Chapter 464
Chapter 464
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 21
Chapter Title: Another Solo Play (23)
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Combat is the act of dodging the opponent's attacks and landing your own on them.
Bwooom-!
To evade the terrifying swing of the mace, you had to observe where it was aiming for on your body. But in a battle fierce enough to leave afterimages from the weapon's swing, your observation shifted from the weapon itself to the one wielding it.
Creeeang!
"You've become... quite pathetic."
To avoid ending up like the other knights he'd crushed before, it meant taking in every detail of the battered Frauk.
For example, the way his broken-doll-like body swung with enough force to shatter the solid slate floor and send shards flying like shotgun pellets.
Or the way blood sprayed out like a fountain from between his dented armor.
Or how, despite it all, he muttered an unintelligible prayer and raised his mace once more.
'He can't handle his power with finesse anymore.'
She recalled fighting alongside him in the servant city. The three consecutive strikes that had shattered the three small flowers blooming on the cursed knight's body from different directions almost simultaneously—even in that dire situation, they had drawn involuntary admiration. It made her think that a human body could be controlled to that degree through training.
Things were different now. The exquisite control that had bent the full-force swing of the mace at right angles three times in succession was now poured entirely into a single attack.
Kwaaaang!
Thud thud thud!
Another attack missed, and chunks of crushed flesh rained down on her staggering body from the shockwave.
'He's on the verge of collapse. A little more impact should be enough to subdue him...!'
Pulling out a cheap suppression bomb for him, who was already mad, was purely to lighten her own load.
Plop plop!
The round magitech bombs fell at her feet.
'The temple basement could only be accessed through narrow stairs.'
It had been about 18 hours since leaving the temple.
If Frauk had held off the emperor's forces filing in one after another for those 18 hours, survival was entirely plausible. No matter how many there were, he only had to face one at a time on those stairs.
Whoooosh-!
Seizing the moment her hand was empty, Frauk's gauntlet flew toward her philtrum.
'Nigmi's legion moved, and all the capital's forces headed for the canyon.'
The emperor must have ordered it to strike Mutant's rear. The moment she had re-entered the canyon's darkness, Frauk must have encountered the emperor's weary troops withdrawing from the temple with his exhausted body.
Crack!
The sound of bones breaking inside the parried gauntlet. In exchange, the holy knight's mace swung toward her now-wide-open body.
'And Frauk headed for the imperial castle.'
A battle that had ended abruptly.
Left alone amid the castle's saint and his brothers, whom he had crushed with his own hands.
What thoughts had run through Frauk's mind, having fulfilled his duty and forsaken his life, in that silent carnage?
If she hadn't left him alone and had stayed with him, would things have been different?
Bwoooom-!
The mace swung. Toward where she had been, where she'd dropped the bomb.
An absurd what-if. His survival was thanks to her mobilizing the Mutant forces, and even without that, staying in the temple basement with him would have been an absurd choice.
But she knew there had also been that selfish thought in her head: 'I have to survive to complete the plan.'
If killing him here was the result of yet another choice she had to bear, she wanted to run from it.
She just wished this paladin, caught in the tragedy, would stay alive. She wished the cheap mana bomb would hurt him just enough to exhaust him into collapse.
Click.
Time seemed to slow. The magitech device crumpled under the mace, and mana light seeped through the cracks. An unusually dense mana glow for a cheap one favored by poor pathfinders.
'...How many bombs did I prepare?'
The moment the crumpling shape felt both familiar and strange.
『Kwaaaaaang-!!!』
The erupting light engulfed the holy knight in suffocating heat. Along with the shock, an old memory crashed over her.
'Click click click click'
Sitting on a cliff on a remote island, biting her nails while fiddling with metal scraps.
=========
'I can get out. I have to get out. I will get out!'
'I saw a continental liner passing the horizon from Southwest Seagull Rock. If I can just reach it, this island...'
'I need to hijack a ship. Might have to use some force.'
'Y-yeah! Traveling the world alone is dangerous, so I need some means to protect myself!'
'There might be more monsters in the sea than in the water. Even more monstrous people. More, more, more...'
.
.
.
.
=========
The magitech engineer, going mad trapped on the island, had clung only to preparations for an uncertain future.
Piling up mountains of mana explosives and tools, he finally set out to sea with all his creations the moment a ship's silhouette appeared on the horizon after two years.
His efforts ended with a small fishing boat swept away by the waves.
The sea carried his body and hopes on that tiny boat to those awaiting him.
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'A subspatial cloak?'
'Yes. Atlahheva told me to give it to you.'
'Uh... I don't know any magic.'
'You don't need to. Just stuff things in roughly, and to take them out, think of the item and reach into the pocket. I put all of Hyde's lost stuff in there, so remember and pull them out when you need them.'
'I didn't lose anything.'
'You did.'
=========
'Think of the item inside and pull it out.'
'A subspatial storage can only retrieve items the user recognizes.'
'Recognizes. Remembers.'
No way.
Of all times.
Why now.
.
.
.
.
Beeeeee-
"Ugh, urgh."
She must have blacked out briefly from the shock.
Even opening her eyes, she couldn't see well, and the ringing in her ears made her head throb.
Blinking her dry eyes forcibly, she saw that the pulverized flesh and corpses that had filled the space before the imperial castle had been neatly cleared. Probably flung around like her by the blast.
"Grrk, grrrk..."
Frauk was embedded in a pile of rubble on the opposite side.
...She thought she'd seen wrong.
"What the hell did I make on that island...?"
The thought summoned images: the island's iron ore, high-quality mana stones more abundant in the sea than on land, seagull guano, nitrates, chain reactions, explosives-making lectures delivered passionately by Metaljo, and Professor listening inattentively.
His body was shattered beyond description. Especially his arm and upper arm, close to the epicenter, had been flayed of most of its outer layers.
Her rib, grazed by the mace, throbbed. Broken?
'He can't be saved.'
Frauk was dying. This wasn't the plan.
'The path is clear.'
Unbidden, her eyes took in the wide-open road to the imperial castle. Good. Faster than expected.
"Frauk."
"Mercy, here..."
Even as she approached him, half his body blown away, she couldn't grasp what she was thinking.
All she could do was ask, for her own absolution.
"Why... did you do it."
"Cough! ...On the way out of the temple, toward the imperial castle, I met others. Heading... to the same place."
Frauk's voice was startlingly clear for a dying man. How could someone with half his chest exposed speak like that?
"To rescue... the emperor. The knights."
"...That alone?"
"That alone."
"For that alone, you killed all those people."
As blood drained, his bloodshot eyes regained their original color. With his remaining arm, Frauk groped his neck and clutched the sigil of mercy. A sigh mixed with bloody phlegm escaped the holy knight's lips.
"Yes. For that alone."
"I, who devoted my life, for that alone."
His reddened eyes cleared, then dimmed.
The fading eyes met hers.
"The Goddess of Mercy said humans wear down."
"Bishops do."
"Priests do."
"Holy knights do."
"I do, and you do."
"The human heart wears down. Bad memories pile up endlessly."
Those words, likely bottled up in his taciturn heart his whole life, poured out only after his chest was laid bare.
The injustice when, after risking his life to block a monster horde in a remote mountain village, they weren't grateful but raged about the broken fences.
The anger at those who exploited their kindness boundlessly because it was boundless.
Yet, doubt in himself for striving to give endlessly to those who demanded endlessly, because giving was their creed.
Those who embrace and endure such filthy emotions receive greater divine power of mercy.
But those who can't endure and wear through their 'mercy' become what the world calls 'merciless' saints.
"Because we are human, the Goddess understands. The powerful strength granted to the merciless is the reward for saints who gave everything to others their whole lives. With heart worn away and little life left, it's the Goddess's final send-off: live your last days as you desire, heedless of others' gazes."
Merciless knights.
Brutal, unresponsive to reason, resorting to excessive violence for their goals—a savage force.
Rather than guiding these naturally emerging among holy knights, the Church of Mercy actively protected them. Compensating their financial damages, smoothing diplomatic issues, even for those breaking doctrine and defying the church—they named them the 'Knights Merciless' and sheltered them.
Their activities were mostly recorded as individual minor incidents; despite the name, they rarely acted as a group. Except when facing tragedies like the saintess's disappearance that wore away all their mercy at once.
"...I hated the emperor."
Having used up all his heart, Frauk simply hated the emperor.
He had devoted his remaining all to hating everything related to him.
Cough, cough! Grrk!
Even his final divine power spent, Frauk began vomiting blood nonstop.
"...How narrow-minded. Knights who came here on honor and loyalty, enduring trials and toil to seize a chance—slaughtered horrifically just for calling him 'Your Imperial Majesty.'"
Cough, cough!
"A madman... Even now, the moment 'emperor' passes my lips, I can't... I can't bear it..."
Speaking in self-mocking tones, the holy knight still burned with hatred toward the imperial castle.
Clink.
"...I should have returned it before this, but no one to take it."
"Take it."
With trembling hand, he pressed his sigil into her grasp.
"Hyde. In you, I saw a saint of mercy."
"..."
"You too will wear down. The pain you think you've passed lies in wait behind you, ready to collapse."
"I'm... fine."
"Look me in the eye and say it. That it doesn't hurt."
She couldn't speak. Opening her mouth felt like something rising to her throat would pour out endlessly.
Precisely, someone similarly worn away endlessly came to mind, choking her.
"Examine yourself, Hyde."
The holy knight's cracked lips smiled bitterly.
"Brother."
"..."
"Mercy."
At those words, she lifted the knee she'd knelt silently beside him.
She searched the scorched, scattered debris for Frauk's helmet.
Wiping the soot with her sleeve, it gleamed decently. Placing it over the ruined holy knight's face suited him far better than now.
Shunk.
This act probably stole only scant time from Frauk. 30 seconds, a minute at most.
"...Does that ease you?"
But even one minute, to Frauk who had rued his own appearance in his final moments, would feel like self-punishment in death.
Plop plop.
Shake shake.
She shook the blood from her sword and loosened up in place.
Her slightly throbbing ribs.
Her body tingling from the blast.
Aside from that, near-perfect condition.
"...Thanks to you, I can do this easily."
As the holy knight said, shortening his life by a mere minute wouldn't have worn her greatly.
She thought of it as giving back as much as received, then lifted the horrifically heavy sword.
Shaking off the clotted blood, she looked up at the imperial castle's walls soaring endlessly above.
The gates that would take an hour to cut through even with a master knight, the walls deemed impregnable layered with ancient spells, symbols, defensive magic—and covered relentlessly without a single gap by purple cursed flowers.
Each one captivating anyone daring to approach, but her gaze lingered far below them.
Crackle, crackle...
Before the massacred gates, someone leisurely tended a bonfire, warming themselves.
A thick black robe covering their whole body.
A hidden face she knew without seeing.
"Took you long enough?"
To that leisurely voice unmatched in ease, she answered by kicking over the bonfire before him. The scattering embers passed through his robe and body, sprinkling behind.
Darik.
The black mage who had vanished upon entering the canyon waited for her before the gates.
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