Omen

“—Ngggh—”
“—Khaaaaack—”
“Haaaaagh—”

“…”

Maybe he’d gone a little too far.

Aiden looked around sheepishly at the Knights sprawled about him, every one of them making noises that barely sounded human. Limbs bent at wrong angles, broken ribs stabbing into lungs, spines wrenched around. Whichever way you looked at it, every last one of them had injuries that even a superhuman body couldn’t just shrug off.

Wow.

He’d been fairly sure of himself going in. No less than the Knight of Dawn, a hero known across the whole continent, had told him he ‘would be good for one man’s share’. With that man’s word behind him, he’d been confident he could at least keep a fight going, even with his supernatural power weakened. But crushing them this thoroughly? Not even Aiden had seen that coming.

…It really has been drilled in.

Now he truly understood what that man had meant when he’d said Aiden had earned as many ‘spare lives’ as the times he’d died. His body already knew that horrific pain would follow if it didn’t move exactly this way, right here, so it found the most efficient movement on instinct. Layer Meyer’s skill on top of that, which analyzed an opponent’s techniques exactly as they stood, and what else could you call it? He hadn’t beaten them so much as toyed with them.

Nothing… got copied.

Thanks to the Analysis skill, he’d been able to mimic the Knights’ movements just as they performed them, but none of it had taken shape as a new set of combat forms. As always, that was probably because they were figures of low ‘importance’ in the main scenario.

Not that he minded much. He already had Noelle’s combat forms, which were far more efficient anyway, and the Point Shop was now right under his nose.

No idea what they’ve hidden away in there that’s so good it still won’t open…

He was scratching his cheek over that when someone nearby let out a shout like a thunderclap.

“Aiden!”

It was Noelle. It couldn’t have been more than a few minutes since he’d asked for support, and she’d apparently come running all over again.

“Ah, Dame Noe—”

He turned his head to greet her, and the words died on the spot, because the moment he saw the look on her face as she ran toward him, he knew by instinct.

…She was angry.

Really, tremendously so.

Sure enough, the first thing she did after closing the distance in one breath was clamp down hard on both his shoulders. The pressure was fearsome, as if they’d been caught in an industrial vise. He could almost have sworn he saw flames blazing in her eyes…

“What were you thinking, running in alone with no support—!”

“…”

Her voice rang out, and Aiden’s body shrank back before he could stop it.

“What if you had gotten hurt doing that! Never mind hurt, what if something truly terrible had happened to you!”
“…If I’d left it alone, Katya would have been in danger.”
“You’re far, far more likely to die than Her Highness is—!”

“…”

“Do you understand me? You must never take a risk like this again! If anything, you should be leaving me or Her Highness behind and running for it yoursel—!”

…No.

She looked like a tiger about to devour its prey, yet listen to what she was actually saying and every word of it was worry for him.

And he was sorry for someone like that, but.

No — rather, because she was someone like that.

“No.”

However angry the other person was, some things had to be said.

Aiden was blinking, but his answer came out clear.

“I can’t do that, though.”
“What on earth do you—!”
“If you were in a situation like that, Dame Noelle, I’d do exactly the same thing.”

“…”

“What’s so wrong with helping when Katya or you are in danger?”

There was a world of difference between living smoothly, getting along with everyone, and living like a coward. Aiden might want very badly to get along with everyone, but he was no coward.

Katya was his friend. And Dame Noelle, however badly things had started between them, had treated him well from first to last. It was no stretch to call them his ‘relatives’.

Whenever the people inside his fence were threatened, he’d stepped out in front of the threat and rammed his head straight into it. He’d lived that way until now, and he’d go on living that way. True, he alone knew the threat the future held, but even his taking on the karma of saving the world, a karma no single human being had any business carrying, came down to that same thing in the end.

Whether it could really be done, not even Aiden knew. He might fail miserably halfway and die, and the world might end with him.

The reason he had taken it on even so.

was, as always with him, something very small and very clear.

“If I’m going to ditch everyone close to me and live well on my own, then what’s even the point of working so hard to live?”

What was it worth, getting through this life alone? Where was the fun in it, or the meaning?

It was fine if he ran into a bit of danger himself. Fine if he took a bit of a loss. As long as the people close to him could huddle together and get along, laughing all the way, that was enough. And any bastard who disturbed a pastoral scene like that was best pulverized by whatever means came to hand.

He had gotten tangled up with tremendous people, gained formidable abilities, and somehow ended up fated to save the world as well, but.

The course of his life had never once strayed from that line. Family. Friends. An ordinary, respectable citizen who dreamed of a peaceful life with them.

And.

Someone ready to do anything at all to protect it.

“…”

As she listened to all of it, the strength slowly drained out of Noelle’s grip. Her hands dropped, and she stayed silent for a long while. The longer she stayed silent, the more the color drained from Aiden’s face as well.

I shouldn’t have talked back…!

Wasn’t this the moment right before an explosion? He’d mouthed off to an angry person for no good reason, so wasn’t he about to get it twice as bad…! Even if it needed saying, he should’ve said it more gently…!

“…You really are a strange person, Aiden.”

It was almost.

the look of eyes about to cry.

“Why are you only ever firm at times like this? When the rest of the time you want to live like an invisible man.”

…Uh.

Aiden blinked awkwardly.

No.

Why was she acting like this? He’d expected to get scolded for talking back, but somehow…

Feels like I poked at a trauma?

Sure enough, the air around her was much like the time he’d asked how she’d come to be called the Butcher. She listened to everything he said as if he’d caught her off guard, and it felt as though she were laying over him something she’d rather not remember.

Before long, Noelle pulled her hat down low. It was what she often did when she didn’t want anyone to read her face.

“Return to the headquarters with Her Highness. I will handle the scene.”

“…”

But, unlike before.

this one thing looked a long way from ever being explained to him.

“He’s the real deal, that one.”

Levant said it with a wry laugh as their hands were bound behind their back.

“You hooked yourself a decent bastard for a husband, Noelle. Seems you’ve got an eye for people after all.”

“…”

“Which makes it even clearer to me. Why you keep your distance from him.”

“…”

“Different sex, but he’s a lot like Teresa. Don’t you think?”
“…Levant.”

Noelle let a moment pass before she spoke.

“What were you thinking, doing something like this.”
“I don’t think we were ever close enough to be worrying about each other like this.”
“In the Coalition War we were comrades.”
“We were, right up until Teresa died because of you.”

“…”

Noelle’s hands stopped, and Levant let the next words fall slowly.

“Noelle Astria Simmers. Listen well.”

It was more than a plain accusation. There was regret in that voice, even grief.

“The one left standing to the last that day should have been you, not Teresa. The one to come home in glory as the savior of the nation should have been the Lord Protector, not you.”

“…”

Noelle didn’t answer. She only went on binding the captives’ hands in silence, as if this were a burden she had to bear herself. Levant, who’d been watching her while quietly letting it happen, gave another wry laugh and went on.

“You’ve gotten strange, Lionhearted.”
“What has?”
“Used to be, one mention of Teresa and you’d lose your head on the spot. Now it looks like you’ve got a bit of room to breathe.”

“…”

Noelle smiled bitterly at that.

Well.

Until not long ago, that would certainly have been true.

Why was that.

“Married life must be treating you well, huh?”

“…”

“Still newlyweds, so it must be all honeymoon bliss right now. Be nice if one of you up and had an affai—”

Instead of answering, Noelle struck Levant across the back of the neck and knocked them out cold. There was no mercy or pity in the blow at all.

It had been a day of one thing after another.

Katya, back at the headquarters, went straight to her own room and shut herself in, apparently lost deep in thought, and the day had worn Aiden out enough that he too planted his face in the bed just as he was.

Those Knights.

They were going straight to trial, from what he’d heard. Dame Noelle had arrested them and handed them over to the prosecution, and that was the word she’d left behind. They’d be getting a fairly severe punishment.

“…”

There was no evidence anywhere to show who had set this up, or why. But he did have a suspicion.

Only one person openly held ‘Malice’ toward him, and it was this one. Every line of reasoning ended in the same place: the attack had been meant to put Aiden in a difficult spot.

…In that case.

Aiden glared at the window through narrowed eyes. If that side meant to come at him with open hostility, he had no intention of sitting still and taking it. He’d have to put countermeasures in place.

Though of course, something more urgent came first.

“—Hm.”

As he studied the window floating in front of him, Aiden’s eyes narrowed further, and then further still, until the skin bunched into wrinkles.

Just one day left, then.

The main quest had been up there from the start, fine. But what on earth did it mean that the Noelle business was overlapping with it too?

I’ve prepared hard for it.

He had no idea what was going to blow up, but he could say that much without any shame. It was a pity he hadn’t gotten the Point Shop open, but he’d already copied more than enough skills. If the difficulty matched the original as he remembered it, this much would see him through without too much trouble.

Yet one law had held true all along, and it wouldn’t let him relax.

It’s never gone the way the original did.

This was a world without a protagonist in the first place, so assuming everything would roll along its original course was a contradiction in itself. Something he hadn’t expected was bound to happen. So he’d need at least one piece of ‘insurance’, because quite apart from stockpiling strength, there was at least one thing he could do that would help directly with the event.

“Hm.”

Aiden let out a breath through his nose and walked straight out into the corridor.

At this hour almost everyone had gone home, even that workaholic Noelle, but there was one person who was bound to stay later still. When he reached his destination, he knocked on the office door.

“Come in.”

The voice was steeped in exhaustion. Aiden eased the door open and went in, and there was Dame Stella, pounding away at a typewriter with the same machine-like air as ever, for all that she was being worked to the bone.

“Aiden? What brings you here at this hour?”

They’d hardly ever met in private like this, so her eyebrows went up as she asked.

It was a bit of an odd picture, true. And what he was about to say to her was odder still.

“Dame Stella.”
“Yes. What is it?”
“Would you come out with me?”

“…”

Dame Stella frowned and looked out the window. Dusk had fallen long ago, and it was now the pitch-black small hours. However he looked at it, it was a strange thing to ask a woman who wasn’t his wife at this hour.

“…It does seem rather late to be going out, though…?”
“It does, doesn’t it?”
“I am relieved you know it. If the matter is urgent, you should report it to Dame Noelle and have appropriate personnel assigned—”
“No, I think it has to be you, Dame Stella.”

“…”

“And I’d like it to be just the two of us.”

Dame Stella sprayed out the coffee she’d been drinking in magnificent fashion.