WeTried Translations
Translator: Botanica
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Academy's Pure Love Dark Knight ◈
Chapter 118
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Episode 118. Even a Rose Made of Glass Has Thorns.
Sophitia's group kept walking deeper in, but the inside of the cave stretched on with no end in sight.
Visibility so poor they couldn't see a foot ahead.
"I'll light the way first."
Asha used her spirit magic to conjure a flame that lit the surroundings, the same way Nex would, and cleared a path forward.
The situation was similar to when Licht had entered the dungeon before.
But there were many differences too. For one, this hardly seemed like a place where an Apostle of Wrath would be, in more ways than one.
"Why aren't there any guards inside..?"
Unlike the high-tier monsters standing watch outside, there wasn't so much as a footprint or a stray tuft of fur here.
Normally, if monsters were meant to appear in a place like this and block off the entrance they'd come through, wouldn't that be to the enemy's advantage?
This was an apostle who'd deliberately lured even the monsters from the summit down the mountain to sow confusion,
there was no way it wouldn't have thought of a countermeasure for the moment its hiding place was discovered.
The brilliant strategist Sophitia Coldheart kept walking forward, but a nagging question in the back of her mind refused to resolve itself.
If the white-haired man she'd met a few days ago had been beside her, would he have known the reason behind this contradiction she was sensing?
On top of that, it was too quiet. Strangely so, as if there had never been a single person or animal in this cave from the start.
"That smell.. blood…."
Phine, whose sense of smell was sharp, caught the wrongness first, and the others stopped in their tracks. A sharp, coppery scent of blood stung the nose.
"Guess I'll need a little more light."
Asha Aureus used her spirit magic to bring up the flame. In an instant the place lit up as bright as day, and
"Mmph!! Mmmph!!"
there, sprawled across a stone altar, was a girl bound with rope. A spot in this freezing snow mountain untouched by the falling snow.
Her mouth was gagged with cloth so she couldn't even scream, and if Sophie's group hadn't come, she would have frozen to death, on top of everything else.
"These absolute lunatics…."
Around the altar, an inverted pentagram had been drawn in blood, and encircling it stood a mountain of monster corpses.
No, to be precise, there were human bodies among them too.
Because of the cold, the corpses hadn't decayed at all, they looked as though they'd simply frozen solid. No maggots, no insects crawling over them, just bodies lying there as if asleep.
"Just like with Head, these bastards, honestly!!"
What on earth had they been trying to do here?
Drake shouted, loud enough for someone to hear, whoever that might be. But his voice only echoed back, hollow and useless.
"Wait, Phine…."
At that, Phine Gransia walked toward the altar without a moment's hesitation.
Bloodstains smeared beneath her footprints, giving off an unsettling feeling, but she paid it no mind.
She was far more focused on saving the person than on the suspicious pentagram, and she pressed forward to the stone altar.
The Glass Knight had come to be this way largely because of a certain Black Knight who never hesitated to throw himself into danger without a thought for his own life.
"..Disgusting."
Phine untied the rope binding the child and pulled the cloth from her mouth. Only then did the freckled, red-haired girl finally manage to catch her breath.
"Th, thank you.. for saving me.."
"What's your name, kid?"
Seeing the red marks left on her skin, clearly from being bound for a long time, Phine frowned inside her helmet and asked the child's name while trying to calm her.
"Esther.. My name is Esther."
The Northern Grand Duchess and Asha both felt a flicker of unease looking at the girl, but the heavily armored Glass Knight scooped Esther up and brought her back over to the group.
"..Alright, do you know what the Heroic Cult was trying to do here, kid?"
The black-haired woman with bear ears asked without lowering her guard. No matter how she looked at it, this had all the marks of something suspicious.
"I.. I don't.. I don't know.. Wahhh…."
The aftershock of seeing the corpses seemed to be too much for the child, and she immediately burst into tears at Phine's side.
"Sophie, that was mean."
"..Something's off about this, no matter how I look at it."
"Don't cry, Esther. Shh, there, there."
Leaving behind their sole witness, who was crying too hard now to talk,
"It looks like traces of a human sacrifice meant to summon something."
The spirit magic master offered her opinion once she'd gathered her thoughts. Between the inverted pentagram and the use of the altar,
the most likely explanation was that they'd meant to use the corpses and the child as a medium for a summoning.
"This is…. Are they trying to summon a high-ranking demon? No idea what it actually is, though!"
Drake turned the events over in his mind once more, thinking back to what had happened in that sunless meeting place. It didn't match what Licht had told him after everything was over, the last time.
Back then, Licht had said it was for the Heroic Cult to punish unbelievers, but now, wasn't there clearly some other, well-defined goal at play?
The monsters that kept coming down into the North, the coordinated movements all aimed at breaking the walls, a plan set in motion even before the Demon King of Omniscience had died.
These three things frightened the Dragon Slayer, and made the hand holding his sword tremble.
"Wait, Phine."
"..What is it, Sophie?"
Phine, patting the crying child's back, was gently soothing her.
"Get away from that child."
Watching that, the Grand Duchess finally realized the source of the unease she'd been feeling all along.
"The corpses around here have been dead a long time, and if she were meant as a sacrifice, they wouldn't have been this careless about it."
Sophitia drew the spear from her back. The tip of the ice weapon leveled at Esther's throat.
"And on top of that, in the place most likely to be the apostle's hiding spot."
"Wait, Sophie..!"
Without a moment's hesitation, she swung the spear, and though the Glass Knight drew her sword to try to stop her, it was already too late.
"..If a child is here like this, it's strange for her not to be involved somehow."
Look past appearances to the truth underneath, that ordinary lesson had come from the mysterious man she'd shared dinner with before.
The composed, level-headed Sophitia struck the red-haired girl, that sentence surfacing suddenly in her mind, and
"..Ah, caught."
Esther blocked the spear with a small palm, her lips splitting into a grin. And behind her, Phine's shock showed clearly, that she hadn't noticed anything wrong.
"I thought I fooled you well enough. Why'd you catch on?"
The reason not even Phine's eyes had seen through the lie.
Was that the apostle's name really was Esther, and she'd simply refused, deliberately, to answer anything she knew.
"Well, still…. Guess I can make at least one of you angry!"
The apostle locked eyes with Phine, who stood closest to her. No matter how much of a Masterpiece it was, Phine Gransia's glass armor was specialized against magic.
"Wh, what…"
It had no resistance at all against this kind of thing. As wrath began to consume her, her eyes bled red, gold irises overtaken by a bloody hue.
"Damn it, no!!"
Drake noticed the change instantly and struck down at Esther's neck, but the girl died with a peaceful smile, as if she'd achieved exactly what she wanted.
"…"
But even with the caster gone, the princess didn't so much as flinch. The red eyes behind her glass helmet struck fear into everyone around her.
"An ability that still takes effect after death, huh. I heard it was the same with the Apostle of Gluttony too…."
Maybe this had been the goal from the start. Deliberately letting someone approach, then enraging whichever one of them would be hardest to fight back against.
"Phine. Are you okay..? You're okay, right..?"
Sophitia called Phine's name, trying to check if she was still herself, but
"Glass.. Knight.."
instead of answering, Phine chanted her glass magic, and a massive glass knight burst out from behind her. A knight wielding a greatsword, much like the one from the grade exam.
"Phine, wait..! Calm down!!"
Clang! The giant glass sword came crashing down toward the Northern Grand Duchess, and Drake barely managed to block it in time, so no one was hurt.
The ground shook, and dust rained down from above. Whether the space was cramped or not, the glass knight kept trying to strike again and again.
"This is bad. If we pull back our spirits, monsters might come pouring down into the North…."
"Even so, we can't raise a blade against my brother's daughter!"
Watching the enraged Phine, the others began to hesitate.
On top of that, this was a narrow, cramped cave. If they let the Glass Knight run wild, this whole place could collapse.
"Even running for the entrance, we'd be too late…."
The Grand Duchess made the call, worried about her friend who'd changed like this. Even if they ran for the way they came in, Phine's attacks would catch up regardless.
"What do we do..?"
Even with spirit magic, swordsmanship, and spearwork all working together, it was impossible to subdue Phine without hurting her. Who could possibly disable a princess without doing her harm?
"Phine, please, come to your senses. You're just angry, that's all, right..? Come on."
In the end, the best option left was to calm her down. Sophitia tried to freeze her in place, aiming only to stop her movement.
"Let's think about this a little more clearly. All of us."
Craaack. Ice crept slowly around Phine like forming frost, but she didn't so much as falter.
「Mirror Mirage.」
She summoned duplicates that shattered the ice wall climbing up around her, and slipped through the opening the moment it broke. A swarm of glass illusions rushed at the remaining three.
"At this rate the cave's going to collapse!!"
"Melting glass has its limits too."
Drake and Asha were holding the line with sword strikes and spirit magic, but with the interference gone, the Glass Knight deliberately smashed the ceiling, bringing down stone.
A moment where they desperately needed someone to save even one of them.
"Took a while to find you, princess of mine."
Someone charged in from Phine Gransia's side.
Whether he'd used Wolf Fang or not, a fast, gleaming cobalt flash tore across the cave.
Clang, clang! The sound of metal and glass colliding rang out one after another, and the man dodged the clones' attacks the instant they lunged, shattering them right after.
"..Why are you angry, Phine?"
The figure in the Black Knight's helmet, having dealt with them using a Reverse Scale Pierce and Jeokmok, felt a sense of déjà vu looking at the glass knight before him.
"My student!! The princess was hit by the Apostle of Wrath!!"
Licht, who'd escaped his confinement, sighed as he looked at Phine, her eyes gone red.
"Phine, even if you're angry, you can't take it out on other people."
"…"
Unlike during the grade exam, he knew exactly who was inside that glass armor, and spoke calmly, as if he'd expected something like this all along.
"If you're angry, take it out on me instead."
No more words needed. The glass knight's great sword flew straight at Licht. Reacting instantly, he dodged to the side, and
"Old Thought, Reminiscence."
he summoned another Heart Sword, driving a black lever into the greatsword and yanking it back. Crack, crack. Small fractures began spreading across Phine's Glass Knight.
The cracks climbed further up the body, growing wider, until with a resounding craaaaack, it shattered, and the glass magic dispersed.
"..Whatever it is you do."
At the same moment he spoke, Licht took up the Shadow Fang stance. Just as at the grade exam, Phine raised her sword high once more, facing him as her opponent.
In truth, the Heart Slash she was about to unleash was nearly impossible to block. That made dodging the better option by far, but
"Captive pure love or whatever else, I'm sure I can take it gladly."
Regardless, the Black Knight spoke calmly, and behind his helmet, his expression turned faintly nostalgic.
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