EP.100 29-1. 1%.
Dark Knight Licht. His real name is Lee Soo-hyun.
In fact, it had only been three months since Phine got to know him.
“…Charitines unnie.”
The Glass Knight, who was colder and more emotionless than anyone else.
The princess, like an empty glass with nothing inside, had always believed that she didn't need to be strong because of the trauma she had experienced in her childhood.
That's why she entered the academy using the alias Mardol.
“Licht, it was the same last time, but healing isn’t working.”
“Shar unnie…!! Please…!!”
She was holding onto the black-haired Saintess in the Grand Hearts Academiia’s infirmary and earnestly pleading.
Her face was tearful, and she was even shedding tears.
“Licht can’t die like this…”
“Nex is using the Phoenix Cradle outside, so he’s barely clinging to life….”
The condition of the man who had fallen after being pierced through the heart by a bullet was already useless even with Charitines using her divine power next to him.
In fact, the degree of injury was severe. His heart, as well as his arms, legs, and other parts, were not intact. One arm was grotesquely twisted, and both legs were broken.
“…Phine. Prepare yourself.”
Professor Beatrice, who had been trying to heal together until just now, also left the room and said that it would be better to give up.
“Phine already knows too. You even searched the Library of Truth….”
Laplace even said that the mana center had already been used once to heal the injury, so the situation wouldn't change even if the Heavenly Demon came.
“The Demon Lord doesn’t even die cleanly.”
Who would have known that he would pretend to be dead until right before he died and attack before leaving.
The 2nd Saintess sighed deeply. She kept pouring large amounts of blood into Licht’s body, but it was like pouring water into a bottomless pit.
“…Shar unnie. The problem is that the circuits are twisted, right?”
It was then. After a long period of silence, Phine took off her glass helmet herself.
Charitines was wondering why she had suddenly taken off her helmet, but as the situation was urgent, she answered the question first.
“That’s right. But hoobae’s condition is severe.”
“If only his heart and blood vessels are intact, can he be healed…?”
Phine's beautiful white hair fell to her waist with a thud, and her unique golden wolf eyes shone. Her gaze was only towards Licht.
“Unless you completely reverse and reweave the blood vessels…. Wait, could it be.”
The pure white girl drew a sword from behind her back. A transparent sword that was like her heart.
“Then with my blood and the Dragon Heart.”
When she slightly grabbed the blade, the inside of her hand was cut and blood flowed out. The scarlet blood falling, drip. Thud., was entering Licht’s hole-filled heart.
“…Can’t we save Licht?”
Among the things that Phine had brought to Charitines earlier while asking her to save him was the Dragon Heart, which she had received as the winning prize in the grade exam.
“Even if you replace the completely broken heart and fill it with new blood….”
The red eyes unique to the vampire race shone. The vampire saintess carefully looked down at the man wearing the Dark Knight helmet and checked his body.
“How can you put a dead dragon’s heart into a living person’s body and make it beat?”
“There’s a way.”
Phine put the Dragon Heart down next to her as if she was aiming for something and put her hand on her chest. A magic circle unfolding within her palm.
“If I link it with my heart and make it beat.”
“…Huh? Phine, I must have misheard you?”
Looking at her, Charitines couldn't help but make a shocked expression, and Phine's face was filled with determination.
“That’s too reckless!! Phine!! If you fail, you’ll both die!!”
She was saying that she would link her living heart with the dead dragon’s heart to make it beat, and then transplant it into the body of someone whose life was fading away.
It was nonsense to anyone who heard it.
The 2nd Saintess grabbed her by the shoulders, who was only wearing glass armor, and tried to stop her.
“..It doesn’t matter. I can use glass magic to reweave the blood vessels.”
“No, that’s not it…!”
Phine Gransia had already made up her mind. The reason she put her own blood into Licht's body was to use magic better.
“The success rate is at most 1 percent. Phine. Are you really going to do it…?!”
“…”
A Glass Knight with multiple arms appeared from behind her back. An illusion that appeared with many tools like a surgeon performing an operation.
“…When Licht tried to save me, he didn't calculate things like that.”
She closed her eyes slightly and then opened them again, looking for what was wrong with the man's body.
“Were my good eyes needed for this time, Shar unnie.”
Phine’s eyes were no longer a curse to her.
The last remaining means to save Licht.
The princess entrusted her senses entirely to it and grasped at a faint hope.
“Haa… Really…”
Charitines grabbed her forehead and frowned. A princess of a country risking her life for a male student of the academy who wasn't even a noble?
It was an incredibly serious matter. He was a hero who killed the Demon Lord of the Hero Cult that even the Ten Greats couldn't catch.
“If our Phine cherishes Licht that much….”
What good would it do if she died like this? The greatest hope was that the Emperor wouldn’t try to behead all the families of those involved.
But she couldn't just watch her close younger sister, who had her precious people taken away by the Demon Lord in the past.
The platinum wolf who was barely regaining her bright appearance. She couldn't just fall back into the muddy water without being able to do anything.
Phine Gransia had already made up her mind. No matter what she said, it wouldn't work, and she knew better than anyone the danger of risking her life.
“…I’ll help you from the side. You’ll really get scolded later. Phine.”
“Thank you, Shar unnie.”
The black-haired Saintess, having made up her mind, used her divine power together and assisted in the surgery with the instinctive senses unique to vampires.
***
Even when I thought about it again myself, I couldn't understand.
‘…Licht.’
Why am I so concerned?
Why do I feel a painful sensation when this man gets hurt?
The emotion she first had for the man wearing the Dark Knight helmet was curiosity.
‘Why do you always risk your life? Say it hurts if it hurts.’
His emotions were too easily revealed, and he seemed to have many gaps.
‘Why are you holding a sword when you can’t even use mana properly?’
Her good eyes examined the tangled blood vessels, and she looked at the scars all over his body with sad eyes.
‘I can’t watch you sacrifice yourself anymore… Licht…’
The words that he was weak before carried more weight. A sensation that painfully constricted Phine’s heart. Otherwise, there was no way he would value his own life so little.
He must have experienced a lot in the battles he fought, going back and forth between life and death.
‘…Or he had the experience of wanting to die.’
Phine saw the fire site in Licht’s, no, Lee Soo-hyun’s trauma. She didn't know he had a similar dark past to her.
That was the first time she saw his bare face. It was a face that anyone could call hideous, but she didn't care.
‘I wish you’d be more confident. Licht.’
Rather, there were many handsome parts when you looked around, and above all, a person’s inner self was more important than their outer appearance.
‘You’re allowed to be.’
He had saved her mother too, but
She was as good as saved thanks to the Dark Knight's warm heart.
He had healed her in many ways, and even shared the burden of guilt that was so heavy that it felt like it would crush her.
Now, if someone was badmouthing him when he was walking around with his helmet off, she would immediately use her power to scold them.
‘…It’s okay with me. The burn scars.’
Inside Phine Gransia, he had become an infinitely precious person. Even if someone else helped her once or twice or achieved the merit of catching the Demon Lord.
There would be no change in Lee Soo-hyun's priority in her heart. Her precious people, Nex and Charitines.
Now, the only hero who protects Kainel and Ariel, who she truly befriends without hesitation, and the students of the academy, was him.
‘There’s nothing for you to worry about.’
He didn't want power or anything even though he knew she was a princess, and where else was there someone who would overlook it even after knowing about her gender?
It didn't matter whether he was handsome or ugly.
‘You don’t have to be strong. Just stay alive.’
The anxiety that it had to be Dark Knight Lee Soo-hyun made Phine feel a cold sensation on the back of her neck.
At first, she didn't know he was weak. She only knew that he was a strong person from the start.
‘A strong person who is strong enough to catch the Demon Lord of Omniscience. But at the same time….’
He was a weak person. A person who was purer than anyone else, a person who was clumsier than anyone else.
The man named Lee Soo-hyun that Phine had seen by his side had always felt like that. A figure she couldn’t leave alone, like a puppy soaked in the rain.
‘You’re really bad at lying too… Licht…’
She slightly glanced at the blue rose placed on the side table.
He had won the grade exam with his skills, but he had wanted a Mana Rose so much that he came in 2nd place due to running out of time.
‘A kind liar.’
He used that again for her, who was injured by Head’s Holy Sword. How absurd was that behavior. Wasn't it clearly something precious?
‘I wonder what the Nameless Saintess is doing… Really.’
It seemed like he had prepared the flower for that person. In order to save herself, she was about to use her divine power regardless of whether thorns were stuck in the inside of her palm.
If it hadn't been for him, she might have already been reduced to an idiot by Ignorance. It was dangerous back then, even though Head was dead now.
“…Licht.”
She saw the many remaining wounds on the man’s hands. Wounds that were stabbed and cut by plant thorns and scarred. In this state, he swung his sword and fought and won against the Demon Lord.
‘How much did it hurt.’
She had been watching the battle with Head Eike from afar with good eyes. She was really surprised when his body was crushed by a large metal and turned to rags.
‘Professor Dennis stopped it….’
The blue-haired magician stopped Phine, who was about to jump out, and said that she had to catch him off guard. At least when fighting ‘Omniscience’, she shouldn’t show predictable movements.
The glass wings that allowed the Dark Knight to escape the trap were Dennis's idea, but it was only Phine herself who helped when he tried to counter Catastrophe with Demon Lord Slayer.
‘Perverted Licht… Please wake up…’
She thought as she looked at Lee Soo-hyun, who was lying down powerlessly.
‘I think the actions you take when you’re startled are cute…’
That was why Phine sometimes played pranks. It was nice to see, like a depressed puppy being startled and doing cute things.
In fact, it didn't seem like he was that into women.
If that were the case, he could have glanced at other female students in the academy or looked at them with lustful eyes, but he didn't.
He didn't drink with other female students during festivals, and he quietly listened to their concerns.
‘Above all… He has no ulterior motives towards Ariel.’
Elves are a race famous for their beauty. He knew about Kainel's affection while going around with Ariel, and he was someone who didn’t interfere in their relationship.
You could say that he was closer to cheering on their romance. It was the same at the bakery.
Besides, even Phine Gransia herself had never asked him to take off his helmet or said that he wanted to see her face after finding out that she was a woman.
‘I don’t know why Licht was so shaken when he saw my body, though….’
Phine looked down. Originally, the curved hills would have blocked her view, but now the Masterpiece was covering her figure.
‘When you wake up, I’ll tease you more.’
She didn't even know that sweat was flowing from her face because she was concentrating.
In the frozen air inside the infirmary. From Phine's lips, who was racing against time to save Lee Soo-hyun within a limited time.
“…You’re a precious person to me, Licht.”
Without her knowing, her true feelings popped out. Emotions that even armor couldn't block.
“Phine? What did you say just now?”
Now, the glass surrounding her couldn't become an obstacle.