Chapter 26
Chapter 26
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 26
Chapter Title: Star Feast (4)
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It felt like I’d been struck on the back of the head.
“Don’t tell me…?”
I tried to deny it, but no matter how I thought about it, there was only one conclusion.
Thump, thump. The Faceless Witch clutched her chest and staggered as if struck by a dizzy spell.
The identity of the being that was scrambling my thoughts.
“Good heavens.”
I thought a star had spoken to me, that I was finally on my way to becoming a knight.
But this star wasn’t that kind of star.
「The Waning Star」
A star that has lost its light.
The antithesis of a Guardian Constellation.
The identity of the entity that had made a pass at me was the Faceless Witch.
The Faceless Witch greeted me with an elegant gesture.
The fallen constellation announced its presence with theatrical flair.
“Yan!”
Gunther’s voice snapped me back to my senses.
It was an urgent situation.
There was no time to hesitate.
“My apologies!”
If I had my way, I would have thrown this ominous object away, but I couldn’t.
The Faceless Witch promised to behave.
It wasn’t because I trusted a witch’s promise.
If I left this sinister weapon in the camp, there was no telling what might happen.
Fallen constellations were known to sometimes lure humans and make them their servants.
“Damn it.”
With no other choice, I grabbed the cursed weapon and mounted the horse.
“Hold on tight!”
With that short warning, the horse kicked off the ground.
“We’ll follow right behind you!”
The voices of Bok, Garon, and the other mercenaries quickly faded into the distance until they were gone.
Thud-dud-dud-dud!
Listening to the sound of hooves striking the still-damp earth, I looked up at the sky far away.
Swoooosh!
The signal flares continued to rise without end.
I had never seen such chaos.
The Waning Star, the Madosa attacking the castle.
Everything was sudden and out of the blue.
My head was spinning.
As we neared the castle, the Madosa’s energy grew stronger, and my breath grew short.
If not for the sacred aura emanating from Gunther’s body, I would have been in trouble.
The Faceless Witch clicked her tongue as if I were pathetic.
I erased the witch’s existence from my mind.
Now that I knew her identity, I had no intention of listening to her.
The Faceless Witch mumbled and grumbled.
I ignored her complaints as well.
There was nothing to be gained from listening to a Waning Star.
Sniff, sniff.
The acrid smell of something burning stung my nostrils.
Beyond the distant walls of Komrat Castle, the glow of a fire flickered.
Fwoooosh!
From the direction of Komrat Castle, another immense presence erupted.
It was fierce and sinister, but unlike the Madosa’s, it wasn’t ominous.
“It seems she has begun her fight.”
It was the overwhelming presence unique to a high-ranking knight.
Boom! Boom!
The sound of explosions echoed from afar.
Gunther kicked the horse’s flank.
We galloped at full speed for some time.
The gates of Komrat came into view.
“Ah…”
Corpses were strewn amidst the wreckage of the completely shattered castle gates.
The bodies of gate guards with broken necks and passersby who had been caught in the sudden calamity and brutally murdered were everywhere.
Neeeigh.
The horse suddenly stopped and let out a long cry.
Terrified, the horse kept backing away.
It even reared up on its hind legs, starting to panic.
Gunther and I immediately leaped from the horse’s back.
-Agh! Help me!
-Gyaaaah!
Not far off, the clash of swords, screams, and shouts echoed without pause.
“...!”
Gunther looked at me with a hardened expression.
“Go, Master.”
He was hesitating, unable to leave me behind, so I pushed his back.
“...Be careful.”
After a moment’s hesitation, he kicked off the ground and ran toward the inner castle.
He vanished in an instant, and I followed, heading inside as well.
Flames shot up from all around.
“Hoo.”
It wasn’t easy to breathe.
I couldn’t tell if it was because of the overwhelming presence or the acrid smoke.
I forced myself to steady my breathing.
I pressed on, scanning the rubble of collapsed buildings.
Another pile of bodies appeared.
The green hue of their coats was clearly distinct from the Komrat guards.
They were soldiers of the Giftrang family.
They lay sprawled alongside a heap of bodies cloaked in dirty mantles.
“Ah…!”
As I was examining them, trying to piece together the state of the battle, I suddenly saw a shadow squirming in the distance.
Slightly off the path, among a pile of collapsed debris, there was a survivor.
A knight, the upper half of his torso seemingly ripped away, was crawling on the ground.
He was one of the Yuhyeolmogi Knights, the pride of the Giftrangs.
“Keuk…”
I ran to the knight, who was dragging his stomach, clutching the ground with his one remaining hand, and helped him up.
“A… an apprentice mercenary?”
The knight’s face was deathly pale as he asked.
It was a sign of excessive blood loss.
“R-run. This is no place for a boy like you.”
“The Knight I serve has already headed to the battlefield.”
“S-so, not a mercenary, but an Esquire.”
A light returned to the Yuhyeolmogi Knight’s eyes.
“Ha. S-so reinforcements have arrived.”
I informed him that Gritta Giftrang had already joined the battle.
“Ahh. So she has come.”
The knight let out a sigh of relief.
“...Do you have any last words?”
I watched him for a moment before asking.
“...You’ve learned well.”
The knight looked at me as if he were proud.
“When you see the family head, tell her Marian said this. That I am sorry for not being able to serve her to the end. And tell Evan to forget a pathetic Master like me… and to become a great knight…”
The knight’s breathing, which had stabilized for a moment, began to grow ragged again, becoming fainter and fainter.
“Th-thank you. Thanks to you, I can leave my last words.”
A smile graced his pale lips as the knight asked me.
“T-tell me your name. On my w-way, I should know who… saw me off… at the end…”
Before I could answer, the knight’s head slumped forward, and he moved no more.
I gently laid the knight on the ground and said softly.
“Yan. It’s Yan.”
I offered a small gesture of respect to the deceased knight.
The Faceless Witch smacked her lips.
After seeing the knight off, I was about to turn away.
“Hm?”
Suddenly, another body caught my eye.
Not far from the knight’s corpse, the body of a small-statured boy was lying on the ground.
His appearance was too young to be a soldier, and he wore the typical attire of a squire.
“Ah.”
It seemed one of Knight Marian’s last wishes would go undelivered.
“Hoo.”
With a long sigh, I dragged Evan’s body and laid it next to Knight Marian’s.
Then, I resumed my interrupted advance.
Bodies were everywhere.
In the short distance from the Komrat gate to this point, I had seen hundreds of corpses.
Half of them were ordinary citizens who had never even held a sword.
Grind.
My jaw clenched on its own.
The Faceless Witch hummed a cheerful tune.
I forced myself to ignore the gloomy humming in my head and continued onward for some time.
Wooooom.
In the distance, another powerful aura surged.
It was different from Gritta’s fierce and sinister energy, and different from the Madosa’s ominous presence. It was a somewhat sacred and auspicious aura.
“Master?”
It was the unique presence of a holy knight, which Gunther possessed.
I frowned.
Gritta was already fighting the Madosa. The number of Yuhyeolmogi Knights who followed her was not small.
For Gunther to have joined the battle despite this meant the situation was just that bad.
“Dammit!”
I urgently kicked off the ground and ran.
“Don’t fall back!”
“The injured to the rear!”
I saw a dozen middle-aged men and women fighting back-to-back in a desperate struggle.
“Hehehe. The Giftrangs are nothing special!”
“Maybe it’s because they’re a branch family. Utterly bland.”
Assailants in greyish-blue cloaks pulled over their heads relentlessly taunted and attacked them.
Thwip.
Without breaking my stride, I threw a dagger.
Shashashak.
Five daggers struck the assailants in the back.
Clang.
But the daggers bounced off with a loud metallic sound, achieving nothing.
“Hm? There was a little brat who survived.”
“I thought we killed all the squires.”
The assailants who spotted me tilted their heads.
Seeing their unguarded posture, I threw another dagger, but the result was the same.
“That doesn’t even tickle.”
“Hey, kid. Why don’t you go join your friends?”
The bastards approached, cackling.
I immediately drew the Knight Slayer and aimed at the one in front.
I had already set a bolt on the way here, so there was no need for a cumbersome preparation.
All I had to do was twitch my finger.
Thwump.
Even as he saw me aiming squarely at him, the assailant made no move to dodge or block.
He seemed to trust the steel armor that had deflected my daggers.
How foolish.
Thwack.
The bolt instantly pierced the assailant’s body and flew on for some distance before embedding itself in a wall.
“...?”
The assailant looked down at his chest with a blank expression before collapsing.
“H-how…!”
As the panicked assailants checked on their fallen comrade, I frowned.
I had assumed they were armed with steel plate, but I was wrong.
Just before he fell, I caught a glimpse of a faded shirt under his cloak.
The assailant wasn't wearing steel plate, not even a common gambeson.
“Blades don’t pierce them, be careful!”
The belated warning made me flinch.
“Their heads, their bodies, everything’s like a lump of iron!”
“They don’t die no matter how hard you hit them!”
“They’re not normal humans!”
Their description matched certain ‘things’ I had encountered in my past life.
Beings impervious to blades, who wouldn’t die no matter how much you attacked them—inhuman existences.
“Chimeras?”
The magical weapons created by the mages of the Blue Tower through forbidden arts were exactly like that.
“You know of us?”
The assailants, the Chimeras, all stopped their attack and turned toward me.
“This is no time to be playing with chaff.”
“We should grab that brat first.”
“Grab him, tear off an arm or a leg, and he’ll spit out everything he knows.”
I scowled at the bloodthirsty bastards.
Chimeras.
In my past life, they didn’t appear until after half of the Eight Great Families had fallen.
It was long after the Great War had begun.
In other words, about ten years from now.
They weren’t supposed to be here.
The memories of my past life tangled in a chaotic mess.
My mind was a jumble.
But amidst the confusion, I realized something.
Why the subjugation of the bandit hordes had been so sluggish in my past life.
If their opponents were the killers from the Blue Tower, ten of whom could easily match a single knight, it was no wonder the West, lacking any prominent families or knightly orders, had been so helpless.
I also understood why Komrat’s gates and walls had fallen so quickly.
This was not good.
Gritta was fighting the Madosa.
By now, Gunther and the Yuhyeolmogi Knights would be scattered, fighting Chimeras.
Besides the twenty or so Chimeras in front of me, there was no telling how many more had swarmed into Komrat.
“Hah.”
I let out a sigh.
“This is too much. Even the Great War wasn’t this bad.”
It had only been three days since I had come back from the dead, and I was in another crisis.
The back of my neck grew stiff. It felt as if an invisible hand was squeezing it.
But the tighter it squeezed, the sharper my senses became.
Just like when I was in the midst of the Great War in my past life.
“Anyone would think I go looking for places to die.”
For some reason, I felt like I could hear Roman’s voice.
‘You fool, desperate to die! Idiot who thinks he has ten lives!’
What did I say back to him in my past life?
I couldn’t remember.
It was probably some trivial answer.
Clack.
I readjusted my grip on the Knight Slayer.
I was facing Chimeras far earlier than I had in my past life.
And in my hands, I happened to have a notorious weapon capable of piercing even abnormally thick knight’s armor.
As expected, this was the only thing I could rely on.
The Faceless Witch jumped up and down on the spot, as if to say she was here too.
Ignoring the clueless witch’s antics, I put some distance between myself and the Chimeras.
The Chimeras slowly advanced toward me.
Clink.
Just then, someone stepped in front of me.
“Looks like we’ll have to work together, right?”
The ten middle-aged men and women, who had found a moment’s respite thanks to me, now surrounded me as if to guard me.
“We saw you have a weapon that can take them down.”
“We’ll handle defense. You handle offense. A perfect fit.”
Being guarded by those who hadn’t yielded a single step against the Chimeras.
It was a luxury I had never enjoyed, even in my past life.