22 – Confession (4)

* * * *

-visor! Chaeeng! squeak.

The sound of the demons’ teeth colliding with my sword and the sound of my sword shallowly cutting through their skin resonated in the quiet and bleak forest.

Unlike knights who generally train strength and stamina to the limit and prioritize honest attacks,

For me, who uses a swordsmanship similar to the so-called ‘quick sword’, which quickly and swiftly draws only fatal wounds to neutralize the enemy, balance and speed.

The current situation, with terrible debuffs on both of them, was very uncomfortable.

-visor! squeak.

It was because no matter how many times he cut it, the usual clean line of light was not drawn. And thanks to that, even though countless cuts were carved all over the body, the demons still exhaled heavily and stamped their feet toward me.

Perhaps those guys also realized that my appearance was not words, and did not back down an inch, shining their cool eyes toward me.

Sup, whoa.

Eventually, I felt my legs tremble. The battle cannot continue any longer. Further delay was forbidden.

That black (黑) is not smart enough to be called cowardly, because he carefully waits for my stamina to run out.

The proof was that every time he swung his sword at those wild boar monsters, he secretly spewed out his killing intentions towards Lily just enough for me to notice.

Because of worrying about when Black would aim for Lily, he circled around her and continued the battle with the monsters, so his overworked body reached its limit.

Soon after, the monsters kicked off the ground and thrust their sharp fangs at me.

If I continued the routine of defending against their attacks and counterattacking at the opportunity, a certain victory would be guaranteed, but what I needed now was not an exhausting and certain victory.

A way to buy Lily the time and stamina to get away, even if what I need right now is uncertain. In a word, it was a gamble.

– Kwak.

He gripped the sword in a different way than usual. Not an assassin’s gripping method to cut off the enemy’s breath efficiently and quickly, but a general swordsman’s and knight’s gripping method.

I straightened my posture and looked at the monsters running toward me.

‘Is the one on the left a little closer?’

Thoughts were short, judgments and actions were quick.

Immediately after moving briefly to the left, he cut his sword with all his might from the bottom left to the top right.

-Kieek!

It’s not perfect, but the sharp sword drew a line. Following the sword path, the guy’s face was almost split in two, and he couldn’t overcome the inertia and fell to the ground.

As it was, I put my weight from top to bottom toward the guy on the right who was raising his head toward me, and struck the sword down.

– Fu-wook! Queueek!

‘It was shallow… !’

The sword did not completely slash his throat and became lodged between the bones.

It was a mistake that came about because of the gripping method I wasn’t used to, and because my physical condition was so fatal.

I’ll try it when I have a little more power… The regret that I had was fleetingly fleeting. Because there was no time for that now.

Anyway, this guy was destined to die from excessive bleeding or whatever.

So, he immediately raised his head to Lily and shouted.

“Run!! Hurry up!”

“…!”

Lily, who had been quietly maintaining her stamina, ran toward the assembly point with all her might in response to my signal. Lily ran towards the darkness with all her might, relying only on the direction she knew, probably not even having the magic to maintain the magic she had developed.

-Szeuk. Sseuseuk.

At the same time, the lycanthrope began to move the great darkness toward Lily, making a deliberate noise as if to be heard.

As promised, in order to stop him, he pulled out the sword stuck in the neck of the boar monster and pointed it at the lycanthrope.

– Ting!

Then, despite being capable of tearing me apart with the whole sword, he flicked my sword lightly, then showed me his bright white teeth.

sigh.

Yes, what that beast-type monster showed me was a smile like a mockery.

What would you do if you did that? ridiculed.

… My body trembled.

It was only then that he realized his intentions.

Between her slightly parted lips, she could hear the clattering of her teeth, engulfed in anxiety.

It was because he realized why he was just watching the situation.

the guy That lycanthrope was not an ordinary monster. He was very intelligent, and terribly sadistic.

That must have been the reason why he tried to attack only Selina in the original work.

He probably learned it naturally while attacking humans somewhere. The fact that if the target he was trying to protect dies first, the one left behind will have no choice but to run amok.

That’s why he watched the situation, waiting and waiting for my stamina to run out.

To tear Lily to death in front of my exhausted eyes, to enjoy watching my screaming reaction to the fact that I was so helplessly unable to protect her.

“This dog-like bastard…!!”

It had to be stopped no matter what.

Even if it meant crushing one of my remaining arms, I had to stop him from approaching Lily.

Any more.

never.

I don’t want to see her get hurt right in front of my eyes.

I don’t want to feel the moment she dies in my arms.

So I threw myself at him and swung my sword. No, I just waved the arm holding the knife.

It was because he didn’t even have the strength to wield the sword.

-Hook.

“……Cool.”

-Kreur… Kut.

“This fucking baby ….”

Its claws pierced my abdomen. Hot, sticky blood filled his throat and flowed out of his mouth, which was slightly opened in pain.

Seeing me like that, he grinned again and smiled with his dirty teeth.

It seemed that he could have killed me, but he was reluctant to pierce my abdomen with only one claw.

Soon after, my body stuck in his claws floated along with his hands, and I flew through the air again and was slammed to the ground.

– Perok! fluff.

“B-berry…?!”

Through the blurred vision of shock and pain, I saw Lily’s eyes, which contained my horrendous appearance suddenly thrown in front of her, vibrating violently.

And the darkness slowly creeping towards Lily in my blurry vision.

run away quickly

I wanted to shout that now is not the time to be distracted by me, to quickly move my legs and run away, but my lips did not budge.

where are the lips

As if his entire body had been stabbed by a sharp blade, not even the slightest bit of force was applied, and his muscles did not feel even the slightest vibration.

“…!! …!”

Through my fading vision, I saw Lily move her mouth at me urgently.

However, Lily’s voice lingered in my ears and soon disappeared.

Will I die like this?

Am I going to die like this?

A promise to save her this time.

The hope of living happily with the woman she loves.

An oath to protect her until your share.

Could it be that all of that is just so fleeting?

In the end, she’s in his hands… Is it that we have no choice but to watch as the artist dies again as intended?

How could she, who has no guilt, be so unreasonable?

– Knock it.

I couldn’t hold back my anger at the unreasonable result that came despite my bone-breaking efforts and bit my tongue.

… shut up, no It can’t be.

Why did I go through such hardships until now? To save her from this hellish waste.

She was in a situation similar to mine, but it was to watch with these two eyes that she, unlike me, who constantly worked hard and longed for results, met a happy ending.

Yes, I can’t do it twice if I’ve done it once.

Even though I was completely paralyzed, I was the one who moved my mouth with hellish despair.

But just because you have a hole in your body, or because you’ve shed a lot of blood, doesn’t mean you can’t move.

Move. in action. in action. in action.

– Kwaaak.

The body that heard my earnest wish screamed and breathed the last stamina into my right hand holding the sword again.

But no. this is not enough Right now, I can’t protect Lily just by holding a sword in my hand.

Please, leg, move. move me Let’s move a little more.

‘Cause it’s just a little bit Just a little bit, it doesn’t matter until Lily runs away… .

After that, it doesn’t matter if my body becomes paralyzed again or even if I die… .

I don’t care what my body is like, so please… Please just move because it’s good even a little bit!!!

… .

… .

＜… La.＞

At that moment, I felt something hot in my left eye and recognized that my breathing was different from usual.

I felt that I was able to move my body freely using magic that I did not normally use well.

I could see that the long experience of the sword, which I had felt even indirectly, had now completely belonged to me.

“…[email protected] …!%^!”

I could see Lily screaming something at me, who suddenly stood up, but I still couldn’t hear it.

It was because it was not right to pour the remaining mana into the hearing in the current situation.

It was because all the experiences accumulated inside me had told me that now is the time to focus only on moving the muscles in my body.

– Turbuck. Turbuck.

The blood that flowed from the dark red hole in my abdomen stopped. It was because he used magic to stop bleeding only in necessary blood vessels.

I moved towards the guy who was leisurely approaching Lily. It was because he could now clearly see its form even in the dark.

Let’s go one step closer to him.

One step, he took a step away from me.

He looked a bit taken aback as I, who had been in a dying state until just a moment ago, walked around as if I was fine.

I was so busy adjusting to the darkness that I couldn’t even properly grasp my position, so I was staring straight into his eyes, and I was quite taken aback.

if not… I instinctively judged that I couldn’t win against the current me.

Either way it didn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that he intended to kill Lily by playing with her in front of me.

Turbuck. I approached the guy who kept walking backwards at once, and then opened my mouth to him.

Then my voice came out. Even so, the tone was profound and determined, completely different from usual.

“…You dare, who are you trying to touch?”

A mere beast knows the subject.

At the same time, the gripped sword was raised from the ground towards the sky.

The sword was gripped in a very different way from before, and from before.

I cut him down with the swordsmanship that I had glimpsed only in my memory one day, that I couldn’t use because it didn’t match my inclination, and that was close to perfect in terms of honest knighthood.

-Suddenly.

With that very monotonous sound.

his darkness. the darkness of the sky. The uneasy languidness of the forest.

It split along the golden sword path engraved as if it were cutting through the sound, and collapsed.