Clever Move and Pure Spirit (1)
Kriel slowly withdrew his hand. Psssh—black blood tainted by the abyss oozed from the wound where the blade had been pulled free. Gila Decaire collapsed like a shed husk.
"Oh, dear. Decaire. How utterly futile. You lacked the eye to appreciate true artwork."
Whether it was a lament or mockery, the demon's voice reverberated through the arena. Kriel glared up at the sky where the sound had spread.
"But rest easy. I won't abandon you."
This was Decaire's voice. Kriel's eyes shifted. The man who had collapsed with a ruptured heart was now standing once more. Kriel knew it wasn't the Dark Knight moving Decaire's body—it was his master, the demon. Darkness from the abyss surged into the hollow where his heart had been, filling the void.
"The performance was a bit lacking. I apologize for the mishap due to my shortcomings. But look—Decaire lives on even without his heart. A brief dip into the abyss, and he'll reclaim his form."
Kriel offered no reply to the demon. He simply gripped his sword and took a deep breath.
"You could be like this too. Not dying once and living once, but ascending to eternity where life and death lose all meaning—a paradise."
"Immortality, huh. Tempting, but I have no intention of spending eternity in some gloomy pit like this."
Your fate is sealed.
The demon wearing Decaire's skin laughed.
"Your path is clear."
The voices from the void and Decaire's mouth chimed in unison.
"The royal path to the deepest abyss awaits you."
The tone was gentle, yet laced with unyielding stubbornness that brooked no argument. Kriel imagined the response a noble knight would give to a demon's temptation and spoke.
"Fuck off."
Oh no. His true feelings had slipped out first. But who cared? A little profanity hurled at a demon wouldn't dent his honor.
Grrrrumble—the abyss wailed. A shadow half-forced over the Chalice of Truth, which hadn't fully corrupted. Under Tirnanog's natural order, it should have already dissipated. The demon had sustained it at some cost to lure Kriel in, deploying a demonkin as an abyss shard in his stead. Now that Decaire was defeated, the abyss would slowly recede. The attackers outside couldn't be ignored either. Leaving a message for next time, the demon withdrew.
"We'll meet again someday. I hope by then your will more readily embraces the truth."
Drawing on the honor he'd mimicked until now, Kriel replied. What was sealed wasn't fate, but his own resolve. In that sense, the path ahead being clear rang true.
"My will is resolute, and thus my path is clear."
"The royal path lies open for you—where will you wander instead?"
"The narrow, thorny way."
A path of knighthood bearing only his own glory, not another's. Thanking the wandering knight elder from whom he'd borrowed the maxim, Kriel raised his sword. His fingers creaked, his legs screamed. Forcing a few steps forward anyway.
Toward Decaire's body, absorbing the abyss. The demon in Decaire's skin didn't flee. It laughed instead.
The abyss shuddered and shattered. Light seeped in from outside.
Your will stands firm for now.
But remember: we archdukes each paint our own pictures, and in Tirnanog, many seek to add a single stroke to our canvas.
It was partly a show of leisure. That knight, the future king, had rejected the royal path for knighthood. His current state—untouched by even a sliver of abyss—suggested the choice was long solidified. Yet the cause of the water spirit Niamh's entanglement in this plot stemmed from a trap he'd meticulously laid over years.
A clever move forcing him toward the royal path despite his knighthood. Among the archdukes' collaborators was one dreaming of the "Third Balor." Time was not infinite—use it wisely.
With his last strength, Kriel swung his sword. Decaire's bisected body sank into the abyss, and the pit finally collapsed.
Outside the expanding abyss. Tuon froze the area around Alberik Lir, shielding him from being swept in. Beside her stood Niam.
"You... why?"
"The master didn't specify a target."
Kriel's curt parting words: "Protect." Tuon had wanted to ask who, for how long, where, with what, how, and why—but her master had charged into the abyss's heart without consultation. Had this spirit harbored abyss within, she'd have shoved it straight in, but alas, no such taint. Leaving it to the flood would only spawn another abyss-corrupted spirit. The abyss's brood mustn't grow. More precisely, any beyond those who would kneel to her master were unnecessary. Better to guard it than let another rabble-sworn abyss spawn multiply. That was Tuon's decision.
Niam sank to her knees. Alberik struggled to speak.
"See? I knew I had an eye for people... He's straight out of Mom's stories, that knight."
Niam knew the tale well too. She'd heard it at Alberik's bedside. A knight fighting alone for his beliefs, unrecognized by all. It was as if the knight from Lady Pand's old tale had appeared to rebuke her.
It came with every able body from the Lir estate. Spirits, magic, fighting spirit—every means of attack poured toward the creeping abyss. The ink-like shadow staining earth and sky began retreating instead of advancing.
Then, in an instant, something flashed at the abyss's center.
Sword light.
The core exploded. Elves who'd fought in the Maou War recognized it—the phenomenon when an abyss-core demonkin was slain. Darkness converged on the shattered nucleus. The garden, filled with surreal gloom, finally revealed its true silhouette.
But the colors weren't the same. The fresh greens had faded like sun-bleached cloth, and even stones bore abyss scorch marks.
Where the abyss receded stood the Chalice of Truth—and Kriel. Holding a single sword, standing firm, he waved to Orishin.
"No way! It was like five minutes—what the hell happened in there?!"
Five minutes? Time inside had felt far longer. Kriel meant to say so, but his mouth wouldn't open.
'Ah, damn it.'
I'm gonna pass out.
Kriel lost consciousness.
When he opened his eyes again, Tuon was the first thing he saw. She was peeling an apple with her hand chop.
"...What're you doing?"
"Peeling an apple."
It was an answer that defied response. Noting Kriel's baffled expression, Tuon tilted her head and added,
"That vulgar curved sword urged me to use another blade, so to prove I'm the only sword my master needs, I'm peeling this apple."
Now he got it. The Lir family had prepared spirit-blessed fruit for breakfast. Orishin had probably insisted on using a fruit knife. Taking it as a challenge, Tuon was peeling with her hand out of pointless stubbornness.
Amusingly, she was cutting cleanly.
"Where's Orishin?"
"Off somewhere with the rice-loving elf."
"Hey, open the door!"
"Halt. Halt. Halt. Identify."
"It's me! You can tell by my voice!"
"Identify."
"Grah! Orishin!"
"State your business."
Kriel couldn't bear hearing more of that military drill.
"Just open it."
"Understood."
Tuon shuffled out and turned the knob. Behind the familiar horse head loomed a haggard Alberik, forcing a smile.
"Morning! Fine and bright. Porridge? Or bread?"
"Porridge. Need something easy to digest."
"Oh, you're up, Kriel! Kid looked half-dead, had me worried!"
"I've always been sturdy. What happened after I went down?"
Orishin bobbed his head side to side. Alberik closed his eyes briefly.
"Niam turned herself in. She's locked in the basement prison that used to be my room. No verdict from the family yet, but... she'll probably die."
"So it came to that..."
Inevitable. The abyss was Tirnanog's greatest foe. One who conspired with it without falling to corruption faced even harsher judgment.
"Did she say why? No abyss taint on her soul, so no worry of being dragged off by demons postmortem."
"Ah, well, see..."
Orishin, still harboring a corner of abyss corruption in his soul, answered. As a spirit who feared death alongside the abyss, he could somewhat grasp Niam's mindset.
"Lady Pand's lingering abyss plague? It's a time bomb."
It masqueraded as a bodily ailment, but its essence was a wicked curse strangling the soul—dragging it from providence's side postmortem to offer to the abyss.
Kriel clicked his tongue with an ah. A way to free Lady Pand's soul from the demon's grasp had dawned on him.
Someone who could wield abyss power in the demon's stead could seize her plummeting soul and release it. No other abyss spawn would free a captured soul without cost, but Kriel was here.
Yet it meant unleashing the abyss skills he'd staunchly refused.