.｡.:✧ Chapter 21 ✧:.｡.

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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: FusionX
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“…You, that?”

Recalling that Adele and Lothos, who were blankly staring at me, did not know about my previous runs,

it reminded me that something like this had happened before.

In that cold snowy field, the two who had witnessed this blue flash had also shown such expressions.

Back then, I was quite arrogant, calling myself a genius and dismissing it.

Should I say the same this time? But seeing their faces demanding an explanation, my heart strangely softened.

There were many awkward aspects to simply calling it talent.

“There are many awkward aspects to calling it talent.”

“If you had wielded a sword without my knowledge, that could be the case. But your hands are soft.”

“…It’s difficult to explain right now.”

As my gaze turned upward, Adele’s eyes also turned towards the building where Jay lived.

She must have realized that the time was approaching soon.

There were probably people moving towards that place.

“We need to save a life, don’t we?”

“Is what you’re trying to tell me also a secret to you?”

A secret. I wasn’t particularly trying to hide it.

It was just that I didn’t find it pleasant to be treated as a mentally ill person.

The absurd reality of a person dying 100 times and regressing.

Always returning to a summer day at the age of twenty, repeating a miserable death.

Even if I borrowed the power of a relic, who would believe that?

“Speak, don’t just stare blankly.”

The woman named Adele was someone who had been entangled with me through countless fates.

If such a person saw me as a lunatic…

Well, it wouldn’t feel very good. So I was hiding it.

Because I wanted those eyes not to hold disgust and contempt towards me. I had no choice but to call my past a secret.

“It’s a… secret.”

“Is that so?”

Although her face showed dissatisfaction, Adele, who understood, nodded and smiled brightly.

I was grateful that she smiled like that.

If any suspicion had remained, I might have made a mistake out of discomfort.

“Then I won’t ask. Should we wait here?”

“You’re planning to wait?”

“Don’t leave until I tell you to.”

After staring at me for a moment, she added with a faint smile.

“And don’t run away alone again.”

“…Alright.”

I felt indebted to her in many ways.

If she had asked about each detail, it would have been troublesome, but I never imagined she wouldn’t ask just because it was a secret.

I bowed my head to the woman gazing at me with as much courtesy as possible.

Thinking that someday, I would definitely tell her about my past.

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Tap, the footsteps climbing the building were light.

I had become so accustomed to this covert activity that perhaps I could even climb with my eyes closed.

Taking two steps here and one more step, I could reach the window.

Indeed, the balcony was caught at my fingertips, so I pulled my arm and headed upward.

I had experience wielding a sword, but my body was clumsy.

Just climbing up made my arms ache like this.

I always thought this, but wasn’t this a terrible body?

Fortunately, it wasn’t a lack of stamina.

If I added the realm I had achieved to that, I would be able to splendidly subdue the assailants who would soon arrive.

Climbing onto the balcony and looking inside, I noticed Jay still asleep.

Lying on the bed, wrapped in a blanket, snoring softly… Was it her original fate to be stabbed to death while sleeping like that?

She was a woman with a truly strange destiny. Perhaps not as much as me, though.

“If I move one more step here, the alarm will go off.”

Her mana was specialized in barriers and illusions.

Although each person had mana specialized in a certain field, I knew it was rare for it to be focused on such auxiliary abilities like hers.

A barrier that would sound an evacuation alarm to her if I stretched out my hand even a little.

Since I had touched it and woken her up before, I needed to move carefully this time.

Because Jay was not someone who could easily calm down once she realized her life was threatened.

I didn’t know how I saved her last time.

Didn’t I even knock her out and fight just because she made a fuss when I was only holding a sword?

Waiting for a moment to sense any presence around, soon shadows began to squirm from below the building.

It wasn’t just a feeling.

They were really moving, seeping into this building while squirming.

No matter when I saw it, it was a truly mysterious movement.

Although I could guess the employer because of that movement, it was quite tricky to deal with at first.

“…Four.”

This number didn’t change.

Deploying four assassins just to kill one woman, they must have been asked to handle it definitively. None other than by the Crown Prince.

I found out about this fact in the previous turn.

When I investigated the people who could hire assassins one by one and didn’t find an answer, I searched from the top and found the Crown Prince’s name.

Why did that name come up so many times?

Adele, me, and this alchemist. We all died because of the Crown Prince.

What would he gain by killing so many people?

The Crown Prince held an absolute advantage in the succession to the throne.

Since the current emperor had only one son, there was only one heir.

There were many possible reasons, but that wasn’t enough to explain it…

Thud-

“I can think about it later.”

Before beheading the Crown Prince, I could ask him then.

No matter how much I pondered over it, nothing would change unless I did it directly.

Wasn’t that the lesson I had learned through countless lives?

Pressing my forehead, I moved my steps to follow where the earlier shadows had gone.

It was easy to remember the location of the barrier.

Avoiding it, I took a position in the passageway leading to Jay’s room.

Click, click.

Perhaps they had no intention of hiding even their own footsteps now. The moment I drew my sword, they must have noticed it too.

That there was an uninvited guest here.

I also had no intention of hiding, so the flames that burned the darkness flickered in the air.

“……”

What appeared in that darkness were three. Even as our eyes met, they still maintained their silence.

I had always experienced such things.

But if there was a difference from before, it was that this sword could withstand my mana.

Swoosh-

A line was drawn in the air in an instant.

Like a butterfly landing on a flower, the assassins couldn’t react to the movement that was too natural.

That was their mistake. Letting their guard down for a moment.

When that fleeting moment passed,

blood spurted from the neck of one assassin.

As the assassin’s body, staring at me with bloodshot eyes, crumbled like that, a sword surged towards me.

Two swords pouring towards me… no, three.

I watched as even the assassin who had been hiding revealed himself and attacked.

Chwaa- The sword on my wrist sprang out and sprayed poison.

If it touched me even a little, my body would be paralyzed, so I twisted my body.

As if spinning, my body rotated in the air, and the sword moved along with it.

It was different from my prediction. My body reacted because it was an attack I already knew.

If they had truly used an unpredictable attack, I might have reacted.

However, even in the few rundI had repeated, the assassins always used the same moves.

One dies, and three stab their swords simultaneously. I avoid that attack by twisting my body.

Chwaaak-! Only after one assassin’s arm was severed did their eyes turn serious.

They must have let their guard down because they knew my face.

Robert Taylor couldn’t deflect their attacks.

How did I know? The answer to that question was simple.

“Crown Prince.”

I beheaded the assassin who momentarily flinched.

Two remained, and I chuckled at the gaze that seemed to ask how I knew that name.

They must not have liked that smile, as the assassins simultaneously lunged at my chest.

I avoided it by dragging my foot back. Kicking off the ground, I simultaneously lowered my head to dodge the sword slashing from behind.

‘The same.’

Whoosh! The sword drawing a circular trajectory headed downward.

My gaze still lingered on the tip of the sword.

Because I knew it would change its trajectory here too.

The reaction wasn’t much different from before.

Kwashik-!

I thrust upward before the sword touched.

The sword imbued with mana pierced the heart, and the body of the assassin spitting out blood crumbled.

Then silence fell.

Only one person was left to point a sword at me, but even he had lost his fighting spirit and was just standing there blankly.

Was there no difference this time too?

As I turned around, scattering the blood on the sword, I saw the face of the masked assassin.

“Who the hell… are you?”

As I wiped the blood from my face, the assassin, who had been staring at me in a daze, asked back.

Even if it was just a moment, three had died in that good timing.

But I was not included in those three.

It must be surprising. The Robert Taylor they knew was just a foolish young master.

Sighing at the answer I had heard too many times, I opened my mouth.

“Robert Taylor.”

“…I know. But are you really Robert Taylor?”

“You won’t believe me anyway. No matter what I answer.”

Chwak-

I knew the following dialogue. So there was no need to listen.

As I approached, the assassin, momentarily startled, gripped his sword, but that was all.

His head had already fallen to the ground.

I looked at the head that had died with eyes wide open.

I had already found out everything I needed to know from them in the previous run.

Torturing directly wasn’t a good experience in many ways.

I was the one doing the torture, but wasn’t it just as painful to recall the memories I had experienced?

I didn’t sense any more presence around.

Those far away would be Lothos and Adele, so I could let my guard down.

Just as I was about to back away, thinking of Jay who would wake up soon, I felt movement behind me.

“You, what…?”

When I turned my head, I saw a woman who was no different from a child.

I didn’t expect her to wake up now. Frowning as if it was a blunder, I thought about my current situation for a moment.

A hallway stained with blood, a man holding a severed head and a sword in one hand.

I wasn’t wearing a mask, but what would she think of me, who had entered without triggering the barrier?

After observing those round, wide eyes and seeing her mouth open wide, I answered.

“I came to save you.”

I didn’t know if she would believe me, but if I didn’t say at least this much, she would scream.

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“Ahhh… my room.”

Jay sobbed as she looked at the hallway that was not just stained but drenched in blood.

She did scream at Robert’s words,

but she only quieted down after seeing that man trying to swing his sword.

If he were an assassin, he would have killed her long ago.

But if he wasn’t an assassin, how did he get in here?

There were many strange aspects, but she didn’t ask any further.

That man had killed those assassins alone.

It was a familiar face, but could it be that even that was actually concealed by magic…? Various delusions swirled in Jay’s mind.

Fortunately, the potion bottles were not damaged.

Only this hallway was splattered with flesh.

Of course, it wasn’t comforting, but the important thing was that she had been saved from the threat.

And by… Robert Taylor, no less.

Jay knew about this man well too.

She had definitely heard he was the black sheep of the Taylor family, but was he really the same person?

That suspicious face was quite strange, so Robert narrowed his eyes and opened his mouth.

“I am the Robert you know. The black sheep, the troublemaker. You’re not mistaken.”

“I, I see.”

“You should be able to clean this up quickly. Hurry and clean it up, someone is coming.”

Robert’s gaze turned towards the window below.

Adele and Lothos, who said they would wait, were seen coming up, unable to endure the wait.

There was no need to show them this scene. It would be enough to have saved a person to a reasonable extent.

“…But why did you save me?”

When Jay asked, Robert turned his head while wiping his blood-stained face with a wet towel.

Although she flinched for a moment at those emotionless eyes, she couldn’t help but be curious.

“An alchemist, but originally an intelligence agent.”

Jay’s eyes did not waver.

She was better than anyone at telling lies, so it was not easy even for Robert to read her true intentions.

But this was the truth.

Her real past that she had directly told him and that he had as data.

“You used to belong to the imperial family, but you betrayed them and now you’re a fugitive under the identity of the alchemist Jay, a runaway magician.”

“You, how do you-”

“Arwen, I need you.”

Jay frowned at the eyes she was witnessing for the first time in her life.

No emotions could be read from them.

Not like her telling lies, but eyes that were simply empty and filled with only void.

What on earth did he mean?

She felt a sense of incongruity, as if he were a completely different person from the Robert Taylor she knew.

When she answered the question that he needed her, Robert replied while wiping away the last remaining bloodstain.

“I’m going to kill the Crown Prince.”

And at that answer, Jay dropped the beaker she was holding.

Clang-

Contrary to the noisy sound, only silence flowed between the two people.

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