Chapter Chapter 29: RATH 29 TL: Eevee (1/2)
RATH 29
TL: Eevee
TN: Important news about the future of this project: see Release Notes for details.
4. The others’ stories (3)
#5 Their story: Sia nel Karuan’s story.
“Can you hear me?”
“Ah….”
What I saw as I opened my eyes to my familiar subordinate’s voice was a black ceiling.
That’s right. I came. I came…
That thought kept circulating around my head.
-Once you wake up you will already be at your house.
He’s still as bad as ever.
To think he’d say that to me, an orphan without a home or a place to go back to.
There’s only one place I want to go back to.
“By any chance, he wasn’t caught by the princess, was he?”
“Indeed. The person that defeated the Sword Star was deduced as Sir Ast… I mean Instructor Naruan and was pursued, but was revealed as captain’s peer Rein.”
“Ha? Rein beat the Sword Saint? He was the weakest of all of us?”
“That was what was reported to us.”
Since they’d already gotten that far, Master will already have defeated the Sword Star. Since she was unconscious enough for even Rein to carry the Sword Star probably wasn’t in her most optimal condition. But she’s still the Sword Star.
Since the Sword Star’s an opponent that would be impossible for Rein to beat if she as awake.
In that case…
“He must have handed over the bat.”
“Huh?”
“It exists. Humanity’s strongest weapon.”
Then that makes sense.
He could probably neutralise the Sword Saint in one strike with that.
I had the help of my own secretly trained forces and the emperor’s direct shadows, as well as the princess’s help.
The numbers were over 200.
I even had them hide their bodies in the dark and used less torches to have him underestimate our numbers.
But master was always one step ahead of me. And the unfortunate truth was that he was one step ahead of me in the critical moment as well.
To be honest I was uneasy.
Our Master who wasn’t more outstanding than anyone, became the most outstanding for that reason, and our Master that was careless, became more careful than anyone because of that.
He would use any method to erase his weaknesses, and always develop new strengths.
Master always did the things that sounded easy, yet hard to actually realize.
Because of that, in all honesty this operation made me uneasy, and in some aspects it went as expected.
“Casualties?”
“Amazingly, none. Even our allies that were hit by friendly fire in the confusion were treated. To be honest… I still don’t know what it was that we fought against.”
“Then again, that sounds about right.”
Firstly, it hurts when you’re hit.
Even I who endured during all sorts of training couldn’t avoid that pain.
But funnily enough that was also treatment.
Once, just once when Maren suffered a critical wound during training, Master brought out the metal bat.
Ah, now that I think about it that was also the first time I saw the metal bat.
-In, instructor! Even so that’s too far!
-Sending him off comfortably would be… huh?
-Is he hurting him because he didn’t finish training… eh?
We all had to look at that scene with both our eyes wide open.
He was screaming and despairing as he hysterically laughed in pain as his sides were torn and his guts were spilling out, but we were stupefied as we saw the injury miraculously heal itself in front of our eyes as it was hit.
-Kill, kill me… just, kill me…
-Now, my disciples. You can get injured. There’s even a way to heal you. So rest assured.
Master’s smile then made even me who loved Master more than anyone else unconsciously take a step back, and the impact of the metal bat I felt not long after that even momentarily turned my loving heart into a murderous one.
And Maren who was crawling on the ground after suffering treatment from the metal bat survived. Much too perfectly fine.
To the extent that he woke up fresher than us the next morning. For the record, because of the trauma from this incident, he rejected countless love calls from paramilitary groups, and strongly pushed for a desk job and so went into Internal Affairs. He had become afraid of getting injured.
“Fu… fuhu…. Huhuhu…. Yes, hm. You wouldn’t know.”
“Miss Sia?”
As I looked at the ceiling I ignored my laughter that leaked through my lips.
Although it might seem somewhat unbecoming of a woman to laugh like that, for some reason I just want to keep laughing like this.
“Yes, Master is… an enigma.”
“An enigma?”
“Yes, Master is the unknown itself! He’s someone we simply cannot understand.”
I couldn’t understand with any common logic. No matter how long I’d been looking at him I still couldn’t understand.
Whether Master’s name was Naruan, Ast, Herman, Esedna.
Or maybe even something else I didn’t know about. No one knew.
The territory that Master used to live in had already long been burnt to the ground by the Empire, and Master’s traces that I tracked him by differed with every lead. What was more, when I stole records of someone else’s observations of Master and compared them to my own, all our records were different.
Sometimes, I despaired that I knew nothing about Master.
Sometimes, I feared that I meant nothing to Master.
Sometimes, I felt an emptiness wondering if the Master I knew and loved really existed.
So I was embarrassed, but went to ask Master himself.
-Master, Master!
-Instructor.
-Yes, instructor. I wanted to ask you something.
-Your training is already more or less complete, but very well. What is it.
-What is love? Does love exist? Then why does love change?
-Whew… and you suddenly came to me for this.
As if he couldn’t be bothered, or perhaps thought it ridiculous, but, he answered my question seriously.