WeTried Translations

Translator: Botanica

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Academy's Pure Love Dark Knight ◈

Chapter 97

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Episode 97. Seek Life, Find Love.

I turned to the blue-haired man with the striking white eyes and spoke.

"Professor Dennis, please evacuate Phine and the others."

"I can't do that, it's too dangerous. Are you planning to take on Head alone, Licht?"

"Then is there anyone else here who can handle 'Omniscience' and 'Erasure of knowledge' besides me?"

"That's..."

Dennis couldn't answer easily after hearing that. I suppose that made sense. He must have been more than a little shaken by what the Demon King had just shouted.

"This is absurd!! A Hero of the same concept can't possibly exist!!"

Because it meant a complete counter to a Demon King now existed. Now that I thought about it, she'd said something similar during the final battle with Magic Hat too. I guess back then I'd nullified even falsehood itself.

"I'm fine. I can't say the same for other times, though..."

I said this while meeting the Glass Knight's golden eyes. Thankfully, she looked fine. At this rate, there was no chance of her becoming the 'Nameless Saintess.'

"..Right now, I think I can kill that bastard for certain."

He'd touched our Phine while I was right here? The fact that he'd tried to use Erasure of knowledge to turn her into a complete idiot made my grip on my sword tighten.

"Licht, are you angry?"

"No? I'm perfectly fine."

"No, you look furious."

Damn, Phine had caught onto my feelings. How was she so sharp, the exact opposite of oblivious me? My expression should have been hidden behind my helmet too.

"I'm a little angry."

"..I see."

A short laugh slipped out of me for no reason. To think I hadn't noticed even though she'd been right beside me this whole time, honestly, part of me wanted to scream "Aaaaargh!! I'm sorry!!" right there.

"Then we'll put a little distance between us and you, Licht."

"Thank you, Professor."

"I'll have to help you the instant you're in danger, after all."

Given the situation, that would have to wait. Even if it got pushed back, my karma wasn't going anywhere.

"Licht. Together..."

"Fight together, you mean? No. There might still be aftereffects lingering."

"I don't want you carrying this alone anymore, Licht.."

Don't say things like that, it makes my resolve waver. Phine, if I wanted to make sure you never became the Nameless Saintess, I had to eliminate the Demon King in front of me, this Head Ache, for certain.

"..."

For a moment, no words came. There was no more time to waste. At this rate, everyone would get caught up in the battle against the Demon King.

"..Professor Dennis."

"Understood. Take care of yourself."

At my signal, the blue-haired mage activated a three-dimensional magic circle and teleported everyone nearby except Head and me.

"Licht..!"

Even as she was being pulled away, she reached out an arm, trying to grab hold of me. I couldn't understand how she could be so soft-hearted.

She could just leave it to her Pure Love Black Knight. Believe it or not, I had experience taking down Demon Kings.

With me here, there was no way our spatial coordinates could be reverse-calculated. I raised Giyu and walked slowly toward Head.

"Hero, do you even understand what you've done?!"

"Well, what exactly did I do?"

A shower pattered down across the training grounds.

"You threw away the last move that could have stopped the fate bearing down on the future!!"

"Fate, my ass."

In the pouring rain, two men whose difference of opinion could never be bridged stood hostile against each other.

[A 'contradiction' has occurred in <Knight Heart>!! Lee Suhyun, please cease combat!!]

At that moment, a transparent status window appeared before my eyes.

The developer was at it again. It had happened last time too, when I tried to save Phine. I should have noticed that our Phine had been by my side ever since I succeeded with the Corrupted Route glitch.

'I really am a dense person. I had no business lecturing Kainel about it.'

I'd thought I knew everything about the person I loved, but apparently not even that was true. Then again, love wasn't something to interpret or judge through words or sentences.

Honestly, if it weren't for our Saintess, I might already have fallen for Phine Gransia. The Glass Knight's heart was warmer and gentler than anyone's.

She was someone who'd just risked her life to pull me out of my trauma. How could anyone not fall for a person like that.

'No, maybe I already have.'

Some part of my heart had already fallen to Phine. Honestly, ever since I'd been possessing this body, I'd been building an iron wall against the possibility of getting tangled up with the female cast.

Unless a pairing was already firmly established, like with Ariel or Chartiness, I hadn't gone out of my way to interact with them, and even then, I'd stepped aside at important moments.

'..Come to think of it, that had been true at the drinking party, and at the festival too.'

That had been a time when I knew she was a woman, so I should have just acted the way I always did.

Drinking together, giving her a piggyback ride, it was full of things the usual me would never have done, but something in me kept stirring at the thought of leaving her alone.

Being with Phine made my heart race, and there was a lot about her gentleness that moved me.

"..If fate exists, then a 'fate' that can overcome it should exist too."

I walked forward, looking straight ahead. If the story followed its original course, she would become the Saintess, and might even come to love me.

But that wasn't love. At least, not something that deserved to be called pure love.

"That's sophistry..! This isn't something wordplay can solve!!"

"I'm a Black Knight. Someone who has to drink from a bitter cup however many times it takes, for the person he loves."

If I hadn't been here, what would have become of Head's attack on Grand Hearts Academy? Chartiness probably would have actually been kidnapped this time.

'So that's why no contradiction message showed up when I cleared the [The Secret Club Where the Sun Sets] dungeon.'

A chill ran through my whole body. That meant that, apart from the incident with Magic Hat and now this one with Head, everything had gone exactly the way the creator intended.

[A contradiction has occurred in the original work, <Knight Heart>..!]

[In the original work, <Knight Heart>, a contradiction...]

[The original work, <Knight Heart>....]

The transparent status windows kept overlapping, one after another, until they blocked my vision, so I cut through them once with Giyu.

"If it's fate that makes her unhappy, then I'll cut it down as many times as it takes."

Slice. The status window split cleanly in two.

The unpleasant cluster of letters dissolved into a haze of light and vanished. The fact that the creator's warning had come in this form, in the end, meant something.

'If I just kill Head here, there's no way our Phine ends up forgotten by everyone.'

It was proof enough that I could twist the flow of the original work, or its sequel. I wanted to see her live out her life as she was meant to, as a princess instead of a Saintess.

She was someone whose smiling face looked far prettier than her sorrowful one. The reason was that simple.

If I killed even Magic Hat at this rate, I could get her mother, Bellin Gransia, back too.

Like hell I'd listen to a warning window at this point.

"No one can stop my 'prophecy'!! Countless people will die or be hurt. I'm only trying to minimize that!!"

"That thing, is it really even a prophecy?"

Head glared at me with wide eyes, shouting as if in his last throes.

"Hey, Demon King of Omniscience."

"What is it, boy."

"Do you happen to know who'd win if you and I fought?"

He shook his head at the question. I figured as much.

"..I don't know."

"Why don't you know? Aren't you the 'Demon King of Omniscience'?"

"..."

The Demon Kings' powers and abilities weren't actually this perfect. The Demon King of Omniscience looked confused, unable to give even a simple answer with certainty.

"..So you might be wrong, and yet you've been weighing people's lives on that flimsy judgment of yours?"

"No. I've already confirmed it seven times over. Ruin can't be stopped."

He ground his molars with a grit. Confirmed it seven times, what did that even mean. Don't tell me it was that.

"Head, are you a returner?"

"How could you..!!"

It was obvious, wasn't it. The very concept of omniscience was contradictory to begin with. In the original work, <Knight Heart>, he'd even said in his dying words, "Let's meet again at the hour of prophecy."

Since I was a possessor, it wasn't strange for a returner or two to show up as well. A Heavenly Demon existed too, after all.

"I wasn't there in those loops of yours, was I?"

"That's right, so if you lend your strength, boy, even more lives could..."

"Fuck off. Don't wag that tongue at me. Shouldn't 'I'm sorry for killing people over something I was never sure of' come out of your mouth first?"

That settled it. He'd never once doubted that the future he'd seen was unchangeable, while pointing that blade at everyone else without mercy.

"Then what should I have done. I've already fought alongside the Ten Greats, and I've betrayed the other Demon Kings too."

Head spoke to me with a twisted, mad smile. Something was missing.

"I tried seven times to change that bleak future. You, Lee Suhyun, someone from another world, should understand that better than anyone!!"

"You're missing one basic premise, Head."

In some ways, you could say he resembled me, but that Demon King and I had been different from the start. And that difference was.

"If you'd given up your return and staked your life from the start, something would have changed, wouldn't it? Your omniscience would disappear."

I was someone who could give up even his life for the person he loved. My life had, from the very start, essentially been saved by Phine Gransia anyway.

It was fine even if she never became the Nameless Saintess. Phine was just Phine. I couldn't let my own one-sided feelings hurt her.

If anyone got hurt, it would be me. I wouldn't watch her get hurt, not until the day I died.

Because Phine was someone who deserved to be happier from here on. This was the right choice, better than letting her fall into the Demon Kings' hands as things stood.

"..Negotiations have broken down. Hero."

"Oops, sounds like I hit a nerve. However will I apologize."

He scowled deeply and aimed a red revolver at me. Bang. The gunshot rang out across the battlefield. Head fired a bullet at me.

"I'm not a Hero, I'm a Black Knight."

I used Giyu to turn my body into water droplets and dodged his bullet. The rain kept falling over the academy.

In that rain, Demon King and Black Knight poured out everything they had, each trying to kill the other.

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