Star-Slaying Swordsman

“…Why are you willing to help us?”

While on their way, Sofia asked the woman walking alongside her.

She was there at that moment, heard all the negative repercussions that could happen to her from that place where all her adventurer comrades gathered…

It was precisely the reason she had doubts, as if to ask why she was the only one who wanted to help Julius…

“Let’s see… if I had to put it simply, I’d say the reason is, without a doubt, my intuition.”

“Your… intuition?”

“Yes, my intuition… As a swordsman, that is. It was pleading me to go there, so I did.”

She was saying that helping wasn’t what she came for..

She herself knew that the opinions of the adventurers who were negative about heading there from the beginning were more correct than anything else, but nevertheless, it bothered her.

So despite knowing all of what could happen to her, she was still going to clear the doubts swirling in her mind.

“But, well… I guess that’s really something. Rest assured that I’ll help him if I consider him still indeed our reach.”

I was sure the rest of the team was thinking the same way she was.

With that remark, she looked reluctantly at the four adventurers who were following her, and lightly cupped her chin.

“Well, I wouldn't tell you to get your hopes up. But if letting you escape was the first thing he did, then he's not some fool who can't foresee the future…”

If he was a fool who just thought he was strong, he would think that he could protect himself.

But he let her go before anything else.

Judging from his behavior, at least he wasn’t a fool who was blinded by his own arrogance.

She continued her analysis calmly with Sofia by her side, who kept a somber look on her face.

“There’s still a good possibility of him being alive—”

A possibility, she said.

At first, she tried to mince her words that way.

But in reality, she had hesitated, or perhaps it was more appropriate to say that she stopped from doing so.

You could say she was at an unintentional loss for words.

“…Hey, Lilea.”

One of the adventurers who had been following behind us must have noticed the unusual atmosphere.

He rushed up to her in a panic, called out the name of the female adventurer who was with me, Lilea, and asked for confirmation.

“…Yeah, I heard that too. As a swordsman, there is no way I could have misheard that sound.”

This sound…

Sofia understood from their conversation that they were responding to a certain sound coming from somewhere, but she didn’t know what it was.

“What do you mean sound—”

“Sofia-chan, right?”

***

***

She asked in order to clear her doubts, but Lilea interrupted her and fired back a question in response.

“Um… Yes… Is something the matter?”

“Are there any swordsmen in your village? …One that is confident in his own skills, that is.”

“Swordsman.”

As Sofia heard that very word, a sole image of a boy came to her mind.

“—I want to slay the stars.”

A boy that was appalled by everyone in the village, saying such words as though he was saying them all the time.

Not only was there not a single skilled swordsman in the village, but even those who could handle a weapon could only do so much with one hand.

There wasn’t anyone who could satisfy the requirements of being a “swordsman,” but…

There was someone who longed for being one.

A young boy, who longed to be a “Star Slayer.”

“…No, there weren’t. But there’s one idiot who longed to be one.”

He longed to be one.

Therefore, he still wasn’t a “swordsman.”

Sofia's words were not an answer to Lilea's question, but despite this, Lilea listened in silence and smiled as to say what she was thinking was right all along.

“I see, I knew it. Seems like my intuition was right all along. No wonder my hands were tingling so strangely… That boy… was a swordsman.”

Lilea removed her gaze from Sofia and refocused on the man who had been running up to her.

“Lowe! You’re not going to tell me that he’s dead, are you?”

“We haven’t decided on that kid at all yet. And I told you I don’t operate at night.”

“Don’t grumble on every little detail, come follow me quickly!”

“He…?! H-Hey! Don’t pull on my hair!!!”

Lowe, the adventurer, scrunched his face in pain as his hair was grabbed and pulled forcibly, stomping his foot on the ground.

“Hey, that Julius kid, was it? We’re leaving him to you, okay?”

The other three adventurers, who had been watching the series of exchanges between the two, let out a deep sigh, and rushed at the dumbfounded Sofia.

The three of them, who were walking up with leisurely steps, were making their case to the stunned Sofia who was wondering what was going on.

An empty, screeching metallic sound continued to cut through the silence of the night from nowhere.

The sound of leaves occasionally rustling in the wind was not a concern of theirs, but it continued to echo uninterrupted, as if it was just a part of nature.

“…He got this deep in the forest this late at night…”

One of the adventurers, a thin man with long, lop-sided eyes, begins to mumble his words with a mixture of dismay.

The sound of metal striking against metal constantly roared through the night forest.

Other sounds besides that ceased to exist at that very moment.

Hit by hit, one after another, the sound of endless striking continued unceasingly.

“I really wonder what—”

Supposing this was the sound of a clash of opponents killing each other…

I wondered how intense the struggle was between the perpetrators of this sound against one another.

At the very least, it was not difficult to imagine that neither of them was an ordinary person.

“What an annoying monster you are!”

With a look of resignation on his face, the boy spat out these words without any pretense of hiding his exasperation.

——

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