Raimont’s sword rushing at me suddenly turned pitch black.

It seemed he had activated his ability, and I already knew what kind it was.

I had seen Raimont use his ability when fighting monsters before.

So instead of blocking his strike, I nimbly dodged to the side.

Whoosh―

A few strands of my hair cut off by Raimont’s strike corroded and disappeared in midair.

Corrosion ability.

That was his power.

Anything that brushed against that longsword imbued with his ability would quickly corrode and crumble.

Even a well-made, sturdy sword would break after clashing with that blade a few times.

So instead of blocking his attacks with my sword, I evaded them as much as possible while countering.

Seeing me nimbly avoid all his attacks, Raimont sneered with a slightly reddened face.

“Can you only dodge like a loach?”

“Of course not.”

I immediately showed Raimont another one of my skills.

Thunk―

As I stabbed my sword vertically into the ground, sharp icicles began to sprout up around it like thorns.

Unfortunately, Raimont managed to avoid being impaled by the ice pillars.

However―

“Ugh…!”

His evasion wasn’t perfect.

He retreated backward, clutching his leg that was now bleeding from being grazed by the spikes.

The look in his eyes as he glared at me had become even more vicious than before.

“You’re just using useless tricks.”

“You said I could only dodge like a loach, so I just showed you another skill. Is there a problem?”

“…”

Hearing my taunt, Raimont glared at me murderously before suddenly glancing at Karl.

“Lord Karl. Use your ability to heal my wound.”

“…”

“Hurry! Not healing me for that woman’s sake is betrayal against His Majesty! Do you not care if your sister dies from illness?”

Karl bit his lip hard before finally using his ability to heal Raimont’s wound.

This confirmed it. He had firmly decided to side with Ernant, not me.

“Hah…”

I let out a sigh filled with the sadness and sense of betrayal swirling inside me.

Now was not the time to be swept up in such emotions.

I focused my mind once again and swiftly closed the distance with Raimont, looking for an opening.

“How foolish.”

Muttering that, Raimont tried to block my attack with his sword infused with his ability.

If our swords clashed like this, my sword would instantly turn to scrap metal.

Raimont seemed to be drawing out his ability to the fullest, intending to shatter my only weapon in this chance.

Though it may be unfortunate for Raimont, I wasn’t foolish enough to clash weapons with him as he planned.

Thwack!

After rushing at him, I stopped just short and kicked up the snow on the ground with all my might.

Towards Raimont’s face.

As his vision was suddenly blocked, Raimont shouted in a panicked voice.

“Such a cowardly…!!”

Yes, I agreed that throwing dirt or snow was a cowardly method.

If you did something like this in a duel between knights, you’d be cursed for a lifetime.

But.

“Don’t you know cowards live longer in real battles?”

How foolish is it to worry about being cowardly or not in a situation where you might lose your life?

I was willing to do anything to protect this new life I had barely obtained.

Whether it was throwing dirt in the opponent’s eyes or running away with my tail between my legs.

Slash―

Just like with Karoline, I completely severed both of Raimont’s arms.

Raimont, whose vision was temporarily blocked by the snow I threw, couldn’t dodge in time.

His severed forearms fell and rolled on the ground.

I put the tip of my sword to the neck of the now incapacitated Raimont and urged:

“Surrender. You have no choice now that your arms are cut off.”

Raimont stared at his severed forearms with a dumb expression, seemingly unable to accept what had happened to him.

In that moment, I coldly glared at him and said:

“Get up for now. We’ll return to the camp and I’ll report to the captain exactly how you attacked me.”

“…Do you think he’ll believe your words? I plan to claim that you attacked me without reason first. There are no witnesses, so it’s impossible to tell if words are fabricated. That Oscar fellow, was it? He must have been too busy with camp preparations to see us by now, even with his clairvoyance ability.”

“Ha. The captain won’t care what you bark. Our trust isn’t weak enough to be broken by your sly tongue.”

“Is that so…?”

Raimont muttered with a suddenly ominous smile.

“But sometimes the one you firmly believed in stabs you in the back. Like right now, for instance.”

“…?”

By the time I felt something was off after hearing Raimont’s words, it was already too late.

Stab―

I felt the chilling coldness of a blade piercing my skin from behind.

I slowly turned around.

The first thing I saw was Karl’s face, stained with guilt.

“I’m sorry, Vice Captain.”

I slowly lowered my gaze from Karl’s face to his hands.

In his hands was a dagger, its blade embedded into my side from behind.

He stabbed me. Karl did.

Though I didn’t want to accept it, the current situation could only be defined that way.

“You… How could you…”

Seeing me unable to speak properly due to the pain and confusion, Karl squeezed his eyes shut.

Then he forcefully twisted and pulled out the dagger he had stabbed into my back.

“…!”

A horrifying pain different from being mauled by a monster’s claws or fangs spread throughout my body from my spine.

It hurt. Not just because a blade had pierced my flesh.

It hurt even more because I was stabbed at an unexpected moment, by an unexpected person.

“I’m sorry. I’m truly sorry, Vice Captain. But for my sister’s sake… His Majesty’s research must continue.”

Did Karl know? That each and every one of his apologies hurt me even more.

That his excuse of having no choice for his sister’s sake tore and crushed my heart even further.

Suddenly, laughter involuntarily escaped my lips.

Nothing had really changed from before my regression, had it?

Both before my regression and now, it was never the monsters that drove me to death.

The betrayal of those I trusted.

That was truly the danger I should have been wary of and feared.

“Yulia! Please answer! Yulia!”

Martin’s voice echoed across the snowy field.

It had already been 3 hours since the squad members started searching together for the missing Yulia.

However, Yulia did not appear before them.

Martin, who had called out Yulia’s name loudly once more in that time, now asked Karl standing next to him.

“Are you sure you saw Yulia heading east to gather firewood?”

Karl replied nonchalantly.

“Yes, she definitely went that way. After that, her whereabouts became unknown. Lord Raimont said he saw her too, right?”

Raimont, whose wounds had now been completely healed by Karl’s ability, put on a worried expression and answered.

“Yes, I saw her too. I wonder if she might have had an accident there…”

In reality, the place where they had lured Yulia was towards the hill to the south.

But there were still some traces of battle left there, so Raimont and Karl made up a lie to confuse the search.

That Yulia had gone east to gather firewood.

Believing Karl’s words, Martin ordered a search focused in that direction, but no traces of Yulia were being found.

Martin painfully scrunched his eyes and called for Oscar this time.

“Oscar. Are you searching well with your ability?”

“Yes, but I still can’t find any traces of the Vice Captain.”

When Yulia was battling Raimont, Oscar had been engrossed in camp preparations.

For that reason, he wasn’t using his clairvoyance ability and didn’t witness what happened to Yulia.

Raimont and Karl, who had deliberately chosen a time when camp preparations were in full swing to lure Yulia in order to avoid Oscar’s eyes, were able to commit their crime without witnesses thanks to that meticulousness.

Bang! Martin, unable to find Yulia despite the continued search, punched a nearby tree.

As the atmosphere grew heavy and everyone was eyeing each other cautiously, Maximilian carefully spoke to Martin.

“Captain, the sky is getting dark.”

“…”

“It will be dangerous if we encounter monsters at night. Perhaps we should stop the search for today and resume tomorrow…”

Martin gritted his teeth and looked up at the sky at Maximilian’s carefully broached words.

It was as Maximilian said.

Despite Martin searching for his important person, the cruel darkness of night was covering the sky without waiting for him.