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90 Chapter

The cliff marking the end of the forest was sheer. Just looking at it sent shivers down my spine.

‘This isn’t much…

For someone like me or Leo, who use mana, it was a height we could handle easily.

“Wait, wait! Shu-Shu! What are you doing now?”

As I charged recklessly toward the cliff, a pale Leo gripped my hand tightly.

‘…What’s wrong with him?’

There was no way a Sword Expert couldn’t jump from this height. I frowned slightly at his strange reaction.

“If we go down the cliff, the basilisk will jump after you. We’ll end it at that cliff.”

“W-wait, are you saying you want to jump from here?”

Leo’s voice was quite urgent. I could even feel his hand trembling. Even while confused, I didn’t stop my steps toward the cliff.

“Of course. There’s nothing I can’t do.”

Ahead lay the treetops. The sun, hidden by the trees, illuminated the dizzying cliff.

I threw myself down the cliff where the end was barely visible.

Thud.

At the same time, warmth departed from my hand. I didn’t realize what was happening at that moment.

‘Huh?’

Even while plummeting from that great height, I twisted my body to check behind me.

There, letting go of my hand, was a terrified Leo.

‘Ah.’

And a flash of a scene from the novel came to mind. Amidst falling, while I quickly shielded my body with mana, I remembered an important fact I had forgotten.

‘Alexandros is afraid of running away and falling from high places.’

This trauma belonged to a boy born as a powerless prince of a kingdom, who had to survive by sacrificing something precious.

‘Damn it! How did I forget this!?’

I couldn’t believe I only just recalled this. I clothed my feet with mana to slow my falling speed while pressing my throbbing temples.

‘It seems like my brain is forcibly erasing memories of the original story.’

I had written down and stored important parts of the original story, which were crucial turning points, but for some reason, I would forget them easily over time. I decided I would have to memorize them again when I returned to the mansion and slightly curled my body up.

Boom!

I landed from the vertical drop. The ground pleasantly yielded as my feet hit it. Summoning a whirlwind of mana, I blew away the dust and swiftly looked up at the dizzying cliff.

“Leo!”

My loud call made him flinch. Terrified, Leo leaned against a nearby tree, shaking his head.

“I—I can’t do it. I can’t!”

“Damn it! I know, but you have to!”

“I can’t!”

“Hell, hurry up…”

“I’m scared!”

His voice was nearly a scream. Fear seeped through his tone, making me flinch.

Leo, that is, Alexandros Leon Atara, was the youngest prince born in the Atara Kingdom, where the order of succession was taken very seriously.

His mother was a commoner who rose to the palace. When he was just a baby, he managed to survive thanks to his mother’s ties to the king who had loved her. But even that ended when his mother was poisoned at the age of five, leaving him to fend for himself amidst the icy politics of the palace with no protection against the sibling rivalries.

‘There were constant reports of assassins breaking into the prince’s bedchamber.’

Alexandros’s brothers didn’t want another contender in the chaotic fight for the throne, so his life was always in danger. He was struggling just to defend against the assassins constantly pouring in, let alone aiming for the throne himself.

“Your Highness, you must listen to me. Stop whining. If you want to survive, you must become strong. With that attitude, you’ll just be a victim in this blood-soaked struggle for the throne.”

The only person who helped Alexandros was his nurse, Leisha.

Leisha was quite a special nurse. She was a powerful wizard, a genius who once aspired to the empire’s magic tower.

“Leisha. Please take care of my child.”

Leisha became Alexandros’s nurse because of a request from Alexandros’s mother.

It’s unclear why Leisha granted that request.

In the novel, what’s important isn’t why the promising female wizard became merely the nurse for the seventh prince but how she contributed to the male protagonist’s growth.

The wise and strong Leisha protected the abandoned Leo from the threats of assassins. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that he was able to survive his childhood in the palace thanks entirely to her.

“Le—Leisha! There’s a corpse in my room…!”

“Don’t make a fuss. I killed him because he broke into your room last night.”

“What? But still, killing…”

“Enough, Your Highness.”

“Don’t you realize yet? If you don’t kill, you will be killed. If you don’t have this level of determination, you might as well speak up. You can die being sympathetic to assassins. I don’t want to do this with someone who doesn’t want to live.”

“You, I…”

“You either die a victim of this war or kill and become king. There are no other choices.”

Leisha raised Leo too harshly, to the point where her dialogue in the novel made it hard to believe she was dealing with a ten-year-old child—straightforward and sharp.

‘No wonder he seemed like a thorny little lion… now it makes sense.’

Remembering how Leisha handled Leo, I understood his attitude when we first met. Under the ruthless teachings and protection of Leisha, Alexandros learned how to survive and the virtues of a king.

The event that became his lifelong trauma happened when he was twelve years old.

That day, Leisha’s vigilance, which was usually as tight as a drum, loosened just a bit. She was slightly more relaxed and softened, and it was the day Leisha smiled at Alexandros for the first time.

That day, Alexandros’s nightmares began.

Leisha, having consumed food laced with poison gifted by someone, weakened enough for assassins to invade Alexandros’s palace. Struggling with the poison, Leisha was unable to protect Alexandros, who had not the strength to defend her.

“Damn it! Run away! Right now! Don’t look back! There’s a teleportation magic circle in the garden; go out the window!”

Alexandros had to run. He had no strength at all. Even as a poisoned arrow struck his shoulder and every part of his body was wounded, he couldn’t look back.

“You must become strong. You must take revenge! I don’t want to remain just a prince’s nurse! Become a king, and let me remain as a minister who helped build the king’s foundations!”

Leisha was both a strong wizard and an ambitious person.

Alexandros fell. He crossed through a narrow castle window, into the desolate garden, void of any gardener. Just before his body hit the ground,

“Whoa! Someone is…!”

He teleported from the kingdom to the empire thanks to Leisha’s last magic and met Aria. This was Alexandros’s past in the original story.

“What is this ragged thing?”

Even though it twisted and met me instead of Aria, his past as a prince remained unchanged.

Alexandros was afraid of running away and falling from high places.

Crash!

“Damn！”

I heard a basilisk that had been stabbed by my sword suddenly move again. Gritting my teeth, I looked up at Leo, frozen in a panic atop the cliff.

“I don’t have my sword!”

I had to flee while stabing the basilisk, so I had no sword in my hands. For a moment, I thought about asking Leo to throw me his sword, but it was clear he would get hurt if he flew up to the cliff with me, so I gave up.

“But it’s too late for me to go back up there!”

The cliff’s height was nothing short of dizzying. It seemed faster for the basilisk to jump on Leo than for me to climb back up.

In the end, there was only one method.

Leo had to jump from this cliff.

‘Scolding won’t work.’

Currently, Leo was a terrified ten-year-old child. Pushing a frightened child would only worsen the situation. Biting my lip, I tried to wear a gentle expression.

“Leo, Leo! Good boy. Look here!”

At my call, his trembling body flinched. Leo, who had barely opened his eyes, peered over the cliff before closing them tightly again.

“I can’t… bear to look…”

His pale face was pitiful. Biting my lips at the approaching presence of the basilisk, I spoke to him as kindly as I could.

“Leo. It’s okay, sweetheart. Don’t look over the edge; look at me!”

He flinched. I could see sweat pouring like rain from his forehead.

Wounds were like that. Even if they were old scars, they hurt if touched, leaving marks. Especially, the wounds of loss were like brands that bled anew whenever forgotten, and even I, who had reached the level of Sword Master, sometimes felt pain.

‘What did Leisha mean to Leo? Was it like Karasho meant to me?’

A woman’s smiling face flashed briefly in my mind.

My teacher’s face.

If Leisha was like Karasho to Leo, I could understand his fear.

‘Just as I overcame it, I hope you can too.’

No matter how deep and dark the traces of the dead, the living must go on. It took me quite a while to accept that too.

To imply that everything was okay, I smiled at him reassuringly.

“Look at me, Leo. Don’t think of looking down; think of looking at me!”

It was a strangely light transformation of thought, almost amusing. However, facing a friend was entirely different from facing a cliff, so I whispered to soothe him.

“Leo. Please, look at me.”

His tightly shut eyes slowly opened. Dimly lifting his eyelids, shimmering green eyes glinted beneath. Leo turned his head toward me, and I met those eyes frozen in fear.

I gently smiled at that fear. The memories of the past would get better, and that we, in the present, would also be okay.

“It’s okay. I’m here. Even the moment you take the step, I’ll be right here. I will catch you for sure. Don’t worry, just come to me! You’re not falling; you’re coming to me.”

A hint of confusion appeared on his terrified, fluorescent green eyes. I confirmed that his trembling body was settling down a bit and smiled at him.

“Come on, Leo. I’ll hold you.”

This was my comfort to him. A determination that I would catch him if he fell, and a cheer that he could overcome his fear.

“…Ah.”

Leo, who had swallowed hard, exhaled softly. The dazed green eyes fixated on me. Still a scared face, still dripping with cold sweat. He was still afraid.

“…Is that true?”

But even so, Leo was taking a step toward the cliff.

With eyes as blind as a saint staring at a god, he accepted it. I was someone insufficient to become anyone’s savior, but I’d had enough experiences to help those wishing to escape the quagmire.

With a gentle smile, I opened my arms wide toward him.

“Hurry up. I’m waiting.”

With a resolve in his expression, Leo took a step. One step. Two steps. Even if his steps trembled, he kept moving.

And at that moment, Leo’s foot stepped into thin air.

Kraaaaaak!

The basilisk burst through the trees, screeching horrifically. I activated all the mana I had and kicked off the ground.

The greedy maw of the basilisk yawning wide. Barely avoiding that gaping mouth, Leo was falling. I leapt as high as I could to catch falling Leo. All of it unfolded like a panorama in an instant.

I caught Leo, trembling in mid-air. His terrified face met mine.

Swish.

The sword that had hung at his waist was pulled into my hand. Cradling Leo’s body, which had shut his eyes tightly, I grinned.

“Open your eyes, Leo.”

Raw mana gathered in the air. Soon, the orb of aura devoid of light was completed. Gripping the sword against the vast orb charged with distant energy, I whispered to Leo.

“You need to see how strong your friend is.”

I smoothly stroked the sword toward the orb.

And the world was cloaked in darkness.

 

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