Crumbling Boundaries
Crumbling Boundaries
Several days had passed since I formed that bizarre alliance with Erden.
My daily life was returning to a suffocatingly exhausting double bind.
When night deepened, Ines invariably burrowed into my arms. She would lean against the sound of my heartbeat, breathing softly as she fell asleep, and even in that empty unconsciousness, she continuously poured miracles into me.
A pure and blind sacred power that filled my chest to bursting.
All night long, I pressed that sublime power tightly into the area around my heart.
And before dawn broke, I would slip into the forest beyond the barrier, become Erden's shield, slaughter demon beasts, and pour all that stored sacred power into his body.
As the price of that vicious cycle.
Ines's appearance was changing noticeably.
"......."
I carefully stroked the white arm of Ines, who was curled up asleep in the corner of the bed.
Thanks to the academy's pleasant environment, and the hypocritical regular treatments by the church priests who visited every few days.
Ines's intelligence and reason still hadn't returned even a handful, but the terrible scars that had covered her body had vanished like a lie.
The merciless whip marks wielded by the slave trader.
The self-harm scars from biting and scratching when she couldn't overcome her own anxiety.
Now not even a trace remained.
Her original dazzling platinum blonde hair.
And flawlessly radiant, white-jade-like skin.
The shell of the most perfect and innocent 'saint' who had once saved the world and received everyone's adoration had returned.
But.
Ines, who had been stirring in her sleep at my touch, unconsciously licked my finger.
Like a beast, or like a stray dog craving its owner's warmth.
Only the shell is splendid.
Inside, still empty, a broken beast that cannot even breathe properly without the sound of my heartbeat.
I stroked her flawless cheek and felt a terrible thirst, as if my throat was burning.
I need to fix what's really inside. Whatever it takes.
The cool forest beyond the barrier.
In the bluish darkness just before dawn, Erden sat slumped on the ground, roughly scrubbing his face.
"It's impossible."
His bloodshot eyes, mixed with fatigue and madness, turned toward me.
"That crazy hypothesis of yours about perfectly destroying the ego with sacred power. It's absolutely impossible."
This was the final conclusion of the mad heretic, who had spent several days and nights dissecting and analyzing the sacred power he received from me.
I crossed my arms and silently waited for his next words.
"First, I need to clarify the fundamental difference between regular healing magic and sacred power. Magical healing is nothing more than 'regeneration'—forcefully reattaching severed cells. So if you fix the brain after significant physical damage, even if the body recovers, you can't restore lost memories or intelligence."
Erden scribbled complex formulas on the ground with a twig and continued nervously.
"But sacred power is different. The essence of sacred power isn't regeneration, but a 'reversal' close to a miracle. It doesn't just restore the body—it overwrites the target's unique soul form back to its original state. In other words, if you inflict terrible physical damage on the brain and pour in extreme sacred power, it doesn't become a blank slate."
Erden snapped the twig he was scribbling with.
"It simply returns perfectly to the original self before the shock. Turning a person into an idiot through a loop of destruction and regeneration is absolutely impossible under the logic of sacred power."
"...Are you certain?"
"Of course, I'm just a low-rank mage, and I can't arrogantly assert that my hypothesis is one hundred percent correct."
Erden added with a chuckle.
"But judging from the results of dissecting the miraculous sacred power you poured in, my intellect is convinced this is the perfect answer."
If that's the case, then turning Ines into an idiot wasn't simply a result of physical torture or side effects of sacred power.
"Keuheuheu, isn't it interesting?"
While my mind was running cold, Erden's eyes flashed as he burst into grotesque excitement.
"If sacred power didn't damage her brain, there's only one answer. Someone deliberately crushed a person's unique soul and performed a terrible ritual to overlay it with an empty shell."
Erden stood up and took a step closer to me.
"Just who is that lady-in-waiting you've been hiding so tightly, that you'd even suspect such an unheard-of blasphemy? What terrible thing did she go through!"
In Erden's voice, there was pure intellectual delight toward unknown truth and a mad thirst for exploration rather than malice.
"That's none of your business."
I drew a dry line and turned away.
But the madman who had caught the scent of a puzzle wouldn't stop his tongue easily.
"I did a bit of background research on you over the past few days."
Erden's sneering laughter came from behind me.
"A nameless orphan commoner, parading around a pretty 'idiot lady-in-waiting' that no one knows where you picked up? Even while attracting the nobles' aggro."
My steps stopped dead.
"What is that lady-in-waiting to you that you'd go this far? Want to know the exact reason?"
Erden was crossing the line.
Using the academic advantage he held as a weapon, he snickered and touched my sore spot.
"If you want to fix that lady-in-waiting's brain, stop this indirect bullshit and bring that woman herself onto my experimental table. I'll personally tear open her skull and dissect it!"
Pushing my woman into another man's filthy laboratory, demanding I let him dig into her skull.
"......."
My vision turned cold.
I gave no warning, no answer.
I simply turned back, kicked off the ground, and leaped.
"Huh...?"
Just as Erden's murky eyes couldn't track my movement and dazedly wavered.
My heavy fist cut through the air and mercilessly smashed into his jaw.
Kwajik-!
"Keo, heok!"
A bone-chilling crack as his jaw dislocated.
Erden's body flew into the air and then crashed to the ground like a rotten log.
Dark red blood and a few broken molars spilled from his mouth onto the mud.
"Keu, kkeueueu...."
Erden trembled convulsively, his eyes rolling back from the shock.
I pressed my boot down on his chest and looked down at him with coldly sharpened eyes.
"Just one more time."
My voice was as cold and dry as a midwinter ice sheet.
"If you dare speak carelessly about my possession and mention your filthy experimental table again."
I put weight on my boot, and Erden choked and spat out blood foam.
"I'll dissect your head alive."
Leaving that grim warning, I shook off my bloody fist and turned away without regret.
My steps toward the dormitory were heavy.
If sacred power wasn't the cause, then what kind of forbidden arts did the church use to reduce Ines to that state?
As Erden said, without showing her directly, finding the cause and a cure was nearly impossible.
But exposing my woman defenselessly before that madman's eyes was beyond my control.
An absolute final line that could never be compromised.
Suppressing my tangled anger, I stood before the dormitory door.
She should be sleeping, clutching the shirt I had given her, oblivious to the world.
My hand reaching for the door was unconsciously infinitely cautious.
Kkiik-
"......."
The air in the room was grotesquely cold.
"Aa, aang! Aaah!"
The suppressed groans of a beast came from the darkness.
My heart sank.
For some reason, Ines had woken up early today.
When she opened her eyes and didn't hear the familiar heartbeat, she was seized by extreme fear and withdrawal symptoms, convulsing madly in the corner of the bed.
"Ines!"
The moment I rushed over and grabbed her shoulder.
An unbelievably terrible sight unfolded before my eyes.
Ttuk, tuduk.
Bright red blood flowed from Ines's mouth down her chin.
What she was panting and biting like a beast was—
Her own white-jade-like arm, which through my devotion and the church's treatment over several days, had been cleanly restored without a single scar.
Kwajik, ppudeuk.
Flesh tore and blood burst forth.
That clean and radiant skin was being brutally ruined again by her own cruel teeth marks and scratches.
"Haa...."
A despairing breath escaped through my lips.
I hurriedly pulled her body close and pressed her firmly against my chest.
"I'm here. Stay still."
When my heartbeat reached her, Ines's flailing subsided.
But the blood flowing from her lips soaked my shirt, and the savagely torn wound on her arm gouged at my eyes.
It was miserable.
No matter how many nights I spent slaughtering demon beasts.
No matter how much I overworked my bones and muscles to build the safest fence.
At this rate, I could never protect this child intact.
If I couldn't fix the fundamental destruction of her brain, Ines would spend her whole life tethered to the sound of my heartbeat, slowly devouring herself and withering away.
Before this wretched reality, my firm stubbornness silently crumbled.
I had to show Erden Ines's condition.
To solve the cause of this terrible curse, I desperately needed that mad heretic's knowledge.
If that was the only way, a desperate urgency rose to my throat—that I might have to swallow my pride and compromise with him.
But.
"...Wait."
I swept back Ines's bloodstained platinum hair and growled low like a beast.
Why should I bow to Erden?
I had no intention whatsoever of docilely bringing my woman to that filthy heretic's stale laboratory.
Surrendering to circumstances and handing over my control to someone else—that's not my way.
What broke wasn't stubbornness, but the last shred of reason remaining in my mind.
I don't need to move.
Tonight, I'll just grab that madman by the scruff of his neck and drag him into this cramped room.
Within my perfect line of sight.
With the tip of my blade aimed so I can pierce his throat anytime.