FSFSLU 42

chapter 42

Look at the lonely carriage racing along with neither driver nor passengers.

It was the alarm bell announcing the ruin of this journey, the proclamation of a hopeless, arduous trek about to begin.

Still, watching the carriage’s shrinking rear end without doing anything felt unbearable.

“Isabel!”

Liz had achieved nothing so far on this journey.

When the horses tethered to the carriage bolted down the path leaving the three of them behind, the first to snap back to her senses—quite naturally—was Liz.

She had decided to follow Isabel, leaving Rettina which would gradually get better; part of her wanted to escape the cramped town and see more of the world, but essentially she couldn’t stand by and let Isabel be left alone.

When trouble came, Liz had always preferred to fix things first rather than get bogged down in complicated cause-and-effect.

Of course, even if she caught up to the carriage there might be no clever way to stop it—Liz knew nothing about horses or carriages.

Still, all of Isabel and Liz’s possessions were on that carriage, so she had to chase after it.

“Isabel!”

Liz shouted, pointing at herself so Isabel would hear clearly.

“Blessing of Fortitude!”

“Ah! Yes!”

The night before, Liz and Isabel had set a few rules for the journey ahead.

One of them was a signal for emergency situations: that Liz could act without needing Isabel to be told the circumstances.

That was one such signal.

Isabel raised the Angelos Rod high and pointed it at Liz. The silver cross wrapped in cloth gleamed, and a bright light flowed into Liz’s body.

Tio recoiled in shock.

‘A blessing?’

He already knew what the priests of the Church of the Lord could do: a blessing that enhanced physical ability—no offensive power, only a boost to the body.

But even the process of the blessing pouring out released an enormous amount of holy energy. If Tio had been engulfed in it, even if not direct contact, he would have felt considerable pain.

He wasn’t the only one alarmed.

Liz had already seen Isabel casting a blessing on herself and running about before, so she expected to be strengthened by a similar degree.

That was a miscalculation.

Unlike Isabel, Liz’s body already possessed the physical abilities of a robust adult male. It was no wonder Tio had mistaken Liz for Daikro.

When Isabel’s blessing augmented Liz’s body, the dust kicked up by Liz’s sprint blew over Tio, who had been standing beside her.

Liz herself was astonished—the speed was so great she couldn’t even identify the rows of trees rushing past her back. She felt the air buffet her eyes, drying them quickly.

She had to deliberately slow herself to avoid being swept away by inertia.

But soon Liz adapted to her altered body. The change was something she felt in her skin.

‘I can catch up with this!’ she thought.

So Liz ran off in pursuit of the carriage.

A bit late, Isabel cupped her hands and shouted after Liz’s receding back, “Big sis, fighting!” Even though Liz wouldn’t hear it, Isabel seemed simply to want to try the gesture.

Then she turned to Tio and smiled broadly.

“You look full of energy, sleepy eyes!”

It was infuriating.

“……”

Everything started to go wrong from the beginning.

Although he was hiding his nature for now, Tio needed to reveal himself to the master of the Demon Sword and bring them into the Demon King’s army. That was why he intended to take them to Dorothea.

But on the very first day they met, such a colossal problem had occurred.

If it had been a monster ambush or some combat situation, Tio might have had a chance to show his skills—but a runaway carriage? This was obnoxious.

Even if he requested enlistment with the Demon King’s army now, he’d be rejected for sheer incompetence.

And the rest of their journey would turn into a thorny path.

Getting a new horse and carriage was impossible. Tio was disguised as a plain human coachman while concealing that he was undead.

If a seemingly ordinary coachman produced a ready horse and carriage overnight, it would arouse suspicion.

If they lost the horse and carriage now, they’d have to continue on foot until they secured some other transport.

A trip that the carriage would cover in ten days would be on foot.

For someone like Tio, who could turn into shadow and cross the ground, that would be easy, and traveling alone with the master of the Demon Sword wouldn’t be a problem.

But this companion, Isabel, was a walking catastrophe.

To have to accompany a holy-energy monster who felt pain from even a touch on a long march—Tio would rather bite his tongue and die. Of course, he couldn’t die.

“It seems the sleepy-eyed one got too healthy. But Big Sister Liz will catch up soon!” Isabel said, smiling brightly without any idea what she’d set in motion. The smile made Tio want to clench his fist.

Even so, Isabel would instantly heal any injury. If he struck her, he’d feel his fist burn instead.

How powerless he felt.

For the first time since his creation, Tio thought about abandoning his mission.

But he didn’t want to disappoint Dorothea.

With that single resolve, Tio steeled himself again.

“Um, priest?” he said.

“Yes, Yudit!” Isabel answered. There was not a single apology in her voice—she truly seemed glad the horse had become healthy.

Tio ground his teeth and forced out the words, the sound squashed by his clenched jaw.

“We should… follow them, right?”

“Oh, right! Just a moment!”

Tio blinked, then flinched; Isabel brought the Angelos Rod to point at him, the gesture urgent.

“I—I’m fine! Don’t cast a blessing on me!”

“Huh?”

Isabel tilted her head, as if asking why he’d refuse such a good thing.

“I said I’m fine!”

“You can’t catch up without a blessing! I’ll cast it on you too, so we can run together!”

“Even if I can’t catch up, that’s okay! If you want, run on by yourself! I’ll walk!”

There was no way a blessing of physical enhancement would be applied to Tio. Better to walk unblessed than to endure the painful blessing. Isabel glanced at him and playfully elbowed his side.

“Oh, you can’t leave me behind~”

Tio realized for the first time that even an undead could get a surge of blood pressure.

Holding in the pain where Isabel’s elbow hit, he forced a smile; his jaw was clenched so tightly his pronunciation came out muffled.

“H-hnng… g-go aw-say.”

“Hmm, then.” Isabel snapped her fingers.

“Let’s walk together!”

The offer was hardly different from being torn apart, but Tio accepted. If he refused, Isabel might insist she’d carry him and run—a last ultimatum he didn’t want.

And so—

The ultimate undead, Tio, walked side by side along the path with the reincarnated saint Isabel.

They walked where the wheel ruts of carriages were most pronounced; Isabel hummed the Church’s hymns the whole way.

Tio kept a wide berth between them. Walking close was awkward. If they touched, he’d feel pain again.

‘Dorothea, why didn’t you make me unable to feel pain?’ he muttered inwardly, chastising his own foolishness.

He’d already been made this way: he could feel pain, but it was muted—pierced by an arrow he would feel only a skin-tearing kind of pain.

Even Dorothea could hardly have anticipated meeting such a colossal wielder of holy power while making someone like Tio.

Isabel asked several more times, “Why are you walking so far away?” Whatever answer Tio gave, she would go “Oh, I see!” and then ask the same question a minute later.

His tolerance was being tested in real time.

If he could assassinate her quietly, that would be best. But unless he was a highly trained human assassin, Tio—who felt pain from holy energy—couldn’t even bear to imagine killing Isabel.

Above all, the master of the Demon Sword seemed close to Isabel; killing her was out of the question.

First, even if it took longer, they would walk this path to meet the owner of the Demon Sword again. If the owner heroically recovered the carriage and horses, perhaps they could resume traveling by carriage instead of on foot…

‘No, it won’t change anything.’

A sudden realization made Tio’s blood pressure spike further.

Even if they managed to secure horses again, it wouldn’t help. If Isabel was nearby, any animal brainwashed by feeding it the horse’s bodily fluids would be freed in an instant.

And he himself had no confidence in handling horses without brainwashing; he wasn’t a real coachman.

Whatever outcome, it was Tio who would end up in trouble. In fact, once the owner of the Demon Sword had run off in the distance, it was predictable that Dorothea would give him a severe reprimand.

‘How dare you subject the one who is to be a general in the Demon King’s army to such humiliation! Now pay for your incompetence!’

It was just imagination, but the imagined rebuke chilled him to the bone. For a mere created being, the Creator’s wrath equated to a calamity on par with the world’s end.

Thus, Tio could only glare at Isabel with angry eyes again and again.

“Are you all right? Is anything uncomfortable?” Isabel would ask, her voice ready to heal any pain immediately. Each time, Tio hurriedly relaxed his face and forced a smile.

If Isabel perceived him as a patient, her merciful holy power would be unleashed without mercy.

“I’m fine,” he’d say.

“But why do you walk so far away?”

“I just like walking alone.”

“I like walking together! If you don’t want to come, shall I go?”

“Please… just let me walk like this.”

“Isn’t it boring just walking? Oh, can I sing then?”

Tio thought that was for the best. Listening to her sing would be far easier than replying to every chirpy remark.

And all the while they walked together, Isabel sang hymns of the Church.

He was filled with murderous intent.

Thanks to the Fortitude Blessing, Liz soon caught up with the carriage.

But even after catching up, she couldn’t find a way to stop the carriage without injuring herself or the horse, so she elected to run alongside it.

If she got tired and slowed down, she planned to leap onto the carriage, remove the cargo and jump off.

Their road toward Grangtina first passed a small village along this path, and by nightfall they were to reach the fortified city at the road’s end, Castlina.

But the horse took a side path—not the direct road to Castlina—and carefully adjusted its speed so the carriage wouldn’t be damaged during the sharp cornering.

From that moment, Liz suspected that the horse was not simply running wild but might be moving with a clear purpose.

While running down that route, Liz spotted up ahead a small village at the end of the side path.

And a man running toward the carriage from the village entrance.

Liz thought him a man intent on suicide. Trying to throw himself in front of an unattended, charging carriage—what madness was that?

Strangely enough, the horse itself began to slow.

‘So horses are smart after all,’ she thought. Even a horse wouldn’t crash into a person standing ahead.

Then the man running toward the carriage called out in a pitiful voice:

“Emmmaa—!”

Neigh—heehee—

The horse came to a complete stop, and Liz, not understanding why, also stopped.

That’s when Liz found herself face to face with the real owner.

Emma—the horse—pranced in joy, and the man who had had his carriage and horses stolen the night before, and the villagers who had helped him search for the lost horse, all rushed up.

They had spent the entire night searching for the horse and carriage; each of them looked haggard with worry and fatigue.

The man, the horse’s owner and coachman, wiped a tear and asked angrily:

“Did you steal my Emma?”

Liz wasn’t flustered by the question.

She pointed with her thumb over her shoulder and calmly explained that she didn’t know the carriage was stolen, that they’d been passengers, and that the coachman was on his way here—one only had to look at the loaded goods to see.

“……”

“Really. If I were a horse thief, would I come back like this?”