Chapter 14 – Auditore da Sicilia (3)

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Translated by Jinmu

Read only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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I walked forward. The male student remained standing still.

“……”

Taut tension spread through the room, and a heavy silence sank into the classroom walls.

Hair as red as if dyed in blood, and eyes of a murky red hue. My instincts were sounding the alarm wildly. They were forcefully insisting that this bastard was dangerous. In a situation like this, what exactly could I even did?

“If you have something to say, then say it.”

At my words, the bastard showed no particular reaction.

He simply stared at me with hollow, sunken eyes. I stayed where I was and met his gaze. A coldly honed hostility pricked at my entire body.

What the hell was wrong with this bastard’s eyes?

For some reason, it gave me a sense of deja vu. Thinking it over, he gave off an atmosphere similar to Chloe when she had completely lost her mind.

On top of that, red hair and red eyes were rare even in this world. My guess was that he was probably related to her by blood.

Even after several minutes passed, no conversation whatsoever went back and forth between us. At that point, Chloe forced on a serious expression and stepped in front of me to block me.

“Geom-ma, you don’t have to pay attention to this person.”

Chloe spoke in a tone telling me to ignore him on purpose. If I hadn’t seen him, maybe that would be one thing, but with this much sinister energy pouring off him, how was I supposed not to pay attention? Turning her back to me, she faced him and spoke with a trembling voice.

“I-I told you not to come……!”

Chloe’s voice held hostility. It was surely her own attempt at speaking sharply, but since her voice naturally tended to trail off and sink in on itself, it didn’t seem especially effective.

The one facing her drew a bloody curve at the corner of his mouth without replying. At that, Chloe trembled all over with a pale face and grabbed hold of my sleeve.

Seeing that, my brow naturally furrowed. Even considering Chloe’s naturally timid personality, from what I could see, she was clearly recoiling strongly from the bastard in front of her. Then, the one who had remained silent all this time finally opened his mouth.

“He doesn’t look particularly strong. Did you want to stay with this sort of man badly enough to break Auditore law, Chloe?”

After drawing in a deep breath, Chloe answered.

“Whether it’s Auditore or anything else, it has nothing to do with me anymore.”

“Blood that has already been stained cannot be washed clean. If one is born Auditore, then one remains forever subordinate to Auditore.”

The male student called Nox said that to her like he was driving in a stake. For a kid, his way of speaking sounded like something straight out of a historical drama.

“Throw away this lowborn thing and return to Auditore, Chloe.”

“Don’t talk about Geom-ma like that!”

At the word lowborn, Chloe’s face hardened for the first time, and she released a coldly restrained killing intent toward Nox. A red, violent pressure filled the classroom with a dreadful force.

Thankfully it was lunchtime and there were no students around.

By now I had gotten somewhat used to these kinds of abnormal situations, but if this had been me only a few weeks ago, I probably would have grabbed my forehead and staggered under the suffocating weight of this atmosphere.

Auditore…

Turning that word over in my head, I thought about it. I didn’t know the family in detail, but I knew the rough outline. A shadow clan specializing in infiltration and assassination.

Back when I played the game, they didn’t appear at all in the early stages and were only gradually mentioned around the middle. In the later episodes, they showed up only in a fragmentary helper role.

If I remembered right, even among the various families wrapped in mystique, they had been a heroic house with especially little information available.

But one thing was certain: every member of the family was absurdly strong. Even if they were said to lag behind the other heroic houses in direct, frontal warfare.

When it came to ambushes and covert kills, I knew there was no one who could rival them.

Apparently they repeated training so harsh it bordered on abuse from before the children had even come of age, raising them as tools for assassination.

If you looked at it that way, then maybe that face of Nox’s, with all emotion ruthlessly cut away, was what counted as normal for an Auditore. And perhaps it was Chloe, with the face of a shy young girl, who was the one that seemed out of place.

Maybe Chloe had simply wanted to live an ordinary life. No one but the person herself would ever be able to understand her.

But the situation probably hadn’t allowed that so easily. For me, it was because of the Blessing of the Sword God I had been given, and for Chloe, it was because of the environment of being born into a family of assassins. She must have had to run away. The twisted side of her was probably a product of that cruel method of upbringing too.

I looked at Chloe. She was showing hostility to Nox while biting her tiny lips so hard that blood was beginning to run.

That sight felt like a defense mechanism, like a hedgehog raising its spines to protect itself.

I turned my gaze and stared at Nox. His eyes were filled with a coldness that made it seem like he could kill without a second thought. No, he already looked like someone well accustomed to killing.

As far as I knew, Auditore was a family of order that specialized in tracking down and purging enemies within its own ranks. To be honest, I too had no aversion to killing when it was necessary. If anything, I was the sort who thought it could be justified.

I think bastards like the Mao twins deserve to die. And in a noble society that had long since gone rotten, there were probably countless heads that need to roll.

But to have your own life ignored, and to be forced into living as a machine that went on committing emotionless murders… Just because you were born an assassin, to be forced into a fate with no choices at all, wasn’t that far too cruel?

I thought to myself. Heroes save the world with noble conviction. I was not a hero. I could’t become one, and I don’t want to.

Even so, even if I could’t save the world, maybe I can at least help save one girl’s life.

A dry laugh slipped out of my mouth. It was mockery that didn’t suit the situation. I lightly patted Chloe on the shoulder.

“I’m going to have a little talk with that bastard.”

I had no choice but to admit it. It was definitely closer to a curse, but that power was not going to let me be defeated. In the end, I was back at the starting point. I had tried to run from the Blessing of the Sword God, but there was no running from it.

The saying, There was no paradise where you run away to, crossed my mind.

My name was Kang Geom-ma anyway. Sword Geom and Demon Ma, making Geom-ma. It’s the perfect name for sticking to a ridiculous concept. If it came to putting on airs, I’d already done it even in front of the old man who was the strongest Sword Emperor in humanity.

“Your name was Nox, right?”

“……”

Nox blinked silently.

“Follow me.”

Then I opened my mouth again in a dry voice.

“I’ll cut you down.”

I was a swordsman.

For me, conversation was done not with words, but with blades.

* * *

Academy faculty office.

The buzz-cut Instructor Lee Won-bin stood there with his arms folded, sunk deep in thought. Just what had to happen for a person to change that much in such a short time? It wasn’t only his appearance. Even the atmosphere and impression he gave off had become completely different.

Originally, he had already been a student somewhat lacking in ordinary teenage qualities. At times, he even gave off the sense of life experience of someone older than Lee Won-bin himself.

Something must have happened to that boy.

While he was thinking that, someone suddenly shouted right behind him to startle him. A woman with short hair and a long, slender frame smiled at him with playful eyes.

“Seeenior!”

“Ah, Instructor Kim.”

“Huh? What’s with that reaction? You’re making this awkward for the person trying to surprise you.”

At Lee Won-bin’s flat response, Instructor Kim made a pouty face. Then she tossed a handful of Haribo gummies into her mouth.

Her hand always seemed to be holding one kind of snack or another. Hiding his tangled thoughts, Lee Won-bin decided to humor her joking tone.

“Senior, is something wrong? Your head looks especially bare today.”

“…You don’t tease a bald man.”

“Hehe, sowwy.”

Instructor Kim scratched her head awkwardly and stuck out her tongue. Then, with a puzzled expression, she asked again.

“Seriously though, is something up? Why do you look so gloomy?”

“It’s nothing much. That Geom-ma kid skipped several days and then showed up today, but the impression he gave was just way too different. That’s what’s been bothering me.”

“Maybe he’s just in a growth spurt and got a little taller? Kids these days grow so fast. There are lots of cadets who look older than me at first glance, you know? So don’t worry too much, Senior.”

“…It wasn’t just his appearance. It felt more like… the person himself had changed a little. How should I put it, like some of his emotions had been scraped away……. It’s hard to explain, but anyway, he seemed strange.”

Lee Won-bin let out a short sigh and shrugged. Instructor Kim chewed her gummies with a curious expression.

“Well, as long as he doesn’t cause trouble, isn’t that fine? From what you’ve said, Senior Won-bin, he sounds like a polite and well-mannered kid. It’s probably just needless worry.”

“Needless worry……”

Maybe I didn’t need to worry that much…

Lee Won-bin brought that brief train of thought to an end. Lost in his concerns about Kang Geom-ma, he realized that before he knew it, there were less than fifteen minutes left until lunch break ended. He rose from his seat to head for the campus cafeteria.

Rrrring.

The wired desk phone let out a sharp bell. Since it was lunchtime, unless something urgent had happened, no internal call should have been coming through. Setting that brief question aside, Lee Won-bin picked up the receiver.

“Wolf Class homeroom instructor Lee Won-bin speaking.”

I-Instructor Lee Won-bin, sir!

The voice coming from the receiver was the most junior instructor. Standing beside him, Instructor Kim asked who it was. Lee Won-bin silently shaped the answer with his mouth for her, then resumed the call.

“Ah, Instructor Choi. What’s going on all of a sudden?”

I think a problem might have come up.

Lee Won-bin’s brow tightened. Unease entered his expression.

“What kind of problem all of a sudden?”

Well, it seemed that a student from your class had gone to the headmaster and requested a subspace battle between cadets.

“What? Out of nowhere!?”

Before he knew it, a shout burst from Lee Won-bin’s throat. At that thunderous yell, every eye in the faculty office turned toward him. Instructor Kim, who had been absentmindedly chewing gummies, even choked and started hiccupping at the sight.

A subspace battle. Unlike an ordinary pairing, it was a spar conducted in subspace and close to real combat. You could think of it as being like the class assignment test, but what made it different was that it took place before all the cadets watching.

In other words, it was no different from broadcasting live to the entire academy a scene in which flesh was torn and blood splattered between cadets. Unless it was an extreme case, there was no way such a thing would be approved.

“Who requested it, and who is the opponent?”

Well……

The other voice trailed off hesitantly. When the frustration got the better of him and Lee Won-bin pressed sharply, Instructor Choi answered carefully.

The student who filed the request was Kang Geom-ma, and the opponent was Nox Auditore.