Chapter 290: Entire package

Lys looked at the woman standing in the broken gap of the wall.

Even in the dim light, he could make out the clean lines of her face and the cold, assessing interest in her eyes. Behind her, ranks of armored men stretched into the dark, easily a hundred, all of them bearing the same polished steel as the three he had just killed. 

Spears, longswords, and stranger weapons he had no names for caught the faint moonlight in disciplined silence.

He was outmatched. Completely.

This woman was clearly the one giving the orders. The one responsible for the hole in the gate, the dead volunteers, and the army waiting outside the wall in front of him.

“Who are you?” Lys asked, voice rough from blood and exhaustion. “What do you want here?”

She barely spoke a word.

A small movement of her hand was enough. Several knights peeled away from the formation and stepped through the breach, spreading out to cut off his vision of the hole in the wall.

Lys retreated a step, CorpseSlayer held low in his hand.

“Listen, this village has nothing to do with….”

They did not let him finish.

The first knight came in fast and hard, nothing like the coordinated but still human pace of the previous three he had fought until now. 

The sword stroke of the guy was clean, heavy, and aimed to end the fight in a single motion. Lys twisted aside barely; the edge still carved a shallow line across his already damaged shoulder. Before he could reset his balance, a second blade forced him to give ground again. A third closed from the flank.

These were real knights, men who lived by the sword and expected to kill with every swing.

Lys kept moving, relying on footwork and the thin margin his Iron Skin and Basic Regeneration still gave him. He knew he could not trade cleanly with these men, unlike before. One solid hit from any one man from here would finish the battle instantly.

While in his thoughts, trying to figure out a way out of this, he never saw the man who had circled behind him.

A heavy shield slammed into his back with the full weight of an armored charge. The impact lifted him off his feet and hurled him several meters forward. 

He hit the dirt hard, the breath driven out of his lungs in a wet cough. Blood sprayed across his own hand and the blade of CorpseSlayer. Pain exploded through his ribs, sharp enough that for a split second he thought they had finally broken into pieces completely.

But unlike his imagination, the Iron Skin had held. Barely. Without it, the blow would have crushed his spine or caved his chest, that’s for sure.

Lys forced himself onto one knee, still coughing blood, vision blurring.

Another knight lunged in to finish him while he was down. Lys brought CorpseSlayer up on pure instinct. Sword-Shield activated. 

The heavy downward cut met the cursed blade; a portion of the force reversed instantly into the attacker. The knight staggered, nearly driven to his own knees by the redirected impact, and only kept his footing through sheer discipline and his willpower.

Seeing the scene of her knights losing here to a mere village boy, a cool, contemptuous voice cut across the clearing.

“Pathetic.”

It was Ines who said it. She stepped closer, the dark fabric of her dress barely whispering against the dirt, even though it was dragging along the way. She stopped in front of the knight who had nearly fallen to his own redirected strike. She looked down at him with open disdain.

“Is that how low my knights have fallen? Injuring themselves with their own strength?”

She then turned her gaze on Lys.

Now that she stood only a few paces away, the moonlight caught her features more clearly. She looked sharp, composed, and carried the calm certainty of someone who had never needed to raise her voice to be obeyed. Her eyes moved from Lys’s bloodied face to the sword still clenched in his hand.

Finally getting a closer look at his sword, something shifted in her expression.

It was recognition of something she had long forgotten.

“Is that…” Her voice lost a fraction of its boredom. “Is that the CorpseSlayer? The cursed sword of the legendary witch Aurora?”

Lys stared at her, confusion cutting through the pain. He had never heard the name Aurora. The system only ever called it the Cursed Sword of the Fallen Witch. And as far as he knew, most people never knew the origin of this blade until now. Even Madam Vesper hadn’t said much about it when she gave him this sword as a gift, only saying a fallen noble family had sold this family heirloom of theirs to save face or something.  

Ines moved before he could ask her who the hell was “Aurora”. She sank into a smooth crouch right in front of him, one hand already reaching toward the dark steel as if the weapon itself were the only thing that was visible to her right now.

Lys shoved himself backward on pure reflex, putting distance between the sword and her fingers. He knew even if he managed to let her touch the sword and get her immobilized by its curse, like the knight before her, he still had to deal with her knights behind her. And if they saw their leader suffer because of him or his weapons, that would be a single way to death itself.

Ines’s eyes narrowed. The mild interest cooled into something sharper.

She rose in a single fluid motion.

“How?”

Lys kept CorpseSlayer angled between them. “How what?”

“How did you manage to wield it?” Her voice remained quiet, but every word carried weight. 

“That sword is cursed, isn’t it? It should reject any hand that is not its rightful owner, or destroy the one foolish enough to force the bond. Yet here you are, using its skills, walking around with it like a common sidearm. How?”

Lys glanced past her at the circle of ready knights. Every one of them waited only for her command. It seemed like talking with her was the only thing that was keeping him alive now.

So, he chose his words carefully.

“What does it matter to you whether I can wield it or not? This sword answers only to me. Even if you understood the reason, it would not help you. You still could not use it.”

For a moment, Ines simply looked at him.

Then she laughed in a soft, genuine way, which was also edged with genuine surprise.

“Interesting.” She tilted her head slightly. “Boy, you may be the most interesting thing I have encountered in quite some time. An army stands behind me, ready to cut you down the instant I give the order… and you still choose to argue. You even refuse me an answer. How entertaining. I heard rumors about you, did seeing you up close seem more entertaining.”

She took one slow step closer.

“That is fair, I suppose. Even if you told me the method, there is every chance I could not replicate it. But do you truly believe you are in a position to refuse me anything right now?” She said the last sentence in a cold voice.

Mana rolled outward from her body in a sudden, controlled burst.

It was not directed at him specifically, yet the pressure settled over the entire clearing like a physical weight. The air itself felt heavier. Several of the nearer knights shifted almost imperceptibly under the edge of it. The display of her power was effortless, the casual flex of someone who had long since stopped needing to prove anything in front of anyone.

Lys locked his knees and kept his face still.

‘Stay calm, Lys. Do not show fear. If she sees it, she will likely end me here immediately.’

Ines watched him for a long second. A faint crease appeared between her brows.

‘Strange’, she thought. ‘Most people lose control of their bladder when I release even a fraction of my dark mana. Why does this boy look barely affected?’

She let the pressure fade as smoothly as it had appeared.

“Very well,” she said at last. “You win, boy. I will believe you, for now. It may well be exactly as you claim. I released that sword from my collection years ago because it was useless to me. A sealed curiosity. And somehow the blade itself found a champion in a village boy and allowed him to unlock features even I never managed to draw out from it.” A thin smile touched her lips. “Well done, kid. I’m impressed.”

Lys felt a thin, dangerous thread of relief begin to loosen in his chest.

But it also died the moment she continued.

“I had originally planned to kill you on the spot for the inconvenience you caused my earlier arrangements in front of the guild. Consider yourself fortunate. Now that I know you have my sword and can even use its skill like this, I have changed my mind.”

She raised one hand in a languid gesture that took in the ranks of silent, armored men behind her.

“I have a different use for you now. Since you have already awakened the sword, and since there is a real possibility I could never force the same bond even if I understood the method, I will simply take the entire package, hah... ha.” She gave a humorless laugh.

“You, the blade, and whatever secrets the two of you still hide…” Her eyes glittered with cold amusement. “...will join my personal collection. Just like these fine men standing behind me. Loyal. Useful. And entirely mine.”

The words settled over the blood-soaked ground with finality.

‘Oh dear. It seems I really am fucked now.’ Lys swallowed once. The taste of his own blood was still thick on his tongue.