Salvation (1)
"I'd wager the banquet hall is in full swing right now, too busy to even notice the signal you sent out. My dear sister's obsession with that witch of a mage runs deeper than you'd think. If I had to guess, she's probably swinging her sword at her own partner, the Hero, in a fit of rage about now."
"Using your own sister like that... how cowardly can you be—"
"Cowardly? Coming from the mouth of someone who seduced the Hero and the Saintess both to lure me into a trap and kill me, I'd say this approach was the correct one after all."
"......"
"If it were you, you'd have without a doubt called for help from the Hero and the mage, wouldn't you? There's no other explanation for why you'd attend a noble exchange gathering of all things with such a bizarre combination in tow. And in that situation, it would've been impossible for the Hero or the mage to slip away from prying eyes and make it here. Without those two around, I had no reason to fear you. Am I wrong?"
...Infuriating, but he wasn't wrong. No matter how much McHart had yet to awaken as a demonkin, he was hardly an opponent I could beat without the protagonist's plot armor.
Even if Serista showed up alone amid the commotion to help me, she'd only buy time. Granted, that was still better than stalling on my own, but.
And as I'd said before, Ethan wouldn't find it easy to leave his post after the look I'd given him at the last moment.
"Honestly, tell me—didn't you think things were going a little too smoothly?"
"Well..."
"Doesn't it strike you as strange? Guests we've never seen before, swarming into this insolent noble exchange gathering that's never once been held before now. You used to tremble so badly at the academy that you kept guards at your side twenty-four hours a day—and yet you thought I wouldn't smell a trap when you suddenly picked fights with people and tried to slip away all by yourself?"
"......"
"But if I let this chance slip by, you'd just go right back to clinging to that insufferable duke's son and that witch of a mage, dodging me at every turn. So I decided to make good use of the opportunity. Of course, I anticipated you'd feign a falling-out with that squat little mage to draw me out—but I'll admit, I never expected you'd go so far as to detach yourself from that insufferable noble brat you can't live without."
Which spared me the trouble, McHart added with a smirk as he spat out the last words.
What I really wanted was to plant a nice vertical scar across that smug face of his. The only problem was that I lacked the ability to do so.
And now that his words had made me realize how flimsy my plan truly was, a belated wave of regret began to wash over me.
There's no way that idiot would ever doubt himself or think up countermeasures on his own. I'd bet anything that Evelyn's meddling was involved.
Evelyn wasn't exactly strategist-grade intelligent either, but the fact that she'd managed to use McHart meant she was at least smarter than McHart himself.
In the end, the fault lay with my half-baked plan—an attempt to trick a single prince and nothing more. I had no excuses. If I'd factored Evelyn's existence into the equation, a far more elaborate scheme, or even an all-out frontal assault, would have had far better odds.
My fatal mistake had been piling uncertainty on top of uncertainty, analyzing the mind of exactly one person—McHart—just to lure him into a trap. Flimsy as it was, a trap was still a trap, but I should have built in at least a slightly more reliable safety net.
If I'd managed to secure the help of even one or two more people, this whole situation would have unfolded differently. It was the same matter of suspecting the same imperial family member, so I hadn't been able to tell her—but if I'd known it would come to this, asking Seraphin for help might have been the wiser choice after all...
-FWOOSH!
"......!"
After pretending to chat at his leisure, McHart closed the distance with another mana leap. My instincts and reflexes let me dodge his approach, but I was reaching my limit.
Dodging him on raw stamina alone, without mana, could only last so long, and I could feel my strength draining away in both my legs.
...And I had a gut feeling that before long, he'd catch me and drag me back into that mindscape of his.
Maybe I should have just joined Gehmajoshigi-gwat's Hero party from the start.
I should have stuck with them, if only until the end of Part 4's final story arc where McHart gets dealt with. Then at least I wouldn't be meeting my end here, so pointlessly, in some back alley of fate.
Though realistically, I might have dragged Agnes and Serista into this mess for nothing. If I ended up beaten down like this in front of them, the two of them would carry the guilt over me for a long, long time.
...And above all, I'd owe Ethan yet another apology. I'd gone and created a whole scene of us fighting out of jealousy, all for the sake of manufacturing my little trap. If something happened to me, how much would he blame himself again for not being at my side?
All manner of thoughts swirled through me as the chase through the back courtyard wore on, and my stamina was nearing its absolute limit from the continuous battle.
"What's the matter? Why are you so slow? At this rate, I'll have you caught in no time!"
"Haah... haah... haah..."
"Has it finally sunk in that no one's coming to save you? Are you starting to give up? If so, feel free to give up whenever you like!"
...Even if it killed me, I was taking at least one swing at that son of a bitch's face before I died.
After deciding that otherwise, I'd be too aggrieved to close my eyes in peace, I wheeled around mid-flight and launched a countercharge straight toward the direction McHart was pursuing from.
-FLASH!
"Wha—?!"
Startled by my sudden change of direction and my dagger lunging at him mid-air, McHart faltered—and for an instant, his careless body drifted into my blade's range.
Please, go down in one strike!
The pale-blue edge, coated in Sharp Blade, flew straight for the bridge of McHart's nose—and just as my blade was about to draw a rather more definitive border between the left and right hemispheres of his brain—
-CRUNCH!
"......Huh?"
-Grip.
"Got you. Finally."
In an instant, McHart twisted his neck at an angle no human neck should bend, dodging my blade—and in return seized the hand gripping my dagger.
Shit, part of his body has already demonized—!
The instant his hand closed around me, the world around us began darkening at terrifying speed. It was devouring the color of my surroundings, like watching a color TV flicker into black and white.
Along with that sinister sensation, McHart began dragging me into his mindscape. The arm he'd caught was already well beyond my power to pull free.
...I probably wasn't making it out alive this time. Last time, I'd only escaped through luck, against an enemy caught off guard. The same opening would never present itself twice.
So this is where it ends, huh.
Well. I'd survived stubbornly enough, all things considered.
Seven whole years since transmigrating into Lilith—seven years of scraping and scrambling, all while avoiding being forcibly taken by Ethan. At this point, I figured I'd done pretty much everything I possibly could.
I mean, I'd put the flame spirit into Agnes's hands, I'd prevented Ethan and Kallaham from falling and becoming mid-bosses, and I'd even given them just cause to subjugate McHart before his demonization. By any measure, I'd contributed no small amount to the story's progression.
No matter how I exited the stage midway, that salvation-romance obsessed guy's game clear would proceed without a hitch.
The Hero would slay the Demon King and return to the real world. Agnes would become the Tower Master of the Crimson Tower. Seraphin would ascend the throne, Serista would awaken as a true Saintess... In a few years, they'd each greet their own happy endings just like that.
And Ethan had already lost weight and gotten far better-looking than his original incarnation, so once I was gone, he'd shake off whatever lingering feelings he had for me, marry a proper fiancée, and carry on the Blackwood line.
Years of campaigns to fell the Demon King, and then their separate lives—as long as a small handful of memories of me remained somewhere in their heads, that would be enough.
If I'd known it would come to this... maybe I should've just let Ethan properly take my maidenhead after all.
If I'd known in advance that I'd fail to catch McHart, I could've granted him that much, out of one final act of loyalty. But there was no point regretting the past when all that awaited me now was hell—all I could do was smother it with whatever happy imaginings I could muster.
No, wait. If I was going to be used however he pleased in this damned mindscape, then maybe killing myself right here and now would be the one way to defy his intentions...
"Lilith......!!!"
And then, just as even the last scrap of light grew murky and McHart's power was about to swallow me whole in darkness—I heard Ethan's voice calling my name. Or so it seemed.
It was vivid enough to make me wonder if I'd already started seeing my life flash before my eyes on the brink of death, and then his voice stopped being mere sound and became touch, lending it a terrifying sense of reality.
-Grip.
"Lilith!! Are you all right?!"
"...Ethan?"
There was a small hole, barely a hand-span wide, that McHart's signature magic hadn't managed to swallow.
A familiar hand shot out from that tiny gap, seized my wrist, and pulled—dragging my entire body back toward the outside world.
...Well, no. Tried to pull.
-YANK!
"Lilith! It's you, right?! Say something!"
"W-wait, WAIT!! My arm!! MY ARM IS GOING TO COME OFF!!"
"Oh."
His devotion to pulling me out of McHart's mindscape was admirable—his utterly brainless method, less so. One wrong move and I was seconds away from losing my left arm entirely.
Just as my mind flooded with a very different kind of terror at the premonition that I'd be going from Lilith to Lilith, minus one arm, space itself tore open, and a razor-sharp blade materialized right before my eyes.
...That's not a figure of speech. It was literally, physically, right in front of my face.
-SHUNK!
"KYAAAAAAAAAK?!"
The pale-blue blade erupted inches from my face, so close that a hair's deviation would have skewered my skull—a wholly different flavor of mortal terror, sharp and bitter, crashed over me.
This was nothing like the abstract dread of being sucked into McHart's mindscape. This was real. Sure, if I'd lost an arm I could've asked Serista to heal it, but if I turned into a Dullahan, I wouldn't be visiting a doctor—I'd be visiting some deeply suspicious undertaker.
But my terror went entirely unheeded. The blade Ethan had summoned before my eyes simply followed the line of my body and began carving McHart's mindscape apart. And through the seam it cut, light—light I'd thought I'd never see again—started seeping inward.
Wait. Don't tell me...
Blue blade-energy flowing endlessly along the edge. The power to cleave through a world, through the boundary into another dimension.
It didn't take me long to realize what I was watching: Ethan had tripped the awakening flag. He was breaking through to Sword Expert.
-Snip, ssshhk!
In the blink of an eye, he'd cut away half the space wrapping around me, tore the remaining barrier apart with a rending sound, and hauled me bodily out of McHart's mindscape.
When I came back to my senses amid that dreamlike, impossible turn of events, I was being carried in his arms, princess-style.
"Lilith, are you okay?! Are you hurt anywhere?!"
"...Y-yes."
...Of all things, Ethan had arrived before the Hero. And he'd broken through to Sword Expert while he was at it.
For one fleeting moment, I felt that Ethan was somehow more dependable than the Hero himself—but I quietly buried that thought in my heart.