GDTEA Chapter 145

Burn It

The storm that suddenly rolled in brought thunder and lightning along with it. Days continued where the wind and rain showed no sign of letting up. The wedding ceremony that had been planned was postponed.

“—There’s no sign of the typhoon passing, Ren. It’s already been five days since we couldn’t go down to the village. I wonder if Virena and Tein are doing okay?”

Sharti whispered softly while wrapping bandages.

“Grandma used to come every time there was a typhoon, but this time it seems like she’s having trouble making it. I hope nothing happened to her. Or maybe since Ren is here now, she worries a little less.”

Forcing a bright voice, she spread ointment generously over the wound.

“Oh, I left the ring next to you, Ren. I figured it’d be the first thing you’d look for. So when you open your eyes, don’t go moving around carelessly just to find the ring, okay?”

Sharti smiled faintly as she looked at Ren lying in the bed as if dead. It was a smile she had to wring out of herself, and it was utterly pitiful.

“Don’t worry. I haven’t looked at the ring. I figured you’d have something to say if I peeked. So hurry up and wake up and show me. ……I’m curious, you know.”

Truthfully, she wanted to see his teal eyes more than she wanted to see the ring. She wanted to see Ren’s smile — the one he gave only to her.

“I’m so relieved your fever finally broke today.”

It had already been five days since Ren lost consciousness and collapsed. The wounds he’d received from the unknown assassins were deep, and on top of that he had bled profusely while unable to maintain his body temperature in the rain, so there had been several dangerous crises to get through.

With his fever burning so fiercely, Sharti had not been able to sleep the entire time.

“When the rain stops, Ren will wake up too, right?”

Sharti, murmuring as she held his hand, shook off her low spirits and smiled bravely. In the cave, he’d suddenly opened his eyes just like this, so there was no need to be too impatient.

“Come to think of it, Ren — did you know it’s already been a full year since I met you? Isn’t time incredibly fast?”

Around this time a year ago, she had discovered Ren hiding in a cave, his body injured. Strictly speaking, it was the cave Tein had found and brought her to, but regardless, the cave was a refuge she had made, and it was she who had saved him through treatment.

From that moment, the bond between the two of them had begun.

“I thought we’d changed so much, but this one thing hasn’t changed at all.”

The situation of her treating an injured Ren remained unchanged. As she chewed over the bittersweet feeling, the restlessness in her chest grew.

“……Phew.”

Coming out of the bedroom, Sharti leaned against the door and slowly slid down to the floor. She drew up her knees and hid her somber face behind them.

She was desperately holding on in front of Ren, but she kept feeling anxious.

“Ren, ……I’m so scared.”

She hadn’t been able to see Ren fighting clearly in the downpour. But seeing the bodies horribly face-down in the muddy water, and Ren gone pale from losing so much blood, she realized it all over again.

Ren had truly protected her with his life on the line.

‘What if something like that happens again? What if they come back?’

Right now, she had no one she could ask about the unknown assassins, and no one she could confide in. She lacked the strength to protect Ren while he was unconscious.

The anesthetic powder and paralysis powder she had made were potent, but on a rainy day their accuracy and effectiveness inevitably dropped.

Rumble—.

Sharti flinched at a flash of lightning.

“……Ugh, ugh……, ngh…….”

Just then, at the sound of violent groaning coming from inside the bedroom, Sharti startled and flung the door open.

Ren had suddenly broken out in a cold sweat and was tossing and turning violently.

“Ren!”

Ren’s pallid face kept releasing agonized groans, and his condition looked far from ordinary. The way he writhed, desperately trying to look away from something and flee, made it look as though he were wandering through a nightmare.

Sharti urgently grabbed his arm.

“Ren, don’t. If you move any more, your wounds will tear open.”

A nightmare wasn’t something she could do anything about. But she couldn’t just stand by with her hands idle while Ren was suffering.

‘Headache medicine — no, sleeping pills — no, he still had a low-grade fever, so fever reducer — it might be body aches too……’

Sharti was rummaging through all of her medicines when she felt a strange emptiness. One medicine was missing.

‘I’m sure I put it separately here.’

She was about to check once more for the antidote she had placed in the dresser drawer, when lightning struck again.

Thanks to that, Sharti snapped back to her senses and refocused, carefully checking the medicines she needed first.

“There’s only cold medicine.”

Sharti bit her lip. Because she had recently sold some to the village, her body ache medicine was all gone.

“…….”

Sharti checked the outdoors, where the storm was raging. She glanced at Ren once, and without deliberating long at all, immediately threw on her raincoat.

She packed a basket and a shovel, and also grabbed a blade just in case.

“Ren, I’ll be right back.”

About to leave the room while squeezing his hand tightly, Sharti turned back and briefly pressed her lips to his forehead.

“I’ll be back soon. Hold on just a little, Ren.”

Listening to her pounding heart, Sharti stepped outside the house. Fortunately, the rain had weakened, so visibility wasn’t too poor.

‘Thank goodness.’

The wind was still there, but at this level, it didn’t seem like she’d go tumbling down the mountain.

Sharti suppressed her urgency and climbed the mountain. And at some point it seemed the thunder had stopped, and the rain began to cease.

A flicker of anticipation crossed Sharti’s face.

‘When I get home, Ren might already be up!’

But what actually spread before Sharti’s eyes when she came down from the mountain was a wildfire beginning to spread, accompanied by acrid smoke.

****

Jed, who had been watching the small log cabin the entire time, confirmed that Sharti had left and quietly entered the house.

“Begin.”

“Yes.”

The mage from the House of Gwendhill that Jed had brought with him welled up with tears of joy as he drew a magic circle on the bedroom floor. It was a teleportation circle.

Jed looked at his master lying in the bed.

‘There’s no way the Tower Master lied.’

The antidote he had given his master five days ago had indeed been the antidote Sharti made. To be precise, it was also an antidote that Jed had secretly taken from this house.

[Now that you must know everything, to tell you the truth — the antidote that doctor made is the only way. The mind-type poison the Grand Duke was afflicted with won’t even react to anything other than that doctor’s antidote.]

He was displeased with the Tower Master for having known all along yet keeping his mouth shut until now, but regardless, now that he knew the way to resolve the amnesia, he didn’t concern himself with it.

‘I was wondering how the vermin of Bridend had found their way here.’

Surely the antidote Sharti had made was their goal. As it happened, thanks to the vermin making their move, Jed had arrived right in time and had been able to both save his master and steal the antidote she had made.

‘Just as I anticipated. It’s dangerous beside that woman doctor.’

Hadn’t his master nearly died because of Sharti? The fact that she was entangled with Darhan Bridend was ominous as well.

The Tower Master vouched for her abilities, but even so, she was nothing more than a fugitive using a false identity. She was far too lacking a presence to stand beside the Grand Duke of the Great Empire of Neweiton.

“…….”

He felt the pain from the wound inside his torn lip, but Jed’s expression did not change.

[Jed!!]

Ben, who had been furious that Jed had used Sharti as bait to provoke their master, hadn’t held back and had thrown a punch at him straight away.

[Why are you telling us not to help, Jed!]

Hiro had raged like fire at Jed’s coldness in not moving even as their master was cut by an assassin’s blade.

He had received the complaints and fury of comrades who were no different from close friends, all directed at him alone — but Jed didn’t care.

‘We have no time.’

If they didn’t use a scheme like this, they would lose everything forever.

It was a coercive and unethical choice, but for Jed it was the best option, and he had no intention of regretting it.

Looking out the window, the rain was beginning to stop.

“Preparations are complete, Sir Jed.”

“Then immediately——”

The moment Jed turned his head, he drew a sharp breath at the aura that pricked his skin.

The master who had been lying in the bed was raising himself up.

“……Where is this?”

The moment he met those cold teal eyes, Jed immediately dropped to one knee before him.

His body trembled at the familiar aura of the Sword Master that filled the room to the brim.

Leodelt Gwendhill—. His one and only master had awakened.

Jed lowered his head and spoke, suppressing his emotions as much as he could.

“You had been keeping yourself in hiding for a time.”

“…….”

“Do you not remember?”

Jed’s heart was pounding.

Leodelt climbed down from the bed and checked the state of his own body. His dry eyes swept over the body wrapped tightly in bandages.

“I remember up to being swept down by the Harv Mountain waterfall.”

“……!”

Jed nodded.

It was the perfect Leodelt Gwendhill. Good. Everything had returned to its proper place.

“After that, assassins persisted in following us, so I brought you here rather than to the Grand Ducal residence.”

“I see.”

It was the weighty and concise answer he had always heard.

“Currently within the Empire, not only the noble faction but all the people of the Empire had been told that Your Grace had died.”

“His Majesty.”

“I had made separate contact. However, it seems a problem arose with His Majesty the Emperor’s safety a short while ago.”

Leodelt nodded as he listened to Jed’s concise report.

“I will go to the Grand Ducal residence.”

“Yes.”

Jed, who had been draping a coat over Leodelt’s shoulders, glanced around the room.

His master had returned, but unsettling factors still remained.

“This place…… what shall we do with it, Your Grace?”

At Jed’s words, Leodelt turned his head.

“I think it would be better to erase the traces…….”

“That’s unlike you.”

Leodelt, who had been watching Jed trailing off in a most uncharacteristic manner, looked toward the mage.

“Burn it.”

In that moment, Jed’s palms grew damp.

Just as he felt that this was now truly irreversible, Jed thought of the doctor who had stayed by his master’s side the entire time.

‘That was simply a false thing born of amnesia.’

A temporary side effect, so to speak.

As the mage swung his staff, Jed discarded his pointless musings.

“Let’s go.”

Leodelt gave a brief command after confirming the bedroom engulfed in flames in an instant.

The mage raised his staff, and all three were swallowed by the teleportation circle.

In the flames that all had left behind, a jewelry box tumbled down from the bed.

The fire began to climb the walls and surge toward the ceiling.

****

Thud. Sharti limply dropped her basket and trembled.

“Why, why…….”

It was still raining — how could a wildfire this large break out?

“……Could it be—.”

At the thought that the assassins from five days ago might have deliberately started the wildfire, Sharti’s face went pale.

She somehow forced her shaking legs to move.

Averting her eyes from the fire as much as possible, Sharti desperately descended the mountain, and at that spot she crumpled and collapsed to the ground.

“…….”

The small log cabin — the house that was soon to become their newlywed home — was engulfed in flames.

Crash! Watching the house cave in and collapse, Sharti moved her lips in a daze.

“In, inside……. Inside, inside there’s a person, Ren is in there……. Save, I have to save him…….”

Sharti was in her right mind.

She had lost her presence of mind, and she was shaking as though she might convulse at any moment, but her eyes alone were not clouded.

“I, I have to save him.”

Sharti took one step forward.

Before the inferno that had grown massive enough to devour her at any moment, Sharti stepped one step further.

After that, even she couldn’t remember.

“Ren!!”

“Reeeen—!!!”

“Ren!!!”

“Ren! Ren!!!”

“Ren……!!”

All she could tell was that, along with the familiar pain of her throat burning raw, her voice was splitting apart pathetically.