Chapter 418
Chapter 418
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 18
Chapter Title: Railed (22)
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“This is that... basic mandatory training, right? Since you're part of the 14th Special Forces too.”
“What if you fall into a lethal trap and can't do anything. When every last resort is blocked, what are you gonna do?”
“Well. If you're gonna die anyway, you'd charge in and bite, right?”
“Sigh. That's why kids are...”
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A conversation with a comrade who's long dead now.
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“So, I'm talking about a situation where even ‘that’ isn't possible. The absolute last resort, the worst of the worst.”
“You roll the dice long enough, you're bound to get snake eyes sometimes.”
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A debate on how to act in the face of total failure.
Why did that memory resurface now?
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Everything felt like a dream.
The fading gunfire outside, the boiling cries of anguish too.
“Sorry it had to end this way.”
The gun barrel of Stationmaster Bedar aimed at me and Catreia.
“No one from this station will be reported as surviving.”
“Noble business always ends with mouths shut.”
“Until my fake corpse is exposed, I can be treated as dead.”
And,
“The snipers prepared by the family disappeared because of you, didn't they.”
“...You were involved?”
“If things had gone as planned, Volteus and the engineers wouldn't have torn each other apart like that. Brasthol prepared the snipers hoping the railship wouldn't be damaged. The lie about station staff being mobilized for construction—wasn't that preparation for it too.”
Even Catreia's calm voice facing down the gun barrel.
‘I was cautious.’
I trusted her affection, but hadn't ruled out the chance she was following family orders.
‘I observed her thoroughly.’
Height 155cm. Slender build. Muscles toned from housework. No aura sense, no traces of magical modification.
I'd exposed my back to her out of confidence that I could escape if needed.
But as always, Catreia knelt and cradled me, and I couldn't move.
“Half the payment was to come after the job, but one sheet is fine?”
“...It's fine.”
Bedar's eyes, resigned to his fate, brimmed with solidified grief.
His fingertips, heavy with so much, hooked the trigger.
“At least my daughter can escape this damned island.”
Bang—
Thud.
Roll—
The muzzle flashed.
And a severed head rolled across the floor.
Why couldn't I resist?
Catreia should have been ordinary—yet even when I twisted her fingers, pressed her joints and nerves, used every trick I'd planned, she hadn't budged.
Crunch.
The answer was right before my eyes.
The mana bullet leaving the barrel, the gun barrel itself, the icy sky-blue war scythe that beheaded Bedar in one strike.
Vivid weapons gleaming in chromatic shards, crystalline wings sprouting through Catreia's shoulder.
“Shard Knight.”
Shard Knight Catreia.
Something neither the real-world Professor nor the saint Professor of 3rd World knew.
A product existing only in 4th World, beyond my knowledge.
“...I meant to tell you someday. But not in a place like this, not in a situation like this.”
Setting me down, Catreia politely lifted her skirt hem and bowed.
“Servant of the great noble Brasthol family. Catreia, dispatched from the main house to monitor the shard production site of Polgrad.”
“All of it... lies?”
“I've never lied to you, young master. Not once.”
Even now, blocking my path and revealing her true self, Catreia's eyes filled with sorrow and affection.
“Nine years ago. They said the job assigned to me, a new maid in Brasthol, was to look after you.”
“That's true.”
“They said I was a monitor dispatched from Brasthol main house to this colony.”
“That too, of course.”
“Then you're saying at just ten years old, you became a Shard Knight and were assigned to monitor Delpiad Brasthol, the colony manager who's like a king of the territory? Entrusting a ten-year-old with spying on someone like Delpiad Brasthol? Where's the truth in that absurd story?”
Click!
Catreia knelt to meet my gaze. While I drew the pistol from Naelda, she made no move to stop me.
‘She deflected a fired bullet with that massive weapon.’
A puny arcane shooter like this pistol wouldn't even be a threat.
So I turned the muzzle to my temple.
Sorrow thick enough to rub off on my fingers crossed Catreia's face.
She could move faster than my trigger finger—why was she so shaken before this meaningless threat?
“...Move.”
“If you go now, you might get caught in Volteus Straug's rampage.”
“I'll shoot if you don't.”
“I won't lose you here, young master.”
“What's your real goal? Family orders? Or really, like you said, my survival? Or is this another hidden something from this godforsaken world I don't know!”
Perfect helplessness dawned on me.
‘It was a scenario I could never stop from the start.’
In other words, a tutorial. Placed atop events already too far progressed for me to intervene, my role was to watch and realize.
What was I meant to realize?
The system—an entity that predicts my actions via my traits and principles—brought me to Polgrad at this time, hoping I'd grasp something.
Why had the tireless, unflagging machine intelligence stopped sending [Join my plan] messages at some point?
Throb—
My head ached. That familiar stabbing pain, the helplessness once clinging like skin. Memories of powerlessness that demanded I do something—anything—because I could do nothing.
Memories of that powerless past, pushing me not to stop before an impassable wall.
“...There are things you must know to survive, young master.”
Catreia spoke.
Tales of things I didn't know.
Everything tied to today.
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Engineer George.
He betrayed for greed.
Born a hunchback, unlike other railship engineers, he had nowhere to go and couldn't retire from the fugitive railship.
He'd longed his whole life for ‘a small house just for him,’ and Brasthol promised him citizenship.
Stamped with the family head's seal, a paper with real power—George couldn't refuse.
“...I was wary of all outside contact.”
“Messages through familiars from black mages leave no magical traces. Black magic uses almost no mana.”
Soul magic. A realm I knew little of.
Thus, Engineer George became Brasthol's collaborator. For that small room to lay his head, what he'd craved all his life.
Retired railship engineer and stationmaster Bedar had a daughter. With somewhere to return to, he stepped off the railship.
“...Blackmail?”
“Engineers cherish each other like they share lives. If he sacrificed his daughter, the plan would leak to the railship—so the family decided against that risk.”
So his offered payment was the ‘one sheet’ Catreia mentioned earlier. One upfront, another on completion.
[Old Lordric Route, Intercontinental Round-Trip Ticket Voucher]
The crisp paper Catreia pulled from Bedar's severed embrace was passage off the island.
“Bedar knew Polgrad's truths as a railship engineer. He couldn't ultimately refuse giving his daughter a real human life, not this human farm.”
So Bedar betrayed his old comrade. And the client Brasthol family too. Intercontinental liner tickets, tangled in great houses' interests, couldn't be forged—priceless as gold, and nobles clearly preferred them over a traitor's life.
To evade pursuit, he faked his death. By having everyone else at the station die. Without touching Volteus's chromatic shards or other valuables, clutching only that one ticket for his daughter.
So he killed the snipers prepared for Volteus, and all the station staff working with him.
Engineer George, who'd delivered the catalyst to Volteus, should have been sniped with Volteus's rampage—but since Volteus survived, George died swept up in it.
Thus Bedar finished preparations, tried to kill the last two survivors, and met his end by Catreia's hand.
Finally, Catreia.
“Generally, they don't implant shards in children regardless of talent. Too high a risk of losing key memories compared to adults.”
Conversely, force-feeding shards into a talented child could wipe their memories blank.
Children like blank canvases, gaining shard power but forgetting parents, world's morals and customs, scant life memories.
Failures: kill the idiot child, recover purer shards. Success: raise a loyal, cold-blooded human weapon to family tastes.
Manufactured Shard Knights.
Still experimental, they were dispatched to fractured continent fringes to prove utility, away from main house rivalries.
Some to melting permafrost rare-earth mines.
Some to sunken mountains, Deep Blue Line ocean salvage ops.
And she, Catreia, to a distant eastern human farm—to monitor the lord managing their livestock.
“Dedicated maid to an abandoned bastard. A role given so I could move without exposing my status. People thought I was with you when I vanished; you thought I'd gone to do other maids' work.”
The family shame—a child left to die by neglect—survived because it proved monitor Catreia's identity.
Catreia was a loyal overseer, and this newborn's ‘mere existence’ aided her free movement. Monitoring was her sacred family duty; keeping the useful child alive extended that duty. With scant knowledge, she did her best.
When the baby cried nonstop, fearing a hoarse throat, she slapped cheeks and ordered silence. The baby wailed harder.
Starving near death, the child rejected her stir-fried mushrooms; after much thought, she found a lactating woman. After massive scolding, half her meals bought nursing rights.
Swear it: nothing in her life was this annoying, unreasonable.
Vowed a dozen times: strangle the moment it hindered duty beyond use.
But Delpiad Brasthol was a diligent farm lord.
“Uh, ooa. Mama!”
“Ugh...”
The child entrusted to her grew day by day.
Family taught no personal possessions; Catreia believed it devoutly.
...But.
‘Discard anyway. Worthless whether dead or alive.’
‘If it's like it doesn't exist, can't I have it?’
Thus, bastard Professor Brasthol became young Catreia's first possession. Valuable not to family, but to her personally—as property, her child.
Something dearer than life.
“It's... strange, isn't it? I checked you many times—no Shard Knight talent. Why bloom so spectacularly now, before others' eyes, not mine.”
Brasthol already had spy George inside the railship, relaying all rumors.
Third young master bastard plotting railship escape with Volteus.
Unlike quiet facade, exceptionally clever.
And per Naelda and Volteus, unmatched Shard Knight talent.
Delpiad reported straight to main house; already eyeing here for valuable Volteus, they took keen interest.
‘Looks quite usable.’
‘...’
‘Catreia, bring the child to main house.’
‘...But master, my duty here—’
‘I'll send your next monitor. Nine years exemplary service—time for new tasks. Age right, looks fine, unknown in homeland... plenty uses.’
Return order. And bring young master.
Likely, same treatment as her. Force-feed shards for talent, lose nine years' memories as cost.
Her existence erased from his mind.
Catreia couldn't bear it.
****
“That's all.”
“That's all...?”
“Yes! So I planned this moment to keep you from being dragged there. Not much of a plan—barely different from Bedar's.”
Catreia continued calmly.
“Couldn't let you with Volteus. More unstable than you think; even without Brasthol meddling, he'd rampage soon. Violently, somewhere on soft ground, atop the running train. Couldn't let you with such folk.”
“He was holding himself back fine.”
“Really? Did you know the tea he constantly sips is water steeped with awakening narcotics?”
...Narcotics? That?
“Widens gap between body and mind, shields psyche from shards. Common for end-stage Shard Knights. Gulped all compatible shards without soul mage vetting or alchemist elixirs—reaching end fast is no surprise. Volteus sacrificed too much for power. Can't guarantee safety without drugs.”
“But... Volteus didn't seem hallucinating at all.”
“Any high Shard Knight manages that. They hone mental fortitude more than mages.”
Catreia didn't want me on the time-bomb railship.
So she let it fall.
“If you were a Shard Knight that strong, we could've joined the railship together. Even if Volteus rampaged, he could've escaped with me. Everyone survives, escapes—and if worst comes, make the choice then.”
“Ah, such a dreamy future. How nice that would've been. Traveling railship with you. Wondered if any other way, if not this path—but no.”
Rustle—
“...Body like this, no choice.”
Catreia undid her collar, exposing upper chest.
Pale skin bulged with a small crystal, ominous aura clear at a glance.
“Geas implanted when family made ‘blank Shard Knight.’ Potent spell activates if main house confirms betrayal. Heart, brain, spine, scattered elsewhere.”
“Effect: auto-casts if defy master's orders. Wipes memories, turns target into caster's puppet for a week.”
Like showing shameful jewelry, she spoke serenely.
“Right now, holding you keeps ‘Capture Professor Brasthol, send to main house’ intact. Send you off, geas triggers—I drag you there per orders.”
...Crunch.
“I'd do anything to stop it. To save you, save nine years' memories in me. Only way to free you from them.”
Finished, Catreia rose gracefully, cleared the food sack she'd sat on, revealed hidden small bag beneath.
Sturdy, sized for nine-year-old boy to carry.
She tenderly tucked Bedar's intercontinental round-trip ticket inside.
“Ten days' water and food, sturdy clothes. Follow tracks—another abandoned station like this. No people, but emergency rations stocked in fixed spots. Resupply there, follow tracks to outpost with docks.”
“Catreia.”
“Stick to tracks—no worry of land crawlers or monsters. Small track village? Show your noble clothes. They fear nobles pathologically—won't harm you.”
“Catreia,”
“Take chromatic shards. Port towns always have black markets tied to smuggling. Play naive noble, sell cheap—enough coin to live alone.”
“...Catreia! What the hell are you doing!”
“Sugar and prayers. And farewell?”
Thud.
She set down the meticulously checked bag, quietly raised hand.
Crystals grew from shoulder blade along fingers, glowing her color.
Icy sky-blue. Massive war scythe over 2 meters—hard to believe for her fragile frame.
Its blue edge caught Catreia's throat.
Catreia meant to die. Before releasing me, still in ‘fulfilling orders’ phase—her only way to keep memories, avoid puppetdom.
‘The absolute last resort. Worst of the worst—what will you do?’
Dead comrade's voice echoed like hallucination.
I want to stop her. Catreia just wanted me alive.
But her living dooms me. She'll follow orders; defy, puppet her does it.
Of those dying before me today—who villains, who heroes?
Engineer George, lifelong hunchback scorned as useless, dreaming his small house?
Bedar, betraying all—even his ticket—for daughter's future, fearing noble betrayal?
Catreia, who watched, used all deaths, ended with hers to complete my freedom?
“Every moment with you—only those were my life.”
“Farewell, please.”
Bowing demurely as when introduced, Catreia yanked her scythe without hesitation.
Rustle.
Serene-faced Catreia.
Her long braid unraveled, waving softly.
Along the freed hairline, slowly. Her neck tilted.
...Thud.
Fell.
I stood frozen, thoughtless. As her scythe grazed her neck. Immobile before her.
‘Things you must know to survive, young master.’
Catreia shared traitors' tales, hers—claiming vital for my survival.
Those tales bound me, forced me watch her final moment.
What she desperately wanted me to learn.
What the child leaving her grasp must realize to survive this world.
“This is... 4th World.”
In this corrupt world where good and evil end same, what survival means—engrave in mind, heart, this choice's soul.
Catreia got her wish.
Kept nine years' memories, didn't drag me home,
Successfully implanted world's most precious lesson in her child.
Not bad for me either.
Catreia, Master Knight rival, confirmed: no railship survivors.
Staff died by Bedar; master Bedar by Catreia.
Her suicide erased all to report massacre, or lone nine-year-old fleeing to port.
Roll—
Blue gem fell from dead Catreia's fingertips.
Shard that devoured her soul with countless prior masters. Tear-like blue sapphire.
Couldn't laugh, cry, rage. Between emotions and me, the me conflicted before her death sat.
...Click.
I cradled Catreia's head, stepped out warehouse.
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