Chapter 224. Ruin in the Forest (4)
The memory rippled briefly, noise crashing through it for a moment.
Enoch narrowed his eyes and looked around.
What he saw around him was unmistakably the corridor of Rhodes. But when he blinked once, the stone statues of knights standing in rigid rows in reality flickered overlaid on top of it.
As though past and present had become superimposed, two corridors belonging to different places and different times were alternating in and out of view around Enoch.
"……"
Enoch calmly took in his surroundings.
The elegant, refined long hallway of the past, and the abandoned, ruined hallway of reality flickered and switched back and forth around him like a glitch running through the whole world, flashing in and out as if the scenery were short-circuiting.
As if it were the cut-editing of a finely crafted film, the two landscapes — the shifting real world and the memory of the World of Impermanence — kept crossing before his eyes.
And yet Enoch did not stop. He walked on, unfaltering, through the Rhodes corridor of the past.
The hem of his black uniform fluttered in a wind. The boy with hair as jet-black as pitch cut across the corridor of the old Victoria Outsourcing District fortress as he moved through it all.
"Kh."
In a world where illusion and reality crossed in bewildering disorder, Enoch pressed a hand to his head.
The forced inheritance was still continuing.
Thinking it might help, he pressed down hard on one eye, but the hallucination did not fade.
The sense and scenery of reality gradually grew fainter, while the memories — not his own — of another person grew sharper. A strange, indescribable sensation.
Enoch raised his head as a quiet realization came to him.
So this, perhaps, was a form of the 'side effect' the World of Impermanence had continued to warn him about.
In the middle of the real world, his senses — even his logical thought — now seemingly in disarray. There, Enoch steadied himself and stared ahead.
KRRRRRRRR!!
Just then, a deafening roar rang out beside him, and the entire hallway of reality shook as though in a frenzy.
"Th, those…!!"
Alicia cried out, angling her lance across her body.
A few meters ahead. Streaming green light and with eyes burning fiercely, the black-carapaced experimental magical beasts were there.
Enemies boasting bodies two meters tall, shattering the wall with their whole bodies and crushing the ground beneath their feet as they entered.
More than a dozen magical beasts smashed through the wide castle interior corridor, thudding forward through curtains of flying debris and dust.
Alicia, standing before Enoch, crouched low and held her lance angled behind her hip as she shouted,
"We're spotted! Run, Direct Lineage!!"
At the same time, Lien stepped forward before Enoch could.
Pulling one skirt high, she drew a wire from the holster at her thigh and spread it between both arms. Then she glanced at Enoch.
"Young Master, I'll clear the way."
At Lien's movement, her maid-dress skirt swept up in a single flutter — and in the next instant she dashed silently forward.
As she swung her arm once, wires unfurled around her with a sharp, hissing sound.
Kicking off the walls several times and crossing the air with the wires in her wake, silver halos crossed around her, firing outward in every direction.
The wires, dropping onto the enemies' forms like a bombardment, pierced them with precision.
Shattering their carapaces and skewering their bodies clean through, they pinned them forcibly in place.
The enemies, brain and heart destroyed in an instant, convulsed briefly and crumbled on the spot.
Pressing them under the soles of her shoes, Lien gave her wires one easy swing with one arm to reel them back, and turned. Her eyes met Enoch's.
"Young Master, now."
The moment he sprinted past her at the signal, the figures of Lien and Alicia, who had been at his side, suddenly vanished.
Once again, the surroundings were changing.
KRRRRRRR!!
The paths of the ruined corridor he was sprinting through transformed — as if being overlaid — into the form of an elegant, long hallway.
Before he knew it, the scenery had switched back once more to the past landscape of Rhodes.
***
The clear patter of rain, sending ripples across the lake's surface, rang harshly at Enoch's ears.
Looking around, what he saw was the Rhodes of the past.
From the hazy gray sky, a fine rain was already pouring down.
But the noises around him were not only that. The clash of swords and spears, the roar of something exploding and collapsing — all of it thundered through the place as though to swallow it whole.
And through the colonnade where all those sounds echoed, past the towering pillars.
Between those massive interior pillars, a girl was running somewhere.
[Suleiman's 0th Special Operations Unit.]
The girl blinked her wide eyes once.
[The reason the Kingdom of Suleiman, at some point, began to be called the Overlord of the Desert. The unit that had, above all else, thoroughly crushed Suleiman's enemy states — its greatest contributors.]
She looked up at the sky with unfocused eyes.
[Though only frightening rumors of them had spread, this was the first time they had ever attacked Rhodes.]
In particular, the reconnaissance branch of the '0th Unit' was an elite force of the Kingdom of Suleiman, specializing in espionage and special operations.
A handful of specialists who would identify an enemy country's weaknesses and carry out sudden assaults.
But for some reason, the 0th Unit had never once revealed their faces or their forms.
The 0th Unit of Suleiman. Warriors of the desert notorious even for always concealing their faces on missions.
[That the kingdom of Suleiman itself was rumored to have reached into the hidden arts called 'magic' was due, too, to the 0th Special Operations Unit's unnatural strength and cruelty.]
A strength comparable even to 'magic' — an unknown power whose very existence was not yet known.
An enemy of such might and such secrecy — Suleiman's ultimate force, and sheer terror itself.
[Though they had never engaged before. The 0th Unit was said to be an even match even for the Guardian Knights of Rhodes, who prided themselves on formidable defense — or to gain the upper hand through numerical advantage.]
Of course, given that, there was no way the scouting party alone could break through the defenses of Rhodes' knights.
But at present, the Guardian Knights had been removed from defensive duties to prepare for the once-in-three-years grand social event — one of the very few mandatory days of absence.
That was why, with nothing more than a sudden assault by the 0th Unit's scouting party, Rhodes had so easily been breached by the enemy's hands.
The girl ran, panting.
How much time had passed since she'd heard that an enemy kingdom's special operations unit had struck? A few minutes? A few hours?
"My lady, my lady! Keep a clear head, please!!"
Just then, a woman's voice cried out urgently from ahead.
Coming back to herself, the girl's eyes widened.
Pulled free from her thoughts, the pouring sound of real rain slapped against her eardrums. She was running from the castle now, clutching up the hem of her dress in both hands.
Running without pause, she glanced around her, and her sky-blue eyes caught sight of paths leading around behind the fortress wall.
Only then did the girl realize she was in the middle of fleeing from a war.
And warm, familiar hands were holding her own, leading her along. The girl cried out, facing forward,
"Nanny!"
"My lady, don't raise your voice. We're going to cross this lake, past the mansion, and get to the safe house!"
The nanny, fleeing with the girl in tow, said so as she led her toward a small skiff moored at a little pier at the back of their estate's lake.
"The Guardian Knights will arrive soon. We just need to stay out of sight until then!"
"Ahh…"
Running after the nanny, the girl looked to the side.
High above the gray sky, the fortress walls rose tall. Beneath the flames spreading over them, she saw the citizens of Rhodes being mercilessly trampled, crying out in anguish.
And above the collapsing people, warriors holding long swords curved like crescent moons were slowly stepping out of the curtain of rain.
Enormous soldiers clad completely in the white headscarves and masks of desert warriors, with every inch of their faces and skin concealed.
Those ghostly figures, who would never show themselves, at last tore through the curtain of rain, and began to trample the earth of Rhodes underfoot.
Their bloodied blades, swung with swift precision, cut through the rain and flashed with a cold, sharp light.
"Kyaaaahhh!! S-save me!!"
"Stop, stop it! Please! Please don't kill!"
"No. No, no. Not the children, at least─!!"
The girl's eyes, even as she fled, flew wide.
Beneath the boots of the Suleiman soldiers — their faces invisible — the citizens of Rhodes fell bleeding.
The armored guards put up resistance as they had been rigorously trained to do, but they could not overcome the overwhelming disparity in martial prowess. All around her, they lost their halberds and fell to the ground.
A woman, clutching at her torn clothes and shoulder, staggered along with unfocused eyes, walking on and on without end.
Above the scene of the fortress city torn through by blood and fire, small children crying out for their mothers turned to look back as they ran.
A ruin where only the hands of people crushed beneath colossal debris poked out from the wreckage.
All of that image of Rhodes passed through the girl's field of vision — she who was nothing more than a fleeing survivor.
Seeing the people in peril — and seeing her own helpless state, unable to do anything for them — the girl could not even blink, and watched the scene unfold.
KRRRRRRR!!
Before long, an enormous fracture shot through the burning fortress wall, and it collapsed, belching out dust.
All the sights inside the castle were obscured behind that curtain.
Just then, the nanny, having reached the pier a step ahead, cried out urgently,
"My lady, hurry, get in!"
Having set a skiff afloat on the lake, the nanny, with her slender arms, strained with all her might to lift the oar from the back of the boat.
"There's an emergency shelter across this lake. For now, just get there…!"
But her urgent shout could go no further. The nanny's eyes widened as she looked at the girl. Swaying once, she turned to look behind her.
In the nanny's back, an arrow was lodged.
"N, Nanny?"
The girl weakly stretched her hand out ahead of her.
SSSHHHHRRRK!!!
And in the next moment, a sharp whistle of slicing air cut through the girl's eardrums.
Shielding the girl, the nanny took three more arrows in her back, staggered, and collapsed, setting the small boat rocking heavily.
"……!!"
Held in the nanny's arms, the girl — barely clinging to a consciousness that might snap at any moment — looked to the shore. One of Suleiman's special operations soldiers was kneeling on one knee, aiming a massive longbow this way.
The second volley of arrows flew in at that moment.
The nanny, glancing at them, clenched her teeth and pulled the girl into her arms. Gently, as if she were saying goodbye.
"My lady."
To the girl, who turned vacant eyes to her side, the nanny managed a faint smile and ran her hand through her hair.
"I pray. That you too, my lady, may wage a battle of your own."
And with the girl still in her embrace, she pushed her down into the waters of the lake. Before the girl could catch her balance, she plunged straight into its depths.
With a dull splash against the surface, she sank, sending spray up around her.
Spray broke beautifully beneath the lake, and through that shimmering light, she opened her eyes.
[……From then on, I hated the water.]
Unable to accept reality, the girl, with her unfocused eyes, sank into the depths of the lake. Only then — belatedly — did she realize she couldn't swim, and her eyes flew wide.
Desperately, she flailed her thin arms.
She tried, somehow, to escape the water. With everything she had, she tried to grasp the water with her fists. Choking for breath and thrashing, she stretched her arms up toward the surface.
But they did not reach.
Watching in a daze as that distant light grew further and further from the surface, the girl lowered her arms a little.
Her weakly outstretched hands caught hold of nothing. Only soft water pulling her down into the depths.
Abandoning resistance, the girl finally resigned herself to everything and tilted her head back.
[The water I was sinking into was fear and helplessness.]
Deeper, even deeper she sank.
White bubbles rose as her last breath. With terror and suffocation, her mind grew dim from some point onward.
The harder she tried, the more fiercely she gritted her teeth and struggled to fight through, the more the water simply slipped between her fingers and slid away.
The girl lowered her tear-lined eyelids.
[This vast water filling everything around me felt like a presence too immense — and I was simply afraid.]
Her long, translucent water-colored dress fluttered and drifted in the water like the wings of a falling bird, catching the moonlight as it trailed long beneath her.
Within her heart, the girl quietly murmured.
[And that felt just like the circumstance I now faced.]
Helpless. Only sinking, and sinking.
[Unable to resist, unable to thrash.]
In the midst of quietly drowning, she opened her tear-lined eyes and just barely found the thought.
[Does destiny really exist? If it does, why do we have such a thing?]
She stretched out her thin arm, feebly opening her hand as if to grasp at the unreachable surface.
[If to be born in a fortress city on a frontier facing enemy states means everyone must accept such cruel fates and fight for their whole lives──]
The girl's outstretched arm fell limply to her side.
[──does that mean the people of Rhodes are, from the very moment of birth, destined to struggle against destiny itself?]
That was why she had wanted to protect them.
She had wanted to fulfill the duty placed upon her from birth.
[And yet, the 'me' who resolved to protect them was this fragile.]
She had known, really. That the socializing and banquets of nobles could not hold back the spears and swords of enemies storming in before their very eyes.
[That they could not truly become a means of saving the people suffering right in front of her.]
Just then, a strange gurgling sound rose from the depths of the lake, and together with white bubbles, it brushed past the girl's tear-wet lashes.
The girl looked up with vacant eyes at the sky.
[That 'me' — trapped in such reality — was exactly like now, sinking endlessly through the water. And suddenly I wondered.]
Sinking through the water, the girl asked herself a question.
[Was this destiny of mine truly right?]
She had only wanted to fulfill her mission.
To protect Rhodes, and accept her own destiny so she could fight back against the fate she had been placed in. And yet this was how it had all ended.
But only now, reduced to this state, did she realize the way of accepting such an unresistable fate had been wrong. And I…
As her vision grew hazy, she sensed it. Ah, this is the end. So meaninglessly.
[And still, I'm going to die like this.]
Instinctively, she could not help but realize that this vast water — and the reality that was like this water — was an existence she could never overcome by her own strength.
Within the soft pressure of water that had become the nightmare of reality, the girl surrendered her body to the helplessness and sank ever deeper.
How far will I fall.
How deep will I drop.
Will I really die like this, without being able to resist?
Ah, so that's how it is, the girl thought, clasping both hands before her chest. A quiet realization came just before death.
So, this, then, was…
[This, then… is destiny?]
Seeing her like that, Enoch stopped his stride unconsciously and narrowed his eyes.
Had the Sword Saint really lived such a harrowing life?
The reason the strength with which she handled the sword was weak — perhaps it was somehow tied to that.
How had a girl who had never originally picked up a sword come to perfect such swordsmanship? Enoch thought he was beginning to grasp it a little now.
But it wasn't enough yet.
The way things were going, the girl would die.
〇 Until World of Impermanence Entry … 78%
Watching her sink into the lake of the past, Enoch clenched his fist.
The inheritance came with side effects. But he had no idea how to consciously stop an inheritance that had begun suddenly.
In that case, he may as well see it through now.
For Enoch to grow — to one day reach the Sword Saint's summit himself — he had to etch the trajectory of the life of someone who had reached it before him into his own mind.
And he was curious. How had she, who had reached the Sword Saint's summit in the past, overcome this crisis?
She was in the middle of a lake. In such a place, she couldn't hope for anyone's aid. There was no boat of any sort near her.
And in the very next moment.
As if in answer to Enoch's question, the surface of the lake — receding into the distance above the girl — suddenly threw up a great spray and parted in a circular ripple.
'Wait─'
And the moment Enoch confirmed what was there, he could not help but doubt his own eyes.
The middle of the Rhodes lake, where no help could be hoped for. In the middle of that vast world of water.
A single Guardian Knight of Rhodes, his full body clad in silver armor and helm, holding a longsword in one hand, was plunging without hesitation beneath the water.
And he was swimming straight down through the deep water — straight toward her.