The Plain Knight's Bloodied End
The grasslands were drenched in nothing but screams and blood.
— CRASH!
— SPLAT!
“UWAH!”
“GYAAAAA!”
The ear-splitting sound of metal crumpling.
Screams and roars that could barely be distinguished by gender.
Scraps of iron scattered everywhere.
Body parts whose owners could no longer be identified.
And red footprints mixed with the rancid stench of blood.
The battlefield’s carnage had completely soaked the entire plain.
In the center of the blood-soaked grassland,
Elise von Rosenheim was gasping for breath while tightly gripping her greatsword.
The daughter of the Rosenheim family and a knight—
Elise von Rosenheim.
One might wonder whether the title of “Rosenheim’s Grim Reaper,” which seemed too young for her twenty-seven years,
was truly justified.
Around her, blood was everywhere.
Including the bodies of the Iron Fangs subordinates she had already killed—nearly thirty in total.
Her blue aura blade showed no sign of wavering, despite the exhaustion weighing on her.
How many seconds had it been since Elise had taken a breath to steady her raging heart?
“UAAAAH! Die already, you whore!”
A subordinate of the Iron Fangs fearlessly thrust his halberd at Elise.
The blow from an Iron Fangs soldier, delivered with crude cursing.
“Hah!”
Elise twisted her body sideways to narrowly dodge the savage halberd.
And in the same instant, she raised her greatsword high above her shoulder—
— PWAK!
— and split the Iron Fangs soldier right in half with her blue aura blade.
Elise pressed her momentum forward and struck a second horizontal cut.
The target of her slash was the soldier standing directly behind the one she had just bisected.
The staggering soldier never had a chance to resist.
— KWAJIK!
A sound far removed from the clean severance of flesh, yet the soldier’s head was cleanly separated from his body.
“Hah… hah…”
Elise took two lives in the blink of an eye and drew a deep breath.
But she still could not stop.
The flame ball spewed by an Iron Fangs mage.
A mana-charged arrow loosed by the sniper beside her.
And the two halberds swinging in from the front simultaneously closed in on Elise.
— DEGUURU!
Elise rolled to the left, barely escaping the barrage of lethal intent.
In the same motion, she concentrated all her weight on her greatsword and swung it in a massive arc—
— SWAAAK!
— and bisected two soldiers from the Iron Fangs family at the same time.
“Hans! Hans! Are you unharmed?”
Elise, who had bisected two in an instant, belatedly looked for her lieutenant Hans.
“Lady Elise! Please don’t worry about me! You’re the one who should be marrying His Highness, Lady Elise, since you survived the battlefield!”
Lieutenant Hans, right nearby, reported his survival as if it were nothing.
“Hah! Stop with that ridiculous joke! How about I marry you instead, Hans?”
“Lady Elise! What nonsense are you saying? A lowly commoner like me—how could I possibly marry you with a clear conscience?!”
Even as their breathing grew rough, the banter continued.
“Just you wait! Because I look plain and unremarkable, right?! After the battle ends, you won’t get through unscathed! This time it’s for real!”
Even as her breathing came heavy, did Elise’s trauma over her appearance rear its ugly head?
Elise narrowed her eyes and roared.
— SWAK!
— SWUUUU!
In the midst of this, a lethal blow full of murderous intent flew in from the Iron Fangs soldiers.
— CLANG!
Elise received the two simultaneous attacks with her greatsword wrapped in blue aura.
But the very moment she tried to shake them off with a fierce motion and exact her revenge—
— KWAJIK!
An unknown ambush struck the back of Elise’s head.
“KHEH?!”
A blow delivered with the force to almost cave in her full helm.
Elise, who had never even imagined such a strike, collapsed forward.
“…Forgive me, Sir Rosenheim.”
A voice begging for forgiveness, whose owner Elise could not identify, reached her ears as she lay sprawled on the grass.
— KWAJIK!
A dull blow struck again, this time pounding against Elise’s full helm.
“Treason?! You bastards! What are you doing to Lady Elise?! Die, you—”
Seeing Elise fall, Hans shouted and lunged at whoever had done it.
As his consciousness faded, Hans’s desperate struggles grew dimmer and dimmer…
Elise lost consciousness.