Hero vs. Maid (2)
CRASH!!
The remote guest room where the Hero had been staying was obliterated by the collision of Aura.
From a height roughly equal to the third floor—where the walls of the mansion room had crumbled and given way—two figures leaped down toward the rear of the garden.
It was a drop that would have made a clean landing nearly impossible for an ordinary person, yet both were powerhouses wrapped in vast Aura, so the height meant nothing to them.
The instant their feet touched the earth, the Hero and the maid clashed, weapons raised.
In Lee Hye-yeong the Hero’s hand was a sinister blade formed entirely of dark black Aura; Maid Emma gripped dual daggers wreathed in blue Aura. Every time the weapons met—
Clang!!
BOOOOM!!!
—tremendous shockwaves thundered through the mansion,
Wreee-wreee!
and the magical barrier installed inside the estate detected the disturbance, setting off a shrill, frantic alarm.
Every soul in the Grand Duke’s residence had no choice but to know something was wrong.
Ding-ding!
“Emergency! Emergency!”
Mana alarms alone were not enough; the guards on duty began shouting and ringing the emergency bells, plunging the mansion into even greater uproar.
The security detail that raced to the source of the chaos found two women locked in combat.
“What the hell is going on, Emma!!”
The captain of the guard shouted toward one of the fighters—Maid Emma—yet
Clang!!
Emma had no breath left to answer.
The two women slammed their blades together, each radiating an overwhelming killing intent.
“Emma’s fighting?”
“More importantly—isn’t the one she’s fighting the Hero?”
“That bitch who lost her mind at the banquet?”
The guards could only stare in shock at Emma’s opponent.
She had already caused a scene in broad daylight; now she was causing another in the dead of night.
“Why on earth is Emma fighting the Hero…?”
Why, of all nights, were the two of them locked in battle?
The very idea of Emma fighting anyone was hard enough to picture.
“Captain, who cares about the reason!”
“Exactly—let’s just beat that bitch down!”
“She dared attack our House Frigid!!”
Any ordinary person would have first tried to grasp the situation or break up the fight.
But the Frigid household was bound by fierce loyalty among its soldiers and servants; anyone who pointed a blade at one of their own was an enemy to be cut down without hesitation.
And who was Emma?
She was the personal maid of Edward Frigid—second son of the Grand Duke, the idol of House Frigid.
The Hero attacking her already looked far from sane.
Therefore the Hero was one hundred percent in the wrong.
Having reached that conclusion—and with his subordinates clamoring for action—the captain issued the order without a second thought.
“Right. There’s no way something spewing that kind of aura is the real Hero! All units, support Emma—charge!!”
“Waaaaah!”
The guards surged forward to join the fray. Emma whipped her head around and shouted desperately to stop them.
“N-no, don’t! It’s too dangerous!”
“!?”
Before the would-be reinforcements could even process her warning—
“And who the hell are you people? All of you, get lost!!”
Fwoooosh!!!
Seeing the charging guards, the Hero poured even more power into her blade and swung.
Clang!
“Guh!!”
Emma barely managed to intercept the blow and was hurled backward.
Whoooooosh!!
“Wh-what the— Aaaaagh!!”
“Aaaaagh!!”
From a distance the force had been hard to grasp; now the sheer shockwave and wind pressure from the clashing blades sent the guards flying.
“Guh…!!”
The only one who stayed on her feet—by driving her sword into the ground—was the captain of the guard.
They were not knights of the Order, merely ordinary soldiers who protected the mansion; yet in any other house they would have ranked as knight-level fighters.
And still they had been blasted away by nothing more than the residual impact of two blades colliding. The captain could scarcely believe her eyes.
Looking closely at the scene unfolding before her, she felt her will to fight drain away.
This is impossible… That power is absurd. We need the Knight Order at the very least!
No—even if the Knight Order arrived, could they actually defeat that Hero?
When she had first moved to help Emma, she had assumed the black-aura-spewing lunatic could not possibly be the righteous Hero summoned to slay the Demon King of this age.
But the power on display left no room for doubt: this was Hero-level strength.
The guards, herself included, stood no chance of subduing her.
The knights were stronger than the guards, yet still not strong enough to win.
At minimum the Knight Captains would be required simply to hold her at bay; to crush her completely, Grace—who had severed the Hero’s arm in the banquet hall earlier that day—would have to return.
But…
Clang!!
KRA-KRA-KRA-BOOM!!
Watching Emma and the Hero continue to trade blows, the captain thought:
B-but Emma was this strong…?
She could only recall the Emma who always presented a masculine, clumsy front, and the question refused to leave her mind.
Ehehe! Sorry, Captain~
Emma, be careful!
Far from any image of feminine strength, Emma had always been scatterbrained and accident-prone.
Ugh… that airhead, tsk tsk…
Ehehe! Young Master, wait for me~
Because Young Master so often called her an airhead whenever she made a mistake, her nickname throughout the household had become “Airhead Maid.”
It was hardly a compliment, yet she had loved it simply because Young Master had coined it.
That same girl was this powerful? Most of the people working in the household had never known.
Setting the mystery aside for the moment—
Hah… but thank the gods. Hold on until the Knight Order gets here!
The captain could only cheer Emma on. Emma was barely managing to hold her ground, yet the Aura and shockwaves from the endless blade collisions finally proved too much; the captain’s consciousness slipped away.
Emma… please…
Emma was stronger than expected, yes—but even simply enduring looked like a desperate struggle. In the instant before blacking out, the captain could only worry for her.
Clang!!
“Guh!”
Every time Emma locked blades with the Hero, regret flooded her.
She’s getting stronger!
It was galling, but she had no choice but to admit it.
This rate of growth was simply absurd.
The legends of Heroes spoken of only in distant myths had never been fiction after all.
This was power befitting the sole existence capable of slaying the Demon King who would bring about the world’s end.
Her mind was broken, she hunted the precious Young Master Emma served, and she called him by some bizarre name—
yet this power alone was unmistakably that of a Hero.
Clang!!
“Urgh!!”
With every passing second Emma felt herself being pushed back.
“Kyahahahat, die!!”
Clang! Clang!! Clang!!
“Hah…! Hah…!”
The tide of battle had completely reversed.
Looking more like a berserker than a Hero, the enemy kept swinging her blade; Emma found it increasingly difficult simply to block.
When the ambush first began, the Hero’s eyes had been filled with unmistakable fear.
Fear that she might die.
Terror as death drew closer and closer.
She had felt it—of that Emma was certain.
That was why she had scrambled desperately around that cramped room, trying to survive by any means.
Yet the more wounds the Hero took, the less she screamed in pain; instead her face twisted with sorrow, as though recalling something.
No—more precisely, it was the expression of someone drowning in regret and self-reproach.
At first, when she muttered apologies to herself, Emma had assumed she was simply begging for her life.
But she had been seeking forgiveness from someone else entirely.
Whatever crime she had committed, she had already committed a far greater one.
The crime of plunging Young Master into unconsciousness, leaving him in a critical state with no telling when—or if—he would wake.
That was why Emma had to kill the Hero… yet far from succeeding, she was the one being overwhelmed.
BOOOOM!!
“Kyaaaaah!!”
At last Emma could hold no longer. The Aura she had wrapped around her body shattered, and the resulting impact sent her tumbling across the ground.
“Heh… not much to you after all, huh?”
“Grrrk!!”
The Hero approached the fallen Emma with a mocking sneer.
“Still… thanks. Because of you, I finally understand.”
“Wh-what are you talking about…?”
“Hyeonwoo… no, here it’s Edward… they call him Ed, don’t they?”
“Don’t you dare speak Young Master’s name with that filthy mouth!”
Thud!
“Guhk!!”
“You’re the one who keeps yapping ‘Young Master, Young Master’ like a broken record!!”
Shunk!
“Kyaaaaah!!”
The Hero’s blade sank deep into Emma’s shoulder.
And then—
Shunk-shunk-shunk!!
“Kyaaaaah!!”
“Kyahahat!!”
The Hero twisted the deeply embedded sword savagely, deliberately maximizing Emma’s agony.
“Does it hurt? Ed must have hurt just like this… I’m sorry, Ed!..”
“Kh-hhhk!!..”
The pain of her shoulder being torn open was nothing compared to the knowledge of her own failure—and the helpless weakness that kept her from silencing that filthy mouth right now.
Emma could not stop the tears.
I’m so sorry, Young Master.
She should have succeeded. Instead she had failed so stupidly.
Worse—she had created a monster.
Shuuunk!!
“Kyaaaaah!!”
“I’m going to kill every last one of the rest of them too… kyahahat..!!”
The Hero yanked the sword free from Emma’s shoulder and raised it high.
“So you die first!”
Just as she prepared to bring the blade down and sever Emma’s throat, a man’s furious shout froze her mid-swing.
“You fucking bitch, get your hands off her!!”
That voice…!
She turned toward the source—the window of the room where Young Master was staying—and there he stood.
Young Master’s face was twisted with a rage that made his usual scowling, frowning expression look mild by comparison.
“Emma!!”