Laeli Caris (2)
Goblins are the lowest class of monster.
A grown man in full armor could take one down one-on-one without much trouble. So when the first goblin appeared, the mood didn't shift. It felt more like spotting something curious than facing a threat.
And I remember running from it.
I was in the middle of seriously wondering what on earth my past self had even been when I felt something strange.
"Why..."
It was bizarre, and yet familiar. The same sensation I'd felt when I contracted with the Great Demon. The same one that had washed over me when I stood face to face with the Demon King. A feeling that thick. That filthy.
"It's carrying Magi."
The moment I muttered that, I knew. This was not the kind of energy a mere lowly monster like a goblin had any business possessing.
The young lady glanced back at my words, then slowly drew her sword. A monster was a monster, no matter what it carried. It needed to be cut down and killed.
What happened after that, I don't know. Back then I ran without looking back, and afterward I was too far gone to remember a thing.
...I really do need to have a serious reckoning with my past self.
In the end, the young lady came back having lost an eye. Whether more monsters attacked after I fled, or whether that Magi-bearing goblin was simply too strong — there were several possibilities. But one fact hadn't changed: the situation in front of me was a crisis.
And I was essentially alone. Even with my immortality, it was the contract with the Great Demon — the black magic I performed by staking a life that could not die — that had raised me to the rank of an officer in the Demon King's army. Without those things, my actual skill was barely that of an ordinary person.
I just couldn't die. That was all.
Kieeeeek!
"Kh!"
Laeli barely managed to knock aside the claw that shot toward her in an instant. That was not a normal goblin's speed. It was on par with a lesser demon.
A knight could handle a lesser demon well enough. But Laeli was still a seed just beginning to sprout. She wasn't even close to a knight — she was at the level of an ordinary squire.
Kieeek!
"Ugh!"
Laeli met the goblin's fierce assault with real courage, but her skill wasn't enough. On top of that, she kept glancing back at me, splitting her focus. In a fight she couldn't even be sure of winning if she gave it her full attention, exposing a weakness like that was fatal.
"This is bad..."
And it wasn't just a matter of losing an eye. Her life itself looked to be in danger. The goblin's claw stretched toward a lethal spot, and Laeli didn't look like she had the strength left to block or dodge.
Originally, I'd planned to just watch. Whether she lost an eye or took damage to the corresponding part of her body, I hadn't intended to particularly care. But letting her die this early wasn't what I wanted. With no telling what variables might arise, a person who originally hadn't died dying now would produce results I couldn't even imagine.
So I reached out.
Shunk—!
The goblin's claw punched through tender flesh. Vivid blood sprayed across my vision, and I quietly swallowed the pain. The madness had consumed my reason — but it had also crushed the pain into nothing. For someone who had lived an entire lifetime numb, the sudden, violent agony made me stagger.
Laeli cried out in horror.
"Argal...!"
"Get a hold of yourself!"
Coming to her senses, Laeli seized the moment the goblin was briefly caught on me and swung her sword. Even a monster steeped in Magi dies the same way if you take off its head. The goblin, which hadn't expected my interference, took the blade and died.
Clatter.
Panicked by the unexpected turn, Laeli dropped her sword and sank to the ground. Her fierce gaze was locked on my hand — the one with a gaping hole, still pouring blood. Complicated emotions tangled across her face, but she seemed to want to tend the wound first, reaching out. I slapped her hand away.
Smack.
"Don't touch it."
"Ah..."
If she put her hands on a wound without the first idea what she was doing, it could fester or turn septic. So I stopped her, intending to head back to Viscount Caris's territory for treatment.
That was when a single sentence from her made me turn my head.
"I'm... sorry."
Sorry. Strange. What was there to be sorry for here? Wasn't the one who truly needed to apologize me — the one who had slaughtered her entire family in the past?
If an Immortal's death is worthless, an Immortal's wound is worth even less. This really was nothing. Nothing at all.
"It's nothing, my lady."
The sky was dark. Clouds had swallowed the sun, and the forest smothered what little light filtered down.
"Today was simply an unlucky day."
Originally, she would have lost one eye and spent the rest of her life never leaving her family's estate. That fate had been twisted. She had been granted good fortune. Unintentionally.
"Regardless of anyone's intent."
At those words, Laeli's eyes went wide, then she bowed her head deeply. And she muttered something I could barely hear.
"I'm sorry.... Truly..."
I had already said it once. There was no need to be sorry. I didn't feel the need to say it again. I turned and started walking toward where I'd originally been headed.
Laeli could not get her head together no matter how she tried.
She had succeeded in leading Argal into a forest where monsters appeared. But the monster that showed up was strong. It was only a goblin, and yet it was far too fast, far too powerful. And Argal's reaction had been calmer than she'd expected — so calm he'd actually started analyzing the thing the moment he saw it.
"Why.... It's carrying Magi?"
Magi. That single word struck Laeli like a thunderbolt. A monster that had taken on Magi gained strength on par with a demon. It was an opponent a mere knight cadet like her could not possibly overcome.
Her sword grew heavier. Her reactions slowed. Meanwhile the goblin's attacks only got faster, and a rising panic began to claw at her chest.
Am I going to die here like this? No — if I do, what happens to Young Master Argal?
She turned her head, about to scream at him to run, and that was the moment. The broken motion left an opening. The goblin lunged for a vital point, claws outstretched, and Laeli could not react in time. She squeezed her eyes shut just before the sharp tips reached her.
Shunk!
A sound far too cruel, far too full of pain. Laeli had been certain she was about to die — and then she realized she felt nothing. No pain. No wound. Her eyes flew open.
What had thrown itself in the way was a smooth, uncalloused hand that bore not a single trace of training. A hand she had thought even more fragile than her own now hung hideously pierced through, half-torn by the goblin's claw. Scarlet blood covered them both, and Laeli cried out as if she couldn't believe what she was seeing.
"Argal...!"
"Get a hold of yourself!"
He barked the order as if it didn't even hurt. A chance that would not come again. Even if she was still lacking, she had the talent to one day stand at the peak of knighthood, and she did not let the opening slip. She gathered every scrap of her focus. The sword she swept in a single gathered stroke traced a path that was startlingly clean.
The goblin's head came off, and in the same instant Laeli felt herself take a step forward. The creature that had been about to kill her moments ago was now nothing but a scrap of corpse.
And the fact she still could not believe was this: that frail, timid young master had sacrificed his own hand for her.
Argal frowned down at the half-ruined thing. Blood was still flowing, and the wound was deep enough that bone showed through. She was wondering how to treat it — wrapping it in cloth first, surely — and had just started to reach out when Argal slapped her hand away.
"Don't touch it."
That savage look in his eyes made Laeli's chest feel as if it were being torn apart. She had done wrong, and she had no way to make it right. She had no way to treat the horrific wound right in front of her. All of it had come from her own mistake, her own fault.
"I'm... sorry."
She forced her lips apart — they barely wanted to open — and squeezed out an apology with whatever strength she had left. Had he accepted it? Argal's rigid expression eased, just a fraction, and he offered her comfort.
"It's nothing, my lady."
As if he knew the wreck of his hand was shaking her to the core, he seemed to hide it behind his back. The gaze that had gone calm settled the center she had lost, and only then did Laeli recover her composure. With her reason intact again, she could trace back through everything that had happened, and at last she understood.
I committed a crime beyond measure, and I received a grace beyond measure.
What's more, Argal seemed to have some grasp of the circumstances. It wasn't as if there had been nothing suspicious. She was the one who had dragged him into a dark forest out of nowhere, after all. And yet he spoke without a trace of resentment.
"Today was simply an unlucky day."
"Regardless of anyone's intent."
That last sentence drove itself into Laeli's chest. She could not keep her head up. He was far too sharp. Regardless of anyone's intent. Who could possibly have known a Magi-tainted goblin would come bursting out? He was telling her not to feel guilty for it. It was far too kind.
She looked at him now with eyes that had shed a layer. Here was someone who could stake his life for another person — and who had the courage to actually do it. Not someone who merely pretended to be strong, but someone who carried a genuine toughness inside. That kind of person was standing right in front of her.
And so Laeli regretted it more than she could say. She had been in marriage talks with a man like this, and she had tried to break it off of her own accord. Could it be undone? Would she be given even a single chance? Beneath that wish, she offered one more word of apology.
"I'm sorry.... Truly..."
Things had turned out this way, but the return to House Caris didn't take long. The castle erupted the moment we walked back through the gates, which was hardly surprising. A fairly serious accident had just occurred, after all.
A priest residing in the castle rushed over at once to tend my wound. The old cleric, his face a mass of fine wrinkles, looked at the injury and made a low sound in his throat.
"That's no ordinary willpower you've got.... This is a horrific wound — the flesh is torn wide open."
Unless the priest was of bishop or cardinal rank, a wound of this severity simply could not be healed in a single pass. What he could do was a stopgap: dull the pain somewhat, roughly join the torn flesh back together, and wrap it in bandages. After several such steps, the emergency treatment was done.
It was a fairly nasty injury, and perhaps because a trace of the monster's Magi still lingered in it, the wound throbbed from time to time. The madness I'd carried had certainly taken the edge off every kind of pain. My past self had stood there just fine even after both arms were torn off, after my whole body was shredded by blades, after a weapon punched through my heart — never mind a hole through the hand.
Even so, I felt no regret that the madness was gone. This silence in my chest was so still I could barely get used to it — and yet it was comfortable, because the particular unease I'd felt when I killed someone I had considered precious was no longer there. And so I was satisfied.
I was resting on a bed when Viscount Caris came to see me. He looked at my bandaged hand, then bowed deeply at the waist. It was a sight you rarely saw from the head of a noble house.
"I'm sorry."
And then his manner changed. One hand went to his chest, his shoulder dropping slightly, while the other extended behind him. It was the posture a knight used to pay respect to another.
"And thank you. You saved my girl."
I'll say it again: it was hardly anything. I had saved her, yes, but only because I figured it was better than watching the variables that would come from her dying. The wound I'd taken for it was nothing more than a single, trivial puncture. I didn't think it warranted that degree of gratitude.
That said, there was no reason not to accept what was being offered. If a noble expressed thanks at that level, he was certain to follow it with some token of his appreciation.
"It's nothing, Viscount."
I had seen countless nobles. I had killed countless nobles. I knew exactly how much profit they raked in with those smooth tongues of theirs. And knowing that, why wouldn't I use the same?
"I only did what was expected of me."
"The wound should heal well enough if we give it time and proper care, shouldn't it?"
In other words: a very long-winded way of saying, pay for the treatment.