Chapter 163
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 163
After exchanging a few blows, Uin was certain of one thing.
The blue-haired Paladin wasn't particularly skilled. His pure, noble impression wasn't a lie; he was simply relying on the power of a Masterpiece.
…
And Uin knew what that meant.
The Paladin spoke as if he had taken “absolutely no damage,” but she knew better.
I know what it truly means to take no damage at all.
She had already experienced it firsthand.
—Swallow hadn't budged an inch, even when struck by a blow delivered with her full, absolute power.
This Paladin, on the other hand, might not have been wounded, but he had still been pushed back by attacks that weren't even her strongest. If that was the case…
“Hmph.”
Uin rushed the Paladin once more. This time, she put everything she had into it, clenching her fist and slamming it down onto his shield.
“Shatter!”
Kaaaaaaang!
A blast of wind several times more powerful than before swept through the area. The Paladin was hurled backward, knocked clean off his feet by the impact. With a sharp crack, a fissure split across Uin’s gauntlet.
The Imitation of Apocalypse could only withstand three of her full-strength strikes.
“Ugh…!”
As the Paladin bit his lip and stumbled back, Uin immediately lunged after him.
Pakaaaaang!
She delivered the second blow.
The Paladin was still physically unharmed, but his body trembled visibly from the impact. Again, the gauntlet cracked under the force of her strike. Even so, she pressed on without a shred of hesitation, relentlessly slamming her fist against the shield one last time.
Swaaaaaaang!
This time, unable to withstand the shock, the gauntlet shattered into pieces.
Pushed back over ten meters by the three consecutive strikes, the Paladin gasped for breath.
Or so it seemed, until a sudden torrent of blood erupted from his mouth.
“Damn it…”
It was an absurd level of destructive power. This was a supreme holy relic that had never faltered under any monster’s attack, a shield that had completely negated even Kart’s flames, yet it couldn’t fully absorb the impact. To be precise, his very bones were rattling. The vibrations lingered deep within him, shaking him from the inside out.
“Foolish…”
Yet, the Paladin managed a triumphant smirk. He had seen her gauntlet shatter with his own eyes. No matter how strong Uin was, she wouldn't dare fight barehanded.
Now, for the counterattack—
“Catch, you brute of a disciple.”
A voice called out from behind.
Only then did the Paladin look back. The other paladins—who, while not as strong as him, were undoubtedly powerful in their own right—had been completely wiped out.
It was only now that the blue-haired Paladin recognized the figures standing behind the soldiers. Two people who had absolutely no business being there.
The former Hero, Rashumer, and the current Hero, Sian.
“What kind of madness is this…?”
It made no sense. They were supposed to be leading the retreat. The mere fact that those two were staying behind until the very end carried an immense risk. Why?
Had they really staked everything on such a desperate gamble?
Pushing his questions aside, he focused on the object flying through the air. It was a new gauntlet.
Uin snatched the new gauntlet Rashumer had thrown to her.
The moment she slipped it onto her hands, she charged at the Paladin again.
Pakaaaaang!
Once more, a massive shockwave assaulted the Paladin’s body. Cracks immediately spiderwebbed across the new gauntlet, but Uin didn’t care in the slightest. The Paladin’s body trembled, shaking so violently that he no longer had the strength to hold his sword and shield.
Before the vibrations in his body could even subside, a second attack followed.
“H-Hieek!”
The Paladin reflexively raised his shield. A tremendous vibration reverberated through it. Feeling as though his internal organs were being scrambled and boiled, he coughed up another mouthful of blood.
Clatter!
Unable to withstand the shock any longer, the blue-haired Paladin dropped his sword and shield.
This was absurd.
It was an absurdly brute-force method.
An impact powerful enough to bypass a holy relic—this was something he had never anticipated.
Uin slowly approached. The Paladin’s trembling legs finally gave out, and he collapsed to the ground.
As Uin straddled his chest and clenched both fists, the Paladin groaned and shielded his face with his arms.
But instead of striking, she pulled his arms down and lowered the visor of his helmet back into place.
“…Huh?”
Baffled, the Paladin let out a confused sound. It took him a few more seconds to realize what her actions implied.
“W-Wait a minute!”
“Since your armor is so good, you should be able to last a while,” a chilling voice pierced through his helmet.
Uin glanced toward the distant roars of the Orcs. She still had a few minutes.
“I-I surrender! Just a second, wait! Waiiiiiiit!”
Thud!
Before the Paladin could finish his scream, a tremendous, head-rattling impact was delivered through his helmet. The shock snapped his head ninety degrees to the side, and he coughed up blood inside the enclosed space.
Thud! Thud!
The heavy, metallic clangs rang out continuously, mingling with the Paladin’s muffled screams. Interspersed within was the faint sound of Uin exhaling, but the metallic strikes that immediately followed swallowed all other noises.
Though she should have been growing tired, Uin rained down punches without a single pause.
As she battered the helmet relentlessly, blood sprayed from the gaps in the visor, splattering directly onto her face. Even with the Paladin’s blood covering her, she didn’t blink. She didn’t even wipe it away.
She simply kept swinging her fists.
The sight went beyond heartless; it was downright chilling.
“…”
Yet, no one interfered. Sian and Rashumer merely watched in silence.
—Throughout the entire ordeal, Uin’s face remained completely expressionless.
Originally, Uin was someone who smiled a lot. She wore her emotions plainly on her face. It had been that way when Rashumer first met her, and according to Ar, she had been an even more cheerful girl before the Black Disaster Advent Incident of Riaze.
For such a girl, a Hero who loved the people of the Empire, to show absolutely no change in expression from start to finish… Even when her emotions should have been running high, she remained completely unshaken.
…She was no longer the Uin Historia of the past.
“Then again, it’s a miracle she hasn’t gone mad,” Rashumer muttered quietly to himself.
Her spiritual pillar, Ar, had collapsed. She had realized that the comrades she trusted implicitly were hiding the truth. She had read the darkness in their eyes and sensed they were concealing even more…
All of this had happened in a single day. Her heart must have been utterly shattered. And she hadn't even been given time to process her feelings.
Because they were at war. Because in this situation, every second a Hero hesitated could lead to unimaginable consequences.
Uin had endured something a seventeen-year-old girl should never have had to face alone. Her expressionless face was the result. Knowing this, how could anyone stop her?
“Huff, huff.”
Uin only stopped punching when she herself was exhausted. A faint trace of pain finally showed on her face. As she stumbled to her feet and pulled off her gauntlets, the skin on her hands was completely raw and scraped. Drops of blood welled up on her knuckles and dripped to the ground.
The Paladin lay prone, his body twitching for a long time before he coughed a few times and barely managed to breathe. Though he was clinging to life, there was no chance of survival. His internal organs were already severely ruptured.
“Cough, gurgle, gasp…”
Watching the Paladin, Rashumer let out a short grunt of admiration. No matter how incredible a Masterpiece was, an impact of that scale should have broken his neck or caused fatal brain damage. The only reason he was still alive was his own tenacious life force.
With trembling hands, the Paladin pushed up his visor and immediately began vomiting. A few teeth were mixed in with the bloody mess.
“Damn… it…” Spitting out a curse, he began to crawl. “Your… Holiness… the Pope…”
The Pope had confidently asserted that ‘Uin won’t be much of a problem.’ He had said that Uin was indecisive and would hesitate to kill. Furthermore, he had claimed that no matter how strong she was, she could never pierce the defense of the holy relic, and since she was already mentally unstable, a few words would be enough to make her self-destruct.
The Pope had even given him a divine revelation of what to do after eliminating Uin. According to the plan, the Paladin was supposed to kill her, and then, after the Pope declared the salvation of the Empire, he would fight Kurak.
This isn’t what you said, Your Holiness…
Crawling on the ground, the Paladin rolled over to look up at Uin.
Her gaze was cold, as if she were simply watching to see how far he could crawl with his broken body.
“T-To me… pfft…” In utter despair, the Paladin chuckled, his tone completely different from before. It was his true nature, laid bare only at the brink of death. “You asked me… why the people of the Empire had to die.”
“…”
“You stupid… bitch. Cough, do you think I killed more of the Empire’s people? Or… do you think your precious Deputy killed more…?”
Uin froze. The Paladin smirked mockingly.
“Cough, wheeze, hahahaha… Ridiculous. Look at that face. You don’t know a thing.”
Yes, this was it. That reaction upon hearing an unexpected truth. Since he was going to die anyway, he would utterly shatter her mind. Die while drowning in guilt for the rest of your life, you foolish Hero.
“Did you think you’ve only walked a righteous path? …You’ll be shocked to find out what a piece of trash Ar really is.”
And you’ll realize just how hypocritical you are, too.
—Just as he was about to say those words.
Uin suddenly lifted him with one hand.
Limp and helpless, the Paladin was hoisted into the air without any resistance. Flustered, he hurriedly looked at her face.
Their eyes met.
Terrified by her expression, he was about to blurt out whatever came to mind.
But Uin slammed her other fist into his abdomen.
Taking the blow completely undefended, the Paladin rolled across the ground. Though there was no direct physical impact, the vibrations transmitted through the armor made his entire body shudder. Combined with the damage he had already accumulated, his scrambled organs felt as if they were turning into mush. He struggled to breathe.
“Cough! Gasp! Choke! Argh, aaargh!”
As the Paladin clutched his stomach in agony, Uin spoke in a flat, indifferent voice.
“I know.”
She approached him as he writhed on the ground and grabbed him by the hair. She paused, thinking. Deciding it was an inefficient method, she let go and lowered his visor once more.
“I said, I know.”
This time, she grabbed the back of his helmet and slammed his head straight into the ground.
“I’ll find out even if you don’t tell me. I will. I’ll find out myself. So don’t you worry about it.”
Her tone remained completely flat.
Thud, thud, thud.
She slammed his head down again and again.
An ordinary human would have died long ago, but the armor the Paladin wore—one of the 36 Masterpieces—negated almost all damage except for the vibrations. Because of this, even if he wanted to die, he couldn't. He merely experienced agonizing, near-fatal pain repeatedly, blacking out and waking up countless times in a matter of seconds while Uin continued to slam his head into the ground with an expressionless face.
“…I’ll handle things myself.”
Like a mantra, Uin repeated the same words.
In the time between Ar’s collapse and her arrival at the Annun Plains—during that single day in Riaze—Garot had called Uin to her office. The room was a cluttered mess of scattered documents, and Garot’s expression had been dark. Just by looking at her, Uin could guess how much Ar had been hiding.
At that time, Garot had made her a promise.
She promised that once the war was over, she would tell Uin everything she knew. She would take responsibility for finding out what she didn’t know. She would uncover everything related to the Edelbreas Black Wolf Knights and tell her all of it. For now, she had asked Uin to forget everything and just fight.
So, when that time came… once she uncovered the things Ar had hidden…
“…”
It was then that the Paladin, who had been twitching and somehow holding on, went completely limp.
Only after double-checking that he was no longer breathing did Uin let go of the helmet.
“Ha.”
She let out a sigh.
“Ha, hahahahaha.”
This time, she laughed.
Even to her, it felt absurd. This was undoubtedly her first time killing someone, yet strangely, she felt no particular emotion. Far from feeling guilty, she was as calm as if she had simply done what was necessary.
This man was the culprit behind thousands of additional casualties in the Siege of Felstein and the Siege of Rubhem. If he hadn't been stopped here, he would have gone on to kill hundreds of thousands more. Someone had to kill him, and she couldn’t always leave that task to others.
Yes, this was unavoidable. Above all, considering the weight of his sins, she couldn’t even bring herself to feel like she had killed a human being.
If anything, it only left a bitter taste in her mouth as she recalled Ar’s past question: ‘Do you think you can kill a person?’
Having finished her task, Uin turned her head toward Rashumer and Sian. The two had been watching her this entire time. The look in Rashumer’s eyes had changed. It was different from before, and by no means pleasant.
Not knowing what kind of face to make, Uin forced a smile.