momentarily overwhelmed by the spirit Blanc emitted, he gathered his mind again.
"Thank you."
Then he expressed gratitude to Blanc with sincerity.
If he hadn't been here today, Ciella would have lived carrying Evil all her life.
And that Evil would have eaten away at Ciella’s soul and body, leading her to ruin and eventually shattering Ciella into pieces.
Blanc saved his daughter from the promised ruin today.
He was Ciella’s savior and the Neudorf family’s benefactor.
"I will definitely repay you."
At Berger’s sincere words, Blanc answered with a smile.
"Well. I do not quite know what the Count is talking about."
Blanc passed Berger and stopped in front of Ciella’s door.
Then he turned his head and looked back at Berger.
"Did something happen today?"
"……!"
As soon as those words ended, Blanc turned his body and walked out the hallway.
As if nothing really happened, showing no lingering attachment.
Like that, Blanc was walking out the dark hallway of Neudorf.
Only the moonlight shining through the window illuminated the backs of Blanc and Tarania following behind Blanc.
***
The white light shot high into the sky piercing the Neudorf mansion in the middle of the night was bound to become a topic of conversation for people.
The Felix Royal Family and the Cardinal of the Goddess Order demanded an accurate explanation for the white light that pierced the night sky in the late night, and Berger Neudorf responded to it.
"I announce glad tidings to alchemists and wizards all over the world. I, Berger Neudorf, succeeded in reproducing Moonlit Grass. The beam of light stretching toward the moon is an event that occurred while conducting experiments related to Moonlit Grass."
Regarding this incident, Count Berger, the head of the Neudorf family, upheld the will of the Royal Family and the Order and released an official statement through the Alchemy School.
'Success in reproduction of Moonlit Grass.'
The people of Baltimere nodded their heads hearing that news.
Because the light stretching into the night sky felt majestic to anyone who saw it.
If it was light generated by Moonlit Grass, people accepted it saying it could be sufficiently so.
And cheered.
The most recent appearance of Moonlit Grass, which only appeared in legends, was by Baron Blanc Cadmus, called the Knight of the Moonlit Grass.
And Count Berger Neudorf, who inherited the legend of the Moonlit Grass seed, finally made the legend a reality.
Like that, the event that happened in the Neudorf mansion in the middle of the night was perceived by people as an incident due to experiment failure that alchemists often caused along with the appearance of Moonlit Grass.
Like that, the truth was covered up.
The people who were in Berger’s laboratory that day took Aselheit’s sword as a grave, pushed the truth of that day into a coffin, turned their oaths into soil, and buried it deep inside the sword.
Only the moon floating in the sky was the sole witness who witnessed this event but did not make an oath.
However, since the moon has no mouth.
Eventually, the truth related to Ciella will never leak out to the world forever.