Any moment of respite, no matter how brief, should be cherished.
But how can I relax? My body was aching with pain. My right eye was hardly functional. And what lay ahead was a class 4. We were in no condition to fight it if we struggled against a class 2.
Margaret has always told me that with information comes power. But how can I achieve such power if we have never once seen a class 4 void spawn before?
Humans were never designed to destroy these things. It was as if they were created for the sole purpose of tormenting humanity. According to Muller and his sacred texts, their creator is the Goddess's brother.
Still, that made every victory against them, no matter how costly, a moment for study. But the one person who wanted to study them the most was missing from the group.
Muller. Sara. Rinne. The three of them were standing with me, each bearing an expression that differed from the next.
Muller looked over his tools, collecting and sharpening the knives he used on the void spawn that we took down. Sara, by his side, struggled to avoid looking at the corpses at her feet. Despite that, she tried her best to help him.
Then, there was Rinne.
She looked over the corpses with a familiar expression on her face. One that I used to make years ago when investigating cases involving children I used to know. She crouched down to one of the unrecognizable bodies and pulled out what looked to be a teddy bear, one that looked identical to the one the void spawn had created using a part of itself. There was a sadness in her eyes before she took a deep breath. Rinne stashed the bear into her pouch and walked over to me. She said nothing, but held the side of my clothing gently.
I turned to Muller, who had just finished preparing for what lay just beyond, in the room where all of this started. "So, where is Kelly?"
Muller grunted a little and turned away as if he knew I was going to ask such a question. "Defected."
"Defected, huh?" I said.
Muller turned to me and raised a brow at my nonchalant answer to something that I should be worried about, given that she's my client. But truthfully, I knew this would happen, just not so soon.
"So the person behind her brainwashing, they came after you guys?"
"Yes."
So this was a trap all along. Lure us here to kill the void spawn they released while they get their hands on the sheath, completing the artifact set. There was no one to be mad at. Not myself, who went ahead knowing the possible dangers of leaving her alone, nor Muller, who would abandon no one without reason, despite his cold personality.
"Who was it?" I asked.
"Ritair," Muller started moving ahead. Sara was close behind him. I looked at Rinne and motioned her with my head to go ahead of me so I could watch the rearguard. "He's a pretty-faced kid who took the second seat of the cult."
"They replaced their first knight already?" That news was something I was not expecting to hear. It had not been that long since we killed the previous first knight. And unsurprisingly, they, like their predecessor, are looking for both the dagger and the sheath to control people with.
"Looks that way." Muller turned his head dejectedly. "I am no match for the snot-nose brat."
"Oh?" It was rare to find someone who could beat Muller in a fight.
"I couldn't see his attacks."
"How?" Rinne entered our conversation in a questioning tone that could have been taken for sass. Muller's metal hand twitched a little when she spoke. "His movements were clear as day; you were just hitting places where he wasn't."
"Okay," Muller's voice deepened as he turned back, staring at Rinne. She jumped a little at the dangerous look he was giving her. "Tell me, brat."
"Cool it, Muller," I said, resulting in him giving me the same look.
He then turned back to Rinne and spoke in a somewhat nicer tone, though I doubt Rinne could understand that. "This brat of yours could see every move that I couldn't. Once Ritair learned of that, due to her big mouth, he targeted her. So tell me, how did you see how he moved?"
"What do you mean?" Rinne raised her voice a little. "He moved normally, sure, he was fast, but he wasn't in the areas you kept hitting. I don't know how else to explain it."
"An artifact." I surmised from the way they were speaking. Muller was unable to see the target's movements, but Rinne could. Saying that only the user's target was perceptually altered by the artifact would be impossible if Muller still couldn't fight the guy when he was targeting Rinne, which meant that it was something that Rinne alone could see through.
"Maybe," Muller said in a questioning tone, as if thinking. "But he didn't use any artifact during that fight, just a rapier."
"There was something," Rinne said, "That thing around his neck, it was glowing an ominous color while he fought. It gave off a weird feeling, something I felt inside of Kelly and…" she turned to me. I knew what she was going to say. Me.
Muller simply shook his head. "If this brat wasn't Rinara's daughter, I would claim she'd lost it."
"I'm being serious here!" Rinne shouted.
"I know you are, girl, let me finish." Muller barked back. Rinne ran behind me, using me as a shield to block herself from Muller's unfriendly gaze. I gave him a look, telling him to tone it down. He scoffed before continuing to speak. "Rinara could see things we couldn't; the same went for her father. The Goddess's bloodline carries many gifts."
"If I have this so-called Goddess bloodline in me, why do you treat me like a subhuman?" Rinne spoke in a tone that was too low for Muller to hear behind me. "Shouldn't I be the subject of your worship?"
"What did the brat mumble over there that she is too spineless to share?" Muller turned back, his eyes narrowing sharply. Rinne clenched the ends of my clothes tightly.
"She asked why are you so mean to her?" Twisting her words a little, I formed them into a question that I, myself, wanted to know as well. "She's an adorable girl who lived a hard life. Rinne is the daughter of our friend, so can't you just give her a chance?"
"How can you give her a chance?" Muller stopped moving and turned completely around. "How can you not feel angry at her existing?"
I felt Rinne bump into me as my legs suddenly halted. Muller's gaze robbed me of air. I felt the hair on my skin crawl. I gripped my weapon tight, crushing down hard on my teeth.
What was he talking about? Rinne is the last thing Rinara gave to this world. I will not let him speak that way about her.
"Why are you mad at me?" Muller asked, as if being genuinely surprised that I would react this way to him. "You and Rinara have been in love for years prior to her passing. Yet you are protecting the spawn of a bastard. Even if Rinara is our friend, I cannot and will not forgive her sin of being unfaithful."
Her sin. I felt a wave of nausea swell up inside of me. The truth, one of the many I have tried to deny. I wish. I truly wished I had never known what he was talking about, but he was right. Rinara's sin, before it was something that came up in enemy files, but Rinne is living proof of it.
Because of that, the realization that I partly killed Rinara out of rage stung me deep. That was no merciful killing; I killed her because I wanted to.
BECAUSE I WANTED TO…
"Hmph," Muller grunted as he turned away from me.
What face was I making? Why was he giving me that look? What was there to pity? You started this, you bastard. Making me relive those days.
"Golden Steam…are you okay…?" There was a soft voice in my ear. Rinne hugged me; it was not as comforting as she might have thought, as my broken armor was digging deeper into me. But it was enough to bring me back. To think that wasn't even the class 4's attack…speaking of which, it hasn't happened in a while.
"Golden Steam," Muller spoke clearly, his voice devoid of emotion. "You know something more than you let on about that day." He turned back to face me. His eyes stared deep into me. "Trust was something Margaret and I had given you, but you know something else that happened that day, don't you? Did you lie about why you—"
"I never lied!" I shouted. There was not a chance in hell I would let him tell Rinne about what happened.
"I see." He said as if understanding my reason for yelling.
I returned his gaze and spoke. "I never lied about what happened that day. So what if Rinara had a daughter with another man? Her final wish to me was to protect Rinne. I might be sixteen years late, but I will protect her and stand by her."
"Drop the act with those eyes of yours," Muller said with a dismissive sigh. "You can't fool the world if you can't even fool yourself."
There was nothing I could say back to him. He was right; he could see through me. Muller always could.
That day, the day Rinara was killed. I learned something I wish I had never had. Maybe, had I never learned it, maybe she could still be by my side. But I felt so betrayed that day. We argued during the mission, which led to her capture. Held hostage while infected with the void spawn virus, I had no other choice.
All these years, I wished to forget that information. Blame it on the misinformation fed by the cult to force us to fight against one another.
But that void spawn we killed, it shattered the lie I hid behind. It spoke, not by using the shadow, but through its own words as if it knew what I had done that day.
Her sin. Would you call it a sin? I wouldn't. It was simply selfishness on my part. Sure, one could say that we were in love, but we were never a pair. So again, could you call it a sin? One that gave birth to a child in this world?
"H—hey guys?" Sara's sweet yet trembling voice tore through the hostility in the air. She was standing next to a door that had a large tentacle growing out that branched out into smaller tentacles that stretched out all over the shaft.
Muller and I nodded, agreeing to talk about this later. We readied our weapons and walked towards Sara, who foolishly explored ahead of us.
Whether we can chalk it up to luck or coincidence, this was a rather anticlimactic end to our mission.
"Looks like a cocoon." Muller approached the black mass that lay motionless on the ground. The tentacles that stretched out from it were starting to shrivel up. "And someone beat us to the punch."
There was a small opening that scattered the black mass. They looked as if they were made by precision strikes of a sharp blade. Maybe a knife? I took my finger and poked the wound; it was deep, deeper than what a knife should be capable of before expanding the wound.
"Muller, you said this Ritair fellow was using a rapier, right?"
"Yeah."
"Then…" I guess we have a problem on our hands. "He saved our asses."