Can't Wait Even a Day
I started at the east gate and made a full circuit of the territory.
East gate, north gate, west gate.
Only the south gate remained.
Saving the area closest to Oskar’s territory for last turned out to be the right call.
If I had moved by the book without the simulations, I might have made a fatal mistake.
No.
According to the simulation results, I would have failed.
Experience and manuals do not always lead to the correct answer.
I was truly glad I had acquired the simulation ability early on.
I had set out in the morning, and already the light was fading.
I never expected to meet the sunset like this today.
This was a view I should have been watching through a train window.
Chronos. That bastard could go anywhere he pleased, so why bother riding a train in the first place?
Judging by the way things played out, he hadn’t been targeting me and Veronica from the start.
Was he looking for someone?
If I hadn’t run into Chronos on the train, I would probably be asleep right now in a first-class seat.
Ah. Just thinking about it made me want to lie down.
I wondered if Veronica was making good progress.
She never paid much attention to other people, so I was starting to worry whether she even remembered Chris, whom she had only glimpsed at the Dowon Festival.
“Hah.”
From atop the wall I looked back over the path I had taken.
I had come a long way.
They would start flooding this far soon enough.
There might be endless debates among certain enthusiasts about types of zombies, but these ones were the so-called “running zombies.”
Even so, running or not, they still moved at human speeds, so they had not managed to fill the entire sprawling territory in half a day.
Of course, things had already started blowing up all over near the east gate, survivors were fleeing this way, and most decisive of all—
Clang-clang-clang-clang-clang—!
The bells had been ringing without pause for some time now.
It sounded like Julian’s territory’s private siren for emergencies.
As I had said before, this place drilled its troops rigorously because of Oskar, so they seemed to have a proper manual for emergencies.
Of course, they never expected the ones ringing those bells would be undead rather than soldiers sent by Grand Duke Oskar.
“Thank you so much for your help!”
As I prepared to move to the final south gate, one of Julian’s soldiers saluted me.
Snap—!
The soldiers following him raised their right hands in perfect unison, crisp as a single body.
Even with something like a siren in place, I had been faster.
Before they could even grasp the situation, I had shut the gates on my own authority and severed the bridges.
At first the soldiers had tried to stop me, thinking I was the enemy, but after watching a few zombies charge in indiscriminately they started offering these greetings instead.
Still, I would have preferred they didn’t thank me.
Some of them might have been the same soldiers who fired cannons at me not long ago…
It felt awkward for both sides, so better not.
Right. Cannons.
I told them to make use of the cannons.
“But there might still be a way to reverse it, sir. Survivors could get caught in the shelling…”
For guys who had opened every gunport just to stop one man, they were being remarkably cautious.
Hard to believe they were even the same army.
And if any such method existed, would I have ended up the Holy Knight who killed the most of his own brothers?
There was no such thing.
There never had been.
I debated what words might make them believe me, then simply closed my mouth.
There was no time.
Rather than waste time persuading them to fire the cannons, finishing the lockdown and personally eliminating the zombies myself was the path that would save more survivors.
I knew that from experience.
The knight orders were the specialists for this.
Besides, even without me saying anything, they would soon learn the despairing truth that no cure existed.
Even if they shut their eyes and covered their ears, they would feel it in their bones.
Just as everyone had in my previous life.
Bang!
I turned and headed for the south gate.
Moving along the top of the wall, I glanced down below.
The south gate still looked better off than the west gate.
If zombies had only just begun gathering at the west gate where I had been moments ago, the south gate had not registered a single detection spirit.
And yet.
“You there—why are you… still here?”
Oskar had arrived at the south gate at the head of his army.
He sat astride a white horse at the very front of the formation, craning his neck to look up at me.
…So the talk about standing at the front of the battlefield had not been empty bluster after all.
He really was right out in front.
Commanders usually stayed in the middle, didn’t they?
If he was going to prove it this thoroughly, maybe that “path of a man” he spoke of so tiresomely deserved a little support after all.
“Come to think of it, where is young Miss Veronica?”
“Why has Your Grace come here?”
I answered his question with one of my own, and instead of replying he simply pointed toward the black smoke rising from various places inside the territory.
Flames and smoke from powder magazines and the like exploding in chain reaction.
“How am I supposed to sit still with that going on? One must at least check what is happening, no?”
I looked back and forth between the smoke inside the territory and Oskar.
“I will explain the details once this is finished. For now, please fall back.”
Fortunately the south gate was already firmly shut without my needing to close it.
Perhaps because of the bells still clanging noisily, or because the south gate soldiers had seen Grand Duke Oskar’s army approaching.
Unlike when I first looked at the map, it was locked tight.
Sever a few small bridges and the full lockdown would be complete.
“A rebellion, perhaps? Because Julian is dead?”
Grand Duke Oskar’s eyes seemed to ask whether both of us already knew something if that were the case.
“It is nothing of the sort. This is the work of the Death God Cult.”
Oskar had already promised to help with the war against them, so I could say that much.
“I… see.”
He nodded slowly, as if my armor finally made sense.
“Then open the gates! We will go in and fight as well!”
“You must not. These forces are too valuable to throw away their lives in a place like this.”
“Nonsense! These are warriors who pledged to follow me into battle! They are far braver men than you give them credit for!”
“Yes, I know. However.”
Whoosh—!
One spirit flew out and detonated a small bridge.
“Veronica will bring the Holy Knight Order. I told her to find the Silver Knight you mentioned. Thanks to what you told me then.”
Boom!
I pulverized the next one right after it.
“And this sort of work is my field. I was not born with holy power for nothing. Your Grace, did you not say you were looking for a place to die?”
“…….”
“At least it is not here. Please die magnificently somewhere far more horrific than this. Leave this place to the knight commanders.”
“Khah… ha…”
Oskar laughed as if he could not believe what he was hearing and turned his reins.
Then he tilted his head and stopped.
“Commander…s?”
“I’m looking for a student named Chris.”
The Theological School was just as carefully sealed.
The guard at the main gate eyed Veronica with open suspicion.
“Gates are already closed. Come back tomorrow morning…”
“No!”
Veronica shouted before the guard could finish.
“He’s in the dormitory. Just open it for a moment and I’ll find him and leave right away.”
“You know how ridiculous that sounds, right? That’s impossible. Showing up out of nowhere and wanting to go all the way into the dorms—do you even know who you are, expecting us to just—”
“Tch.”
Veronica cut him off a second time.
She dug through the coin purse at her waist and pulled out an emerald.
“…What are you doing?”
“Your face didn’t look like tomorrow morning was going to cut it, damn it.”
The emerald vanished from Veronica’s palm, and green lines of light traced across her skin.
She lightly lifted the hem of the dress Karma had bought her and bent her knees.
Whoosh—!
Veronica sprang upward and cleared the Theological School’s wall in a single bound.
She raced along the top of the wall just as he had run atop the fortress walls.
“For a thug, he’s seriously full of himself.”
She sprinted full tilt toward the only building still lit at this hour—the dormitory.
“Why did you make that face?”
She remembered Karma’s expression, chillingly serious, when the zombies first started leaping the station platforms.
That face.
That voice. She had never heard them before.
“Why did you cast magic on me?”
She had pressed her cool hand against her own cheek.
The moment he saw the zombies, the first thing he did was cast a buff spell on Veronica.
Even in that desperate moment he had gently reached through her hair to caress her face.
“Why…”
The last thing she had seen was his back, ceremonial dagger in hand.
“Why didn’t you come with me…”
The fact that she had never received an answer kept replaying in her mind.
She had asked when he would come.
She had wanted, someday, to ask what heart he was helping her with.
He had given her no answer at all.
Someday.
Would she meet him again and finally hear it?
Thud!
She drew a deep breath and landed in front of the dormitory building.
She had no idea which side was the men’s dorms, or which floor Chris was on.
But time was passing even now.
For Karma, left alone out there, every minute and every second might be critical.
Flick—
A silver coin rose from Veronica’s purse.
Then.
KRA-BOOM!
The magical explosion bursting in midair spread across the night sky like fireworks.
Startled by the sudden flash and noise, every Theological School student in the dorms flung their windows open and looked outside.
In that instant.
“Found you.”
She spotted that annoying face she had seen at the Dowon Festival.
“Chriiis!”
When Veronica bellowed with all her strength, he flinched and pointed at his own face.
From Chris’s perspective it was only natural.
A sudden ruckus at the Theological School in the middle of the night, and he was the cause of it.
“It’s urgent. Get down here right now.”
“…Who are you?”
“No time, so just come down!”
“I asked who you are. You think you can just pull a stunt like this and—”
“I told you to just come down already. Why so much talk for a round-of-16 scrub?”
“…Okay, I’m starting to remember.”
Chris recalled the dark history he had tried to forget, along with Veronica’s face.
After that, Chris, now dressed in clerical robes, came clumping down the stairs.
“Ah, it’s fine. I’ll handle this.”
“What do you mean it’s fine? Yeah, like this is something you can just—”
“I’m not talking to you.”
The person Chris raised a hand to reassure was the guard who had chased after Veronica.
The guard nodded at Chris’s words but still walked away with a dissatisfied look.
“So. What is it?”
“Undead showed up in the south.”
“The south?”
“There’s someone left behind there. He told me to bring the Silver Knight… so. He said you’d know how to contact them.”
“Oh, for crying out loud. You think the Silver Knight is somebody’s pet dog? And if something happened in the south, there are monasteries in the south too. You should go find the brothers and sisters there. Why come all the way here? Why me of all people?”
“Because that person told me to find you!”
“That person?”
“Yeah, Karma. He talked like he knew you.”
“So who the hell is that supposed to—”
Because Veronica did not know Karma’s true identity, a critical error occurred.
They were not communicating at all.
“You… don’t know Karma? He definitely spoke like you two were—”
“Never heard of him. Anyway, how are you going to take responsibility for this? Looks like you snuck in on your own. I can contact the Academy and—”
“Why don’t you know?”
Chris tried to lecture the older girl, but Veronica neither flinched nor grew angry.
She only lowered her head and whispered in a heavy voice.
“If even you say you don’t know, then what happens to him… is he just supposed to die like a dog…?”
“I-I don’t know. Just calm down first…”
Caught off guard by the unexpected reaction, Chris panicked.
“I thought since he even uses shining spirits… he must have some connection to the Holy Knight Order… Ah!”
Veronica jerked her head up mid-sentence.
“That’s right—he said he knows the knight commander. You just don’t know because you’re a round-of-16 nobody…”
“Shining spirits?”
Those words sparked something for Chris as well.
Light Spirits.
Only one person used those.
Daywin Hasgard.
The fraud chosen by the Goddess yet refusing to join the Order.
This woman must be a student sponsored by that Daywin. Just like… that bastard.
At last Chris’s thought process began working properly.
“Karma, huh. What the hell is that about. What kind of life is he even living…”
Chris gave a hollow laugh and shot Veronica a sidelong glance.
“Alright, I know who it is now. So that guy told you to find the Silver Knight through me?”
“Yeah.”
“I can contact them.”
“R-really?”
Veronica’s face suddenly brightened.
“Just wait one week.”
“…What?”
“The Silver Knight you’re looking for is currently on a top-secret mission with Commander Blash. We’re not just sitting around after the information that guy gave us either. Seems to me everyone’s doing what they need to do, so why not leave it alone?”
“What are you talking about? One week?”
“I’m scheduled to be deployed in a week myself, so if I run into them I’ll pass the message along. Happy? Now go back. I’ll clean up the mess you made somehow.”
The moment Chris realized the human called Karma was Daywin, all further thought simply vanished.
With that man, no matter what happened he would be fine.
Recalling the overwhelming difference in skill he had experienced firsthand on the roads of the marquisate, he tried to shoo Veronica away.
“I can’t wait a week. I can’t wait even a day.”
But Veronica could not simply back down.
“You’re seriously stubborn. I said go.”
“If you’re getting deployed, that means you know the location.”
“Ah.”
He had slipped up.
The instant Chris realized it, Veronica’s eyes flashed.
“Send a messenger.”
“Are you insane? Do you think we’re some neighborhood watch? I said top-secret mission! Do you know how carefully the Commander treats security…!”
“Send a messenger.”
Veronica repeated herself and took a step forward.
One step closer.
“I was told to bring the Silver Knight, the Holy Knight Order.”
Chris took a step back in response.
“That might have been the last thing I ever hear from him.”
But Veronica closed the distance again.
“There are still so many things I want to say, so many things I want to ask. And that gets to be the last thing… it’s too cruel.”
Veronica slowly slipped her hand into her purse.
“But you even changed clothes before coming down. And then you tell me to wait a week.”
She gathered every coin and jewel in the purse into one fist and thrust it in Chris’s face.
She had pulled out her entire fortune to save Karma.
“If you keep acting so leisurely one more time… you little… bastard. I’ll kill… you.”
With a face on the verge of tears.
And in a voice that sounded almost like pleading.
She desperately threatened him.