GDTEA Chapter 144

Ren

Ren ran.

He ran through the torrential downpour, where he couldn’t see even an inch ahead, like a beast that had lost its mind.

In his fragmentary, boiling memories, he had clearly been in the bedroom.

Yet somehow he was running without shoes, gripping a sword he had no memory of picking up.

‘Sha—.’

Ren kept running.

He ran forward in a frenzy, looking at nothing but what lay ahead.

‘Sharti—.’

He didn’t want to think about anything.

He simply kept running, to find just one person.

‘Sharti, Sharti…….’

[Your Grace, the Grand Duke—.]

But as auditory hallucinations began to sound, Ren’s expression twisted.

[—You who are the master of the House of Gwendhill.]

A stone lodged into the sole of his foot.

Yes. The pain he was feeling now must be that.

The pain that felt as though his heart was being torn apart was not his own.

[Leodelt Gwendhill, become the sword that protects the Empire.]

The hallucinations rang through his mind more powerfully and clearly than the dreadful sound of rain battering his ears.

He wanted to cover his ears, but there was no escaping it.

There was no way he could escape it.

Every hallucination he was hearing now was a fragment of the memories he had lost.

[Henceforth, the House of Gwendhill shall wield its sword and sacrifice its body for the eternal glory of the Neweiton Empire, to protect the Empire without end.]

The fierce, lashing downpour stung his eyes.

[Grand Duke Gwendhill—.]

Huk, huh-uk……. Huh-euk, haa…….

Ren, who had been swept away by the tidal waves of memories rushing in all at once, reflexively swung his sword.

Clang—. With the sound of steel meeting steel, his body moved on its own.

Feeling the wind slice past his chest, Ren brought his sword down without hesitation.

A metallic, bloody scent drifted through the air, yet the hand swinging the sword showed no sign of stopping.

The sensation of wielding the sword alternated between feeling unfamiliar and feeling intimately known.

[Gwendhill—.]

[Your Grace, the Grand Duke—.]

[Leodelt Gwendhill—!]

[Your Grace—.]

[—Master.]

Heat rose through his body and up into his head.

It felt as though his head might burst.

‘……Shut up.’

The black-masked assassins who had been lying in wait fell one by one into the mud, felled by Ren’s sword.

Ren ran again in a frenzy.

The bloodstains on his face were washed away by the rain and streamed down.

Perhaps because it was mixed with blood, the rainwater flowing beneath his eyes felt terribly hot.

Running and running without rest, Ren found himself hoping that his heart would burst before anything else.

His ragged, tattered heart hurt too much.

‘Shut up, shut up.’

Ren swung his sword as though cutting down the hallucinations, the voices, one by one.

And at last, he saw the woman he had been searching for so desperately.

The moment Ren spotted the woman who had been seized by the black-masked assassins, he cried out.

He strained the veins in his throat in an attempt to call the woman’s name with every ounce of strength he had.

“……!”

But no sound came out.

In that instant, her name would not come to him.

‘……That’s absurd!’

Her name, of all names, was one he must never forget.

Without even the time to be shocked, Ren struck his own face with his fist.

Thud—! Having struck his facial bone squarely, Ren barely managed to hold onto his consciousness.

Just as he was about to force strength back into his throat, a voice rang out from within his heart.

What unbelievable nerve.

What right do you have to call that poor woman’s name?

You, of all people, have no such right.

It was as if his throat were being choked; breathing became difficult.

Despair spread across the face of Ren, who could only exhale short, ragged breaths.

[As it happens, there is a kingdom presumptuous enough to provoke war without knowing its place. The Kingdom of Krianet. Hmm, it seems suitable as the opening act for a war of conquest. What does the Grand Duke think?]

After Gwendhill came Krianet.

[I hear the King of Krianet took his own life not long ago. Faced with the prospect of losing a war he himself started, the shame must have been unbearable for a king. But, Grand Duke—victory in war goes to the side that strikes the head off the enemy first. Therefore, bring me the heads of the Krianet royals without fail.]

The hallucinations were whispering a truth he did not wish to know.

‘Silence!’

Ren did not stand still any longer.

He wanted nothing more to do with memories—he never wanted to recover them again.

If this was the truth, he did not want to know it.

“—Sharti!!!”

Ren screamed her name so forcefully that the metallic taste of blood rose in his throat.

A cry like a scream of anguish rang out through the rain.

“……Ren?”

Before Sharti could turn her head toward him, Ren plunged without hesitation into the midst of the black-masked assassins.

With her hood torn away, she was soaked from head to toe in the rain.

Of all things, the rain streamed down her face as well, making her look as though she were weeping.

Ren, grinding his teeth, swung his sword and endured the pain tearing through his heart.

“—Ren, it’s dangerous!”

Dangerous? Who? You? Me?

Something seemed to be reaching his ears, but they were growing numb.

A kind of motion sickness overtook him, as though his very identity was splitting into two, three, four, only to meld back together again and again.

“Kill the man first!”

“Seize him!”

The assassins threw themselves at Ren in earnest.

Dodging blades that grazed him by the thinnest of margins, Ren felt strangely as though his body had grown light.

The more his vision blurred, the more keenly his body began to react to the movements of his enemies.

……It felt as though control over his body was being handed over to someone else.

‘……No!’

Ren’s eyes flew open wide.

Thanks to an assassin seizing the opening and driving a sword into his forearm, he managed to find his reason once more.

Ren shook his head roughly, then tightened his grip on the sword.

“Die—!”

It was a strange thing.

The clearer his mind became, the heavier his body grew, and the sword he swung turned dull.

There were many reasons for this. He had been caught in the rain and his condition was far from normal, and the skill of the assassins was formidable as well.

But the precise reason was one only Ren could know.

“……Quiet.”

[They say only the Krianet princess remains in the royal palace.]

“……I said quiet.”

[Even so, the princess, unlike the king, seems to know how to take responsibility. She intends to remain alone in the palace to face the enemy forces.]

“—Shut up!”

Even as blood poured freely from his wounds, Ren refused to release the sword in his hand.

He had an ominous premonition that the moment strength left his hand, he would no longer be able to exist as ‘Ren.’

“They’re trying to stall for time.”

“Kill the doctor first!”

As though they could afford to delay no longer, the assassins leapt not toward Ren, but toward Sharti.

“……!”

“Sharti!!”

Their target from the very beginning had been Sharti, the doctor.

Sharti, who had been keeping her distance so as not to hinder Ren, twisted her body in urgent desperation.

The sight of a hidden weapon hurtling toward her reached Ren’s eyes in slow motion.

‘Move, move……!’

His legs would not move.

Every time he tried to move, his body swayed.

He had already lost far too much blood.

Was he going to stand here and watch the woman he loved die before his eyes?

Because she is a woman who should already have died five years ago?

As though mocking him for his pathetic state, a low and heavy voice rang through his heart once more.

You are not a protector.

You are the enemy who should be killing that woman.

For you are none other than Grand Duke Leodelt Gwendhill—the very man that woman so terribly fears.

“……!”

A sensation as though his heart had stopped swept through his entire body.

The truth—one he could not believe and therefore could not accept—was being cruelly excavated and forced upon him.

[The princess of Krianet, is she.]

The memories, having begun to consciously stir the past, drove their way into his unstable mind.

And in the end, they chose only the very worst memories, closing around his throat to choke the life from him.

Thud.

Thud.

Thud.

Thud.

[The Krianet royals who were so high and mighty when they declared war—to think they would grovel at my feet like this, begging for their lives. Quite a different disposition from the royals of the Neweiton Empire.]

Ah.

With all expression gone from his face, Ren let out a hollow, empty sigh.

The rain ran hot down beneath his eyes.

‘……Sharti—.’

Within his consciousness, where despair was piling up layer upon layer, Ren readjusted his grip on the sword.

From his body, gone cold, aura rose like a faint, wavering heat haze.

[A severed head—or to be reduced to ash together with the royal palace—which do you suppose is the finest spoil one can claim from a defeated nation?]

Crushed beneath the weight of sins pressing down on every part of him, Ren simply brought his sword down through empty air.

The aura he unleashed, laden with killing intent, cleaved straight through the bodies of the assassins targeting Sharti, cutting them in two.

“…….”

But Ren did not stop.

More powerfully, more sharply, more swiftly—he continued to release wave after wave of aura.

As though targeting someone unseen, Ren swung his sword without pause, without drawing a single breath.

Without doing so, he had no way to contain the aura boiling within him.

‘Gwendhill, he says. I am Grand Duke Gwendhill, he says. It was I who tried to burn Sharti to death. That bastard was me—and all this time, without knowing that, I had been with her…….’

He wanted to be sick.

But he had no right to be.

Rage surged to the very top of his head.

But he had no right to such feelings either.

His face grew soaked through and through.

But he had no right to shed tears.

Anguish tore his chest apart.

But again—he had no right to that either.

‘I am Ren. I must be Ren. Not a killer—but an ordinary man, who is just about to find happiness with the woman he loves…….’

Ren, who had been hyperventilating and gasping for breath, crumpled his face into something utterly wretched.

Thud—his knees buckled and gave way beneath him onto the ground, now muddy and sodden with rain.

With the sword driven into the earth, Ren tilted his head back and stared up at the sky.

“…….”

At the centre of the red puddles of blood pooling all around him, Ren recalled a feeling that was strangely, disturbingly familiar.

Before he had lost his memories, the man who had lived with withered emotions in a state of helplessness had always harbored a single wish.

‘—I want to die.’

To think he had longed for death so desperately…….

It was a wish so relentless and desperate that he found himself wondering how he had ever managed to forget it.

Shhhhhhhh—.

Beyond the sensation of every drop of blood draining from his body, he could feel the aura that permeated him locked in a desperate, grueling struggle.

It was fighting against the curse that had been gnawing away at his memories.

Instead of a healing spell, the aura of a Sword Master was attempting to neutralize the curse.

‘……The antidote.’

That’s right. He had taken the antidote.

In his dazed state, Ren recalled the antidote Sharti had made.

What was needed was the antidote, a healing spell, and a blessing.

All that remained was the blessing.

“……Ha, haha…….”

A hollow, mirthless sound escaped him briefly.

Could the will to reclaim his memories even be called a blessing now?

‘On the contrary—is it not oblivion that is the true blessing of the gods?’

Ah, then perhaps the gods had now taken that blessing back.

Before he could throw his life away in vain, they had granted him the time to forget everything and feel happiness as ‘Ren.’

It was the very moment Ren lowered his head and was about to resign himself to everything.

“—Ren!”

Along with his name being called, cutting through to his ear, two small hands cupped his face.

Hands that pulled him from the depths of the swamp of despair and resignation he was sinking into—gently, tenderly stroking his cheek.

“It’s alright, Ren. It’s alright. I can save you.”

Drenched, disheveled hair, and a white face drained to an almost pitifully pale shade, and hands trembling with fear.

The moment cold hands touched him, Ren felt as though he were plummeting down an endless cliff.

The woman before him—a young girl, younger than she was now—he had killed her.

He had burned her with fire, tried to erase her from the world.

He had carved deep and hideous scars that would never fade into her delicate skin.

He had robbed her of even an ordinary life.

Having taken everything from her, he had merely had his own heart stolen.

“……Sha—rti…….”

“Yes. Ren, I’m here. It’s going to be alright. You can’t lose consciousness.”

He had been saved and had survived—while she had been cast into a nightmare.

“……I—.”

He knew he had no right.

He knew it was a selfish, cruel, shameless feeling.

He knew that even repentance would not be permitted to him.

And yet, despite all of it, Ren could not give up Sharti.

He wrapped his arm around Sharti’s waist and leaned forward, pressing himself against her.

“I don’t want to.”

“Ren, don’t move. Your wounds——”

“I don’t want to die. I don’t want to disappear, Sharti.”

Ren understood it instinctively.

That the moment his heavy eyelids closed, he would be left alone.

That in exchange for recovering his memories, he would lose something most precious to him.

Ren clung to Sharti with everything he had.

“I love you, Sharti. I love you. No—I’m sorry. I was wrong. Everything was my fault. I’m sorry for loving you. I’m sorry for having fallen in love with you. I’m sorry for not being able to let you go even still. A man like me, daring to love you.”

He wailed.

Until his voice gave out, Ren begged her forgiveness in the rain.

And just like that, he lost consciousness in her arms.

“…….”

When he opened his eyes, Ren hoped he would be able to face her hatred head-on, properly.

He wanted to repent, to atone—before her, in whatever way she wished.

And so he begged.

Please—let me remain as ‘Ren.’

But his wishes had never been granted.

Not once.