TL/ED – Miso

The lake. Around the Lighthouse.

The captain was chain-smoking as he surveyed the scene when a soldier hurriedly rowed a small boat over and saluted.

“Captain! Orders have come down from above!”

“…What is it.”

“They say to support the man fighting right now and repel the enemy!”

“…”

The captain let out a sigh as he looked at his subordinate who had spoken.

The higher-ups apparently had no idea what was happening right now.

“Pass this back to them.”

“Ah, yes! I’ll take it down!”

“Tell them it’s not at a level where we can intervene.”

“…Pardon?”

Looking at the soldier’s dumbfounded face, he glanced back behind him.

There, blurry, wavering afterimages were colliding, spreading metallic sounds sharp enough to hurt the ears.

“I can’t even tell which is which, so how could we attack?”

-…Bang!

The moment the words left his mouth, a spray of water rose up as though a massive boulder had been hurled into the lake.

The small waves that formed made the ships sway. As soldiers helplessly toppled over and dropped their bows, the captain quietly gritted his teeth and gave the order.

“Drop anchor! At the very least, fill the surroundings so there’s no space for him to escape!”

It was the best decision he could make at that moment.

***

Aksha had killed children before.

No, many. A typical household raised two or three children, and a village was mostly made up of such families.

There had been times he spared them, either because he disliked his dagger being soiled by their oily blood, or as silent protest when the commission had been stingier than expected, but including those, he had killed tens of thousands.

That was why it was all the more unbelievable.

The fact that the sword of a child not yet of age was pressing against his neck.

-Clang!

“Tsk…”

Sword exchanges between powerhouses who had reached a certain realm did not exceed ten bouts.

Because beyond that, one of the two swords would invariably sever the opponent’s neck.

As they were swordsmen at the pinnacle, even if they appeared to be evenly matched, with each exchange they were slowly closing in on their opponent. If the count went beyond a certain number, no matter how perfectly one defended, a blow would inevitably reach a vital point.

The opponent knew this, and so did he, which was why whoever felt his neck would be cut before the tenth clash would retreat first.

In exchange, the one who retreated had to pay a price.

If the margin had been narrow up to the ninth exchange, it would end with a proportionally minor wound, but-

“Ridiculous.”

-Puchak!

…retreating from a completely overwhelmed position.

Required accepting a wound close to fatal.

Aksha roughly rubbed his wrist where blood had begun to flow, stopping the bleeding. Seeing the wound that had already healed without so much as a scar, Linmel frowned deeply.

“Stop doing that! How many times have I cut it already! Are you a snail or something?”

“Don’t get cocky. That’s not a wound you inflicted with your own skill.”

It was true.

Had Aksha wanted, those would have ended as minor scratches at most.

Still, Linmel smiled confidently and readjusted her sword.

“Even so, you’re the one who always runs away.”

“…”

She had clashed with him time and time again without avoiding the wounds.

That was the right approach. Since his side had no restrictions regarding injury, if she threw herself forward more boldly and landed even one fatal blow, it would be an unconditional victory.

Beyond mere individual skill, this immortal ability was overwhelmingly advantageous in battles against swordsmen.

Yet even with such an edge, not once.

She had failed to reach the tenth sword.

Linmel’s sword always won the contest by the slimmest of margins, turning into a strike aimed at the assassin’s vital points.

‘This… can’t simply be coincidence.’

Aksha gripped his dagger in a reverse hold and studied Linmel from every angle.

Of course, since the difference really was tiny, up until the third time he had dismissed her as an incredibly lucky kid and kept trying.

But at this point, he had to accept an unbelievable truth.

Linmel was perfectly grasping and exploiting the Sword Gap, thinner than a strand of hair.

A realm an ordinary person could never reach, even if they poured in tens of thousands, hundreds of millions of hours.

A talent that, by its mere existence, could drive every knight into an Inner Demon.

“…Dazzling.”

Though he was an assassin and not a knight, a pure exclamation of admiration slipped out of him.

Aksha suddenly wondered what would have happened had he met this girl in a year – no, half a year later.

‘If I had, by the time we met at the Lighthouse, I would have already…’

Been hacked to pieces and turned into a corpse with no return.

The thought drew a hollow laugh out of him.

Barely less than half a year had split his fate and hers down the middle.

“How long do you think you can keep this up? Besides, you…”

“Don’t blame the heavens. That talent being bestowed on you is proof that they loved you.”

Seizing the moment Linmel opened her mouth, Aksha lunged forward.

“…That won’t work!”

Linmel shouted confidently and charged in.

It wasn’t a wrong judgment. They had crossed blades many times, and she had never once lost.

But this time, there was one thing different.

-…Crunch!

“?!”

Aksha extended his left hand holding the dagger, then sliced that arm off with his right.

Linmel furrowed her brow at the incomprehensible self-mutilation, but responded perfectly.

She knocked aside the flying left hand and charged at the main body now left with only its right arm.

‘No matter how well you regenerate, if I split you vertically in two!’

In the brief gap before regeneration, she could carve him into thousands of pieces.

Linmel’s keen eyes already saw the Sword Path she would cut. Just as she was about to hack apart the body with only its right arm remaining-

-Stab!

“?!”

“Children really do have a pure side to them.”

-Clang! Linmel hurriedly twisted her body and deflected the dagger that had stabbed at the back of her neck.

The left hand that had been severed from the body had moved with a will of its own, striking from behind.

Fortunately, the dagger failed to deal meaningful damage. When Linmel warily stepped back several paces, Aksha, now with a relaxed expression, reattached his arm.

“Regenerating the arm, that really is thanks to the help of the Fallen. But those bastards are ruthless by nature, so they don’t do all that much for me.”

“You… it’s not that you were cut-”

“No one lets their guard down, even seeing a headless corpse. Every Rakshasa Assassin has a secret technique of their own…”

Aksha skillfully demonstrated by cutting off his own head.

Blood flowed from the cross-section. Looking again, it appeared rather unnatural. As though it had been severed from the very start.

Placing his head back on, Aksha slowly spun the dagger in his grip and smiled.

“A bit of body modification. Did you really think a person could be cut that many times and still survive? You might not know it, but your companion looked rather clever.”

“-The brain is your weakness.”

Linmel lightly brushed off the mockery and nodded.

“No wonder you’ve been so generous about offering up your neck all this time, while carefully avoiding even minor wounds to your head. No matter what other parts get cut off, if the head gets split in half, you can’t regenerate, can you?”

“Sharp. I tried not to show it, but you noticed.”

Aksha clapped his hands in admiration.

Linmel felt a pang of unease at him giving up his weakness so easily, when-

“Uh, ah…”

Suddenly she felt a dizziness ringing through her head and sank to her knees.

Ripples spread across the lake, and Linmel’s shoes began to slowly sink.

A chill. Trembling, Linmel touched the back of her neck.

From the wound left when she had been stabbed by the dagger, a small amount of blood was trickling out.

‘I thought I had blocked it perfectly…’

“It’s cowardly. I know that.”

Aksha shrugged and slowly drew closer.

“But what can I do. If you wanted a fair fight, you shouldn’t have stepped into a place like this.”

“…”

“Your friend could have killed me with ease. In the worst case, I was even thinking of summoning those things… Not knowing your place, you’re causing trouble for him, and for the heavens that gave you that talent. Well, fortunate for me, though.”

“Kha, hack.”

Linmel felt something well up in her stomach and vomited it out into the lake.

The clear lake was stained a dark red. Aksha, who had approached to behead Linmel as she gradually began to sink into the lake, tilted his head upon seeing her expression.

“…You’re laughing?”

Linmel wiped the blood at the corner of her mouth and was smiling confidently.

He had seen the scene many times over, where those nearing death let out laughter close to self-mockery, or lost their minds and burst into mad laughter.

But this case was neither of those.

Linmel was simply smiling happily, like a person in a good mood, like someone in the company of their beloved.

“What’s so funny?”

“You idiot. Jern must have known everything.”

“…?”

Linmel gazed at her own reflection in the blood-stained lake as if using it for a mirror, and smiled.

“Jern knows everything. How strong you are, how weak I am, he would have known it all. That must be why he tried to stop me.”

“Well, then it’s your fault.”

“Yeah. But still… in the end, he listened to me.”

Linmel put strength into her legs.

In the lake that had swallowed her up to her knees, her shoes pressed down onto firm ground.

“He believed in me. He thought I could hold my own against you.”

“…”

In the midst of his perfect victory, Aksha felt unease.

That unease sublimated into an attack. Without any pretense, the dagger immediately shot for Linmel’s neck.

Whether she dodged or blocked, it would absolutely pierce through-

“I’m sorry. I can’t lose.”

-Clang!

“…!”

Aksha watched Linmel stand up proudly and knock the dagger aside, and goosebumps rose along his spine.

A poison that could end a massive ancient dragon’s life with a single drop had failed to kill a single girl.

“Futile!”

But it had already been too late from the start. The dagger had been thrust in such a way that it would pierce through even if blocked.

The poison had dulled Linmel’s reaction just slightly- and as a result, the dagger cut clean through her sword of steel.

“Guh!”

The force sent her tumbling several times across the lake’s surface before she came to a rest, staring at the sword – the handle that had once been a sword – gripped in her hand.

Aksha did not wait for a single instant.

‘Now, right now!’

The right judgment would have been to wait.

This had to be nothing more than a final flash of lucidity. If the poison spread just a little more, Linmel wouldn’t be able to move no matter how ideal the circumstances.

But the honed instincts of an assassin were sounding a tremendous alarm bell.

A single second.

No, even less than that, if he allowed her-

His instincts were screaming that the one whose corpse would sink into the lake was about to change.

“Ngh…!”

Linmel threw the handle away and reached for the emergency dagger at her hip.

But she was slightly late.

Aksha rushed in like spilled ink, a form too indistinct to even recognize, holding not a single stray thought.

Linmel bit down on her lower lip.

She had no intention of giving up. But at the very least, she had to prepare to lose one of her arms.

“…?”

At that moment.

Linmel’s hand, groping through the lake, caught hold of something.

That hard something carried- for some reason, the very same chill as when she had held Jern’s hand.

There was no time to hesitate.

-Splash!

“Guh… khagh…!?!”

Along with the sound of splashing water, the dagger dropped into the water.

Linmel, wearing a startled expression though she was the one who had swung it, stared at the ice spear in her hand.

A long, easy-to-grip spear that couldn’t possibly form in this warm climate. Aksha, utterly stunned, tried to grab hold of the ice spear that had pierced through his forehead.

“Thi…”

-Thud, thud-thud.

Though no one touched them, starting from below his neck with his arms and legs, his body parts slowly broke away and fell off.

His trembling head soon drooped limply.

“Lin…”

Leaving behind one last dying word.

What remained of the Rakshasa Assassin were fragments of a corpse drifting about on the water.

After briefly removing Aksha’s head from the blood-stained ice spear, Linmel smiled softly and hugged the spear close.

“You were watching.”

Was he still watching?

…Since it’s over now, probably not, right?

Linmel, secretly checking her surroundings, put her tongue to the ice spear.

“Ah, ow… ah, ih cold…”

It hadn’t been a very good choice.