13 – dream
“Ah, master. My own master.”
A hand that was melting like jelly stroked my cheek. Every time their fingers touched and fell, pieces of flesh smeared on their cheeks.
The skin, no, something embarrassing to even call it skin, could not bear its own weight and fell off with the movement of the arm.
Even after that, my mouth was constantly moving, but all of it didn’t make sense.
The lips puckered and disappeared, the gums and teeth were exposed, and the inside of the throat seemed to have started to melt.
Soon, the flesh, blood vessels, and muscles that made up the arms all melted away, revealing the bony bones. Before long, even that bone slowly rotted away and collapsed.
The sight of a single human being melting alive was unfolding before my eyes.
In the human form slowly but surely turning into liquid, it was the two round eyes that kept their place until the end.
His eyes were fixed on me until the moment when all the flesh that supported him melted away. However, it didn’t last long before it fell to the floor and rolled across the other side.
Right before meeting its end, the liquid that was a human squeezed out its last words. There was no fear, no fear, no despair, no sadness in that voice. It was a voice full of joy, joy, and happiness.
“I love you. My—”
My eyes opened with a loud kudang-tang sound. I felt a cool sensation in the back of my head, and my neck was bent down.
It smelled of dirt and grass right next to it. It was faster for my body to transmit pain signals than to figure out what situation I was in with my head. A tingling pain came from the back of my neck and back of my head as I touched the floor.
The body was turned upside down. The lower body is half-draped on a long chair, but the upper body is rolling on the street.
From the looks of it, it seemed that he had fallen asleep on a chair and struggled and fell headfirst to the floor.
I forcibly lowered my lower body to the floor with force in my legs, and there was a popping sound.
I didn’t have the strength to get up, so I lay down on the street in a daze and stared at the sky. Unlike my gloomy heart, the still gloomy sky was clear without a single cloud.
This is a dream I had for years. 10 years? 20 years? maybe more?
First of all, one thing is for sure, no matter how many years this has been a dream, I’m glad I didn’t listen until the end.
If I had listened to the last words, as soon as I woke up, I would have pulled out a knife and slashed my head.
I forcibly moved my trembling hands and touched the floor. Perhaps it was right after I had such a bad dream, but my body didn’t have enough energy.
My legs trembled all the time I got up, and my knees almost broke several times. I leaned my back against a tree and took a few breaths.
I shuddered at the feeling of reviving the sensations I had forgotten. Nausea came up. I couldn’t stand it and vomited into the air a few times, and it felt like my stomach was calming down.
I wiped my lips and leaned over to the tree behind me again.
Now it was time for the castle to wake up. If anyone saw me standing like this since dawn, I would be treated like a crazy person, but I don’t want to see who is around me.
There was no reason to look around and sleep. After all, if Charlotte or Serena decide to keep an eye on me secretly, it’s impossible for me to notice.
And if he had seen me like this, he would have come running right away and asked what was going on instead of watching me from afar.
Then, the remaining vigilance targets are the butlers, servants, or royal knights who work in this castle, and to those people, I literally don’t have them.
It means not recognizing its existence.
I can’t see myself with my own eyes, I can’t hear footsteps or voices, and if I smell it, I can’t smell it either.
Even if I openly touch all kinds of places, of course I don’t recognize the fact, and I’ve never tried it, but even if I put my finger in my mouth, I can’t feel anything.
It was because of the existence erasure magic that Charlotte had cast. In this castle, only Charlotte and Serena can perceive my presence.
All Royal Knights, with no exceptions, have the magic of obliterating their existence, but Serena just chewed away the magic with her own power.
The reason was that, at least in this castle, other insignificant things didn’t even want to look at me.
In my heart, I wanted to erase the existence of me from all humans on the continent and let only myself know about it, but I endured it.
It’s not just empty words, it’s even more frightening that it’s possible if you really put your mind to it.
“Did you really fall asleep?”
He groaned and tore his back from the tree. It was fortunate that I felt somewhat calmed down while doing Sim Ho-Hum a few times.
Before I could hear the last words in my heart, I gave sarcastic compliments to this damn body that kept me awake.
Now, it looks like I won’t be able to sleep for at least 3 or 4 years. That doesn’t mean you’ll die or get tired.
He grabbed his throbbing head and moved on. Perhaps this direction was the training ground for the Royal Knights.
Originally, I wanted to go around more leisurely, but now I wasn’t in the mood to be relaxed. I felt like I would just keep dreaming if I stayed relaxed. I wanted to force myself to do something or roll my body.
Fortunately, it seemed to be headed in the right direction. The closer we got to the back of the castle, the louder the sound of things colliding and shouting.
It was the time when the gloomy colors were about to clear and the surroundings were about to brighten up, but it was sincerity worthy of the kingdom’s elite troops. Finally, as we turned the corner, the scenery of the training ground came into view.
The training ground behind the castle was already full of knights in training. As if they couldn’t fight each other while wearing special armor and real swords, each of them was carrying wooden swords in appropriate steel armor.
Of course, even that modest armor was of a quality comparable to the armor of quite a few advanced adventurers.
Leather armor and a wooden sword properly wrapped with mana are stronger than steel armor and a steel sword without mana, so there shouldn’t be any problem with that outfit.
At the position of Commander of the Royal Knights, which reached the pinnacle of mana management, he could tear steel with his bare hands.
True to the name of the Royal Knights, the movements of the knights were beyond imagination.
I couldn’t even keep up with the speed with which I swung my sword, but there was even a moment when I reacted and slashed them all, attacking them in reverse.
Every time the wooden swords collided with each other, mana splashed in all directions.
Perhaps there was an agreement to compete only in pure swordsmanship, so no skill was exchanged between them.
Since it doesn’t seem to be a training ground with protective magic, it seemed that they were concerned that the area would be devastated if they used their skills here.
And among the countless knights, the one who stands out the most is Serena.
First of all, she is one of the few female knights, and she has overwhelming beauty that can be seen from a distance and her swordsmanship skills commensurate with it.
A bonus is the slender limbs that are exposed under the plain short sleeves and shorts that are not even wearing armor.
Five or six knights, who seemed to be many-on-one sparring, were attacking at the same time, but Serena evaded or blocked all of the attacks, showing off an overwhelming difference in skill.
Even the attack from behind was useless to Serena.
If the other knights’ swords couldn’t see and react, but they could still see it, Serena’s sword was at a level where they couldn’t even see it.
As soon as the wooden sword aimed at Serena, it disappeared, and with the dull sound of hitting something with the wooden sword, the attacker rolled on the floor clutching his forearm, thigh, or calf.
The number of knights lying on the ground nearby was approaching twenty, but Serena still refused to allow a single attack.
The knights who attacked again and again, suppressing their pain, were beaten by wooden swords exactly as many times as they attacked.
Suddenly, Serena’s eyes met. Serena’s body confirmed my appearance, and a level of mana that was incomparable to that of before spurted out.
The moment the knights around were startled and tried to look at Serena, Serena disappeared from her seat and appeared as if teleporting to a place a few steps away from me, politely getting down on one knee and bowing her head.
It was after that that the sound of the blow was heard.
baek! Dozens of hitting sounds were heard overlapping, and at the same time, all the knights in the training ground rolled into place. Seeing her body trembling and drooping, I didn’t want to wake up like that for a while.
Of course I couldn’t see it, but maybe those knights couldn’t react even if they knew that Serena was attacking.
Kneeling on one knee and holding one hand in front of her chest, Serena lifted her bowed head and met my eyes.
“What brought you to this humble place, my lord?”
“For some reason, I came to pick you up.”
“You mean me?”
As if unexpectedly, Serena’s eyes widened slightly.
“Why are you so surprised? There’s still work to be done. You and me.”
“If you say it’s something that needs to be dealt with?”
“Dragon. Have you forgotten why you came to see me?”
“I remember. It’s just that I was a little surprised when he said it was something I had to deal with.”
“It was unexpected, what do you mean by that?”
It was inconvenient for me to talk while kneeling like this, so I signaled with my hand to stand up and Serena got up.
Despite the sparring just before, Serena’s body was not sweaty. Breathing was also calm, like someone who had been resting for a while.
“It meant that it was surprising that your lord was still concerned with the affairs of that rude lord. You were the one who insulted me for serving her. I just knew you didn’t care.”
“……ah.”
While I was just thinking of an excuse, I walked slowly to meet the time, but you can interpret it like this.
Well, from Serena’s point of view, even though she heard everything she had done, it would have seemed like she was walking slowly, saying it was no big deal.
Serena, who didn’t pay much attention to those around her, could have mistaken it for nothing.
“Still, you went to the position of the 1st Knight Commander of the royal family. You have to deal with it. It must have been a mess by now.”
I’m going to take care of my side of things. If you ask why you came so soon, you can answer that you met with the 1st Knight Commander of the Royal Family and came back halfway.
Even if I questioned it, Serena would vouch for the authenticity of my words, so I wouldn’t dare doubt it.
… … But now that I’m talking about it, I feel anxious that the city might be a lot more shit than I thought.
First of all, the manor house was cut in half, several soldiers had their heads cut by Serena, cracks suddenly appeared in the sky, and the dragon problem could not be solved, but the royal knight commander who was said to have come to support has disappeared somewhere.
It’s fortunate that the lord didn’t faint when he saw the sky splitting past his eyes, or that he woke up right away even if he fainted.
The problem is when you’ve passed out and haven’t woken up yet. If there is no one to deal with it, another strange rumor may circulate. In the worst case, there was even a possibility that the lord would lose trust.
For now, I can only hope that the lord did not faint. Dragons are a very sensitive subject.
He must have talked with Serena alone, so Serena said to the lord that he had heard it wrong, and pushed it with authority to confuse him, and reassured him that he searched the forest while he was gone, but the dragon left.
It’s a little shameful to cut off the knights’ throats, but blame them.
Serena lowered her head again as she was thinking of a scenario to deal with the situation in her head.
“If my lord says so, I will follow.”
“Okay. First, tell Charlotte to open the warp gate—”
“Elizabeth, Commander of the 1st Knights?”
I heard a voice calling Serena from the other side of the training ground.
Soon after, a female knight with red hair appeared. After scanning the groaning knights scattered all over the training ground, he kicked the ground at Serena with a distorted face.
The red-haired female knight, who had shortened the distance of several tens of meters in an instant with a single run, arrived in front of Serena and looked straight ahead with her arms crossed with a sullen face.
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Just looking at it, it was an expression that said, “I’m angry right now.” No, he’s blatantly faster than that. Is it normal for the royal knights to have body acceleration efficiency like that?
“Did the commander of the knights do something?”
There was no object in the sentence, but the target was obvious. You must be referring to the knights scattered around the training ground.
Serena must have noticed the meaning behind the question, so she glanced at the training ground and nodded in affirmation.
“Yes.”
“Why did you do that?”
“I have no obligation to tell you?”
As Serena drew a line, the red-haired female knight’s eyebrows twitched slightly.
“Then, there is a definite reason, but I’ll take it as meaning that it’s a secret reason that I can’t tell even to myself, the 7th Knight Commander.”
“Do whatever you want. When you’re done with what you have to say, get out of here.”
Perhaps it was because her conversation with me was interrupted, but Serena’s tone was sharp.
The red-haired female knight, who asked politely but was returned with a curse, further distorted his expression. The fingers on her arms moved up and down nervously.
“It’s not just the Royal Knights who have excellent abilities, Commander Elizabeth Knights. The honor and dignity befitting him—”
“Shut up, Alessia Beneviento.”
Serena paused and growled. The name of that red-haired female knight was Alessia. I just found out. When Serena suddenly got angry, Alessia paused and responded as if she was full of energy.
“Now you’re getting angry in reverse. What on earth did I do wrong to make you angry again? Are you trying to hide it because you got stabbed? You didn’t even tell us why you did that during training, and our number 1 What more would the Knight Commander want to hide from us?”
“This is your last warning, Beneviento. If you insult my lord one more time, I won’t let you go.”
“Insult? When do you think I insulted His Majesty? Rather, isn’t Captain Elizabeth insulting Her Majesty even more for doing such a thing to the knights who serve him?”
Oh, that’s a landmine. Sensing that fact, as soon as I let out a sigh, mana began to rise from Serena’s body.
