Ch.955Anonymous Troublemakers Get Blocked.

The sudden change in the situation overwhelmed Jeir and Palos, who collapsed bidding farewell to their other halves they had been with for hundreds of years.

Split in half, that is.

From crown to groin, vertically.

An injury no one could survive, not even if they were a fairy elder rather than just a fairy. He collapsed without even leaving last words, convulsing as his innards spilled out between the cut surfaces.

It was an absurdly empty end.

“Finally killed you, you little fly.”

– Splat!

I smiled as I stomped on half of his split head, crushing it.

‘What a surprise, you’ve used up all your tricks. Thanks to that, I caught you more easily than expected.’

I silently praised Hersella, my lips barely moving.

Honestly, she deserved the praise.

Without her quick thinking, it would have taken much longer to kill him. Not just time, but I would have had to expend much more power.

The former fairy guardian, Jeir/Palos.

Befitting a world where stronger opponents emerge as time passes, he was one of the most difficult and powerful fairies I had ever faced.

[I would have liked to enjoy this a bit longer… but now is not the time, is it? That’s why I tried to imitate you a little.]

However, perhaps due to his age, he lacked imagination.

He failed to consider the possibility of two souls residing in one body, misjudging that his opponent wasn’t using Defying Fate because they couldn’t use it, rather than choosing not to.

Well, that judgment wasn’t entirely wrong. It’s true that Hersella couldn’t use Defying Fate when she was in control of our consciousness.

In fact, throughout the battle, Hersella took hits she could have avoided with Defying Fate and missed opportunities where she could have struck with it.

For Jeir-Palos facing her, it was natural to assume she was unable to use Defying Fate.

He probably mistakenly thought that the price for manifesting the second Tale of Heros, Field of Mortality, was temporarily losing the original time compression ability.

That misconception became his fatal flaw.

When his guard against Defying Fate had almost disappeared, believing it couldn’t be used, Defying Fate was unleashed as if it had been waiting for that moment, binding him and cutting off his breath.

‘Imitating me?’

Hersella called this sequence of events an imitation of me.

[It may not have reached the level of your deviousness… but well, not a bad result.]

She said she tried implementing a devious scheme like mine because the situation was urgent.

‘…Well, whatever works.’

I couldn’t be bothered to argue, so I just accepted it.

I swallowed my thoughts about how her mindset was truly like that of an uncivilized barbarian, calling it “devious” to deceive an enemy for a quick and certain victory.

Anyway, we won, so it’s fine. We won.

There were still two mass-produced guardians left, but with the most troublesome Jeir-Palos dead, dealing with the remaining two wouldn’t be difficult.

The reason we had struggled until now was because Jeir-Palos had interfered at opportune moments whenever we targeted them.

Without that, I would have killed them all long ago.

– Crunch!

Just like now.

—-

After dismembering the last surviving mass-produced guardian and incapacitating the other by tearing off its ears and remaining limbs.

“Queen Astika, Your Majesty! Are you safe?”

As I sat down on the ruins to catch my breath briefly after shaking off the blood covering my body, a female knight from the Rosicrucian Order rushed over to inquire about my well-being.

Probably one of the knights who had evacuated. If she had remained in the palace instead of evacuating, she wouldn’t have even left a proper corpse in the Field of Mortality.

“Are you injured, Your Majesty!”

The female knight approached me, kneeling on one knee in respect as she asked.

I couldn’t say, “Do I look uninjured to you?”

That’s the kind of joke you can make with friends, but saying something like that to a subordinate would turn it from a joke into a rebuke.

…Well, that wasn’t the only reason.

“Yes. I’m perfectly fine.”

I nodded, pretending to be fine as I stood up from where I was sitting.

In reality, I had expended considerable energy, and my body was covered in wounds—penetrating injuries, electrical burns, contusions, and lacerations.

While I couldn’t call it a severe injury since I hadn’t lost a limb… it certainly wasn’t a minor wound either.

Honestly, only someone like me could endure such injuries. If someone else had sustained this level of damage, they would already be a cold corpse lying on the ground.

“I see. Your Majesty’s well-being is this country’s greatest fortune. Truly, it must be heaven’s blessing.”

The female knight bowed her head with a slight sigh of relief.

Ten fairy guardians—just hearing about it was terrifying, she said. To defeat them single-handedly and emerge unscathed must truly be divine providence.

I snickered. The answer itself was ridiculous.

“That’s amusing. Heaven’s blessing? I never expected you to say such things.”

“Pardon…? What do you mean…?”

The female knight asked what I meant.

“Well, you know. For you of all people to speak of luck bestowed by heaven, I find it quite funny.”

I laughed heartily as I sheathed my notched blade and placed my right hand on Durandal’s hilt.

“Shouldn’t you, of all people, avoid such talk?”

“……”

Silence.

The female knight kept her head bowed, hiding her expression, and rudely remained silent in response to her queen’s words. An impossible act for a knight and a subject.

…Well, that was to be expected.

“How amusing that someone who opposes the goddess of heaven would speak of heaven’s blessing. Could anything be more ridiculous? Don’t you find it funny too?”

“……”

“Planning to evade with silence? I don’t know whether to call it rude or pathetic. Which would you prefer? I’ll choose the opposite, so answer me.”

The female knight maintained her silence. Like a corpse. There’s a saying that the dead don’t speak. That adage suddenly came to mind, making me laugh wryly.

Surprisingly, the dead in this world tended to be quite talkative. Fitting for a world where souls exist.

In such a world, those who remained silent weren’t the dead but the living who were speechless.

Like this female knight before me.

“Answer me. Feirus Haransior.”

No, like the man who had been speaking through the female knight.

—-

“…How.”

After a moment of silence, the female knight finally spoke again, lifting her head stiffly to reveal a bloodless, pale face.

“How did you notice? I heard you merely lucked into obtaining the rune seal, with no magical aptitude whatsoever.”

A question mixed with acknowledgment of fact. I drew Durandal, twisting the corner of my mouth into a sneer as I answered.

“Why wouldn’t I know, you idiot? Everything from the smell to the sound of your organs is different.”

A corpse overlaid with a soul through advanced half-soul techniques might mimic the sounds of a heart and organs indistinguishably from when alive, but only if the organs are intact.

From inside this female knight’s abdomen came the squelching noise of a ruptured organ.

Listening carefully, it seemed to be coming from the kidney area… and that was enough.

How could a woman with a ruptured kidney run around and move normally?

The fact that she wasn’t doubled over clutching her stomach made it clear that the female knight before me wasn’t in a normal state. Probably not even alive.

Half-soul technique.

Either he personally turned this female knight into a corpse, or he picked up an already dead knight and implanted part of his soul into her.

And in this situation, what half-soul practitioner would approach me… who else but Feirus?

If Ophelia had something to say to me, she would have simply come to find me and spoken to me, rather than unethically using my knight’s corpse as a tool.

“The sound of organs…? You can distinguish such things? Preposterous. You’re not some beast…”

Feirus muttered with an incredulous expression.

“What’s preposterous is the audacity of your liver to seek me out in that state.”

I swung my sword at him.

The corpse of the female knight before me was merely a messenger. Even if I cut off her head and broke the half-soul technique, it wouldn’t harm Feirus himself…

“Wait, I didn’t come to fight…”

“Die.”

That’s that, and this is this.

When the source of my extreme irritation appears before me so brazenly, how could I hold back my blade?

Even Buddha couldn’t endure this. He would have flattened them with his divine palm.

Of course, I wasn’t Buddha, so instead of flattening the female knight, I tried to cleanly behead her.

– Crack!

I missed because she collapsed, completely crushing the bones in her legs.

…This crazy bastard really dodges in the most insane ways. I’ve never seen someone destroy their own legs to avoid a sword strike.

Well, I suppose since they weren’t his own legs, he had no hesitation in doing such a thing.

“Sitting down? What good will that do? Do you think you can keep dodging?”

“Stop. I said I didn’t come to fight…!”

The female knight frowned in irritation.

“Do I care?”

I swung my sword again. This time she couldn’t completely avoid it, and part of her body was cut off in an instant.

Instead of her head, which was my original target, both arms flew off. It was ridiculous how she thrust her arms out like shields while breaking her spine backward.

A few more sword strikes and she’d become a complete invertebrate. What kind of nonsense is this, using someone else’s corpse like that?

“If you would just listen for once…!”

“I would listen if it were a person speaking.”

The next strike took off the female knight’s head.

The head floated up into the air. The exposed teeth seemed to be trying to say something, but I couldn’t hear anything.

Naturally, given human anatomy, one cannot speak without a head attached.

Like that snake-eating butcher Mr. Naga, I could put my mouth to the cut surface and blow air to enable communication…

But why would I do that? If I wanted to do that, I wouldn’t have cut off the head in the first place.

“If you have something to say, come in your original body. Then I might listen to your last words.”

With that, I thrust Durandal into the female knight’s forehead, severing the half-soul technique inscribed in her brain.

Hoping that Feirus, who had been driven away without getting a word in, would be seething with humiliation, I gently removed the knight’s head from my blade and placed it beside her body.

Trolls should be blocked and banished before they can open their mouths.

He would surely come back again, but at least I felt somewhat relieved having vented my frustration.