I Picked Up the Protagonist’s Heroine - Chapter 11

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Dionysus

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◈ I Picked Up the Protagonist’s Heroine ◈

Chapter 11: Outside Story (2)

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Romans turned at the ominous presence and saw Daywin already charging at him on horseback.

‘A Paladin?’

The sheer force pouring off him was so overwhelming that Romans had not even recognized him as Daywin at first.

Only when he came close enough for Romans to make out his face did he recognize his younger brother.

“Why is the youngest...?”

Romans’s unsteady gaze traveled over Daywin as though he were looking at a stranger.

The pure white armor.

The shining halo.

He stared with a mixture of awe and shock.

“Y-Youngest, fall back!”

Romans suddenly came to his senses and shouted.

“You can’t come this way!”

It was just as the unnaturally numerous goblin horde began to surround Romans’s troops.

Even if his younger brother joined them...

Flash!

Daywin gave off a burst of light.

At the same time, Ester, riding with Daywin, had her attention seized by it.

‘Magic?’

She stared blankly.

‘...This isn’t ordinary magic.’

The light Daywin had created gradually took shape.

The round, shining circle bent, soon becoming a human figure.

The size of a finger.

A tiny little person.

It fluttered the wings sprouting from its back as it drifted through the air.

Elegant, delicate, and holy.

A fragment of the goddess she had known only through myths and fairy tales.

‘A spirit...’

A Light Spirit.

It was a being made of mana, sometimes called a gift from the goddess.

Spirits could fight alongside their users, cast buff spells, or hinder enemies.

Those contracted with a spirit were rare, but if one could handle a spirit, it was like having a dependable partner at their side.

In particular, simply being able to wield a Light Spirit was recognized as a mark of nobility.

Moreover, the deeper the bond between the user and spirit, the greater its effects became.

Swish!

While she was thinking, Daywin’s finger swept through the air.

He began casting another spell.

One gesture, one spell.

He wove prayers and incantations in his mind, activating them from his fingertips.

A magic circle appeared on the spirit’s back.

Ester opened her eyes wide so as not to miss Daywin’s magic.

‘Movement Speed Increase.’

Then...

‘Another Movement Speed Increase.’

And again.

‘Movement Speed Increase again...?’

Daywin cast Movement Speed Increase on the spirit a total of five times.

As Ester had said in their academy lesson before, the effect stacked because a spirit’s body was itself a mana circuit.

‘Is he planning a rapid attack by taking advantage of the spirit’s small size?’

But Ester did not know.

To survive until the end of the world, one had to throw away common sense.

Ping!

When Daywin issued an order with his finger, the spirit, which had been fluttering its wings elegantly, fixed its gaze on the forest where the goblins lay in wait.

Then...

Whoosh!

It shot forward like a cannonball.

At that moment, Ester remembered once more that a spirit’s body was a mass of mana.

An enormous amount of mana was compressed into a tiny body no larger than a finger.

If that mass of mana threw itself forward at tremendous speed...

Kaboom!

The spirit crashed into a tree in the forest and self-destructed.

The massive explosion of mana swallowed the trees and goblins whole.

‘Huh? It exploded...’

Not only Ester, but Romans and his soldiers as well.

All of them stared at the blast site with dumbfounded expressions.

‘What...?’

Past and future.

The man who had been the commander of the Paladin Order.

He had been the most irreverent Paladin in the Order.

‘He used that noble spirit as a mana bomb and threw it away...!’

That Paladin was neither holy nor knightly.

A spirit was not merely an object made of mana.

It was a living creature that thought, chose, and acted.

It was alive.

It had a name.

And yet...

Boom!

Daywin summoned a second spirit and immediately slammed it into the forest.

Another explosion of mana.

The blast shook the forest, and clouds of dust and shredded leaves billowed up.

‘I’ve never even heard of something like this.’

He was out of his mind.

Normally, one would build a bond with a spirit and raise its abilities.

But Daywin did the opposite.

Rather than making one spirit level 100, his strategy was to throw one hundred newborn level 1 spirits at the enemy.

And they were not merely level 1 spirits.

Things changed when they were covered in the buffs of a Paladin devoted entirely to enhancement magic.

‘Even so...’

What Ester found especially incomprehensible was the endless stream of summoned spirits.

Daywin was practically kicking away every gift the goddess gave him, yet the goddess kept sending more.

Universal love.

Or favoritism.

Daywin was loved by the goddess enough to make one jealous.

Boom!

He did not stop.

With no expression at all, Daywin continued the bombardment.

Boom!

After a while, Daywin’s eyes turned sharp.

“...Found you.”

In a voice as cold as frost, he stared toward one side of the forest.

Ester, who had been watching him from behind, followed his gaze as well.

A man wearing a black mask.

The masked man, who had been mingled among the goblins in the trees, leaped across the branches as though they were stepping stones.

Meanwhile, Daywin rose to his feet atop the horse’s back, balancing precariously.

Then he summoned two spirits.

The spirits clung to his back and pushed against his armor with their tiny hands.

Bang!

The two spirits, enhanced with Movement Speed Increase, flew up in an instant and launched Daywin into the air.

Daywin dove into the forest in one leap.

He hung in the air for a moment.

The instant he landed, he seized the intruder’s throat as the man leaped across the branches.

“...Ghk!”

Daywin drove the masked man’s neck straight into the ground.

Thud!

“Urk...!”

The man let out a pained groan as his back struck the earth.

He twisted his entire body in an attempt to escape, but Daywin’s grip held firm.

Daywin slowly looked the man over.

He was dressed entirely in black.

His mask hid not only his face, but even his hair.

In his hand was a goblin hand axe.

‘Romans died in a goblin ambush. There were traces of a goblin axe having been used.’

The more the man struggled, the tighter Daywin’s grip became.

As though he would snap his neck at any moment.

‘So it was a human using a goblin’s weapon.’

At last, the masked man swung the axe in his hand, but Daywin moved faster and subdued that arm as well.

“I imagined killing you over and over. Cutting you to death, burning you to death, strangling you to death. Yes, it was all fantasy, but we finally met. Now...”

Remembering the game that had presented the player with dozens of choices, Daywin asked.

The opposite of when he had been the player.

“How should I kill you?”

The extra offered a choice.

* * *

As I choked the assassin, the light faded from his blue eyes.

He did not seem to have the strength to struggle any longer.

Just as I reached for his mask to check his face.

“Ru...”

He forced out the words with all his remaining strength.

“Run away...!”

Run away.

He was telling me to run away?

Rustle!

At that moment, a silhouette sprang from the brush.

Silhouettes. Plural.

They wore the same clothes and masks as the man I held.

More assassins.

Like a swarm of insects that had hidden in the darkness only to be struck by intense light, they burst into the depths of the forest.

There was not just one.

No, from the beginning...

Why had I assumed there was only one?

Whip!

A sudden sense of dread made me turn around.

I reflexively checked on Romans.

“No, no. It’s too late to run now.”

A man in a black mask and robe was strolling toward Romans’s troops.

His face was hidden beneath black cloth.

Only his emerald eyes were barely visible.

An axe in each hand.

He was different from the other assassins.

Step, step.

Even after all the others had fled, he moved with light, dancing steps.

Romans’s troops also noticed the lone masked figure and raised their shields and spears to keep him at bay.

But they were too late.

He struck in an instant, like lightning.

The last assassin leaped alone into the middle of Romans’s troops and cut them down.

Slash!

How many had he cut down in that single strike?

It had happened in the blink of an eye.

Romans’s soldiers fell helplessly.

Limbs severed along with their armor.

Shields torn apart like paper.

Even the cries begging for mercy.

The horrific sight assaulted all five senses.

The shabby axes in his hands had devastated Romans’s troops.

“...No.”

I ran like a madman.

I could not fail again.

I could not let him die again.

But as if mocking my desperation, the assassin...

Crash!

...shattered the ground as he sprang up and arrived right in front of Romans.

Less than a second.

He closed the distance in that brief instant.

And it was not only his legs that were fast.

The moment he approached, he swung his arm...

Thunk!

...and buried an axe in Romans’s chest.

Dark red blood splattered across the man’s mask and quickly soaked into it.

“Ghk...!”

Romans coughed up blood.

Meanwhile, that bastard kicked Romans’s body away as if he were ridiculous, pulling out the axe.

Then he pointed the dripping axe blade at me.

“You there, Third Young Master.”

Those clear green eyes looked straight at me.

“You’re a little different from the intelligence report, aren’t you?”

Whoosh!

He tossed one axe into the air and caught it again.

“When we first investigated, it clearly said the third son had no power at all. Well, it makes no difference. You still couldn’t do anything while your brother died.”

By the time I arrived, Romans’s blood had already soaked the ground.

I frantically shoved my hand into the pouch holding the potion bottles.

“What are you going to do? Use a potion?”

He snapped his head to the side with an exaggerated, clownish motion and grinned.

“You shouldn’t get your hopes up. I’m the type to make sure a job gets done.”

Ting!

He flicked the axe blade with a finger.

“I coat them in poison. You never know. Though the fact that I had to step in already means this job wasn’t handled very thoroughly...”

The bastard grinned at me and continued.

“I didn’t expect someone like you to show up either, so let’s call it even.”

Ignoring him, I sat beside Romans.

I pressed a highest-grade recovery potion tightly into his hand.

It was the potion he had secretly tucked away, saying it was to protect me.

“Give up. No matter how good the potion is...”

I slowly rose.

Flash!

I summoned five spirits at once and closed the distance.

“Ah, I get it! You’re thinking you need to avenge your dead brother? Sorry, but I don’t have time to play with you. Like I said, things got a little off track because of you.”

“My dead brother? What are you talking about?”

“...What?”

“The only person dying today will be you.”

I decided to rewrite it.

To overwrite the changed outcome.

“Begin!”

Without taking my eyes off him, I spoke to the other person.

The one who had stayed by my side all day for this moment.

“Ester!”

“Yes! I’ll do it now!”

As the assassin swung his axe, Ester was already ready to cast her spell.

With a tense expression, she gathered mana.