Chapter 29
Chapter 29
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: penny
Chapter: 29
Chapter Title: The Knights Arrive
-----------------------------------------------------------------
“Kyiiiiiiiiii!!!!!!”
The moment the blessed dagger plunged into his body, the lord let out a grotesque scream. It wasn’t the lord himself—it was the demon half-fused with his body.
I pulled the dagger out and stabbed it back in, repeating the motion over and over. The first few times, his thrashing grew more violent with each stab, but after that, his movements gradually slowed.
Aurora stood there with her arms crossed under her chest, not even blinking as she watched the lord get purified by holy power and die.
For the final thrust, I drove the dagger in deep, then pulled it out. The lord collapsed limply to the floor, repeating strange noises like “kiii, kiiii.”
“All done. Let’s go.”
“That thing’s still alive, isn’t it? We can just leave it like that?”
Aurora’s finger pointed at the lord, who was barely clinging to life and twitching faintly on the ground.
“Yeah, it’s still alive.”
“You’re not going to kill it?”
“I could if I wanted to, but I’m not going to. Lady Aurora, from now on, we’re saying we couldn’t kill it—not that we didn’t. You’ll have to back me up on that.”
“Of course I will, don’t worry. Though... couldn’t kill it, huh? There must be a reason for that.”
“Naturally.”
I pointed at the lord with the tip of the dagger as I spoke.
“What did I say is absolutely necessary to kill a demon?”
“A weapon imbued with holy power or a holy spell.”
“Exactly. But we don’t have any weapons with holy power right now, do we? So of course we can’t kill it.”
“Huh? But that holy weapon you’re holding... Oh, right. I get it. Yeah, we don’t have any holy weapons at all. So we can’t kill that thing. What a shame.”
As expected from Aurora, the incredibly competent and sharp NPC from the game—she instantly grasped my intent and played along.
“But one more thing. Why go to the trouble of hiding that weapon?”
“It’s not the dagger I’m hiding. It’s the fact that we used it.”
“The fact that we used it?”
Aurora echoed my words. I nodded.
“Weapons imbued with holy power require a certain level of faith to use properly. Someone without faith can’t bring out their full power, no matter what.”
My explanation was just a roundabout way of saying that in the game, you needed sufficient ‘Faith’ and ‘Holy Power’ stats for blessed weapons to perform at full capacity.
Aurora nodded in understanding at my explanation, then paused and turned to look at me.
“But how did you...?”
“What country around here comes to mind when you think faith and holy power?”
“None other than the Raphaela Holy Kingdom.”
The name of the Holy Kingdom had changed too, huh. Good thing I hadn’t opened my mouth first.
“...Wait, does that mean you’re from the Raphaela Holy Kingdom?”
“No. And that’s exactly why I want to hide the fact that I used it.”
Aurora let out an “Ah” at my words.
“You want to hide that you used a holy weapon even though you’re not from the Holy Kingdom?”
“Correct.”
Just a few exchanges, and she’d zeroed in on the core issue. Watching Aurora display the same brilliance from the game made even me proud.
“...Alright, that makes sense. The Holy Kingdom zealots are infamous for it. You’d want to avoid getting tangled up with them as much as possible. But then how do we deal with that demon?”
“We don’t. We send a letter to the imperial palace. Tell them a demon’s appeared and ask them to handle it.”
In the game, players had two choices.
Use a blessed weapon or holy spell to kill the lord directly, or beat him up as much as you wanted to vent, then send a letter to the empress to deal with it.
Logically, killing him on the spot seemed simpler, but if the player did that, it triggered an event later where the Holy Kingdom showered you with extremely annoying attention.
I had zero interest in their attention. To avoid getting saddled with all sorts of dirty, petty side quests, I planned to visit the Holy Kingdom exactly once in the mid-game and never look back.
Who in their right mind thought thirty long-distance delivery quests without fast travel was a good idea?
“Well, got it. We’re deceiving the empress, but we’ve already fooled her once—what’s one more time?”
“We’ve fooled her once already?”
“I’m talking about this idiot who touched a demon-possessed book on his own and got eaten alive.”
“...Oh, right. I forgot for a second. Yeah, that happened.”
That part had been a lie from the start. So this made twice.
“And.”
Aurora added casually, spinning around, bending slightly at the waist, and looking up at me.
“It’s only natural to show this much favor to the benefactor of my life. I still owe you a mountain of debts, after all.”
A bright smile bloomed on her face.
“Iris, time’s almost up.”
“...I know. It’s not fully sealed yet, so just a bit longer.”
At that moment, the captains of the Silver Dawn Knights gathered anxiously at the main gate. The moon already hung brilliantly in the sky. Iris’s silver hair gleamed radiantly in the moonlight.
Soon, the time the newbie had mentioned—“when the moon catches on the tallest tree visible from the castle gate”—arrived. The moment the moon snagged on the tree, Lize scanned the avenue before the gate. But the street was silent.
“Erica, anyone on the road?”
“No. Nothing. It’s empty.”
“I see.”
Iris’s curt reply carried a tangle of complex emotions.
“Claudia, Lize, Erica. Prepare yourselves. We’re heading to the mansion.”
At her brief command, the knight captains mounted their horses without a word. They’d prepared to storm the mansion long ago—they’d just been waiting for the right moment.
Claudia, Iris, Lize, and Erica all had a reason for acting with such urgency. It stemmed from a single sentence the newbie had left before entering the lord’s mansion.
“If I don’t make it back by the time the moon catches on the tallest tree from the castle gate, could you come looking for me at the mansion?”
Lize had laughed it off as an ominous joke, but the newbie’s expression had been deadly serious. And sure enough, he hadn’t returned by now.
That left only one thing to do.
If a fight broke out with the lord, the Silver Dawn Knights would come out on the losing end—so in the past, they might’ve just gritted their teeth and let it slide. But things were different now.
They absolutely couldn’t afford to lose that newbie.
At some point, without anyone leading, their pace quickened. Lize, at the front, was practically galloping.
With no one on the streets, there was no need to hold back, and rising anxiety pushed their speed higher. They reached the mansion in no time.
“Huh...? What the hell are they doing?”
“Why are those bitches here at this hour? Halt! Halt! Hey, didn’t you hear me? Stop!”
Two knights on guard duty at the mansion’s main gate, yawning their heads off, panicked at the sight of Lize charging full-tilt on horseback, followed by the other three. They shouted for them to stop.
Instead of obeying, Lize drew her twin daggers from her waist.
The knights panicked even more. They’d never seen the Silver Dawn Knights openly defy them before.
And they knew full well that if it came to a straight fight, their skills wouldn’t even measure up.
By the time the two knights finally grasped the situation and reached for their weapons, they were already frozen stiff and getting carved up.
“Guhk!”
“Kek!”
The knights rolled on the ground, bleeding from head to toe. Lize didn’t spare a glance at the unconscious men as she charged into the mansion. Iris, Erica, and Claudia followed right after.
The four knight captains finally reined in their horses at the mansion entrance.
“He’s inside, right?”
“High chance.”
“We storming in, sis?”
“Of course. Even if you all object, I’m going in alone.”
The usual playful, energetic Lize was gone, replaced by a murderous aura matching her fiery red hair. She looked ready to hack through anything in her path.
“Why would we object? If we’re going, we go together. And so what if they try to make a fuss over this? What more mess can our lives get into? Later, we’ll just tell the newbie it’s his fault we ended up like this and make him buy us drinks.”
Claudia stepped forward with her greatsword in hand. She raised it high overhead and smashed it down on the gate with all her might. With a boom, the sturdy wooden door splintered like matchsticks.
Lize went first, followed by Iris, Erica, and Claudia.
“Welcome.”
The moment the four entered the mansion, the first thing they spotted was a maid hurrying toward them and bowing politely.
“...?”
Question marks popped up over their heads in unison. Their weapon hands slowly lowered.
“What? Did that girl just greet us?”
“She said welcome? I must’ve misheard.”
“I heard it too. I thought my ears were playing tricks, but guess we’re all hallucinating. Illusion magic?”
Claudia, Erica, and Iris stood frozen in bewilderment. Ignoring them, Lize strode up to the maid and grabbed her by the collar.
“Cut the crap and tell me where the newbie is ri—”
“‘Mr. Newbie’ asked me to escort the knight captains to the parlor. Please follow me.”
Even Lize could only stand there dumbfounded.
Her grip slackened, and the maid casually straightened her collar before turning and ascending the stairs. She soon vanished upstairs.
But none of the four moved from their spots.
No—they couldn’t. The shock was too great; their minds refused to process. Their gaping mouths wouldn’t close.
In the end, they only followed after the maid came back down, impatient from waiting upstairs, and repeated the invitation.
And in the room they entered.
“Oh, you’re here?”
“Welcome, knight captains.”
There sat the newbie and Aurora, perfectly fine, facing each other across a table and sipping tea.