The sounds within the Exhibition Center fell completely silent.
Only residual smoke and a burnt odor drifted from the entrance.
Those who had not made it out would likely never do so.
Outside the Exhibition Center, Rosie stared at Knight John opposite her.
He was still wearing his plate armor, but the shield on his left arm was gone, likely discarded after being hit by the rays during the battle.
He pushed up his visor, revealing a face slick with sweat but still remarkably calm.
“I didn't expect you to be the one who won in the end,” John said, looking up at Rosie.
“Is that so? Are you planning to surrender?” Rosie asked.
Knight John shook his head.
He slowly raised the sword in his right hand, adopting a standard starting stance. “There are only knights who die in battle; there are no knights who surrender.”
The dwarf tossed his backpack onto the ground, raising his axe as he prepared to charge.
Rosie reached out to stop him. “Let me handle this. This is a battle between knights. Do not interfere.”
The dwarf hesitated, looking from Rosie to John before finally nodding and stepping back.
Hearing this, John's eyes flickered slightly. He fell silent for a moment before speaking:
“Thank you, Miss Rosie, for still treating me as a knight in the end.”
Rosie raised her meteoric iron sword, pointing the tip toward the ground. “To me, ‘knight’ is nothing but an empty title. I simply want to kill you.”
John's gaze darkened for a moment, but he quickly regained his composure. “Then come.”
The moment the words left his mouth, he kicked off the ground and charged forward.
His blade traced a bright silver arc through the air, striking directly at Rosie.
Rosie met him head-on.
The clash of their blades echoed continuously through the area.
Knight John's attacks were as fierce as ever, but without his shield to cover and complement him, both the reach and defensive capabilities of his one-handed sword were significantly lacking.
Meanwhile, Rosie's meteoric iron sword was a bastard sword, giving her a longer reach.
She gripped the hilt with both hands, pouring immense strength into every strike. She repeatedly forced John's blade down, compelling him to use more and more strength just to parry.
Under Rosie's relentless heavy slashes, Knight John was forced backward, his heels dragging deep grooves into the sand. Every block sent a violent tremor through his wrists.
He grit his teeth, desperately searching for an opportunity to counterattack.
But Rosie had no intention of giving him that chance.
After several consecutive heavy blows, John's stance began to falter.
Rosie suddenly channeled her strength into both hands and delivered a savage downward slash—the Combat Skill, Heroic Strike.
The speed and power of this strike surged dramatically, the blade tearing through the air with a sharp, whistling shriek.
John desperately raised his sword to block, but the moment the blades collided, a force far exceeding anything before surged through the point of contact.
The single-handed sword was knocked clean out of his hand, spinning twice in the air before plunging into the sand.
Rosie fluidly shifted her stance, executing a diagonal slash.
John had no time to dodge. The blade severed his right hand at the wrist.
Blood erupted from the stump.
John let out a muffled groan, clamping his left hand over the severed wrist. Blood seeped through his fingers, staining a small patch of the sand a dark, wet red.
He didn't cry out in pain, nor did he struggle.
“I lost,” Knight John said, his voice dry but calm.
He panted for a few breaths, then sank to one knee. Using his blood-stained left hand, he removed his helmet and set it on the sand beside him.
“If you can make it out of here, I hope you won't tell Miss Rhine about the Baron's death. She may seem fragile, but she is stubborn to the core. If she learns the truth, she will surely throw her life away trying to fight the Count.”
Rosie stood before him, her sword resting at her side. “She has the right to know the truth. I will tell her everything, including your betrayal.”
John said nothing more.
He closed his eyes, kneeling there, waiting.
A flash of cold steel.
John's body swayed and collapsed onto the sand. Blood gushed from his neck, slowly spreading across the ground and staining the surrounding sand red.
Rosie sheathed her sword, glanced at the corpse on the ground, and turned to leave.
The dwarf looked at John and muttered softly, “At least he died with some dignity.”
Rosie didn't look back. “Dead is dead. A dead man with dignity is still a dead man.”
Her boots kicked up sand with a steady, rhythmic rustling.
The dwarf bent down, picked up his backpack, and followed.
Their figures gradually faded into the distance under the glow of the crystals, leaving behind only a slumped corpse and a helmet resting on the sand.
...
Inside the temporary camp of the ruins, in the hall of the former records room.
The corpses had been dragged to a corner, piled up in a messy heap.
On one side of the metal door, a large hole had been blasted through the thick, grayish-white wall.
Soldiers were hunched over, moving in and out of the breach to carry out documents, stacking them on the ground outside.
The smell of dust, sweat, and burning torches filled the air of the hall.
Anna emerged from the breach, cradling a stack of dusty documents.
She walked over to a table on one side of the hall, set them down, and spread a few pages open.
Count Morris stepped out from the crowd and approached her, his gaze landing on the documents. “How is it? Did you find anything?”
“A few things.”
Anna nodded. She spread one of the documents open, then pulled the map they had taken from Baron Weiss from her coat and laid it out on the table.
Her finger traced the lines on the map, finally stopping on a section densely packed with symbols.
“Based on the information retrieved from the records room, combined with the map, what we are looking for is located in the core area of the central sector.”
She pointed to a section of the map. “This is the central base and research center. Right next to it is the weapons depot...”
If Rosie were here, she would have been astonished to find that Anna not only recognized Ancient Gnomish, but was highly proficient in it.
She read the runes with a fluency that completely belied someone who supposedly needed to rely on a translator.
Her previous claims of being unable to read Ancient Gnomish had been entirely a facade.
“I wonder how John and the others are doing,” Anna said, straightening up. “If the water source in that exhibition center is still usable, we can temporarily use it as a supply station.”
“John should be back soon. We'll know once we wait a bit longer,” Count Morris said.
“I hope everything goes smoothly,” Anna murmured.
However, a long time passed, and John did not return.
He, along with the thirty men he had taken, had completely vanished.
Count Morris paced back and forth in the hall, his footsteps growing increasingly rapid and restless.
Finally, he stopped and summoned a knight. “Go. Follow the markers John left behind. Find out what happened.”
A squad left the camp, tracing the footprints and markers in the sand toward the Exhibition Center.
The wait felt agonizingly long.
Eventually, the squad returned. The leading knight, carrying a helmet in his hand, entered the hall and stopped before Count Morris.
“My Lord...” He held up the helmet. “John is dead.”
Count Morris said nothing.
“He was killed by someone,” the knight added. “It was an execution-style killing. We also found signs of battle and bloodstains near the entrance of the ruins, but no other bodies. Since it seemed too suspicious, we didn't venture deeper inside.”
Anna looked up from behind the stack of documents, her gaze landing on the helmet. After a brief silence, she spoke: “It must have been Rosie.”
“She likely used some method to trigger the ruins' defense mechanisms while John and his men were searching the Exhibition Center, wiping out the others. Then, she ambushed John as he escaped and executed him,” Anna analyzed.
Count Morris's brow furrowed deeply, his voice laced with suppressed fury. “That wretched hedge knight!”
He wasn't mourning John's death.
Rather, John was the candidate he had planned to install as the Lord of Weismar.
With John dead, arranging the succession of Weismar would become problematic.
After all, Baron Weiss still had a daughter who was the legitimate heir.
“We'll have to take the long way around and use the rat nest as our base,” Anna said, glancing toward the corner where the white rat and the Queen Rat were curled up.
“Also, do not underestimate Rosie's strength. I've always felt there is more to her than meets the eye. She's hiding many secrets.”
Anna's tone carried a rare gravity.
Count Morris looked at her with slight surprise. “I didn't expect a top scholar like you to say something like that.”
“If it weren't to complete my mentor's task, I wouldn't even be here, let alone provoke someone so bizarre,” Anna said flatly.
Count Morris fell silent for a moment, then nodded. “Since even you say so, I suppose I must take this seriously.”
He gestured, and an attendant quickly walked over carrying a small cage.
Inside was a gray bird, hopping between the wooden bars and occasionally fluttering its wings.
The Count opened the cage door, took the bird out, and pulled a thin red string from his coat. He tied it to the bird's leg before handing it back to the attendant.
“Release it.”
The attendant held the bird in both hands, walked outside the camp, and tossed it upward.
The bird fluttered its wings, circled once in the air, and flew off toward the portal, quickly vanishing beneath the dark ceiling of the cavern.
“I left some backup plans outside the portal, just in case,” the Count said. “Now is the time to activate them.”
Anna remained silent for a moment. Looking at Count Morris, she said:
“It seems you had this planned from the very beginning. Even if the Baron hadn't issued the Pioneer Decree, you would have found an opportunity to kill him, wouldn't you?”
“There is only one key to open the door. Naturally, it is safest in one's own hands,” Count Morris said, a ruthless glint flashing in his eyes.
“What do you plan to do now?” Anna asked.
“Nothing much. Just ensuring the key doesn't fall into anyone else's hands,” the Count replied nonchalantly.
Anna could sense the murderous intent in his words, but she said nothing more.
She looked down at the map spread before her, her gaze lingering on the highlighted core area.
“Rosie, you'll be heading here too, won't you...”
Rate on N.U.
