I Tried To Be Her Loyal Sword

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21 화

Momentarily dazed, I shook myself awake and opened my eyes wide.

“Are you insane? Did your brain go haywire? Where the heck is this place!”

I shouted as I stomped towards Cal. Fixing his disheveled hair, he widened the magic circle even further.

“You’re the crazy one. Did you think you could handle these alone?”

“Honestly, it’s way better to deal with them alone than having to deal with you!”

As I growled harshly, he let out a soft chuckle. I was worried sick that Cal might get hurt, but he seemed strangely at ease.

“Don’t worry too much, it’ll likely be fine.”

“Damn it! Do you even realize how dangerous this situation is…!”

“Save the nagging for later. For now, how do we handle those monsters in front of us?”

Sweat dripped from Cal’s smiling face. Only then did I notice his trembling wrist that was holding the magic circle.

Growl… Kraaang!

The Deberas surrounded by Cal’s magic circle were going berserk, trying to break through. The magic circle was shaking perilously.

“Damn it, seriously…”

Though I wanted to smack that frog-brained Cal, this was not the time for that. I resolved to scold him thoroughly once this was over and sighed heavily.

“Listen! Those Deberas are already being controlled by someone, so it’s impossible to dominate their minds!”

“What?”

Cal frowned as he attempted mind-control magic, but as expected, it didn’t work, and the magic circle was breaking apart.

“Who on earth is…?”

“That’s not important right now! There’s something else you need to help with besides mind control. Can you use fire magic?”

“I can.”

I quickly explained to Cal, who looked like he was struggling to maintain the magic circle.

“Deberas are corpses and weak to fire. So the best way to kill them is to inflict a deep wound and then ignite that wound with fire magic. I’ll climb up a tree and injure a Debera, and then you cast fire magic into the wound. Can you do that?”

“I’ll give it a shot.”

Cal nodded, his face serious. I noticed his hands twitching as the Deberas began to gnaw at the magic circle, and I slowly opened my mouth.

“You still have that teleportation artifact, right?”

“Uh… yeah.”

After a brief hesitation, Cal responded with a sigh. I smiled weakly at him.

“Promise me you’ll run away if I get incapacitated.”

“That’s absurd…!”

“Don’t be stubborn!”

I shot him a glare as he protested.

“If you don’t promise, I’ll knock you out and send you off by force!”

I cannot flee in the face of danger. That’s how my life had to be, and fighting against danger to protect people is the duty of those in power.

But Cal is the heir to a Duke’s Mansion and must protect more people in different ways, so he had to survive this place.

“Promise me you’ll make it back alive.”

Honestly, this might be my selfishness.

Having finally opened my heart to someone after so long, I wished for my other kin to live too. As happily as possible.

It was a new wind starting to grow in my heart.

“Damn it… I promise. But don’t make that face!”

Cal, flustered and unable to meet my gaze, ruffled his hair angrily. I sighed in relief and turned to face the monsters. The magic circles were nearly destroyed by the Deberas gnawing away.

“On three, we take action.”

I felt his agreement in the silence. Taking a deep breath, I counted.

“One.”

I concentrated my mana into the sword. I tightened my grip with trembling hands.

It felt like I was about to lose something precious again. The Debera’s red eyes looked like a flaming disaster that would swallow me and everything dear to me.

“Two.”

I enveloped my body with mana, enhancing my physique. Cal quickly moved to a tree behind me.

But I wouldn’t back down. I was also a disaster. My power was honed from calamity to protect what I held dear.

“Three.”

The magic circle shattered. The disasters were unleashed. The Deberas surged towards me like a massive hailstorm. In front of that colossal disaster, I summoned forth my black aura.

My sword became sharpest when I was defending something.

Whoosh-!

Kraaaak!

I thrust the black aura forward, pushing back the advancing Deberas and cleaving them one by one. The sword, stained with thick blackness, sliced through the rotting flesh of the Deberas.

The stench overwhelmed my senses as black blood and rotting chunks splattered all over me. Yet I didn’t halt. A claw-like Debera scratched my shoulder. My body wrapped in mana suffered only a minor scratch. I countered the incoming paw, piercing the body of the Debera and dragging the blade downward.

Kraaaak!

Black blood splattered everywhere. The Debera shrieked. I gestured towards Cal.

“Now!”

“Fire!”

A red magic circle appeared above the wound, igniting it in flames. The flames entered the Debera’s insides. The stench of burning flesh was nauseating as the Debera exploded in a burst.

“Ugh.”

From the tree, I could hear Cal gagging. He seemed to try to act okay, but there was no way I wouldn’t notice the strain on him.

“Stay focused. If you don’t support me, I’m dead!”

I screamed while roughly wiping the rotten flesh off my cheek.

I wished I could comfort Cal by his side. But I couldn’t do that right now. He had decided to stay here, and thus he needed to bear the consequences of that decision.

“I will not let you die!”

Cal shouted back with a voice filled with frustration. For a moment, I forgot the situation and let out a small laugh before gripping my sword tightly against the approaching Deberas.

Someone I once fought alongside had told me something similar.

“Your sword has no finesse. No rules, no tricks… Unlike typical knights’ flashy swordsmanship. But strangely, I can’t take my eyes off you swinging that sword. Your sword seems to prove your existence with every swing. Unorthodox yet adhering to some principle, simple but profound. Though, that doesn’t mean you’re doing it right. How can a fool only attack mindlessly without defense?”

My stamina was pitiful compared to a Swordmaster’s average. I had swung my sword without any physical training. I didn’t even know how to defend myself. I could barely block lethal blows; I mostly just took normal attacks to my body.

My recuperative abilities weren’t great either. My days were filled with poor eating and lack of sleep. I lived with malnutrition and chronic fatigue, unable to develop any immunity.

The reason I could be called a black disaster was solely because I never stopped attacking.

“Kraaaak!”

I kept swinging, slashing again and again. Even as my body became drenched in black blood and rotten flesh, I continued to strike. The claw-like Deberas scratched my skin, and their gruesome teeth tried to pierce my flesh, but I wouldn’t stop.

Under the belief that the best defense is a good offense, I wielded my sword to survive and prove that I was alive.

Everything that couldn’t kill me had only made me stronger.

“Damn it, Mir!”

One Debera’s fang pierced my arm. Since the Debera’s saliva was a type of paralysis poison, my arm began to stiffen. Dizziness struck me as I thrust my sword into the Debera’s mouth and cut upward.

Lucky for me, my left arm was the one that got bitten, not my sword-hand.

“Fire!”

Cal cast fire magic aimed at the four wounded Deberas. I’d heard that casting multiple magic circles simultaneously was quite difficult, but here he was, creating four at once, proving him to be a true genius.

“Elemental magic consumes a lot of mana… I need to finish this fast.”

I felt I had to push myself even more. There were about ten Deberas left. Exhaling heavily, I shifted my grip on the sword, positioning it horizontally.

“Cal! Can you hold off the Deberas and buy me some time?”

“Thirty seconds! No longer than that!”

“That’s more than enough!”

Cal, looking thoroughly exhausted, began to deploy defensive magic circles without asking for reasons. Peculiar patterns of glowing magic circles filled the air. They were more than sufficient to stall the rampaging Deberas for now.

While Cal desperately held back the crazed Deberas, I focused on gathering my mana in mid-air.

Condensing and condensing again. As I tore through the aura within me, a large black sphere emerged.

It felt too grand to call it an ‘ultimate technique,’ yet there were no other words to define it. It was my most destructive skill, developed for fighting one against many.

“Cal! We’re dropping the defenses now!”

If I had to name it, I would call it ‘Black Wind.’

As the light faded, the disasters charged towards me.

Swoosh.

With my blade raised, I thrust the black aura’s sphere unhesitatingly towards the oncoming Deberas.

Boom! Bang-!

The black wind engulfed the world. The condensed sphere exploded, following the trajectory of my sword.

The black aura greedily devoured the charging Deberas. The noise was so loud; it reverberated as it shook the ground. My eyes shut tightly against the fierce wind before they snapped back open.

“Ugh…”

In an instant, everything was over.

Sighing in relief, I wiped the black blood off my cheeks with the back of my hand. The smell of decaying corpses and burning flesh polluted my senses. I felt nauseous, as if I had fallen into a pile of corpses. I doubted I’d ever feel clean again no matter how many times I washed.

“They’re all dead for sure.”

Cautiously searching through the Deberas’ corpses, fearing there might be any survivors, I confirmed they were all lifeless. Especially the last dozen I took out, their bodies were completely severed and blackened by the aura, unrecognizable in form.

“The foul presence is gone too.”

It seemed that the curse, likely tied to the original, had also dispersed.

I approached Cal. I limped slightly as one of the Deberas had lightly severed my leg muscles.

“Cal, are you okay?”

He was lying on a big branch, breathing heavily, and slowly nodded his head.

“I’m not dead.”

“Then what’s your condition? Half dead? One-fourth dead?”

At my tired joke, he managed a weak laugh. As he relaxed, he murmured with half-closed eyes.

“…I’m alive.”

“We both survived.”

Though my body was a wreck and the stench of death clung to me, I was still alive. I stood on this land, underneath the sky, with my two eyes wide open.

‘In this snowy field, we both made it out.’

Having been the sole survivor in a similar situation not long ago, this scenario tugged at my heartstrings in a truly strange way. I felt like I could burst into tears, my brow furrowing heavily.

“I never knew being alive felt… like this.”

Cal murmured. In any shape or form, being alive had a breathtaking, almost unbearable brilliance to it.

Cal gazed at me for a long moment. I met his gaze, clutching my left arm where the poison was spreading.

There was something wordlessly shared between us, those who had survived together against hardships.

After a prolonged moment of meeting each other’s eyes, Cal slowly opened his mouth.

“I don’t have the strength to get down.”

“You definitely don’t look it.”

He lay back against the branch, spreading his arms as he smirked.

“Go ahead and drop. I’ll catch you.”

“You didn’t bite your left arm, did you?”

“I can handle someone like Cal just fine.”

Even though my recovery speed was slower than an average Swordmaster’s, a Swordmaster is still a Swordmaster. I had gained quite a resistance to poison long ago, so despite trembling a little, I could definitely catch Cal. As he slowly blinked, he chuckled softly.

“Then I’ll gladly fall.”

With a gentle whisper of the wind, I easily caught the falling body of the boy. Cal was a good head and a half taller than me, so I had to squish him a bit before he could settle on my body.

With his eyes half-closed, struggling to stay awake, I whispered softly, “It’s okay to sleep.”

“…Then, I guess I will.”

He didn’t reject it at all, looking really tired. Drowsy Cal murmured slowly, his lips twitching.

“After this… be friends…”

Thud.

Overcome by sleep, Cal could not finish his sentence and drooped his head.

‘…Friends.’

Looking down at Cal, who glimmered softly in the moonlight, I gently smiled and pressed my lips against his forehead.

“Sweet dreams, my dear Cal.”

Cal had already become more than just a friend to me.