Chapter 89: Echoes of the Past and the Night’s Alarm

When Nolan Cyril happened to glance up in the academy square, and spotted that figure from afar, surrounded by attendants, even without turning, his keen senses told him the slender form behind him had flinched for an instant, like a reflex.

“Hill, what’s wrong?”

He turned back with concern, seeing the golden-haired girl named Hill hunching her shoulders fiercely, fists clenched tight on the hood’s edge, fully concealing those pointed elven ears beneath the fabric.

Shadows draped her delicate features, only her ruby-red eyes quivering in the dimness, brimming with shattered terror.

This child—

Nolan sighed inwardly, fearing some foul memory had been stirred again.

He reached out tentatively, patting her rigid shoulder, murmuring in elven tongue:

“It’s alright . . . I’m here. (Elven)”

This elven girl was one Nolan had rescued from a slaver’s clutches before arriving in the capital.

Back then, in that dank underground black market, the pot-bellied merchant had boasted smugly of his “rare stock,” while the crowd—knowing full well s*ave trading was outlawed on the surface, aware even that elves held imperial citizenship—turned a blind eye, plunging instead into frenzied bidding.

Nolan recalled how Master Dabel despised the slaving trade above all, and how the swordsmanship he now wielded owed much to elven grace.

Gazing at the elven girl in her iron cage, ragged and lash-scarred, he knew he could not stand idle.

Thus, on a moonless, gale-lashed night, he struck without hesitation.

In the end, every captive tasted freedom; the slaver’s den burned to ash in the blaze.

Nolan knew his limits, with his own affairs pressing, so he doled out the looted coin to the liberated, aiding their homeward paths.

Yet when he had seen to the last one’s departure—

that elven girl, whom he thought would have fled at once—

she remained, kneeling soulless in the wide-flung cage.

Rustle—

Nolan unclasped his cloak, draping it over the near-naked girl, veiling too those gruesome whip marks.

Then, hesitating, he asked:

“You . . . not leaving?”

The elven girl stirred not, like a puppet drained of spark.

Nolan paused, realizing then she might not grasp his tongue; racking his mind, he dredged up a few halting phrases in elven, learned long ago from Master Dabel:

“Ma . . . ma . . . don’t fear, I’m no villain . . . home? (Elven)”

“Home? (Elven)”

As expected—

at her kin’s tongue, the girl’s eyes gleamed.

“Home . . . home . . . destroyed. (Elven)”

Her voice quavered, bones fine and frail, laced with faint tremor.

Since that rescue, the child had dogged his steps obstinately, even deeming herself his thrall; her excessive dread and timid ways left Nolan at a loss.

No matter how often he assured her freedom, she met him only with those eyes, pools of unease.

In Nolan’s heart, Hill’s shoulders quaked as she stammered:

“The village . . . the village was ruined, everyone . . . everyone . . .”

“Died!

Ah—!”

That final shriek tore shrill across the square.

The girl’s cry instantly roused the gaggle of finery-clad folk—the noble maiden at their heart, in flame-red gown with silver-gray tresses, whipped round at the sound.

In that instant, Nolan made out her face—

Everything settled then, in dust.

Until Kritiya arrived slowly at the scene, and I beheld through her eyes the elf corpses strewn across the bridgehead, realization crashed upon me: the pivotal node twisting the original novel’s plot had unfolded, unbidden, right before us.

How absurd—that third-rate isekai webnovel,

a work spun wholly from base urges—

I guessed it merely sought to slot into the hero’s nascent harem an elven damsel, delivered for his delight.

Who doesn’t crave such a trope?

But how could it be so straightforward?

When the world veered from its scripted course, such twists arose to plague me.

“Very well.”

I forced my thoughts onward, nails biting flesh unheeded.

What was it again?

The elven girl Hill accuses—

The elven girl Hill accuses—

some noble guard in her escort of joining the massacre that razed her village.

Then, that nameless guard—ever the scapegoat—steps forth in Kritiya’s stead, seeking to chide the pair who disrupted the noble gathering’s merriment.

Thus, the ducal daughter’s guard challenges the duelist; without suspense, he fells that disposable wretch—who spanned but two chapters from debut to demise—leaving him bedridden for life, beyond even holy light’s mend.

Hence, under all eyes, Nolan, having maimed the lady’s protector—

this marked Kritiya and Nolan’s ill-starred first meeting in the canon.

What followed: the lady’s pride wounded, her circle hounding him with provocations, even plots to silence the elf girl.

Yet Nolan thwarted each in turn.

At last, in a academy delegation’s parley with the imperial court, he struck fatally—not with blade, but with a dossier he had amassed:

proof of the ducal guard’s hand in the elven village’s slaughter, and their traffic in elven thralls.

The guard’s filth laid bare, the implicated about Kritiya faced justice.

Kritiya herself, lacking direct ties, spared by political calculus, drew but a slap: lax oversight, loose reins on serfs—months in confinement.

But the scandal’s stain blotted her every ambition long-term.

As the tale’s villainess, her rift with hero Nolan deepened thereby—

until her schemes crumbled utterly under his heel.

“So what am I fretting over, truly?

Those elves’ lives, or Nolan . . . dreading enmity with the protagonist?”

In the dead of night, Kritiya had surrendered to slumber on the carriage’s cot, yet sleep eluded me; the boy’s face, boyish in memory, flickered before my eyes.

Nolan . . .

Since my awakening, Kritiya had parted from Nolan long before; I had broached him cautiously once, but her reply—a heart like a still pond, dead and silent—

told me then that ill had befallen.

I trusted he lived still—protagonist’s fortune, after all—and I shunned his recall deliberately, dubbing him merely “the hero” in canon reveries.

Until I deemed him truly banished from mind, this turn pried memory’s lock like a key.

Those shared fragments played silent as a mime . . .

If Kritiya truly reached the capital, truly crossed Nolan anew—if he learned all this . . .

what then would he think?

When we had become . . .

friends . . .

“If only I could explain . . .

No . . .

too late; it’s done . . .”

I tossed upon the bed, mulling ceaseless.

But had it truly come to pass?

A doubt surged sharp in my skull.

In canon, the elven girl Hill accused the ducal guard of razing her hamlet.

Yet that bridge clash was pitched even—seasoned fighters both sides; our guard lost a dozen, at least.

Where lay any village in that?

Strictly weighed, the elves struck first, seeking to seize the duke’s train unjustly; Arendel’s rashness at worst—before the emperor, I wager a self-defense plea holds firm.

How did it twist to village slaughter, slaver’s guilt unforgiven?

Come to think . . .

these past days, the train halted oft, lingering in camps; Kritiya heeded not, recalling only the adjutant’s report: resupply, wounded returned, reinforcements awaited.

“No—

something’s amiss!”

I bolted upright, yanking the door; night chill kissed this thinly clad frame, wrenching a mighty sneeze from me.

“Ah . . .

Miss, why’re you out?

Need the privy?

The chamber pot . . .

where’s the chamber pot . . .”

Maid Sally slumbered in the tent without; my sneeze roused her, fumbling groggy into view.

“Forget the pot!”

I heeded decorum not, voice edged sharp by haste.

“Sally, find Arendel at once! See if he’s awake? Summon him to me—now!”