When Dasha opened his eyes, the world was darkness.
Not long after, he could recall his name.
Dasha.
The proud tenth knight of the Round Table.
......a loyal bard serving......
He fought for......, and sang of......'s great deeds. Ah, that was his calling. To fight and sing for......
Regaining his senses, he tried to sing out of habit. Yet even opening his mouth, no song could emerge. No, in the first place......
'Ah.'
At the place his trembling fingertips groped, there was no mouth to open.
No eyes to watch over the shining world, no nose to smell life's fresh scent, nothing at all.
He had no head.
Yet having no head, there was no problem seeing and feeling the world. That fact plunged him into even greater shock.
'Ah......'
He had awakened as a hideous Dullahan.
'This terrible......'
Lost in chaos, he rose to his feet. This place where he had opened his eyes was filled with the barren smell of death.
Surrounding him, desiccated beings devoid of any warmth staggered about aimlessly.
Dasha noticed they were skeletons. Their gaunt bones looked fragile enough to break with slight force rather than threatening.
Some, unable to even maintain that much, crawled across the ground.
Standing in the dead land, Dasha desperately searched his memories.
Much of his memory was lost, but the important things he remembered.
The fact that......'s final wish had failed.
'So the world became like this because of that.'
Had the defeated goddess's followers become such terrible forms, while the wicked god's puppets alone enjoyed overflowing life?
Dasha thought. Why he had opened his eyes. Instinctively he realized he had to wait for someone, but he couldn't remember who at all.
Certainly he had praised someone.
But the place where......had been was cleanly empty as if carved out with a blade.
What was certain was defeat. Having failed at something he had strived to achieve with all his heart, his death was stolen.
'Failed.'
And the world became that of Birth. Since it became that of Birth, he must have opened his eyes in such a terrible form.
Dasha, who had been blankly looking up at the sky, took a step.
From not far away, the pulsing sound of abundant life could be heard. How ignorant and cruel this peace was!
There was also an agent of Birth there. The disgusting smell of destiny's threads scraped at Dasha's sensitively raised nerves.
Dasha had one choice.
'Revenge.'
To destroy all the world that Birth had established.
* * *
"If I were Lilia......"
Looking down absently at the schedule of Maxel that Count Ruejak had sent, I opened my lips indifferently.
"I would have left here long ago. Not chasing around like this."
Honestly, if she acted like this, it was convenient for me, but separately, a sigh came out. Why does she have such short thinking?
It was embarrassing that I had been jealous and angry at someone like this, to the point of dying miserably in the past. It was also a bit absurd.
No matter how blind I was to Maxel, did I really get swept up so easily by this one's tricks?
With my brows deeply furrowed as I looked down at the schedule, Zenon, who had confirmed the contents over my shoulder, spoke in a nonchalant tone.
"They must be that inseparable."
The old me would have agreed with Zenon's words. However, now my thinking was a bit different.
I folded the schedule and tucked it away, clicking my tongue briefly.
"It's not that, it's that she doesn't trust."
With things having reached this state, not trusting was natural, but even if it wasn't because of the current situation, Lilia's distrust had continued for quite a long time in my view.
"Lilia doesn't trust Maxel. That's why she intervened in the succession dispute for the throne too."
Shrugging my shoulders, I turned to look at Zenon.
"Right? Foresight is 'the future.' It's glimpsing what will happen in advance. But that girl, even after seeing the future, strove to create that future."
Either the foresight was imperfect, or she couldn't trust it.
"And right now, what Lilia needs is Maxel's victory. She'll try to make that happen somehow this time too."
The route shown on the schedule was longer than I thought, but I had nine Dullahans. Dullahans that could even transform into animals.
Since I had identified the regions where Dasha was likely to appear through this schedule, it became easier for the Dullahans to search the area.
"Then sending assassins like this is also because they don't trust the prophecy that they themselves will win."
Zenon muttered indifferently as he slammed the assassin he had been binding with magic onto the ground.
Something very dull and terrible...... seemed to sound, but I decided not to check.
Instead, I decided to praise Zenon.
"Good comprehension. Seeing how you apply it right away."
I had expected a situation like this to some extent when I decided to reveal my whereabouts openly.
Since Lilia was someone who had tried to find me and send assassins even when I was hiding, in her own mind, she couldn't miss this opportunity.
It was just that the fact that she didn't have a broad perspective looking around her surroundings was merely pitiful.
I glanced at the assassins I had piled up demonstratively, then looked back at those running busily from afar.
The guard captain and holy knight who had gone to bring witnesses, and several soldiers were returning.
"He is a monster hunter! He's the one who caught monsters for our village before!"
The witness the guard captain brought nodded his head vigorously after checking the dead assassin's face.
"Are you certain?"
"Yes! They said His Highness the Crown Prince personally hired and sent them......"
At the village resident's testimony, the guard captain's face subtly stiffened. The word Crown Prince must have made him uncomfortable.
He would have already been on high alert after receiving a report that a resurrected one had been attacked last night, and with things looking serious, he would probably report to his superiors soon?
While the guard captain hesitated to continue speaking, the temple's holy knight who had been dispatched for investigation interposed with a grave face.
"Regardless of who is behind this, if the Empire cannot properly protect the resurrected one, the Temple will immediately form a subjugation force to purge these heretics."
"First, the investigation......"
"Look at these assassins!"
With the holy knight indignant about the fact that the resurrected one had been exposed to danger before him, the guard captain had a troubled face.
"Of course they look vicious, but we haven't properly confirmed even these ones' testimony......"
"What testimony would assassins give!"
"Still one......"
The guard captain stopped while trying to point to one side.
At the spot he was looking at, the assassin who had been subdued by Zenon until a moment ago was lying limp.
"......Didn't you say one was alive?"
Zenon, who noticed the guard captain's gaze, avoided his eyes slightly and spoke as if it were nothing.
"It was self-defense."
I offered words of apology to him as if doing a favor.
"I tried to subdue him strongly thinking it might cause great damage, but he ended up dying. I should have kept one alive for interrogation. I apologize."
"No, it's fine!"
The guard captain waved his hands with a face that looked rather apologetic. With this, he had to continue the investigation based on the testimony of me, the victim, and the village resident who knew the assassin's face.
Of course, the fact that a village resident who knew this assassin's face suddenly appeared was not a coincidence.
I had just made use of it since news was circulating that monster hunters were going around eliminating monsters while talking about the Crown Prince's broad generosity.
Zenon had shown excellent skill in illusion magic among magic, after all.
'When will the news reach Lilia, I wonder.'
Lilia probably didn't know I would officially report the assassins to the authorities like this. After all, assassins are supposed to be dealt with secretly.
But there was no reason for me to do that when I'm not in a position where I have to hide and deal with assassins.
'I'm just a innocent resurrected one who received a threat on my life, so I deserve official protection.'
I beat the assassins and reported them all to the nearby authorities as soon as dawn broke.
The territory residents who had been paying attention to my every move were naturally shocked and clamored for a proper investigation. Not stopping there, someone even reported it to the Temple.
For me, it was a labor-saving matter. Thanks to that, even the holy knights were now running rampant trying to find those who threatened me.
"I heard that monster hunters belong to a certain merchant group."
"A merchant group? Do you happen to know which one?"
"I don't know that far. I only overheard by chance what was being said among merchants recently."
As Samuel pretended not to know and passed on the information, the guard captain and holy knight busily gave orders to their respective subordinates.
Glancing at them, I muttered like a monologue.
"Even without this, the atmosphere doesn't seem good because of the dead land nearby, yet they can't even control people properly."
"We will greatly strengthen the territory's security. We apologize for causing concern."
I waved my hand indifferently toward the guard member who was repeatedly bowing, then turned my body lethargically.
Zenon cursed the assassins' mastermind in a voice loud enough for all the territory residents to hear, and Samuel too, without batting an eye, spouted words about how evil energy was draped over the entire Empire.
This fraud had definitely started small from the Imperial Palace, but I didn't know how it had grown to this scale.
'More importantly, it's about time the paths overlapped.'
If Dasha was targeting Lilia, the place he was most likely to appear was right around here.
Also, it wasn't far from the place where the Dullahan was last sighted.
"Upon checking the places that Dullahan attacked, it was following the locations His Highness the Crown Prince traveled to and from regarding the subjugation force issue."
Count Ruejak had said so. And the Dullahan briefly stopping its activity was, coincidentally, said to be at the point when the Crown Prince returned to the lord's castle far from the dead land.
At that time, I had appeared saying I came to stop the Dullahan.
If that was true, I could understand why the Dullahan didn't reappear in places it had destroyed once.
'Not that it was hiding avoiding me, but if it stopped activity because Maxel and Lilia temporarily moved away from the dead land.'
Then the matter became simple.
I just needed to lure Maxel and Lilia back near the dead land.