Eclipse (4)

Through the darkness of a narrow, damp secret passage, Elara ran for her life, clutching the hand of the young beastkin girl Anya.

Behind them, the terrible roars of monsters, the screams of humans, and the clash of metal still drifted faintly through the dark.

"Hah… hah…"

Her breath burned in her throat. Her old, frail body had already reached its limit. But she could not stop.

I have to live. Somehow, I have to survive.

That was how Elara had lived her entire life.

Her own safety had always come first. In her line of work, it had to.

In her youth, she had swung her blade in the dark.

Night Viper. Under that name, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠she had been the Blackwood Guild's elite assassin.

For money and renown alone, she had taken countless lives.

To survive the back alleys where betrayal and intrigue ran rampant, she had to be more selfish and ruthless than anyone else.

Perhaps it was karma in the end. On her final mission she made an irreversible mistake, and countless people died.

Few knew that the disaster called the Ancient Calamity Seal Collapse had, in truth, been her fault.

That was why Elara had abandoned everything and drifted all the way out here to remote Seorigol.

…I just wanted to forget it all and live quietly.

And of all places, she had ended up under this lunatic of a lord.

Ian Darkest. At first she had thought him nothing more than a pitiful bastard cast off by his family. No—not pitiful. Pathetic. No talent, no guts, nothing but groveling. She had found him contemptible.

Then, about a year ago, the boy suddenly changed.

"An Eclipse is coming! We have to prepare!"

Out of nowhere he started spouting nonsense about the sun vanishing and monsters pouring in. At first everyone treated him like a madman. Elara was no different. But Ian was serious.

Even under everyone's mockery, he never stopped. From a household with nothing, he somehow scraped together materials, threw up crude fences, and dug pits for traps.

With clumsy knowledge he claimed to have learned at the Academy, he forced the villagers into training—and even made her swing a sword under the pretense of teaching swordsmanship.

"Help me move this! We need it stacked on the wall!"

"This herb has detoxifying properties! We'll need it in an emergency!"

"Anya, you have to fight too! Stop just hiding and at least hold a spear properly!"

It was ridiculous… and somehow desperate.

As if the end of the world truly were coming, he threw everything he had into it.

He barely slept. He skipped meals as a matter of course. His already thin frame grew even more wretched for it.

Watching him, Elara had thought, That fool's going to work himself into an early grave. And inwardly she had sneered. What difference is thrashing around like that going to make?

A calamity was a calamity precisely because humans could not contend with it.

Even she, once called the greatest assassin alive, had been able to do nothing—and had brought a calamity down with her own hands.

And yet… the anomaly truly came.

In broad daylight the sun vanished, and monsters poured forth. Ian's mad ramblings had become reality.

And now, the sounds drifting from far behind them.

BOOM!

KRAAAAGH!

"Damn it! Hold them! Hold them somehow!"

Ian's voice. Desperate, frantic. Behind it, the screams of soldiers and the roars of monsters tangled together.

Anya's flinch traveled up through Elara's fingertips.

Without meaning to, Elara's steps slowed.

…That idiot lord.

He should have just run.

What good was a shabby little fief like this if he got himself killed? Even those knights who'd come as reinforcements looked useless.

And he was still fighting? Why? What was Seorigol to him? Land belonging to the family that scorned and oppressed him?

She couldn't understand it. If it had been her, she would have fled long ago. Honor? Responsibility? Pretty words that meant nothing when you were hungry.

So why couldn't she make her feet keep moving? Why did she keep looking back?

"Grandma…?"

Anya tugged anxiously at Elara's hem.

Elara snapped back to herself. Right. She had to protect this child. An old woman like her could end up however she liked, but this girl still had her whole life ahead of her.

"…We're almost there, little one. Just a little farther…"

She soothed Anya and tried to move again.

That was when it came.

"— Can you hear me —"

It was a true word. An utterance of such force that even Elara, who had spent decades as an assassin, had never once encountered anything like it.

From the village came sounds of agonized groaning.

Then a thunderous crash, as if something enormous had been driven into the earth.

And after that… a brief silence.

…Is it over?

A foul premonition coiled around her entire body.

She had to run. Now.

If she did, she might at least save this tiny beastkin child.

Ian Darkest. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠That bastard son would be of no use whatsoever. Why would he try to stop a calamity he hadn't even caused, and for whose sake?

An incomprehensible creature. The opposite of everything Elara was.

…Or so it should have been.

Damn it all!

Elara clenched her teeth.

Images of Ian from the past year flashed through her mind. Digging traps in silence beneath everyone's laughter. Sighing over an empty storehouse.

Clumsily tending the villagers' wounds. And just now—that precarious back, standing alone against a monster.

"Anya."

Elara knelt so their eyes met.

"In that corner over there, I've hidden ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠food and water. Take them… and wait for me here. Understood? You must not come out. Not for anything."

"…What about you, Grandma?"

Anya's eyes wavered with unease.

"Grandma has… a little errand to run. I'll be right back. Be a good girl, all right?"

Elara stroked Anya's head once, then turned without hesitation.

"Damn lord… I've lost my mind, I really have… What the hell am I doing at my age…"

Muttering curses, she began to run back the way she had come. It was the final sprint of a woman who had never once staked her life for anyone else.

Crack—!

It felt as if the entire world had frozen solid.

I had seen this effect countless times through a screen, so I recognized it at once.

Linea Judith.

The wide-area time-stop skill she activated.

Even in Tales of Legend, it ranked among the most broken skills in existence—an ability with absurd performance.

The massive shadow-claw of the Whispering Terror, poised to crush me, halted inches from my face. Even the scattering dirt and the precarious flames of the torches hung fixed in midair, as if pinned there.

An absolute silence in which the monster's ear-splitting whispers, the soldiers' screams, even the sound of my own heartbeat seemed to recede into the distance.

— Step. Step.

When I heard footsteps, I allowed myself a flicker of hope.

A five-star hero.

The arrival of Linea Judith.

The appearance of that overpowered mage who would have no reason to remember me.

But.

"What the heck is this, nyang?"

What emerged from the darkness was someone entirely different from what I had expected. The familiar shabby clothes, the bent back, the sharp eyes.

"…Grandma?"

It was Grandma Elara.

I thought she had fled. How had she come back into the middle of this hellscape?

And yet… something was off. Unlike her usual hunched, slow manner, her steps were startlingly light and swift.

As if… she were gliding over shadows.

Elara swept her gaze over the frozen monster, the fallen soldiers, and me—locked in place—then clicked her tongue and snapped,

"Damn lord. Because of you, these old bones are freezing their ass off on a night like this!"

Her voice still carried its usual bite, but her eyes were different.

In them burned a cold resolve… and something that had slept for a very long time, now flashing awake.

"…You didn't run, then?"

"Hmph. If it weren't for that little one, I'd have been long gone."

Elara jerked her chin toward somewhere behind her.

There was nothing but a hillside, but—well. Anya ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠would be there, no doubt.

"My lord."

A cold voice called me.

Grandma Elara was no longer the foul-mouthed old woman who hurled curses the moment she saw me.

In place of those greed-creased wrinkles, a sharp gaze—cold and keen as a honed blade—glittered even in a space thick with an Aberration's presence.

Elara pointed at the Aberration.

"What's its weak point?"

"There should be a core inside its pupils. Like a golem. That's its weakness."

"I won't ask how you know."

"…Thank you."

She gave a short nod and lifted her walking stick.

Then she twisted the grip and drew it free.

— Shhk.

A light scrape of friction, and the wooden cane was gone.

In its place, a single dagger that shed a black light.

On the hilt, the faint mark of a black crow was engraved.

"…Blackwood?"

"You know your stuff."

"You were an assassin? Why on earth would someone like you be out in a backwater like…"

Blackwood.

The most infamous assassin lineage on the continent.

An assassin who had been granted a blade from that house was a giant among giants—someone whose services cost a mansion just to hire once.

And of course, people who never moved without money, no matter the circumstances.

I muttered before I could stop myself.

"I don't have any money I can offer you."

"Tsk. No wonder the fief's a mess, with a lord this dense."

Elara clicked her tongue, then looked at me with the corner of her mouth curling up.

"What moves people isn't money, child. It's the heart. You foolish lord."

…The kind of thing grandmothers always said.

Which meant I had moved her heart somehow? How, exactly?

There was no time to ask.

Elara had already taken a step toward the Aberration.

"What an absurd creature. And on top of that, some unidentifiable time-stop magic. I've no idea where things like this keep coming from."

Fwoosh.

Black energy rose around her like flames catching light.

"Watch closely. This is how you use a blade."

The words had barely left her mouth before Elara's body shot forward.

A speed no one would believe belonged to an old woman.

Without a shred of hesitation, she charged the massive form of the Whispering Terror, frozen in that blue light.

Her target was clear.

The largest of the red eyes on its brow, glowing with a uniquely ominous light.

The source of its mental assaults—and the most likely location of this monster's core.

She launched herself into the air. Defying gravity, she rose as lightly as a leaf and reached the creature's face. Then, putting everything she had into it, she drove the dagger down into the red eye.

"Eat this, you monster bastard!"

Shunk!

The pitch-black dagger sank deep into the red pupil.

— CRACK!

In that instant, the blue light encasing the world shattered, and frozen time began to flow again.

The Aberration's death throes.

The moment the time-stop broke, a hideous scream tore through the air.

"—KRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!"

A shriek thick with the agony and fury of a destroyed core.

Its enormous body thrashed violently, and from the embedded dagger outward, the black shadows began to scatter in unstable fragments.

KRAAAAAAAAAANG—!

Then the condensed black energy throughout its entire body erupted in every direction.