“Albert!” A girl’s voice brought me back to reality.
The body of the blue-haired asshole—no, of the holy knight Theophilus was in front of me. By some coincidence, his head was in the arms of his holy woman, Nemophila. Had it flown over there or had she picked it up deliberately? She seemed to be in an odd daze.
“Albert! Can you hear me?! I can’t hold out much longer!” I didn’t know if it had been a few seconds or a few minutes, but I had been out of it for a brief period of time. The princess had already been through this when we killed the guardian dragon, so she had been protecting me. The giant’s series of attacks using Vulpine Razor’s ribbonlike blades were fended off by a pale light.
“Got it. I’m up now.” Answering the princess, I approached Nemophila. I had to get her back on her feet so the three of us could move. “Nemophila.” When I grabbed her arm, Theophilus’s head fell from her hands and rolled on the ground. Even if we wanted to bury him later, we didn’t have time to worry about his body right now.
“Ah.”
“We need to move.” I couldn’t talk, given I’d just been lost in someone else’s memories, but we couldn’t afford to leave ourselves exposed on a battlefield.
“S-Sir Albert?” Her unfocused eyes wandered as though she’d just woken up and looked at me.
“Do you see anyone else?”
“No, but... I was just with my princess...”
“Huh? Hold on.” Judging from her reaction and the way she’d said “my” princess, I knew exactly what had happened. “You saw his memories too, didn’t you?”
“Memories? O-Oh, right. Those weren’t my memories... They were the grave keeper’s...” I knew full well how intense the memories could be. You might even mistake them for your own if you weren’t careful. Somehow, Nemophila had seen his past just like me.
Was it because she was touching part of his body?
Nemophila giggled. “So the originator of it all wasn’t the grave keeper but my ancestor. This blood of mine perverted his loyalty, yet I resented him for killing my holy knight. My family was an accomplice to the one who caused everything!” Nemophila’s family already knew of the connection they’d once had with the witch, but they believed they were merely research associates prior to the witch committing her heinous crimes—not direct accomplices in carrying them out as we’d just learned.
No one knew of the role the grave keeper’s master had played in spreading the curse and dragging her own family and territory into it. Nobody knew except for the grave keeper and the witch herself. However, now wasn’t the time for that.
“Please, think about this later.”
“Who am I supposed to blame now?” Nemophila asked.
“A-Albert!” The princess was panicking. Clicking my tongue internally, I decided to change plans. I stood in front of the princess with the greatsword I’d used to fight the grave keeper and repelled all six oncoming ribbons. “Thank you! I-I’ll get a barrier back up immediately!”
My master was out of breath. She’d clearly been working quite hard. “It’s okay. Take a breather and compose yourself.” I wanted to charge in and finish off the giant, but the princess was out of mana and I couldn’t leave her behind with the unstable Nemophila. And I still had one other concern.
The entire reason I wanted to retreat was that our problems didn’t necessarily end when the Twelve Corpses were dead. Their bodies might start to move again, as had been the case with Hector. Yet Theophilus’s body showed no signs of moving. What’s up with that?
Was it because he’d died after having his flesh restored? Or was it because he’d accomplished his desire? Hector had been protecting the church for over three hundred years; however, because I’d killed him, he’d been unable to fulfill his promise. Maybe his regret had made his bones move on their own.
Since Theophilus had resolved his regret by protecting his princess this time, perhaps there was no reason for his body to move after he died. Whatever the reason, I was grateful for it. I didn’t wanna have to kill the same person twice, and fighting the giant and the grave keeper at the same time would’ve been a major headache.
“Sir Albert, Lady Astrantia, please leave me,” Nemophila said emotionlessly. She had lost the target of her revenge, looked into his past, and realized that her ancestor had been the cause of everything. It was easy to imagine how that might have messed with her head. Still, the battlefield was no place to wallow in sentimentality.
“Gah, shit! There’s no end to ’em!” A short distance away, Bronze’s holy knight, Serrulata, was shouting.
“Language, Serrulata.” Her partner, Euryops, chastised her with a grim expression on her face.
“Sir Albert! I’m sorry!” Black’s holy knight, Myra, apologized in a regretful tone. It was immediately apparent why—some of the curions from the city center that they had been holding off had broken through.
“Hurry. If you leave me behind, you can still exterminate the giant and then retreat.” She was right. If I only had to protect the princess, I could fight the giant at the same time. That said, I had no intention of abandoning her. There was no need to in the first place.
“You’re a real pain in the ass, you know that?”
“Pardon?” Nemophila raised her voice, probably not expecting to be spoken to that way in the current situation.
“Two of your holy knights gave their lives to protect you! They thought you were worth sacrificing themselves for! And you’re gonna throw that away? That’d mean your holy knights were morons who died for nothing! Is that what you want?! Two dumbasses who wasted their lives!”
“Are you insulting my partner?!”
“I am! And Theophilus too!”
“I-I won’t have you making a mockery of my holy knight!” Nothing I’d said would have resonated with someone who was truly empty inside. The indignation she felt on someone else’s behalf was proof that there was still a light in her darkness.
“You’re the one making a mockery of them!”
“N-No, I—”
“If I’m wrong, then stop complaining and live! That’s the only way to repay the dead!” As the one who had taken the life of the adoptive father who had rescued me from the slums, all I could do was follow the path of the holy knight he had taught me.
“R-Repay them? What can I do now?” Some lives were forgotten and lost to history forever, while others endured centuries and were still hailed as heroes. That’s because those heroes had people to speak of their exploits after they died.
“You’re the one who decides if their sacrifices mean anything.”
“Me?”
“So, what’s it gonna be?! Are you gonna stay here and render their lives worthless by dying for nothing, or are you gonna live on and make them heroes who gave their lives for a great holy woman? It’s time to choose!”
The curions that had breached our defensive line didn’t come toward us and instead crowded around the giant. When they touched the giant’s missing parts, they melted into its bones, repairing them.
They can do that? Was it one of the giant’s abilities, or was it something every curion could do? Curions could recover damage to their bones, but they healed at a fixed rate. Could damage exceeding a curion’s ability to repair it be compensated for by receiving bones from other curions? Whatever the case, the giant’s right wrist regenerated and its severed lumbar vertebrae extended, piercing deeply into the earth.
It sat itself up using its newly healed right arm and turned to face me. The only good news was that it had let go of Vulpine Razor and that it couldn’t restore any more of its body because my allies were holding back the rest of the curion horde.
“Princess, Physical Enhancement!”
“R-Right!” Light emanating from the princess enveloped me, but it was clearly less than usual. Despite doing her best, it was plain to see that she was exhausted.
The giant turned its shoulder and used the momentum to swing its right fist. The giant bone fist approached with a roar and enough force to level even the sturdiest stone building. However, evasion wasn’t an option.
“Bring it.” Raising my greatsword above my head, I brought it down to meet the oncoming fist. A moment later, the particles of light covering me greatly increased.
“If I help you, does that mean their sacrifices weren’t in vain?” It was Nemophila’s divine protection.
“Obviously. I’m the holy knight who’s gonna kill the Twelve Corpses and steal the witch’s dream away from her.” Neither of us was going to ruin the moment by saying something like “you can’t kill yourself” or “the grave keeper was the one who killed the shaman.”
With both holy women’s Physical Enhancements powering me up, my Dragonflame Bone crashed into the giant’s fist with a thunderous roar. After a clash that lasted only a second, my greatsword tore through its hand and reached its radius. Like a crowd of people parting around us, its fist split in half and passed by on either side. The giant groaned unhappily, its arm split once again after regenerating mere moments prior.
I pointed the tip of my greatsword at the giant. “Sorry for ignoring you. Don’t worry, I’ll kill you too.”