Chapter 49
At that very moment.
“My Lady!”
Knox, who had traveled through the portal immediately, called out for Aisha.
Given that she had taken the portal, he expected her to have naturally headed for the Duke’s Castle first.
“…….”
He rushed into the castle, but perhaps due to the emergency, the hallways were as silent as a tomb.
It was then.
“Master Knox!”
Brad the butler, who had been walking down the hall, turned pale the moment he saw him.
“Weren’t you with Lady Aisha at the Royal Palace? We surely sent an urgent message to your side….”
‘So she isn’t here.’
Knox felt a surge of frustration but didn’t let it show on his face.
“The Lady has moved to the North. She used the Royal Palace portal.”
“What? But the Lady is at the Duke’s Castle—”
Knox didn’t have time to listen to Brad’s explanation.
“If she’s not here, I’ll go out and look for her immediately.”
Hurrying past Brad, Knox exited the Duke’s Castle once more and surveyed the surroundings.
‘Where on earth did she go?’
He had jumped through the portal right after her to make sure he didn’t lose her, so shouldn’t he at least spot a glimpse of her yellow pigtails?
‘Surely she didn’t skip the castle entirely.’
Crost Duchy Castle was visible from the portal’s location. Even Aisha should have been able to find her way this far.
His restless gaze turned toward the End of the World.
In the distance, between the gaps in the Ice Wall, grey smoke was billowing up without end.
Grrrrrrrr—
The fact that he could faintly hear the roars of monsters from such a distance meant the subjugation was in full swing.
Which meant, surely.
‘She couldn’t have gone there.’
Knox tried to tell himself it wasn’t true, but his ominously thumping heart knew the truth.
If it was the Lady he knew, the moment she realized the situation, she would have run toward the End of the World to find her father.
She might have been a spy once, but she was a brave five-year-old who would risk her life to keep her word.
“Sigh….”
There was no helping it.
Grabbing a sword from a nearby armory, Knox ran toward the End of the World.
A short while later.
After running through the snow for a long time, a group of armed knights gradually came into view.
“…M-Master Knox?!”
“Master Knox. How did you get all the way here… and why are you holding a sword?”
This was the defense zone supporting the front lines.
Seeing that the knights—aside from the wounded lying on the ground—were mostly intact, it seemed the line hadn’t been breached yet.
“Where is His Excellency?”
Knox panted heavily.
“His Excellency is at the front line…”
Upon hearing the knight’s words.
“Master Knox! Where are you going alone?!”
Without giving the knight a chance to respond, he broke through the temporary iron fence and passed through the Ice Wall.
Guuuuuuuu—
“Over there!”
“Behind you, gah!”
“Watch out! The monsters have gone berserk! Everyone, maintain your distance!”
Passing through the Ice Wall, all he could see was white snow and red blood.
Amidst the intense contrasting colors, monsters five times larger than a human were roaring and rampaging even after being pierced by blades.
‘Your Excellency. Your Excellency, please.’
No matter where he looked, not a single person seemed at ease.
Uwaaaaah!
A knight stumbled back toward Knox following a sudden monster attack.
Quickly spinning away to avoid the collision, Knox ducked his upper body to dodge a stray arrow while running toward the front.
This was hell.
He didn’t know why the monsters’ frenzy had spread like this, but these were not the monsters he usually knew.
Every single one of them was acting strange. If they were stabbed by a sword, they should at least writhe in pain.
Instead, they kept moving as if hypnotized until their hearts stopped beating.
“Tsk, damn it.”
To make matters worse, as he neared the End of the World, the snowfall intensified until it was impossible to distinguish monster from knight.
It was then.
Kraaaaaa—
Along with a monster’s final roar, hot blood splattered across the ground.
Standing in the middle of the battlefield, Knox spotted a familiar silhouette.
A man who stood out even from a distance because of his height.
It was Calips.
“Your Excellency!”
When he shouted with all his might, Calips, who was driving his sword into a monster, turned his head.
The moment he saw Knox, Calips’s expression filled with bewilderment.
“Why are you here… Damn it! Move!”
But that was as far as it went.
Calips roughly shoved Knox aside and instantly froze a monster that had lunged toward them.
“…What are you doing here?! Did you not see the urgent message?!”
Knox’s heart sank at the Duke’s fierce roar.
But he had to speak.
Because something far more terrifying than Calips’s anger was the uncertainty of what might happen to Aisha.
“The Lady came through the portal.”
“…What?”
“The Lady came to the North through the portal! I was chasing after her!”
Calips’s ragged breathing stopped.
He stood still in the middle of the battlefield as if he had been paused, staring at Knox for a long time with slightly widened red eyes.
And then.
“…Aisha is here?”
He asked back in a cracked voice, as if he couldn’t believe it.
Damn it.
‘Even His Excellency doesn’t know. Then where on earth is the Lady…?’
It was then.
“Y-Your Excellency!”
Behind the frozen Calips, a massive silhouette suddenly rose.
It was the monster Calips had just killed with his sword.
Whether it still had a spark of life left or was acting on instinct, it lunged with a paw—its veins bursting even as it limped—to grab Calips’s ankle. At that moment.
“……?”
The monster stopped dead in its tracks.
“…What is this?”
“They were abnormal from the start. Don’t let your guard down!”
It was the same elsewhere.
As the monsters, who had been fighting to the death, stopped their movements all at once, the knights holding their swords looked around in confusion.
And then.
The monsters stepped back, one by one. As if they were clearing a path.
Almost like they were saluting a hero returning from a march.
“…….”
As the path opened naturally, Calips and Knox followed the white trail with their eyes as if possessed.
And at the end of that path.
“Papa!”
A young lady stood there, holding a small poisoned needle.
“…….”
The appearance of the young lady was truly bizarre.
A white snowfield stained with blood.
A path of fresh, white snow had been laid out before the child holding the needle.
Furthermore, every time the child took a step, the monsters watching her intently took a step back.
It was as if they were making way for Aisha.
“……?”
“…….”
The surrounding knights exchanged glances at the strange sight.
Calips and Knox did the same.
“Aisha!”
But quickly snapping back to his senses, Calips threw down his sword and ran toward Aisha.
“Oof.”
Her blue eyes rounded at the unexpected embrace.
Because he hugged her so urgently, Aisha let out a sharp gasp, but there was no way Calips would notice such a thing in this situation.
“Why are you here? I told you to stay in the Kingdom until things settled down. Why didn’t you listen?”
Even while holding her, he seemed restless, stroking the back of her golden head incessantly.
The surrounding knights fell silent at the Duke’s unexpectedly emotional reaction.
It was their first time seeing the Duke act so emotionally, and they were stunned by the surprising sight of him cherishing an adopted daughter—who shared no blood with him—as if she were his own.
Regardless, Aisha tried to say what she had to say.
“It’s not that I wanted to come—”
“In any case, what if something had gone wrong? If you came through the portal, you should have gone back or stayed put right in front of it. Dozens of people in the Kingdom were frantically looking for you; if you had just waited there, you would have been found. Why did you come all the way here alone?”
Of course, Calips’s voice only grew louder in his worry.
“…Your Excellency.”
Eventually, Knox approached quietly.
“There are many eyes watching. And the situation isn’t fully over yet.”
As he spoke, Knox scanned the surroundings.
Was it not over?
No. The situation was already finished.
One by one, the monsters, who had suddenly lost their will to fight, were leaving the vicinity of the Ice Wall.
“…….”
It wasn’t because of Aisha.
It was surely because of that cat.
Glancing down, he saw a white cat sitting on the snowy field.
Since the moment it appeared, it had been looking up only at Aisha.
The cat didn’t seem to have much on its mind.
It simply looked as though it were waiting for Aisha, currently held in Calips’s arms, to come back down.