90. Who Is That Bitch.
90. Who Is That Bitch.
My stomach burned.
A searing pain surged through me, as though I were being branded with a hot iron.
'If I pull this out, a ton of blood is going to come out...'
A rapier had pierced through my abdomen.
Some internal organs were likely damaged as well.
Normally, pulling out an object lodged in a wound like this is a shortcut to death, but that only applied to ordinary circumstances.
'She stabbed me with an Aura Blade...!'
A vivid blue aura blazed fiercely along the rapier impaled in my gut.
The burning aura continuously inflicted damage on the wound and my internal organs, so leaving the blade lodged inside me was causing more harm than pulling it out would.
Because I possessed a Master's body, my high resistance kept the damage to a minimum, but an ordinary person would have died already.
The blazing blue aura on the rapier seemed to perfectly embody her fury.
"...!!"
But contrary to the raging aura, Casey's hand gripping the rapier trembled like an aspen leaf.
Immediately after the thrust, her expression had wavered noticeably, though only for an instant.
She looked as if she truly hadn't imagined it would actually land.
"Old man, why... why did you take that hit...?"
"Is that something to say after stabbing me?"
"I thought you'd just dodge it like you always do..."
The one who did the stabbing was wearing a more dumbfounded expression than me.
Since I'd never properly taken a direct hit from Casey's attacks before, it made sense. Not that I wasn't feeling dumbfounded too.
"You...!!! What did you do?!!!"
As soon as Lucia grasped the situation, she lunged at Casey.
Ordinarily, she should have drawn her sword, but inconveniently, both Nana and Lucia had come out for fun this time without being prepared at all.
Raising her fists instead of a sword, she charged recklessly at Casey, who was still holding the rapier.
Casey didn't even spare Lucia a glance.
Her trembling hand regained its composure.
"I have no business with you."
"Ugh.. My body.. won't move?!"
When Casey raised her hand toward Lucia, a magic circle unfurled. Lucia's body floated up into the air before being hurled backward, crashing through the wall of an old building and slamming into it.
It was her specialty, Telekinesis Magic.
It was noticeable that she had moderated the force, suggesting she was utterly fixated on me alone.
I used that opening to pull my body backward.
Then, the rapier impaled in my abdomen slid out.
-Hududuk
Bright red blood gushed from the open hole, soaking the floor.
I had gone to the trouble of wearing expensive clothes, and now they were torn and drenched in blood. A complete mess.
In an instant, I applied pressure to several pressure points on my body.
"Ugh...."
My face instinctively contorted from the pain, which felt like my stomach was twisting itself apart.
But the effect was incredible.
The wound, which had been spouting blood like a hole in a burlap sack, stopped bleeding any further.
I had forcibly clenched the wound shut to suppress the bleeding.
The throbbing agony felt as if my muscles and flesh had been clamped together with metal clips, but it was better than dying.
"Ah.. it stings like crazy..."
"Letting yourself get stabbed like this... guess you've gotten pretty dull, haven't you? And here I thought you'd been living a super busy life."
If it had been anyone but you attacking me, I wouldn't have gotten stabbed.
No, even that was just an excuse.
Right now, the embarrassment was actually worse than the pain of having my belly pierced.
Just recently, when I was attacked by the Director, I came out with barely a scratch, but now I'd taken effective damage from Casey, who was a step below me... It was deeply, profoundly humiliating.
I had shaken too much.
The brat I'd raised back in my Knight Order days, Casey Capel, stood before me now, clutching a rapier wreathed in burning aura and glaring at me with ice-cold eyes.
She had never been a terribly smiley child in the first place.
'Honestly, if it had been any of the other members, I would have just comfortably beaten the shit out of them...'
I had heard from the Director that Casey was chasing after me, but I had never imagined we would reunite here.
While my abdomen hurt like hell, it wasn't to the point of immobility.
Fortunately, Casey didn't seem intent on continuing her attack for the moment.
I spoke, forcing a smile onto my face.
"Casey, you should've at least called before coming. You startled me."
"...That's a terrible joke, if it was one. Getting hit by an opponent a rank below you, and that's what you have to say? You're past your prime, old man."
I received a chilly reaction in return.
It was like the response of a teenage daughter in the prime of loathing her father.
"When you abandoned the Knights and left, I wondered what kind of grand thing you were up to... but it was just messing around with a woman?"
"Abandoned? I just stepped away for a bit."
"Don't lie to me anymore. I'll never be fooled by you again..."
Casey bit her lip in frustration.
It was a habit I'd always told her to break because it would ruin her lips, but she was still doing it.
"...What's your relationship with that woman..?"
"She's a new friend I made."
"So... your type was tall women like her..."
"I said she's a friend."
It seemed Casey was angry because I had left the Knight Order.
But that was strange.
I had definitely run away from the Order.
When I left, I had written exactly two letters. One was for the Director, and the other was for Casey.
"It was an urgent matter... I left you a letter, didn't I?"
"That piece of trash?"
The moment I mentioned the letter, Casey's face scrunched up even more.
I wrote it in a hurry, so I don't remember exactly what I said, but trash?!
"Trash...?"
"Aren't you talking about that burning trash where you wrote a lie saying you'd return after behaving and listening to the Director for 100 nights? I burned it after the 200th night."
'So that's what I wrote back then.'
Hearing it, I remembered.
After getting word that there was a lead on the Growth Potion in the Snow Country, I had set a plan to break through the Snow Country and return within two months, so that was what I'd written in the letter.
"It's been about three years, so it's been over a thousand nights. Got any more excuses?"
"On that point... I've got nothing to say. I'm sorry... It ended up taking longer than I thought."
I really was sorry, enough to have nothing to say in my defense.
The Snow Country, which I'd planned to break through in two months, was a place that was difficult to conquer without a team even if you knew the strategy, and I had wasted three years trying to build a trustworthy team.
'She waited for over two years... She had good reason to be angry.'
I said I'd be back in three months and then disappeared without a word for three years, so her being furious was normal.
I could have sent letters in the meantime, but I was just too absorbed in the hunt for the Growth Potion, and I had a baseless belief that Casey, an adult who'd already carved out her place in the Order, would manage just fine on her own.
After all, Casey was the kind of clever kid who, if you taught her one thing, would learn two more on her own.
"And..!! I heard everything from the Snow Country Expedition members. They said you already found the Growth Potion in the Snow Country!! You'd finished everything you wrote about in the letter, so why didn't you come back?!
So you... you really did abandon me..!! You, in the end...!!"
As Casey's emotions surged, the aura on her rapier flared up even more violently.
It looked like she intended to attack again.
"Casey, calm down. Let's just talk, you and me."
"No..!! I don't want to hear any more!!"
The rapier, its aura once again blazing fiercely, closed in on me.
I clearly said let's talk.
It was Casey who refused.
"Then... I have no choice but to make you calm down...!!!"
An aura also began to blaze from the short dagger I held in my hand.
No need to complicate things.
I just had to beat her down, subdue her, and then we could talk.
There was a hole in my gut, but I was still a Master.
As long as I didn't let my guard down, subduing one Casey while suffering from this level of injury was child's play.
"Get away from Atlas!!"
At that moment, Lucia, who had regained consciousness, rose to her feet, covered in dust.
Casey still didn't spare Lucia even a glance.
Maybe she felt Lucia wasn't even worth dealing with. But this time, Lucia was different.
Judging that she was powerless bare-handed, she searched for her own weapon.
The weapon she newly grabbed was what people commonly referred to as a building pillar.
"Ugh...!"
Lucia gripped the pillar, which was firmly fixed into the ground, tightly in her hands.
"Uwaaaaaaaaah!!!"
-Ppajijik!
The large pillar Lucia had grabbed crumpled inward in the shape of her grip, and then the entire pillar was ripped out in one go.
From the building where the pillar had been torn out, construction materials flew in all directions along with a thick cloud of dust.
Lucia didn't just mindlessly swing the pillar. She grabbed it and attempted 'swordsmanship.'
A crimson flame erupted from the wooden pillar, which couldn't fully contain her aura.
The Russell family's proud Rock Sword was now being performed through a thick wooden log.
"Whoa... wh-whoa, whoa?!"
-Tukwang!!!
A thunderous roar echoed through the alley in the downtown district, as if a bomb had gone off.
————————-
Thanks to the swordsmanship Lucia unleashed by ripping out that pillar, the downtown district became a wreck of dust and debris, allowing us to slip away safely amidst the chaos.
But it was an attack she'd swung without any forethought or consideration for her surroundings.
After all, I, right in front of Casey, had nearly gotten caught up in it too.
"Ah... Atlas... your... your stomach... what do we do..."
Lucia, who had been practically carrying me as she ran, had fallen into a panic.
She had been running with me, drenched in blood from the waist down, so my clothes and her hands were covered in my blood.
Pale as a ghost, she trembled, staring at the blood smeared on her body.
"It's fine, I'm not dying... I spilled some blood and a few organs got wrecked, but... it's the kind of wound that'll heal up fast."
"This is a serious crisis!!"
"...And there isn't a hospital in sight... Could you go to that store up ahead and buy me some water, two bottles of wound-healing potion, and about two bundles of bandages...?"
There must have been a hospital somewhere in the downtown district, but none were immediately visible.
They were probably hidden away between the various alleys.
I missed the Academy, where they had a massive hospital that could quickly restore you even if your limbs were severed.
"Ah... okay... Once you get those, you'll be fine, right...?"
"Yeah, the bleeding's almost stopped now anyway."
It was only stopped because I'd forcibly clenched everything shut, so it hurt like a bitch, but it was stopped nonetheless.
Treating a wound by myself was familiar territory.
As it was, I could manage emergency first aid just fine alone, but it would be much easier if I had the things I mentioned.
"I'll be... right back, so you have to be safe..."
"I told you, I'm fine."
Realizing that fetching these things was the only way she could help right now, Lucia dashed off between the still dusty buildings.
After confirming she had gone far enough to be out of sight, I muttered to myself.
"Hoo... Did you come because you felt like talking to me after all...?"
"....."
Casey, who had been hiding in the shadow of a building, appeared without a sound.
The stealth technique was of such a high level that even an Expert on high alert, albeit panicked, hadn't noticed her right beside us.
I don't know who taught her, but they taught her damn well.
'Ah, was it me?'
Earlier, Lucia's wide-range attack had scattered things, but there was still unresolved business between us.
I moved to draw my dagger again, but Casey's reaction was completely different from what I expected.
"Ah... old man..."
Casey's condition, now that she reappeared, was strange.
She seemed like a completely different person from the Casey I'd seen moments ago.
She trembled as she stared at the blood-soaked wound on my abdomen.
"...Here, take this..."
Seeing my wound, Casey pulled a small paper box from her pocket and tossed it to me.
It was a wound treatment kit issued by the Knight Order.
"I'll gratefully accept it."
"You couldn't even... dodge something like that... Don't ever go around calling yourself a squad leader of the Imperial Knights. Old man... I really hate you."
"Don't tell the kids in the Order. It's embarrassing."
"...I'll tell them everything. That you got dull and got caught off guard by a surprise attack."
It didn't stop at simply trembling. Thick tears began to roll down from her eyes in heavy droplets.
She was definitely Casey, but she seemed completely different from the one I had just seen.
It was as if the mask she had been desperately wearing had finally been stripped away.
Realizing tears were streaming down her own face, Casey wiped them roughly with the sleeve of her robe and then fled swiftly.
Left alone, I sighed, holding the wound treatment kit left in my hands.
"Should I call this a late case of puberty...?"