Awakening (4)
Dietrich marched toward the main manor with resolute, commanding strides.
Having sent the bulk of his forces away to counter the raid by the Judge, Viscount Alec had left only a skeleton guard behind—a garrison that had no hope of barring Dietrich's path.
“Out of my way!”
Dietrich's blade swept through those standing before him like autumn leaves scattered by a gale. By the time he reached the entrance of the main building, he had not spilled a drop of his own blood, nor had he broken a single bead of sweat.
Things were scarcely any different once he breached the interior. Most of the soldiers who moved to intercept him were so thoroughly outclassed they could not withstand even a single blow. What finally brought Dietrich's advance to an abrupt halt was, unexpectedly, the household servants.
“Do you have any idea what Viscount Alec has done?” Dietrich demanded.
Was the viscount surprisingly beloved by his people? Or had he simply concealed his true nature with consummate skill?
“We know,” one of them answered.
“Then why...?”
“Because he is the master we chose to believe in and follow.”
After subduing them without dealing fatal harm, Dietrich pressed forward once more. They must simply be terrified that the fallout will land on them later, he rationalized. He chose to understand it that way.
Ascending to the second floor, Dietrich crossed the meticulously kept corridor and thrust the double doors open. There, he laid eyes upon the very secret Viscount Alec had kept hidden away.
“Halt.”
“...”
As Dietrich froze in stunned horror at the sight before him, Viscount Alec returned. Panting heavily, the viscount leveled his sword directly at Dietrich.
Dietrich cast a quick glance over his shoulder to survey his surroundings. There were no reinforcements. The viscount had come back entirely alone. He had returned in secret because this was a guilty truth he could not share even with his closest confidants—and Dietrich had already seen what Alec wished so desperately to conceal.
“Viscount Alec. Do you realize what you have done?”
“I beg of you, turn around and leave.”
“Your wife is already dead! Yet you—!”
“Silence! She is still alive!” Viscount Alec roared.
Yet Dietrich had already verified the grim truth: the viscountess was a corpse. Her flesh had not decayed, preserved as it was by holy power, but her breath had ceased long ago. It was an outcome far more gruesome than even Yohan had anticipated.
“My wife has merely fallen into a deep sleep,” Alec insisted. “And even that is something the Prophet will remedy.”
“No power exists in this world that can resurrect the dead.”
“I told you she is not dead.”
The words rang out with chilling stillness. Unconsciously, Dietrich stepped backward before that quiet, simmering madness. The cowering, subservient middle-aged man who had bowed before Yohan was nowhere to be seen.
“...Even if such a miracle were possible, you have crossed a line you can never uncross. Even if your wife were to truly wake, could you stand before her with a clear conscience?”
“Ha...! Sir Dietrich, since you clearly do not understand, allow me to enlighten you.”
Viscount Alec tightened his grip on his hilt, squaring off against him.
“The very fact that I was granted this fief is proof that I have already snuffed out countless lives.”
Viscount Alec was a war hero—a veteran commander who had slaughtered innumerable souls across the Empire's many campaigns.
“I was a sinner from the start, yet my wife accepted a wretch like me.”
“That has nothing to do with—!”
“It has everything to do with it! Has the Empire ever waged a single war where the innocent were spared? I have butchered innocents all my life.”
“That is mere sophistry!”
“Then let me ask you: Sir Dietrich, can you swear before heaven that you took no lives to reach this room?”
“...”
“Can you state with absolute certainty that every single one of them deserved to die?”
“I repeat: do not try to deceive me with your sophistry!”
Viscount Alec merely scoffed at Dietrich's fierce denunciation.
“Naive.”
“...”
“Far too naive!”
Clang!
Their blades tangled in a violent clash. The impact far exceeded Dietrich's expectations, sending him reeling backward before he could even steady his footing.
“I do not justify my sins,” Alec said coldly. “If someone comes to pass judgment on me, I have no intention of claiming it is unjust.”
“...”
“Sophistry? Yes, precisely. It was sophistry, and you are not wrong in thinking I sought to shake your resolve.”
Whoosh!
Having repelled Dietrich with a single thrust, Alec flicked his sword clean with practiced ease. He showed no intention of pursuing immediately.
“What I meant to say is that your conviction is so utterly pathetic it wavers before such trifling rhetoric!”
“Kh!”
“If you intend to bar my path with nothing more than cheap chivalry...” The point of Alec's sword locked onto Dietrich once more. “...you will never stop me.”
It was an outright declaration of war.
Clash!
Viscount Alec was terrifyingly strong. His blade dominated the exchange from the outset, leaving Dietrich scrambling helplessly just to ward off the relentless flurry of strikes.
“Haa...”
His breath had raggedly unraveled long ago. Dietrich knew in his gut that he could not defeat the viscount; the gap in their martial caliber was far too wide. Yet beyond that, something else weighed heavily upon him.
Every single strike is so heavy.
The weight behind their swords was fundamentally different. The man before him was undeniably an evil soul—a piece of scum who stooped to any atrocity to achieve his selfish ends. Yet how could the blade of such a wretched man carry so much weight?
...No, it isn't that his sword is heavy.
Alec's sophistry had achieved its purpose; it had successfully pierced Dietrich's thoughts. Alec had called him naive, and Alec was right. Dietrich had swung his sword under the flat, unexamined assumption that the wicked must simply be struck down. It wasn't that the viscount's blade was heavy—it was that Dietrich's own sword was utterly weightless.
“Hup!”
“Gah?!”
Clang!
Unable to withstand the brute force of Alec's blow once more, Dietrich was sent skidding across the floor. Though he had avoided taking a mortal wound, the continuous onslaught was steadily grinding down his stamina.
“Ugh!”
Scrambling to get back to his feet, Dietrich's knee buckled beneath him. His vision swam. A suffocating sense of powerlessness washed over him, and as he looked upon Alec's demonic, murderously focused posture, he bit down hard on his lip.
“I heard Viscount Alec is pretty tough.”
Dietrich recalled the offhand remark Yohan had made before sending him here. Had his senior anticipated that things would turn out like this?
“Then...” Dietrich murmured, his mind hazy from blood loss. How am I supposed to win?
Yet precisely because he was slipping into a semi-conscious trance, he was able to reflect with startling clarity.
“If you don't want to die, you'd better do whatever it takes. Don't worry about picking your methods.”
It sounded like ordinary advice, yet it had come from Yohan—the man who seemed to foresee every twist of fate. A path forward had to exist.
Dietrich watched Alec advance with measured steps. He had prepared nothing. His only tool was the sword in his hand. With no terrain or objects to exploit, what methods could he possibly employ?
“This has dragged on too long,” Alec said. “I must dispose of you quickly and return to the front line.”
“Kuh!”
Dietrich broke into a desperate sprint. His grip had lost all strength; in this condition, catching another blow from Alec's sword was entirely out of the question. Survival was his sole priority.
Darting erratically across the chamber, Dietrich's mind raced at breakneck speed. And finally, he arrived at a malicious, uncharacteristic scheme—an act so dishonorable his normal self never would have entertained it.
The instant Viscount Alec closed the distance to corner him—
“What?!”
Dietrich threw his body backward in a desperate leap. It was not a great distance. With Alec's deadly reflexes, the viscount could easily have severed Dietrich's head before his boots even left the floorboards.
Except you can't.
That was the method Dietrich seized upon. He had spent his dwindling breath running around the room solely to engineer this singular moment. Directly behind Dietrich sat the bed—and upon it still lay the corpse of Viscount Alec's wife. He had positioned himself to use the viscountess as a human shield.
For a man who clung desperately to a formless god solely to save his wife, this was a checkmate.
“How dare you...!” Alec hissed.
If he swung his blade now, he would surely fell Dietrich, but blood would splatter across the bed. Alec could not bear the thought of soiling her sanctuary. Dietrich had gambled everything on the morbidly immaculate state of the room.
In the end, Viscount Alec was forced to arrest his descending blade mid-swing. And the price for that hesitation was catastrophic.
“Dieee!”
The moment his boots grazed the floorboards, Dietrich hurled himself forward with every ounce of strength remaining in his limbs. That roar contained neither chivalry nor righteous indignation—only a raw, primal struggle to survive.
Whoosh!
Dietrich's blade plummeted toward Alec's exposed neck.
“Do you think you're the first whelp I've ever put down?!”
Clang!
Even from an awkward, broken stance, Viscount Alec managed to intercept the blow. The composure he had maintained dissolved into a bellow of pure rage.
“Urgh!”
Dietrich's decisive strike had been parried. To be sure, Alec had not deflected it cleanly; his balance was severely compromised. Even so, the seasoned general moved faster than Dietrich.
What do I do?
Dietrich watched the viscount's counter-thrust spear toward his heart. His own sword had rebounded wide; there was no conceivable way to bring it back in time to defend.
How? What can I possibly do?!
There was no way out. The duel was effectively decided. Yet in that sliver of an instant, Dietrich pushed his mind beyond its limits to claw his way out of death's grip.
Snap.
It felt as though something severed cleanly inside his mind.
Sching.
A fraction of a second before Alec's sword could pierce Dietrich's chest, a faint, red line traced itself across the viscount's throat.
“What...?!”
Alec aborted his thrust and staggered backward, clamping a frantic hand over his neck as blood welled up between his fingers. Dietrich glared at him with cold, chilling eyes.
“Khh...”
The wound was severe. Carved deep into Alec's throat was the exact strike Dietrich had initially aimed. That swing had unquestionably failed—yet Alec's neck was sliced open along the trajectory of that very attack.
“I see...”
Alec slowly lowered his hand from his throat. Blood spilled freely over his tunic in dark crimson sheets. It was a severe wound, but with enough time, a master could have stemmed the bleeding. Yet Alec knew instantly: this wound cannot be healed.
“So that is why the Prophet considered you the greatest threat... and sought so desperately to sway you...”
[Trace]
Dietrich's innate ability: the solitary variable capable of subduing Cult after his future awakening with holy relics.
It was the power to summon the past into the present. To manifest an attack once more along the trajectory of a previously swung blade; to render wounds inflicted upon an opponent entirely unhealable; to etch the scars he left upon the world as permanent, irrevocable traces.
Realizing his death was upon him, Viscount Alec let his sword slip from his grasp. Clattering to the floor, it was abandoned. Dietrich, sprawled across the ground in total exhaustion, could only watch.
Rather than making a final attempt to take Dietrich down with him, the viscount dragged his feet toward the bed where his wife lay. Then, with his dying breath, he uttered a single phrase:
“I am sorry.”
Thud!
Leaving behind those words, Viscount Alec collapsed lifelessly to the floor. What that final apology truly meant, Dietrich could not comprehend.
Dietrich lay thinking.
Viscount Alec had undeniably been a sinner—a criminal guilty of unforgivable atrocities who richly deserved his punishment. That reality remained unshakable.
Yet he had not been the cartoonish villain Dietrich had envisioned. At the first news that his territory was under threat, he had mobilized every last soldier to defend it. Servants who were merely hired hands had risked their lives to obstruct Dietrich for his sake. In that respect at least, he had been a devoted lord.
Of course, everyone had their reasons. Who in this world lived without a story? But Dietrich had never once bothered to look beneath the surface. He had always taken it for granted that he stood on the side of justice, and anyone opposing him was simply a vile criminal.
“Was I really no different, then?”
Alec had asked whether Dietrich could swear that not a single innocent had died by his hand. Dietrich didn't know. He had never even cared to look. He had cut them down simply because they were henchmen of the enemy standing in his way.
He had viewed Eden the same way—as nothing more than senseless terrorists who reveled in destruction.
“...”
Now he knew better. They were monsters who held what people held most dear hostage, pulling their strings from the shadows. The frog in the well had finally looked up to realize how vast the sky truly was. The world was far darker and more terrifying than the neat, simple realm he thought he understood.
Now he was forced to think. He had to think. He needed to understand how weightlessly he had swung his sword without contemplation. He had to feel the gravity of that responsibility and carry its crushing weight.
“Cult...”
Dietrich hailed from the slums. He had been the leader of the slum children. Yet back then, he had been nothing more than a frightened child.
“Perhaps I was...”
When their friends were murdered, Dietrich had stood frozen, pale and useless. In the wake of that nightmare, the one who handled the burials and laid their dead companions into the earth had not been their so-called leader, but Cult.
From that day on, Cult had taken the initiative, resolving every crisis they faced. Cult had quickly been adopted into the Ereticus Marquisate, providing for the surviving friends who still wandered the slums. Yes, everything had seemed to work out.
“...I was just a coward, wasn't I?”
Dietrich realized it with a pang of bitter shame: from that very day, he had stopped thinking for himself. Because everything sorted itself out whenever he did what his capable friend told him to do. Because all he had to do was follow quietly behind. And so, he had surrendered the burden of thought.
Yet now, he had to think. Because he had finally seen his own cowardice. He was no righteous hero. The moment he seized an opening by using Alec's beloved wife as a shield, he understood that at his core, he was no different from Viscount Alec.
The world was far from simple, and the boundary between good and evil was hopelessly blurred. That was why he had to constantly question and ponder what was truly right.
“I...”
His head throbbed with a piercing ache, as though the physical architecture of his brain was rewiring itself around the awakening of his innate ability. Yet Dietrich did not close his eyes to it. He refused to stop thinking.
He began to revisit all the truths he had averted his eyes from, re-examining the memories he had cast aside.
“I won't lean on you anymore, Cult.”
His thoughts returned to the moment he had first found Viscount Alec. He had trusted Cult with blind, uncritical devotion. But now, even he understood.
“I have to fulfill my own duty, too.”
He could no longer live as a man who merely leaned on the backs of others.