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A treacherous land shrouded in a blizzard.

Four lost knights walked along the path by the railway, their faces twisted in anguish—if you could call it a path, that is; it was covered in snow and one wrong step could send them sliding.

They were stragglers who had come out on a mission under the duke’s orders but had fallen behind.

The barren land of the Empire showed them no kindness.

Even their leader, the Team Leader, had only held the position of knight for two years.

While he could grasp the general situation of battles, it meant he didn’t possess the skills to lead them effectively.

“Damn it. Where the hell are we supposed to go…!”

Gritting his teeth, the Team Leader turned back.

His teammates were following him, pale and terror-stricken from hunger and cold.

If one of them fell, no one would stop to help.

They simply picked themselves up and continued trailing behind him.

In other words, it meant that if the Team Leader fell apart, they would all lose hope and give up on life.

His shoulders felt heavy.

But where were they supposed to go from here?

A wrong turn could lead to death by candles, and if they wandered into the vast land in search of food, they might get lost or run into an outsider.

A thick snowflake hit the Team Leader’s nose.

Tears welled up.

Why the hell did he have to go through this?

He was only trying to fulfill his duty of protecting his domain.

Was this miserable death what had come back to him?

He didn’t want to continue any longer.

Just as he was about to give up and sit down in place.

“Team Leader! There’s a light over there!”

One of his teammates pointed to a distant glow.

Could it be a candle’s torch?

If that were the case, they were in big trouble.

He wanted to quickly take his team and hide somewhere, but something felt off.

The bright light didn’t seem to be moving at all.

It merely stayed still.

There was something he learned in knight training.

Candles would avoid staying still, fearing death, so they would never settle down unless it was a dire situation.

He gave waiting orders to his teammates and cautiously approached the light.

“Team Leader!”

“Shh.”

He didn’t want his teammates to step forward.

He didn’t want them to face a cruel death due to his incompetence.

As he neared the light, the Team Leader was shocked.

It was a cold cave, and an alien space was opened within it.

Ah, so this must be what it feels like when a space is forcibly connected to something else.

The space looked ominously dangerous, but he felt it might be much better than the place they were in now.

“Everyone, into that space! Follow me!”

“Yes!”

There was no guarantee of food, but perhaps due to the hope of escaping the immediate cold, the faces of the weary teammates lit up.

In a fit of excitement, the Team Leader rushed into that space.

He soon regretted his choice.

As he witnessed the scene within that space, he turned back and shouted at his teammates.

“Everyone retreat! Fall back!”

But the teammates couldn’t immediately react to the Team Leader’s reversal.

They had no time to think and didn’t want to leave the warm inside space.

Thus, all their feet stepped into that space.

At the same time, the door of the space closed.

That’s when they realized.

They understood why the Team Leader had told them to fall back.

A scene of hell.

The situation within that space could be summed up in these four words.

Severed skulls, decapitated corpses, and bodies that had bled out from severed lower halves.

All sorts of corpses lay scattered in every direction.

The sight was a final blow to the already weary Team Leader, and everyone collapsed in despair.

They didn’t want any more.

Suffering for no reason.

At that moment, footsteps echoed from a distance.

The sound was heavy yet extremely fast.

The Team Leader instinctively felt it.

Even if he tried to hide now, he wouldn’t be able to escape the owner of those footsteps.

He wanted to shout and allow his teammates to escape.

But the living Team Leader became a corpse on the spot.

“Ugh…”

The teammates couldn’t breathe after seeing their Team Leader’s state.

They instinctively felt it was their turn next.

The existence that did this to their Team Leader was breathing heavily and glaring at them.

A monster.

That gaze was of a type no human could possess.

The moment the monster lifted its foot from that spot.

Only the pitiful screams of humans remained.

The last thing visible was a teammate desperately crawling on the ground, only to have his head severed right in front of him.

The sight was of a man gripping an axe with blades split on both hands, his face covered in scaled skin.

#

Knights Headquarters.

Having barely escaped from the hunter, I proceeded straight to the headquarters.

Hmm, for now, I had one feeling while reading the books the Saint wanted me to check.

In the end, you have to roll to get stronger.

Just like how I absorbed the pain of the White Mask and fainted, I needed to repeat that several times for outsiders to get stronger.

It wasn’t that outsiders didn’t want to do such things, but that it took much less to cause them to faint compared to humans.

In that sense, it meant my mindset about absorbing the pain of the Knight Commander was somewhat reversed.

I needed to absorb the Knight Commander’s pain to get stronger.

That was why I had come straight to the headquarters.

“Um, Deputy Director.”

“…”

“Can I come back a bit later!”

“Wait! Are you trying to make me look weird again?!”

This time, I spotted Maren Burstian sprawled on the floor tangled with the Knight Commander.

Heh, it sure is nice to see them display affection at any time.

The Knight Commander simply stared blankly at the Deputy Director.

“C-Commander, please get up!”

“Hmm. I was just about to do that.”

The Knight Commander nodded as if she didn’t know anything and immediately returned to her seat.

The Deputy Director exhaled as if in disbelief at the Knight Commander’s actions and took a deep breath, returning to his seat as well.

“Tanton, you really have a knack for timing.”

“That’s right. You could’ve come in a bit later to give them some time…”

“Ahem!”

The Deputy Director made a big fake cough to cut me off.

Huh?

Wasn’t that the intention?

He looked very flustered, even sweating cold.

“Well then.”

Recognizing that we might continue on this topic, the Deputy Director finally broke the awkward silence.

Hmm.

How did he know?

“What are you here for?”

“Uh, I’m here about the subject we discussed before, remember?”

Realizing it was a more serious topic than expected, the Deputy Director wiped the surprised look from his face and looked at me seriously.

“Hmm. Did you find something out?”

“I think absorbing the Knight Commander’s pain first might be a good approach.”

“…Hmm.”

Was he worried that something more than fainting might occur?

I had come to understand that enduring such experiences was necessary to get stronger, so I wasn’t worried anymore.

“It’s okay, Deputy Director. I feel much stronger than I did after that incident.”

“If your body gets damaged because of that, it’s not a good trade-off.”

“Ah, come on, that won’t happen.”

“I can’t believe you don’t know how dangerous it is.”

The Deputy Director sighed.

“I always feel this, but you really push yourself too much.”

“I think it’s worth giving it a go this time.”

“…If you put it that way, what can I do?”

The Deputy Director said this and then closed his eyes.

It was a signal of approval.

The Knight Commander had been listening to our conversation with a foolish expression.

In the Deputy Director’s dream, the Knight Commander was an exceptionally confident career woman filled with experience.

It seemed to highlight why knowledge was considered so important among humans.

“Excuse me, Commander.”

“Hmm.”

To those who can’t die, there’s nothing to fear.

The Knight Commander only wore an endlessly calm expression.

I could see the bright red aura surrounding her head.

It looked even denser than when the White Mask was around, making me feel a sense of fear.

But I had to endure these experiences to get stronger, so it was something to consider.

I thought as I reached out to touch the aura.

I was thinking of absorbing this and observing the reaction, but since the pain would help me in any case, I absorbed it right away.

The pain began to creep in, and soon I felt something odd.

When I tried to push the pain out, it was too dense, and I couldn’t control it.

“Ugh…?!”

It suddenly felt like my head was going blank.

Oh, wait a minute.

Something seemed to be going wrong.

“Tanton!”

Thanks to what I absorbed before with the White Mask, my body felt sturdy, so I didn’t feel faint.

But the sensation of my head turning white was extremely unpleasant.

“Get a grip!”

Yes, this feeling was…

It was similar to that.

“Bweeeck.”

“Tanton! Not here!”

It felt like a hangover creeping in after a night of drinking.

 

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