I Can’t Run Away From the Girl Who Saved Me

87 – Mask (6)

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Dawn, the sun has not yet risen.

At this time, when the whole world was dark and dark blue, Alice slowly woke up with a rustling sound.

Her waist and back were stiff as if they would break at any moment from sleeping on the hard floor, but Alice exhaled through her nose and forcibly lifted her stiff back, emitting a crunching sound. Paid it

“Huh,”

Her heavy pain made her sigh.

Will there ever come a day when I get used to sleeping on the bare floor?

Alice thought that she would definitely never adapt.

But she wasn’t particularly dissatisfied.

The whole world was like hell now, but I wasn’t so spoiled that I didn’t know how fortunate it was to have a roof over this forest of lying trees, which had already been like a green hell above the world of humans.

But, that too ended today.

Now there was no time to hesitate anymore.

Alice blinked her eyes two or three times in her sitting position and then slowly began to raise her body.

As always, she wanted to leave the cabin before the owner opened her eyes.

“Are you going?”

Oops,

It seemed like it was late today.

Alice responded to her voice coming from inside her room.

“You woke up early. Did I wake you up?”

“No. “I didn’t sleep.”

“Okay…”

The masked man is the owner of this cabin.

To be honest, he was a weak-hearted man for whom the term ‘boy’ was more appropriate than ‘man’, but he was still as tall as a pole, so he must have been an adult.

It is said that he suffers from a strange disease that cannot be exposed to human eyes, but I have never heard of such a disease existing.

However, since all sorts of strange things were bound to happen while living in this forest full of demonic energy, Alice did not bother to question him.

He wasn’t a doctor, so just because he was sick didn’t mean he knew everything about the disease, and seeing him look scared and avert his eyes, it didn’t seem like he was lying.

Perhaps Alice could heal him with the divine power welling up in her body, but he had no intention of doing so.

The reward for sleeping over the past few days would be enough for the game he brought back every night, and he wouldn’t ask for anything more in return for giving up a living room without even a bed.

In the first place, Alice was not good at handling divine power.

Although she had been trained as a knight, she had never been educated as a saint, so she knew nothing more than to pour out ridiculous amounts of divine power.

If you pour out divine power inefficiently, you will be able to heal most wounds in an instant, but you will not be able to manipulate it delicately enough to cure other people’s illnesses.

Of course, pouring divine power into his body might cure his illness someday, but that would have ruined Alice’s daily plans, and she couldn’t afford that.

Even if I had a day or two to spare, I didn’t want to waste that precious rest on someone whose name I didn’t even know.

‘If I catch the demon lord and come back alive, and if I don’t die even then… Well, I don’t know then.’

Alice thought so as she slowly put on her breastplate.

His voice came from inside the room again.

“Honestly, I didn’t think the interrogator would sleep either.”

“… Have you heard that story?”

“Yes.”

Last night, he told Alice.

I think I know where the subordinates Alice is looking for so desperately are.

When I asked him more closely, he said that a few months ago, he found five corpses that had been attacked by monsters and buried them in the village where he used to live.

When asked about the detailed location and how to find it in the large cemetery, he said, ‘It is a small cemetery where only villagers are buried in the first place, and there is no way to find out the name, so only the phrase praying for a soul to rest is engraved on the tombstone, so it is difficult to find what kind of tombstone it is. ‘It will be easy,’ he explained.

Alice nodded and asked if he had seen any other missing people.

He answered that it was the first and last time he saw anyone other than himself and his companion.

Alice slowly opened her mouth, silently savoring once again the feelings of elation and guilt that came to her at the same time when she heard the news last night.

“Rather, that’s why. “If they are really my subordinates, I can’t face them with a clouded mind.”

“… I’m sorry for not telling you sooner.”

“It’s not like I partially hid it.”

“…”

“Did you partially hide it?”

Alice asked him in a low voice as he hesitated to answer.

The man answered in a hurry.

“Oh, no, it’s not like that… Uh, uh… That,”

It takes a while to choose an appropriate answer in my head.

For some reason, such a goofy appearance reminded me of a boy I often saw when I was young.

That child probably no longer exists.

“Oh, I never thought they would be priests.”

The man answered hastily, as if pushing Alice out of her thoughts.

Alice nodded her head in response.

“I can’t help it because I wouldn’t have come dressed in a priest’s uniform that would be inconvenient to explore this forest. “I didn’t explain facial expressions in the first place, and even if I did, you would have already forgotten things like faces.”

“… I see… Right?”

“More than anything, I still don’t know if the bodies are my men or not.”

“Is there any way to know? “There’s no way you’re trying to dig up a body…”

Alice smiled and answered the man’s wild imagination.

“You can tell just by going near the body. “With divine power.”

“Do you know what divine power is like?”

“People with divine power have a slight amount of divine power left in their corpses, but those who belong to the Goddess Church all have a similar aura of divine power, so they can be roughly recognized.”

“… The atmosphere?”

Alice tapped the nose of her steel boot on the floor to fit it to her foot and said:

“The divine power possessed by the priests of the Goddess Church strangely resembles that of a model student. “This was especially true of a priest named Melbourne.”

“…Is there also a divine power with a different smell?”

“Yes.”

“For example?”

The man kept asking questions.

It was as if he didn’t want to let Alice go.

Alice was a little surprised that the man’s question did not seem bothersome at all, and she smiled without realizing it.

“Me.”

“…?”

“Mine tastes like iron.”

It may sound like an odd answer, but it was true.

Alice slowly took her steps and tried to go out.

The moment I grabbed the door handle of the cabin, the man spoke again.

“Hey, over there.”

“Hmm?”

As the sound got closer, it seemed like he had come closer to at least see Alice off.

Alice waited for his words without looking back in case she caught his gaze.

“Take care of your body.”

“…Yes.”

“Oh, and…”

The man hesitated and then slowly opened his mouth.

“See you again.”

Alice asked back.

“What does it mean?”

“What does it mean…? “That’s literally it.”

“Really?”

“It’s just a greeting. “Why are you doing this?”

“…Hmm, it feels like it’s been a long time since I heard something like that.”

Alice opened the door and went out.

See you again.

She couldn’t say the same thing back because she knew it probably wouldn’t work.

“Goodbye.”

Alice slowly made her way, trembling on her feet, into the forest where the Magi was writhing.

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The place the man told me about was not very far from the lakeside.

Even Alice passed by these burned-out ruins, and she had seen them a few times.

But she could never have imagined that there was a graveyard inside this place where the people she had sent to death were buried.

Was it because he hoped that at least one out of a thousand or ten thousand people would be alive?

Seeing their graves now may not make her cry, but for her, who will challenge the Demon King and face her death with a high probability, it was a past mistake and regret that she had to look past.

Alice shook her head.

It hasn’t been decided yet that it’s them, so let’s not jump to conclusions.

Thinking so, she slowly stepped into the small cemetery located in the ruined corner of the village.

“Ah…”

There was nothing to check.

As soon as she set foot in her graveyard, she could feel the faint remaining fragments of divine power slowly seeping into her body.

Upright, exemplary, and uninterestingly rigid sacred power.

It was Melbourne.

“…Ha, damn it.”

Alice slowly approached the monument with no name engraved on it.

Certainly, the many empty headstones were easy to find at a glance in this narrow cemetery.

Alice slowly put her hands together and prayed.

No matter how little faith she has, she is an important person in the Goddess religion, so wouldn’t this prayer reach them?

With that thought, she slowly closed her eyes.

“I’m sorry. Melbourne. “Really.”

There was no reply.

It couldn’t have happened.

The dead have no words.

It was a fact as cruel as it was obvious.

“You may feel relieved, but I will die soon too. If you are unlucky, you will die sooner. “If you are very unlucky, you will suffer for a long time and die slowly.”

In the forest filled with demonic energy, there was no longer any sound of birds.

Today there was no sound of wind or rustling of animal feet, so all she could hear was the regular sound of the machine lodged inside her chest, whirring and occasionally rattling.

I thought I was already used to the heat so hot it melts my skin, but today my heart aches even more.

“I’m sorry…”

Alice slowly raised her head and loosened her hands.

She didn’t dare to ask for forgiveness.

It was because I didn’t want forgiveness anyway.

She had no complaints at all even though they also resented and took revenge on me, just like the revenge she had taken.

It was because it was not a waste of money to spend all the money they had earned as a member of the Goddess Church to support their family.

“If I go, you can curse at me, hit me, cut me, and blame me as much as you like.”

Alice said that and she stepped back.

Now that there are no excuses to laze around, it’s really time to go.

He said he would be very satisfied if the Demon King’s castle was his tomb.

She truly thought so.

The honor of catching the devil, the fame of saving the world.

Rather than that, it was enough for me if I could die next to Maria, who was dying somewhere in the Demon Castle.

Moreover, according to the Pope’s revelation, Eric’s investigation, and the information obtained through interrogation of the previously captured third prince, it was almost certain that that bastard Balder was also hiding in the Demon King’s Castle.

Take revenge on your friend and close your eyes where your friend lies.

Alice, who regretted for the rest of her life that she had not been able to join the hero’s party due to her lack of skills, really liked that ending.

“Now it’s time to go.”

Alice shook her head slowly.

Before she entered the forest, her short, dark brown bob hair slowly fluttered.

As she slowly turned her body,

Something appeared at the end of her vision.

“…?”

It was a tombstone.

Next to the tombstone where five of his subordinates are buried, there is a beautiful tombstone with a slightly more ornate shape and slightly more densely engraved information.

A word written on the tombstone entered Alice’s field of vision as if it had been sucked in.

“Layla Staff.”

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