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 rested her hand on my shattered shoulder, and warm mana flowed in to lull the screaming nerves quiet. The tension bled out of me, and the strength I’d been spending to prop myself against the greatsword drained away with it.

And I sprawled flat across the floor.

— Shaaaaak!

But the thing wouldn’t allow us even that brief exchange of words, and it thrust its spear.

— Klang!

Valerian, who had appeared from somewhere, flicked it aside as casually as swatting a fly.

“Fond of laws, are you. The heir is me.”

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

“To be reduced to bug-crawling, beaten down by some has-been specter.”

“Valerian. To your front.”

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

— KER-RAAAANG!

And the thing lunging at him was sent flying off into the distance instead.

Strong.

I’d known it already, but seeing it up close drove the point home. Valerian’s martial power was every bit as far off the charts.

The clean hit I’d carved out by staking my life and burning through my own life force, those two pulled off with a single casual swing.

Seraphina conjured an ice spear in midair and spoke.

“Arden took up Bato’s greatsword and landed a solid hit on the thing.”

“Just dumb luck. You want me to acknowledge a brat who broke his own arm grandstanding?”

Valerian grumbled and sliced off the thing’s arm as it came charging back in. The two of them kept up their leisurely conversation, as though out for a stroll, while they shredded 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 regen is faster than my frost.”

Annoyance flickered across Valerian’s face, and Seraphina, her expression still blank, drove home another conjured spear of ice.

My consciousness was slipping away.

I need treatment. You two.

I didn’t have a shred of doubt that the two of them would beat the Fallen Hero. No matter how good its regeneration was, there was no way they’d miss the core that I had spotted. What mattered more was that I was dying while the two of them played around.

“Y-Young Master. Are you all right?”

Some time later, Bato, apparently having come to, scooped me up into his arms with a sob in his voice. He’d lost quite a lot of blood himself; clumps of dried blood were caked over one side of his head.

I didn’t have the strength to answer, so I just shook my head.

Cradled in Bato’s broad arms as he carried me off, I watched what was left of the fight through my blurring vision.

— Krunch!

Dozens of ice spears slammed through the hero’s body, pinning its limbs in place.

Valerian didn’t miss the opening; his greatsword cleanly sheared the hero’s head off.

The glowing core lay exposed at the back of the neck, and Seraphina walked up and ground it to pulp under her heel.

— Phsssss…

And just like that, the form of the hero that had been so terrifying scattered into black powder. Once I’d confirmed it was over, I let my consciousness sink away into the dark.

When I opened my eyes, a familiar ceiling came into view. The bitter scent of medicinal herbs and the sting of alcohol filled my nose.

“…”

I tried to summon the strength to sit up, but I couldn’t so much as twitch a finger. I looked down at myself, and what I saw was a sight to behold. My whole body was wound round and round in white bandages, the spitting image of a mummy fresh out of the museum.

I’m… alive.

A wave of relief washed over me, and along with it a horrendous thirst. I wanted to ask for water, but my throat was bone-dry as a desert, and I couldn’t even force out 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.

The way she explained it, the situation had gone like this. At the moment the Phase 2 attack paralyzed my entire nervous system, when my heart stopped and it looked like I’d die without being able to lift a finger, Eve had stepped in.

My body had been driven not by my own will but by her processing power, 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 attention had already drifted to the pitcher of water sitting on the bedside table. My nerves throbbed with pain, my throat parched with thirst.

Eve caught my line of sight and sighed.

I blinked to signal yes, since I couldn’t nod. 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.”

And 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 days back 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, the words dying in her throat.

“What? You touched?”

But that, apparently, was just a misread on my part.

— Ding.

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

— Ku-gugung.

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

Huh?

I blinked in surprise too. Until now her words had only sat inside empty [ ] brackets, but this line carried a clear sender tag: [Eve].

I was in complete agreement with that.

Yeah, exactly.

— Ding.

At the same moment, both our jaws dropped open.

“I have no idea. I just sort of agreed with what you said in my head.”

Her eyes sparkled.

“Try what?”

Doing as I was told, I pictured the words I wanted to send to Eve.

“Oh!?”

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

That was definitely true.

The follow-up tests went smoothly too. The instant I thought something, it reached her. Being able to hold a perfect, soundless 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 knock came at the door of the sickroom.

“Young Master… are you awake?”

Soon enough the door opened, and familiar faces shuffled hesitantly inside. Elli came first, her eyes swollen puffy as a pufferfish from crying, and behind her, Leo edged in awkwardly.

The instant the two of them saw my mummy-like state, their hands flew to their mouths. Elli’s eyes especially welled up with tears, as if someone had turned on a faucet.

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

Elli rushed to the bed, grabbed my bandage-wrapped 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 head, Elli kept on wailing. The bandages were going soggy with her tears.

“Get off. What are you doing, grabbing onto a patient like that.”

Mercifully, Leo grabbed Elli by the scruff of the neck and peeled her off me.

“You must be thirsty?”

Then he glanced at the bedside table and, without a moment’s hesitation, picked up the water pitcher. He skillfully fitted a straw into a cup and brought it to my lips.

Cold, life-giving water flowed down my parched, burning throat. If rain in the desert had a feeling, this had to be exactly it.

“…Haaa.”

A small, hoarse breath leaked from my lips.

Only then did Elli wipe her eyes and sniffle too.

“S-sorry.”

“It’s all right. You were really worried, huh?”

“…Hngh.”

Even at my reassurance, Elli still couldn’t stop the tears.

“Young Master needs his rest, so quit it with the crying.”

At Leo’s scolding, Elli scrunched her mouth into a pout.

Then he set the empty cup back on the bedside table and looked down at me with a dry gaze. But despite that dryness, his eyes trembled almost imperceptibly as he 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 he said it, I caught on at once that the house had clamped down on the information. What I’d faced was the corrupted form of a past hero, and there was no question of letting something like that out into the world. A knight house’s honor would be dragged through the dirt, of course, and on top of that, unease would ripple through the territory’s commoners.

A sound judgment. The truth only needed to be known by a small handful at the top. There was no need to spread fear for nothing.

“To insist on running the heir’s trial with that bad body of yours to begin with — there are limits on how reckless one can be.”

Leo clicked his tongue and straightened the blanket over me.

Once the mood 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. I’d been wondering where Seraphina had gotten to 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 is currently sealed off, and they’re investigating the cause. Until the exact cause is identified, she said every procedure relating to the Trial of Arms is put on hold.”

As I listened to Elli, I turned my eyes toward Eve. I was curious what she thought.

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

Hm?

But then a very basic 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, he’d said.

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

Eve had said as much.

That 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 still working through it on my own when Eve broke in.

She’d been mulling over the exact same thing.

Yeesh, look at the goosebumps.
The chills!