But the moment she let her guard down, a familiar presence suddenly intruded upon her consciousness, making her instinctively raise her right hand, transforming it into a dragon claw to clash with the sudden sword strike.
The incoming blade was also forcefully deflected by the hard dragon scales on Aurelia’s hand.
The attacker seemed to hesitate for a moment due to this far-beyond-expectation counterattack.
“Come here!!”
Using the force of the opponent’s charge and the sword being pinned, Aurelia instantly unleashed the power of her dragonized right arm, swinging both the person and the sword around and slamming them hard into the ground.
A heavy, dull thud mixed with the sharp noise of shattered earth and stones exploded in the silent night.
The ground trembled violently under the immense impact.
Centered on the point of impact, spiderweb-like cracks instantly spread out.
Dust mixed with weeds and dirt shot into the air.
A sharp pain shot through Aurelia’s right arm.
The dragon claw rapidly receded in the blink of an eye, turning back into her original pale, slender human right hand.
She quickly retreated several steps, focusing her gaze to see fiery red hair and golden eyes filled with killing intent staring fixedly at her.
“Cap… Captain?”
Those two words almost blurted out, carrying a tremor and a trace of absurd, laughable hope that even she hadn’t been aware of.
Even though that sword strike just now was merciless, even though those golden eyes burned with icy killing intent…
Upon clearly seeing that face, slightly smudged with dust yet still familiar, that title that once represented trust and reliance uncontrollably spilled from her lips.
[Shouldn’t he have gone to the Holy City? Why is he still here!?]
The dust slowly settled. The clear moonlight outlined Laurence’s tall, straight figure.
…
He slowly straightened up, rubbing his painfully bruised right arm, but the look in his eyes as he regarded Aurelia remained thick with disgust and hatred.
…
“Don’t call me with that tone identical to a human’s.”
He gripped the longsword in his hand tightly, its tip pointing at Aurelia.
“There’s only the two of us here. What’s the point of you putting on an act anymore?”
…
“An act?”
She repeated the word.
Under the moonlight, her dust-covered face, those gem-like crimson eyes shone startlingly bright.
No tears, no pleas, only a rising wave of anger.
“In your eyes, everything I did was just an act? Just to bewitch people, as you call it?”
…
Laurence’s brow furrowed tightly, disgust and scrutiny interweaving in his golden eyes.
His wrist gripping the sword turned slightly, the tip still steadily aimed at Aurelia’s throat.
But the aura of being ready to deliver a fatal blow at any moment around him seemed to stagnate for an instant.
He didn’t answer her question, but his tense expression and deep gaze showed he wasn’t completely unmoved.
Aurelia let out a bitter laugh, meeting Laurence’s gaze directly.
“Those all-nighters I pulled at the base, keeping watch for injured teammates, you think that was an act too?”
She took a step forward, her crimson eyes fixed intently on Laurence.
“I worked hard to manage the base, clean your rooms, wash blood-stained bandages, repair damaged equipment, racking my brains to make tasty meals with limited ingredients when supplies were scarce, just so you could be a little more comfortable between missions…”
“These dirty, tiring jobs no one else wanted to do, were they fake too? Were they also meticulously rehearsed performances meant to bewitch people?”
The muscles on Laurence’s face tightened further.
Deep within those golden eyes, something seemed to be lightly touched, but it was immediately covered by deeper wariness.
He needed to observe, to observe what kind of disguise this lifetime’s Disaster wore.
Only if it escaped would there be a chance to catch it again.
[This is absolutely not an excuse for my current hesitation to strike, but… strategy!]
Laurence tightened his grip on the sword hilt, saying this to himself in his mind.
“Fine, let’s set all that aside.”
Her voice suddenly rose in pitch as she pointed at Laurence.
“Laurence, look me in the eye and answer me properly!”
“When you were gravely ill and bedridden back then, who was it who stayed by your side without leaving for nearly half a month?!”
“If I really were the Disaster Source as you say, some monster solely intent on corrupting and destroying the world—”
Aurelia’s voice cracked slightly from agitation, yet each word was like a blade, fiercely hacking at Laurence.
“Why didn’t I take that chance, when you were at your weakest, most defenseless, to stab you to death?! To kill you, the one bearing the Braveblood, destined to become the greatest threat to the Disaster in the future?!”
“Why would I risk being discovered by the church to stay in your order? Why would I do those thankless tasks, keep those watches no one else wanted, do the dirtiest, hardest work?”
“Answer me, Laurence!”
She shouted, taking a few more steps forward, pointing at his face, her angry tone carrying a hint of hidden grievance.
“Using your so-called upright, righteous creed, answer me! What does everything I did amount to in your eyes?!”
Aurelia’s questioning echoed in the night, filled with resentment and anger.
She just stared at Laurence, as if trying to dig out from those golden pupils, now filled with inexplicable disgust and hatred, an answer that would let her understand, or at least let her die with clarity.
Yet those sharp accusations, those vivid details, the deeply buried grievance in those eyes, did indeed stir ripples and stabs of pain within his heart.
However…
“Enough… nonsense. Disaster.”
The longsword emitted a hum.
The light flowing along its blade was no longer a violent, blazing white but had shifted to a more restrained pale gold, like solidified holy light, pure and solemnly lethal.
“So… this is your answer, Laurence? Not even a shred of trust, you won’t leave for me?”
“Trust…”
He repeated the two words, then let out a cold laugh.
“I already told you. My trust in you vanished completely that night you personally used the Power of Calamity to heal your injuries.”
“No! It wasn’t like that!”
Aurelia reacted like a cat whose tail had been stepped on, her voice rising sharply with a tremble.
“It wasn’t me! It was it! There’s something in my body, in my head! It’s influencing me! It’s called the ‘Disaster Source’! It’s—”
“Enough!”
Laurence sharply cut off her explanation.
The wavering ripples caused earlier by memories of his predecessor life and this life were now replaced by a kind of anger, as if he’d been fooled.
…
“Even now, you’re still trying to use such clumsy lies to excuse yourself?!”
“I’m not lying to you! Why… why won’t you believe me? Just once, won’t you believe me just once?!”
Laurence took a step forward, leaving a shallow footprint in the ground.
He no longer looked at Aurelia’s eyes, or rather, he refused to look.
He feared that looking any longer, the too-real panic and urgency within them would shake his will that had just solidified again.
“Every drop of your blood, every inhuman mutation, silently proves your true nature. And now, you actually want to shift blame using something that cannot be proven false, trying to disguise yourself as an eroded victim?”
“That’s even more disgusting than direct corruption. It precisely proves your cunning, your precise grasp of human weaknesses. You think, by fabricating an excuse of being controlled, you can shake my conviction, drape yourself in a cloak of tragedy?”
“I’m not! I still have Dragon Clan blood within me! That Disaster Source wants to induce me to absorb it, saying something about becoming a god!”
Aurelia’s voice trembled from agitation and weakness, but she stared fixedly at Laurence, her crimson eyes burning with the last of her resentment and interrogation under the moonlight.
“Even if you don’t believe any of that, then, Laurence, let me ask you one last thing!”
She took a deep breath, her voice rising again.
“If I really were as you say, a meticulously planning, perfectly disguised Disaster Source solely intent on hiding until the very end—”
“Then let me ask you! That night you first intended to kill me, that injury on my leg! That claw wound that wasn’t fatal at all!”
…
Her finger pointed sharply at her own calf, though there was no wound there now.
“Why would I use the Power of Calamity to heal it right in front of you?! Was I insane?! I lurked for so long, disguised for so long, just to actively expose myself over a wound that posed no threat to my life, just so it could heal quickly?!”
She no longer had the worry of Laurence discovering the Disaster Source holding her back.
Since he was so convinced, she might as well lay all her cards on the table, let that pig-headed brain of his properly think about what foolish things he was doing, how deep his misunderstanding of her was!
“What would I gain from that?! Just so you’d have a chance to discover me, then come after me with a sword like now?! Does that fit the logic of a cunning villain?! Are you out of your mind?!”
…
Laurence’s hand holding the sword trembled violently.
Deep within those killing-intent-filled eyes, it seemed something was struck hard by this verbal assault, producing a fine crack.
…
Aurelia’s interrogation… was logically flawless.
If she really had been perfectly disguising herself with long-term intentions, why would she expose herself over such an insignificant moment because of a leg injury?
…
It didn’t fit the behavioral pattern of someone lying in wait.
Could it really be as she said, something was controlling her?
Could it be… he was truly mistaken?
Could it be that the companionship day and night, those warm acts of care, the sweat shed and the silent guardianship, were all her genuine feelings, not pretense?
Just as his thoughts began to tilt, fragments of his memory abruptly flashed through his mind again, the timing extremely coincidental.
The blood-red light that annihilated everything at the end of his predecessor life, the twisted, agonized faces of his companions under the Disaster’s erosion, and Aurelia’s cold, mocking, condescending gaze overlooking all living beings…
Countless fragmented, tragic images instantly flooded his mind, violently pressing down the scales that had just tilted towards reason and logic once more with regret and killing intent.
*[No, I can’t be swayed by her words! This must also be part of the calculation! This is a deeper disguise, an excuse concocted for that momentary act of stupidity back then!]
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