22
Chapter 22
The returning Reconnaissance Unit was different than before. While the previous unit had seemed somewhat relaxed, this one felt less like Elite Soldiers and more like fanatics.
The proof was in the complete lack of loot. They carried only the bare minimum of water and food, keeping their loads light for maximum mobility. They were on an entirely different level from the previous units.
It was unprecedented for them to ignore loot after claiming so many enemy heads. Usami approached one of the soldiers and asked.
"What is the meaning of this?"
The soldier replied.
"We have seen the light."
"The light? What light are you talking about?"
"The Goddess of War has always shone upon us. We simply failed to realize it until now."
The Goddess of War. Usami felt a headache coming on. Had Emilia's delusions spread to the soldiers as well?
Yet, the carriage was piled high with heads—at least several hundred. For a preliminary skirmish, these results were absurdly impressive.
To be honest, Usami had been worried when Emilia led the troops out. He had feared she might die during such a dangerous reconnaissance mission.
But the reality was far different. Not only had they claimed hundreds of heads, but the soldiers who returned with Emilia seemed fundamentally changed.
"Usami."
Emilia called out to him.
"Lady Emilia?"
"The Goddess of War has shone upon us."
The Goddess of War again. Usami could see that Emilia had grown stronger, and judging by the recent results, her ability to lead soldiers was exceptional. But...
"Lady Emilia! This isn't the Goddess's grace. This is the result of your own hard work!"
Usami hoped Emilia would break free from the shackles of fanaticism. He intended to offer her some advice, but she took it differently.
-Shring
The sword slid upward from Emilia's scabbard.
"Usami, everything I possess was given to me by the Goddess. If you dare speak against her again, I will not forgive you, regardless of who you are."
Watching Emilia place her hand on the hilt, Usami felt that something had gone terribly wrong.
When did it start? When did Emilia become so fanatically devoted to the Goddess of War?
As a child, Emilia had suffered from auditory hallucinations. Heartbroken, Usami had once brought a priest from The Order to her, hoping they could help.
However, after meeting the priest, Emilia changed. She began to show a borderline obsessive devotion to the Goddess of War. For a moment, Usami wondered if it was his fault for introducing her to that priest...
"No, if anything, this is His Highness's failure."
Usami quickly dismissed that thought. Emilia hadn't gone astray because of him. To be precise, it was because of Grand Duke Karl von Kronor.
And for good reason; since Emilia was only six years old, Karl had subjected her to training that bordered on abuse, throwing her into monster pits with nothing but a single dagger.
This was a tragic tale. A story of the abuse Emilia Kronor suffered at the hands of her father.
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Karl von Kronor had sixteen children with ten different wives. But now, only three remained.
Why had only three survived out of sixteen? The reason was simple.
In the Kronor family, newborns undergo a brutal selection process. Those born premature, disabled, or too cowardly are simply cast off a cliff. Even those who were selected through this process were not guaranteed to survive.
Once they could walk, every child was taught to fight. They learned how to swing a sword, thrust a spear, and fire a bow.
By age six, they were thrown into small cages with starving goblins. To win was to live; to lose was to die.
From the moment they woke until they slept, they endured life-or-death training and fought hundreds of monsters. Only those who survived could claim the name Kronor.
In that regard, Emilia was a perfect warrior. She never shed a single tear while hunting and butchering hundreds of monsters, silently slaughtering whoever she was ordered to kill.
Deprived of love, Emilia grew up like a machine, knowing only mandated training and lethal combat. She accepted this as natural and never questioned it.
This brutal regimen made Emilia powerful—terrifyingly so. By age ten, she was on par with adult knights, and by fifteen, few knights could even stand against her.
Upon entering Arcadia Academy, Emilia laid waste to every instructor during her entrance exam. Her blade, forged in the fires of countless near-death experiences, knew no mercy; one instructor even quit his job due to the trauma of her assault.
At Arcadia Academy, Emilia remained the undisputed number one. While she struggled with politics and diplomacy, her military leadership, swordsmanship, and magic were on a level far beyond her peers.
Then one day, Karl von Kronor spoke.
"Emilia."
"Yes, Your Highness."
"From this moment on, you are the heir to the Kronor family."
"Yes."
Emilia reacted with neither joy nor sorrow, accepting the news with stoic indifference. She knew she could die at any moment, and if she did, the title would simply pass to her siblings.
Emilia, who had lived her life like a machine, began to change once she truly settled into the academy. Whenever parents visited, she saw them hugging their children or gazing at them with eyes full of love.
Whenever she witnessed such scenes, Emilia felt a strange sense of emptiness and anxiety. She couldn't quite name the reason, but it was a longing for the things she lacked, mixed with a deep-seated insecurity.
As the days passed, Emilia solidified her position as the undisputed top student at the academy, but she increasingly felt alienated from her peers. She was like a swan floating alone in a pond full of ducks.
Yet, being a swan brought her no joy. No one in the world was like her. Love, pity, longing, joy, and sorrow—she had spent her life suppressing these emotions to focus solely on survival, making it impossible to blend in.
On days when the gap between herself and others felt widest, she was overcome by an indescribable loneliness. It felt as though she were drifting alone in the void, an illusion that every other member of her kind had perished, leaving her as the sole survivor.
Whenever those feelings took hold, she would bury herself under her blankets, blocking out all light and sound, and shiver uncontrollably in the dark. It was the only way to escape the suffocating fear of solitude.
Then one day, a voice began to whisper in her ear, telling her that she was different and that she was an outsider. It claimed this was inevitable because she was not human.
The whispering voice constantly urged her to take the sword at her waist and plunge it into her own throat, insisting that she was a child who simply did not belong in this world.
Eventually, a renowned priest visited the academy, brought by Usami Arca, the strategist for Grand Duke Kronor.
Emilia confessed to the priest that someone lived inside her head, a presence that relentlessly whispered for her to end her own life.
The priest let out a sigh so heavy it felt as if the ground might cave in, and he taught her a prayer intended to exorcise demons. She recited it with all her might, though it seemed to have little effect at first.
With no other options, Emilia continued to chant the prayer without end, praising the Goddess of War, the wielder of all power over destruction and rebirth, and begging to become her child.
She lost track of how many times she repeated the words—hundreds, thousands, perhaps tens of thousands. Eventually, the voice in her head vanished, replaced by the endless loop of the prayer.
The prayer echoed in her mind twenty-four hours a day, following her even into her dreams. Still, it was far better than the voice that had once demanded her death.
As she continued to endure her solitary existence, a beautiful goddess wrapped in light, clad in armor and wielding a trident, suddenly appeared before her.
The goddess declared that Emilia was truly her child and promised to grant her great power.
On that day, Emilia obtained an overwhelming amount of aura unlike anything she had ever known, marking the moment she awakened as a Sword Master.