Her hand gripping the broken sword had yet to find its proper position.
Bido took a step back.
The fallen leaves beneath her feet crunched loudly.
The soldier did not stop,
re-gripping his sword and gradually closing the distance.
“···It’s over now.”
It was a low voice filled with certainty.
Bido did not answer.
Instead, her mind was racing.
Ereudin assessed the situation and tried to move in from the side.
To help Bido,
but he wasn’t exactly in a good position himself.
Another soldier kept cutting off Ereudin’s line of sight.
Bido looked at the soldier and took another step back.
She hadn’t learned any martial arts worthy of facing this soldier right now.
There didn’t seem to be many options.
If she fled, Ereudin would be left alone.
But continuing to hold out—she couldn’t block the next strike with a broken sword like this.
Bido understood that fact all too clearly.
She tried to steady her breath in that situation, but it wouldn’t come as she wished.
At the edge of her vision, the soldier’s toes advanced once more.
A movement that said he would give her no room to escape.
Bido gripped the hilt even tighter.
The leather was wet.
She had no chance to tell whether it was sweat or blood.
“Put that down already. I don’t really want to hurt you.”
Even at the soldier’s words, Bido’s gaze did not waver.
Then, Bido felt a heavy sensation at her back.
It was a box bound in chains.
A box still on her back even in this situation.
What was inside was a weapon everyone considered dangerous.
If she opened this box now, something might change.
Bido did not turn her head.
There was no need to check.
She had never once forgotten that weight was there.
What she held was only the broken sword.
Bido’s gaze faltered for a moment.
Not because a choice had come to mind,
but because she first realized that one choice still remained.
If she didn’t take it out now, she might not get the chance at all.
“Yeah, I’ve got no choice either.”
The soldier said so and thrust his blade at Bido again.
Bido twisted her body reflexively.
The blade grazed past her, and the wind tugged at her sleeve.
She didn’t miss that opening, turning her back to grab the box.
And—
she threw it behind her.
The weight cut straight through the air.
The box struck the ground with a dull thud.
At that action, the soldier’s steps paused briefly.
He was looking at Bido.
What remained in her hand was still only the hilt of the broken sword.
“Give it up already.”
The soldier spoke in a low voice.
He was not impatient.
Simply the face of one who had already judged it to be over.
“You know it too. You can’t face me with that.”
Bido did not answer those words,
fixing her gaze on the box.
The soldier gritted his teeth and slowly approached again.
Closing the distance without letting his guard down.
Bido took one more step back.
And—
adjusted her grip on the broken sword.
The soldier judged that Bido, looking like that, would charge at him,
and took a stance to prepare for it.
But Bido threw her body straight toward the box that had been thrown behind her.
Matching that, the soldier’s feet moved again.
The speed at which he closed the distance increased.
But before that,
Bido’s hand fell upon the box.
Grabbing the chains,
she roughly thrust the blade of the broken sword into them.
A metallic screeching sound rang out.
It was a motion far from precision.
The chains twisted and broke.
The moment the box opened,
a cold sensation first leaked from inside.
That coldness was not a temperature that merely brushed the fingertips.
The smell changed first.
Wet wood, steel, and an unidentifiable faint fishy stench.
That smell was not the scent of a “weapon.”
Bido suddenly remembered.
The moments when people would pause each time they moved this box.
No one had said why, and that silence had remained like a warning instead.
Without hesitation, Bido reached out,
and seized the hilt of the sword inside.
The moment she grabbed it—
the current of life force flowing inside her body quivered.
Into the flow Ideurin had been generating throughout the battle until now,
something rough forced its way in.
For an instant, her breath caught.
The weight in her hand was unmistakable,
yet that weight somehow contradicted her body’s senses.
Bido gritted her teeth and drew the sword out.
Now was not the time to think.
Immediately, Bido took her stance.
The familiar angle, as always.
It was an extension of the movements she had repeated all this time.
But the sensation of the hand gripping the sword was off.
The soldier’s sword, rushing toward her, drew a line once more.
Maintaining a cautious interval,
an attack to gauge Bido’s reaction as she held the new weapon.
Bido no longer dodged, but stepped forward.
The moment the sword she held moved, the air split.
Clang!
The trajectory of the blade Bido swung was excessive, and more power than necessary was behind it.
The soldier hastily gripped his sword with both hands.
However, the impact was greater than expected.
The soldier’s body was pushed back.
‘Strange.’
The girl until just now hadn’t fought like this.
The restrained distance, the movements matched to breath—both were gone.
Instead—
raw power was pouring out roughly.
Bido’s attacks did not stop.
Slashing, pushing, and slashing again.
The soldier grew desperate to defend,
and simply receiving the blows was barely enough to maintain his balance.
And then,
glancing at Bido’s face from an angle, the soldier saw something.
Around one of the girl’s eyes,
an illusion as if red scales had briefly risen beneath the skin.
The soldier’s eyes went wide.
In that instant,
Bido’s sword strike came again.
This time, it was closer to pushing than cutting.
The soldier tried to block, but his balance had already crumbled.
With the impact, the weapon flew from the soldier’s hand.
The sword grazed a tree trunk and embedded itself far away.
The soldier reflexively stepped back,
looking at Bido empty-handed and breathing heavily.
But Bido did not stop.
Ignoring the soldier before her eyes,
she immediately turned to the side.
“Ereudin!”
Bido shouted briefly.
Ereudin was already moving.
His gaze swept across Bido’s face once,
then returned.
It was the expression of someone who instinctively understood that now was not the time to ask.
Boom!
In the momentary gap as Ereudin unleashed an explosive fist against the sword of the soldier before him,
the two began running at the same time.
A soldier shouted something from behind,
but the sound was soon buried by the forest.
While running, Bido strapped the dragon weapon to the spot where her long sword should have been.
An unfamiliar weight traveled along her spine.
And she felt the leather straps digging into her shoulder.
It wasn’t simply because of the sword’s weight.
A lingering chill clung to her back.
As if it wasn’t a sword,
but rather carrying an unclosed door on her back while running.
Bido clenched and unclenched her fingers.
Oddly, her senses lagged behind.
Her breathing was uneven, and her fingertips trembled faintly.
Rather than the feeling of having survived,
the question of whether she could keep running in this state came first.
Even while running, Bido swallowed several times.
A metallic taste lingered at the tip of her tongue.
What pooled in her mouth wasn’t blood,
but felt like the coldness seeping from the sword.
As if the lock on something other than the box had been undone,
a feeling of something following after her, not yet fully shut.
Bido squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them.
If she stopped now,
it wouldn’t be the unfamiliar energy from before,
but something even more alien that would take root inside her body.
The forest did not end easily.
While running through the trees,
Bido’s breath would not easily calm.
The weight of the dragon weapon continued to assert its presence against her back.
Each time she moved, her center of gravity subtly shifted.
Ereudin sent his gaze toward Bido’s face several times.
At first, he wasn’t certain.
But as they ran, he saw that change gradually fade.
The red aura that had spread disappeared,
and the scaly traces that had risen above the area around her eyes subsided as if they had never been.
“Bido.”
Ereudin called out carefully.
Bido turned her head while catching her breath.
“What is it?”
Ereudin seemed to choose his words for a moment.
Then he averted his gaze, looked ahead again, and spoke.
“···It’s nothing.”
He knew that even if he spoke now, he would receive no answer.
“Let’s hurry to the promised place.”
Ereudin added.
“We can’t stop like this.”
Bido looked at him for a moment, then nodded.
The two picked up speed again.
They did not look back.
They had neither the leisure nor the reason to do so.
But even while running,
Bido’s body continued struggling to sort out a rhythm that was not her own.
What it was due to, she still could not properly know herself.
—
On the other side of the forest,
Adel rose, pushing himself up with one knee among the shattered trees.
His shoulder guard was completely torn,
and red metal fragments were scattered on the ground.
“Are you alright?”
At the question of the female knight beside him,
Adel spoke while catching his breath briefly.
“The White Wolf… is stronger than I heard.”
The female knight’s gaze turned toward the forest.
“Even so, it will be difficult for them to flee far in that state.”
Adel looked at the forest once more instead of answering.