Confirming the sight of the sack flying far into the high distance, you fell to the ground.
Upon landing, a heavy sound reverberated, and a great impact was applied to your body.
For an ordinary person, it would have been a situation where not only their ankles and legs, but even their spine would have been shattered, but for you with a metal body, it was merely light damage that could be healed with one circulation of mana.
While circulating mana throughout your entire body, the red mana you had received from Sophia passed by your eyes.
At that moment, several short images flashed in your vision in succession.
A young and intelligent girl.
A woman teaching something to that girl.
A blue-green radiance covering the sky.
The images were extremely fragmentary and abstract, making it difficult to fully grasp their meaning.
But you felt a vague intuition.
This was something related to Sophia.
Usually, you wouldn’t have paid much attention and would have dismissed it.
You simply thought that everyone had their own story, this was just one of the passing settings, and so on.
But this time, for some reason, you couldn’t do that.
— I’d like to hear Sir Tin’s stories.
Suddenly, you recalled words that Sophia had once casually mentioned.
You thought that she probably meant the Tin Knight when she said that.
Not the player outside the monitor whose life or death was unclear.
But all you could tell was the player’s story, but even that retelling would be vague and many details would be glossed over..
It couldn’t be helped. Although you were the Tin Knight, and the Tin Knight was you, your knowledge about the Tin Knight was limited.
You didn’t know whether that fact was sad or happy.
The very act of strictly distinguishing and separating the two felt like something that shouldn’t be done.
It was similar to continuing to ponder about death, a question without an answer.
In the sense that the more you did it, the more suffocating and heavy it felt.
You shook your head to clear the thoughts from your mind.
Whoever you were, whatever the situation, you had adventures to undertake and enemies to overcome.
The air that had seemed to weigh heavily became lighter just with that.
Returning to a light and floating feeling as if you had pulled several all-nighters, you decided to focus on the current situation.
The mana in the shield’s gems had all been used up, but thanks to Sophia injecting a lot of residual mana before leaving, the main body’s fuel was full.
Of course, the situation wasn’t good enough to be optimistic about just that.
There was still no sign of Dorothea coming, and you still couldn’t pass through the wall.
But you were certain.
Sophia would surely show something worthy of using the word “believe.”
Sure enough, not long after Sophia went in, you saw the emerald wall slowly starting to crumble and disappear.
Due to its large size, it seemed like it would take a bit more time to completely disappear, but it looked like you’d be able to go inside soon.
While waiting for the moment to rush in, you quietly grasped your sword.
“The power, the Lord is leaving…!”
Responding to the scale in the city center, the scales held by guards in various locations also lost their light or even shattered.
The guards, who had been wearing expressions of fullness as if entranced, either collapsed or howled towards the sky as if falling into panic.
The soldiers near the scale debris still had some emerald light enveloping their bodies, but even that was gradually diminishing like a flickering candle.
“What should we do…!?”
The guards in the square frantically sought answers from the lord, but the lord didn’t respond.
He just glared at Sophia with wide eyes.
“Do you know what you’ve done? You’ve just destroyed one of the great Lord’s sacred relics! How do you intend to atone for this sin!!”
Sophia turned her gaze towards the agitated lord.
A singular query escaped her lips.
To the lord with a dumbfounded face, Sophia continued in a gentle manner, “Let me ask in return, what have I done wrong?”
“Are you seriously saying that now!?”
“But isn’t the scale’s judgment absolute?” she spoke as if somewhat sly, but loud enough for everyone around to hear clearly.
“The scale itself judged that ‘itself being used in this way in this city is wrong’. But if you say that’s wrong, the conclusion is one of two things.”
Her half-open pink eyes coldly glared at the lord.
“First, the scale’s judgment was perfect, but you’re denying it merely because it goes against your will. Second, the scale wasn’t perfect to begin with, but you were boasting that it was. Now, which is it?”
The lord’s lips quivered.
He seemed to want to deny Sophia’s words, but couldn’t immediately come up with a plausible logic.
Everyone gathered in Justitia’s square was watching this scene between the two.
The sight of the Justitia lord, who had always been confident and relaxed, who had been like an absolute being, now at a loss for words and floundering, while a woman with a mysterious atmosphere cornered him with her eloquence.
Cold sweat ran down the lord’s back.
The lord, desperately trying to refute Sophia’s words by coming up with logic, failed to realize that from the moment he tried to persuade and preach to the opponent with logic, the absoluteness of the divine that he held so important had long since disappeared.
And finally, the answer the lord arrived at was as follows, “I see, you are, no, you! You were a demon all along! You came here to cover and hide the Lord’s glory with that bewitching tongue and evil power! Oh, Lord, forgive me! My eyes were dim, and I failed to stop them from damaging your tool!”
Denying Sophia’s words, denying her existence, and denying even all the results caused by her as wrong.
It was childish petulance and also sophistry, but at the same time, it was one of the answers to escape this situation.
“Everyone! Subjugate that evil demon! If you subjugate the demon—no, the demon race that’s driving this world into corruption! I swear on my name as the lord of Justitia that I will report your merits to heaven! And I will ensure that you can live a paradise-like life in the Kingdom of Heaven!”
At the lord’s words, murmurs erupted among the crowd, watching the lord and Sophia.
Even those who were dazed, not understanding the situation, those who were looking at the lord with somewhat distrustful eyes, and even those who just wished for this situation to end quickly, all had greed in their eyes.
No matter how flimsy the lord’s logic might be, no matter how plausible Sophia’s words might be, in the end, if they physically silenced her, that would be the end of it.
Justice without power was futile.
Sophia didn’t think of herself as justice, but if they resorted to violence, she didn’t have proper means to resist.
If she were caught using holy power here, it would cause great trouble for the party’s future journey, and even if she used it, it wouldn’t be of much help, anyway.
“Lord! Bless those who carry out your will!”
White holy power erupted from the lord’s body.
He gathered the fragments of the broken scale and wrapped them around his body like armor, and when the holy power touched the blue-green gems, it became even more brilliant, inflating its power several—no, dozens of times.
Strength returned to the bodies of the guards whose momentum had been gradually weakening, and as if stimulated by that light, some from the crowd blinded by greed also rushed towards Sophia.
The Lion Duke’s bloodline members tried to block them, but there were too many enemies aiming for Sophia.
A guard’s strong hand grabbed Sophia’s nape and pushed her down to the ground, and some mercenary raised his sword high.
That sight was clearly imprinted in Adelaide’s eyes.
At that moment, the little lion felt something hot rising from deep in her chest.
Matching the pounding of her heart, a flame-like passion circulated through all the blood vessels in her body.
The fact that Sophia wouldn’t die from something couldn’t be an excuse for the unreasonableness she was suffering now.
She hadn’t said a single wrong word. She hadn’t harmed anyone here.
All those actions trying to suppress Sophia, her companion, with violence and authority just because she was bothersome, burned various things in Adelaide’s heart.
The fatigue and pain accumulated in her body were the first to turn to ashes.
Various calculations and anxieties about the future burned and disappeared.
Even the mercy that had been dulling the tip of her sword until now was incinerated.
Her teacher wasn’t here right now.
So, she had to do it.
Adelaide’s posture lowered.
The tip of her sword pointed down to the left, and all the muscles in her body held power like a bowstring drawn to its limit.
In the brilliant golden flames, violet lightning clearly resided.
There was no heated battle cry, no violent resonance of metal meeting metal, no characteristic sound of fabric tearing.
A single beautiful and fierce trajectory was drawn.
And the next moment, everything placed between that trajectory was bisected.
The head of the man suppressing Sophia parted from his body. The upper and lower bodies of the warriors standing straight separated.
Even the guards protected by emerald light, who had easily deflected ordinary sword energy, were no exception.
Intense blood spurted high into the sky, and part of the square was dyed red, as if erased with an eraser.
Everyone lost their words in shock and stared at the small-built swordswoman grasping a two-handed sword.
Adelaide was about to swing a second slash, but the next moment, her sword crumbled as if it had exceeded its limit.
And, her flesh suffered an all too similar fate.
Adelaide knelt on one knee and collapsed.
Even though she tried to stand up again, thinking this wasn’t the time, her body wouldn’t even budge.
But even seeing this, people couldn’t easily move.
The single strike was simply too overwhelming for the surrounding people.
The lord unconsciously took a step back.
And then, as if feeling ashamed of that fact, he shouted even louder, “What are you all doing!? The demon and her companions are weakened now! Come on, hurry!”
Conflict appeared in people’s eyes.
The all-too-sweet honey offered by the lord.
The sight of Adelaide weakened before their eyes, Sophia lying face down on the ground, covered in blood.
As the scales of self-preservation and greed wavered, at that moment.
“Ooh… Lrd. How bery bleasing. Seeing that unsightly abbearance makes me peel so represhed.”
It was a gloomy, murky, and unclear pronunciation.
But the emotion contained in it was all too cheerful.
Those words directed at the lord even carried a sense of affection.
The lord reflexively turned his body to the right, but there was no one there.
Instead, someone whispered from the lord’s left shoulder, “Where are you looking? I’m over here.”
The eyes of the lord, filled with terror, met the eyes of a man in a feverish state with only his eyes and neck remaining.
The necromancer, who had resolved even the last lingering attachment in his life and now had only vengeance left to resolve, smiled.
“When you go to the afterlife, tell that Great Lord or whatever you believe in… It was Shylock who sent you.”
Shylock bit off the lord’s ear.
In his gums where teeth had fallen out, blood-soaked animal bone fragments were stuck like needles.
Even though he himself must be feeling considerable pain from biting, Shylock showed joy as if he didn’t care about such things at all.
Ominous mana surged around his head.
An overwhelming evil energy, far more than the mana he originally possessed.
It was Dorothea’s mana, which she had passed on as “change”.
The lord screamed something.
White light tried to burn Shylock’s head, and emerald fragments tried to wrap around the lord’s body.
An explosion even more intense than before, which had been blocked by the Tin Knight last time, detonated.
The lord’s flesh was shattered into pieces, and even his remaining soul was tainted by necromancy and plunged into the abyss.
The remaining curse and poison mixed with the emerald fragments, offsetting and annihilating each other.
The trial was abolished.
In the courtroom, where neither the arrogant judge nor the wicked criminal remained, only the spectators were left.
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