Ch.25Report on the Fall of Innocence (Complete)

Kain’s sword drew a large arc. It was an upward diagonal slash from below. The Knight of the Scabbard could easily block the attack by simply holding his sword upright.

Indeed, the knight took that stance. The very stance Kain had hoped for.

With a deft twist of his right wrist, Kain reversed his grip. Like an assassin diving in with a dagger, Kain crashed into the Knight of the Scabbard.

The slow-moving knight couldn’t block the charge with his scabbard. And by diving inside the scabbard’s range, Kain could avoid both its attack and defense.

Kain slashed upward. The shadow split and blood sprayed. It was the dark blood of a dying person. But it wasn’t a fatal wound.

“Oh my.”

The knight’s fist flew at him. With a thud, it buried itself in Kain’s stomach. Though he barely managed to deflect it with his left arm, and the chain mail absorbed some of the impact, his insides still twisted in pain.

Kain’s world flipped upside down. Ungracefully, he rolled backward for quite a distance. His head slammed against the floor with a crash, sending pain through his skull.

The Knight of the Scabbard approached. Dripping dead blood, it came closer. Kain wanted to laugh. The crumbling monastery. Bodies burning in black flames, impaled on shadow stakes. And now, himself about to be beaten with a scabbard. The mercilessly blue sky. And the scabbard raised to its peak.

Kain didn’t close his eyes. Until the very end, he tried to dodge. If he rolled and thrust his sword… but the Imperial Sword was far away. His right hand was empty.

A shadow fell over him. The scabbard never reached Kain. It stopped in mid-air with a clang, blocked by another scabbard.

“Hey. Didn’t I… tell you…”

Lily swung her arm. Sparks flew between the scabbards with a clashing sound. Lily struck the black knight’s wrist. Though it wasn’t a particularly strong blow, the knight trembled and stepped back.

“I understand,” Lily muttered.

“What?”

“The weakness. I understand it. I’ll block. I’ll block so you can strike. Then we’ll win. I can’t do it alone, but together we can.”

Lily drew the Imperial Sword. She stood in front of Kain.

“I’ll buy time until you recover.”

The Knight of the Scabbard composed himself and raised his scabbard.

“…You. You… know. I don’t… want to hurt you… Step aside.”

“Who are you?”

Lily held her sword straight up, pointing its tip at eye level. The Knight of the Scabbard answered after a long pause.

“I am… a knight.”

Lily shook her head.

“A knight protects honor, protects the weak, keeps oaths, and guards their heart like a fortress. No matter how strong a knight may be, if their heart is broken, they are no knight. Even an unsquired page with a righteous heart is already a knight. So I ask you. Are you truly a knight?”

“I am a knight!”

“Is this form ‘truly’ the knight you had hoped to become?”

The Knight of the Scabbard flinched. Lily didn’t waver at all. Not even her sword tip.

“I persecuted those who persecuted me. I oppressed those who oppressed me. I struck those who struck me and treated harshly those who treated me harshly. I merely repaid them as they did to me! I only took revenge!”

“I didn’t ask what you did. I asked if you are a knight.”

“And what are you?!”

It sounded like a strangled crow croaking. The knight raised his scabbard. Black flames rose around him like hissing snakes.

“You, chattering away before me! Are you unjust like him? Are you faithless like him? Are you, like him! Saying that I was wrong?!”

Lily raised her sword. The Knight of the Scabbard hesitated and stepped back. But Lily had merely raised the cross guard to eye level.

“I am the sword that cuts swords…”

A slow yet resolute pronouncement.

“I am the shield that blocks shields and the spear that pierces spears. The arrow that strikes arrows and the fortress that topples fortresses.

I am the standard-bearer of the Two-headed Eagle, the Valkyrja of the White Blood Knights, the Skjaldmær. I am Liliana Brynhildr, Knight of the White Blood.

I swear again to live as a knight and die as a knight until white blood flows on the ground once more.

Adversary, I ask you. Are you the one who will take my breath today?”

There was no answer. The knight asked again.

“I ask you. Do you truly intend to raise your sword against me?”

There was no answer. The knight asked one last time.

“I ask you. Do you truly believe you can defeat me?”

There was no answer. Liliana kissed the blade. After raising the cross guard to eye level, she lowered it to the bottom right. Sunlight cut by the sword scattered like a dying flash.

“Then I shall gladly break you.”

Knight Liliana stopped breathing. Absurdly, that’s what Kain thought.

Of course it was an illusion. Lily, no—Knight Liliana, not an agent—simply stood still with her sword tip raised to eye level. A standard defensive stance.

It was quiet. Just quiet. Yet the Knight of the Scabbard hesitated. Like a woodcutter before an enormous tree, doubting his frail arms and dull axe.

As the knight hesitated, Liliana extended her sword. Her left hand firmly gripped the lower part of the handle, but her right hand held it loosely as if shaking hands with the sword. She aimed the tip at the black knight’s solar plexus.

A textbook long-range defensive stance. The Valkyrja of the White Blood Knights took a step forward.

Though they were at least fifteen paces apart, the shadow-engulfed knight’s shoulders twitched. The shadows hissing around him growled like fierce dogs.

Still, Lily didn’t even breathe loudly. She simply took another step forward.

The dark knight let out a terrible cry. From within the shadows, a sword emerged. Severed wrists of knights, bitten-off arms, and spears embedded in bodies rose up to pierce Liliana.

Liliana didn’t dodge the spear. Instead, she placed her sword against the spearhead. With a clang, she pushed it away and cut through the shaft in one motion. The wooden shaft splintered, and the spear lost its power and fell away.

She tilted her wrist. Before the rising sword could fall, she slashed the shadow’s hand. As the hand split, the sword tumbled to the ground.

She stopped the advancing sword abruptly. Extending her right leg forward, she thrust. The sword traced a line from the black knight’s hand to elbow, then she pulled her leg back and straightened her sword.

The knight charged, swinging his scabbard. A slightly diagonal downward slash. Liliana waited for the moment. The moment when the knight would raise his sword. When it would reach its peak. She recalled every single exchange of blows between him and Kain.

Speed. Feeling. Movement. Habits.

As the scabbard fell, Liliana’s sword was already thrusting upward from below. She had no intention of blocking the falling sword.

The White Blood Knights’ teaching is to counter a thrust with a thrust, a slash with a slash, responding more strongly, more quickly, and more precisely.

Had it been cloth, she could have easily cut through half the black knight’s arm, or at least a wrist.

But the knight wore armor. Though made of something repulsive, it was still enough to stop a blade.

But that was all. The knight’s body staggered after allowing a single strike. As his stance opened, countless vulnerabilities were exposed.

Like a mountain that collapses when the final stone falls after enduring and enduring, Liliana turned her pressure into an offensive onslaught.

Her sword pierced through openings and found gaps in the armor. She struck down, slashed across, and cut through. The falling scabbard was blocked by the tip of the Imperial Sword.

Had the Imperial Sword bent slightly? Similar, but not quite right. It hadn’t bent—Liliana had deliberately curved the sword. Though she knew it would shorten the sword’s life, she understood the sword’s anger.

How quickly a forcibly bent sword, a humiliated sword, would straighten itself again.

Liliana didn’t soothe the sword. Nor did she ignore it. She simply twisted her wrist slightly to direct where the anger should go. The sword, enhanced by the fierce transition and its own recoil, tore through the knight’s shoulder.

The knight reflexively threw back his head.

“Now!”

Liliana swung her sword to knock away the scabbard.

The front completely exposed. Kain extended the Imperial Sword. Through the gap in the armor, toward the fully exposed neck, through the opening Lily had created.

Irreversible, unstoppable, unblockable. Inevitable.

– Kairos.

And the rising shadow was also inevitable.

The helmet of the darkness-possessed knight came off on its own. Though what lay beneath was undulating shadow, Kain recognized the face that appeared in the shadow.

The shadow with her face whispered. In that brief moment as the sword penetrated the neck.

– Are you really killing me again? Me, your fiancée? Like that day?

No sooner had the words fallen than the sword pierced the neck. If not for that final hesitation, the head would have already rolled away.

But because of that moment’s hesitation, the neck was only shallowly cut. Again. Just as he had done to her, again.

– Traitor… coward… run away. That suits you best.

“Aaaaaaah!”

He couldn’t move his arm. Kain put strength into his legs. Forcefully, like pushing open a locked door, he pushed the sword all the way through.

The sword pierced the knight’s neck.

Unable to pull the sword out, Kain let it go.

The knight staggered backward and then toppled over.

Gulp. Gurgle. No meaningful words could come from the pierced throat. Only dark blood flowed out.

– My love. See you in hell.

A massive explosion was heard.

From the collapsed Otranto Blockade Monastery, pieces of flesh rose up. Clumping together of their own accord, they formed a massive beast.

An evil dragon spread its wings made of horse spines and membranes of intestines, with scales of half-burned human faces. The faces of Brother Bartolomeo and Father Haspel were among them.

As if it were a sewer, shadows gathered toward the evil dragon. The burned bodies of Mercy Knights, half-charred and half-bleeding horse carcasses, hands still gripping weapons, and heads embedded in axes all flocked together.

At the end of it all was the black knight with the scabbard.

– I shall wait for you.

“Parasite… bastard…”

Kain spat. The “real” Knight of the Scabbard silently looked at Kain and Lily. He turned, mounted the evil dragon’s back, and flew beyond the horizon like a passing nightmare.

“Cough. Cough.”

The apprentice knight shed tears. Someone who could have become an excellent holy knight, but who lost everything in a moment of passion, received a final mercy from the light.

Faint light swirled in both his hands. The apprentice knight placed it on his neck.

Though the sword remained embedded, the wound barely healed. Not because he wanted to live, but to ask a final question of life.

He already knew he couldn’t survive. His pupils were dilated, and he was gradually stiffening. His body was already beyond saving.

“…You are… a knight…”

“Yes.”

Knight Liliana knelt down. She placed her hand on the forehead of her former adversary. The apprentice knight’s eyes trembled up and down.

“…I wanted… to become one too. A knight. Then…”

Gasp. Gasp. Air leaked out. The skull was already visible on his face. His flesh turned dark, revealing blood vessels. Lily gently stroked his hair.

“Then…?”

“…I would have been… beaten less.”

With a sob, the apprentice knight’s body seemed to swell, then gradually subsided. It was like a whistling sound. As if he had finally found his resting place. Lily closed his eyes.

“You did well.”

Kain stared with empty eyes at the flying beast. Lily collapsed. Muffled crying flowed from her body curled up on the floor.

“You did… you did well…”

“Yes… it’s over. It’s over now. You did well. You did great. Really great.”

Kain floundered. He barely knew what he was saying.

Nothing was over. Nothing had been resolved. What he and Lily had faced was merely a shadow. A madman dancing with a scabbard.

But at those haphazard words, Lily burst into tears.

Not tears that consumed her, but tears that burst out, released, and flowed away—tears of relief. Releasing the built-up tension, the suppressed fear, letting it flow and empty out.

Enough to forgive even a barren rocky mountain that couldn’t grow a single blade of grass,

Lily hugged Kain tightly, cried and cried until exhaustion took her to sleep.

The Imperial Sword stuck in the dead man’s neck gleamed. The insufferable light stabbed at his eyes. But Kain kept his eyes wide open. He couldn’t close them. He stared at the horizon while patting Lily’s back.

Just like long ago, on a midsummer night in Venelucia, when he had plunged a knife into his fiancée’s body.