Chapter 71

"...Grace..."

This iteration had seemed somewhat stable.

Whether it was bringing Aisling away from the east, or Schützenfest.

"...Grace!"

There were regrets, but not enough to warrant regression.

With each regression, his body was becoming more and more like garbage.

"...ur Grace, Your...!"

Ah, but could he actually regress?

It wasn't Yurik who killed him. If the bizarre bird that kidnapped him was one commanded by Yurik, that would be different, but if Yurik hadn't appeared...

"Your Grace, Your Grace! W-wake up!"

"Aaahhhhh! I'm alive!"

"Y-you've regained c-consciousness, Your Grace! Th-thank goodness."

No regression!

He bolted upright and felt his body, but it was intact.

Nothing was broken or shattered. He was alive!

Beside him, Amelia was folding her hands and continuously offering prayers of thanks to someone.

Amelia was here too. That was a relief.

"Amelia, where are we?"

The place where he and Amelia were was a round room made entirely of gray stone.

There was something like a staircase on the other side, but it had been gradually breaking apart from the middle, as if it hadn't been maintained for a long time.

Amelia shook her head with an anxious face.

"I d-don't r-really know. After the b-bird fell, we landed in the s-snow, but the bird w-wasn't dead, and I f-felt a strange p-presence nearby, so I m-moved Your Grace to the first b-building I saw."

"Presence?"

"I d-don't know exactly, b-but roughly d-dangerous."

He couldn't gauge where they had fallen with the bizarre bird.

One clear fact was that they had crossed the northern border.

The snow field Amelia mentioned was likely the snow plain said to appear from the entrance to the north.

So, they had arrived in the north, leaving Russel behind.

"There w-were no p-people around. And with the d-dark weather and s-snow falling, it was d-difficult to secure visibility."

"It's okay. We'll know where we are once we look around. It might be an abandoned building with no one around."

"Y-Your Grace. What s-should we do?"

"First... shall we go up and see?"

He looked up as he said that.

The ceiling of this room was much higher than the ducal residence.

In other words, it was a kind of tower with a cylindrical structure.

Given that Amelia had carried him and entered directly, the tower probably wasn't locked.

Then there might still be traces of people.

"Let's go up and scout from the top. If the weather is a problem, we can wait until then."

"Y-yes!"

He and Amelia began to climb the stairs attached to the tower wall.

The sound of the wind fiercely howling outside could be heard even inside the tower.

Amelia went across the collapsed areas first and then helped him cross.

How far had they climbed?

When he pushed up the lid of the ceiling at the top floor where faint light was seeping in,

"Ugh."

A wind that seemed to cut into his flesh struck his face.

The bone-chilling cold seeped through the gaps no matter how tightly he wrapped his cloak.

His frozen eyes stung sharply as they whipped across his cheeks, and he was momentarily overwhelmed by the passing blizzard.

A dark, purplish-gray sky,

A vast white frozen land spread out against the hazy firmament, where it was impossible to tell whether it was day or night.

No vegetation, no people, nothing.

Just the border of a kingdom made entirely of ice and snow.

"This is the north..."

His breath rose white but was swept away by the wind.

Looking around, it was impossible to see far, as Amelia had said.

However, structures of similar size stood on either side of this tower.

"M-maybe a w-watchtower?"

"It might be. If this place isn't far from the border."

Should he be grateful that they hadn't fallen into the center of the north?

At this point, they might be able to return easily.

The black horn hanging around his neck.

There was a way to return to that campsite right here.

"Y-Your Grace? A-are you f-feeling unwell?"

"No, I'm fine. Let's go down for now. It's too cold."

It was a headache thinking about what excuse to make to Amelia, and what to tell Russel.

Besides, Amelia was just a woman who knew nothing about the Duchess or him.

If he hadn't brought her in, she would have died or slowly died from drug addiction like in the previous iteration.

He was about to go down again with Amelia's escort.

But before he could even raise his hand to Amelia's,

"Your Grace!"

A huge shadow was cast over his head.

Amelia embraced him and threw herself in another direction.

And simultaneously, a heavy thudding sound and a familiar terrible cry were heard from the direction where he had been standing.

"W-what is this!"

"I-it's the b-bird!"

The bird, which had lost an eye, had half of its head smeared with black bodily fluid.

The single remaining green eyeball was burning with rage.

It gripped the railing of the watchtower top with its talons and let out an angry roar.

Die if he showed his back, die if he stayed here.

He was used to dying. But if Amelia died here, he wouldn't be able to see her again.

Then he needed to send Amelia down first and become the bait himself.

It would be painful, but there was no choice.

Just as he was grabbing her arms, which were tightly embracing him, to push her behind him,

"Amel... Amelia?"

Something was strange.

He had certainly thought she would be surprised, scared, or trembling.

She released him and walked in front of him on her own.

Standing between him and the Shantak, she drew the daggers she had at both sides of her waist.

One was an ordinary dagger, the other was the demonic beast weapon Arndt had given her.

"Your Grace, p-please go down n-now."

"Amelia."

"If you s-stay here, you'll be in the w-way. P-please. I'll c-come down soon t-too."

He was supposed to just go like this?

But there was the Shantak, drooling, in front of Amelia, making it difficult to speak to her further.

And there was also the strangely calm Amelia.

He involuntarily nodded and ran down to the lower floor.

If Amelia was buying time by sacrificing her life,

He intended to repay that in his own way.

* * *

After confirming that Arenheit had safely descended, Amelia adjusted her grip on the daggers.

The cold was so intense that her hands naturally began to curl.

She couldn't remain in a standoff here for long.

Besides, Arenheit Duke had no means to protect himself from whatever might come up from below.

"H-he's a c-completely different p-person from the D-Duchess..."

During their first meeting, she had thought they resembled each other a bit.

But she changed her mind when she saw him simply going along with his servants who talked back or retorted.

He was too soft and kind to be the only blood relative of the Duchess.

That's why he had been trying his best to come forward in front of her earlier.

"B-but if that h-happened, the l-late Duchess would h-have struck him d-down."

She had received too many favors from the Duchess.

Truly, literally countless.

Yet, she had betrayed the Duchess.

Blinded by mere love, too excited by the thought that she too could experience love.

But wasn't it time now to repay that favor?

The dagger twisted in Amelia's hand.

She lowered her stance and glared at the massive bizarre bird.

As she had realized when climbing on it earlier, the scales were as hard as an alloy.

With even the wings covered in scales, the places where a knife could penetrate were limited.

If so.

Her body moved like lightning.

The small body that soared into the sky was accurate and sharp.

Her body, which spun once in midair, aimed for the single eye of the bizarre bird that had raised its head to follow her trajectory.

The arrow was small but lethal, and the target was soft but large.

A sound that made every hair on her body stand on end echoed in the northern sky.

'Not enough.'

Amelia, who had calmly accepted the disgusting sensation, was thrown far away as the head swung.

The sound of her shoe soles and stones creating friction was covered by a thumping noise.

The monster was charging at full speed towards her.

Now blind, it would have to rely on sound.

She dodged the first headbutt by jumping to the side.

The railing collapsed, and stone fragments flew in all directions.

Along with that, the bizarre bird's head shook from side to side.

'Low intelligence too.'

Attacking Arenheit, who was alone, after seeing the light would have been instinct, not intelligence.

Born inherently cunning and sly, it was proven that there was hardly a brain in that head.

Amelia picked up a stone that had rolled to her feet and threw it hard in another direction.

The bizarre bird's head turned that way, and it trembled with a cry that seemed to tear.

Taking advantage of that gap, she jumped up once more and, like an acrobat, climbed onto the bizarre bird's neck.

Even as she was being shaken from side to side, she repeatedly stabbed the boundary between the head and neck with her dagger.

-Kang, kkang!

After swinging it a couple of times, the tip of the dagger became miserably blunt.

Meanwhile, the bizarre bird went berserk, smashing its head against the railing.

Amelia, unable to avoid the impact, slipped from the neck but managed to hang on.

"In that case...!"

The dagger entrusted by Arndt gleamed in her left hand.

Even soaked in blood, it never lost its luster, and Amelia stabbed it from the reverse direction of the scales.

-Kigigik!

Unbelievably, there was a noise of metal scraping against metal.

A sword forged with demonic beast teeth couldn't fail to penetrate a mere single thin scale of a bizarre bird.

A rare expression of ecstasy bloomed on Amelia's face.

Once, twice, three times!

The bizarre bird, literally went wild with a pain it had never experienced before.

It rolled on the floor and crashed its body against the railing to try to shake Amelia off, but Amelia's desperate effort was stronger.

In the end, it tried to fly into the sky, but it was too late a decision.

Black bodily fluid gushed like a fountain from the bizarre bird's neck, and even drenched in it, Amelia didn't stop.

Finally, the bizarre bird staggered, let out a long, high-pitched cry towards the sky, and then laid its massive body down.

Only then did Amelia let go and roll onto the floor.

"I-it's over..."

Amelia, who had barely risen, looked at the black bodily fluid still gurgling out of the bizarre bird and wiped her face.

Suddenly, the dagger in her hand caught her eye.

The dagger gleaming subtly like a star.

Luxurious, but its power was not to be underestimated.

Amelia looked down at it and then hugged it tightly to her chest.

This dagger saved me.

You saved me.

And to think he gave it with such a disgruntled face.

What a cute person!

A pink blush bloomed on Amelia's face.