Chapter 26
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 26
When people spoke of distance, they usually described it in terms of an average adult’s walking pace—a day’s journey, or half a day’s walk.
Because of this, there were always discrepancies. It was especially wise to take a local’s word with a grain of salt, even more so when the terrain involved forests or mountains.
With that in mind, Rickert estimated it would take them about two days to escape the forest. Besides, with one injured person in their group, they couldn’t make fast progress anyway.
The forest path was uneven, constantly rising and falling. It climbed gently, dipped suddenly, and was riddled with thick, protruding tree roots. It was a path utterly impassable for any carriage or wagon.
Molty stubbornly insisted he could walk on his own, but after a firm word from Rickert, he reluctantly leaned on Volka for support.
And so, the group welcomed another night in the forest. The hooting of owls echoed through the trees, and the moon was barely visible, obscured by the dense canopy. In the pitch-black darkness, two campfires crackled to life.
It was the kind of night where an unknown terror seemed to lurk just beyond the firelight, shrouded in the oppressive dark.
They sliced and shared the salted meat they had gotten from the village. It was so caked in salt that they had to nibble it in tiny bites alongside their hard bread.
The students tried to hide it, but their anxiety was plain to see. Ironically, they found their resolve by watching the calm Rickert. They wondered how he could remain so utterly unfazed; it was a marvel they still couldn't get used to.
“The enemy will come from the path we just took,” Rickert began, wiping the dagger he’d used to slice the meat. Though he hadn’t asked for their attention, everyone turned to him, hanging on his every word.
“If they had gotten ahead of us to set a trap, we would’ve run into them near the village. The end of this path is too far for them to lie in wait. They’re probably running late because they stopped to inspect the scene before giving chase. That means we’ll have to fight.”
Rickert stated it plainly. There was no running, no other option. They had to fight.
“Since we’re split into three groups, let’s have three people take on one enemy at a time. You all know you won’t remember a thing from your training anyway, right? Just think about stabbing and slashing the moment you see an opening. If three of us fight one of them, an opening is bound to appear.”
It might have been a blow to their pride, but when lives were on the line, pride didn’t matter. Having experienced it once already, the students understood this well. However…
“But they outnumber us. There are only nine of us, plus one injured. They must have at least thirty. How can three of us…” one of the female students spoke up. Perhaps because they had grown closer, she voiced her thoughts without hesitation.
“That’s why the first clash is crucial. If we ambush them and take down a few in an instant, they’ll mistake us for a larger force. It’s about momentum. We overwhelm them with sheer momentum. Don’t think about anything else—just focus on killing one person at a time. We’ll sweep through them just like that. I’ll handle the stronger ones.”
Even if Rickert was right, and even if they trusted him as their leader, the students still seemed unsure, their lack of real combat experience showing on their faces.
Rickert tapped the bandage wrapped around his left hand.
“The wound on my palm hasn’t fully healed yet.”
It had only been a single day since he had sworn an oath not to run, but to fight and avenge anyone who died. The stinging sensation on his palm was still vivid, a constant reminder.
Yet, the human heart was a fickle thing. There was no telling how they would react once thrown into the thick of it.
Rickert glanced over at Ice. His impossibly silver hair and perfectly proportioned features seemed to shine even after three days without a proper wash. Yet those eyes, which had always been cold and indifferent, now looked strangely melancholic. Or perhaps, fearful.
Rickert realized he still didn’t truly understand the man. Had he really left just to complete the request? Whether that was the truth or merely a coward’s excuse, there was no way to know.
“It’s better to fight. Running away becomes a habit, too. And once it does, your life becomes truly miserable…” Rickert muttered, as if talking to himself, or perhaps intending for everyone to hear.
The campfire blazed. The students remained silent. It was impossible to tell whether they were steeling their resolve or simply trembling with fear.
Rickert thought that while he, who was accustomed to fighting, could easily make such a choice, he couldn't force the students to risk their lives just because he was willing to. At the same time, he felt a sense of kinship with them. In his previous life, he had been thrown onto the battlefield when he was only fifteen or sixteen.
Looking up and studying the students’ faces one by one, the thoughts, the tremors, the worries, and the anxieties of those days came rushing back to him.
That was why he could never bring himself to say something like, If you run, I’ll kill you. Even if they fled, he would have no choice but to embrace them again and tell them it was alright. But since he couldn’t actively encourage them to run, either, Rickert figured this was as far as his duty went.
As the night deepened, a strange wave of melancholy washed over him. In the end, nothing had changed.
*
The next day, after walking a bit further along the forest path, Rickert decided to set up an ambush. It was far better to fight with preparation than to keep walking and be caught off guard.
The students wondered if they could escape the forest if they just pushed on, or if they might meet the guild’s adventurers once they reached Torvail. Nevertheless, they trusted Rickert’s judgment and followed his lead.
And that was exactly what Rickert had intended. It wasn’t just to gain a tactical advantage; setting up an ambush forced a shift in their mindset. Psychologically, it made them accept the reality: We are going to fight.
Like a truly competent field commander, Rickert knew how to choose the time and place of battle.
“Hey, wouldn’t it be better to strike from both sides?” Volka asked. Currently, all the students were hiding on one side of the path.
“That only works if we’re perfectly coordinated. As you know from experience, once the blades start swinging, everything becomes a blur. You might end up hitting our own people coming from the other side.”
“I guess so…”
In a life-or-death situation, the extreme tension could easily make someone lose the ability to distinguish friend from foe. That was why armies emphasized formations; all a soldier had to do was thrust at whoever was directly in front of them. While larger groups were harder to command, the individual soldiers only needed to perform simple, repetitive actions. In small-scale skirmishes like this, however, the capability of each fighter mattered far more.
Rickert and the students drew their weapons and waited in hiding by the roadside. The wait turned out to be far more tedious than they expected. In the silence, all sorts of thoughts crossed their minds—from trivial distractions to solemn resolutions.
Then, around noon, a scream echoed from far down the path.
“Aaaaaaargh!”
Everyone’s eyes widened. What was that?
And then, another.
“Aaaaaaargh!”
The group flinched. Even Rickert was bewildered. What is going on?
Screams continued to ring out intermittently. “Don’t leave me behind! Save me! I’m sorry…!”
At some point, a faint breeze carried the scent of burning. Fire? What’s happening?
“You motherfuckers! Do I look like a fucking joke to you?!”
Though they didn’t know exactly what was happening, it was clear that something incredibly grave was unfolding. The screams drew closer and closer. Then—
“Pant! Pant! Pant!”
A man came sprinting toward them, completely empty-handed. Judging by his attire, he was an adventurer—one of their enemies—but he had two arrows sticking out of his back. Huh? He was fleeing in a frantic panic, looking as though he had just seen a ghost.
Rickert realized it intuitively. The enemies had run into the locals, and a fight had broken out. And they were getting utterly slaughtered. In an unfamiliar place, especially rugged terrain like this, you could never match the people who lived there. When dealing with rangers who excelled at stealth and archery, the best policy was to leave them alone, like a poisonous frog.
The students tensed. Should we charge out? What do we do? But Rickert raised an arm, stopping them. For now, they would watch.
They gripped their weapons tightly. Blood began to seep through the bandages on someone’s hand. The tension reached a boiling point.
The screams drew even closer, and before long, another group of men came scrambling up the path. They, too, had arrows embedded in their arms and bodies. One man, an arrow lodged in his thigh, was limping heavily in a desperate bid to escape.
Rickert lunged at the one who looked the most intact. Startled mid-stride, the man flailed his arms in panic.
Thwack!
Rickert’s downward strike split the man’s head open. With that as the signal, the students swarmed out.
“Revenge!” someone shouted.
Then, without prompting, all the students roared in unison.
“Revenge!”
The enemies had no morale left, and many didn’t even have their weapons ready. What followed was a one-sided slaughter.
“W-Wait a minute!”
“I surrender!”
The men begged for mercy, but the students showed none, hacking every last one of them down. It got to the point where Rickert had to restrain one student who was frantically butchering a corpse in a frenzy.
“Pant! Pant! Pant!”
Though they hadn’t fought for long, they gasped for breath, half-crazed with adrenaline.
More fleeing men appeared shortly after, but upon seeing Rickert’s group and the corpses of their allies, they shrieked in horror and bolted into the pathless depths of the forest.
Meanwhile, the smell of burning grew stronger. Thick gray smoke billowed in the distance.
“Let’s move. The fire might spread faster than we think. Molty, you take the lead. I’ll cover the rear.”
Rickert intentionally placed the injured boy at the front. It was to ensure that every single one of them survived. The students understood his intention and, now bolstered by confidence, nodded in agreement.
Rickert slung his scabbard diagonally across his back and walked at the very end of the line, sword drawn.
About an hour later, as they drove off the last of the stragglers, a dense shroud of gray smoke suddenly enveloped them. They hadn’t even felt the heat of the flames yet.
The brief wave of smoke swept over them, and they coughed, eyes stinging from the acrid fumes. In an instant, the companions walking right in front of them vanished from sight. It was the same for Rickert as it was for the others.
“Cough! Cough!”
The smoke swirled, disorienting them. Even the path beneath their feet was barely visible. From that moment on, the students simply walked blindly forward.
Then, someone lunged at Volka through the smoke. A chilling sound brushed past his ear.
Whoosh!
Startled, Volka instinctively twisted his body to dodge. But his foot caught on a root, sending him sprawling. A trickle of blood ran down his cheek where a blade had grazed him.
Through the thick smoke, the glow of the fire flickered, revealing a man glaring at Volka, his eyes wide with madness.
With his disheveled appearance and wildly tangled, shoulder-length hair, he looked like a demon risen from hell. Arrows protruded from his back like a hedgehog’s quills, leaving his leather armor—which had done all it could for its master—in tatters.
He growled like a beast.
“Do you bastards really think I’m a fucking joke…!”
It was none other than Lorentz. Having poked a hornets’ nest and suffered a brutal beating from the rangers, he had completely lost his mind, consumed by venomous rage. He was ready to slaughter anyone who crossed his path. He was also the one who had set the fire. As his subordinates were helplessly picked off, he had ignited the forest in a final, desperate act of spite.
Volka scrambled to his feet, trying to escape. He had dropped his sword when he fell and was completely defenseless. He had strayed from the path, had no idea where he was, and now a terrifying killer was closing in, aiming to plunge a blade into his back.
Clang!
The ring of clashing steel echoed. Volka fell again and looked back. A black cloak fluttered. To his utter shock, it was Ice. He couldn’t believe his eyes. Why…?
“That way. Go,” Ice said indifferently, stepping in to block Lorentz.
Thick smoke still swirled around them, the acrid fumes stinging their nostrils. The heat was rising, a sign the flames were drawing closer.
Without a word, Lorentz and Ice clashed. As Ice swung his sword, pure white crystals resembling snowflakes bloomed along the blade’s trajectory. A brief chill swept through the air. According to the Rubens Guild’s classification, it was unmistakably the Blooming Sword.
Startled, Lorentz avoided a direct clash. He leaned back, quickly widening the distance.
“It’s you! You’re the bastard who caused all of this! Hehehe… Yes, if I kill you, I can make up for everything! You son of a bitch! I’ll rip you apart!”
He had received reports that a young brat in a red cloak had killed the guild’s rising star, but seeing the Blooming Sword right before his eyes, everything else fled his mind.
Ignoring his opponent’s ranting, Ice focused entirely on the man before him.
Once more, Lorentz’s sword lunged forward. Ice thrust his own blade to parry, envisioning his next move. But the gap in real combat experience proved fatal.
There was no impact. With a flick of his wrist, Lorentz had deftly spun his sword to avoid the parry and kicked dirt into Ice’s face.
Ice quickly turned his head, but in a battle between experts, a split-second opening was deadly.
His flank burned. It felt like a deep gash. Even so, Ice grit his teeth and counterattacked, parrying the strike aimed at his throat. But his follow-up swing cut only empty air.
In that instant, the thought of his own death flashed through Ice’s mind. A life-or-death duel was never decided by sword mastery alone. Unless it was a formal duel between knights, what fool would fight fair? The environment introduced too many variables—the acrid smoke, his watering eyes, the sweltering heat, the uneven ground, the blurred vision.
Had they purely contested their swordsmanship, Ice might have won. But this was a battlefield where life and death hung in the balance, a place where one had to use any means necessary to survive.
Though the snow-like mana bloomed beautifully on Ice’s sword as it cut through the air, that was all. Lorentz had already slipped to the side, raising his sword high like an executioner.
Ice collapsed, his hands hitting the ground. He quickly rolled over to look up, but whether it was his neck, head, or chest, it seemed only a matter of seconds before Lorentz’s blade came crashing down.
Just then, someone soared through the fiery glow. To Ice, he looked like an angel with wings of fire.
Rickert brought his sword down from over his head. But Lorentz was no amateur; his reflexes were almost animalistic. He leaped back to create distance. But having seized the momentum, Rickert gave him no room to recover. A relentless barrage of strikes followed.
Swish! Whoosh! Swish!
The strikes were neither fast nor slow. At a glance, they seemed ordinary. Yet, strangely, Lorentz found himself constantly driven back, unable to find an opening to counter. An unnerving sense of wrongness crept down his spine. It was only because Lorentz was so skilled that he could even sense this; a weaker man would have had his sword shattered and been killed before he even realized what was happening.
Then, Rickert’s red cloak caught Lorentz’s eye. A red cloak… Wait, something’s wrong. Didn’t that brat just use the Blooming Sword?
Rickert systematically closed the distance with his footwork, cutting off every angle. By the time Lorentz realized what was happening, he had nowhere left to retreat.
He employed the same tactic he had used on Ice, feigning a counterattack to bait a mistake. But Rickert’s eyes—at once burning and icy cold—didn’t just see through the trick; they pierced it.
Whoosh!
Slash!
Lorentz used his wrist to avoid a blade-to-blade clash, but the distance had already closed too much. Unable to block, the top half of his head was sheared off, cleanly bisected just above the jaw.
Thud.
The headless torso collapsed. From the severed cross-section, his tongue and teeth were clearly visible. The severed head’s eye twitched for a brief second, and the body, disconnected from the brain, squirmed for a moment longer. Soon, both halves of the corpse fell completely still.
Rickert immediately sheathed his sword, slung it over his shoulder, and approached Ice.
“Can you move?”
Ice couldn’t answer. He looked up at Rickert like someone who had just witnessed the impossible. Or perhaps, someone who had experienced a miracle.
Time seemed to grind to a halt. In this forest of swirling smoke and flickering flames, as if the world were ending, it felt as though a being descended from the heavens was looking down upon him.
After a moment of daze, Ice snapped back to reality. Blood was gushing from his flank.
“J-Just go…”
Just go. Was it because of his wound, or the shame of having abandoned Rickert before?
Rickert stared down at him for a moment, then spoke firmly.
“You might be able to abandon me, but I won’t abandon you. That’s the difference between us.”
Ice lowered his head, his voice pleading and desperate.
“…Even you can’t save me… Just let me die…”
“Keep talking nonsense and I’ll knock you out and carry you. Come on, get on my back. And cover yourself with this if you don’t want that handsome face ruined,” Rickert said, pulling off his cloak as if there were no time to waste. It was already soaking wet.
He pulled Ice up by the arms and forced him onto his back. Draping the wet cloak over him, Rickert plunged into the flames. Ice buried his face in the boy’s shoulder.
After what felt like an eternity of running, they burst free from that living hell. A vast, cool field stretched out before them, the bright sun and a refreshing breeze welcoming the two boys. It was hard to believe heaven and hell could exist so close to one another. At long last, the forest was behind them.
Waiting for them were the other students who had already escaped, along with adventurers from the Beringen Guild who had come to their aid.
The anxiously waiting students erupted into cheers and rushed forward the moment they saw Rickert emerge with Ice on his back. Overwhelmed by a wave of immense relief, Volka’s face crumpled as he collapsed onto the grass.
All nine of them had survived. Not only that, but they had also slain the clan master of a rival guild.
Never in the Academy’s history had anything like this occurred—students surviving an initial ambush, launching a counterattack, and killing the enemy leader. It was a feat that even seasoned adventurers would have found difficult, yet it had been accomplished by a group of mere students.
As a result, the Beringen adventurers were at a loss for how to even begin writing their report on such an absurd outcome.
For now, however, all of that could wait. It was time to simply bask in the sun, feel the breeze, and rest. They had more than earned it.
Rickert laid Ice down and was about to administer first aid when the adventurers stepped in. They took over, washing the wound, liberally applying a potion, and stitching it shut.
The world outside the forest was so peaceful that the events of just moments ago felt like a dream.
Lying on Rickert's cloak, Ice gazed up at the white clouds drifting lazily across the blue sky, feeling a pleasant drowsiness from the potion creep over him.
The excited chatter of the other students drifted over from nearby. The earlier awkwardness and wariness between them had vanished, replaced by a sense of unity.
Lost in a world of his own, Ice was just about to drift off to sleep while watching the clear sky when Rickert’s face suddenly filled his vision, blocking the view.
"Are you alright? Do you need anything else?"
Rickert’s appearance, however, was a sight to behold. His skin was flushed bright red from braving the fire, and his hair was so singed it curled up like a head of broccoli.
"Pfft… haha…"
Despite the throbbing pain, a laugh escaped Ice’s lips.
Rickert’s eyes widened in surprise at the sound—he’d never seen Ice so much as smile, let alone laugh. But when he realized what Ice was laughing at, a silly grin spread across his own face.
The crisp breeze, the warm sunlight, the gentle pull of sleep, and a comforting friend.
There was nothing more to wish for.
Arc 6 – When a Frozen Heart Melts. End.