Chapter 70

Chapter 70. Please Do Not Lie (10)

How amusing. To think you would try to stop me with those trifling things.

He spoke in a mocking tone, and at his words, a hollow laugh rose in me as well.

Trying to stand against a dragon with magic. There was no greater fool.

But after meeting Rene again, I had become a fool, so I decided not to care much.

I narrowed my eyes, pressed my mouth firmly shut, twisted my waist, and attacked him.

At that, the Fire Ball flew toward his chest, while the electric current gathered in my hand shot toward his head with an irregular trajectory.

WHOOSH! CRACKLE!

As I watched the spells leave my hands and fly according to my will, I bent my waist and desperately wished.

Please block them!

-Anti Magic Shield.

Thankfully, he granted my wish.

The flames and lightning flying with terrifying force vanished just like that.

I seized the moment when he was briefly off guard and shot upward.

FLASH!

“Aaaaaah!”

Aiarunit, who had been looking around, met my eyes, but it was already too late. I rammed his chin with my shoulder.

BOOM!

After being struck in the chin, his head snapped far backward.

I was floating in the air, held in that brief pause before beginning to fall.

However, that gave Aiarunit a chance to counterattack.

His neck, which had bent backward, powerfully returned to its original position, and he struck me with his chin.

With our positions reversed, I took a blow to the shoulder from his chin and fell at tremendous speed, burying myself in the sand.

THUD?!

Cough!

I frowned at the tingling sensation rising from my back, but what approached me was not a helping hand. It was Aiarunit’s enormous sole.

GRRRRIND—

I stared blankly at the three-pronged sole blocking the moon, then hurriedly tried to stand.

However, his foot was so large that there was no way to avoid it.

With no other choice, I bared my teeth and raised both arms, and his sole came crashing down over me.

Damn it!

KRAAASH!

“Nghhhhh…”

After blocking his stone-like sole with both arms, I squeezed my eyes shut with a defeated expression.

I could not even guess how much his body weighed, and with my current ability, there was nothing I could do about it.

Strange sounds came from my arm and leg joints, and a grinding crackle came from my waist as well.

I clenched my teeth. At that, the taste of blood filled my mouth, as though my gums had burst.

And my body gradually began sinking into the sand.

It is impossible. Any more than this…

At that moment, explosions came from the distance.

BOOM!

BOOM!

BOOM!

BOOM!

WHISTLE—

The instant I thought I heard a sharp sound of wind, Aiarunit’s voice suddenly rang out.

-Shield.

BOOM! BANG! KRAAASH!

My surroundings suddenly flashed, and explosions rang out.

Exel had attacked with his gun blade, but it seemed Aiarunit had blocked it with magic.

After blocking it with magic, Aiarunit seemed to be trying to step forward, because he placed even more weight on the foot pressing me down.

My body rapidly began sinking into the sand.

It felt as though my body would burst. However, I clenched my teeth and endured until the end while supporting his foot.

Thanks to that, even as I was completely buried in the sand, I was able to avoid losing consciousness.

Enduring suffocation and the heavy pressure crushing my entire body at the same time was harder than trying to exhale while being held against Rene’s chest.

When the crushing pressure finally disappeared, I floundered in the sand for quite a while before barely managing to stick my head out again.

“Pah! Cough, cough! Hahh, hahh…”

I struggled to pull my body free after being completely buried in sand, then lifted my head at the voice coming from ahead.

-My name is Aiarunit! From this moment onward, I shall kill every one of you!

I saw Aiarunit’s back as he ran toward the wall.

Seeing that, I hurriedly tried to escape, but my body was heavy.

Then something unexpected happened.

A loud voice rang out from the wall. I felt as though I had heard that voice before.

“Why exactly are you doing this?! We cannot simply sit still and die without even knowing the reason!”

No way. Guard Captain Moro?

I looked toward the wall with a puzzled expression.

The soldiers who had been moving busily seemed to have frozen stiff in place, terrified.

In the middle of them, the man who appeared to be the guard captain had his hands cupped around his mouth and was shouting.

Aiarunit slowed down and moved forward slowly as he answered the question.

-Four hundred years ago, there must have been a Dragon Slayer in this country. Was there not?

Dragon Slayer. I smiled bitterly as I looked at his back, risen again beyond death.

He said his child had died at human hands…

At his words, Guard Captain Moro closed his mouth.

For a moment, a slightly sorrowful wind flowed over the cold desert, stroking the sand. Then the desperate shout of a man rang out again.

“But you cannot ask a son to answer for the sins of his father! Fire the catapults!”

Dozens of flowerpots rose into the beautiful night sky under the full moon.

I hurriedly pulled up my hood and buried my head inside the sandpit.

“Damn it!”

BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM! KRAAASH! THOOOM!

The flowerpots that fell onto the sand immediately exploded, and tremendous shockwaves mixed with a sandstorm swept over me.

I wrapped both hands around my head, lowered it to avoid them, and imagined the beautiful Rene, who was probably still sleeping soundly at home.

…Maybe I should not have come.

The explosions that seemed as if they would continue forever gradually faded, then stopped.

Sensing that the bombardment had ended, I pushed away the sand covering my body and crawled outside.

There was almost nothing intact around me.

Huge sand craters had been dug in every direction, but no flowerpot had fallen where I was, so I had avoided injury.

When I raised my head and looked ahead, through the terrible sand dust, I could still hear the sound of Aiarunit’s enormous footsteps.

THOOM—! THOOM—! THOOM—!

-Pitiful humans. Obey the fate given to you. You must pay the blood price for my child.

At that, Guard Captain Moro’s voice, sounding somewhat exhausted, followed after him.

“Where in the world does a son pay for the sins of his father?!”

I wanted to applaud his words.

It truly expressed the situation well. There had certainly been wrongdoing, but it had been the wrongdoing of a previous generation.

If one asked the descendants about that wrong after four hundred years had passed, there was no way to hear a proper answer from them.

However, at the words that followed, I could only smile bitterly.

-Then how will you explain the son who inherits his father’s legacy?

Guard Captain Moro’s voice did not come again.

And I decided to stop paying attention to their conversation and focus only on pulling myself out of the sandpit.

After floundering for a long while and barely escaping from it, I collapsed back against the sand dune.

There was no strength in my body. My back and heart continued to ache.

…Is this how it ends after all?

Ahead, Aiarunit and Moro seemed to be exchanging more words, but that was a meaningless conversation.

Aiarunit would not back down.

If he intended to do that, he would not have crossed the desert and come all the way here.

I let out a sigh and decided to conserve my strength for the next battle.

Though that only meant resting for a short while, and even that seemed difficult given the current situation.

As I looked up at the large full moon, Aiarunit’s voice came from ahead.

-Who are you?

BOOM!

Instead of an answer, an explosion rang out across the night sky.

At the same time, flashes of light burst continuously from the direction of the wall.

I glanced toward the wall, then looked back up at the night sky with a bitter smile.

Is it Exel this time?

Turning my eyes away from the battle taking place at the wall, I tried to picture Rene, who had tried to stop me, up in the night sky.

Her slender face and soft white skin.

Her gentle eyes that sometimes turned sharp.

Her golden eyes that always looked only at me.

That was the face of the Rene I knew.

I erased her face with a sorrowful smile.

Rene, I am sorry. In the end, I became the one who lied.