Chapter 90

Chapter 90. The Road Back (2)

Inside the forest, there were only the two of us.

I had definitely been following behind the group.

On top of that, I had no idea where this place was.

Getting lost. I could not believe that I had gotten lost with my senses.

“Do not tell me we are lost?”

I heard Young Master Ride’s voice.

When I looked at Young Master Ride, he was looking at me with an expression I had never seen before.

However, that unfamiliar expression soon vanished.

“I do not know what happened.”

I shook my head. This was an utterly unexpected situation.

“Please wait a moment. I will look from above and return.”

I climbed to the top of a tree and looked around.

Absurdly enough, even after climbing up, I still could not tell where I was at all.

It was an unexpected situation and an absurd case, but instead, I was able to nod.

“So this is what happened.”

One major question had been answered.

I came back down and spoke to Ride.

“It is a little strange, but I think I can find the way. Let us go quickly.”

“Huh? You know the way?”

At my words, Ride looked bewildered.

“Yes. Let us go.”

I began moving in one direction.

I heard hesitant footsteps behind me.

I turned my head and looked at Ride, and Ride followed me with a troubled expression.

As we moved, monsters appeared as usual.

I stepped forward first and blocked them with my sword, but unlike before, they were not easy to deal with.

I thought I had swung my sword properly, but it brushed past the monsters, and at times, I swung too deeply and had difficulty pulling it back out.

“Damn it, why does nothing hit? Help me a little!”

“I am trying too. My ability is not working well on that monster!”

It seemed he was doing something from behind, but the monster happily attacked me, and only after I was covered in wounds did we manage to drive it away.

Even so, I did not stop.

The path became even harder to understand, but I continued walking while leading Ride.

After several more fights, I finally suffered a serious wound and stopped walking.

Ugh. Urgh.

I sat on the corpse of a monster resembling a crocodile and looked at my side.

The flesh had split open, and my innards were visible. Blood continued flowing out, making me dizzy.

I poured a potion over it, but the wound was so severe that even maintaining my current condition seemed difficult.

“I think this is as far as I go. I do not think I can move any farther.”

At my words, Ride examined me with a serious expression.

No matter how hard he looked, nothing would change.

My wound was fatal, and it was difficult for me to move any farther.

Ride, who had been looking at me for quite some time, gripped the sword I had leaned against a tree.

“It is heavier than I expected. You have been fighting while holding something like this?”

He moved the sword with a frown.

Unlike his ability, it seemed he had properly learned the sword.

Seeing Ride silently grip and swing my sword, I let out a sigh.

“As expected, it was you? You deliberately separated me from the others.”

At my words, he laughed.

“There are too many quick-witted people. Or perhaps my acting is lacking.”

“Do not tell me someone else noticed besides me?”

At my words, he poked his side with a finger.

“The professor who suffered the same wound noticed at the very end too. If she had not known, she could have died peacefully, so why did she have to act as though she knew?”

He quietly clicked his tongue.

“Do you mean Professor did not die because of monsters? Did you kill her?”

“Well, she would have died even if I had left her alone, so you could say it was because of the monsters. I only made her pass away a little sooner because it seemed she would tell Bria.”

He spoke in an extremely relaxed voice.

Even with me before him, he did not seem worried at all.

That was only natural. Even in my eyes, it seemed difficult to face him with this wound.

He knew that too, and that was why he was talking so comfortably.

“People did not know, but my ability is not effective only on monsters. I can distort a person’s senses and disrupt them too. I can even make people mistake the location of the pillar of light.”

As expected. It was just as I had guessed.

The reason I had gotten lost and the reason Katrine’s group had gone down a strange path were both because of Ride’s ability.

“But the duke, and the elders of my house, ignored this ability of mine and gave the heirship to my younger brother!”

In the middle of speaking, he stabbed the sword toward the sky.

“Do you know how painful it is for the son who was pushed out of the heirship to be chased to the academy and laugh along with the other dregs? No, you are an illegitimate son to begin with, so there is no way you would know.”

He excitedly poured out his own story.

It seemed there was no need for me to ask the reason separately. He was explaining it on his own.

From when I saw him at the entrance ceremony until yesterday, I had not known anything about Ride’s circumstances.

I had thought he was simply the clever son of a high-ranking noble living comfortably, but it seemed he had pain and conflict of his own.

To be honest, to me, he looked like an idiot, but what could I do if he said he was suffering?

There was no reason for me to say anything, nor could I.

Ride continued speaking.

“While I was forcibly enduring it, yesterday, I finally realized that heaven had not abandoned me.”

As expected, that knight’s corpse had been the problem.

“That corpse was a knight our house had sent to the sealed grounds fifty years ago. It was a grand plan that sent my great-uncle and half the knight order. You do not need to know what object they were trying to find. In any case, like the others who failed, they came to these sealed grounds and disappeared.”

I blankly watched him talk. My dizziness was worsening, but I could still endure it for now.

“After that, everyone from the family who attended the academy had the duty and goal of going to the sealed grounds and recovering the belongings left behind by my missing great-uncle.”

“But there was no way something like that could be found so easily. In the end, it became only a formal obligation.”

I must have lost consciousness briefly while listening to him.

“Hey, do not die already. You have to hear the rest of my story.”

Ride was looking at me with a worried face.

Once I came to my senses, he began speaking again.

“It was only a formal obligation, but if it actually happened, it became an entirely different matter. Enough that the son who had been pushed out of the heirship could gain a chance to climb back up.”

As he spoke, he placed his hand on his waist.

“My dead great-uncle had a ring that glowed when it came within a certain distance, just in case. And family members who come to the academy carry that ring.”

He showed me his hand. A ring I had not seen at the academy was on his finger.

After discovering the knight’s corpse, he had taken the ring out of his bag and checked it. The ring had glowed red, and he had used his ability to lead the group in the direction the ring indicated.

Unluckily, the destination was where a monsters’ nest was located, and he had succeeded in using the others to find the item his great-uncle had left behind.

“Is the pouch on your waist that item?”

“That is right. The thing our house had been searching for. The thing that will let me rise back to the position of heir.”

He tapped the small pouch at his waist.

The pouch looked so small that it did not seem as though anything significant could fit inside it.

What could be inside?

Even through my hazy mind, curiosity flashed by.

“When I returned later, the wounded professor was suspicious of me, so I had no choice but to act.”

As he concluded his story, he glared at me.

“It was nothing much, but because of it, Professor ended up dying. On top of that, you acted as though you knew too, making things difficult for me!”

In the end, it was something he himself had done, yet he was angry at me and Professor Katrine.

He had deceived people, killed someone to hide the fact that he had deceived them, lied again to hide that killing, and was now trying to kill me.

Perhaps yesterday had been the first time he told such a large lie.

However, as lies and murder continued, his conscience dulled, and he grew accustomed to killing.

In the end, he was now trying to kill me without hesitation.

“I wanted to tell someone. I laughed when I saw villains in plays ramble on and reveal their secrets, but once I was in that situation myself, it was truly difficult to endure.”

With that rambling excuse as his final words, he finally approached me.

“There is not enough time to wait for you to die naturally. I have to reach the gathering point before the sun sets, so forgive me for killing you first.”

He lifted the sword while spouting nonsense.

If I died to that sword, I would return to yesterday morning.

It was according to plan.

In any case, I had to die at least once to save Katrine.

In order to use that death effectively, I had been searching for the culprit all this time.

I questioned her death, asked around here and there to identify the culprit, and then deliberately got wounded to make the culprit open his mouth.

Fortunately, the culprit’s mouth was light, so I was able to hear the story easily.

Then now, all that remained was to die.

Graaaaaaar!

However, dying alone felt a little unfair.

Even if what happened now would disappear, I could not leave the one who killed Katrine alone.

“What is that? What was that sound?”

Ride could not even swing the sword and looked around in surprise.

‘Fortunately, the timing worked.’

Strangely, my ability to see and feel mana was not affected by Ride’s ability.

My sense of direction had become a mess, but my sense of mana remained the same.

Thanks to that, it was entirely possible to sense approaching monsters and find places with many monsters.

So, while I was lost, I searched for a place with many monsters.

And this place was a nest of crocodile monsters.

The monster I was sitting on was a female that had remained in the nest, and the monsters now rushing in were male monsters.

Dozens of crocodile monsters appeared in every direction.

“Go away! I said go away!”

Ride swung the sword in terror and activated his ability.

However, the sword bounced off the monsters’ bodies, and his ability only affected one or two monsters.

“No, no! I came this far! I was going back to my rightful place!”

Ride’s screams rang out among the monsters.

His screams gradually grew quieter and eventually became silent.

I heard the sounds of monsters chewing flesh, and I saw other monsters approaching me as well.

‘But I cannot let myself be eaten.’

I drew up all the mana I had left.

Mana flowed out together with my blood.

The dizziness grew worse, and now all my strength vanished.

At the same time, my vision went black.

[You have died. Restarting from the autosave point.]

A little while later—or perhaps after a long time—my vision grew bright again.

Dense forest and vines.

The group members I had seen yesterday were bent over and retching.

The same sight.

I had returned properly.

Now, it was time to go save Katrine.