Chapter 22: Arc 2 Ch. 10: Hearts and Minds, Part III (Dark)

Ciedrich startled back from my shout. He spun around, frantically looking for anyone else near us, only composing himself and turning back to me after finding nothing.

“Who’s John?” he asked with a hint of amusement on his face.

Out of the corner of my eye, a rustling bush at the edge of the clearing grabbed my attention. Ciedrich followed my gaze, but by the time he noticed the brown-haired man sprinting toward him, it was already too late.

“J-John?”

No, the young man looping an arm around Ciedrich’s neck in a chokehold looked more like—

“You just can’t help going back to the same spot, can ya?” Zack said, his brow drenched with sweat.

“You wretch!” Ciedrich hissed. “You always knew your place before. Do you really want to die that badly?”

“Hey, we all gotta go some day.”

Ciedrich brought his arms up to his neck as he struggled and thrashed to break out of Zack’s imperfect, tenuous hold, the latter now sporting a leather vest after apparently ditching his heavy guard armor for mobility. Before Zack could finish the maneuver and choke him out, Ciedrich retrieved his knife and sliced a nasty gash across Zack’s exposed, muscular arm. He grunted in pain, wincing and loosening his grasp just enough for Ciedrich to finally break out of the chokehold.

Zack quickly drew his short sword forcing Ciedrich to retreat a few steps back. They stared each other down, both panting for breath. Zack grimaced as he checked his wounded arm, wincing again at the sight of blood dripping from the long cut to the grass below. He reached down to a pouch at his side and pulled out a flask filled with a blood-red liquid. After a few sips, the wound began mending itself.

“Do you know how much these damn things cost?” Zack asked, stowing the healing potion. “No, you wouldn’t give a shit.”

Ciedrich spat on the ground. “It makes me sick to think that even this world is too good for the likes of you. And that’s saying a lot.”

An intricate symbol on Ciedrich’s knife lit up with his channeled mana, extending the small blade with dark, solidified mana into a magical longsword.

“Overcompensating for something?” Zack challenged.

Ciedrich snarled as he lunged at him, aiming to stab through his opponent’s heart. Zack dodged the strike and retaliated with a few slashes of his own, and their duel began in full. Zack’s short sword wasn’t as light or as long as Ciedrich’s mana sword, but Zack had far more strength and skill with sword fighting. Ciedrich favored one foot as he fought, his prior injury making his movements slower and more difficult, but Zack seemed like he was still winded after running all the way out here from the city. They exchanged one strike for another, sword clashing against sword, neither side gaining a clear advantage over the other.

As glad as I was for his sudden arrival, I really, really couldn’t stand watching this go down! I could have easily ended this in seconds if that creep wasn’t still using his ring to keep that Charm spell active. Even while Ciedrich was busy fighting, that insufferable, paralyzing magical pressure still attempted its psychic invasion on my mind, and it was all I could manage with all my concentrated efforts to hold the invading sensation at bay. Being a damsel in distress fucking sucks!

“Zack, the ring! Just get the damn ring!” I shouted.

“I’m a little busy here!” he shouted back.

The two of them locked their swords together, both dripping with sweat while staring each other down again in the heat of battle.

“I’ve always dreamed of the day I could put down a filthy dog like you,” Ciedrich growled.

Zack smirked. “I dunno, you always seemed like more of a bitch to me.”

Ciedrich snarled even louder and launched into a raging flurry of wild stabs and slashes. Zack was still too quick for him, scoring scrapes and cuts with his short sword during Ciedrich’s reckless onslaught. If he could keep on provoking him like that, this could work! Even if Ciedrich wouldn’t run out of mana because of the eclipse, there was no way he could win this battle of attrition!

Unfortunately, the creep seemed to figure that much out as well. Ciedrich’s face contorted with pain at his fresh array of bleeding wounds, and he made to step back as if offering a brief respite from the fight. But I saw the way his free hand started moving, the tip of his finger glowing with mana—

“Zack, dodge!”

My warning didn’t reach him in time. At that range, there was nothing Zack could do to evade the magical projectile aimed for his center of mass. He twisted to avoid it, but the ball of energy exploded on his side, sending him staggering off-balance. Ciedrich used the opening to lunge forward and drive his mana sword… right into Zack’s stomach…

“Hey now, that ain’t fair,” he grunted.

A wave of nausea swept over me as I watched him—no, I couldn’t bear to watch any more. A sickening storm of emotion made my vision blur, and I had to struggle harder than ever to keep the spell from taking over my mind. I heard the thud of a body plummeting to the ground, a furious snarl, the heavy blow of a fist striking bone, and another, and another…

I shouted again as hard as I could, “John, I need some better fucking backup!”

“No one else is coming!” Ciedrich yelled.

No… no, it hadn’t even been two days since I’d come here. I couldn’t get a ‘game over’ now, not like this! There had to be something I could do—anything! Come on, think. Think!

Of all the things that could have popped into my mind at that moment, I remembered one of the last things John told me the first time we met.

This isn’t supposed to be punishment, you know. I’ll see about slipping you a little something extra.

Maybe, just maybe…

I only needed to lift a finger to trace the symbol, only one finger for a moment. I quickly found that I could regain barely enough control to manage that much after straining with everything I had for one last counterattack against the spell. Now all I needed was an opening and a little power-up.

“Ciedrich, wait! It’s a gamble, but I’ll do it. I just want to say one thing first.”

He stopped, slowly standing up over Zack’s body and turning around, shaking off the blood dripping from his knuckles. “Really, now? What could you possibly have to say at a time like thi—”

“Mana Bolt!”

By the time Ciedrich realized what I finished casting, it was too late. The projectile burst onto his ringed hand, and with a piercing crack and an explosion of light, the ring shattered into a thousand pieces.

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The psychic pressure instantly evaporated from my mind and every sense came rushing back to me all at once. Before Ciedrich could even react, I ran toward him, pulled out my dagger, and thrust it into his chest.

He staggered back, eyes widening in horror as he glanced down at the dagger’s hilt sticking out of him.

“You…! You witch, you missed my heart. Now you’ll—”

Suddenly, his whole body shook and trembled. He uttered a pained, choking sound as he desperately clutched at his bleeding chest, the obsidian blade lodged within glowing with a network of shining violet lines for just a moment.

“Who the hell are you?” he croaked.

With one last violent spasm, Ciedrich crumpled to the ground. He tried reaching a trembling hand to pull out the dagger—a hand that would never reach it. His arm fell slack to his side, never to move again.

“My name is Beryl, you piece—of—shit!”

I finished with a barrage of kicks at his motionless body, receiving no response at all. I panted heavily as I stared down at him, almost daring him to move again, until a raspy wheezing from behind me grabbed my attention.

“…eryl… Beryl…”

Fuck, I forgot about Zack! I rushed over to his side and knelt down beside him. It… It hurt to even look at his face…

When he spoke, his voice was hardly more than a whisper. “Beryl, there’s not much time. You have to—”

“No, Zack, you can’t die!”

“I’m not gonna fucking die, just feed me the damn potion!”

“Huh? Oh, right.”

I grabbed the pouch at his side and pulled out the red flask, still mostly full. After I finished helping him drink the rest of it, a bit of color began gradually returning to his scarily paled complexion, or at least the parts that weren’t already all bloodied.

“Thanks,” he uttered with a groan, rubbing his blood-stained vest. “Still hurts worse than hell, but I should make it. Now, uh, you might want to cover up…”

His battered, red covered cheeks got even redder as he cast an awkward glance at my chest. I looked down to discover that my breasts were still hanging out of my dress. This whole time…!

I turned around and pulled the top back up and over myself as fast as I could, then I gave Ciedrich’s corpse another kick for good measure.

His corpse… He really was dead. His unmoving eyes stared at nothing, that once light-colored suit was now dyed a deep scarlet, and his lifeless face looked frozen in agony. When I went to retrieve my dagger from his chest, I even had to wipe off the blood that clung to the dark blade. What did the Demon King enchant this thing with?! The short weapon suddenly felt ten times heavier as I held it in my hands.

This world, this really wasn’t a game. I mean, I knew it all along, of course I knew it all this time! And yet, to run into something like this so soon…

Well, on the bright side, didn’t this technically count as my first monster kill? At this point, I might as well loot the damn body.

That knife of his seemed like a useful weapon, but closer inspection revealed a marking that looked suspiciously like the former nobleman’s family crest; that definitely wasn’t something I wanted to be caught carrying or trying to sell. However, a quick check in his pockets led to the discovery of a velvet pouch filled with a generous handful of gold and silver coins. It was hard to tell in the waning moonlight, but two of the ‘silver’ coins looked a little different. They had to be…!

I glanced back and forth from the coins in my hand to Zack, still lying face-up. “Since I had to save your ass in the end, I’m taking the bigger cut. But here, you earned this.”

I flipped him one of the platinum coins. He looked it over like it was a winning lottery ticket.

“Heh. I’ve never actually held one of these before. Just figures it would happen like this, doesn’t it?”

“You should have gone for the killing blow from the start,” I grumbled. “You had a clear shot.”

Zack buried his head in his hands. “Here’s the thing: I was trying to keep the sick bastard alive, ‘cause now we’re kinda screwed.”

A lump caught in my throat. “Um… how screwed exactly?”

He sighed. “The Noble Council might not give a shit about Ciedrich, but when they find out ‘one of their own’ has gone missing and commoners are likely to blame, it’s gonna get ugly. Especially once the Church gets wind of it.”

Oh God, I hadn’t thought about that. After I’d come this far, I… I was actually going to get exiled for real now—or worse!

“But wait, it was self-defense! And technically it was the enchantment that killed him, right? This is all Mao’s fault!”

Zack let out a dry laugh. “That is definitely not gonna fly.”

Damn, could Mao help us anyway? No, that old drunk was more likely to get wasted and blab and get us in even deeper shit! The only other possibility I could think of was…

No. Oh, no. That was a terrible, wickedly terrible idea. And it just might work.

I bent down and grabbed the collar of the corpse’s suit. “Hang on, I might know someone who can help with this. Do you think you can you make it back to the city on your own?”

Wincing again, he slowly sat up and shrugged. “Yeah. I’ll manage. Beryl, just… don’t do anything crazy, okay?”

I groaned. “At this point, I think ‘crazy’ is the only option left…”

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