WeTried Translations

Translator: Botanica

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◈ Academy's Pure Love Dark Knight ◈

Chapter 100

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Episode 100. 1%.

The Black Knight, Licht. His real name, Lee Suhyun.

In truth, it had only been three months since Phine first came to know him.

"..Chartiness."

The Glass Knight who'd once been colder and more emotionless than anyone.

The princess, empty as an unfilled glass, had always believed, ever since the trauma of her childhood, that she was worthless unless she was strong.

Which was why she'd even taken on the false name Mardol to enroll in the academy. And now.

"Licht, like last time, healing isn't working on him."

"Char..!! Please..!!"

In the infirmary of Grand Hearts Academy, she clung to the black-haired Saintess, pleading desperately.

Her face was twisted in anguish, tears streaming down.

"Licht can't die like this.."

"Nex is using the Phoenix Cradle outside, so we're barely managing to keep him tethered to life, but..."

The man had collapsed with a bullet through his heart, and even Chartiness's holy power at his side was useless against it.

In truth, the extent of his injuries was severe. Not just his heart, there wasn't a single part of him, arms, legs, anywhere, that was unhurt. One arm was twisted at a grotesque angle, and both legs were broken.

"..Phine. You need to prepare yourself."

"No. I don't want that..!!"

Professor Beatrice, who'd been helping try to heal him until just moments ago before leaving the room, had said it would be best to give up too.

"You already know, Phine. We even searched the Library of Truth.."

Laplace had even said that even if the Heavenly Demon came, nothing would change, since her dantian had already been spent once treating an injury.

"Even dying, the Demon King couldn't go quietly."

Who would have known he'd play dead right up until the moment he died, just to land one last attack.

The 2nd Saintess let out a long sigh. She kept pouring massive amounts of blood into Licht's body, but it was like filling a jar with a hole in the bottom.

"..Char. The problem is that his circuits are tangled, right?"

That was when it happened. After a long silence, Phine took off her glass helmet herself.

Chartiness felt puzzled as to why she'd suddenly taken off her helmet, but with the situation so urgent, she answered the question first.

"That's right. But Licht's condition is severe."

"If just his heart and blood vessels were intact, you could heal him, right..?"

Phine's beautiful white hair tumbled down past her waist, and her distinctive golden wolf eyes shone. Her gaze was fixed solely on Licht.

"Not unless you turned his blood vessels completely inside out and rebuilt them from scratch... Wait, don't tell me."

The girl in pure white drew a sword from behind her back. A transparent blade, just like her own heart.

"Then with my blood, and the Dragon Heart."

The moment she lightly gripped the blade, it cut into her palm and blood welled up. Drip. Drop. Bright crimson blood fell, sinking into the gaping hole in Licht's heart.

"..Couldn't we save Licht this way?"

"It's impossible. Phine."

Among the things Phine had brought earlier while begging Chartiness to save him was the Dragon Heart she'd won as the grade exam's first-place prize.

"Even if we replaced his completely destroyed heart and filled it with new blood..."

Her red eyes, distinctive of the vampire race, gleamed. The vampire Saintess looked carefully down at the man in the Black Knight's helmet, checking over his body.

"How could we put a dead dragon's heart into a living person's body and make it beat?"

"There's a way."

As if she had something specific in mind, Phine set the Dragon Heart down beside her and placed a hand over her own chest. A magic circle unfurled inside her palm.

"I'll link it to my own heart, and make it beat that way."

"..What? Phine, tell me I heard that wrong."

Watching her, Chartiness couldn't help the look of shock that crossed her face, while Phine's own face was set with resolve.

"That's far too reckless!! Phine!! If it fails, you'll both die!!"

She meant to link her own living heart to the dead dragon's heart to make it beat, then transplant it into the body of a man whose life was fading.

It was nonsense to anyone who heard it.

The 2nd Saintess grabbed both her shoulders, clad only in glass armor, trying to stop her, but.

"..It doesn't matter. I can use glass magic to rebuild the blood vessels."

"No, that's not what I meant..!"

Phine Gransia had already made up her mind. Sending her own blood into Licht's body had also been to make her magic work more effectively.

"Even at best, the chance of success is around 1 percent. Phine. Are you really going to do this..?!"

"..."

A Glass Knight with multiple arms emerged from behind her, an illusion armed with an array of tools, like a surgeon about to operate.

"..When Licht tried to save me, he didn't calculate the odds either."

She closed her eyes briefly, then opened them again, searching the man's body for what had gone wrong.

"Maybe my good eyes were needed for a moment just like this. Char."

To Phine, her eyes were no longer something like a curse.

They were the last means left to save Licht.

The princess, entrusting her senses entirely to them, clung to a thread of hope.

"Haah.. Honestly.."

Chartiness pressed a hand to her brow and frowned. A nation's princess, staking her life for a male academy student who wasn't even a noble?

It was an enormously serious matter. Granted, he was the hero who'd killed the Heroic Cult's Demon King that not even the Ten Greats could catch, but.

"For our Phine to think this much of Licht..."

If she died like this, what would any of it even mean. Her best hope was that the Emperor wouldn't go so far as to have the families of everyone involved beheaded.

But she couldn't just stand by and watch her close little sister, who had already once had someone precious to her taken by a Demon King in the past.

The Platinum Wolf, who'd only just begun to recover her bright self. Not like this, not sinking back into the mud without even trying.

Phine Gransia had already steeled her resolve. No amount of talking would get through to her now, and she understood the risk of staking her life better than anyone.

"..I'll help you, at least. But you're really going to get an earful from me later. Phine."

"Thank you, Char."

Having made up her mind, the black-haired Saintess added her holy power, assisting the operation with the instinctive senses unique to her vampire nature.

* * *

Even thinking it over herself, again, she couldn't make sense of it.

'..Licht.'

Why did she care about him so much.

Why did it hurt her too, whenever this man got hurt.

The first feeling she'd had toward the man in the Black Knight's helmet was curiosity.

'Why do you always stake your life like that? If it hurts, say it hurts.'

His emotions showed far too easily, and he seemed full of openings.

'You can't even use mana properly, so why pick up a sword?'

Her good eyes examined the tangled blood vessels, and looked with sorrow at the scars scattered all across him.

'I can't watch you sacrifice yourself anymore.. Licht..'

His earlier words about having once been weak carried even more weight now. A dull, aching pressure squeezed at Phine's heart. Otherwise, there was no way he'd treat his own life so carelessly.

He'd probably experienced a great deal, crossing back and forth between life and death in battle.

'..Or maybe there'd been a time he wanted to die.'

Phine had seen the fire in Licht, no, in Lee Suhyun's trauma. She hadn't known he had a bleak past similar to her own.

That was the first time she'd seen his bare face. Anyone would have called it grotesque, but it hadn't mattered to her.

'I wish you'd hold your head up. Licht.'

If anything, looking closely there was plenty about him that was handsome, and besides, what mattered in a person was what was inside, not the outside.

'You're allowed to.'

There was the fact that he'd saved her mother too, but

more than that, she'd been saved, in every sense, by the Black Knight's warm heart.

He'd healed so many of her wounds in so many ways, and even helped carry the guilt that had felt heavy enough to crush her.

To the point that now, if anyone spoke ill of him should he ever go around without his helmet, she wanted to use her own authority to punish them on the spot.

'..I'm fine with it, you know. Your burn scars.'

Inside Phine Gransia, he had become someone endlessly precious to her. Even if someone else helped her once or twice, or earned credit for felling a Demon King.

Lee Suhyun's place in her heart, first among everyone, would never change. Among her precious people were Nex and Chartiness.

Kainel and Ariel, whom she now counted as friends without any reservation, and beyond that, the students of the academy, he was the only hero who protected them all.

'You won't have to worry about a thing.'

He knew she was a princess and never once angled for power or wanted anything from her, and how many people, once they learned about her gender, would just quietly accept it?

Handsome or not, it made no difference to her at all.

'You don't have to be strong. Just stay alive.'

Black Knight Lee Suhyun. The anxious thought that it had to be him, no one else, sent a cold chill crawling up the back of Phine's neck.

At first she hadn't known he was weak. She'd only ever thought of him as a strong person from the start.

'Strong enough to bring down the Demon King of Omniscience. But at the same time...'

He was weak. Purer than anyone, and more clumsily innocent than anyone.

The man named Lee Suhyun that Phine had watched from his side had always felt that way to her. Someone she couldn't just leave alone, like a puppy drenched in the rain.

'You really can't lie to save your life.. Licht..'

She glanced sidelong at the blue rose sitting on the table beside her.

He'd won the grade exam fair and square on skill, then, because he wanted a Mana Rose, deliberately let the clock run out and dropped to second place.

'You sweet liar.'

And then he'd used it on her, after she'd been wounded by Head's holy sword. What a ridiculous thing to do. Wasn't it something precious to him?

'The Nameless Saintess.. where is she, and what is she even doing. Honestly.'

It had clearly looked like a flower he'd prepared for that person. Yet he'd tried to use his holy power to save her, not caring whether the thorns dug into his palm.

If not for him, she might already have fallen to Erasure of knowledge and been left an idiot. Head was dead now, but it had been genuinely dangerous back then.

"..Licht."

She looked at the wounds covering the man's hands. Scarred from being pricked and cut by plant thorns. In this state, he'd swung his sword and beaten the Demon King.

'How much must that have hurt.'

She'd watched his desperate fight with Head Ache from a distance with her good eyes. She'd been genuinely terrified when he was struck by that massive chunk of metal and his body turned to rags, but

'Professor Dennis stopped me..'

The blue-haired mage had held Phine back as she tried to rush out, telling her they needed to strike where it was least expected. At the very least, against 'Omniscience,' they couldn't afford an obvious move.

The glass wings that let the Black Knight escape the trap had been Dennis's idea, but the moment she'd helped him counter Catastrophe with Demon-King Slaying had been Phine's own judgment alone.

'You pervert, Licht.. please wake up..'

Watching Lee Suhyun lying there without any strength, she thought.

'I think it's cute, the way you jump and flail when you're startled..'

That was also why Phine liked to tease him now and then. It was nice to watch, like a gloomy-looking puppy startled into some adorable little reaction.

In truth, he didn't seem like the type to chase after women, either.

If he had been, he might have cast sidelong glances at other girls around the academy, or looked at them with some sly intent, but he never did.

He hadn't gone drinking with other girls during the festival either, and he'd quietly listened whenever someone had something weighing on them.

'Above all.. he has no ulterior motive toward Ariel at all.'

An elf, a race famous for its beauty. Even while spending time with Ariel, he'd known about her feelings for Kainel and never once tried to come between them.

If anything, he seemed more like someone rooting for the two of them. That had been true at the bakery too.

And as for Phine Gransia herself, even after learning she was a woman, he'd never once asked her to take off her helmet or said he wanted to see her face.

'Though I still don't know why he got so flustered seeing my body...'

Phine looked down at herself. Ordinarily, her view would have been blocked by her curves, but for now, her Masterpiece concealed her figure.

'When you wake up, I'll tease you even more.'

She was concentrating so hard she didn't even notice the sweat running down her face.

The air inside the infirmary hung frozen. From Phine's lips, as she raced against every fleeting second within the limited time she had to save Lee Suhyun.

"..Because you're someone precious to me. Licht."

Her true feelings slipped out before she even realized it. A feeling not even her armor could hold back.

"Phine? What did you just say?"

The glass wrapped around her was no obstacle any longer.

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