TL/ED – Miso
When anger builds past a certain point, one’s heart would instead turn cold.
It’s a fairly well-known saying. But surely this wasn’t what it ant.
“…?”
I frowned, uncomfortable at the physical coldness spreading through my heart.
My chest was filling with so kind of chill. While I was puzzling over what on earth it was, Aksha looked down at his own crushed arms and let out a sigh.
“What kind of monsters is the empire raising, honestly.”
“That’s not really sothing you should be saying.”
When I gathered Water Pressure once more, this ti to crush his legs as well, he panicked and leapt dozens of steps backward.
Then he pulled a whistle from inside his coat and put it to his lips.
“Oh no you don’t.”
I crushed the whistle instantly, but-
-Shreeeeeeeeek!
A sound sharp enough to rupture eardrums rang through the entire Lighthouse.
I frowned. Behind the broken whistle I could see his upper body, grotesquely swollen.
So the whistle had just been a feint. Still, even if reinforcents ca in this situation, nothing would change.
He seed to know that too, giving a bitter smile as he slid his dagger back away.
“This is a bit much. I figured at most soone like the princess’s right-hand man would show up. I wasn’t counting on a monster who crushes a man’s arms just by looking at them.”
“Are you begging for your life now?”
“Begging? Pointless. I’ve heard it thousands of tis myself, and not once have I ever listened… see!”
-Crunch!
As he shook his arm, the pulped limb gradually began to restore itself.
A regeneration close to a miracle. At first I suspected magic, or perhaps so hidden elixir.
But the mont I saw the fully healed arm, its skin tone different from the rest of his body, I couldn’t help but frown.
“…That, don’t tell -”
“Sorry for the lie. For all that our organization is old and decrepit, we’re actually pretty good at adopting new things. Knights, Fallen, whatever, if we can use it, we’ll use it.”
He wasn’t a mage but a simple Assassin. Naturally, he couldn’t Fall.
Instead, it seed he’d used so other thod to borrow a Fallen’s power remotely.
Letting out a hollow laugh of disbelief, I clenched the empty air.
“Lucky you. Now I’ve got sothing to ask before I kill you.”
“That’s interesting. Sa here!”
Aksha stamped hard on the ground.
Of course, inside the Deep Sea, such a movent ant nothing. At that very mont, I already had him by the throat.
Since I couldn’t kill him, I put in just enough pressure to knock him out. Without a trace of hesitation, he sliced through his own neck.
“What…?!”
A literal decapitation. The sharp dagger cut through a human neck as though it were nothing more than tofu.
Even then, he didn’t die. Still holding his own head, he backed away dozens of steps and tried to fling himself from the Lighthouse to escape.
Wait, that works too? Suppressing my incredulity, I caught him with Current Sense.
If cutting off his head didn’t kill him, then I’d crush his legs instead.
-Crunch!
“Tch, your reach is sothing…!”
-Slice!
Useless, as expected. Apparently unable even to feel pain, he sliced off his own legs with a grin on his face and plunged into the lake.
He imdiately began swimming, heading for Lumia. I nearly jumped in after him, then quietly gritted my teeth.
‘Damn.’
I couldn’t approach Lumia while the Deep Sea was manifested.
With the Deep Sea manifested, I was effectively a walking mass of disaster. Just as thought grew sluggish the closer one got to Decay, an ordinary person coming near would slowly begin to be crushed. The way people froze to death around Decay.
Even now, I could feel the air growing progressively thicker. I’d tossed Lumia down beneath the Lighthouse for her safety, but apparently that hadn’t been such a good choice.
No matter how I restrained and blocked my opponent, if he was willing to discard body parts like a lizard to reach Lumia, I had no choice but to let him close the distance.
And that wasn’t even the only problem.
[Look! There’s sothing happening at the Lighthouse!]
[Communications? Still no response?]
[Yes, command says to move out for now…]
The soldiers, alerted to trouble by the whistle, had begun to approach.
They weren’t exactly a threat. Ordinary soldiers, however many ca, would just end up crushed to death.
But…
‘That’s quite a lot of them.’
Several hundred at a rough estimate.
I had prepared myself to kill people, but I hadn’t envisioned a slaughter on this scale.
With the Deep Sea manifested, controlling my force would be difficult, so killing them all was the only answer. It would probably be an unprecedented massacre.
‘…’
On the other hand, if I withdrew the Deep Sea here and let Lumia be taken? There was a high chance war would break out. And then, instead of hundreds, at least thousands of people would die.
In the end, it ca down to simple arithtic.
The difference between sacrificing hundreds and killing thousands.
“…No choice, then.”
What I had to do was clear.
Kill the Assassin, wipe out those soldiers, then retreat with the injured Linl.
In the end, there was no such thing as an easy choice. The peaceful resolution Lumia had hoped for would likely be difficult to achieve.
Watching them push through the lake like a swarm of ants, I braced myself and spread both hands wide.
-Rrrrrrrrrrumble…
[Wh-what? What’s wrong with the water?]
[There’s not a breath of wind…]
I needed to resolve the situation while affecting Lumia as little as possible.
I couldn’t afford to take much ti, so I- seized hold of the lake itself.
The lake was undeniably vast. To a country bumpkin, it could pass for a small sea. That was how enormous it was.
But at so point, the range of my Current Sense and Current had already extended far beyond it.
[What in the world… is this?]
[It, it looks like he’s doing sothing over there…?]
[What kind of nonsense is that?! How could a human do such a thing!]
The flow of the lake began to swirl violently in one direction, unmistakable even to the untrained eye, building itself into a storm.
Only then did the soldiers grasp the situation.
That soone was moving the currents of this enormous lake.
[Th-that can’t be…]
My Current Sense read every expression on the faces of the n aboard the ships.
The faces of those who slowly realized the truth were filled with shock, terror, and despair.
One of them raised his head and looked up at the Lighthouse. Seeing controlling the lake, he uttered the word.
[Monster…]
-Indeed, he wasn’t wrong.
Teeth clenched, just as I was about to literally upturn the lake-
“Jern.”
“…Linl?”
The one who, monts ago, had been groaning on the ground from her injuries stood and blocked my path.
I could see the back of her head, a faint citrus scent drifting from it. She opened her mouth lightly, as if deciding on tonight’s dinner nu.
“Leave this to .”
“What?”
At how matter-of-factly she’d said it, I asked again more carefully.
“What are you talking about? What do you think you can do alone?”
“I’ll rescue Lumia, bring down that Assassin, and keep those n from getting hurt, all at once. Jern, you just make us a way to get out safely.”
“…”
Her crisp, clear articulation left speechless once again.
“But… you’re injured.”
“Mm. It does hurt a bit. My ribs are throbbing.”
“Even if you weren’t hurt, that Assassin is stronger than you.”
This wasn’t to say Linl was weak.
Linl was young. She hadn’t even been a Knight for very long.
For soone like that to defeat a mber of the legendary assassin organization that had produced the Heaven’s Judgent Knights? Even buying ti would be a miracle.
Young as she was, Linl wasn’t shallow enough to spout nonsense in a situation like this.
“Do you have so kind of chance of winning?”
“I’m not really sure. But Jern, what you’re about to do, you don’t really want to do it, right?”
“…What?”
“Then I want to do it.”
She glanced lightly down below the Lighthouse, then drew her sword.
“And I think I can.”
She said it with a small smile.
It was a blank check, impossible to accept, backed by no guarantee whatsoever.
And yet in that smiling face there was- a bearing that suggested she could pull off anything she set her mind to.
‘If Linl can just hold out for a little while…’
I turned it over in my head in a rush. If Linl could protect Lumia and buy even a tiny bit of ti-
there was a way to avoid the massacre and still extract information about that Assassin.
In the end, I bowed my head and let out a sigh.
“…Ten minutes. I’ll be back within that ti. Just hold out, however you can. Worst case, it’s fine if Lumia gets taken. Just stay alive.”
She looked fine on her feet, so her wounds seed to have healed to so extent, and judging by how fast she could escape from Knights, if she gave it her all, the chances of her being caught by the Assassin seed low.
Even so, it was a stupid call. Was it really right to send this young Knight up against that ruthless Assassin?
“Mm! I’ll have it all tidied up!”
…The words were so full of confidence they made my worry feel foolish.
***
Linl watched as Jern slowly withdrew the Deep Sea and pulled back, then.
“Owowow…! It hurts like hell…! Urgh, uuurgh.”
she promptly collapsed and rolled across the floor.
The Assassin’s kicks had hit like cannon fire. On the outside she looked fine, but on the inside it felt as though she’d been reduced to pulp.
If she’d let any of that show, Jern wouldn’t have trusted her, so she’d had no choice but to pretend she was fine, and oh, how agonizing that had been.
‘…Still.’
Linl steadied her aching stomach, rose to her feet, and smiled happily.
‘He trusted .’
Wasn’t this the first ti?
Jern trusting her, and asking for her help.
Her insides still cried out in pain. But after pulling herself together with a few deep breaths, Linl leapt straight down into the lake.
-Splash! A huge plu of water rose up.
“S-sothing just jumped off the Lighthouse!”
“All units, prepare to fi…?!”
The soldiers on the boats, who had been waiting on standby, drew their bows and prepared to shoot whatever surfaced.
But it was wasted effort. She hadn’t sunk in the first place.
Walking gracefully across the water, Linl approached the soldiers, who stood with their bows raised and dazed looks on their faces.
“…Shoot!”
-Fwsh fwsh fwsh!
A multitude of arrows flew at her.
But Linl’s arm whipped about strangely like a lash, knocking every single one of them down without missing a shot.
“What the hell is that…?”
“Hoh, quite a level of skill.”
“?!”
Startled by the unfamiliar voice that had suddenly appeared behind him, the captain jerked around.
Sopping wet, Aksha paid him no mind, watching Linl with interested eyes as he carelessly dumped the unconscious Lumia onto the deck.
“Hold onto her. If she gets taken, you die.”
“Y-yes?”
A soldier, shocked by the sight before him, asked again.
Aksha, for his part, walked across the water as if it were nothing, approached until he was within a sword’s swing of Linl, and stopped.
Still standing, he looked down at Linl glaring up at him and gave a crooked smile.
“Seeing Rakshasa’s techniques used like this takes back.”
“My master taught this technique.”
“Your master rely learned what we passed down to you. How much do you know about Rakshasa?”
“I don’t. Just that you’re a defunct assassin group.”
“Sharp tongue. Not wrong, either. But… with you among us, things might be different.”
“Hmm… I’d rather just die than join you.”
Watching her speak so boldly, Aksha smirked and drew his dagger.
“A foolish choice. Where’s that Fallen?”
“I don’t know. But if it’s Jern, he must be doing sothing impressive.”
“Oho, you’ll die before then.”
“I won’t die.”
Declaring this firmly, Linl pointed her sword at Aksha’s neck.
She smirked back at him and tightened her grip.
“I’ve got a reason I can’t forgive you, you see.”
“…A survivor from a village I destroyed? Happens often enough. Avengers blinded by rage coming to find .”
“-You made Jern do sothing he didn’t want to do.”
Linl’s sword, swung lightly, traced an arc.
“…!?”
A Knight’s sword could be dodged, even pressed right against the neck: the smile that had been on Aksha’s face as he thought this vanished.
-Splurt! The Sword Path she had drawn twisted bizarrely, aiming precisely at his heart.
Having retreated several steps in the blink of an eye, Aksha found one of his feet dipping slightly into the lake.
With a dazed expression, he stared at his own heart for a mont.
The wound itself didn’t matter. It would heal anyway. But that Sword Form, that alone- had caught in his eye far too familiarly.
Aksha gritted his teeth and pressed her.
“You- this, did you learn it from your master…? No, that can’t be. No Heaven’s Judgent Knight could know this.”
“Oh?”
“That’s ours. How could you know our sword…”
“Hmm. Is that so?”
Watching Aksha’s face mount with rising fury, Linl wore an expression of barely any interest.
“Guess you thought the sa as , then.”
“…What?”
“I also thought, if I did it this way it would be a little faster…? Harder to react to.”
Saying it almost in passing, Linl gradually closed the distance between them.
Aksha glanced down at his own feet for a mont, noticing that her feet hadn’t been dampened by the water in the slightest.
On the top of his foot, a few droplets of water trembled.
“…”
Without a word, Aksha drew a second dagger from his waist.
‘A stupid idea.’
He had thought that if he took her along, raised her as an Assassin, nurtured her talent, she’d one day beco his sharpest dagger. He wiped that delusion away.
He had to kill her. Right now.
Along with that thought, a violet liquid began to drip, drip from Aksha’s dagger.
But seeing that poison, Linl only smiled.
“What’s so amusing?”
“That, it looks like it would really hurt if it hit .”
“…Say what?”
Linl closed her eyes and rembered Jern, up on the Lighthouse, looking down at the scene below.
“I’m glad it’s facing you, and not Jern.”
The result of lying to Jern for the first ti was…
rather satisfying.
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