Chapter 71
‘Damn automatic defense. As expected, it’s too much for now.’
The army of Desert Wraiths, reacting to the gunshot, turned to look at me and Elisha standing at the entrance.
The Desert Wraiths, wielding curved shamshir swords—also known as ‘Crescent Blades’—were quite menacing.
Their grotesque appearance made Elisha’s face turn pale.
“Ma-Martin Cadet? This is…”
“From now on, we’re going to fight the Desert Wraith army tooth and nail.”
Killing and being killed would deplete the Hierophant’s power, since it was the undead, not the living, using the Hierophant.
When the time came, I’d shoot to strip the Hierophant away.
I stepped forward.
“I’ll take the front line, so you handle the rear.”
“The front line?! Hey, do you think you’re some kind of Bord or Gilbert?! A marksman on the front line!”
I deftly dodged a sword swung by a charging Desert Wraith and slammed my fist into its head.
Its skull shattered, and in an instant, the wraith turned to sand.
“If you don’t support me, I won’t hold out either.”
“I-I-I…!”
‘Huh? What’s that?’
The response coming back was oddly off.
With a sinking feeling, I turned around and saw Elisha’s pupils clouded.
Her hands, gripping the bow, were trembling violently.
It was, as I feared, the activation of her trauma.
‘Of all times, now.’
“I-I…”
A burden, huh?
I couldn’t recall a single time she’d been helpful.
Sure, she’d overcome her trauma in the future and become the greatest archer, but that wasn’t now, was it?
Right now, I had to face this Desert Wraith army alone.
‘…No, this might actually be perfect.’
Let’s crush it here.
‘The unstable factor.’
The thing that kept getting in the way, time and again.
‘Elisha’s trauma.’
If her trauma was the problem, then right here, right now, I’d make Elisha overcome it and grow to the next level.
‘I can do this.’
Of course, it wasn’t as easy as it sounded.
Overcoming trauma required immense effort, both internally and externally.
If I couldn’t buy Elisha time externally, I shouldn’t even attempt it.
‘Let’s do it.’
Back then, maybe not, but now I’d grown stronger.
In the original story, the protagonist Gilbert had awakened Elisha.
Now, I could at least mimic that.
“Wake up on your own, Cadet Elisha. I’ll hold them off as long as I can, so hurry. I’ll wait. Until you pay for that damn coffee.”
As I watched Martin charge forward, Elisha felt a vision from her childhood wash over her again.
Into an endless abyss, her mind was being sucked away.
Hoping Elisha would wake up quickly, Martin blocked the entrance where the Desert Wraiths were emerging.
The entrance was, to put it mildly, not narrow.
The swarming Desert Wraiths demanded one thing from me: a super play.
Firearm Proficiency (Lv 1) shouted that it was confident in bayonet techniques and to leave it to it.
Movement (Lv 3) silently made its presence felt.
Wild Instinct (Lv 3) said to leave attack detection to it.
Know-It-All (Lv 3) declared that battlefield analysis was already perfect.
I drew a dagger and attached it to the front of my shotgun.
Combat was mathematics.
I wasn’t a science guy, but still, combat was mathematics.
If you mastered the patterns, you could survive.
Even if the rushing Desert Wraiths looked like a wave, this wasn’t some cursed game with overlapping enemies.
In reality, the number of entities I had to face was finite.
“Come on, you half-dead things.”
I clashed with the Desert Wraiths.
First, I smashed one with the butt of my gun, then stabbed another with the bayonet.
In an instant, I took down two.
I dodged a swinging shamshir with minimal movement and landed a kick.
The wraith stumbled back, collapsing the rear line with it.
The leg strength from a body enhanced with Mana at Strength Lv 7 was powerful enough to rupture organs if I were an ordinary person.
‘There’s a lot of them.’
This time, six wraiths charged at once.
I raised my pre-loaded shotgun and fired.
The buckshot hit the wraiths, pushing them back in a line.
While they were staggered, I reloaded and repeated the same pattern as before.
‘Support fire?’
I glanced back, but Elisha was still trembling, clutching her red bow.
It was severe.
Her trauma might be far deeper and more painful than I’d thought.
‘Should I just take them all out myself?’
I reached into my ammo pouch.
A warm sensation touched my hand.
The rosary and diamond bullets, radiating a warm light as if they belonged to another world, distinct from the cold underground ruins.
The one-shot, one-kill trump card I’d planned when I first entered the ruins.
Now, it was possible.
It would bring me victory without a single error, as it always had.
‘…Wait.’
Instead, I grabbed buckshot.
I loaded the shells into the chamber and charged forward.
‘Let’s do this.’
This was a challenge not just for Elisha but for myself.
Hadn’t I resolved to become stronger?
Strong enough to survive the apocalypse.
Strong enough to land a hit on that damn Gilbert.
‘I can do this.’
If I’d come alone, I’d have just spammed diamond bullets and magic rounds.
Simple and effective.
But Elisha was here.
If this was an opportunity, it was an opportunity.
I’d resolve her trauma, the shackle holding her back, and collect that coffee debt.
It wasn’t hard.
I just had to mimic what that damn Gilbert did.
“Cadet Elisha! Without support fire, I can’t hold out long! Snap out of it!”
I dodged one shamshir swinging from the side and parried another, shouting without looking back.
“Cadet Elisha! Snap out of it! Aren’t you a noble?! Are you going to crumble over this?!”
Boom. The sound of an explosion rang out as buckshot pushed back multiple Desert Wraiths.
I opened the chamber, and the spent shell ejected, falling to the ground.
The shell, landing on the sandy floor—
“Cadet Elisha!”
—was buried without a sound.
***
My legs hurt.
Pinned under a fallen tree, I couldn’t pull them out.
“Elisha?”
Startled, I looked up and saw straight ahead.
Against a backdrop of lush greenery, bathed in warm sunlight, Elidin was looking at me.
“Y-Yeah? Huh?”
With chubby cheeks still round with baby fat, I looked up at my brother, five years my senior.
Elidin of the Harmadun family.
Kind, gentle Elidin.
Maybe I stared too blankly, lost in the feeling of seeing him after so long, because Elidin looked down at me with concern.
“Are you okay?”
“Y-Yeah!”
But Elidin wasn’t blessed.
He had no talent for archery, nor for most things, really.
At best, he had a slight knack for accounting.
“Is your leg okay? Can you get out?”
But to me, Elidin’s talents didn’t matter.
In the suffocating world of training and studies, a single smile from my kind, gentle brother… was the most beautiful thing in the world that made me who I was.
“I’m… fine.”
Today, I hadn’t been very mature.
I’d begged Elidin to sneak out because I hated classes, because they were painful and unfair.
In this stormy… wait, no?
It was bright and sunny now?
Huh?
Why was he asking if my leg was okay?
If I could get out?
“Brother?”
Bathed in bright sunlight, Elidin smiled and said, “Elisha, you need to get out.”
Twenty hours of the day were spent training.
Meals and sleep were replaced with Mana Cultivation and elixirs in extreme training.
At seven years old, I wondered what the point of living like this was.
“You need to get out.”
Under the crushing weight of responsibility and pressure, the family’s expectations pushing me off a cliff, what was the meaning of my life?
“Run, Elisha.”
The reason I sought that answer was today.
“Elisha!”
Boom!
A deafening noise hit my eardrums.
Elidin’s shout and a thunderclap.
The tree pinning my legs was burning fiercely.
Right, we were playing hide-and-seek.
Then lightning flashed.
When I came to, I was lying under the tree.
The sky was dark, and rain poured down as if it would drown the world.
Elidin, holding the red bow given only to the legitimate heir of Harmadun, was fighting a pack of orcs.
“Elisha! Run! Hurry! Whatever it takes!”
An axe came down on Elidin’s arm.
Cleanly, unbelievably… it was severed.
A spear pierced his back.
He fell to his knees.
A glaive, as it was called, beheaded Harmadun’s Elidin.
My eyes widened as if they’d tear, and the young Elisha screamed.
“Brother!”
The orc pack approached.
And Elidin, who was surely dead, stood before me again.
Even if Elidin gathered what little talent he had to protect his only little sister, it was always the same.
‘Ah, here it is again.’
This vision again.
As a child, I’d watched Elidin be killed by monsters before my eyes.
Brutally.
Horribly.
The family knights arrived too late to save me, but ever since, I’d been plagued by crippling trauma.
But through my own training, I grew stronger.
By Gilbert’s side, a friend who seemed born for justice, I was somewhat okay.
With my childhood friends Bord and Mary, the trauma couldn’t crush me.
‘But there’s no one here.’
Gilbert?
Not here.
Bord and Mary?
Not here.
I was alone, trapped in this infinite abyss.
In this vision, I was never saved until the end.
Elidin’s death repeated dozens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of times.
When I woke from the dream, the nightmare ended, but somehow, today, I had a gut feeling that my turn would come at the end.
‘Ah, can I… never escape?’
The tedious classes, the grueling training—they stopped being tedious or grueling.
After that day, I pushed myself to the point where others tried to stop me.
I grew strong.
Among all the Harmaduns who’d entered Imperium Academy, I was considered the greatest.
Yet, I couldn’t escape the nightmare from ten years ago.
The orcs, holding weapons stained with my brother’s blood, approached.
Elidin’s head was crushed underfoot.
Ah, I…
“Stand up, Cadet Elisha.”
“…!”
From far away, I heard Cadet Martin’s voice.
I looked up and saw Cadet Martin standing in front of the orc pack.
Was his back… always that broad?
Cadet Martin began fighting the orc pack without retreating a single step.
But just as with Elidin, the orcs rose again after death, approaching Martin repeatedly.
It’s wrong.
We can’t win…
“Cadet Elisha.”
Then Cadet Martin turned to look at me.
Sand was falling from his body.
“Get up.”
In that moment, my eyes snapped open.
The once-pristine corridor was covered in sand.
How many wraiths had he taken down alone?
His body was covered in countless wounds.
How much time had passed?
How many enemies had he fought?
Had he blocked the path to protect me?
‘Ah!’
As that realization hit, the trauma began to fade, and reality started to come into focus.
“Without support fire, it’s tough—how many times do I have to say it, Cadet Elisha?”
Panting, Cadet Martin swung his bayonet, cutting down a wraith.
The wraith turned to sand and crumbled.
“I said I’d take the front line…!”
His hoarse, cracked voice echoed through the corridor, reaching me.
Tears welled up in my eyes.
While I was trapped in my trauma, he’d kept his word.
“Get up…! Provide support fire…!”
Still not looking back, facing only forward, he met the onslaught of blades and spears.
While I wandered in my vision, he’d stood firm, looking only ahead, waiting for me.
I looked at my hand, gripping something tightly.
The red bow was resonating.