“You should have rather put poison, not sleeping pills, in the water glass so that I could not wake up.”
If you had.
Then I would have never known this suffocating despair, this vivid loss forever.
With a voice that would no longer reach anyone, Lionel whispered toward the pile of ashes where even the heat had already cooled down.
“Or perhaps I have not woken up from sleep yet.”
Only after spitting out the words, the fact that those words felt quite plausible was horrible.
Lionel nodded his head slowly as if accepting it.
Yes.
He must still be lying on top of the bed.
If he opens his eyes in the darkness, Agnes will still be alive. And all this sight he is seeing now would merely be an extension of a nightmare.
A terribly unpleasant one at that.
“……I must wake up.”
A heavily choked voice leaked out from Lionel.
At the thought that pain was needed to wake up from sleep, Lionel moved his hand to grasp the pistol fastened at his waist.
However, there was no way a pistol could be on his body, since he had rushed out without even putting on a coat on his bare feet.
Looking down at his empty hand, he stood blankly for a moment.
Inside a realityless silence, time flowed slowly as if stretching out.
Before long, Lionel moved his steps, staggering.
The pistol fastened at the waist of the member of the Knights standing closest entered his sight.
However, Kalt blocked Lionel, who was trying to stretch his hand toward that place.
“Colonel. It is certain that this terrorism is also Nick’s doing.”
“…….”
Lionel’s dark brows crumpled. His hand, which had become like rags, was still trying to grasp the pistol.
“Raul Herben Guten says that Nick seems to intend to flee by using the emergency passage of the Duke of Guten’s family…… not the gates.”
“An executive nightmare is damnably vivid.”
“It is not a dream. Colonel.”
“Then you are saying this is reality, not a dream?”
Lionel’s pupils shook slowly and turned toward Kalt.
It was a gaze out of focus.
“……There is no way.”
Lionel shook his head.
“It shouldn’t be so.”
The scene was already being controlled, but more and more people were gathering around the surroundings.
Gazes mixed with curiosity, fear, and whispering stabbed in from all directions.
Kalt could not leave the figure of his superior collapsed, to be exposed directly like this defenselessly. Therefore, he answered with a bit more strength.
“Are you going to just leave that fellow alone. He is the person who harmed Lady Agnes.”
When those words finished, Lionel’s world began to find its place very slowly.
One very minor sensation returned first.
From the soles of his feet exposed directly on top of the snow, pain soared belatedly.
A sensation that was beyond cold, sharp, cut through his flesh and rose up.
It was a pain as if his skin were freezing and cracking.
Lionel only then drew in a breath with great difficulty.
It hurt.
It was too distinct a pain. Enough that it could not be felt if it were a dream.
It was too distinct a pain. Enough that it could not be felt if it were a dream.
As he admitted that, the surrounding noise that had been buzzing rushed in to become distinct speech in an instant.
“So you mean the Duchess was riding in that carriage?”
“Oh dear, how pitiful.”
“Pitiful, indeed.”
All of this was reality. One that he could no longer escape from by dismissing it as a dream.
He did not want it, but he had no choice but to accept it.
Lionel’s gaze returned to the pile of ashes again.
The spot where nothing remained.
To that spot where, until a moment ago, Agnes might have been breathing.
Agnes died.
That fact, only now, took shape and crushed his chest.
Lionel bowed his head for a moment.
However, tears did not come out.
Instead, there was an emotion that swept down coldly on top of the sense of loss.
It was rage.
No, it was an emotion close to a purpose, for which even the name of rage was too precious.
The one who made this entire situation.
The cause that pushed Agnes to this spot.
Nick.
That human, while making Agnes like this, intends to escape the Empire with his limbs perfectly fine as if nothing had happened. Without paying any price.
He could not let it be so.
“We go to the Duke of Guten’s mansion. Right now.”
Lionel straightened his body.
Like a doll whose broken string was pulled taut again.
The fact that there remained work that must be done.
That single thing alone was making the current Lionel move.
☆☆☆
According to Raul’s information, the Black Iron Knights raided the Duke of Guten’s mansion without a single moment of delay.
As the news that terrorism had occurred spread, a part of the troops that had been deployed at the Duke’s mansion was in a state of having rushed to the Knights’ building. To prepare for a possible sudden raid.
Because of that, the guard of the Duke’s mansion had become lax.
Perhaps because they failed to foresee the visit of uninvited guests, the gate of the Duke’s mansion was gaped open while being half-broken, and blood that had not yet dried was smearing here and there on the courtyard floor.
A smell mixed with metal, soil, and blood was laid thickly inside the air.
Even the small number of knights who remained at least had already been suppressed by Nick.
The private soldiers of the Duke’s family were likewise not much different.
At the attack they encountered without having anticipated a sudden raid, they also were fallen in a mess without even having tried to resist properly.
Beyond those traces, the Black Iron Knights headed toward the Duke of Guten’s office without delay.
According to Raul’s information, it was because the entrance leading to the secret passage of the Duke’s family was located there.
On the path heading to the office as well, numerous corpses and wounded people were already entangled together.
As if Nick had left traces just as they were at the place he passed by, the road was horribly damaged.
And in the very center of it, the corpse of Raul’s older brother, the Duke of Guten, was placed.
Lionel passed by the face of the Duke whose breath was cut off while his eyes were wide open, expressionlessly.
As he entered the office reached at the end of his steps and pushed away the bookshelf, the door made of cold iron hidden behind it revealed its form.
It was the entrance of the secret passage Raul spoke of.
In order to blockade the exit to which the passage connected, half of the troops was in a state of having been deployed to the outskirts of the capital.
Therefore, the passage turned into a trap all at once.
From the front, the Black Iron Knights led by Lionel entered, and from the opposite exit side, the troops led by Kalt entered inside the passage almost simultaneously.
Along with the sound of the iron door closing, a short scream erupted from the inside.
With both their front and back blocked, the Rebelt members changed directions while pushing each other, but it was already too late to escape.
The sound of footsteps and the sound of swords and guns clashing hearing from all directions filled the narrow passage.
“Damn it!”
Nick ground his teeth and looked back.
“Raul, this traitorous bastard—!”
Since the one who knew this passage was only Raul, Nick regarded that Raul had handed over information to the Black Iron Knights right before dying, and shouted out while being filled with rage.
However, even the time to pour out that anger fully was not permitted.
The Rebelt members, who were driven hard by the Black Iron Knights, were flung down to the floor one by one.
In a state where the path to flee was completely cut off, the resistance was not long.
The fight had its conclusion already decided even before it started.
Like that, Nick and the Rebelt gang were all arrested, without a single person of exception.
It was the moment when the end of the confrontation that had continued for such long years brought down its curtain unbelievably vainly.
☆☆☆
Nick, who was dragged outside the passage, finally faced Lionel under the complete light.
Although he was in a bound state, Nick’s eyes at least were still sharply alive.
As if squeezing out his last remaining strength, he threw his body and tried to grasp Lionel’s nape.
“Fucking Lionel Edmund Valheim! You blocked my front like that even on the battlefield, why do you interfere with me every single time! Die, I say die!”
Even though he could have sufficiently avoided it by taking just half a step back, Lionel did not widen the distance.
Before long, Nick’s hand tightened strongly around Lionel’s nape.
“—!”
Lionel stretched out his hand toward the members of the Knights who were rushing to restrain Nick.
It was a meaning telling them not to step in.
Instead, Lionel placed his own hand on top of Nick’s hand that was choking his neck. And he added strength more certainly.
“If you want to kill me, you must grasp more strongly.”
His breath was increasingly suffocated and his vision became dark momentarily.
“Like this.”
However, even when blood rushed to his face and capillaries burst near his eyes, Lionel did not loosen the strength from his hand.
Rather, as if screaming in malice, he choked his own neck even more strongly.
With empty eyes, just like the eyes of Agnes from some time ago who had become broken, which he had turned away from in the end.
☆▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎☆
