Chapter 24: The Raid
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 24: The Raid
Aiden had known for a while that Dame Noel collected alcohol. Her office, after all, was lined with all kinds of liquor.
Still, he’d never heard that she enjoyed it enough to get this drunk.
“What brings you… to my room…?”
The surprising thing was that, even in this state, she still had enough sense to hold a conversation.
Sitting on the edge of her bed, she swirled the sloshing glass and smiled brightly, a gentle demeanor utterly unimaginable from her usual self.
She gets kind of cute when she’s drunk.
Normally, she was so uptight one could call her rigid. Now that her aura had softened, the contrast made her seem surprisingly bright.
“Um…”
As soon as Aiden opened his mouth, a glass slammed down in front of him, cutting him off.
Then, a liquor so potent that the mere smell made his head spin was poured into it with a heavy splash.
“Would you like a drink too, Aiden?”
“…I’ll pass.”
“Aw, why not?!”
“…”
Let’s correct that.
She wasn’t cute when she was drunk; she just had a terrible drinking habit.
Was this the backlash from a life lived like a textbook soldier?
Even so, she didn’t press him further. Instead, she downed the glass she had poured for him in a single gulp—a move that felt very much like her.
She never crossed the line. Her nature was fundamentally gentle and good—a decent person filled with a sense of responsibility.
“Did anything happen… yesterday or today…?”
“…Pardon?”
“Since you’re the one I brought here, Aiden… shouldn’t I take responsibility for you? If anything happens, you must tell me…”
…Even blind drunk, the fact that she brought up such things perfectly matched his impression of her.
“Dame Noel.”
“Yeees?”
“Why on earth do people call you ‘The Butcher’?”
He couldn’t help but be genuinely curious. How did someone like her end up with such an ill-fitting, derogatory nickname?
…Dame Noel’s movements froze.
Now that I think about it, that was rude.
At the banquet, the Imperial Prince had used those words to pressure her, and Katya had also brought it up to grate on Noel’s nerves. It was undoubtedly a painful topic for her.
But if any way of asking was going to be rude, Aiden preferred to just be direct.
“…”
After sitting frozen for a long moment, Dame Noel finally spoke, her voice raspy.
“…Because on the battlefield, I killed the most.”
“Isn’t that an honorable thing for a soldier?”
“Because I killed anyone.”
“…”
“Anyone who held a weapon and tried to continue the fight… no matter who they were—”
Noel trailed off, pouring more liquor into her glass.
…It wasn’t hard to guess what was left unsaid. He could picture it.
The Alliance War had been an unprecedented total war where every nation on the continent staked its survival. The first things a desperate nation on the brink of defeat forgets are humanity and morality.
It was obvious what such nations would do just to hold out a little longer.
Conscripts dragged onto the battlefield without proper training. People who should have been holding books and tools, not weapons. There were even rumors of nations conscripting child soldiers.
“…”
As a knight on the battlefield, Noel had cut them all down.
Lionheart.
An honorary title bestowed upon the knight who always stood at the absolute forefront, shattering enemy lines.
But thinking about it, it also meant she had performed the role of a human butcher better than anyone else.
The derogatory nickname ‘The Butcher’—which made her flinch every time she heard it—must have felt like salt in that very wound.
It was understandable why she drank herself into a stupor like this.
Every time she heard that word, the things she wanted to forget—the nightmares gathering dust in a corner of her memory—would come rushing back.
“If the battle… drags on…” Noel poured more liquor, the liquid splashing heavily.
Aiden’s gaze fixed on her fingertips.
“…only more people die…”
She was trembling violently, seemingly unable to muster any strength. Her face was deathly pale, and the corners of her eyes twitched.
She had held herself together despite downing so much alcohol, but now that this topic was raised, she looked as if she could barely support her own body.
“…So, if everyone feared me instead, maybe more people would surrender…”
Lionheart. A brave human butcher. The Butcher who killed anyone who dared oppose her.
“I wanted to charge in first, kill the most, end the battle even a little sooner… try to reduce the number of deaths, even by just a few…”
Barely aware of what she was saying, Noel rambled incoherently.
Her hands shook uncontrollably, showing no signs of stopping. The liquor pouring into the glass gave off a dizzyingly sharp, raw smell.
“So, I… I mean…”
“Yes.”
Just before the alcohol overflowed, Aiden grabbed her wrist.
“I understand.”
“…”
Noel blinked blankly.
“You’ve had a hard time.”
Regardless of her reaction, Aiden continued calmly.
“This isn’t a conversation to have when you can’t even think straight, so I’ll keep it brief.”
Just as the Imperial Prince had said, Noel might have committed terrible deeds in the environment of war. He also understood that some incident had occurred between her, the Prince, and her mentor, the Lord Protector.
But even so, there was only one conclusion Aiden could draw from her intentions and actions.
“You’ve been through a lot.”
“…”
“I have nothing else to say.”
Noel stared at Aiden for a long time with wide eyes.
A long, long time.
It was as if a fog in her mind had suddenly cleared.
“…Thank you,” she murmured, her voice thick with embarrassment.
And then—
“Wait, hold on—”
Before Aiden could stop her, Noel downed the glass full of strong liquor in one shot.
It was a desperate act, a clear attempt to knock herself unconscious just to escape the awkward atmosphere…
“…”
Whether that was indeed the final blow, Noel collapsed onto the bed, and Aiden let out a sigh.
“Aiden… I’ll… protect you…”
As Noel mumbled in her sleep, Aiden quietly pulled the blanket over her.
“Good grief.”
If Katya was overtly childish, this woman was far too hard on herself.
Aiden glanced around.
…I should probably clean up a bit.
It was an essential task if he wanted to preserve her usual image.
* * *
— System Message
▶ You have wisely handled the side quest.
▶ Affinity with target ‘Noel Astria Seimurs’ has increased.
▶ Bond Level has increased from Level 5 to Level 6.
▶ Your available skill copies have increased by 1!
▶ The accumulated Bond Relationship is sufficiently high. The application method of ‘Weaver of Fate’ will change soon!
If there was any silver lining, it was that their drunken conversation seemed to have helped ease Noel’s mind.
…That makes three copies from Dame Noel alone.
He had been hoarding the Skill Copy Tickets since he hadn’t had a chance to use them, and now he had three.
With two from Katya, one unused Skill Copy Ticket from the Imperial Prince, and the yet-to-be-unlocked ‘Point Shop’, he still had plenty of room to grow.
With this much…
It was safe to assume he had gathered most of the ‘ingredients’ needed to handle the upcoming Act 1, the Ghost Knight Incident.
However, his ‘skill’ to cook those ingredients—namely, his combat technique—was still far from mature. Still, he could see signs of improvement there as well.
“You’re dying a bit less, aren’t you?” Mayer said, sheathing his sword.
His voice was remarkably cheerful, considering he had just sliced Aiden in half.
“Didn’t you only die about eighty times today?”
“…”
“I haven’t seen many people improve this quickly in just a few days.”
Aiden lay sprawled on the floor, silently glaring at Mayer.
This is ridiculous.
It wasn’t an exaggeration; he truly couldn’t do anything against him.
No matter how he tried to boost his physical abilities with Pure White Qi, threaten him with Divine Power, or even mobilize Dharmic Power to escape, it was useless.
His Qi was torn apart like cardboard, his Divine Power was scattered like a mere campfire, and his Dharmic Power was never given time to focus.
He was closed in on and sliced in two.
He died, died, and died again.
It was mind-boggling how Mayer could do all this while making it painfully obvious he wasn’t even fighting seriously.
“…”
The funny thing was, Mayer’s claim that Aiden’s skills had improved wasn’t a lie. On the first day, he had died over a hundred times.
And Aiden himself knew exactly why.
— System Message
▶ The effect of ‘Skill: Analysis’ has been activated.
▶ The combat techniques of the target ‘Mayer Belford’ are equal to the level of this skill. Swordsmanship school analysis is impossible!
▶ A function to analyze the opponent’s ‘weaknesses’ has been added to the skill.
▶ Efficient response methods are automatically learned.
Since Analysis itself was a skill copied from Mayer, he couldn’t directly learn Mayer’s swordsmanship, but he was still constantly scraping together ways to counter him. Thanks to this, the correct responses felt as if they were being automatically engraved into his body.
And since he would die instantly if he didn’t put them into practice, the learning efficiency was absurdly high.
Even with all those advantages, the gap between them was so overwhelming that his head was still constantly sent flying.
As he was thinking, his split body snapped back together with a crackle. In the Inner Mindscape, his body recovered instantly no matter how he died.
He had loathed it when he first experienced it, but after dying dozens to hundreds of times over the past few days, he had grown somewhat used to it.
“…But even if it’s training, is there really a need to feel every sensation so vividly?”
Indeed, every single death was excruciatingly vivid. Being split in two by a sword, burning in Divine Power, having his body burst from Qi, or being turned into a pincushion by Dharmic Power—each pain was as real as if it were actually happening.
“It is necessary,” Mayer replied firmly. “Listen up, greenhorn. Let me tell you something. Do you know why I became a great knight whose name went down in history?”
“Pardon?”
“Because I put myself through training that was even more fucking miserable than real combat.”
“…”
“And now I, a man optimized by that hellish training, am personally tutoring you one-on-one. So don’t complain. It’s all necessary.”
…Well, his words made sense, but…
Wasn’t Aiden just suffering right now? It felt like he was still doing nothing but getting sliced in two by Mayer over and over.
“I’m not just saying you’ve improved to flatter you.”
“What?”
“Trust me. If you got into a fight right now, you’d easily pull your own weight.”
“…Based on what?”
What kind of training was this, where he learned nothing and just kept getting split in half?
“Right, that’s the key.”
Mayer’s words fell as if he had read his mind.
“Over the past few days, you’ve died in all sorts of ways, haven’t you?”
“I have.”
“You can think of it as having earned that many extra lives.”
“…”
“I don’t blame you for looking at me with disbelief. But it’s the truth.”
“It just feels like I’m being tortured, though…?”
“No,” Mayer replied with a smirk. “It’s not just torture. It’s valuable torture.”
…So even he admits it’s torture.
* * *
When you spend every night going through experiences like that, it’s only natural for comments like this to follow.
“Aiden. Are you sleeping well at night?”
In the office, Dame Noel brought it up with a worried look. Anyone would be concerned seeing Aiden grow more haggard by the day.
“…Yes, somehow.”
“If there is anything uncomfortable, please let me know. I will do whatever I can to improve it.”
“…It’s fine.”
Unfortunately, it was something no one could help him with. Even knowing he wouldn’t actually die and that it was just a simulated sensation, continuing to undergo such experiences couldn’t possibly be good for his mental health.
His body was perfectly fine, but his mind felt pushed to its limit every day. It felt as if his very soul was being worn away.
But perhaps unsatisfied with Aiden’s response, Noel pursed her lips and stared at him intently.
When he forced a smile to show he was fine, Noel simply shook her head.
After they locked eyes for a brief moment, Noel hesitated, as if trying to find the right words.
“Aiden.”
“Yes.”
She nibbled on her lip, stealing glances at him.
“When I was drunk… did you come to my room?”
“I did.”
“Did I… commit any discourtesy then?”
“…”
“…I’ve heard from others that my drinking habits are quite bad.”
Judging by her words, she didn’t remember a single thing. He wasn’t sure whether to call that a blessing or a curse.
Well…
Could it be called a discourtesy? She had certainly shown sides of herself she would never normally reveal.
“…No,” Aiden said, scratching his cheek as he voiced his honest thoughts. Since she seemed so worried, he figured he might as well put it in the best light possible.
“If anything, I thought you were quite cute.”
“…”
“Dame Noel?”
“…”
“Dame Noel…?”
“…”
There was no answer.
Dame Noel stubbornly kept her mouth shut, pulling her hat down low as she averted her gaze to her desk.
However, she couldn’t hide the heat rushing to the tips of her ears.
“Aiden.”
After a long silence, Noel glared at him with a somewhat resentful look.
“That is forbidden.”
“…”
“Please refrain from saying such things.”
“…Did I offend you?”
“It didn’t offend me, but it is forbidden.”
“…”
“Technically, I liked it, but regardless, it is forbidden.”
Why was it forbidden, then?
…Still, admitting she liked it was very much like her.
She’s weaker to compliments than I thought.
For someone in her position to be so weak to compliments was rare. The more he peeled back her layers, the more full of quirks she seemed…
“Aiden! Dame Noel!”
Before he could delve deeper into those thoughts, the office door burst open. It was Dame Stella, looking incredibly frantic, a stark contrast to her usual self.
“Dame Stella? What’s—”
“Her Highness Katya has gone missing!”
Aiden leaped to his feet in shock.