Ch. 237
“……!”
How did he notice that fleeting, soundless moment of disappearance?
Ash and Rovenin sensed something wrong and managed to witness the instant the sword vanished. But all they could do was watch.
“What, what is this……?”
“Muhahaha!”
“……Geenie! Is this your doing?”
As the blade of the sword in his hand lost its shape and disappeared before his eyes, Ash trembled helplessly, his hands shaking.
The sword, reduced to nothing but a hilt, could no longer be called a sword.
“Of course! This is the price for hurting my precious Undine! Rovenin! I’ll take everything precious from you!”
[Doesn’t that sound a little too much like a villain’s line……?]
I laughed like I’d already won.
The reason I’d used the whip in the first place was to absorb the sword. Rai and the sword needed to make contact.
I’d thought about turning Rai into a sword, but I had no swordsmanship skills, and recklessly entering a swordsman’s range was too dangerous. A weapon with a long reach and fluid movement like a whip was perfect. A whip wraps easily, so absorption is faster.
“My sword…….”
Even a heartless guy like him would cherish his weapon like his own life if he was a swordsman.
Even Rovenin’s face twisted at the sudden loss. No one could imagine how deeply his shocked expression satisfied me.
“Tenebra.”
Rovenin ran his hand along the sword that was now just a hilt, as if he couldn’t believe it. He muttered quietly, as if he’d given his sword a name.
So it was precious? Good.
“Geenie……! That’s the black sword passed down as a Fedri family heirloom…… Tenebra.”
“What bra?”
“Tenebra! A family heirloom handed down for nine generations, a treasure recognized by the Empire! The symbol of House Fedri and, before that, the dream of all swordsmen!”
[Wow, it tasted better than I expected.]
“……You enjoyed it?”
[It was a delicacy.]
Oh dear. Looks like our snake picked up something weird during his little walk.
“What kind of horrible…… How did you do this? No! Never mind how—put the sword back the way it was, now! Hurry!”
“No. If I was going to undo it, I wouldn’t have erased it in the first place, would I?”
“Please! This is not the time to joke. That’s one of the three great swords that represent the Allied Nations…… a historical artifact that led countless wars to victory…… and…….”
I was pretty sure I’d seen it in the weapons section of the treasure catalog I’d been obsessed with lately.
If I remembered right, the first head of House Fedri helped dwarves and Dark Elves and received it as a reward. There’d been a line about Dragon bones being used in the blade after subjugating a Dragon.
As I dredged up those vague memories, Ash grabbed my shoulders and shook me with something close to tears in his eyes, and I started to feel like maybe I’d gone a little too far.
“You can restore it, right? Right? Say something. Geenie!”
[You know I can’t spit it back out.]
“……If it was that important, you shouldn’t have carried it around.”
I didn’t want to apologize, so I got mad first.
“I’m begging you like this. Geenie, Geenie! You have to somehow give it back. If you erased it, you can remake it, right? Geenie? Please say you can……!”
“Can’t.”
“Gasp…….”
“To be precise, it’s not that I won’t, it’s that I can’t. It’s like eating bread. You’ve eaten bread before, right? Once you eat it, you can’t spit it back out in its original form. It’s like that.”
I wanted to see a face full of despair—but I wanted that on Rovenin, not on Ash.
Rovenin, the sword’s owner, was just standing there silently, expression serious.
Was the shock that big?
“Young Master Rovenin! You must pull yourself together! This is no time to just stand there. This is a tragedy that should never have happened. You have to collect yourself…… But, you…… You did get proper permission from Duke Fedri to bring it out, didn’t you? As far as I know, that sword is only passed down to the heir…….”
Shake of the head.
Rovenin stayed silent, even now.
And seeing it up close, it didn’t seem like the sword was truly his. He’d probably run off with the family treasure without permission.
I quietly took a step back.
[……Something feels off?]
[Looks like it was a pretty meaningful sword to these Empire types.]
“Geenie, why did you do that! What are we going to do…….”
I wanted to avoid Ash’s gaze.
I couldn’t handle it when Ash, who always worried about me more than he blamed me no matter what I did, looked at me in reproach.
I wanted to mess with Rovenin, not Ash.
“Uh…… that is…….”
“You should’ve just killed him instead!”
So it really was that serious.
Absorbing that black sword was probably in the top three worst accidents I’d ever caused.
Of course, I’m still young, so I’ll be able to update that list as much as I want.
[Amazing! Ash is actually telling someone to kill someone. Master, aren’t you going to be hated by Ash now?]
[What? There’s no way Ash would hate me!]
It was a shame, but if I traded it for Tears of Truth…… No, wait. Thinking about it made me mad. Why should I feel sorry?
I didn’t do anything wrong. If you believe it, it becomes the truth.
“How is this my fault!”
“Because you made Tenebra disappear!”
“Then what do you want me to do! He’s the one who pissed me off first! It’s because a swordsman tried to kill a Spirit Mage! I’m just doing a fair balance patch!”
“Good heavens, what kind of logic is that……!”
“I took it because I’m at a disadvantage if he has a sword! What! Why! Don’t you understand self-defense!”
The world of competition is ruthless.
And someone as normal as Ash could never beat my level of shamelessness and lack of conscience.
“……God, why are you giving me this trial…….”
Ash sank to the ground with a miserable groan, utterly crushed by my onslaught, which didn’t have enough conscience left to flavor soup.
I was slightly worried, but I decided to focus only on the fact that I’d given Rovenin a trial.
It was something to be proud of, not something to regret.
The satisfaction of revenge was so exhilarating that I burst into loud laughter again.
In my second life, what I’ve learned is that trials come anyway, even if you live kindly.
So it’s better to live the way you want, like me. That way, you feel less ripped off.
“Muhahaha! Now do you swordsmen get it! If you touch me with metal…… Damn it.”
“Give it back.”
“Ah, that’s too much.”
He really was the type who didn’t discriminate between women and anything else, now or in the past.
“Sword.”
I’d teased him a little, sure, but I had swallowed a family heirloom, and he’d immediately drawn a murder weapon.
I’d suspected it, but Rovenin could use Sword essence.
The highest form of Sword energy—a sword formed purely from Qi.
The time it took him to draw Sword energy from the now-useless hilt and rest it beneath my neck was shorter than a blink.
By the time I felt the dark blue aura of death flickering under my chin, I had already been seized by the collar.
“My sword!”
The blue glow of the Sword energy was too close, too ominous.
Rovenin’s eyes, right in front of me, shone with a light no less intense than that. It resembled the golden flames that demons carry to devour souls.
A gloomy golden light that suited the darkness.
“Aaaah! Rovenin!”
Ash, lost in shock for only a moment, rushed in again, but Rovenin had already grabbed me by the collar and showed no intention of letting go.
He even lifted me up and shook me.
How rough.
You’re the first man to do this to me. I’ll curse you for it.
“Let go.”
“Return the sword.”
“I’m not sorry, but I can’t.”
“What?”
“Didn’t you hear? Once it’s gone from the world, that’s it.”
He was the kind of guy who could rip someone apart with murderous intent alone.
Dangling half in the air by my collar, I shrugged, and Ash was now begging Rovenin with everything he had, pleading for him to let me go.
Seeing how Rovenin didn’t budge even as Ash tried to pry him off with all his strength made the gap between them painfully obvious.
Just because Ash was strong didn’t mean he could be compared to Rovenin.
Hanging there in his huge hand, I sneered. Hmph.
“It’s pathetic for a grown man to act like this over a single sword.”
“Tenebra is not just a sword…….”
“Is that all? Isn’t it against chivalry to point a weapon at someone who isn’t ready to fight?”
“The crime of erasing the Fedri family heirloom isn’t something you can atone for without being executed on the spot.”
“Huh? So you’re really going to kill me? I’m the Saintess, you know. You’re just a shameless Empire dog who doesn’t know gratitude.”
On the outside, I mocked him, but on the inside, I shrank.
The Sword energy’s ferocity was worse than I’d expected; it made me feel threatened whether I wanted to or not, and being grabbed by the collar made it hard to breathe.
“I swear to the God of Death. If you don’t return my sword, I’ll cut off your head, hang it on your family’s flag, and display it in the square.”
“What a shame. My family’s so humble we don’t even have a family crest, let alone a flag.”
“Judging by your actions, you’re a woman who won’t live long.”
“I hear that a lot.”
Rovenin leaned in and whispered. His low, gloomy voice was always unpleasant.
“It would be wise to use your tricks in moderation.”
[Ah.]
The whip—Rai—left on the floor when the sword disappeared, was inching along as slowly as possible, aiming for Rovenin’s ankle to coil around it and break it. But he got caught before he could even touch him.
“Oh my? The whip is moving on its own.”
“You’re impatient. If you weren’t a moron, you’d understand.”
“I have no idea what goes through a lunatic’s mind.”
“How easy it is to pierce your slender neck.”
I laughed at him as much as I could, but he wasn’t wrong.
My life was already in Rovenin’s hands.
That was why Ash was frantic, begging him to let me go.
This was why you never stepped into a swordsman’s range.
If a blade is beneath your throat, it’s the same as having one foot in the afterlife.
And if what’s threatening your neck is a savage Sword energy that can pierce even Dragon scales, while you’re dangling by the collar like me, you might as well consider yourself dead already.
I could feel my hair melting and breaking off where the Sword energy grazed it.
What is this, a lightsaber?
In that whatever it touched disappeared cleanly from the world, Sword energy was a little similar to Rai’s absorption.
“Then kill me. You’ll never see that gloomy sword again, though.”
“So…… there is a way?”
“Well. Depending on what you do, there might be. Or there might not be.”
It was pure bluff.
Even Rai didn’t know how to restore anything he’d absorbed.
It was just as hopeless as my current situation. If I tried to summon something, Rovenin would sense it and kill me faster, and it wasn’t easy to move Rai without getting caught.
That left only one way out of this crisis…… take hostages.
Fortunately, I have no conscience.