Chapter 89

Chapter 89. The Road Back (1)

I had experienced it several times, but seeing the corpse of someone I knew—and someone I had been close to—was still quite difficult.

Even if I went back in time and they came back to life, the shock of seeing the corpse did not disappear.

Moreover, there was no guarantee that I could save her.

Because of that, more than the shock of someone I knew dying, I felt tension so severe it seemed to squeeze my heart.

“Are you all right?”

“Are only the two of you alive?”

The knights hurriedly asked the two surviving students. Both of them forced themselves to answer out of joy at having survived.

“I-It is only the two of us. Professor Katrine held out until the very end, but…….”

When the female student, Bria, answered in a cracked voice—

“She was badly wounded. We tried to treat her with a potion and bandages, but it did not work.”

The male student, who seemed somewhat more composed, added an explanation.

Looking again, I thought I knew who he was.

He was the student who had taken the new-student pledge. His name was Ride.

While the knights took care of the surviving students, I examined Katrine’s corpse.

The wound on her side, wrapped in bandages, looked extremely severe, just as they had said.

Seeing that there were many other wounds as well, it seemed an intense battle had occurred.

The confidence I had gained from my growth so far drained away.

Katrine, whose ability was not that different from mine, had died like this. In these sealed grounds, I, too, could die at any moment.

“We should send a signal and move to somewhere safer.”

At Senior Knight Miro’s words, Sir Axel took a rod out from his clothes.

He raised the rod upward, then struck the bottom with his palm.

Fwoooosh.

A light source shot upward from the rod, then burst in the sky.

Bang!

It was a signal flare.

“We have let them know they were found, so they will come to the gathering point. We will go to the cave we saw on the way here. Let us hold out there until sunrise, then head straight to the gathering point.”

Senior Knight Miro spoke as though asking for my understanding.

That was because the two knights had seen my ability on the way here.

“It would be difficult to take the body with us, would it not?”

At my words, the senior knight shook his head.

“Then I know where the cave is, so I will prepare the body and follow you immediately.”

At my words, Senior Knight Miro and Sir Axel nodded.

However, Bria and Ride did not understand.

“Huh, come to think of it, why are you here, Alex?”

“I will explain later.”

I postponed Bria’s question.

“Pardon? Still, you should come with us…….”

The senior knight cut off Ride’s words and urged the group onward.

“It is all right, so move quickly. This place is dangerous too.”

Dragging Ride along when he kept stopping as if worried, the knights disappeared in the direction we had come from.

Left alone, I properly examined Katrine’s corpse.

I checked each wound one by one, then untied the bandages and checked the wound on her side once more.

It was not as though I had the ability to conduct a proper autopsy, nor was there anything suspicious about the situation.

It was simply because I found it difficult to accept the fact that she had died so easily.

After checking everything, to the point that I felt sorry toward the dead as I removed her outerwear, I dug the ground with my greatsword and buried her in a shallow grave.

Then I placed a large stone upright and marked the nearby trees with cuts to indicate the place where she was buried.

Fortunately, perhaps because my senses had improved further, I felt I would be able to find this place again.

After staying by the grave for a moment, I took her relics, the shield and sword, and followed the group that had gone ahead.

When I arrived at the cave, not much time had passed since the knights who had left first arrived there.

It was a shallow cave hollowed out beneath a low rocky hill. It was a short cave, only about ten meters deep.

Even though it was not very high, it was still a cave beneath a rocky hill. Since only one side needed to be blocked, even a shallow cave was far safer than sleeping in the middle of the forest.

It was not a place where one could stay for long, but it was enough for a single night.

Before I arrived, the knights had been disguising the front of the cave with undergrowth and branches together with the students.

Ride and Bria, who had been carrying branches, looked relieved that I had arrived early.

“Are you all right?”

At Bria’s question, I nodded.

Perhaps because some time had passed, Bria and Ride seemed to have calmed down somewhat.

I also helped them finish camouflaging the cave, then after deciding the night watches, we agreed to sleep for a short while.

“Dawn will come soon, but sleep even for a moment. Once the sun rises, we will have to keep walking.”

First, we excluded the two students who had suffered hardship from the night watch.

They tried to exclude me from the night watch as well, but I stepped forward and said I would stand watch.

After a slight argument, I ended up taking the relatively comfortable first watch.

After me, Sir Miro would take watch, and Sir Axel would take the last watch.

There was not enough time left until sunrise to require three people to stand watch, but everyone was too tired, so we decided to delay our departure time a little.

It was somewhat cold, but for knights and ability users, this was enough to sleep without a fire.

As I went toward the branches piled up for camouflage in order to stand watch—

Ride lay down first, and the two knights also placed their swords by their heads and soon fell deeply asleep.

Bria also lay down, but before long, she rose again and came beside me.

She sat beside me as I leaned against the rock wall and looked out at the dark forest.

“I knew it would be dangerous, but I never imagined the group I belonged to would end up like this. Moreover, Professor Katrine passed away. I never thought Professor Katrine would die, no matter what happened…….”

She spoke quietly while looking ahead.

They were not words meant to receive an answer. It was simply a lament.

She rambled incoherently here and there, then even spoke about me.

“I heard from the knights. They said the headmaster included you in the search party. With your ability, Young Master Alex, you are more than qualified to join the search party, but the fact that the headmaster acknowledged you is truly impressive.”

Perhaps because she had sparred with me one-on-one several times during Knight Department classes, she did not question my participation in the search party.

As I listened to her, when her words briefly stopped, I also asked a question.

“But what happened?”

“Ah, I told the knights, but you must not have heard.”

She explained what had happened over the course of yesterday.

She told me, in order, how they had followed the light signal but arrived somewhere strange, how that place was a monsters’ nest and they ended up fighting an enormous number of monsters, how they lost the group members one by one, and how even the wounded Professor Katrine eventually died.

As she spoke, her body seemed to tremble little by little, but I did not stop her from speaking.

Instead, I asked her,

“If you are not going back inside right away, may I ask a few things?”

“Yes. I came out because I cannot sleep anyway. Ask me.”

Contrary to her expression, she still did not seem to have recovered from the shock.

Well, since people she knew had died while they were fleeing, there was no way she could already be fine.

If they had been ordinary people from my previous life, this would have become lifelong trauma.

In any case, since she had given me permission, I asked about the points I found questionable.

“You followed the pillar of light, but you did not arrive at the gathering point?”

“It is truly strange, is it not? I do not understand it either. Professor Katrine said something seemed strange with the direction halfway through, so Leonel, I, and Professor Katrine all climbed trees to confirm.”

“She said it seemed strange?”

“Yes. At first, she did not say anything like that, but it seems she felt it was more and more strange as we went.”

“Mm……. Then was it that direction from the very beginning?”

“Ah, no. At one point, we took the wrong direction, so we climbed trees to check and changed direction.”

“When was that?”

“Right. It was a little while after we found the skeleton.”

“Could you tell me in more detail?”

Perhaps because she knew that Professor Katrine and I had been close, Bria told me as much detail as possible.

From the fact that the corpse had been a knight belonging to Ride’s house, to the fights against monsters that included the students who had died.

“If Ride had not been separated at the beginning, perhaps one or two more people might have survived. No, it is not that I am blaming Ride. The fact that he survived alone and returned is impressive enough.”

After she poured out even the things she regretted, she finally returned to her sleeping place, overcome by exhaustion.

A short while later, it became time for the next watch, so I woke Senior Knight Miro and fell asleep as well.

“Everyone, wake up!”

It felt like I had only closed my eyes for a moment, but I immediately heard a voice telling us to wake up.

Wondering whether monsters had attacked midway through, I hurriedly opened my eyes, only for sunlight to sting them sharply.

Everyone rose and made do with dried rations for breakfast.

The trained knights looked fine even with only a short period of sleep, and thanks to our ability-user bodies, Bria and I from the Knight Department were not in bad condition either.

Fortunately, Ride also seemed fine, so the group decided to depart immediately.

Before departure, the two knights quietly spoke with one another.

“Do you intend to hold out at the gathering point until we can return?”

“No. Not that. We should meet the knights who went to search elsewhere at the gathering point. After joining up, let us move to a place where we can endure.”

At Sir Miro’s words, Sir Axel’s expression darkened.

“Will they be alive?”

“Who knows?”

The two knights, who had been speaking, looked at me.

I had heard their entire conversation, but I pretended not to know.

To be honest, the reason we had been able to run through the sealed grounds safely last night was entirely because of me.

I had been the one who found the place where the students were, and I had been the one who sensed approaching monsters and warned them in advance.

My swordsmanship was not bad either, but I could confidently say that with only my ability to sense monsters, I had more than pulled my weight.

We began moving toward the starting point again.

Looking at it again, the sealed grounds at night and the sealed grounds by day were completely different places.

Once the sun rose, dozens of monsters did not pour in at us, and there were no monsters secretly attacking us either.

With me sensing monsters in advance, we could easily defeat the monsters that approached.

Of course, no one rested.

Not only the knights, but Bria also defeated monsters alongside the knights, and Ride confused the monsters as well.

I also helped when we fought monsters, but at other times, I took the lead and guided the group.

Today, there was no pillar of light like yesterday, so we had to find the destination with our naked eyes.

Fortunately, since I remembered the entire route, we were able to move toward our starting point without difficulty.

After walking diligently like that, we were able to arrive near our destination, the clearing, before night fell.

“I know the way from here too.”

At Sir Miro’s words, everyone nodded.

I also stepped back and rejoined the group.

“You worked hard.”

When I stood beside him, Ride spoke to me.

At the entrance ceremony, he had respected me awkwardly, but after learning that I was an illegitimate son, he spoke to me informally like this.

Well, it was not particularly unusual. Although he was not the heir either, he was the eldest son of a high-ranking noble, so he could speak informally to me.

“You worked hard as well, Young Master Ride.”

“We have not arrived yet.”

“There is not much left.”

“And we still have to hold out for another week.”

“That is true.”

“Ah, come to think of it, I heard you found the remains of a knight from Young Master Ride’s house yesterday.”

“……Ah, that did happen. It was fortunate.”

The conversation stopped for a moment.

“Still, it was fortunate. You were separated and returned again.”

“I can only apologize.”

His answers grew slower and gradually shorter.

“Come to think of it, I do not think I have seen the pouch at your waist before.”

“……I had it from the beginning.”

At my question, Ride flinched in surprise.

Huh? I had only brought it up because I had nothing to say. What is going on?

I tried to ask another question, but Young Master Ride’s expression had stiffened completely.

On top of that, when I looked around, an unexpected situation had unfolded before my eyes.