episode_0040

One who walks on their own, that is another alias of a Sword Expert.

As a complete transcender,

it is because one of them possesses combat power equivalent to that of an average mercenary group or knight group.

‘Expert, Eugene… became a Sword Expert…!’

Jeanne’s eyes were dim from losing too much blood,

but even she could clearly see the situation before her eyes.

The blue aura of sword energy blooming from Eugene’s greatsword that had blown away Lucas’s head,

Sword User Alpha, Eugene Schneider, who had become an Imugi waiting for its time due to the imbalance of awakened abilities, became a Sword Expert, an existence called “one who walks on their own.”

ㅡThud!

Lucas’s head, his yellow hair scattered haphazardly,

its miserable state, severed by Eugene’s greatsword,

fell to the ground with a dull sound.

ㅡPshhhh!!

And from his neck, where a clean cut had been made, a fountain of blood belatedly erupted.

‘Blood… the blood spurting from a person…’

Sword Expert Eugene Schneider watched the scene as if frozen, with subtle eyes.

ㅡThump!!

Afterward, Lucas’s body, clad in heavy armor, also collapsed to the ground,

Thud! Thud! Thud!

Eugene’s footsteps, having retrieved the swung sword, moved elsewhere.

“Kheu-euh! Cooler! Kueuhlleok!”

His footsteps were heading towards

Jason, collapsed and vomiting blood, unable to pull out the broken blade stuck between his shoulder and neck.

Squeak!

His eyes still flashed red, but the rabid ferocity from just before had vanished,

Eugene Schneider stopped in front of Jason.

“Tell me. The identity of that elixir that turned you guys into mad dogs.”

Swoosh…!

Afterward, Eugene looked down at Jason with a face so cold that not even malice could be felt.

Then, he pointed to the elixir vial on the ground with the tip of his greatsword and asked.

“Keuh-heut! That reaction, it seems I’m right. They say the first Jedi had a son with demon blood mixed in, so you must be that guy. Keu-keu-heut kueulleok!”

Eugene’s expression went beyond simple curiosity.

Thus, Jason turned the déjà vu he had felt all along into conviction.

The first Jedi of the Sword Order Sophist,

namely, Eugene Schneider’s father, Ulysses Schneider.

Ulysses had a demon woman as his wife

and miraculously had a child with her.

However, conscious of the unavoidable situation between the demons and the Empire,

he hid the secret of his son’s birth as much as possible.

Within Sophist, only a very close aide who had assisted him for a long time knew the fact,

and outside, only a close friend like Antoine Desselles Obleans knew.

Thus, at the present time, the first Jedi Ulysses’ son remains a mystery-like conspiracy theory to the Sophist leadership.

ㅡPuh-wook!!

“Keueok!!”

“I’ll ask again.”

Jason’s rabid ferocity had subsided, but he seemed to know Eugene’s identity and was acting presumptuously,

but Eugene did not react to Jason’s chatter

and stabbed Jason’s thigh with the tip of his greatsword, which was still emitting sword energy, the object of his interrogation.

As a result, Jason’s mouth, which had been wearing a sneer until just before, contorted sharply, and he let out a desperate scream.

“Elixir, was it made inside Sophist?”

Looking down at the scene, Eugene asked again about the identity and origin of the elixir.

“Damn it… This bastard is underestimating the Claymores of Sophist too much… Keuh-heut! We are people who have already abandoned their lives on the battlefield since receiving the sword from the Jedi. My mouth won’t open no matter how much you cut me with a sword, that’s what I’m saying!”

Jason, despite having a face contorted with pain, did not give up his sarcasm towards Eugene until the very end.

“I’d rather choose death myself.”

Clench!

And as if that was not just bluff,

Sophist Intermediate Ascetic Claymore Jason grabbed the broken sword piece stuck in his shoulder.

ㅡSwoosh!ㅡPshhhh!

“Kuaaak!!”

Then, he pulled it out without hesitation.

As a result, crimson blood gushed out like a fountain from the place where the sword had been stuck.

“Take good care of the demon’s blood. It’s connected to a Berserker, so it’s not usually an easy opponent.”

Smirk…!

The crimson blood that gushed out endlessly.

A scene that was utterly miserable,

but as if that was the very image of the mysterious cult Sophist,

Jason wore a rabid smile again and aimed the sword piece he had pulled from his shoulder at his own neck.

An attempt to shut his own mouth by suicide,

then he poured out words of warning mixed with curses that were hard to see as a last will to Eugene.

“Glory to the Jedi!!!!”

Jason, with bloodshot eyes, shouting an oath of allegiance to the Jedi just before taking his own life

ㅡThwack!!!

However, the feeling of the sound that pierced Jason’s neck afterward

was much heavier than that of the sword piece.

What cut Jason’s neck in two was none other than Eugene’s greatsword,

he did not allow Jason the last free will of suicide.

“Sophist has become a group of fanatics.”

“Eugene, you saved me…?”

“Yeah, that’s how it turned out.”

“Ha… as an older sister, I was clumsy again…”

“Are you okay, Jeanne?”

“I’m not okay, your face is blurry…”

“Hearing you say that, you seem to be okay.”

That was all the conversation that took place between the two while Eugene supported Jeanne and came out of the cave.

Too many things had happened densely in a short moment,

and neither of them dared to touch that seemingly sensitive thread.

Eugene simply focused on saving Jeanne, who had been hit by an arrow,

and Jeanne tried not to lose consciousness.

“It’s the Commander!! The Commander and the Assault Captain are coming out together!!!!”

“Woooaaah!!! We’ve won!!!”

When they reached the end of the dark cave,

Eugene and Jeanne were greeted by the figures of their comrades, their silhouettes only visible against the light.

And the joyous cry of a familiar swordsman was heard.

As that cry echoed, the other comrades then shouted the cheers of quest clear.

“Oh no! The Commander has been hit by an arrow! Call the medic quickly! And Sophia too!!”

However, the cheers soon turned into a murmur.

It was because they saw Jeanne’s injured state as she walked out supported by Eugene.

Shield-Axeman Ivan quickly ran over to help support her,

and Thomas, who had come out first according to the agreed time, began to take measures in an orderly manner.

“Eugene, hyung! Are you hurt anywhere?”

Thomas, having finished giving urgent situation response orders, supported Eugene.

Eugene had no visible injuries,

but he looked a little worn out and tired.

“I’m okay. I’m not hurt anywhere. I’m just a little… tired. I’ll be better if I rest.”

Smile…!

Eugene showed a forced smile to Thomas, who was looking up at him with a worried expression while supporting him.

“…..”

After about an hour had passed,

Eugene, who had not even removed his armor yet,

was sitting blankly on a bench outside the Jebodang Village Cathedral.

“I told you to go inside the lodging prepared by the villagers, hyung.”

“Ah, I’m worried about the Commander. How’s the treatment going?”

This was because the treatment for Jeanne was being done in the cathedral.

“Peter uncle pulled out the arrow very cleanly. Then Sister Sophia went in to treat her. The first heal is going well. She said that all that’s left is the 2nd heal, which is the treatment of the external wound. So, thanks to that, the Commander is asleep.”

“That’s a relief. That’s really a relief.”

Thud…!

As Thomas told him the specific details of Jeanne’s treatment,

Eugene finally let out a sigh of relief and leaned his back against the wall.

“But the arrow stuck in the Commander wasn’t a goblin’s, was it? Did you perhaps run into the Sophists? The Claymore that the villagers witnessed?”

Thomas also felt that the urgent fire of the situation had been extinguished,

and cautiously asked what had happened to Eugene and Jeanne.

Thomas was already facing the crossbow used by the goblin,

so he could tell that the crossbow arrow stuck above Jeanne’s chest was definitely not a goblin’s.

Then, what flashed through Thomas’s quick mind

were the Sophists who had been recognized outside of Jebodang Village.

“That’s right. I think we ran into the guys the residents witnessed. I don’t think they were targeting us from the beginning, but it’s just a guess, but I think they came into the cave targeting the Crimson-Hair Sorcerer Goblin and found us.”

“Ah… I see… Then they must have come in through the hidden passage in the thicket. There was another loophole we didn’t know about. Priscilla caught the Sorcerer Goblin who was trying to escape through there.”

Eugene only told Thomas as much of the story as he could tell him right now.

At that, Thomas inferred the reason why the Sophists were able to enter, piercing through the Red Fox Mercenary Corps’ sight surrounding the goblin cave.

“We’ll collect the goblin corpses and the Sophist corpses. Hyung, please get a good rest at the village lodging.”

“Okay, then I’ll go in first. Please do some work.”

Swoosh…!

After exchanging a rough understanding of the situation with each other, Eugene got up from his seat.

‘For 12 years, that’s how I remembered it.’

Eugene headed to the lodging next to the Jebodang Village Community Center.

It was a building that had been rented in advance to hold a celebratory drink if the quest was successfully completed.

Eugene’s footsteps heading there

were different from when he was supporting Jeanne,

and different from when he was walking in front of Thomas, they were shuffling.

‘One day, I heard the news of my father’s death, and I confirmed it through my father’s broken sword.’

The memories of the past that he had suppressed for about an hour and a half in order to focus on Jeanne began to dominate his mind again.

‘I couldn’t even understand my own reaction. I didn’t even see my father’s body, but I accepted his death too easily.’

Nine-year-old Eugene Schneider, who had been hiding in the Schneider family’s secret villa on the fateful day,

that day he received the news of his father Ulysses Schneider’s death from his father’s best friend, Antoine Desselles Obleans.

Antoine said that he could not show Ulysses’ body because his body had been damaged by the influence of such a fierce battle.

He merely showed Eugene the broken appearance of the sword symbolizing Sword Saint Ulysses,

and the blood-stained armor.

In response, nine-year-old Eugene Schneider immediately accepted it to the point that even the few people around him found it strange.

Then, as time passed and he reached puberty, Eugene himself suddenly wondered about his reaction at the time in relation to that time.

‘I struggled to erase the father who had turned into a murderer from my mind, but I couldn’t completely delete him. So I already knew that my father had no choice but to die. That’s why I had no choice but to show that reaction.’

The reason he easily accepted it,

nine-year-old Eugene Schneider had already faced his father, who had turned into a murderer, before the fateful day.

Before Ulysses Schneider made the world noisy as a murderer,

his first act of murder took place at the Schneider mansion.

In that incident, Eugene saw his father standing in the middle of a carnage of corpses, with red eyes flashing and blood vessels protruding from his skin.

Furthermore, he directly made eye contact

and faced the corrupted Sword Saint right in front of him, who, in his madness, even drew a sword on his son and charged in.

‘It was my father who sent me to the secret villa.’

The appearance of his terrified son that he saw right in front of his eyes,

that made Ulysses Schneider grab onto the last thread of his reason.

But Eugene Schneider sealed away all of his father’s last moments in order to protect himself from the unbelievable memories of that day.

Thud!

Eugene, who had reached the lodging before he knew it, collapsed and lay down.

‘Why did my father look like that, why… why… why did a man praised as a Sword Saint become a bloodthirsty murderer…’

Eugene, who wanted to deny the many things in his memory from that day as if carving them out of his head through a defense mechanism,

perhaps the thing that Eugene wanted to deny the most was

the fact that his father may have chosen the path of a murderer himself.

That’s why he asked Jason if the source of the elixir that made him look like a demon was inside Sophist.

Rustle…!

With those unsolvable questions filling his head,

Eugene Schneider’s eyelids, who was too exhausted, slowly closed as if collapsing.

“Huh? Didn’t they say there were definitely four corpses? There are only two??”

The next morning,

after finishing collecting the goblin corpses, a shield soldier from the Red Fox Mercenary Corps was deployed to the Dark Forest Goblin Cave to collect the Sophist corpses.

However, there were only two Sophist corpses left in the place where the battle between Eugene and the Sophists had taken place, not four.