20 — 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 broken shoulder, and warm mana flowed in and lulled the screaming nerves to sleep.
The tension drained out of me, and the strength I’d been pouring into propping myself against the greatsword melted away.
I sprawled out across the floor of my own accord.

— Shaaaaak!

But as though it refused to allow even a brief exchange of words, the thing thrust its spear.

— Klang!

But Valerian, having 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 that had been lunging at him was instead sent flying off into the distance.

Strong.

I’d known it already, but seeing it firsthand, Valerian’s martial power was utterly off the charts too.
The solid hit I’d carved out by staking my life and burning through my very life force, those two pulled off the same thing with a single ordinary swing.

Seraphina conjured an ice spear in midair and spoke.

“Arden landed a solid hit on the thing wielding Bato’s greatsword.”
“Just dumb luck. You want me to acknowledge a brat who broke his own arm grandstanding?”

Valerian grumbled and sliced off the arm of the thing as it came charging back in.
The two of them carried on a leisurely conversation, as though they were 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.”

Valerian’s expression carried a flicker of annoyance, and Seraphina, her face still expressionless, drove home another spear of magically conjured ice.

I felt my consciousness beginning to slip away.

I need treatment. You two.

That those two would lose to the Fallen Hero, I didn’t have a particle of doubt about it.
No matter how good its regeneration was, there was no way they wouldn’t spot the core that I had spotted.
What mattered more than that was that I was dying while those two were busy fighting.

“Y-Young Master. Are you all right?”

After some time had passed, Bato, having regained consciousness by the look of it, scooped me up in 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 shook my head.

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

— Krunch!

Dozens of ice spears bound the hero’s limbs in place and punched straight through them.
Not missing the opening, Valerian’s greatsword cleanly sheared the hero’s head off.
And the glowing core that lay revealed at the back of the neck, Seraphina walked up and ground into pulp under her heel.

— Phsssss…

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

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

“…”

I tried to put strength into my body to sit up, but I couldn’t so much as twitch a finger.
I looked down at myself, and my appearance was a sight to behold.
My whole body was wrapped around and around in white bandages, the spitting image of a mummy that had just escaped from the museum.

I’m… alive.

A wave of relief came over me, and along with it a horrendous thirst.
I wanted to ask for water, but my throat was bone-dry like a desert. I couldn’t even produce a rasping noise.

That was when, in midair, a faint blue light flickered.

The Eve who would normally have been zipping about brightly was sitting at my bedside in a half-shattered hologram, glitching with static, like a TV with a busted screen.

By her explanation, the situation went like this.
The moment my entire nervous system was paralyzed by the Phase 2 attack, when my heart stopped and it looked like I was going to die without being able to lift a finger, Eve had stepped in.

Not by my will, but by her processing power, my body had been forcibly operated, 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 sitting on the bedside table.
The nerve cells were throbbing from the pain and my throat was parched from thirst.

Eve caught my line of sight and sighed.

I blinked my eyes to signal yes, in place of nodding.
But Eve made a sad face and gave a small shrug of her shoulders.

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 life 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, had been simply a misreading on my part.

— Ding.

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

— Ku-gugung.

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

Huh?

I, too, blinked in surprise.
Up till now her words had only had [ ] brackets sitting there empty, but now her line carried a clear sender tag, [Eve].

I was in complete agreement with that.

Yeah, exactly.

— Ding.

At the same moment, both of 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 imagined the words I wanted to reach Eve with.

“Oh!?”

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

That was definitely true.
The follow-up tests went smoothly too.
The instant I thought something, it was transmitted to her.
Being able to carry on 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 sound came from the door of the sickroom.

“Young Master… are you awake?”

Soon enough the door opened, and familiar faces shuffled hesitantly inside.
Elli, her eyes swollen as puffy as a pufferfish’s from crying.
And behind her, dawdling in awkwardly, was Leo.

The instant both of them saw my mummy-like state, they slapped their hands over their mouths.
Elli’s eyes especially had tears welling up in them like somebody had turned on a faucet.

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

Elli sprinted up 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.

Elli, with no idea what was running through my mind, kept on wailing.
The bandages were getting soggy with Elli’s tears.

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

Mercifully, Leo grabbed Elli by the scruff of her neck and peeled her away from 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 water cup and brought it to my lips.

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

“…Haaa.”

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

“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.”

When Leo scolded her, Elli scrunched her mouth in a pout.
Then he set the empty water cup back down on the bedside table and looked down at me with a dry gaze.
But despite Leo’s dry expression, his eyes, as he watched me, were trembling almost imperceptibly.

He set the empty cup down and 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 him say that, I caught on immediately that the house had clamped down on the information.
Because what I’d faced was the corrupted version of a past hero.
There was no question of letting that sort of information 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.
The truth needed to be known only by a small handful at the top.
There was no need to spread fear unnecessarily.

“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 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.
I’d been wondering about Seraphina’s whereabouts as it was.

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

It was more or less what I’d expected, but it didn’t sit pleasantly 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.
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, 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 working through that on my own when Eve cut in.

She had been mulling over the exact same thing.

Yeesh, look at the goosebumps.
The chills!