Chapter 292: Cursed Sword’s Name

By this point, Lys had stopped counting the cuts that were being made on his body one after another.

His world had narrowed to the next sword, the next spear point, the next armored body trying to put him in the dirt permanently. His arms were now aimlessly waving around the CorpseSlayer, trying to cut anything that came close to him. Though Iron Skin had made big, sudden cuts less likely to make him fall, it was not enough to make him invincible. Dozens of knights and soldiers attacking all at once were enough to shake his vision and battle tactics out of sync by now.

Everything else- stamina, vision, the feeling in his fingers- was running on pure refusal to give up, however many tried to bring him down right now.

He put three more of Ines’s knights down. A fourth staggered away, missing most of an arm. 

None of it mattered. For every man who fell, the circle simply tightened. Spears leveled at his ribs, his throat, the backs of his knees. His tunic hung loosely in bloody rags, making his chest bare. One eye was nearly swollen shut. Blood ran freely down his chest and dripped from his chin onto the cursed blade in his hands.

When the attacks finally eased for a breath, Lys stood alone in the center of a ring of steel, chest heaving, sword tip resting on the ground because he could no longer keep it raised. Bodies of Ines’s men lay around his feet. Many more still stood, covering all his sides. 

There was no path left open for him to escape from this hell.

Ines watched him all while he kept struggling to live just one more second.

“Don’t you understand the situation here?” She said, her voice still almost mild. “There is no escape from me. It is either you yield, or you die on this ground.”

“As for me, I would prefer not to waste further time. You have already delayed me longer than I planned. Give up, boy. Before I really start to really lose my patience.”

Lys lifted his head. Blood ran into the eye that still worked. He bared his teeth anyway.

“Never. I will never give up. You are welcome to do your worst.”

Hearing him speak in this informal way, even after all of this, something finally cracked behind Ines’s calm. She felt like he really was challenging her right now.

The mild interest that she had before for him drained out of her face, replaced by a cold, practical irritation. She thinks to herself that she had indulged this longer than it deserved. The cursed sword was useful, for sure. The boy who could wield it was more interesting than the sword itself. But neither was worth rewriting this night’s schedule.

“Move,” she ordered.

The knight who was blocking her space halfway shifted at once, opening a narrow corridor toward Lys. Ines raised one hand. Dark mana began to gather around her fingers in slow, heavy coils.

“It seems I underestimated him too much. He is too stubborn to be reasonable. I guess I’ll simply have to kill him and continue my plan here. The idea of properly using a cursed weapon will have to wait for another opportunity, if there comes any. But for now I just cannot waste a single moment here with this arrogant boy. I have wasted enough already.”

She took a step forward, hand lifting toward Lys’s head. Lys also got himself in a defensive position, away from her, his blade rising in front of him.

Before they can engage in a bloody battle, a clear voice cuts through the ranks behind Ines.

“Stop. You cannot kill him, Madam Ines.”

Ines stopped channeling her mana, hearing her name shouted out from back.

The knights behind her parted. Two figures came through the widened breach in the wall. Miriel looked annoyed and slightly winded, as if she had been dragged along against her preference. Beside her walked Liraya, quiet, composed.

She moved straight into the open space, eyes locked on the bloodied figure standing in the circle of steel. When she spoke again, there was nothing careful or deferential in her tone.

“You cannot kill him.”

Miriel’s head was at her, pure disbelief written across her face. In the mere time Liraya had been with them, she had never seen her contradicted Ines even once. Liraya never stepped forward like this, blocking something Ines was doing. And knowing her mother’s nature of doing things, she knew the woman wouldn’t like someone blocking her way.

Ines turned only partially, keeping Lys in her peripheral vision. Her expression remained controlled, but a new sharpness had entered her eyes.

“Why? Do you know him?”

Liraya’s gaze flicked to Lys for the briefest moment. Something complicated moved behind her eyes: recognition, calculation, and a flicker of something that looked almost like fear, before she looked back at Ines.

“No, How would I know him?” she said. 

Lys, barely able to focus, felt a strange, distant pull at the sound of her voice. The woman was familiar in a way that made no sense in his mind. He can swear he had never seen her face before tonight, yet some buried part of him insisted he knew her. The thought slipped away before he could hold it. His mind wasn’t working the way he wanted it to after getting beaten up like this.

Ines studied Liraya in silence for several seconds. The suspicion that had lived quietly at the back of her mind from the beginning of their meeting, never strong enough to act on, never weak enough to dismiss, stirred now and sharpened.

“Then why,” Ines asked softly, “Why should I spare him? Tell me what importance does he have to me for you to interrupt me right now?”

Liraya answered without hesitation, as if she had already prepared the argument.

“Uh-hh… Didn’t you just say earlier you needed him for the sword? For CorpseSlayer? So isn’t it just wasteful for you to just kill him like this?”

“Just knock him unconscious. Bind him and deal with him later when you have time. There is no reason to throw away a tool you already decided has value, right?”

The logic was clean. Practical. Exactly the kind of reasoning Ines expected Liraya to say to her.

But Liraya didn’t notice that she made a huge mistake here.

Ines’s raised hand lowered a fraction. The dark mana around her fingers thinned. Miriel visibly relaxed, clearly relieved that the strange confrontation seemed about to end.

Liraya herself exhaled the smallest breath and began walking toward Lys, passing by Ines and now her back facing Ines. She thought as if the matter were already settled.

Then Ines’s voice stopped her cold in her tracks.

“You see, you are really right about it being wasteful for me to just kill him tonight. It is just as you said, it is better for me to just knock him out for now and go on with my plan for tonight. And believe it or not, for a second I really was considering that. I might have just accepted that reasoning, but….” she said in a quiet and precise voice. 

The “but” word Ines had added later got Liraya’s attention almost instantly, making her stop in her tracks. 

Ines continued, “But, you just made a big mistake here.”

Liraya froze mid-step. ‘Oh shit.’ 

She knew on what part she messed up.

Ines turned fully now. The last traces of mild curiosity were gone. What remained was cold, focused certainty.

“You see, I  believe I never once said the name of the sword that boy is holding in your presence. Not to you. Not to my daughter, Miriel. Not to anyone until now. And yet you used the word “CorpseSlayer” without hesitation, as if you had known it for a veeeeery long time.”

Liraya’s face had gone pale. She did not turn around immediately.

Ines continued, each word landing like a blade being set in place.

“I have had suspicions about you from the beginning, Liraya. The way you appeared. The gaps in your story. But I just still chose to watch you rather than act on those suspicions, even when you reeked of divine magic. I wanted to believe you were just a divine magic user.”

She took a pause, and then continued again, ”But what an interesting turn of events this turned out to be. You see, never in my imagination did I expect the truth to be quite this large.”

Dark mana bloomed again around both of Ines’s hands, thicker and more violent than before. The temperature in the clearing seemed to drop.

“Sadly for you,” Ines said, “Goddess Liraya, Weaver of Fate… your puny attempt to protect your little host ends tonight. I have finally discovered your real identity.”

Miriel’s mouth opened, but no sound came out. The title goddess, weaver of fate, her mother used for Liraya really was a shock for her. It hung in the air like a death sentence for Liraya.

Without delay, Liraya moved immediately.

She spun, crossed the remaining distance between her and Lys in two strides, and tore CorpseSlayer from his half-numb fingers. The cursed blade came up into a defensive guard in the same motion, its dark edge angled toward Ines.

“Duck, Alex!” She screamed at her back, at Lys.

The name struck Lys harder than any sword had.

Alex.

The name he had carried on Earth. The name no one in this world should have known. The name only one being had ever spoken to him in the space between dying and waking here.

It was the very goddess who had sent him here, in this world. Who gave him a second chance at life here.

Instinct overrode everything else. He dropped flat to the dirt at the same instant Liraya braced the sword in front of them both.

Ines’s dark mana erupted outward in a concentrated, roaring blast aimed directly at the two figures in the center of the circle.

And Liraya, using Lys’s CorpseSlayer, blocked the whole thing by herself.