Chapter 12

The Genius Knight Who Devours Memories

Chapter 12

The inside of the basement was drenched in blood.

Creed’s sword gleamed in front of Rohan’s neck.

Creed suddenly remembered the first time he had seen Rohan.

Back then, Creed had also pointed a sword at Rohan, and Rohan had remained calm.

Just like now.

“I need to know now. None of your actions make any sense.”

Rohan answered calmly.

“I can take the memories of people I kill.”

“What...?”

Creed frowned in disbelief at Rohan’s words.

When asked about his true nature, Rohan had answered without hesitation.

As always, Rohan stood there with an expression whose emotions could not be read.

“You expect me to believe that...”

“Please help me.”

“...”

How am I supposed to.

Creed closed his mouth before he could ask.

If Rohan truly could steal memories...

Did he mean that Creed should keep his secret from others?

Or did he mean Creed should help him kill people so he could make use of his ability?

Knowing Rohan’s personality, he probably meant both.

Creed let out a deep sigh.

There was no point in even thinking about this.

Every question depended on the assumption that Rohan was telling the truth.

Creed spoke without relaxing his frown.

“First. How am I supposed to trust you? Second. Why should I?”

To think he could take other people’s memories?

No matter how much Creed thought about it, it was an incomprehensible ability.

‘But if what he says is true, everything makes sense.’

Even while speaking, however, Creed looked back on Rohan’s strange behavior.

If Rohan truly could steal memories, then everything became understandable.

Catching the spies, finding out the gathering date and destination, even imitating Rainer’s technique.

Then an unexpected statement came from Rohan.

“Your younger brother is being held by the Black Dawn Knights, isn’t he?”

“What did you just say, you bastard?!”

At the sensitive subject, Creed grabbed Rohan by the collar and lifted him up.

Creed growled in a low voice.

“How do you know that?”

Very few people knew.

Creed’s younger brother, three years his junior, had joined the White Wolf Knights, but Creed had never told his comrades about it.

They were assigned to different squads, and even when they crossed paths, they deliberately did not acknowledge each other, so not even Creed’s squad members knew.

Rohan shrugged.

“Who knows. Think carefully.”

“...”

Creed thought of the people who knew.

Knight Commander Supern and a few officers.

Only officers who had access to personal information required for enlistment knew.

And one of them was...

‘Rainer.’

The vice platoon leader of Fourth Platoon.

Rainer, whom Rohan had killed, had also known.

After all, Fourth Platoon was the direct superior unit of Fourth Squad.

‘He took Rainer’s memories?’

Suddenly, Creed remembered Rohan using Swift Sword after Rainer died.

Once his thoughts reached that point, the strength left Creed’s grip.

Back on the ground, Rohan rubbed his reddened neck.

“Adein should still be alive.”

Adein.

That was Creed’s younger brother’s real name.

Creed looked down at Rohan with a strange expression.

“This is driving me insane.”

Although Meiwa’s swords had left Rohan covered in wounds, his expression remained calm.

Blood was still streaming from the wounds that had yet to close.

“I’ll help you meet your brother alive. There will be a battle with the Black Dawn Knights soon.”

Rohan smiled.

Covered in blood while showing his white teeth, the sight was nothing short of grotesque.

“Does that answer both of your questions, Squad Leader?”

“I asked how I’m supposed to trust you.”

“You already know the answer.”

“...”

Creed could not say anything.

The more he thought about it, the more Rohan’s strange behavior could only be explained by his ability to absorb memories.

Creed thought of his younger brother.

If Rohan was telling the truth... could he really save Adein?

Regardless of whether it was true, Creed wanted to cling to the single statement that his brother was alive.

After organizing his thoughts, he spoke quietly.

“...Alive.”

Rohan answered immediately, as though he had expected it.

“I can’t guarantee it. But I’ll try.”

Instead of answering, Creed only gave a faint nod.

___________

The first place Rohan headed was his own locker.

After rummaging through it, he pulled out an eyeball preserved in a glass bottle from deep inside.

“The potion works well. It still hasn’t rotted.”

Rohan spoke without emotion.

The eyeball submerged in liquid looked to be in very good condition.

Creed did not know when Rohan had added the potion, but he had been meticulous.

“Why the hell did you dig out Rainer’s eye?”

Creed frowned at the sight.

“I need this to send false information.”

After speaking, Rohan carefully tucked the eyeball into his clothes.

Then he took out a sheet of paper and began writing with the fountain pen kept in the barracks for communal use.

[One-third of the White Wolf Knights poisoned]

It was a short and concise report.

Creed rounded his lips.

“Is that Rainer’s handwriting?”

“Yes.”

“You can imitate handwriting too? Not just retrace memories?”

“If I retrace memories, I can do many things. I’ll have to study it more myself, though.”

Creed pressed his lips together.

‘Am I really supposed to believe this?’

It felt ridiculous that he was surprised by copied handwriting when Rohan could even immediately imitate Rainer’s secret technique, Swift Sword.

The next place the two headed was the hill near the knight order.

It was also the mountain Rohan visited every dawn when he went hunting.

The guards were startled by the state of the two men when they left the camp, but after Creed said he would personally report to Supern, they were able to leave without much trouble.

On the way, Rohan stopped at a place where crows had gathered.

When he raised the eyeball he had brought with him, one of the crows staring at it flapped down and landed on Rohan’s arm.

Rohan tied the report he had written to the crow’s leg.

After tilting its head and looking at the eye inside the glass bottle once more, the crow flapped away from Rohan.

After going a little farther, they came to a thicket filled with reeds.

It was the location marked as the spies’ teleportation point.

“You’re here?”

“You’re late.”

Kaisen and Johanna emerged from between the reeds.

Behind them, Numbers Two and Four lay bound side by side.

“Sorry. One died.”

Johanna spoke without looking sorry in the slightest.

One of the two was no longer breathing.

Rohan’s gaze shifted toward the brush, searching for Number Two, Meiwa, whose swordsmanship he coveted.

Fortunately, Meiwa’s chest rose and fell at regular intervals.

“He must have hidden poison in one of his molars. He killed himself before we could do anything.”

Creed’s expression twisted as he looked at Number Four.

“You sure you didn’t beat him to death?”

“No.”

His entire body was covered in blood and bruises, damaged so badly that his face alone was almost impossible to recognize.

Kaisen tossed over a military identification tag.

“Just an ordinary soldier from the supply transport unit.”

Number Four’s identity was that of an ordinary soldier.

The fact that Kaisen simply called him an ‘ordinary soldier’ instead of mentioning his name meant he had that little presence.

Rohan did not seem particularly interested in Number Four either, so he headed toward Meiwa, who was lying down.

Meiwa was still breathing, but he was not in much better condition than Number Four and was covered in blood.

The severed wrist seemed to have been cauterized with something hot, because the bleeding had stopped.

Noticing the looks from Rohan and Creed, Kaisen grumbled.

“Do you know how hard we worked to keep him alive?”

A cloth had been tightly stuffed into Meiwa’s mouth.

It was probably there to stop him from killing himself with hidden poison.

Kaisen circled around the fallen Meiwa.

“Haha, we caught a Noxis spy... Let’s interrogate him and squeeze every last bit of information about Noxis out of him. Maybe it could make a huge difference in the war!”

He seemed to feel a great sense of accomplishment at capturing a Noxis spy.

“We caught a spy, so maybe we’ll get promoted and our pay will go up too!”

“If we interrogate him properly, we might even uncover Noxis’s tactics and information.”

Johanna joined in as well.

Shing-!

But the sound that followed poured cold water over the heated atmosphere.

The three people talking turned their heads at the same time.

“Ghk...”

Meiwa let out a short groan, twitched once, then went limp.

Rohan’s sword was buried in Meiwa’s heart.

Kaisen and Johanna’s mouths dropped open.

“W-what, what, what?”

“You’re insane. Completely...”

Their gazes instinctively turned toward Creed.

After all, Creed was the commander of this squad.

But Creed’s words shocked them even more.

“Report that he died during the battle.”

______________

Beneath a gloomy sky.

A flag bearing the black sun, symbol of the Black Dawn Knights, fluttered in the wind.

Beneath it, a middle-aged man nailed to a black cross groaned.

“Ughhh-. Please spare me. I beg you.”

One of the man’s eyes was already missing, as though it had been gouged out.

He had clearly been subjected to all manner of torture, and bright red blood poured from all over his body.

“I am merely a farmer who supplies potatoes to the knight order.”

The man’s occupation was farmer.

As usual, he had delivered potatoes to the White Wolf Knights and was on his way back.

At a deserted place far from the knight order, he had been abducted by Noxis soldiers.

A cloth had covered his face, and when he opened his eyes, he found himself kidnapped and brought into Noxis military territory.

As an ordinary civilian, he could not even guess why he had been abducted.

“Hmm.”

A young woman watching him let out a thoughtful hum.

Her silver hair was cut sharply at her jaw,

and her crimson lips and eyes seemed to burn like flames.

Without hesitation, she used the dagger in her left hand to carve away a piece of the man’s flesh.

“Aaaaaagh!”

His scream filled the air.

Blood splattered across the woman’s face, but she did not even blink.

She placed the dagger beneath the man’s chin and asked in a cold voice.

“How many potatoes did you deliver to the knight order this morning?”

“A-about twenty sacks. Enough for the knight order to eat for two or three days.”

The man answered weakly.

He had no idea how many times she had asked him the same question.

It was frustrating, but rebellion never even crossed his mind.

“And after that?”

“I’m supposed to deliver the same amount of potatoes again in two days.”

“Tell me properly.”

“I-I’m telling the truth! Aaaagh!!”

The woman carved into his flesh once more.

He had already been tortured several times over this exact point.

He was only telling the truth, so he could not understand why she kept reacting this way.

“What was the atmosphere like in the unit?”

What in the world was this woman trying to find out?

The farmer was curious, but there was nothing he could do.

With his head hanging low, a hoarse voice escaped his mouth.

“...The same as usual.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

The woman brought the blood-dripping dagger to her head and scratched it a couple of times.

In her other hand was a small piece of paper.

It was a report from a White Wolf Knights spy, delivered through a familiar.

[One-third of the White Wolf Knights poisoned]

“One-third of them are dead. So why are the food deliveries unchanged?”

She muttered as though she could not understand.

Feeling her stare fixed on him, the farmer trembled violently.

“I-I don’t know anything about that. I truly don’t know anything...”

“I don’t understand.”

The woman pointed the dagger in front of the man’s eyes.

“Either you’re lying.”

Then the woman’s dagger pointed far into the distance.

“Or they’re lying over there.”

The direction she pointed was toward the White Wolf Knights’ encampment.

The man nailed to the cross coughed, blood pouring from his mouth.

He pleaded desperately.

“Please. Please spare my life. I have two daughters and a son!”

The woman turned away without a word.

She looked up at the sky once.

Caw, caw.

Dozens of crows filled the sky.

The crows circled around her, all of them familiars she had tamed.

“Eat.”

She opened her mouth.

Caw- Caw!

The dozens of crows circling in the air all rushed toward the man on the cross at once.

“A-ah! Stop, stop!”

The farmer’s screams sounded behind her, but she did not even blink.

One of the soldiers beside her spoke quietly to the woman.

“Lady Myuria. Your skill in controlling familiars improves every day.”

“I’m still far from enough. They say if I can control them more deeply, I’ll be able to share the vision of every familiar.”

Familiars.

They were the reason she had been able to rise to company commander at such a young age,

and the reason she could gather countless pieces of information scattered throughout the Empire.

“Come here.”

Myuria gestured toward one of the crows hovering in the air.

A large, sturdy crow landed on Myuria’s hand.

Compared to the others, its feathers were glossier and it looked brimming with vitality.

It was one of the few crows whose vision Myuria could share.

Only individuals large and strong enough for their thoughts to remain linked across long distances could do so.

“Lady Myuria. That one...”

“There’s no choice. Given the situation.”

Sharing vision consumed a great deal of mental strength, so it was also a strategy she avoided unless something important was happening.

Myuria stared into the crow’s eyes and infused her intent into it.

- Go and thoroughly inspect the surroundings of the White Wolf Knights.

The crow went blank for a moment before spreading its wings wide and flapping into the air.

At the same time, Myuria’s eyes grew cloudy.

The crow’s view of the ground from high in the air began to appear in her vision.

Now all that remained was to wait.