I’d never been all that good at talking to people, so I hadn’t known what else to do. But that was the first time I’d hurt someone I wanted to protect.
I headed north with Spirit Mountain at my back, out to the halfway point between the woods and the mountains. There weren’t any trees to hide behind, and all the plants were short and wilted.
I looked up at the moon.
“I really hope she’ll forgive me...”
They had me surrounded. I could feel the bloodlust washing over me. I drew my sword.
“All right. I’m alone, just like you wanted.”
I called out to them as the moonlight vanished, and they charged at me from the darkness.
“Scarlet Brave...”
I said it out loud as a reprimand to myself. The power I was about to wield was what I’d sucked out of Alicia.
“I’m sorry.”
I let myself fade into the nature around me. I slipped outside of my attackers’ senses, leaping from blind spot to blind spot as I stabbed my sword into anything that looked like a vital point.
I’d thought this might be a trap. That was part of why I’d left her behind.
I’d watched Alicia die twice already.
Death was something I knew better than most people. Out on the battlefield, I’d killed more demons than I could count. I’d lost more friends than I could count too. I knew exactly what it looked like when the flame of a life burned out—when that something inside a living creature, that thing I could only call a soul, faded away.
That was why I didn’t want Alicia getting hurt anymore. The only reason she’d survived was thanks to a handful of coincidences and miracles. She was only alive because Cardinal Salamanrius had known how to do the medical treatment she’d needed—a “trans-fusion”?—and because the Holy Saint had worked divine miracles that couldn’t have happened anywhere other than the grand cathedral in the Holy City.
“So no more...”
I didn’t want her walking into danger ever again. The battlefield was where I lived, and it wasn’t where Alicia belonged.
She must’ve wanted to protect me, though.
I stabbed my sword in as deep as I could and twisted it to cut the thread of a life. One of them spotted me and tried to grab me. I kicked the arm away and jumped back into another blind spot.
Deeper. Deeper. I let my mind sink into the battle. I couldn’t let myself get distracted out here—out on the knife-edge between life and death. This was the world of take or lose, kill or be killed. Letting my thoughts wander was just plain suicide.
But...
“I’m so selfish...”
I still remembered Alicia’s face when she’d watched us kill those warwolf cubs. I couldn’t get it out of my head. We hadn’t been doing anything wrong—the Gods said demons were evil, and the Church even gave us reward money for bringing back their bodies. But Alicia had looked so sad and hurt.
“I mean, I get it. I ought to, anyway...”
But here I was again, fighting demons and showering myself in blood. I didn’t have a heart that could feel for them the way she did. The guys I fought against weren’t shaped like humans, so I didn’t feel any pangs of conscience when I killed them.
I wasn’t the kind of person who belonged at Alicia’s side.
“Huh...?”
One of them swung down an axe at me. As I knocked it away and cut off his hand, I realized something was wrong. I was getting just a little out of breath. My forehead was sweaty, and more of the demons were starting to be able to see me...
That’s weird...
Surprisingly—or predictably, maybe—the mana I’d sucked out of Alicia was stronger than most people’s. I’d felt like I had enough to keep fighting all night long.
Did I screw up my pacing?
I refocused my mind and tried to be more careful about when I activated my skills and how I came at my enemies, but it didn’t help. It felt like my feet were getting covered in mud. My body kept getting heavier and heavier...
Something was definitely wrong here. I looked around to try and spot where the feeling was coming from. This wasn’t an issue on my end—someone else was up to somethi—“Ng!”
I whipped around and kicked away a long, thin arm.
“Oh?”
A guy in a hooded robe let out a short impressed noise.
“It’s you, isn’t it?!”
I hadn’t felt him touch me, but he was definitely using something like Master’s “Scarlet Brave”—some sort of power that let him suck out people’s mana or stamina.
“Too bad! Master taught me to watch out for stuff like this!”
He’d said there were really dangerous demons out there that could suck out people’s souls just by touching them, so I had to be careful. Once I’d seen through the trick, I didn’t have anything to worry about.
I slashed at the man in the robe, and my sword cut through his hood and exposed his head. Half of his face was covered in burns—he was the one who’d attacked us in the woods.
“I’ll kill you!” I shouted.
This guy was bad news. He’d been after Alicia. I needed to take him out first.
I tried to close in on him while dodging other demons’ attacks, but he was too good at running away. I was always one step too far, and my blade couldn’t reach him. No, it was worse than that...
“What happened to the bride?” he asked. He reached out to catch my sword with his bare hands and smiled at me.
“You don’t need to know!”
I kicked him away and charged after him, but—
“Dammit!”
—more demons got in my way, and I had to jump right back. I’d taken out plenty of them, but the crowd surrounding me wasn’t getting any smaller.
“You left her behind to protect her, then?”
The demons rushed at me, not giving me a moment to catch my breath. While I fought them off, the man kept talking to me.
“How noble and moving, Sir Hero. And how foolish and pathetic you truly are.”
“What do you mean?!”
The relaxed, elegant way he spoke really got on my nerves.
My body feels hot, my heartbeat’s too loud, and this sweat is annoying!
“You’ve realized by now how little you truly know about her, haven’t you?” he asked, standing there in the darkness. He talked like he really did know more than me about Alicia, and he had this mocking look in his eyes, and I—
“Shut up!”
I charged in with everything I had, and I took a wild swing to slice into his side. But—
“That girl is an assassin. She’s been sent to kill you.”
My strike should’ve cut him in two, but he reached out a hand to touch my cheek.
“You’re not sure, are you?”
His mouth twisted into an evil smile like a crescent moon. He grabbed me by the throat and slammed me straight into the ground.
“Gah—!”
“Ah ha! Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha!”
A shadow sliced through the darkness and flew at me like a whip. I quickly raised my sword to block it, but—
“Agh?! Ow!”
I went flying like a rubber ball and rolled to a stop in the dirt. I could taste blood in my mouth. The edges of my vision were blurry. I tried to stand, but my legs were wobbly. I just barely forced myself up with my hands on my knees.
It wasn’t like I’d never thought about it before. Ever since I’d turned down that offer from the royal court and headed back to the front lines to keep collecting bounties, weird people had started coming after me. Master had warned me over and over to be careful. Alicia looked like nothing but a pretty girl, but she’d gotten in fights with plenty of people. She’d even held out against a whole gang of killers. So I’d be lying if I said I’d never wondered if she was one of those assassins too.