Love Letter From The Future-Chapter 339: Bread and Dagger (37)

Swords were always honest.

Unlike tongues, they cannot be wielded deceitfully. Once a sword is drawn and it begins to trace its path, a silent proclamation is made.

A signal of a fight to the death.

An agreement where nothing else needs consideration beyond killing or being killed. Mercy is unnecessary and half-hearted sympathy only leads to mistakes.

At least, that’s how it was in the North.

Sir Alex seemed to have learned this truth through years of experience. Despite his  heavy armor , his steps across the snow were nimble.

The thudding sound of his footsteps echoed only a few times.

It was a terrifyingly swift charge. Before long, he stood before a thick coniferous tree.

He immediately swung his word as if it were the most natural thing to do.

It was a wild trajectory—neither precise nor elegant.

But it was more than enough.

With a resounding crack, the tree’s trunk shattered completely.

Pale yellow fibers exposed themselves like raw flesh. The tree, robbed of its support, inevitably collapsed.

From atop the tree, a shrill scream escaped.

An elven scout who had been hiding among the branches, tumbled to the ground.

Sir Alex didn’t even spare him a glance.

He simply reached out with his free hand and grabbed it  by the skull.

Then, came another resounding crack—and that was the end.

The elf’s face, slammed forcefully into the ground, was grotesquely shattered. There wasn’t even time for him to let out a final scream—it was a swift, clean death.

Only the blood and brain matter spilled on the pristine snow bore witness to his demise.

Sir Alex’s movements showed not a slightest hint of hesitation. If the elves were left entirely to him, not a single one would survive.

That couldn’t happen.

Not only because Aviang was watching, but because what I needed was information.

Harvesting elf heads held no meaning for me.

I already amassed countless achievements—from slaying a named beast and exterminating the demonic human hiding in the orphanage, to recently defeating an Underling of the Evil God.

Defeating a few elves would bring me no further honor.

I’d just probably end up receiving an earful from the Saintess, if anything.

In that case, capturing the elves alive was the better choice.

My dash was as swift as Sir Alex’s.

Through the gaps in my heightened senses, I picked up on a few faint presences. They were so subtle that they could easily be mistaken for part of nature itself.

Come to think of it, Aviang was like that as well.

Her lack of hostility aside, I failed to properly sense her presence when she hid behind a tree. It was a sensation I hadn’t experienced within the confines of the academy walls.

Could it be that elves become harder to detect when surrounded by nature?

I formulated this hypothesis as I stomped the ground with force.

Immediately after feeling the strong rebound from the ground beneath my feet, I found myself face-to-face with an elf who had been hiding atop a conifer. The delicate-looking woman’s eyes widened in shock.

Her disbelieving eyes betrayed a flood of thoughts passing through her mind.

This couldn’t be a typical human’s leg strength.

Impossible.

I seemed to have messed with the wrong person.

She wasn’t wrong.

I had soared several meters high with a single leap. Swordsmen who had reached the level of Expert were invariably monsters with such power.

Across the entire continent, there might only be a few hundred of such superhumans.

To have encountered not one, but two of them at once could only be explained as the elves’ worst luck to have.

The elf made a desperate, belated attempt to resist, but it was over the moment her eyes met mine.

She tried to draw her bowstring, only to shift her gaze in confusion when she felt nothing.

There was nothing where her arm should have been, only gushing blood could be seen..

“Ugh, Kug...!”

Whack—the hilt of my sword struck the elf’s temple.

It was an attack delivered before she could even scream.

Her scream might have drawn the demonic beasts roaming the coniferous forest. Despites the odds of that endangering us being slim, it was best to avoid unnecessary risks.

The elf collapsed helplessly, tumbling down beneath the tree.

The ground below was not only covered in snow but also layered with soft moss. A lightweight elf like her wouldn’t die from the fall.

There’s nothing I could do if she did..

At that moment, I snatched an arrow flying toward me.

A belated cry of shock erupted from somewhere.

“Emily!”

It was from another elven woman.

Her eyes burned with hatred as she glared at me, gritting her teeth. Her arrows brimming with murderous intent were already aimed squarely at me.

Three of them, no less.

I couldn’t help but let out a baffled laugh.

“How could you possibly shoot three arrows with that bow...?”

That’s when I sensed a strange current in the air.

A gentle breeze softly blowing.

In this land of northern gales, could such a gentle breeze even exist?

I hastily sheathed my sword as the three arrows shot into the sky, tracing strange trajectories, came hurtling toward me.

Firstly, I deflected one of them using the arrow I had in hand.

Next, I snatched one of the remaining arrows mid-flight and used it to strike down the last, then hurled it back at the elf.

She looked momentarily flustered but soon responded calmly.

As soon as she sharply let out a whistle, the arrow I threw was deflected in mid-air with a whoosh.

Were I  an ordinary swordsman, I might have been in a bit of a predicament.

I would have had to descend to the ground at the very least

Unfortunately for the elf, I wasn’t the type who fought by conventional means.

Rather, I had another throwing weapon I was most confident in using.

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With a resonant whoosh, a silver trajectory tore through the air, its speed and mass leagues above anything an arrow could match.

A heavy impact had already struck her shoulder by the time she realized it and, with a thwack, blood sprayed into the air like fireworks..

Before the elven woman could fully react, I deftly recalled my hatchet using the Principles of Movement Within Stillness. Due to her contracted muscles refusing to let go of the hatchet, her body swayed lightly, and then she fell..

I leaped down to the ground, catching the returning hatchet and then walked steadily towards the elf.

From a glance, it seemed the elven scouting party consisted of four members. Two appeared to be lacking in skill while the remaining two were likely senior operatives, judging by the fact they could at least put up some resistance..

Though, of course, they were no match for neither me nor Sir Alex.

Sir Alex also appeared to be moments away from finishing off the remaining elf scouts. I exhaled, watching my white breath scatter and, in a cold voice befitting the North, asked.

“Do you want to live?”

“Shut up...!”

Despite the elves’ notorious will to survive, hatred burned fiercely in the woman’s eyes.

Her writhing movements vividly conveyed her excruciating pain as she clutched her shoulder.

The sound of her voice, forced through clenched teeth, burned with intensity.

An intensity so fierce it could melt snow.

“Y-You think I’d beg for my life to the likes of you?!  If it weren’t for your kind, we wouldn’t have ended up like this...!”

“If your side had won, we’d be the ones in this position.”

Fuuu, I exhaled, calming my slightly ragged breath, and crouched down to meet her gaze.

Her lashes faintly quivered, betraying the turmoil of her emotions.

“Still, you’re lucky you met me. I’m not from the North. I have no grudge against your kind—as long as you give me the information I need.... I’ll let you go unharmed.”

“Ugh, ptooey!”

She spat out blood-mixed saliva.

It seemed she had aimed for my face, but her strength fell short, and it didn’t even come close.

I let out a deep sigh.

And in the next instant—

Slam!—the elf’s face was slammed into the ground. At some point, my hand gripped her head and was now forcefully pressing it against the ground.

Beneath the soft moss, rock-hard ground awaited.

The sensation of her nasal bone shattering must have been the first thing she felt, followed by the agonizing difficulty of drawing breath.

As proof, the elf was writhing, flailing her arms and legs and letting out muffled cries. She fumbled to draw a dagger with her remaining hand, but that was all she managed.

I easily disarmed her, twisting her wrist as if it were a child’s.

Crack!

As her wrist broke in the process, an even more despairing scream burst out from her lips.

“UGH, AAAAAUGGGHH! AAAAHHHHH!”

Though, her cries muffled by the ground, failed to echo into the air.

I wasn’t sure how much time passed like this..

I eventually grabbed her hair and lifted her head again.

Clear fear now flickered in her eyes.

“If you stop resisting, I won’t use force. That’s a promise... But if you keep defying me, I can’t guarantee what I’ll do to you.”

After all, you’re not the only elf here.

Though unspoken, my words carried that warning.

The elf woman seemed somewhat hesitant.

If even a mere scouting party was acting like this, the depth of the conflict between humans and elves was beyond imagination.

I was contemplating whether to slam her face into the ground once more.

“Argh!”

Just then a short, low-pitched scream erupted from somewhere.

Both the elf woman and I immediately turned our gazes toward the source. There, an elf man lay collapsed, bleeding profusely.

Standing proudly before him was Sir Alex.

He held no weapon in his hands. He seemed to have dropped his sword during the fight—perhaps intentionally.

His gauntlets were drenched in blood.

Looking at the elf’s swollen and battered face, it was clear he’d been subjected to a merciless beating. As he tried to stumble backward, Sir Alex finally picked up his fallen sword.

It was clear what would happen next.

From the elven woman’s mouth, a pitiful wail escaped.

“Ma-Mathis...!”

Her tone was deeply mournful.

Even Sir Alex momentarily glanced back at the sound of her trembling voice. The elf woman was reacting more intensely than when her own life was threatened.

But Sir Alex wasn’t someone to care about that.

He prepared to swing his sword down, like an executioner releasing the guillotine.

Just then, as I hesitated briefly, someone caught my eye.

Aviang.

That small girl was desperately sprinting. Her frantic expression showed she was determined to stop Sir Alex at all costs.

Even though she was far too late.

She couldn’t use magic. Bound by restraints, if either I or Senior Neris uttered a spell, her head would explode on the spot.

Even so, the sight of her desperately running was, well...

Just as Sir Alex’s sword traced the arc of beheading, and despair filled the eyes of the elven woman and Aviang alike—

Clang—a sharp metallic clash reverberated through the air.

The impact was so strong that small sparks flew from the collision. Sir Alex momentarily staggered from the sudden shock, then quickly regained his stance.

The old knight’s eyes turned to me with a look of surprise.

It was inevitable.

Because I was the one who had stopped him.

The hatched I had thrown, to be precise.