Ch.135Growth (5)

I held my breath.

No, I couldn’t breathe.

Goosebumps rose so sharply that my skin tingled.

My limbs froze as if turned to ice, and my face was instantly drenched in cold sweat.

I felt so consumed by fear that different parts of my body seemed to be breaking down one by one.

“…Damn, what should I do?”

Even amid all this, my pitiful attempts to think clearly weren’t yielding any results.

My head was foggy to begin with.

I was afraid.

Not afraid of fighting, nor of the death that might come for me.

I didn’t know how powerful the people beyond that door might be, but if they were just ordinary people, they would surely be torn to pieces by my hands—

That was what frightened me most.

The faces of those people I had killed with these two hands when I lost my mind flashed through my head in an instant.

How many people were in this mansion?

Was it just those two rattling my doorknob?

Or were there others still remaining on the first floor?

This curse, spreading like a pathogen, might become the fuse that delivers the final judgment to a world already on the brink of destruction.

That terrified me.

But no matter how hard I tried to think, I couldn’t come up with a solution.

I approached the window to try to escape, but it was far too small for my body to fit through, so that was meaningless.

“Hey, why is this locked?”

“Don’t know? Did someone accidentally lock it on their way out?”

“Shit, which idiot was the last one in here?”

“Wasn’t it you?”

“Fuck off, asshole. Do you have the key?”

“How would we have the key? Let’s just go.”

The voices of the two people conversing were quite loud and rough.

It was obvious they weren’t particularly friendly people.

I could sense that the bandits who had taken over our mansion were quite a rough bunch.

I held my breath and prayed desperately.

Please, just go away.

Please,

“No, but I definitely heard a sound from inside.”

“Probably a mouse or some wild animal.”

“What if someone’s hiding in there? This is our place. We already pushed all the furniture in here because we don’t have enough space to sleep. We can’t let anyone else in.”

“So what do you want to do?”

“Get an axe from downstairs.”

“Am I your servant? Go get it yourself, asshole. I don’t know where it is.”

“…Hex has an axe. Borrow it.”

“No way, you’re the one who wants to open this door, so you go. Things are awkward between me and Hex right now.”

“What did you do this time?”

“Got caught cheating at poker the day before yesterday.”

“…Ugh, shit. Fine, I’ll go get it. You keep pulling on this doorknob.”

“Got it.”

I pulled out my dagger from inside my clothes.

It seemed they weren’t going to leave without opening this door.

Judging from their conversation, quite a few people were staying in this mansion.

In the end, there was only one way to avoid making this situation worse.

I removed the sheath from the dagger and placed its sharp edge against my throat.

“Ash! Stop, don’t do it!”

Pia cried out in a startled, tearful voice.

“…Ugh,”

“It’s my fault, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“No, it’s okay, Pia. It’s not your fault.”

“No. Don’t do it, don’t!”

“…Silvia and Sister Alice will somehow take care of this world. So Pia, even without me, please help those two. I’m asking you.”

Pia shook her head frantically, trying to grab my hand holding the dagger to pull it down.

“Ash… no, no!”

“There’s no other way…”

Pia kept shaking her head, then suddenly seemed to remember something as she looked at me with wide eyes.

Then, gripping my wrist even more firmly to pull it down, she began to speak.

“Th-that’s right, if Ash dies…”

“…”

“If Ash dies, S-Silvia will leave the forest!”

“…”

My eyes suddenly opened wide.

It was too convincing to dismiss as just a child’s naive nonsense trying to prevent the terrible situation before her.

I now knew what kind of person Silvia was.

What would she do if she found out I was gone?

What would she do if she knew I was outside the forest?

‘She said she doesn’t care about the Demon Lord… that she doesn’t want to be the Hero anymore.’

I suddenly remembered what Sister Alice had told me.

Silvia’s indifference even after hearing about the Demon Lord’s survival.

“…”

Would Silvia really act to protect this world even without me?

As if answering my doubt, Pia closed her teary eyes tightly and shook her head vigorously from side to side.

“B-but… at this rate,”

“Th-there’s a way. We can do it!”

Pia’s words that she could do anything I wanted flashed through my mind.

Perhaps among the spirit arts, there might be a way to resolve this situation.

With growing hope and expectation, I asked Pia.

“…How?”

“Ash’s… things, something that Ash has touched a lot,”

“…?”

Bang!

The man holding the doorknob was getting irritated and started kicking the door violently.

Pia, startled by the sound, perked up her ears, then nodded with a determined expression.

I chanted a spell to topple the large bookshelf near the door sideways.

With a loud crash, the fallen bookshelf blocked the door.

The man outside was startled and shouted, then muttered in a fearful voice.

“Wh-what’s that? Who’s in there!”

“Pia, try everything you can.”

“Ash, something filled with Ash’s memories…”

“…Something?”

I looked around.

This is my room.

Although I had grown accustomed to living in the cottage with Silvia and hadn’t become attached to specific objects for quite some time, there must still be things I was attached to in this room.

After looking around for a while, my gaze finally stopped at my desk with a small drawer.

However, the desk was buried in the innermost part of the room, hidden behind all sorts of furniture.

There might still be something in that drawer, but the problem was that to open it, I would have to remove all the furniture filling the room one by one.

“Hey! Come quick! There really is someone in here!”

And I didn’t have time for that.

“Woo-eui-eul,”

Pia closed her eyes tightly and her small body trembled.

I could see Pia’s body gradually shrinking.

“Pia?”

Soon, her body reduced to about half its original size, and she placed both hands on the floor, returning to the fox form she had first appeared in before me.

In fox form, Pia ran toward my desk buried in the innermost part, dodging the piled furniture.

Then, raising her front paws, she awkwardly opened the drawer and took a mouthful of the items inside.

A small fountain pen my father had bought me,

An old music box that was broken but I couldn’t throw away because of the memories of lying with my sister listening to it,

Small wool gloves my mother had knitted for me.

Just a glance was enough to recall the memories attached to these items that were now stuffed in Pia’s mouth.

With her mouth full, Pia raised her head.

“…Pia?”

Pia began to swallow those items little by little.

That’s when it happened.

“I brought the axe, try to open this, it’s firmly blocked.”

“Kicking it doesn’t work?”

“Something blocked the door when that loud noise happened. You were right, someone’s really in there.”

Gritting my teeth, I reached through the gaps between the furniture and barely grabbed the blanket on my bed.

Recalling the day when Silvia’s curse had worked on me, there was no doubt that the condition for this curse to activate was looking at the face or eyes.

If they came in, or even if they saw me through the gap in the door split by the axe, I could buy a few seconds if I at least hid my face.

With that thought, I pulled hard on the blanket my fingertips had reached.

Dusty white particles spread throughout the room.

Despite coughing, I lay flat on the floor and covered myself with the dusty blanket.

At that moment, Pia, who had already swallowed all the items, came over and squeezed under the blanket with me.

“Hey! Someone’s in there! There’s someone!”

“W-who are you?!”

“I’ll go call the others!”

The men, seeing me covered with the blanket through the wood grain split by the axe, started shouting in surprise.

Like their loud noise, they began to pound on the door even harder.

As they broke the doorknob with the axe and pushed the door with their shoulders, the bookshelf blocking the door slowly began to move.

“Pia! Are we close?!”

“Krung,”

Pia pressed her body close to me and her small body trembled.

I kept my eyes tightly closed and firmly gripped the thin cloth covering Pia and me.

“Heave-ho!”

With the man’s shout, the bookshelf blocking the door fell over.

And I heard the sound of footsteps entering the room.

“Let’s see what kind of rat you are!”

“Pia!”

The blanket covering me was yanked away by a strong hand.

I lay face down on the floor, covering my face with both arms.

The man said nothing.

Was it too late?

Had the curse already activated?

Despair enveloped my entire body.

That’s when it happened.

“Ash… what are you doing?”

I heard Silvia’s voice.

“…Silvia?”

I looked up in surprise.

Silvia was standing there, holding the blanket that had covered me, looking down at me.

“Ash suddenly disappeared, and I was about to go look for you… so you were under this. Hmm? Why didn’t I see you earlier? Actually, where did this blanket come from?”

“…”

I wiped the cold sweat streaming down my forehead and lowered my gaze.

Below me lay Pia, who had returned to her girl form, breathing heavily.

“My goodness, look at your sweat, Ash. What were you doing?”

“Hah… haah…”

The cottage.

That makeshift cottage I had built.

It seemed Pia had succeeded.

I sighed and sat down, falling backward.

“Ash?”

“Silvia… I got a blanket.”