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Chapter 151
The noble is not noble without reason (2)
Gunn had returned.
(Full Monsters) she told me of the situation in the forest without hesitation.
(Enemy Battle Monsters)
Through her, I learned that the Imperial Army was suffering from the monsters to such an extent that they cared little for attacking Dotrin.
“What kind of monsters?”
Gunn frowned as I asked this.
(Trees Beasts, Half-men)
Unfortunately, she did not know exactly what kind of monsters they were.
She couldn’t help it. If Gunn were a pure-blooded elf, she would have known the ancient monsters well. Yet, Gunn was a half-elf, and their lifespans were incomparable to those of true elves. Moreover, they were not permitted to access the lore and traditions of elves.
“Good work,” I said and patted her shoulders.
Gunn hesitated, then touched her lips once more.
(Many Monsters, Forest. Dangerous)
Eli was watching us with an anxious face, then asked, “Are you really going to do it?”
I didn’t bother giving an answer.
“Are we really going to do it?” Bernardo Eli asked once more.
* * *
“I did it! I really did it!” Eli exclaimed loudly.
‘Skaskakskak~’
His shouts were soon deafened by an eerie sound as if that of hundreds of snakes slithering.
Hundreds of branches, vines, and roots were darting at him, wishing to thirst upon the blood of living humans.
‘Fwoo!’ a clear sound broke over the creaking noises, and it was the sound of a sword. Eli had now started his battle with the evil spirit tree, the treant, in earnest.
The aura on Eli’s blade shone as it sliced and slashed, a beam of light that cut through the multiple limbs of the cursed treant. However, the number of roots and branches did not seem to decrease in number, no matter how many of them he severed.
“You have to attack the body,” I advised.
“As if I don’t know that!” shouted Eli, “As things are now, how do I even get close to the body!?”
As I heard him shout, I chuckled and then laughed. For some reason, I felt the faint stirring of old memories in my mind.
I had always been like this when I was a sword: I only advised and observed.
b Well, now this is bad to bear}
I heard the voice of Agnes, and unlike usual, it sounded rather petulant.
But she quickly regained her accustomed sibilance and told me b Is that child truly my descendant? I cannot believe it. How can she be so weak?}
And there stood Adelia: Looking at the treant, clutching onto her sword, her face full of terror.
Unfortunately, the first foe we meet in the forest was not one that could trigger her [Butcher] and [War Mania] traits at all. And if those traits were inactive, Adelia was just a timid woman.
“Ann, hide your energy for a while.”
b If it feels dangerous, I will return.}
After that, Agnes was silent.
‘Skraskarakrr~’ some of the branches were reaching out to Eli, trembled, and then turned toward us. Now that the energy of my true body was hidden, it seems that the treant was willing to touch us.
As she saw the tentacle-like branches approaching, Adelia’s face became pale, shaken. She was trembling so much that it looked as if she would drop her sword at any moment.
“Bernardo Eli is overwhelmed by the limbs, and I can’t use my mana to get rid of them. So you must protect me,” I said quietly to Adelia.
I couldn’t have spoken in a softer tone, yet she still trembled after hearing my words of encouragement. But I had to make her know that she was not alone. Adelia had been through many battles thus far. Nevertheless, her mind remained that of a meek maid’s.
This is because she has never overcome her fears.
For her, it was either innocence or a bloody rampage by sword under the control of [Butcher] and [War Mania].
There was nothing in between, and so Adelia could not cross the wall.
To become a Sword Master was to reach a state of completion, a supreme existence that was unreachable by those who did not achieve harmony between body and mind. It wasn’t something that could be achieved by a person who had never swung a sword by her own will.
Without borrowing power from her traits, Adelia could not overcome her fears. No one else could wield her sword for her. If she could not overcome her terror, she would stay at her level for life – A sharp yet useless sword.
And as she had been on the sidelines of many battles up to now, she continued to fall behind.
‘Skraakrakra~’
Tens of branches reached toward us. Adelia looked at me with a face that seemed as if it would burst into tears at any moment.
“Well, I…”
Instead of comforting her, I pressed by asking, “Adelia Bavaria, are you a knight – or a maid?”
Adelia gave no answer; she just shifted her trembling gaze between me and the approaching branches.
I stuck my sword into the ground, my true body, and then told Adelia, “If you can’t save me, I’ll die.”
Several of the reaching branches hissed like snakes, for despite Dragon Slayer’s energy having been banished, the treant was still wary.
The hesitation did not last long. The appetite of the evil spirit within the tree was far too great to ignore the terrified woman and the man, not one of them protected by mana.
‘Skrakchuk!’ a branch struck against me with its sharp tip.
“Your Highness!”
However, I did not draw Dragon Slayer from the ground, nor did I unsheathe Twilight from my back.
I didn’t move a muscle – I just stared into Adelia’s pale face.
The branch withdrew and struck at my shoulder like a snapping whip.
`Kwaatcha!’
The treant’s branch scraped over my iron pauldrons, making a creepy, grinding sound. However, it could not penetrate through the hard metal and just scratched across the surface.
`Grukg, Grukg,’ the branches wandered over my armor, seeking soft, exposed flesh.
Adelia ran toward me, screaming – and she wasn’t thinking straight.
Without even considering slashing out with the sword in her grasp, she grabbed the branches with her bare hands and started pulling them from me.
A branch that sensed the texture of her supple flesh turned its tip toward Adelia.
‘Gwack~’ I reached out and grabbed the branch before it pierced into her. The treant’s limb squirmed in the clutch of my iron gauntlet, then started to wound around my forearm like a snake.
Unlike my gauntlets and pauldrons, my vambraces were of leather and so were penetrated at once, a branch latching onto the skin beneath. The branches of the treant hovered around my arm as if awaiting their turn.
`Gschulp~’
Blood began draining from me with a tingling pain. There was not even the scent of blood, for even that was sucked up by the thirsty spirit tree.
“Highness! Highness!” Adelia screamed as she clung onto the branches, trying to pull them from my forearm. A ravenous blood-sucking branch reached out to Adelia, and her face visibly paled.
In the next instant, the branches of the excited treant were flying in. I grabbed Adelia and shoved her behind me, and dozens of branches slammed into me.
My armor was dented and ripped askew. Until that moment, Adelia was staring at me blankly, as if she didn’t understand what was happening. I glanced behind me. All the branches that had pulled away my armor raised their tips and hissed. It seemed that they were greatly pleased by their imminent meal.
I glanced at Adelia and saw that a golden glow had entered her eyes.
It was an auspicious light so clearly different from that of [Butcher] and [War Mania].
‘Ssssaassaak~’
And in the next instant, a golden arc flashed all around me.
`Tchoo-duk-duk-duk~’
Severed branches fell all over the ground, and as I watched the cut limbs wither and turn black, I turned to Adelia. Even if her hands were still trembling and her face so close to crying, Adelia was wielding a sword by her own will.
I erupted into joyous laughter. Adelia severed the branches that had wound around my forearms and waist and then desperately yanked away the one sucking from my wrist.
The branch fell to the ground, and so did a sliver of my flesh. The smell of blood spread into the air.
“Huh? Uh? What are you guys doing?” Eli asked. Adelia held onto me, and her slender shoulders were shaking. Was she crying or just trembling? I didn’t know, I just saw countless tentacles suddenly rush at her. I rested my hand lightly on my true body.
b You’re holding your body back too much} Agnes scolded me for hesitating to wield Dragon Slayer.
“If the danger is great, you or someone else will come out.”
b Even if I do come out, I won’t be able to calm the appetite of evil spirits who have already tasted blood}
“I can do it myself.”
Anne had warned me that I lacked the energy to deal with the treant’s limbs, but that wasn’t true. Even without drawing Twilight, I knew I could sever the branches. No matter how great the lack of mana, a Sword Master is still a Sword Master.
Of course, it would be hard to reach the body of the evil spirit tree.
‘Fwap!’
Just then, a dazzling gold radiance erupted right in front of me, and branches and roots were scattered all over. Those branches that flocked in time after time were sliced and snapped by a shining sword.
Adelia was on the attack and laughed happily.
She has neared that wall – Adelia not Adelia the maid, has just taken her first steps.
* * *
Once the battle was done, Adelia burst out in tears as she leaned over her sword.
“Blood… I’m sorry, your Highness. I’m sorry, your Highness.”
She kept weeping, constantly apologizing to me.
“It’s not as it was cut off. It’s just a little scratch,” Bernardo Eli pointed out. His own body was bloodied, full of cuts and gashes. Where his skin was exposed, signs of sucking wounds were seen. His complexion was pale. Neither Gunn nor Adelia cared about Eli – while the women were tending to the wound on my forearm, applying poultice and bandaging it, Bernardo Eli had to heal his body on his own.
He expressed resentment about this fact, and they ignored him. I giggled and laughed at Eli, yet even as I did so, my head was spinning. I knew that the world had changed, but now that I saw it with my own eyes, the changes were far greater than I had expected.
I had never imagined that I would see the ancient, evil spirit trees once more.
If the elves saw this, they would faint in horror, for it was they who had wiped the treants out.
As the elves began settling the forests to hide from the wyverns in the sky, they made sure that the spirit trees became extinct.
However, the treants have once more appeared in the territories dominated by the descendants of the Sky Knight, Umbert, who had ages ago forced his terrible faerie enemies to flee into the forests.
It was a terrible omen. What else was in this forest? What other entities have come back to the world?
As if in answer to my question, a howl came from afar.
‘Hawoooohooo~’
“Why type of wolf howls like that?” asked Eli with a curious face.
It was just as he said, for the howl was far too ominous to be the cry of a common beast.
I knew well that it was no ordinary wolf.
“The full moon…”
It was clearly the howl of a lycanthrope, a follower of the Plague Lord.
‘Aooow!’
‘Hoooowooo!’
One howl quickly turned into dozens, hundreds.
“We have to go back,” came my swift order.
Eli frowned at my words, for we had planned to return later.
“What’s wrong with those wolves? Or is it because you don’t have mana that you won’t be able to face them?” Eli asked, but quickly shut his mouth when he saw my face. I ignored his jibe, instead urging Adelia and Gunn to pick up the pace.
So, we fled from the forest in haste. The howling of wolves continued to follow us as we made our way from the forest and reached the main camp – howls which never grew distant, yet never came closer.
* * *
While the day was bright, I wandered through the forest. Then, as the day darkened, I returned and reported all I had seen in the forests to the commanders of the Dotrin Royal Army.
Berg Berten generously paid me for my information.
I asked him how rich he was that he could remunerate me so generously, and his old knights gave me a hint. They said that the Bertens was one of the greatest noble families in Dotrin. Berg wasn’t just an aristocrat – he was one of the three Dukes of the kingdom. And yet, a man with such a title renounced his position and started following me around.
“He’s a very weird old man,” I muttered whenever I saw a man who would have been like a king in Leonberg leading a gaggle of old men onto the battlefield.
Anyway, on my part, I appreciated it that Berg valued information to such an extent. Now I didn’t get money from only killing knights. Two birds with one stone sounded like the proper idiom in this scenario.
And each day, we headed into the forest in search of evil spirit trees.
Adelia had only taken up the sword on that first day because I had been in danger. Now, she wielded the sword well by her own will. One thing remained the same: Adelia still shook and trembled, unable to overcome the tension and fear. No matter, she still fought well, tearing through the accursed treants.
Adelia’s swordsmanship was inherited from her ancestor Agnes, who was a slayer of giants. It was truly ruthless. So, little by little, Adelia was getting used to battle. Certainly, this was only possible because her foe was a barren old tree that did not bleed. I wasn’t sure what Adelia would do were she to face sapient enemies.
Even Eli, who had mostly been busy plucking branches away from where they sucked on his flesh, was improving. He had gotten used to dealing with the treants as of late.
Gwain, Trindall, and Kampra joined us sometime later, also testing their mettle against the spirit trees.
Everything was going well, except for the existence of the lycanthropes. There were no more ominous howls and no signs of their presence, but they were certainly there. They wandered around our party, endlessly searching for victims.
It had only been that first day when they had so loudly threatened us, and this was natural.
They weren’t low-level beings driven only by their appetites, like the treants, so they knew how to bide their time and turn a situation to their favor.
In explanation: They were conducting a thorough study of us.
Are we a delicacy that they could sink their fangs into at any time, or we more like poisonous mushrooms that would sicken them once they consumed us?
Under the surveillance of such secretive onlookers, our party continued to hunt the vile spirit trees.
Adelia had reached the verge of no longer being afraid of the treants. Not so long ago, she had been fearful of cutting even through a single branch, yet now she deftly severed a branch for every slash of her blade.
It was a great development, but that was all – Adelia would never be able to cross the wall merely by wielding her sword against old trees, the nature of them being so obscure that they could barely be called living beings.
At a time like this, battles against monsters of flesh and blood were necessary.
It was on this day that a giant wolf blocked our party.
`Krsha,’ the giant wolf arose from the foliage, standing on its hind legs. And it didn’t just lift itself in such a manner for a brief moment – the beast stood tall, bipedal like a human.
Adelia was terrified as she saw the huge lycanthrope, twice as large as the average adult male.
She was as fear-filled as the day when she had first entered the forest before she had slain treants.
The same was true for Eli, Gwain, Trindall, and Kampra. They couldn’t hide their tension as they watched a giant wolf standing upon two legs.
Their reaction was natural – this was no common monster.
It was a messenger sent by the king of the full-moon race, of the fierce half-men.
And the message this herald of the full moon brought to us was bleak: Plague; or death.
‘Krsh,’ the lycanthrope hunched low. I chuckled a little as I saw how full of hostility and murder the beast was. “Do you think you can kill him without getting bitten?” I asked as I laughed.
“So, is your mana back then?” Eli asked, his tone resentful.
“No. I don’t even have a handful.”
Eli raised his eyebrows.
“Why, is there no place for a knight without mana here? You think we’re all going to die now?” Eli demanded.
I laughed at his sharp words, saying, “It could be so.”
Bernardo Eli almost had a seizure as I spoke so casually, yet I got the first word in.
“Eli!”
“What?”
“If you have any of your family’s poetry that you have kept hidden, you should recite it today.”
Eli flinched and then trembled as he heard my words.
“If you don’t, we’ll really die.”
The lycanthrope slammed its hands to the ground and charged at us in a lope.
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