TL/ED – Miso

We sank the boat.

More precisely, we flipped it upside down in the lake and walked out using the air trapped inside.

Stepping across the damp lakebed, Linmel asked me in disbelief.

“A-are we actually walking in the right direction?”

“Yeah, we are.”

With Current Sense, I was heading precisely toward the base of the lighthouse. But Linmel still looked around the narrow, damp air pocket inside the overturned kayak uneasily.

“What if we suffocate before we get there?”

“We won’t.”

I didn’t breathe. Linmel was the only one who needed air.

And since Linmel was still young, she didn’t need all that much of it either.

“This is so nerve-wracking! We’re just drifting along in the current!”

It was a current I had made.

Thud. With the sound of the overturned kayak bumping against a stone wall, we arrived lightly at the lighthouse at last.

Linmel whispered, her expression one of surprise.

“Huh? We actually made it…?”

“I told you we would. Oh, can you break us in?”

“Got it!”

Linmel carefully drew her sword and lightly sliced through the lighthouse’s outer wall.

Once we slipped into the basement, we sealed the opening back up tight and looked around the damp underground.

“Looks like they use this as storage.”

“Wait, Jern. There are people upstairs too.”

Linmel stared warily at the stairs, but I had already checked with Current Sense.

“I know. But there aren’t many.”

“Hm?”

“…Really not many.”

There were strangely few guards.

Even though this was where they were holding an enemy nation’s Princess. To avoid drawing suspicion, maybe?

Even with that unsettled feeling, I slowly used the Current and choked them out one by one.

[Urk, guh…!]

[What the, what’s wro, ugh!]

“Done. They’re all out cold.”

“J-Jern…?”

Even Linmel, who usually took my word as gospel, couldn’t seem to simply believe me when I stared at empty air in the basement and announced it was all taken care of.

But when she saw the guards actually lying unconscious, awe soon filled her eyes.

“So this is what a Wizard can do…! Jern, you’re incredible!”

“Thanks. Let’s hurry and get her out before anyone comes to.”

“Right!”

We climbed to the top floor of the lighthouse without any interference.

The door was locked. But the moment I grasped the handle, there was a clack as the lock came undone on its own.

“Princess Lumia, Your Highness.”

“Uh, um…?”

They seemed to have shown some consideration for a valuable hostage: the top floor was fitted with various furnishings.

A soft bed, a wardrobe, marble flooring, a dining table, and so on. After confirming that no one was hiding anywhere, I stepped up before the bewildered Lumia and knelt.

“Vice Knight Commander of the Wax Wings, Jern Aspandal. I have come on orders to rescue Your Highness.”

“Jern? And… Linmel??”

“Lumia! I came to save you too!”

“Oh. Oh, I see.”

She rose from the bed with a dazed expression, as though she had never expected people like us to come rescue her.

“We’re still in the heart of enemy territory. I’ve already mapped out every escape route, so…”

“Mm, wait a moment.”

Lumia suddenly stood up and began stretching, loosening her body this way and that.

I watched her in genuine disbelief.

“What are you doing right now?”

“Nnngh… I’ve been lying down so long, I’m all stiff.”

“You seem to have had it rather comfortable. For someone who was kidnapped.”

I had thought she might be trembling in fear, but she was more composed than I had expected.

She shrugged her shoulders as if it were no big deal and answered.

“I was startled, yes. But this was bound to happen sooner or later.”

“Are you kidnapped often?”

“There have been many attempts on my person, but this is the first to succeed.”

She furrowed her brow and glanced outside.

“The knights who surrounded me were chosen from among the elite of the Imperial Household’s guards, and yet they noticed nothing at all… Even though there were only a few paces between me and them.”

“How is that even possible?”

“It isn’t. I truly cannot fathom just how formidable a person they must have hired to abduct me.”

“Hm, you still speak that way, I see.”

“…I knew the Imperial Household would send someone for me. But to come this quickly. And for it to be… you and Linmel, of all people.”

Lumia tilted her head and looked at me.

“It would seem my unnie truly treasures you.”

“Well, truthfully, we weren’t actually ordered to come. We realized the Princess was a fake, and the two of us moved on our own before a full uproar broke out in the Empire.”

“…How did you realize the one replacing me was a double?”

“Linmel has always been close with Your Highness. And I… it seemed Your Highness didn’t recognize the dagger I had given you as a gift.”

“Ah, I see.”

Lumia said this with a stiff expression and turned her face toward the window.

Since she clearly wasn’t joking no matter how I looked at her, I pressed her again in disbelief.

Lumia kept nodding to herself, then eventually let out a sigh and looked out beyond the lighthouse.

“If my abduction has not yet been made public, that is fortunate, at least. Fortunate for these people as well.”

“How benevolent of you. To worry even for the ones who kidnapped you.”

“I am not worrying for them. I am pitying them. My unnie loves me, so if ever this came to light, this city would be destroyed.”

“Surely not that…”

“It would be wiped out. And all of it would be wrapped up with no more than a single line of news about a tragic incident on the frontier.”

Lumia looked down through the glass of the lighthouse and closed her eyes.

“However little connection I may have to politics, I am still a Princess. Various hidden matters reach my ears. Do not think I am unaware of what my unnie has done.”

Even now, Sharmia was destroying countless citizens and cities.

Of course, it was not slaughter without cause. She was preventing those who would, in the future, collaborate with the Crimson Circle or launch a coup of comparable scale.

But only a very small number of people knew this, including the Princess herself. Even her younger sister did not know that Sharmia was a prophet.

I wondered in what light her unnie, and all of her efforts, appeared to Lumia.

“Jern.”

“Yes.”

Lumia, her brow still furrowed, spoke in an earnest voice.

“If this ends without being discovered, could we simply treat my abduction as though it never happened? Without even telling my unnie. If they failed in less than a day, those people would likely never attempt the same method again.”

I thought it over briefly, then nodded and added,

“I have two conditions.”

“And they are?”

“First, that you come up with a convincing explanation after we return to the Empire.”

“That I can manage. And the other?”

“And second, that you do not fear me.”

“Ngh…”

Lumia’s face flushed red, and then she let out a sigh and smiled softly.

“Very well. I shall try.”

“Understood. Then…”

“Dodge!”

Linmel suddenly shouted.

My reaction was quick. The moment I heard her voice, I yanked Lumia into my arms.

But the attack was faster.

Slash!

“!”

Hot blood splattered across my face. Linmel had caught a razor-sharp dagger with her bare hand.

Yet without seeming to feel the slightest pain, Linmel casually dropped the dagger and drew her sword.

Following the direction the dagger had come from, I saw that the wardrobe at the edge of the room stood open. The sharp-featured, slender man inside spat and scratched his head.

“Tch, what are the odds, two monster brats in one place.”

He was different. I felt it instinctively.

I had seen countless knights over the years. But the presence radiating from him was entirely unlike theirs.

He wasn’t Fallen, he wasn’t a knight, and yet I couldn’t pin him down with Current Sense.

As I slowly stepped backward and summoned the Current, Linmel handed Lumia off to me and leveled her sword sharply at the man.

“He’s an Assassin from Rakshasa!”

“You don’t have to shout it so loud, I already kn… tch!”

Crunch!

I clamped down precisely on his location with the Current, but he dodged a Current he had no way of seeing as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

As I narrowed my eyes, he glared back at me with an incredulous look.

“You Crimson Circle? Why’s a Fallen taking orders from the Empire?”

“They pay well.”

“…Ah, right. You must be that cursed child the Empire supposedly took in.”

As he said so with a smirk, Linmel’s eyes lit up with fire and she lunged.

“Just because you have a mouth doesn’t mean you get to flap it! An Assassin like you!”

An acceleration without even a single running start.

By the time I came to my senses, Linmel’s blade was already at the Assassin’s throat.

“…Oh ho.”

There was no dodging it. She was close enough to be certain of that.

But the Assassin twisted his body in an acrobatic spin. The Sword Path tracked perfectly along his throat, yet not a single drop of blood spilled. Landing lightly a few paces away, the Assassin looked at Linmel with interest.

“That one over there’s famous, so fair enough, but what’s this kid? Reaching this level at her age…”

“Nngh…!”

Linmel immediately twisted her blade and surged forward once more.

Clang! Her lightning-fast sword struck at the Assassin dozens of times, unfolding into a Sword Dance. Movements that would take his life the instant he made even a single misstep.

Even with Current Sense, I could barely track fragments of it.

And yet the Assassin dodged blows of that speed with ease, his gaze still fixed on me.

He was an Assassin of extraordinary skill.

…Of course they wouldn’t have simply left Lumia alone in this lighthouse.

“T-that’s him! The one who kidnapped me…!”

Hearing Lumia’s flustered words, I quietly clenched my teeth.

‘Tch, and of all times, when Lumia is right next to me…’

Speed wasn’t really a problem for me. Even a small deployment of the Deep Sea would show the Water Foam, and I could kill him on the spot.

The problem was that the Princess was right beside me. If I declared the Deep Sea around us and couldn’t bring him down immediately, dragging things out, then Linmel might survive, but Lumia would be crushed to death.

To make matters worse, Linmel’s brilliant Sword Dance was visibly nearing its end.

“Nngh…!”

Slice.

Her shoulder was grazed, and blood spattered.

Linmel immediately pulled back several meters and hurriedly clutched her shoulder. The Assassin watched her and let out a snort.

“Still a child.”

“…What did you say?”

“If you know your enemy is an Assassin, then you should also be able to guess he’d use unusual weapons. That’s why you reacted to such a shallow cut, isn’t it?”

“…”

“And yet you don’t cut out the flesh, don’t pull out an antidote, you just fall back? A foolish decision.”

“There’s no poison. It didn’t hurt.”

“There are poisons in this world that don’t act right away. Would you throw your life away just because you’re afraid of losing a bit of flesh? Ah, though… there was no poison this time.”

The smiling Assassin wasn’t even breathing hard.

It was obvious at a glance that the gap in skill between him and Linmel was vast. As she gritted her teeth and cast a quick glance behind her,

“Oh ho. Where do you think you’re looking?”

“?!”

Before she could even blink, he closed the distance and drove his foot into Linmel’s stomach.

“Gah…!”

Crash!

Linmel tumbled several times before slamming into a nearby wall, coughing up blood.

“…Linmel!!”

Alongside Lumia’s anguished cry, the Assassin playfully imitated a noble’s formal bow.

“My introduction is overdue. I am Aksha, of Rakshasa. Though it seems the little lady over there knew from the very beginning.”

“J-Jern… run…”

As I hurried over to her, Linmel, writhing, forced herself to try to stand and warned me,

“Rakshasa’s Assassins… they’re the ones who trained the knights who became Heaven’s Judgement Knights… he’s not someone I can beat…”

Drip, drip.

In her clenched expression, I felt both helplessness and sorrow together.

“Don’t try to talk. I’ve got this.”

I reassured Linmel and slowly rose to my feet.

When our eyes met, Aksha smiled lightly and stepped back.

“Mm, you there. My Fallen friend. Honestly, I don’t know much about the Fallen. Rakshasa’s rule is that anything you don’t know, you don’t touch until you know it, unless it really can’t be avoided. So if you leave the Princess and the knight girl and go, I won’t come after you.”

“Why Linmel?”

“I’ll be honest. With talent like hers…”

“Ah, that’s enough. I get the idea.”

Come to think of it, I had almost never seen Linmel in pain.

After her leg was broken back when we were young, she had always been smiling. The only exception was when we left the orphanage.

So in a situation like this.

Especially when Linmel had been hurt because I failed to handle things properly,

I couldn’t help but feel a surge of anger.

“You. You said you didn’t know much about the Fallen, didn’t you?”

“…Hm? I did.”

“Then let me teach you.”

I snapped my fingers.

Crrrrrunch! At the same instant, a grotesque splintering sound rang out.

Quite literally, the attack landed the moment it was launched.

“Oh ho.”

Drip, drip.

Blood flowed. Murky blood, mixed with shattered, pulverized bone.

Just as that filthy blood reached my shoes, Aksha looked down at his crushed arm without the slightest concern and muttered,

“The old sayings never lie. Didn’t see that one coming…”

“Don’t worry. You won’t see the next one either.”

“Is that so… wait, where’s the Princess?”

Kyaaaaaah, splash!

The moment Aksha realized something was wrong, a small scream and the sound of something falling came from beyond the shattered glass.

He stood there blankly for a moment as he pieced together the cause, then shouted in disbelief,

“You crazy bastard?! Did you just throw the Princess into the lake?”

“Hm, seems you haven’t grasped the situation.”

Crrrnch!

Aksha’s left arm twisted like a pretzel.

“You’re in no position to be worrying about anyone else.”

This time, his expression, without a doubt, contorted, if only slightly.