Episode 12 – The Knight and the Little Brother (5)

The Knight and the Little Brother (5)

After wielding the sword, after realizing the power of lightning, I had never been injured.

Not once since I had sent my family away.

But why didn’t I see it coming? I could have avoided it in the first place.

When I saw Flan, why did my body think of Troka?

I don’t know the reason.

* * *

In other works of fiction, losing an arm is often depicted as a trivial injury.
Plot armor, so to speak, because the story can’t be halted by the death of a main character due to a minor incident. In reality, even a severe injury that should leave someone writhing in the emergency room is brushed off as nothing by the next chapter.

Even with a gaping hole in the abdomen or chest, there’s usually just enough time to utter some last words, and characters maintain their composure even as limbs are lost, which is nothing short of astonishing.
Adrenaline or not, a normal person would collapse immediately upon receiving a large hole in their stomach. It’s natural to die instantly if the spine is severed. Yet, these stories never explain why their characters’ lives are so tenacious. In reality, most people would scream in agony from a mere paper cut.

“Kuhup, khaa… hoooph.”

The Blood Tribe members were in disarray over the unbelievable situation. I took advantage of the chaos to barely make it to Lumen’s side.

Despite the severe injury, Lumen was propped up by her greatsword.
Of course, the usual calmness was absent from her face.

Impaled by the bizarrely structured wedge sword, she was dripping pieces of her intestines, yet her eyes were fixed on the remaining Blood Tribe members.

And they were looking at Lumen. Their eyes, once filled with fear, now resembled those of predators eyeing their prey.

The reason Lumen could hold on is often said to be due to magic. A blessing that doesn’t exist in the original world.

Magic that wraps around the body to enhance physical abilities, increase toughness, create extraordinary events as a medium for spells, and sometimes channel it through the sword to unleash wonders.

I don’t really understand the proper principles. But humans in this world, with magic flowing within them, are a bit more tenacious.
You might think it’s just a matter of enduring a few more minutes, but those few minutes make a bigger difference than you’d expect.
In this world, there’s something called faith magic, inexplicable even by modern medicine. As long as the conditions are met, even a skeleton can be brought back to life, fresh and new, before the magic is cast. As long as there’s life, there’s hope.

Lumen’s condition was more serious than I thought. Her pale apricot skin was stained red through the gaps in her sporadically cut armor.
I had no professional medical knowledge, but one thing was certain: without any intervention, Lumen would die. Even before she could open the letter.

I wanted to administer first aid, but there was no time to remove that oppressively heavy armor.
So we must escape from here. This is the middle of the battlefield, a place where one could easily lose their life to a blind arrow or a spell. Especially with Lumen here, who would be considered a hero just for being captured. And with an extra bonus beside her, it’s only a matter of time before they attack.

The Blood Tribe members in sight are four, one man and three women. They may not look strong, but by my standards, they are extremely dangerous.

Is there no other way? I’ll have to use the secret weapon I couldn’t use before.

“Hey Lumen, how much longer can you hold on?”

Lumen, spitting blood from his mouth, raised an arm.
Two fingers spread out. It was a movement filled with faint consciousness.

Two minutes.
About 120 seconds.

Carrying the injured down the hill alone is out of the question.

The best move would be to go down and bring other knights, but if we show our backs, we’ll be killed by those bastards. Do I really need to use the secret weapon?

“Just hang in there mentally. I’ll figure something out.”

I calm my shaking and catch my breath. Fortunately, the Blood Tribe members haven’t moved yet. I took out the sword hilt I had put in my pocket while climbing.

“Ah, members of the Blood Tribe! Both sides have suffered severe damage! How about we both retreat?”

And I shouted at them with all my might.

…It’s a long shot that won’t work, but I have no choice. I needed to buy time to charge up my secret weapon.
It would be best if they listened to me and dispersed, but I’d be satisfied if they hesitated for a moment.

“….”

About 10 seconds passed. The Blood Tribe members raised their weapons.
A clear intent to fight.
The weapon is charged just enough to kill maybe one of them. Sweat starts to run down my left hand holding the sword hilt.

“…… Damn it. You humans are lucky.”

The largest Blood Tribe male spoke briefly, and then they scattered and burrowed into the ground.

Did my desperate cry work?

-Kugugung.

Well, it couldn’t have been resolved that easily.
A flurry of snow pours down from a distant mountain. If we’re swept away by that avalanche, we’ll surely die. It’s impossible to carry Lumen back to the base before the snow reaches us.

“There’s no way out of this.”

That’s when it happened.
Lumen grabbed my arm and slammed me to the ground. Naturally, I extended my arm to brace for the impact.
My arm easily broke through the floor, and we fell to the level below. It wasn’t very high, but unfortunately, I used the arm that had been broken once before to brace myself, and now it throbs in pain.

“Ugh, where is this…?”

This must be a tunnel created by the Blood Tribe for surprise attacks. Somehow, we ended up inside it.

The tunnel felt rough but was surprisingly clean. Fireflies were embedded at regular intervals, illuminating the interior.

By the way, is Lumen okay?

When I looked beside me, the sight of her was terrible.
Lumen had bled so much that her already pale face had turned blue. She was barely hanging on, breathing like an old person about to die, needing immediate treatment.

If it was the saint’s job in the hero party to breathe new life into a dying corpse, then I’m the one who gathers scattered entrails in chunks.
In other words, I can at least perform emergency measures properly.

To stop the bleeding, I begin by removing the armor. Pressing the buttons on the shoulders, the breastplate falls off without resistance.

“Don’t lose consciousness. You need to hold onto something…”

What caught my eye was Lumen’s breast, where the letter hung next to dog tags.
I looked around for something else to use, but with no suitable substitute at hand, I took the letter from around the neck and placed it in Lumen’s hand. Fortunately, the letter didn’t emit any lightning or glow.

Next, I drag a corpse from the Blood Tribe, which had been shoved into a corner, over to stop the bleeding. The Blood Tribe male, who had a large gash on his neck, still felt warm despite being exposed to the cold of Fontis for a long time.

I tear the clothes off the corpse lengthwise. An endless supply of bandages would be needed to stem the flowing blood.
Infection and inflammation are secondary; stopping the bleeding is the priority. Any additional problems like infection or inflammation can be dealt with later by a priest.
My job is to keep them alive for now.

“…Troka.”

“You still seem to be conscious.”

I wrap the torn cloth around Lumen’s abdomen.

One layer.
Two layers.
Three layers.

With each layer, Lumen lets out a hot groan. It’s not the thrashing of pain, but rather a voice longing for something.

“How did Troka die?”

I couldn’t bring myself to answer the question that came through the groans. I needed to organize my thoughts to speak properly, but my body naturally opened my mouth.

“You’re in a life-threatening situation and you have the mind to talk about that? Wrap the bandage yourself if you can. This is surprisingly hard work.”

Lumen pushes my hand away and starts to wrap the bandage around herself.
A donut hole in the stomach and already bouncing back after just wrapping a bandage? This isn’t human.

“You’re a monster. You’ve been pierced in the stomach and you’re already recovering after just wrapping a bandage?”

“My parents are from the Blood Tribe. Recovery is fast.”

“Ah, Blood Tribe… No wonder you’re freakishly strong. There’s always a reason… But are you sure you can talk about such information as casually as ordering food?”

I didn’t know Lumen was from the Blood Tribe. There were no typical Blood Tribe features like ears or tails, and if she was from the Blood Tribe, why betray her own kind and side with humans?
Looking closely at her, I noticed something odd about her hair. Curious, I reached out and her hair twitched in response.

“Is this an ear?”

“Yeah. I usually keep it hidden naturally.”

“Can I touch it?”

“Sure. But in return, do me a favor.”

Damn it. I wouldn’t have touched it if I knew there was a favor involved, but my hand moved too quickly.

I lift the covered ear and gently touch the dense white down feathers inside. When I insert my finger inside the ear, it feels as hot as boiling water.

“It’s sensitive, so stop touching it, please.”

“Oh, okay. Sure.”

The ears of the Blood Tribe were softer than I expected, almost like kneading thin rice cakes. Lumen didn’t seem to enjoy such touch, as she tousled her hair.

“Since I let you touch them, answer me.”

“There’s nothing to hear. Haven’t I already told you? Killed the demon king and then drove the sword into his own neck. What more is there to explain?”

“I’m not talking about the death itself. I mean the cause of Troka’s death.”

“Do we really need to discuss that? You seem to need to hear the answers directly from others to be satisfied, even though you could come up with it yourself. Don’t you realize that your own actions were the catalyst, Miss. Lumen?”

“…It’s going to be a bit of a long story.”

With nothing else to do until the rescue team arrives, I suppose listening won’t hurt. I nodded shallowly up and down.

Lumen caressed her stomach for a moment, moistened her lips with her tongue, and then began to speak.

“I had a younger brother. We both lacked tails, so discrimination was common in our tribe.”

Lumen tightened the bandages. As if washing away years of grime, the story continued.

“I could endure the torment directed at me. But it was harder when they tormented my frail brother… So on a moonless night, I left the pack and entrusted myself to the clan leader. I grew up as a knight, alongside my brother.”

“…”

“My brother was too frail for training. There were more days he vomited during training than days he completed it successfully. …Still, I kept reprimanding him. We were traitors who had abandoned our clan to side with humans. If we were caught by the tribe, it was obvious what fate would befall us.”

“The Blood Tribe is famous for repaying debts and vengeance tenfold.”

“Exactly. That’s why I pushed my brother even harder. In Frontis’s eyes, anyone could be buried, so if you don’t want to die, swing your sword until death.”

Even if it’s excruciating to the point of vomiting, being caught by our own kind would result in something far worse. Endure the immediate pain.
The punishment for snitches and traitors can be seen just by going to prison. Let alone in a place where conventional human rights are nonexistent, it’s difficult to imagine how the Blood Tribe, known for their barbarism, would dispose of such traitors.

“I realized my thinking was wrong. But that realization came only after my brother died on our second expedition.”

Focused solely on my brother, I failed to deflect the blade that appeared behind him.

“And years passed. Then I met Troka. I don’t know if it was fate, but Troka resembled my brother in every way. From his face to his actions and even his speech, everything. I thought he might be the reincarnation of my brother… but there was one difference.”

“Troka is a hero. Unlike your brother, who you were supposed to protect, a hero is someone who is destined to always stand on the front lines.”

When Troka first transmigrated here, he was no different from me now.
Weak, just ordinary person A, without any power as a hero.

However, he was consumed by a sense of duty to kill the Demon King as a hero and came to Frontis to meet the strong. It was there that Lumen happened to meet Troka.

“Yeah, I was scared. Scared of losing my brother again.”

She pressured Troka to give up his mission as a hero.

“So then, I cut off Troka’s arm.”

In quite a rough manner.

“If I hadn’t done even that, Troka would have been dead. If only I had the gift of gab…”

Troka, obsessed with his mission as a hero, was honestly so stubborn that no one could have stopped him.
It might be questionable whether cutting off an arm was the right way to stop Troka, who was charging towards death, but if one projected the image of a younger sibling onto the hero, then such a method would be considered wrong.

“…There’s a lot I want to say, but since it’s an emergency, I’ll hold back.”

As she said, it was only to prevent danger that she had intervened.
Even if he poured out everything he wanted to say, it wouldn’t bring Troka back, and right now, it’s an emergency. The goal is to preserve life and return home, not to waste energy on a war of words.

After a long recounting of the past, Lumen’s face regained its original fierceness. Perhaps because of that, she even started asking odd questions.

“Why didn’t you bring Nico along?”

“Of course, I left her behind. How could she see something like this?”

“But she’s Nicola’s sister, right?”

“If siblings were all superhumans, the empire wouldn’t just leave this frontier alone. Even if the emperor drowns his brain in muscle and booze, he knows how to spot the rotten ones.”

“I see…”

Judging by the return of color to Lumen’s complexion, it seems the situation is no longer as dangerous as before. Now, all that’s left is to wait for Lumen, who has regained her strength, to melt the ice with lightning and escape.

“Well then, I’ll go get some fuel to warm up the body. You rest. If anything dangerous happens, I’ll send a signal right away, so come then.”

Burning bodies is unsightly, so it’s enough to bring some clothes to burn.
The Blood Tribe’s clothing has a small fabric area. They unconsciously manipulate their blood to maintain a high body temperature. Such a useless ability.
Thanks to that, even after rummaging through a dozen bodies, the obtained scraps of fabric amount to no more than a handful.
Should I go deeper? There couldn’t be other Blood Tribe members inside, could there? Surely no one would still be around after all this. If they had any decency, they’d be dead.

“Nice to see you, Mr. Postman?”

Using a firefly stuck to the wall as a landmark, I had only gone a little further when a voice echoed from deep within the tunnel. Shortly after, a woman dressed like a dancer appeared.

An unexpected visitor’s arrival. The person who had come searching even through the tunnels was a disgustingly familiar face, one I couldn’t forget even if I wanted to.

“Flan, to meet you here, what a coincidence?”

The dark blue-haired noblewoman, a fellow mercenary of Benten and someone thought to be missing.
She appeared in the tunnel, her fingers adorned with iron spikes, giving her a menacing look.

If there was any difference from when we met in the carriage, it was that she no longer covered her face with cloth, and she wasn’t hiding her murderous intent.

“You’re going to have a hell of a time with the aftermath. A high-ranking officer like you shouldn’t be loafing around in a place like this, right?”

Her name was Nerati.

Her real name was Nerati, but she was commonly known as the Illusionary Princess, a dangerous figure who occupied a high position in the Demon King’s army’s childish hierarchy.

“Hehehe, you’re amusing, Flan. I quite like you, to some extent. But I’m busy right now, so if you’d kindly step aside, I’ll forgive all your past offenses… and let you live. Won’t you move?”

It would be most accurate to describe her as the despicable woman who ripped off my arm.

In this situation, my response is obvious.

“Fuck off, bitch.”