20. Just Between Us

“Code of House Arne, Article 11. From the moment one becomes the official heir, that station is absolute — and even the head of the house himself cannot strip the title nor put the heir to death merely because the heir does not please him.”

Seraphina laid a hand on my broken shoulder, and warm mana flowed in until the nerves that had been screaming went quiet. The tension left me with it, and so did the strength I’d been pouring into holding myself up on the greatsword, so I let myself drop flat on the floor.

— Shaaaaak!

But as if it wouldn’t allow even that short an exchange of words, the thing thrust its spear.

— Klang!

Yet Valerian had turned up from somewhere, and he knocked it aside as if he were swatting a fly.

“Fond of the law, are you? I am the heir.”

He took one look at me crawling on the floor and snorted.

“Crawling around like a bug, beaten down by some has-been specter.”
“Valerian. To your front.”

Even at Seraphina’s warning he didn’t so much as turn his head. He just swung his sword.

— KER-RAAAANG!

And the thing that had been lunging at him went flying off into the distance instead.

Strong.

I’d known it already, but now I was seeing it firsthand, and Valerian’s martial power was off the charts too. To land that one solid hit I’d had to stake my life and burn through my own life force, yet those two could manage the same thing with a single ordinary swing.

Seraphina conjured an ice spear in midair. “Arden landed a solid hit on it with Bato’s greatsword.”

“Luck, at best. And you’d have me acknowledge a brat who broke his own arm grandstanding?”

Valerian grumbled, and as the thing came charging back in, he sliced its arm off. The two of them went on chatting as if they were out for a stroll, and all the while they were shredding the Fallen Hero to ribbons.

“GRAAAAH!”

But the severed arm reattached itself in an instant.

“No matter how many times you cut it, there’s no end to it.”
“Its regeneration is faster than my frost.”

A flicker of annoyance crossed Valerian’s face, while Seraphina, still expressionless, drove in another spear of conjured ice.

My consciousness was starting to slip.

I need treatment. You two.

I didn’t have a particle of doubt that those two would beat the Fallen Hero. However good its regeneration was, there was no way they’d miss the core when I’d spotted it myself. What mattered more was that I was dying while they were busy fighting.

“Y-Young Master. Are you all right?”

Some time later Bato, who had come to by the look of it, scooped me up in his arms with a sob in his voice. He’d lost plenty of blood himself, and dried clumps of it were caked over one side of his head. I didn’t have the strength to answer, so I just shook my head.

Cradled in those broad arms as he carried me away, I watched the rest of the fight through blurring eyes.

— Krunch!

Dozens of ice spears punched through the hero’s body. Dozens of ice spears bound its limbs in place and went straight through them. Valerian didn’t miss the opening, and his greatsword sheared the head clean off. That left the glowing core exposed at the back of the neck, so Seraphina walked up and ground it to pulp under her heel.

— Phsssss…

And just like that, the hero that had been so terrifying scattered into black powder.

Once I was sure it was over, I let my consciousness drift off into the dark.

When I opened my eyes there was a familiar ceiling above me, and the bitter scent of medicinal herbs and the smell of alcohol were stinging my nose.

“…”

I tried to gather the strength to sit up, but I couldn’t so much as twitch a finger. So I looked down at myself instead, and what a sight I was. White bandages wound around and around my whole body. I was the spitting image of a mummy that had just escaped from the museum.

I’m… alive.

A wave of relief came over me, and a horrendous thirst came along with it. I wanted to ask for water, but my throat was as dry as a desert and couldn’t produce so much as a rasp.

That was when a faint blue light flickered in midair.

The Eve who’d normally be zipping around brightly was sitting at my bedside as a half-shattered hologram, glitching with static.

Like a TV with a busted screen.

Here’s how she explained it. The moment the Phase 2 attack paralyzed my entire nervous system, my heart had stopped, and just as it looked like I’d die without being able to lift a finger, Eve had stepped in.

So my body had been running on her processing power and not on my will, or so she said.

Eve put on a serious face and crossed her translucent arms in an X.

Of course. There was no such thing as a power without a price.

Eve’s lecture went on from there, but my interest had already drifted to the pitcher of water on the bedside table. My nerve cells were throbbing with pain and my throat was parched. Eve caught where I was looking and sighed.

I blinked for yes instead of nodding, but Eve made a sad face and gave a small shrug.

This had to be somebody’s idea of a sick joke.

“…That’s nice.”

So we chatted for a long while. We went back over the fight with the Fallen Hero, and I told her stories about my couch-potato life on Earth.

I was rambling on about my impressions of one-day ghosthood when I caught myself looking at her.

“Just thinking it must’ve been pretty stifling for you.”

Eve had been about to fire something back, but she stopped short and the words died in her throat.

“What? You touched?”

But apparently I’d simply misread her.

— Ding.

That was when the system window in my vision crackled with noise and printed a new notification.

— Ku-gugung.

The hologram window in front of my eyes split top and bottom, like a messenger chatroom.

Huh?

I blinked in surprise too. Up till now her words had only shown up in bare [ ] brackets, but now her line carried a clear sender tag: [Eve].

I agreed completely.

Yeah, exactly.

— Ding.

At the same moment, both our jaws dropped.

“I have no idea. I was just agreeing with you in my head.”

Her eyes sparkled.

“Try what?”

So I did as I was told and imagined the words I wanted to reach her.

“Oh!?”

Meaning my thoughts were linked to the system chat window in real time?

That was definitely true. The follow-up tests went smoothly too, and whatever I thought reached her the instant I thought it. A perfect, soundless secret conversation with Eve, right in front of other people, was an enormous strategic advantage.

This feature even comes with security?
Total steal.

— Knock, knock.

That was when a careful knocking came from the sickroom door.

“Young Master… are you awake?”

The door soon opened, and familiar faces shuffled hesitantly inside. Elli, her eyes swollen up like a pufferfish from crying. And behind her, dawdling in awkwardly, Leo.

The instant they saw the mummy I’d become, both of them slapped their hands over their mouths, and Elli’s eyes especially started welling up as if somebody had turned on a faucet.

“WAAAAH! Young Master! How could you get hurt like this!”

She sprinted to the bed, grabbed my bandaged hand, and burst into sobs.

Oh, this is bad.
She’s going to be at that for a while. And I can’t even comfort her.

With no idea what was running through my mind, Elli kept on wailing, and my bandages were getting soggy with her tears.

“Get off. You can’t just grab onto a patient like that.”

Mercifully, Leo grabbed her by the scruff of the neck and peeled her away from me.

“You’re thirsty, aren’t you?”

He glanced at the bedside table and picked up the pitcher without a moment’s hesitation, then skillfully fitted a straw into a cup of water and brought it to my lips. Cold water of life ran down my parched, burning throat. If rain falling on a desert had a feeling, this was exactly it.

“…Haaa.”

A small, hoarse breath leaked from my lips, and only then did Elli wipe her eyes and sniffle.

“S-sorry.”
“It’s all right. You were really worried, huh?”
“…Hngh.”

Even with my reassurance, she couldn’t stop the tears.

“The Young Master needs his rest, so quit crying already.”

At Leo’s scolding, Elli scrunched her mouth into a pout. He set the empty cup back on the bedside table and looked down at me with a dry gaze. Yet for all that dryness, his eyes were trembling, almost too faintly to see, as they watched me. He folded his arms.

“At least you’re alive. I hear you went and picked a fight with a hero from ages past. When I heard the news, I thought you’d turned into an aspiring suicide case.”

The moment I heard that, I knew the house had clamped down on the information. What I’d faced was the corrupted version of a past hero, so there was no question of letting that out into the world. The honor of a knight house would be dragged through the dirt, of course, and on top of that, worry would creep through the streets among the territory’s commoners.

A wise judgment. Only a small handful at the top needed to know the truth, and there was no need to spread fear for nothing.

“Your body was bad enough to begin with, and you still insisted on taking the heir’s trial. There are limits to how reckless a person can be.”

Leo clicked his tongue and tidied the blanket over me.

Once the atmosphere had settled a little, Elli spoke up, her face still puffy.

“Lady Seraphina has a message she asked us to pass on.”
“What is it?”

I tilted my ear toward her, since I’d been wondering where Seraphina was anyway.

“She says the Trial of Arms is suspended for now.”

It was more or less what I’d expected, but it still didn’t sit well with me.

“I don’t know exactly why, but apparently the underground training hall’s been sealed off, and they’re looking into the cause. She said until they know exactly what it was, everything to do with the Trial of Arms is on hold.”

As I listened to Elli, I turned my eyes toward Eve, curious what she made of it.

The best they’d manage to find would be “an unknown mana surge” or something along those lines, because the truth was permitted only to me and Eve, the ones who understood the game’s system.

Hm?

But then a very fundamental question flickered across my mind.

Why did Arne VII come out demonified, in the first place?

Bato had said it himself. A past hero was summoned by resonating with the challenger’s own mana.

Arden’s body, by anybody’s measure, has next to no mana to speak of.

Eve had said as much too. She couldn’t sense any mana on Arden at all.

But then.

What if what the magic circle responded to wasn’t Arden’s mana at all?

I was working through that on my own when —

She’d been mulling over the exact same thing.

Yeesh, look at the goosebumps.
The chills!