Chapter 21

The Tauros’ enormous spear hurtled towards Lir’s slender neck in a straight line.

The massive arm wielding the spear, thick with rust, bore hideous burn scars.

Even as its own life teetered on the brink, the monster pawed the ground and swung its arm, driven by the instinct of slaughter.

To Lir, facing her imminent demise, everything around her seemed to slow to a crawl.

A raindrop fell before her eyes. The giant spear wielded by the Tauros felt even more menacing, refracted by the light within the falling rain.

The Tauros’ gruesome roar ripped through the damp air, vibrating in her fragile frame. A fleeting glimpse in the corner of her eye showed her master hastily gathering electricity with his fingertips.

A torrent of emotions surged within the young elf’s chest, a fleeting panorama flashing through her mind.

A death so futile, so unjust.

But this was the battlefield.

A moment’s lapse, the place where genius was dragged down to the abyss.

Only then did the fear of death caress the back of her neck.

*Kreeeak!*

The sound of interlocking machinery descended upon the chaotic battlefield.

*Thung!*

For a fleeting instant, a crimson light flooded her vision. The light flashed, then vanished just as quickly, leaving only a faint afterimage burned upon her eyes.

Immediately after. Tauros’ body was engulfed in the crimson glow, and the spear aimed at her throat soared high into the sky.

“……”

Lir stared, eyes blank, at the corpse of Tauros.

The upper half of Tauros, which had been rushing towards her with every ounce of its strength, had utterly vanished.

The lower half of Tauros, now without a brain or heart, lost strength in its gnarled muscles, and quickly faltered, losing its balance.

*Thak!*

The sound of the spearhead, stained with rust and blood, clattering to the ground, and her time snapped back into place.

Unable to overcome its own momentum, the lower half of Tauros, which had been charging with terrifying hoofbeats, grazed her robe as it began to tumble across the ground.

“Uh, ah……”

Lir belatedly stared at the lower half of the Taur that had landed behind her.

The muddy lower half of the monster trembled in the throes of rigor mortis.

“Are you alright!”

The voices of the squad leader and soldiers finally penetrated Lir’s dazed mind.

Her body, strength now completely drained, she unknowingly sank down into the muddy ground.

Her robe was quickly soaked through with black, and her wide-brimmed hat slid down. Strands of golden hair grew damp and heavy with the rain.

“Hooo……”

She lived.

The numbed sensations in her hands and feet returned, and the dread of death that had consumed her mind was replaced with the exhilaration of survival.

Adrenaline surged belatedly.

Her hands and feet trembled, her knees buckled… she gasped for breath, belatedly.

The young elf’s large eyes began to well with tears. Thankfully, the rain would conceal the fact that she was on the verge of weeping.

“You all let your guard down, didn’t you?”

“… Vin.”

Vin.

The frail boy’s chilling voice cut through the rain and settled upon the battlefield.

She looked up at the boy with the white hair. His expression was filled with disappointment and anger.

“The trees obstructed your view, and it was raining! Did you really think that a single ‘bolt’ was enough to wipe out that many Tauros? Did you honestly believe not a single one would survive?!”

Following that, Alter Heindel’s voice, thick with fury, echoed around them. The fact that his beloved disciple had almost lost her life due to a moment’s carelessness enraged even the sage, whose long life had brought him peace.

“Let’s get you up first.”

The boy quietly grasped Lir’s arm and pulled her up, while Alter continued to shout, his voice raised.

She was still intoxicated by the surging adrenaline, unable to properly assess the situation around her.

She dazedly took the boy’s hand and rose, but her legs soon gave way, and she slumped back down to the ground.

“…Did Vin-nim save me?”

Lir sat on the ground, looking up at the boy as she asked.

A faint sound of interlocking mechanical parts, which she’d heard before, emanated from the small crystal floating above the boy’s shoulder.

“Lir, you too! I’ve emphasized again and again that the battlefield is a dangerous place, and you mustn’t let your guard down! And yet, look at you! Don’t make me regret bringing you along!”

Before the boy could answer Lir’s question, Alter’s reprimand crashed down.

“…”

The young elf shrank in on herself, biting her lip tight. The hand gripping the boy’s tightened involuntarily, something rising within her.

Ah, no.

The tears she’d been holding back finally began to flow. Barely escaped from the terror of death, and now scolded by her mentor, she couldn’t control her emotions.

Mood swings as unpredictable as a manic depressive rocked her core. She’d never experienced anything like this before, and she was at a loss as to how to manage the overwhelming tempest.

To open her mouth now would only unleash an unsightly sob.

“…”

The white-haired boy, with his pale face and deep dark circles, carefully placed his wide-brimmed hat upon Lir’s head.

The jet-black hat clashed with her fair skin and golden hair, but now was not the time for such considerations.

The boy quietly picked up Lir’s blue hat, which had flown off when she fell, brushed away the mud, and spoke with gentle care.

“People die on the battlefield. Don’t let your guard down.”

“I’m going mad… I can’t believe this is happening.”

Alter, having confirmed that the boy was tending to his apprentice, began to walk toward the center of the battlefield.

“Aren’t you all elite soldiers? Most of you have at least four years of military service, surely a great deal of combat experience… veterans, aren’t you?”

The white-haired boy watched silently as Alter, his voice booming, addressed the surrounding soldiers.

“Mages and soldiers are symbiotic! Mages eliminate the enemy with magic, and soldiers, drawing on their physical prowess and battle experience, protect the mages from all manner of threats! Is that not each of your roles!”

The old man’s voice cut through the rain, sinking deep into the soldiers’ chests. The more he shouted, the more the old man’s voice turned to a metallic rasp, but no one dared point it out or laugh.

“…”

The white-haired boy, Vin, could not take his eyes off Alter as he berated his soldiers.

Surviving the battlefield, no—claiming victory itself—wasn’t merely a matter of personal strength.

One had to know how to encourage subordinates and comrades. And when they erred, deliver a sharp rebuke, a warning to ensure such mistakes were never repeated.

“…Disappointing,”

The boy spoke, watching Alter’s retreating figure.

His disappointment wasn’t directed at Alter, of course, nor even at the soldiers who had faltered.

It was that he himself wasn’t the one standing there, dressing down the troops—he, who bore the title of General. That was where the sting lay.

“We apologize!”

Even over the drumming rain, the soldiers had caught Vin’s low words, bowing in unison, voices thick with apology.

“Whatever. Enough,”

The boy responded curtly to their contrition, his expression frigid, before hauling Lir back to her feet in the muddy mire.

“Let’s go.”

Her legs trembled as she struggled to stand in the muck. The boy’s arm offered little actual strength, barely enough to aid her balance, but even that small support felt significant to Lir in that moment.

Clutching Vin’s hand, Lir shuffled, her legs unsteady, and finally stumbled into the makeshift barracks.

*Kree-eek.*

As the boy entered the tent, that sound of interlocking machinery echoed again.

Then, as if its task were complete, the crystal shattered into countless fragments, sinking into the boy’s chest.

Watching it, Lir was certain. The strange machinery, the rescue arriving with its gears grinding—it was Vin who had saved her, no other.

“Vin…it *was* you who saved me… wasn’t it?”

“Well, first things first, calm down. How about the leftover bread from earlier?”

Vin spoke as if soothing a whimpering child.

“Thank… hic… Thank you…”

…Tears finally burst forth, and her tongue began to twist. Lir felt mortified to be showing such an unsightly figure.

How should she repay the boy who saved her life? The young elf could not find the answer to that question on her own.

“Is this Lir’s first time on a battlefield?”

Veen wiped away the mud and rainwater from Lir’s robe with a handkerchief as best he could, belatedly asking Alter, who had followed them into the barracks.

“I entered the magic tower when I was four years old, and I’ve lived my whole life training in the tower… So not only is this my first time on a battlefield, it’s my first time outside the tower at all.”

“Then shouldn’t you have been more careful? Even if Lir can make mistakes because it’s her first time on the battlefield, Alter-nim, it’s not as if you don’t know what this place is like.”

“Honestly, I didn’t expect something like this to happen. The few times… we went out together to catch monsters that appeared near our tower, she handled herself well, so I thought there wouldn’t be a problem… If Lir has become a burden on the expedition, I apologize.”

Alter apologized to Veen in a hoarse voice. The boy shook his head as if he hadn’t meant that.

“It’s not exactly that she’s a burden. Everyone has a first time… She just needs to gain experience on the battlefield little by little. In a time when people die every day, what use is a mage who can’t even protect herself?”

Veen placed the muddy handkerchief on the floor and used a clean one to wipe the tears and raindrops from Lir’s face.

“It’s just… I don’t really want to see people die, so I should have been more careful, that’s all…”

The moment the boy’s slender fingers and soft handkerchief had almost finished wiping the moisture from the elf’s cheeks, the boy’s vision suddenly blurred.

“Uwaaa… Thank you! Thank you, really…! I was so scared…”

Lir, making it pointless that Veen had wiped away her tears, once again burst into tears and lunged at him.

The hat that Veen had placed on her head fell off, revealing blonde hair tangled with mud and rainwater.

The boy, who boasted a strength stat of 1, didn’t even have the strength to withstand the elf’s sudden rush.

Veen fell to the barracks floor with Lir, and a sigh escaped his hoarse throat at the same time.

In the end, the young elf couldn’t find a way to repay the boy’s kindness. There was nothing she could do for the white-haired boy right now other than endlessly repeating her thanks.

“I’m sorry, I was a burden, wasn’t I! But thank, thank you…”

This elf, so lacking in the ways of the world, repeated the same words until they were etched into the very marrow of my bones.

Then, burying her face in my chest, she continued to weep, a relentless torrent. Such childishness. I sighed, forcing the words out with a weary breath.

“…You’re heavy, you know.”

I tried, with a slight flexing of my arm, to nudge the elf aside, to relieve the pressure on my chest, the blockage in my throat.

But she remained unmoving.

For a boy whose fingers trembled even lifting a full teacup when exhaustion took hold, whose strength bordered on the calamitous, dislodging even the slender form of a woman from atop his own body was a task nearing impossibility.

And so, abandoning the attempt to shift Lir, I quickly surrendered, and with my frail hands, I gently brushed the mud and water from her hair.

It took no less than two hours for Lir’s weeping to cease, for the tempest of her emotions to finally subside.

“…Forgive me.”

Belatedly regaining her composure, Lir knelt before me, offering her apology.

“Let’s just sleep. What is all this…? I have schedules for tomorrow.”

I spoke with a listless voice, as if the energy had been drained from me. Clutching at my ribs, I lay down on the floor of the makeshift tent, seeking a short reprieve in slumber.

Unlike myself and Alter, who fell asleep almost instantly, Lir remained awake, her eyes wide open throughout the long, dark hours.

…The deed she had committed was, after all, a rather mortifying one.