When Gordo crumpled unconscious with a fistful of his own hair torn out, Sirin brushed the strands off her hand and waited for the next challenger.
The mercenary mob stirred, and this time a man stepped forward who looked nothing like Gordo.
He was carrying a sword of awkward length in each hand.
The man was as ambiguous-looking as the blades he carried.
He twirled them with a swagger and opened his mouth.
“Witch! I won’t be made a fool of like Gordo! Your magic ends here!”
Sirin didn’t bother responding.
She stared at him blankly, then glanced around.
“Witch! How dare you let your guard down in front of me—you’ll soon be—?!”
Sirin didn’t feel obligated to wait for him to finish.
She kicked a loose chunk of wood lying nearby and sent it sailing toward him.
The debris Gordo had smashed to pieces with his fist.
The dual-wielder looked briefly startled at the flying chunk, but quickly batted it aside with an irritated flick.
Sirin nodded.
*Idiot.*
She was certain.
All she’d gotten from Gordo’s superhuman rock-shattering was a pathetic scrap of martial technique.
From a clown like this, she might not even get that much—even if he managed to land a hit.
Which meant taking a blow from this moron would be nothing but a waste of time and a waste of pain.
Sirin didn’t think twice.
She launched herself forward.
“What the—!”
The dual-wielder frantically swung his blades to defend against Sirin’s sudden charge, but he was nowhere near fast enough to keep up.
Sirin slipped past his blades with a grazing dodge and drove in close.
Since she was already here, she decided to try a new technique.
[ Dragon-Subduing Eighteen Palms ]
[ Unyielding Force ]
Sirin was genuinely without prejudice.
The character for *palm* was right there in the name, and she used it as a kick anyway.
She drove a kick loaded with Unyielding Force precisely into the man’s right wrist.
“Gaaah!”
The dual-wielder screamed as bone snapped.
The sword in his right hand clattered to the ground, and he rolled across the dirt clutching his broken wrist.
Unlike when she’d used Pierce as a fist technique, her foot didn’t shatter in the process.
This time, at least.
“Aaaargh!”
Sirin looked down at the man writhing in agony and nodded.
It was once again proven, here in Fantasyland, that every dual-wielder was an idiot—a plain, unadorned fact requiring no further investigation.
“…”
Then, suddenly, Sirin felt that something was very wrong.
It was the same feeling as noticing one mismatched paving stone in a sidewalk, or watching someone throw away a yogurt lid without licking it clean.
She quickly identified the source of her discomfort.
*Mismatched socks.*
Sirin raised her sword.
Sensing her killing intent, the dual-wielder flailed his arms.
“W-Witch, wait, I surrender—!”
“Relax. I’m not going to kill you.”
“Then what’s the sword for?!”
“You came at me with two blades.”
Sirin rebuked him with grave solemnity.
“Therefore, the price must also be paid with both arms. If the right hand is broken, it is only right that the left hand follow. For all hands are equal.”
The dual-wielder went pale.
“That makes absolutely no—!”
“Witch! Stop!”
Bjorn stepped forward.
Sirin ignored him and brought the blade down.
“Aaaaaagh!”
A shriek tore through the air as blood sprayed like a fountain.
Only then did Sirin turn, satisfied, to face Bjorn.
Bjorn was no longer content to watch.
He stepped over his fallen subordinates sprawled across the ground and walked forward with long, deliberate strides.
Instead of drawing the massive greatsword on his back, he drove it into the earth.
Then he drew the comparatively ordinary longsword at his hip.
“…Not going to use the impressive one?”
“That is for hunting monsters.”
Bjorn answered evenly.
Sirin quietly exhaled in relief.
Getting hit by that thing might split her in two.
She’d been fully prepared to turn and run the moment Bjorn reached for the greatsword.
Unaware of her pathetic calculations, Bjorn studied her with a glint of something unreadable in his eyes.
“You didn’t kill any of my men.”
“A promise is a sacred thing.”
Bjorn’s eyebrow twitched at her matter-of-fact tone.
“…I didn’t expect to hear that from a Witch.”
“Witch witch witch, tongue tongue tongue—is that all you know how to say?”
“…”
*Is she truly a Witch, or not?*
In the midst of his confusion, Bjorn recalled the strange agreement he’d struck with Sirin before the trial by combat.
*Trial by combat?
Listen here, you little wretch—say you win.
Do you really think we’ll just stand there afterward?*
Bjorn caught himself before he was taken in by Sirin’s smiling eyes.
*This isn’t the heart of the Empire where the law is respected.
These are men who run wild even on the Pantheon’s holy days—and blood’s already been spilled.*
He continued, his face set hard.
*We have the numbers.
Do you honestly think a trial by combat is enough to put all of this to rest?*
A practical question.
Sirin had smiled, thinking the bear in front of her was smarter than he looked.
*Who said anything about killing all of you?
And I don’t mind losing.*
*…What?*
*You’ve got Heres’s lackeys, don’t you.
Send them out first.
I’ll rough them up.
And then—*
Sirin had jerked her chin toward Bjorn.
*You step in at the end and put me down yourself.
That way you get to keep your pride, avenge your dead vice-captain, whatever kind of picture you want to paint.*
She hadn’t hesitated.
*Finish it with a stab.
Just don’t take my head.*
Bjorn had understood well enough what she was getting at.
She wasn’t offering to die.
She was offering to accept a defeat that might lead to death.
Bjorn had absently stroked his rough-bearded jaw.
It was a tempting proposal—and at the same time, an absurd one.
*…You could die.*
Sirin had laughed at that, a low chuckle, and answered.
*Then stab me gently.
I hate pain.*
That composure.
That bizarre lightness with which she treated even death.
Bjorn had felt a chill crawl up his spine.
And even now, that woman wore the same unreadable, spine-chilling smile.
She smiled with a bewitching curve of her lips and said:
“You’d better come at me for real, Captain.”
“…”
And in the next instant, his body shot forward.
“!!!”
Sirin’s eyes went wide.
The quality of his movement was on an entirely different level from anyone she’d faced before.
Nothing like Gordo’s brute-force charge or the dual-wielder’s fumbling defense.
This was disciplined, refined motion—honed to a razor’s edge.
Every movement was stripped of waste.
Each step, each angle of the swinging blade, was efficient.
—Clang!
Sirin reflexively raised her sword and blocked Bjorn’s first strike.
The impact was heavy enough to numb her arm.
But Bjorn’s attack didn’t stop there.
His longsword moved like a living thing, relentlessly probing every gap in Sirin’s guard.
Fast.
Precise.
Difficult to predict.
“Ngh!”
Sirin barely deflected the strike and stumbled back.
Cold sweat ran down her spine.
Speed and technique that even Coward Mode’s stat inflation could barely keep up with.
This was not the rough brawling of a mercenary.
Sirin wrenched herself clear and shouted:
“What the hell are you?!”
“…”
“You’re supposed to be a mercenary captain who hunts monsters? That’s not the technique of someone who’s only butchered a person or two. What did you do before this?”
The skill of a man long accustomed to killing people, not monsters.
Sirin’s accusation reached into the deepest, most buried corner of Bjorn’s memory and snagged on something.
[ Lux Viae Noctis — We Illuminate the Crossroads of Night ]
[ Torch Legion (Legio Ignis Hecatica) ]
The Empire’s special task legion, sworn to the Goddess of Night and Crossroads.
Monsters twisted by malicious power.
Witches whispering forbidden curses.
Cultists who practiced human sacrifice.
Those who worshipped dark gods of destruction and corruption.
Those who sought to borrow the power of ancient, forgotten things.
Under the name of the Goddess of Night and Crossroads, Bjorn had carried a torch and fought the unholy things lurking behind the veil of night.
The Witch’s voice called back the days when he had fought in the Goddess’s name.
The battlefield reeking of blood and dust.
The chaos he had faced in the dark of night.
The screams and curses that had torn through it.
And the burning villages.
Torches that burned people instead of lighting the night.
But that thought lasted only a moment.
Bjorn was fighting Sirin—and fighting the turmoil within himself at the same time.
What was this woman?
The grotesque recovery that had her back on her feet after taking Gordo’s fist.
The disarming sophistry and erratic behavior.
Above all, the uncanny way she had with words.
All the hallmarks of a Witch.
And yet, at the same time, she avoided unnecessary killing.
She had even said that a promise was sacred.
She was unlike any Witch he had ever encountered.
*…A promise is a promise.*
Bjorn muttered inwardly.
Yes.
He would keep his word and not take her head.
The Witch had kept her promise; he would keep his.
But…
*I have to be certain.*
If this woman was truly a malevolent being, he could not let her walk away from here.
That was not the mercenary captain speaking—that was the oath he had sworn in another life.
Bjorn’s eyes changed.
He drew a slow, deep breath and adjusted his grip on the sword.
He carved into the blade the divine authority of the Goddess of Night and Crossroads—the power he had sworn never to use again.
[ The night is deep and the roads are tangled, yet the three-faced Goddess has granted us a torch to drive back the veil— ]
In an instant, the space around Bjorn’s blade began to shimmer like a heat haze.
“!”
[ But behold—what dances beneath that torch are countless shadows ]
It was not Sirin’s imagination.
A single blade split in an instant into two, then three, then dozens of chilling possibilities, scattering her vision into chaos.
This was no simple illusion.
The sword technique refined under the divine authority of the Goddess of Night and Crossroads.
The Torch Legion’s blade art.
Phantom Sword.
To combat the wicked things that concealed truth in darkness, the Torch Legion had sought answers at the intersection of swordsmanship and magic.
Like the crossroads of night where truth and deception, safety and danger all converge—the Phantom Sword used countless afterimages of the blade to confuse the enemy’s senses and judgment.
Things that crept into the veil of night.
Things difficult to count and indistinct in form.
Things that deceived the senses with sinister magic.
The power the Torch Legion had wielded against the wicked had, paradoxically, come to resemble the very tricks of the wicked.
Sirin saw that divine authority and nearly had a seizure.
“You absolute maniac of a bear! Are you seriously pulling this crap?!”
“I keep my promises. If you’re not a ‘real’ Witch, you won’t die. But if you are…”
“If I am, then what?!”
Bjorn answered by sending his blade flying in silence.
Sirin dodged in sheer horror.
This was no simple trick of the eye.
Each afterimage carried a cold, genuine killing intent.
Sirin swallowed a string of curses.
*This is supposed to be Fantasyland!
So why does this bastard feel like he’s from a completely different genre?!
Is this a wuxia novel?!*
Sirin twisted her body reflexively, evading the cascade of strikes.
She couldn’t dodge all of them.
Some of the grazing blades left nothing but the sound of air being cut.
Others came with a sharp, skin-slicing sensation.
Good.
Not all of them were real.
She only had to dodge the real ones.
No—not dodge.
She just had to pick the real ones and let herself take the hit.
Whatever this technique was, it was clearly formidable.
The Body Enlightenment she’d gain from enduring an attack like this would be no small thing.
She repeated it to herself.
*Just don’t get hit in the neck.*
Whether she could survive a decapitation was not something she could guarantee.
She had no idea how far Coward Mode’s invincibility actually extended.
In that case, to pick out the real ones…
*Oh, you son of a—!*
Another wave of strikes.
Sirin didn’t even have time to finish her internal cursing.
She threw herself desperately to the ground and rolled.
She ought to be grateful she’d landed in Fantasyland.
In a wuxia setting, she’d have earned a nickname like the Prone Blade Wanderer or the Shameless Groveling Swordsman by now.
Fortunately—whether because Fantasyland was practical, or because no one here had any shame—not a single person laughed at Sirin’s ground-rolling sword style.
“Cough.”
Sirin coughed.
“…!”
Sirin looked at the ground.
Right.
That, and Gordo.
Bjorn closed the distance again and charged.
Dozens of blades rained down toward her in a dizzying torrent.
Sirin drove her foot hard into the ground.
[ Unyielding Force ]
—Boom!
The earth beneath her caved in, and an explosive cloud of dust erupted upward.
Her vision went murky in an instant.
The dozens of phantom blades Bjorn had conjured were swallowed by the dust cloud.
*Found you!*
Sirin crowed inwardly.
Only a strike with real substance could cut through a dust cloud and reach her.
Brief relief—then Sirin was swearing again.
*You absolute lunatic!*
Three blades were bearing down on her from three different angles.
*How are all three of them real?!
Even in wuxia, there’s only supposed to be one true strike!*
One at her neck.
One at her torso.
One at her thigh.
She couldn’t dodge all three.
Could she survive a severed neck?
Whether Coward Mode’s invincibility covered decapitation was an unknown.
Sirin couldn’t gamble on it.
She made her decision.
Sirin wrenched her head to the side.
She let the most lethal strike—the one driving for her throat—barely glance past her, and took the other two in her body instead.
The blade aimed at her neck skimmed across Sirin’s bread-bag mask and slid by.
—Thud!
Thud!
The Phantom Sword carved two wounds into Sirin’s body simultaneously.
One shallow.
One deep.
The real strike was the one aimed at her heart.
The unpleasant sensation of cracking ribs, followed by a searing agony that felt like her lungs being skewered, slammed into her.
“Kgh…!”
Instead of a scream, Sirin vomited a gush of red blood.
The blood that burst from her lips soaked into the dirt alongside a torn scrap of her mask.
Through the sword still buried in her, Bjorn felt the faint, desperate flutter of Sirin’s heart—like a last, futile protest.
Bjorn clenched his teeth.
*Damn it.*
The faint trace of divine power he’d channeled through the blade was silent.
The Goddess’s authority showed no reaction whatsoever.
This woman… was not a Witch.
Damn it all!
This wasn’t what he’d intended—he hadn’t meant to pierce her heart!
He’d been trying to avoid the vitals, but this insane wretch had moved in ways that defied his every prediction.
The cold, metallic taste of self-reproach spread through his mouth.
Again.
Again, he had harmed an innocent with his own hands.
The dust slowly settled, and at last Sirin’s face was fully revealed.
“…!”
Bjorn’s breath caught.
Not even at the imperial palace banquets had he ever seen this kind of beauty.
This was something beyond the human realm.
It resembled the faint awe he had felt when the Goddess of Night and Crossroads had bestowed her blessing upon him.
If he had ever looked directly upon the face of a goddess—would it have looked like this?
Stained with blood and dust, yet even those filthy marks could not obscure her otherworldly beauty.
The pained furrow of her brow and the faint trembling of her lashes conjured a breathtaking, grief-stricken allure.
With a sword through her heart, Sirin murmured in a fading whisper.
“Ah…”
The words that followed were too faint to make out clearly.
“…”
Something between *pa* and *ppa*.
Somewhere in between.
“…!!!!”
Bjorn’s world stopped.
Sirin’s final words struck his mind like a hammer blow.
Memories he had forgotten—no, memories he had fought desperately to forget—burst through like a dam breaking, flooding out beyond all control.
The arrogance of the Torch Legion.
The torches that burned the innocent instead of lighting the dark.
The sight of a border village reduced to ash and cinders.
And within those cinders—a barbarian woman whose name he could no longer remember, nothing more than a fleeting connection of a single night.
If she had survived and borne a daughter, she would be about the same age as the woman before him now…
“Hah—!”
Bjorn let out a ragged, involuntary breath, releasing the air he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.
His hands were shaking violently.
That past didn’t exist.
Or did it?
Bjorn could no longer tell where truth ended and false memory began.
One thing was certain.
He had once again killed an innocent woman as a Witch.
Bjorn’s grip on the longsword went slack, as though he’d touched a burning coal, and the blade slipped from his fingers.
Sirin could hold on no longer.
She pitched forward.
She collapsed to the ground, bleeding, and lay still.
“…!”
The first to recover their senses were the constable captain Roderick and Peter.
Both of them ran to Sirin.
Roderick looked at her wound and went white.
“Her heart… he pierced her heart…!”
From among the mercenaries, a cheer erupted as they finally grasped what had happened.
“The Witch is dead! The Captain killed the Witch!”
“Revenge! Revenge for Heres!”
“We won!”
Some sank to the ground in relief.
Others couldn’t contain their excitement and whooped.
Bjorn’s voice cracked as he barked out:
“Silence!”
He turned on the murmuring mercenaries.
“This ground is cursed! Before the Witch’s curse descends upon us, we return to camp immediately!”
Those words gave the frightened mercenaries both dread and a strange sense of relief.
The Witch’s curse.
Yes.
All of this had been because of that Witch.
The mercenaries hurried to help their fallen comrades to their feet and began to scatter.
Bjorn forced his hammering heart down and walked away.
He had no desire to pick up his sword.
No—he didn’t need that sword anymore.
He would never again face another human being in combat.
Meanwhile, Peter crouched down beside the fallen Sirin and whispered quietly.
“Don’t laugh. You mad Witch.”
Sirin muttered inwardly.
*Damn old geezer.*