Chapter 262
Chapter 262
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 262
Chapter Title: Snowfield (2)
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“Kuh, agh!”
Blood gushed like a fountain.
It was hot, like a red-hot iron searing my shoulder.
The pain, spreading like poison, ate away at my reason.
“Hngh!”
Suppressing the dizzying pain, I stabbed down with my folding knife at Cassia’s arm, which was wrapped around my waist.
*Krrrrk!*
A powerful resistance traveled up my hand, so strong it was hard to believe I'd just stabbed a slender forearm.
Still, did the attack get through?
The strength in the arm wrapped around my waist weakened for a moment.
*Thud!*
I stomped my foot hard and put distance between myself and Cassia.
I took an emergency potion from the sling bag I always carry and poured it over the stump of my right arm, torn off below the shoulder.
“Hmph. Such nimble movements, just like a liar.”
Cassia licked the blood flowing from the knife wound on her forearm, then tossed Oh-jin's right arm, which she was holding, to the ground like trash.
“Sis…ter…?”
Isabella, who had been breaking through the wall of shadows, stared wide-eyed at Oh-jin's arm lying on the ground.
“What… are you doing right now?”
Isabella glared at Cassia, her expression hardening.
A thick killing intent rose in her eyes.
“Hm? I’m just punishing a liar.”
“……”
Isabella’s gaze turned icy cold.
Looking down at Oh-jin's arm on the ground, she stopped trying to break the wall and turned toward Cassia.
“How dare you…”
*Crunch, crunch.*
The sound of her nervously biting her nails echoed eerily.
“How dare you… do that to Mr. Oh-jin’s arm…!”
*Crunch.*
A drop of red blood trickled from between her crushed fingernails.
The drop of blood that ran down her finger transformed into the shape of a red scythe.
Her pupils, devoid of light, turned to Cassia.
“Stop, Isabella!”
Oh-jin’s urgent voice reached her, but she couldn’t stop.
Because she couldn't just let the bitch who dared to wound Oh-jin go.
Even if that person was the older sister she had desperately searched for for ten years.
Isabella gripped the red scythe and kicked off the ground violently.
*Swish!*
A crimson path was carved into the ground.
Isabella slid along that path and swung the scythe wide.
“Seeing you defy your big sister, you still have bad habits.”
Cassia let out a cold sneer and clenched her fist as if grabbing the air.
Shadows crept up her body and gathered in her hand.
The gathered shadows formed a long staff.
At the end of the staff, in the mouths of two coiled snakes, hung an emerald-colored bell.
*Ting.*
The clear sound of the bell rang out.
Shadows exploded out from the staff, knocking away Isabella’s scythe.
*Screeeech!*
The red scythe was violently repelled, and Isabella’s body was pushed back.
“You’re the one with bad habits, sister.”
Isabella glared fiercely at Cassia and slit her palm on the blade of the red scythe.
Blood surged up, and red blades poured down toward Cassia.
“…You know nothing, yet you dare to spout such words?”
Cassia’s lightless pupils turned to Isabella.
The jewel embedded in her forehead emitted a sinister black light.
She lightly swung the staff in her hand through the air.
*Shaaaaaa!*
Following the staff’s trajectory, black snakes shot up and formed a massive barrier.
The red blades and the wall of snakes clashed.
The earth tore like paper, and a ride dozens of meters high collapsed, kicking up dust.
“Flow.”
Isabella turned her scythe-cut palm downward.
The dripping blood created circular ripples, staining the earth red.
Flowers bloomed from the red-stained earth.
Hundreds of blood flowers, crimson from stem to leaf, spread out around Isabella.
She looked as if she were standing in the middle of a garden made of blood.
In the garden of blood, Isabella slowly raised her scythe.
“Heeh, what pretty flowers.”
Cassia strode without hesitation into the garden of profusely blooming blood flowers.
She plucked one of the blood flowers and burst into giggles.
“Come to think of it, do you remember? How you made me a flower crown when we were young.”
The vast garden of the Colagrande family.
Isabella, smiling brightly while holding a crown of wildflowers, and Cassia, sitting in a wheelchair, watching Isabella with warm eyes.
Precious memories from a time she could no longer recall.
“…I don’t remember.”
In truth, she remembered.
So vividly she could never forget it, even in her dreams.
“Oh? Is that so? I remember. Fufu, how disgusting you looked putting that crown on me… It still makes me sick to my stomach just thinking about it.”
“……”
Isabella bit her lip harshly.
Even though she knew Cassia wasn’t in her right mind.
“Disgust… ing?”
“Fufut. Why, did you think I’d like it?”
Every word that came from Cassia’s mouth was a dagger stabbing into her heart.
The album of memories she had cherished in her heart was torn to shreds by the sharp daggers.
“Shut up.”
Isabella’s eyes flew open fiercely as she swung her scythe.
The hundreds of blood flowers blooming around her exploded simultaneously, creating a terrifying blast.
*Ruuuuuumble!*
The earth shook as if an earthquake had struck.
With the body of a mere human, she had created destruction on par with a natural disaster.
However.
“Hmph. I thought they were pretty flowers, but on the inside, they’re just like you.”
Even amid that immense explosion, Cassia stood completely unharmed.
“Now it’s my turn, isn’t it?”
*Ting.*
With the clear sound of the bell, black snakes surged toward Isabella like a tidal wave.
“Ngh!”
Tens, hundreds, thousands.
A number of snakes so vast it was meaningless to count.
Isabella swung her scythe wildly, cutting down the snakes that swarmed her like a tidal wave.
How much time had passed like that?
“Hah, hah!”
Isabella gasped for breath, leaning on her red scythe like a cane.
“Tired already?”
Compared to Isabella, who was breathing so heavily she looked like she could collapse at any moment, Cassia’s condition was not much different from when they first clashed.
Her breathing was only slightly faster.
Cassia’s lips twisted into a smirk. She took a light step, and her body vanished into the shadows, reappearing in front of Isabella in an instant.
“I’ll have to punish our Bella, too.”
“…Sister.”
Cassia’s eyes gleamed with a sinister emerald light.
She raised the hand holding the staff high and brought it down toward Isabella.
No, to be precise.
She *tried* to bring it down.
“Ngh…”
Cassia’s body froze, like a machine that had been switched off.
She let out a low groan and bit her lip.
“Ah, ugh.”
The staff slipped from her hand, falling to the ground with the clear sound of its bell.
Cassia clutched her head with both hands and curled into a ball.
“St, op… No, I can’t, stop…”
Cassia muttered, her body trembling.
Each time she struggled while clutching her head, the jewel in her forehead pulsed with black light.
“Ah, ugh. Ah.”
Like a fish leaping from the water, Cassia straightened her curled body and looked up at the sky.
The sky, obscured by her shadows, was covered in a pitch-black darkness without a single point of light.
Memories surfaced.
Old, faded.
Memories she never wanted to recall again.
-I’m sorry. Miss Cassia’s illness… cannot be cured with modern technology.
The doctor’s words fell like a death sentence.
She couldn’t remember the exact name of the disease.
It was a disease where the muscles, starting from her legs, then her waist, her arms, and eventually her whole body, would lose function and harden like stone.
An incurable disease that the vast wealth of the Colagrande family could not treat.
All she could do was wait for death, her body gradually stiffening in a wheelchair.
-Hehe, Cassia! Look at this!
Isabella, presenting her with a crown of wildflowers with a bright smile.
Watching her run around so healthily, as if to mock her in her wheelchair, what a miserable feeling it was.
But she smiled.
As if nothing was wrong.
As if it was nothing.
Because she believed that was the only way her loved ones wouldn’t be sad.
Then, one day.
Waking late at night, she heard a voice as she passed through the hallway.
It was her mother’s voice, talking with her father.
-Still, it’s a relief.
What was a relief?
-If it had happened to Bella, too, I really… Hah.
The sound of her mother’s sigh, tinged with relief.
The moment she heard her mother’s words, her world shattered.
Yes.
Her life, the life of Cassia Colagrande.
Was nothing more than the “still, it’s a relief” part of the equation.
If it were a lottery, she was the losing ticket.
Unwanted by anyone.
Desired by no one.
A crumpled slip of paper, waiting to be thrown in the trash.
That day, she lost everything.
Her kind father, her gentle mother, her lovely little sister.
Even herself.
After some time passed.
Following the family’s rules, she was sent to a distant hospital in Iceland.
She didn’t feel wronged, nor was she sad.
Because she had nothing left anyway.
All she had was this wretched, deteriorating body.
Thus abandoned by her family, she was abandoned once more when a massive rift leading to a Hellscape opened.
In a situation where monsters flooded out like a tidal wave, there was no one to look after her.
The place where she collapsed after struggling out in her wheelchair was a pure white snowfield.
She was left alone amidst the raging blizzard and the endless expanse of snow.
So cold.
So piercingly frigid.
A memory so cold it felt like she would freeze.
“Aah.”
A sky as dark as a moonless night.
Cassia lowered her head, her body staggering as she raised her staff.
“I must… follow His… words.”
She remembers.
She recalls.
She brings it to mind.
Trembling, crying pitifully.
The memory of that day, when she waited for her impending death.
The unending nightmare.
“…That’s the only way.”
Never again.
Will I be aband—
“Heavenly Lightning!”
*Crackle!*
A blue bolt of lightning fell from the sky, piercing Cassia’s body.
Cassia let out a low groan and staggered back.
*Thwip!*
Oh-jin wrapped a wire around Isabella’s body and quickly pulled her toward him.
“Hoo.”
He pulled the still-panting Isabella into an embrace with his remaining arm.
“Hah, hah. It’s alright now, Mr. Oh-jin.”
Isabella, who had been gasping for breath, straightened up.
She created the red scythe again and continued speaking.
“I’ll buy some time, so you escape, Mr. Oh-jin. I managed to make a small crack in the shadow wall earlier.”
“No.”
Oh-jin flatly refused her, shaking his head.
“Fighting together is our best bet.”
“……”
In the first place, he couldn’t escape even if he wanted to; they were surrounded by shadows.
Even if there was a crack, he couldn’t leave Isabella behind.
Watching Oh-jin raise his remaining arm and try to get into a fighting stance, Isabella let out a deep sigh and placed a hand on his shoulder.
“Run.”
A quiet command flowed from her lips.
“Kuh!”
Regardless of Oh-jin’s will, his body began to move on its own.
“Isabella!”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Oh-jin.”
Isabella gave a faint smile.
“But I felt the same way back then, you know?”
Isabella winked and gripped her scythe.
She kicked off the ground and charged at Cassia once more.