The Monster Lady and the Holy Knight - Chapter 114
It was a cliché wish, but she wanted time to stop like this. How selfish and ignorant a thought. To wish to live with him while standing atop countless human bones.
Her stomach twisted with pain.
Veronica sat blankly, absorbing the warmth of the man leaning against her.
The undulating darkness was slowly gnawing away at the scenery. The sun had set, and the surroundings were now pitch black.
The man’s hand, which had been gripping her wrist, pulled her by the waist, pressing her tightly against him. He acted as though he would die if they were separated.
When Leon pressed his lips against the nape of her neck and traced her tilted jawline with slow fingers, Veronica shivered softly. The thick, languid touch made her feel like fragile glass, messily smeared and scattered. In the strangely desperate sensation, she let out a shallow breath.
“Leon.”
The moment she finally called his name aloud, he stopped like an obedient child. Slowly, he raised his head. His features, revealed beneath disheveled hair, were unexpectedly clear instead of clouded. There was no trace of tears.
The moment she saw his eyes gleaming starkly under the moonlight, Veronica felt an eerie chill. He was staring past her back.
Why…
“Can you hear it?”
Hear what…?
“The approaching footsteps.”
At that instant, her stomach churned violently. Overcome with nausea, Veronica stiffened, her face contorting.
She knew this feeling. She had experienced it once before in Aseldorf. It was the sensation of hundreds, thousands of faces staring up at her from beneath her feet.
This time, the direction was behind her, but the source remained unchanged—it came from Bahamut. At last, she too could hear the heavy footfalls. Heavier than a human’s, and more numerous than an entire army. They were undoubtedly returning. The realization sent chills racing through her entire body.
Pale with shock, Veronica muttered, “That’s impossible. How did they know and come back…?”
After ‘it’ had disappeared, saying it was going to find Leon, the countless watching eyes had vanished as well. It was impossible for them to have already searched through Kart and returned. Moreover, the nausea twisting her insides was because the very air was laced with killing intent.
Leon silently looked down at the ground. The white bones began clattering against each other as they bounced and shifted. As the ground trembled, his dark pupils finally shifted to her.
“Because your eyes saw me.”
“What…?”
“That’s the only reason. It saw me through your eyes.”
At first, her mind couldn’t comprehend his words. Then suddenly, a past vision flickered in her thoughts. Back then, she had seen the battlefield beyond Kart through Bahamut’s scattered eyes across the continent. The war in Ruega and Tanbia, the battles in Chesania and Whiteland, even the skirmishes in the Rom Archipelago. Because they were all connected.
Looking back, the timing of Bahamut’s attacks had always been strange. Just before the witch trials were held, or on the exact day citizens were set to flee into the wilderness. As if it knew precisely when things would happen. Perhaps none of it had been coincidence. Perhaps ‘it’ had occasionally stolen glimpses through her eyes, without her ever realizing it.
Veronica whipped her head around and felt the hairs on her neck stand on end as she spotted the densely packed red dots approaching in the distance. Before she knew it, the Bahamut legion was climbing the hill of skulls. This was their domain, and their numbers were vast enough to fill the entire Blasen mountain range. Killing them all was impossible.
While she was distracted, Leon silently gripped his sword and rose to his feet. As he stepped forward to shield her, he gave a warning over his shoulder.
“Stay back. On nights like this, anyone can get caught in the sword’s path.”
“You’re not seriously thinking of fighting…? That’s insane. You can’t take them all on alone. This isn’t like defending Kart. It’s not too late—you have to run!”
He still had a long life ahead of him. If he ran, he could survive. Even if Veronica failed to kill the First, he had enough endurance to make it through.
“If I survive here…”
Leon trailed off. It was unclear whether he meant he would run if he survived, or if he had been about to make a request and stopped himself.
With an expression of exhaustion and languidness, he turned to look at her one last time and asked, “Even if I tell you to go alone, you won’t, will you?”
The pitch-black darkness was now filled with red dots from one side to the other. Veronica bit her lip and shook her head firmly. Leon chuckled faintly. He strode forward to the border between light and darkness, his crimson hair scattering like fire in the night. It created the illusion that the temperature had dropped by several degrees.
As Veronica hurried to stand up, she realized with dismay that Hennessis was buried within the shifting pile of bones. Frantically, she dug through the ground with trembling hands. Every time her fingers scraped against the white bones, sharp stinging pain shot through them.
Her pulse pounded violently, and her stomach churned. She felt like vomiting. Why, why did reality always come crashing in without warning? She had only said words that wounded Leon. She hadn’t even properly wiped away his tears.
Why now, of all times!
“…Found it.”
The moment she finally spotted the hilt engraved with a lion beyond a knee bone, Bahamut’s forces surged forward like a furious tide. Leon, standing in the light, swung his sword.
Crash!
Under the horizontal arc of his blade, the Bahamut monsters momentarily froze midair before bursting like fountains, scattering blood as their bodies tumbled to the ground. The height of the creatures trampling over their fallen kin had noticeably decreased compared to when she had first seen them. Now, they were merely about two heads taller than an average man.
Time was running out. Once they completely transformed into human-like forms, what came next was obvious—they would seek to claim unique faces and individual existences.
Veronica grabbed Hennessis and wobbled as she stood up.
Each time Leon’s blade cut through the air like a thunderstrike, Apocalypse flashed blindingly. Veronica watched the battle unfold without even blinking. She had seen him wield the holy sword countless times. But… but this—
Rampage.
When his sword slammed a Bahamut’s skull into the ground, the earth split open from the impact. The accumulated bones poured into the widening crevices, and an eerie wail echoed through the cavern, enough to drive one mad.
Veronica murmured blankly, “What did he mean, ‘if I survive here’…”
He had no intention of surviving. He planned to die here.
Tears she hadn’t even realized were welling spilled down her cheeks. She didn’t know if it was sorrow or the sheer, overwhelming horror of the slaughter before her.
She had never seen Leon lose control like this. Now she understood why he had told her not to come near. Anyone caught in that storm would have nothing left but death.
With every weighty downward strike of his sword, flesh and blood splattered. His sharp features were already half stained in crimson, and steam rose from his body, drenched in blood. The vertical and diagonal slashes he carved into his enemies were brutally beautiful.
***
Leon charged fearlessly into the heart of the Bahamut legion. His swordsmanship was relentless—every move he made, whether offensive or defensive, was merely a transition into his next strike. Even his moments of stillness existed only to fuel his next assault.
Using the recoil from plunging Apocalypse into the ground, Leon propelled himself high into the air. Landing atop the massive Bahamut’s crown, he spun his sword once before driving it deep into its skull. From his elevated vantage point, he swiftly surveyed the legion below.
His goal was to shatter their formations. The Bahamut moved as a single body, and if one lost its place, even momentarily, an opening would appear. And he had the talent to exploit such moments without fail, turning them into slaughter.
In an instant, over a dozen heads flew through the air. The stench of fresh blood was suffocating.
How many had he killed? How long could he keep this up? Would there be time to return to Veronica before he died?
Amid the relentless carnage, his thoughts blurred. The rising bloodlust whispered to him—
Fight. Kill. Rampage until your soul is ground to dust.
His arms, wielding the sword, and his legs, steady against the ground, felt lighter with every passing moment. He knew this was a symptom of his holy power draining, but he did not stop. No—by now, he had already passed the point of stopping.
Since the day his comrades perished in Tiran, since the moment the First swallowed Veronica, this was the greatest rampage he had ever unleashed. He was pushing himself this far for one reason—to reach the empty space at the legion’s center. The Bahamut monsters were obsessively aligned, yet there was an odd void just the size of a single person. That alone made it suspicious.
Leon believed that was where ‘it’ would be.
When his blade reached its peak momentum, he kicked off the ground and plunged it deep into the very core of the legion, aiming for the safest, deepest, and most protected place within their ranks.
And at that moment—for the first time since the battle began—Apocalypse came to a standstill.
A black cloak fluttered and settled.
A dead silence fell, as if time itself had stopped.
At the tip of the long blade, where blood dripped onto the ground, stood a woman.
Leon froze and murmured lowly, “…Veronica?”
The naked woman stood so close that his sword nearly touched her forehead, yet she showed no change in expression. The blade, which had been descending slowly down her neck, suddenly halted.
“You can never kill it.”
Leon’s eyes widened. The moment he realized what those words meant, ‘it’ curled its lips into a smile. The Bahamut standing beside him grabbed him by the throat, lifting him and slamming him violently against a pillar of the cave.
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miakatame
This novel deserve to have a live adaptation. Like Lord of the Rings. The writer is superb. If you read Sarah J maas novel, this is the kind of story that matches the genre like western. Words can’t really express how I was amazed about the storyline. Thank you so much for translating this