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Chapter 26
Not long after Leblanc left her seat, she spotted a man holding a sword and cautiously looking around. He seemed to be one of the people from earlier. Judging by the way he handled the sword and the aura he gave off, he didn’t appear to be a professional assassin.
Seeing him only strengthened Leblanc’s conviction that they had been sent by Verti. Verti, unaware of Leblanc’s true abilities, would never have felt the need to hire a trained assassin just to kill her and her young escort.
If the woman standing here had been an ordinary young lady from another family instead of Leblanc, she would have already been lying cold and lifeless on the ground.
Staring intently at the back of the man’s head, Leblanc spread her palm, from which writhing black smoke began to form.
As she gazed at the black smoke, her thoughts grew tangled. Wherever the power of chaos touched, it was stained black before the color slowly faded away. In her previous life, Leblanc had been mistaken for a dark mage because people had discovered corpses that had turned black.
When she had used her power on Relton not long ago, the amount had been minimal, so it had quickly returned to normal. But cutting off someone’s breath required dozens of times more power.
It would take at least three or four hours for a blackened corpse to return to its original state. If someone happened to discover the body in the meantime, things would undoubtedly become complicated.
“Damn it… Should I erase his memory and just cripple his legs? How long would it take him to get back? And what if villagers nearby find him like that—what then? Do I just kill everyone and bury the bodies? For now, I’ll use as little power as possible…”
Gnawing at her fingernails in anxiety, Leblanc made up her mind to sever the assassin’s legs. Just as she was about to launch herself at him—
“Aaah!”
A sharp scream rang out from somewhere, and her heart dropped. That voice was far too familiar—it was unmistakably Shasha’s.
Soon, the gazes of the two people turned toward the source of the sound and met in midair. But before the man could steady his sword, the black smoke shooting out from Leblanc’s hand pierced straight through his torso.
“Kuhk!”
Blood burst from the man’s body and splattered across Leblanc’s face. His torso quickly turned pitch-black as he collapsed to the ground. Without sparing even a glance at the corpse, Leblanc hurried toward where the scream had come from.
In an instant, a pain like her heart was about to burst spread through her entire body. Leblanc faltered briefly, but soon forced herself upright and quickened her pace.
“Shasha!”
Her heart pounded with unease. At the same time, the image of Shasha staggering toward her in her previous life overlapped before her eyes.
Shasha—the one person who had stayed by Leblanc’s side until the very end, even after Erkis died and everyone else had left her. His voice, shouting at her to run while blood streamed down his body, rang vividly in her ears.
“No, no… please…”
Not far ahead, the sharp clash of metal echoed. It was near the desert they had passed earlier with Shasha.
Under the bright moonlight, Shasha was struggling to fend off two men with his sword.
“Shasha, duck!”
The moment she saw him, Leblanc released her power without hesitation. An enormous amount of black smoke erupted from her body and surged toward the men. The smoke coiled around their necks, slowly rising upward, and soon their feet lifted off the ground.
“Kuh—khhk…!”
Leblanc’s eyes, now tinged red, gleamed coldly under the moonlight. Suspended in the air, the men kicked frantically as they struggled to escape the tightening black smoke.
“Did that bitch Verti send you?”
Leblanc walked toward them with a straight, unwavering stride. Her red hair, tied together, whipped through the smoke, and with every step she took, the black mist writhed as if alive, searching for prey. Slumped on the ground, Shasha could only stare up at the scene in stunned silence.
“I—I’ll talk, so just… this…”
One of the men, terrified by the pain of suffocation, managed to mutter in a broken voice. But Leblanc calmly extended one hand and tightened her grip.
“I don’t need it.”
Crack—
With the sound of neck bones shattering, both men went limp. Their eyes rolled back, white foam spilling from their mouths. When Leblanc withdrew her power, the two corpses dropped at Shasha’s feet.
Shasha still couldn’t bring himself to speak, only staring blankly at his mistress.
Glancing at the bodies before him, a chill ran down his spine. From their necks to beneath their eyes, the corpses were stained black.
“Shasha, are you okay? Are you hurt anywhere? My goodness, look at all this blood…”
Leblanc, now returned to her usual self, hurried over to him. Blood dripped steadily from Shasha’s arm, as if it had been deeply slashed by a blade.
With a worried expression, Leblanc pulled a handkerchief from her bosom and wrapped his wound. Only then did Shasha, finally coming to his senses, ask in a trembling voice, his face deathly pale,
“C-Count… what was that just now…? H-how did you take down two grown men without even lifting a finger…?”
“I’ll explain later. First, we need to treat your injury…”
At that moment, Leblanc froze as she tried to stand up. Sensing something was wrong, Shasha called out cautiously,
“Count?”
After staring blankly into the air for a moment, Leblanc staggered and collapsed to the ground. Shasha hurriedly caught her, but she showed no response, as if she had lost consciousness.
“Count, wake up! Count!”
No matter how desperately he called her name, Leblanc lay still with her eyes closed. Only the fierce beating of her heart silently testified that she was still alive.
When Leblanc opened her eyes, the first thing she saw was an unfamiliar ceiling. The ceiling of a building made of dark wood and white clay filled her vision.
Blinking slowly, she pushed herself upright. Looking around, everything felt unfamiliar.
“This place is…”
Perhaps because she had been lying down for so long, her head suddenly spun. Supporting herself on the bed with one hand, Leblanc closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Her mouth felt parched and unpleasantly dry.
“Count!”
The door slowly opened, and Shasha appeared. Seeing her awake, he dropped the tray he was holding and rushed over.
“How are you feeling? Are you okay? You suddenly collapsed—I was so scared! Nothing hurts, right?”
At the barrage of questions, a faint smile spread across Leblanc’s lips.
As she slowly nodded, her gaze stopped on the thick bandages wrapped tightly around his arm. Recalling the sight of him bleeding, she asked worriedly,
“What about you? How’s your arm? Did you get treatment?”
“Is this really the time to be worrying about me?”
Shasha snapped as he jumped to his feet. Seeing Leblanc look up at him in confusion, he let out a deep sigh and carefully sat down beside her.
“You woke up after three days. Three whole days—you were lying there like you were dead! Do you have any idea how worried I was? Even the physician said he didn’t know the cause, that all we could do was wait…”
“Three days?”
Leblanc echoed in shock. She clearly remembered the searing pain in her chest just as she tried to stand after saving Shasha. But to think she had not only lost consciousness, but remained that way for three days…
She couldn’t make sense of it. What’s more, for someone who had been unconscious for three days, her body felt perfectly fine—like she had simply woken from a deep sleep.
“Yeah. I already contacted the estate. I told them we were attacked by bandits on the way back, and that I was injured, so we’d be delayed. I figured it’d seem strange if I said you had no injuries at all but were unconscious for days.”
“……”
Silence settled between them. Shasha, looking down as if lost in thought, soon scratched his head awkwardly and spoke,
“This might be none of my business, but… what I saw that day—I’m supposed to keep it a secret, right?”
“…Yes.”
“Hah… so it really was real.”
Avoiding his gaze, Leblanc slowly nodded. Shasha only let out a short sigh and said nothing more, while Leblanc scratched at her nails in growing anxiety.
She knew Shasha wasn’t that kind of person—but she couldn’t help fearing that, having witnessed that power, he might look down on her. After all, back in the desert, he had stared at her with a pale, terrified face.
