The Vanished Heirloom
“……!”
How had they noticed the silent disappearance?
Ash and Robenin had somehow sensed something was wrong and witnessed the exact moment the sword vanished. But that was all they could do.
“What…… is this……?”
“Mwahaha!”
“……Jeanie! Is this really you?”
The moment the blade in his hand lost its form and disappeared before his eyes, Ash began trembling violently, at a complete loss.
With only the hilt remaining, it could no longer be called a sword.
“Of course it is! This is payback for hurting my precious little Undine! Robenin, I’ll take everything precious to you!”
[Your dialogue sounds a bit too villainous……]
I laughed as if victory were already mine.
From the very beginning, I had used the whip for one reason only: to absorb the sword. The blade needed to touch Rai.
I had considered transforming Rai into a sword, but since I knew nothing about swordsmanship and stepping into a swordsman’s range was far too risky, a whip—with its long reach and fluid movement—was the perfect weapon. Plus, it was easy to wrap around things, which made absorption faster.
“My…… sword……”
No matter how indifferent someone might be, a swordsman’s blade was as precious as life itself.
Even Robenin’s expression twisted at the sudden loss. No one could possibly understand how much joy his shocked face brought me.
“Tenebra.”
Robenin stared blankly at the empty hilt, murmuring something under his breath. It seemed he had even given the sword a name.
He must have cherished it. Good.
“Jeanie……! That was the Pedri family’s heirloom, the black sword…… Tenebra.”
“What kind of bra?”
“Tenebra! A treasure passed down through nine generations, recognized even by the Empire! The symbol of the Pedri family—and before that, the dream of every swordsman!”
[Kya, no wonder it tasted so good.]
“……Enjoyed it?”
[It was a delicacy.]
Oh dear. It seems our snake picked up something strange during his walk.
“What in the world have you done……? How did you do it? No—never mind that. Just return the sword to its original state! Right now!”
“No. If I were going to, I wouldn’t have taken it in the first place.”
“Please! This isn’t the time for jokes. That sword is one of the Three Great Swords representing the Allied Nations…… a historic weapon that led countless wars to victory…… and yet……”
It sounded familiar—probably from that weapons section of the treasure encyclopedia I’d been obsessed with lately.
I vaguely recalled that the first head of the Pedri family had received it after helping dwarves and dark elves, and that it contained dragon bone from slaying a dragon.
As I was trying to piece it together, Ash grabbed my shoulders and shook me hard, his face on the verge of tears. Maybe I’d gone a bit too far.
“You can return it, right? Right? Please, say something. Jeanie!”
[You already know I can’t spit it back out.]
“……If it was that important, you shouldn’t have carried it around!”
Since I had no intention of apologizing, I went on the offensive instead.
“I’m begging you. Jeanie, Jeanie! You have to return it somehow. If you destroyed it, you can remake it, can’t you? Jeanie? Please tell me that’s true……!”
“I can’t.”
“Hic…….”
“Just to be clear, it’s not that I won’t—it’s that I can’t. It’s the same as eating bread. You’ve eaten bread before, right? Once it’s down, you can’t spit it back out. That’s what this is.”
I wanted to see a face twisted in despair, but not Ash’s—Robenin’s.
The sword’s owner stood there in silence, his expression grave.
Was the shock too great?
“Young master! Snap out of it! This isn’t the time to stand there dazed! This is a tragedy that should never have happened. You need to pull yourself together…… By the way, you…… did you get proper permission from Duke Pedri before taking it? As far as I know, that sword is only passed down to the heir……”
Robenin shook his head.
So it hadn’t even been his sword to begin with. He must have run off with the family treasure without permission.
I quietly took a step back.
[……Something feels off about the atmosphere.]
[I guess that sword meant a lot to the Empire folks.]
“Jeanie, why would you do such a thing! What were you thinking……?”
I wanted to look away.
Ash, who usually worried about me no matter what I did, was now looking at me with reproach. I had no defense against that.
The one I wanted to spite was Robenin, not Ash.
“Uh…… well……”
“You should’ve just killed the young master instead!”
So it was that serious.
Maybe absorbing that pitch-black sword ranked among the top three worst incidents I’d caused so far.
Of course, I was still young—plenty of time to top that record.
[Amazing! Ash is telling someone to die. Master, doesn’t that mean Ash hates you now?]
[What? Ash would never hate me!]
It was a shame, but if I could trade it for the Tears of Truth…… No, thinking about it just made me angry. Why should I feel guilty?
I’d done nothing wrong. If you believe it, it becomes the truth.
“How is this my fault?!”
“Because you made Tenebra disappear!”
“Then what do you want me to do?! He started it by pissing me off! A swordsman charging at a Spirit Master like that—what did he expect?! I just performed a perfectly legitimate self-balance patch!”
“Good heavens, what kind of logic is that……!”
“I took the sword because having it put me at a disadvantage! So what?! Ever heard of self-defense?!”
The world of competition was ruthless.
And someone with normal reasoning like Ash could never win against my shamelessness and lack of conscience.
“……God, why must You give me such trials……”
Overwhelmed by my conscience-free momentum, Ash let out a miserable groan and collapsed to the floor.
It bothered me a little, but I decided to focus on the fact that I had given Robenin a trial instead.
It wasn’t something to apologize for—it was something to be proud of.
The taste of revenge was thrilling, and I burst into laughter once more.
In my second life, the one thing I’d learned was that even if you lived kindly, trials would come anyway.
So it was better to live however I wanted. That way, at least it felt less like a loss.
“Mwahaha! Now do you understand, swordsman scum?! If you swing metal at me, I’ll—damn it.”
“Give it back.”
“Ah, you’re too much.”
He really didn’t discriminate between men and women, then or now.
“Sword.”
Just because I teased him a little—fine, because I swallowed the family heirloom—he was already drawing a deadly weapon.
I’d suspected as much, but Robenin could indeed use Sword Gang.
The highest form of Sword Aura—creating a blade purely from energy.
In the blink of an eye, he drew that energy from the empty hilt and thrust it right beneath my chin.
By the time I felt the deep blue aura of death rippling at my throat, he had already grabbed me by the collar.
“My sword!”
The blue light from the Sword Gang was far too close, far too menacing.
Robenin’s eyes, right in front of me, burned with equal intensity. They resembled the golden flames demons supposedly carried—flames that erased souls.
A gloomy golden light that suited the darkness.
“Aaaah! Young master!”
Ash, momentarily stunned, immediately threw himself between us, but Robenin showed no sign of letting go of my collar.
He even lifted me up and shook me violently.
How rough.
No man had ever treated me like this before. I’d curse him for it.
“Let go.”
“Return the sword.”
“I’m not sorry, but I can’t.”
“What?”
“Didn’t you hear me? Once something’s gone from this world, it’s gone.”
He was the kind of man who could tear someone apart with killing intent alone.
Still half-suspended in the air, I shrugged. Ash was now desperately begging Robenin instead, hands and feet practically clasped in supplication.
“Calm down, young master! She didn’t do it on purpose. There’s no malice. For my sake, please forgive her…… Yes! I’ll give you this sword instead. It may not match the black sword, but it’s still a fine blade…… Forgive her, she didn’t know! It wasn’t intentional! No, it was intentional, but she couldn’t have known it was Tenebra!”
Even the prince’s near-screaming pleas did nothing. Robenin only tightened his grip.
Despite Ash using all his strength to pull him away, Robenin didn’t budge. The difference in their power was obvious.
Just because Ash was fairly strong didn’t mean he could compare to Robenin.
Still dangling from that massive hand, I sneered. Hah.
“A grown man throwing a fit over one sword? How pathetic.”
“Tenebra isn’t just any sword……”
“Is that all? Pointing a weapon at someone who wasn’t even ready to fight—doesn’t that go against chivalry?”
“Erasing the Pedri family’s heirloom is a crime worthy of immediate execution.”
“Hah? So you’re really going to kill me? This body belongs to the Saintess, you ungrateful, shameless Imperial scum.”
Outwardly I mocked him, but inwardly my stomach tightened.
The killing intent from the Sword Gang was far more intense than I’d expected. Whether I wanted to or not, I felt the threat to my life—and being grabbed by the collar made breathing difficult.
“I swear to the God of Death. If you don’t return my sword, I’ll cut off your head and hang it on your family’s banner in the town square.”
“What do I do? My family’s so humble we don’t even have a banner, let alone a crest.”
“From the way you act, you won’t live long.”
“I hear that a lot.”
Robenin leaned in close and whispered, his low, ominous voice as unpleasant as ever.
“You’d best keep your petty tricks to a minimum.”
[Ah.]
When the sword disappeared, the whip-form Rai had been left on the ground. He’d been slowly moving toward Robenin’s ankle, intending to wrap around and break it—but he was spotted before he could even touch him.
“Oh my? The whip’s moving on its own.”
“How hasty. Even an idiot would know better.”
“I wouldn’t know what a madman is thinking.”
“How easy it would be to pierce that scrawny neck of yours.”
I sneered at him, but it was true.
My life was already in Robenin’s hands.
That was why Ash was panicking so much, begging him to let me go.
This was exactly why you shouldn’t step into a swordsman’s range.
If a blade was already at your throat, you had one foot in the grave.
If I’d been grabbed by the collar like this and the thing threatening my neck was a deadly Sword Gang capable of piercing dragon scales, I might as well be dead already.
Just from the Sword Gang touching them, I could feel clumps of my hair melting away and snapping off.
What kind of lightsaber was this?
In the way it cleanly erased whatever it touched, the Sword Gang almost resembled Rai’s absorption.
“Then go ahead and kill me. You’ll never see that gloomy sword again.”
“So…… there is a way?”
“Who knows. Depending on how you act, there might be—or there might not.”
It was pure bluff.
Neither Rai nor I knew how to restore something he had already absorbed.
The situation was just as hopeless as my current one. If I tried to summon anything, Robenin would notice and kill me faster than I could act—and moving Rai without being seen was impossible.
So the only way to get through this crisis was…… a hostage situation.
Fortunately, I had no conscience.