Let the Whales Fight, This Shrimp is Leaving! - Chapter 69

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 69
The peaceful midday sun that had been gently settling vanished without a trace.
Utter, perfect darkness.
The knights, their vision stolen in an instant, stumbled about in confusion.
“Damn it! What’s happening here?”
“Holdin! Answer us, Holdin!”
‘As if you could answer in this.’
In darkness so thick he couldn’t even see his own palm, Glay Holdin sat helpless, unable to move a finger.
[Hey, get up.]
Beval snapped his fingers before him.
Holdin’s vision returned.
Not entirely restored.
Just enough to make out shapes and objects.
Holdin swallowed hard as he surveyed the monochrome landscape around him.
[Let’s go.]
The carriage door, already still, hung wide open.
“Blast it. Sense the presence!”
The seasoned knights tensed, alert.
Holdin crept forward on his toes, trying his best to avoid detection.
Crack.
“There!”
But these were no ordinary knights—their ki-sense was sharp.
One of them reacted instantly to the snap of a twig beneath Holdin’s foot, reaching out toward him.
The knight had even closed his own eyes to adapt to the darkness, a display of unnerving composure.
“Aaahhh!”
Holdin responded with noise and thrashing, twisting like a loach to evade.
Beval, watching Holdin slip cleverly from the knights’ grasp, clutched his belly and laughed.
[Hey! You’re good at dodging! Go again!]
“Is this some kind of performance for you?”
“His voice—over there!”
“Got him!”
“Kyaaahhh!”
A knight grabbed Holdin’s hood, and he thrashed frantically trying to tear free.
But as mere adjutant, he could never overpower a trained knight.
Quick-witted, he wrenched off his hood before the knight could pin his body.
After that came only flight.
He began running north like a madman.
[Uh, hey, run faster. I’m running out of power soon. Once I do, the magic breaks.]
“Ah! You’re no help at all!”
[What?]
Holdin extended his bleeding hand to the growling demon.
“If you drink more, won’t that work?”
[Sigh. Here I am, sucking on some man’s palm.]
‘And what of my fate, offering blood to a demon?’
Holdin felt aggrieved, but he couldn’t voice the thought.
Not from fear of Beval, but simply because he was breathless.
Beval, who had been leisurely lamenting his own plight, scraped his fingernail across Holdin’s palm, drew blood, and licked it off his hand.
[Your blood tastes awful.]
‘Thank goodness for that.’
No taste meant no predator would mark him as prey.
Holdin grimaced as he kept running north, steady and stubborn.
His throat burned, and sweat seeped through his skin.
‘Should’ve built up my stamina.’
He glanced back at his past lazy self, but regret changed nothing.
He forced his deadening legs to move.
‘Damn it all. Deyan Boislav Nemanic! You owe me—you owe me big!’
The very source of his desperation had become an object of resentment.
The demon walking beside him without effort was grating beyond measure.
‘Why are you walking when I’m running?’
[You’re the one who’s slow.]
‘Slow or not, this isn’t right! If you’ve got magic or something, cast it on me too!’
[It’s not magic—I’m just floating in the air. Walking is just for show. I could stay still and follow you just fine.]
Beval grinned wickedly, pressed his legs together, and stood motionless.
True to his word, the demon’s suspended form drifted along like the moon in the sky, trailing Holdin effortlessly.
Only Holdin was suffering.
‘How infuriating!’
Why couldn’t I have been born a demon!
Suppressing the urge to weep, he ran like a madman until his stamina nearly gave out entirely.
He stopped only when his breathing shattered and his body began to collapse.
Not so much stopped as simply collapsed from exhaustion.
“Huff… puff… gasp.”
With his face pressed into the dirt, each desperate breath seared his lungs.
He had never run with such desperation in his life.
‘God. I wish everything in this world were cursed.’
He resented everything that had tormented him so.
Holdin lay sprawled on the ground, drawing on the cool air rising from the earth to steady his breathing.
Once he’d recovered enough to rise, he forced his torso upright on shaking legs and looked around.
Everything still looked the same—
‘But of course.’
In the distance, he spotted an arrow embedded in a tree trunk.
The fletching bore the red insignia of the Adorif Empire.
Holdin’s suspicion was confirmed.
“Phew.”
He forced his trembling legs to obey and pushed himself upright.
As he staggered forward, he noticed more and more cuts and marks on the trees.
Soon, if he continued walking, the Count Nemanic Estate would come into view.
He had to reach the manor before Idir’s knights found him.
“Has the spell on the knights worn off?”
[Wore off ages ago.]
“Will you be able to sense them if they pursue?”
[Obviously.]
“Then please warn me. They’ll likely have a map and figure out which way I’ve gone quickly enough.”
[You’re planning to go back quietly if caught?]
“Yes. I still need to report to the Imperial Palace, and I have a task the Ducal Princess gave me to complete.”
[Why? Because of that human with the demon contract?]
“Yes.”
[Why not just let him die?]
“That man won’t die even if you kill him.”
Holdin replied grimly.
Deyan had indeed sustained injuries that should have been fatal, more than once.
Yet his terrifying regeneration always activated, and he lived on.
Worse, the more severe the wound, the more his violent impulses grew.
Deyan’s eyes, which had never held much light, began filling with deeper despair.
After he abandoned all hope, he stopped making judgments about almost anything.
If the Emperor ordered, he obeyed. If Holdin suggested something, he nodded.
One could hardly tell who was superior and who subordinate.
To others, he might have seemed merely taciturn—a respectable knight—but…
“What should I do?”
Holdin, watching Deyan’s hollow, expressionless face as he habitually asked what to do, understood.
He owed Deyan many things.
The right to die. Freedom. And a life of his own choosing.
Holdin bore responsibility for Deyan’s condition, so he had to set it right.
Even if he couldn’t fix it entirely, he had to try.
It was a sense of duty—a human duty—that had driven Holdin this far.
Whether Beval knew of this complicated resolve or not,
or knew but simply didn’t care,
[No, I can kill him. Just takes some work, that’s all.]
The demon who’d been trailing beside him made a revolting sound.
Holdin shot him a sharp look, then sighed deeply.
“Yes, all right.”
He meant to end the conversation with that curt reply, but the wretched demon wouldn’t hold his tongue.
[You said you offered his heart as a sacrifice, right? Then the power would be dwelling in the sacrifice. Rip out the heart. Then he dies.]
“Pull out the flag? The moment a single drop of blood spills, the man goes berserk and I’m to cling to him and tear out his heart? Is that even remotely feasible?”
[Ah. You can’t do it?]
“No! I can’t! And I won’t!”
‘Does he think I’m enduring all this just to figure out some method like that.’
[Suit yourself.]
Beval shrugged.
‘Cursed demon.’
Holdin glared, seething, at the ashen Spire that was slowly coming into view.
He’d finally reached this wretched estate.
“You there! Who goes?”
As Holdin approached the manor, a patrol guard spotted him and barked out a challenge.
Holdin made no effort to hide his tears as he greeted the man.
“It’s me! It’s me!”
“Lord Holdin?”
“Yes!”
“Good heavens. What happened to you?”
“I—I survived. I missed this place.”
Holdin approached the guard with watery eyes and threw an arm around his shoulder.
The guard awkwardly pushed him away but showed the kindness of accepting his story.
“Where is His Grace now?”
“I cannot say for now, but rest assured he is safe. More importantly, might I borrow a horse?”
“Of course. Please do.”
“Thank you.”
With a means of transportation secured, Holdin picked up speed and began riding toward the manor.
Shortly after, Holdin stood before the locked door to the Underground Chamber.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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