novelraw Chapter 94 : Please Give Me Food
Chapter 94 : Please Give Me Food
Chapter 94: Please Give Me Food
Imelda called out to Robin again.
“Robin……?”
The masked ones did not react, as if Imelda did not exist to them.
The farmer pulled up his robe to cover his face and then spoke.
“Let’s go.”
One of them passed by the farmer’s side.
Robin vanished without a trace, as if he had disappeared.
Wooong. Woong. Woong.
From far away, a terrifying power approached, flaunting its presence.
The hunter spoke calmly.
“He’s here.”
The silhouette that closed the distance in an instant was an old man.
When Theodric swung his sword, fighting spirit shot forth.
Three masked men stepped up and blocked it with their respective weapons.
Kwaaang!
While the three restrained Theodric, one by one they passed by the farmer.
Imelda’s hands trembled violently.
‘No.’
Even now, she had to grab the farmer and get Robin back.
Ignoring her physical condition, she took a step forward.
Thud.
The moment she moved, she toppled forward.
In the meantime, only three masked men remained.
The rest had all retreated.
Imelda shouted angrily.
“Give Robin back!”
She planted both arms and knees on the ground and ran like a four-legged beast.
The farmer mocked Imelda as he walked away.
“No……!”
The farmer who had been right in front of her disappeared.
None of the mysterious masked powerhouses could be found.
“Ah……?”
Shaaahhh.
Raindrops flowed into Imelda’s mouth.
“Robin…….”
Theodric, who arrived late, dealt with the surrounding enemies.
Imelda clutched her heart and gasped for breath.
“Ah… ahhk…….”
It hurt.
Her heart hurt as if she were witnessing her father’s death.
“Aaah! Hwaaaahhh!”
She screamed like a madwoman, but Robin did not return.
Right. I… wasn’t able to be of help until the very end.
Kwa-rururung!
A deafening roar spread as if lightning had struck.
The resentment of a girl born a noble and sent to the battlefield was swallowed by the battlefield.
The place Robin was thrown into was a white snowfield.
As he rolled across the land that was white in all directions, the cold sensation seeped into his wounds.
He crawled toward the place he had bounced out from, but he could not go back.
He circled around, crying out for the farmer, but only echoes rang out.
“Heh heh…….”
A flesh-cutting wind lashed at Robin’s body.
His leg was broken, and he had no idea where this place was.
When he acknowledged his failure, the overflowing killing intent subsided.
As the cold set in, his reason slowly returned.
“Stupid bastard.”
He had lost the pocket watch Jeremy left behind.
He could not recover Mirian’s body.
There was no way to confirm Paul’s safety.
Would those brutal ones leave Serena and Imelda alive?
For a moment, the thought of dying crossed his mind.
He wanted to run away from this harsh reality.
But that absurd idea did not last long.
-Live.
-Live for your happiness. That’s my last request.
“I have to live. Live and…….”
-Keep the promise.
Smack!
Robin slapped both cheeks hard.
The stinging pain woke his mind.
He blew away the distracting thoughts in his head.
Top priority objective: survival.
Once he set his goal, his head felt clearer.
Whiiiiiing.
Every time the cold wind blew, it felt as if even the blood flowing through his veins would freeze.
Until just moments ago, he had been soaked in rain, sweat, and blood, but before he knew it, ice crystals had formed and stabbed into Robin’s skin.
“Stopping the bleeding was nice.”
He closed his eyes and repeated deep breaths several times.
Every time he exhaled, white breath puffed out.
When he opened his eyes while thinking only of survival, things he could not see before came into view.
“Looks like I’m not the first person like me?”
When he rummaged through the uneven ground, a corpse appeared.
It was a corpse that had frozen to death in the dead of winter.
Because decomposition had not progressed, if one looked closely, it seemed possible to make out even the appearance and attire.
Whenever something seemed a bit suspicious and he cleared away the snow, a corpse invariably appeared.
“Seems like there are quite a lot of people with grudges.”
With the farmer’s ability, it was a good place to make people disappear without a trace.
Most of those who froze to death were dressed in clothing unsuitable for the cold.
He stripped off their clothes one by one.
Crack.
As he removed the clothes, the corpses’ limbs broke off.
Those who had become no different from ice in the extreme cold seemed to glare at Robin resentfully.
Countless corpses, regardless of age or gender, were left completely naked.
He gathered all the clothes he could salvage and layered them onto his body.
“Hoo. Hoo.”
His remaining lifespan increased slightly from ten minutes.
“Thirty minutes should be doable.”
Now that he had secured clothes, he moved on to the next step.
He needed fire.
Every time he breathed out through his mouth, his breath condensed.
This was not an environment where humans could possibly live.
While searching the corpses, he carefully looked for matches but could not find any.
“If I dawdle, I’ll end up like them.”
He said to himself as he looked for something he could burn.
He dug through the snowy ground, hoping even a piece of wood would appear, but only his hands froze.
What should this land be called.
It wasn’t even land.
It was on ice.
Snow had piled upon snow until it became a massive glacier, enough to be mistaken for ground.
Robin stopped searching for useful items and drew his sword.
Fortunately, both swords were still strapped to his waist.
“They said to express a powerful will.”
There was something he had learned from being swept up in war.
Killing intent and fighting spirit.
When he thought about killing the enemy in front of him, killing intent manifested thickly, but mixed within it was clearly fighting spirit as well.
If killing intent was the embodiment of the primal emotion of wanting to kill the opponent, then fighting spirit had a more concrete sense of purpose than that.
‘…When I resolved to recover the pocket watch. Something was different.’
Now that he had grasped the feel of it once, drawing it out again would not be difficult.
He engraved human will upon the world.
Things he could not do right now—such as accumulating achievements or borrowing the power of heroes—were erased from his mind.
Robin asked himself what he needed.
A fiercely burning fire. Did he truly want to light a fire?
‘No.’
If a fire burned, he would be able to escape the cold.
What mattered was the temperature needed for survival.
Warmth sufficient to keep the body’s energy from being stolen by the cold.
‘The young lady wrapped fighting spirit around her entire body.’
He recalled Imelda’s awakening as she pressed the farmer.
The fighting spirit that flowed through her whole body, beyond the sword, was something he had never seen before.
Thinking carefully, it was not just Imelda.
Calimacos did not confine it to himself but spread it widely, as if dominating the entire area.
Mirian also wielded fighting spirit stretched far longer than her sword, lashing it like a whip.
‘Imagine it. Armor wrapping around my body.’
The fighting spirit gathered on the sword writhed.
Like a candle before the wind, the faint fighting spirit that looked ready to go out climbed up Robin’s hand.
To the fighting spirit in which he felt nothing, Robin added one more will.
‘Become warm, like wearing a gambeson.’
Warmth spread across the back of his hand.
It was still insufficient.
He had to cover his entire body like Imelda to survive this cold.
“…….”
He closed his eyes and tried to concentrate, but it only managed to cover his arms.
“Well, even this is better than nothing.”
There was no need to despair just because it did not work right away.
Someday, he would digest it all.
More urgent than that was survival.
Letting the fighting spirit that wrapped his arms flow piece by piece, Robin planted the two swords into the ground.
Thud. Thud.
He could not stay here forever.
The odds were low, but if the farmer came looking for him, his heart would be pierced by a scythe in an instant.
Using the swords held in reverse grip in both hands as canes, Robin moved forward.
Whether it was a village where people lived, a monster’s habitat, or a dungeon of the Demon Tribe.
Anything was fine—he just hoped something would appear.
The war ended in Wilcock’s victory.
When the Demon Tribe and monsters withdrew, the Betterot side still had backing.
The mediation of the Imperial Knights was trustworthy.
No one had imagined that even those Imperial Knights would be forced to kneel.
With no other choice, they poured in all their forces, but unexpected reinforcements appeared.
Powerhouses who hid their identities behind masks and robes fought valiantly against Wilcock’s knight order.
The problem was that not even Betterot knew who they were.
When the knight order withdrew, the battle between ordinary soldiers should have turned into a tedious war of attrition, but once again the result defied expectations.
The participation of two old men decided the outcome.
It had truly been a long time since the Border Count personally took part in battle.
People had secretly thought that Witchard Wilcock’s strength had waned, but that was not the case.
Moreover, the old man who looked as though he might enter eternal rest as soon as tomorrow was like a nightmare to Betterot.
In the end, Betterot raised the white flag.
“…So it really turned out just like Robin said.”
“…….”
“As of today, your name has been removed from the wanted list.”
“…I see.”
Imelda lay on the bed, staring blankly at the ceiling.
Beside her, Serena chattered on.
A week had passed since the declaration of the end of the war.
The reason Serena and Imelda survived the battlefield was thanks to Theodric.
“I knew Grandpa wasn’t an ordinary person, but I didn’t think he was that much.”
Even while burning with fever from the price of drawing on Ether, Serena watched everything.
The feat the old man displayed was nothing short of a calamity.
Unless all the masked ones including the farmer had attacked together, they would have had to be prepared for at least half of them to die.
“I’m leaving tomorrow.”
At Serena’s sudden words, Imelda lifted her body.
Imelda’s appearance was no different from a wreck.
The shock of losing Robin right before her eyes was so great that she had stopped eating and drinking.
Eyes darkened by deep circles peered at Serena through her rough hair.
“Where are you going?”
“The war’s over, and there are lots of places in the north I haven’t been. I’m thinking of traveling around. Want to come with me?”
Serena’s offer to travel together was a considerable kindness.
Through this war, she had realized that traveling alone was not always the answer.
With a swordsman like Imelda alongside her, it would be reassuring.
“…….”
“Getting your emotions in order is important too.”
Imelda fiddled with the stone placed on the bedside table.
The masked woman called Sparrow.
That woman had stabbed Imelda’s side and slipped her hand into her pouch.
At the time, in the chaos, she had not noticed, but there was a stone inside that she had never seen before.
It was neither crafted nor special, just a stone commonly found rolling along the roadside.
Its purplish hue caught her attention, but aside from that, it had no notable features.
Serena looked at it and spoke.
“A purple stone. Could it be a magic stone?”
“Do you know anything about this stone?!”
Imelda asked Serena urgently.
She was grasping at even a straw.
She was so desperate that she moved close enough for her breathing to be heard.
“I haven’t seen one myself. It’s just something I heard.”
“Anything is fine, just tell me.”
“Magic stones are stones found more frequently the closer you get to the Demon Tribe’s land. There’s nothing good about getting close to them.”
“The Demon Tribe’s land…….”
“Drop any foolish ideas. There’s no guarantee that stone is a magic stone, and the Demon Realm is a dangerous place.”
Especially Imelda, whose mind was on the verge of breaking, must not go there.
Serena went on at length about the dangers of the Demon Realm, but none of it reached Imelda’s ears.
‘That woman said it was a gift.’
Sparrow, who had stabbed her side with a dagger and kicked Robin away, was highly skilled.
She had enough composure not to lose even against an awakened Imelda.
And yet, Sparrow did not kill either Imelda or Robin.
It was not just Sparrow. They could have dealt with Robin at any time before retreating.
It was a hard-to-believe conjecture, but perhaps Sparrow had shown goodwill.
‘I have to confirm it.’
What exactly this stone was.
Whether it really was the magic stone Serena mentioned.
And why Sparrow put the magic stone in her pouch.
A strange light appeared in Imelda’s eyes.
She returned not as someone with hollow eyes, but as a person living her life.
There was no logic to it, merely a wish.
‘Robin might be alive.’
She had not witnessed his death directly.
Considering the farmer’s ability, he must have been transported somewhere.
It was probably an extreme environment, but Robin was not a weak human.
Wouldn’t he somehow survive and return?
He might be barely clinging to life, waiting for Imelda.
“Serena.”
“Hm?”
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“I think I know what I need to do now.”
“You didn’t listen to what I said, did you.”
Robin might not be dead.
No, he must be alive.
He had to be. It had to be that way.
Believing that much was the only way to endure this hellish reality.
Creeeak.
The door opened without a knock.
Theodric, looking neat and tidy, glanced over the two girls.
“Grandfather, I have a favor to ask.”
“Go ahead and say it.”
“Go somewhere with me.”
“Very well.”
Theodric did not hesitate.
A withering flower lifted its head.
The old man felt a measure of responsibility for Robin’s disappearance.
He could not deny that he had urged him to reclaim his name.
Moreover, there was much he could teach Imelda.
If things had gone well, he would have taken in both Robin and Imelda, but since it had turned out this way, he resolved to at least teach Imelda.
He did not know if the remaining time would be sufficient, but he would do his best.
Grrrgle.
Imelda’s stomach churned.
The girl spoke without any sense of embarrassment.
“First, before that… um, please give me food.”