Love Letter From The Future-Chapter 367: Bread and Dagger (65)

The mourning for the old knight did not last long.

He was the very first man I ever killed.

No amount of time spent praying for his repose could possibly be enough but now wasn’t the right time. We had to assume that Yurdina’s forces already discovered our location.

Hadn’t Sir Alex already sent out a messenger?

So all I could do now was pull myself together and leave.

Even so, I couldn’t take my eyes off the old knight’s corpse for a long while. Only after what felt like an eternity did I finally turn away.

It was to set the elves free.

But the remaining soldiers did not celebrate my victory.

One of them suddenly grabbed hold of an elf, pressing a blade against their throat while staggering backward.

“KY-KYAAAACK!”

“D-Don’t come any closer!”

I frowned, never expecting him to resort to something so reckless.

Does he have a death wish?

Threatening me now that they’d already lost was pointless. Sure, it might rattle me a bit, but that was about the extent of it.

The moment he lost his hostage, the soldier would be facing a life-threatening situation.

And it wasn’t as though he could escape the coniferous forest with a hostage in tow. He didn’t have the strength for that, and besides, any elf who left this forest was as good as dead.

This meant the hostage held little value as leverage.

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In the end, I let out a sigh and began to reason with him.

“Put the sword down… This fight is already over.”

“Sir Alex was our idol!”

He shouted the words in a desperate wail.

Hearing his desperate voice, some of the other soldiers began to waver. The way they subtly tightened their grips on their weapons made it clear things were about to get troublesome.

First of all, I was alone.

If they all decided to charge, even I had my limits. At this rate, some of the elves might lose their lives.

And besides, hadn’t I just killed one of my own kind?

I had no desire to take any more lives.

The best course of action would be to subdue them without killing, but I couldn’t afford to worry about sparing the lives of those who were so recklessly bent on killing the elves.

So for now, I decided to quietly listen to the soldier’s outburst first.

“We’ve all lost our families to the elves… That’s why we volunteered for this mission! We swore loyalty to Sir Alex—how can we be the only ones to walk away alive?!”

“That would be just a meaningless death, isn’t it?”

At my perfectly valid retort, the soldier flinched.

In a steady voice, I continued to persuade him.

“What meaning is there in throwing away your lives like this? Just to take the lives of a few unfortunate elves?”

“Th-That would be enough!”

“No, it’s not. It won’t even quench that burning thirst for revenge you have.”

As I spoke, I took a single step forward.

It was nothing more than a small gesture.

Yet, even that was enough to make the soldier’s body begin to tremble. After all, the fear of death was a universal emotion shared by all living beings.

In the face of that fear, there was no distinction between humans and elves.

The soldier pressed the dagger even closer to the elf’s throat.

‘Hiiik.’ The elf let out a trembling gasp, his knees shaking in unison with the soldier, as though the two of them were bound by shared terror.

It was almost laughable.

To be so terrified of death yet still be willing to throw his life away so recklessly.

And to take someone else’s precious life in the process, no less.

I extended my hand and spoke.

“Now, let the elf go. I have no intention of harming any of you.”

“…How can I trust you?”

“If I intended to kill you, do you really think you’d still be alive right now?”

It was an arrogant statement, but also a cold truth.

I already subdued the soldiers earlier. My intentions were made clear when I threw my hatchet and destroyed their weapons, one by one.

Had I meant to kill them, I would have done it then.

Unable to find words to refute my logic, the trembling in the soldier’s hand began to subside. He turned his gaze away, the conflict evident in his expression.

The other soldiers were no different.

Their loyalty to Sir Alex and their own lives—

The very fact they were weighing what truly mattered spoke volumes about Sir Alex’s influence.

I made one last attempt to persuade them.

“You can’t just leave Sir Alex’s remains like that, can you?”

That was the final blow.

One of the hesitant soldiers tightly shut his eyes and tossed his weapon aside. The others followed suit shortly after.

Like a sudden downpour, swords and spears clattered to the ground.

The only one left was the soldier holding the elf hostage.

I looked at him as if to ask, ‘Well? What now?’ The man seemed momentarily flustered by his comrades’ decision but soon clenched his teeth.

It was an ominous sign.

His bulging eyes, streaked with red veins, betrayed his frenzied state.

In desperation, my grip on the hatchet tightened but my body, still reeling from its first kill, refused to cooperate..

That brief hesitation threatened to end in catastrophe.

A shout burst involuntarily from my lips.

“No!”

My scream rang out, and just before the dagger was about to slit the elf’s throat…

Thud—a flash of silver embedded itself in the back of the soldier’s neck.

“Guh, Kgh!”

The soldier couldn’t even manage a proper groan. His eyes bulged, as he staggered before collapsing to the side.

In the spot where he had fallen, only a trembling elf remained.

Of course, I wasn’t the one responsible for the blow.

Everyone’s gaze shifted, searching for the culprit. From a shadowy corner of the burning village, a lone figure stirred and stepped into view.

It was a face I knew all too well.

A brown-haired woman with a pin accenting her bangs, her spotless complexion lending her a gentle appearance.

Yet her deep green eyes seem to tell a different story.

They were a bottomless shade, as if rejecting the world. At a glance, they could be mistaken for the eyes of a serpent or perhaps those of a fox hiding its schemes.

With her hands clasped behind her back, she walked forward in measured steps and delicately lifted the hem of her skirt..

It was the etiquette of a maid, perfectly matching her well-tailored attire.

“It has been a while, Sir Ian.”

It was Senior Neris.

Hah, faced with this unexpected meeting, I couldn’t help but let out an incredulous laugh.

Why in the world was Senior Neris here?

**

The soldier Hans groaned as he opened his eyes.

The northern wind sharply bit at his flesh, slipping through his armor. Yet, he hardly felt the chill—likely because the area around him was still ablaze.

The elf village was still smouldering with dying embers, some of which Hans had set himself.

It was ridiculous.

Burning down huts only to stave off freezing to death with their warmth….

Like a parasite feeding off the misery of others—just like the elves who once destroyed his village.

Hans’s village had been destroyed by elves driven by hunger.

He had been the sole survivor. From that day forward, he lived consumed by vengeance.

Eventually, that path led him to a remarkable superior.

A knight who, despite being a commander, always fought alongside his soldiers on the front lines.

Now, that knight was dead.

That too, killed by none other than someone humanity revered as a hero.

Hans felt no tears welling up for that futile end. He merely rose in a daze, piecing his memories together.

He recalled trying to stab an elf to death but, after that, everything was a blur.

It was one of his comrades who filled in the gaps in his memory.

A fellow soldier trudged over, looked down at Hans and let out a heavy sigh as he held out a crude wooden shovel.

One glance was enough to tell.

The crude craftsmanship was undeniably the work of the elves. Hans’s expression went blank.

“We’re digging a grave. You help too.”

“What… what on earth happened here?”

At Hans’s question, the soldier patted him on the shoulder a couple of times.

As if to say he understood how Hans felt.

“What do you think happened? We got wrecked… that too, completely and utterly. Afterward, some lady jabbed you with a needle, and you passed out.”

“Then why are we still alive?”

“Because they spared us.”

It was an obvious answer.

But it was not an easy one to accept.

After all, they were the ones who burned the village and sought to massacre every last elf.

Yet they spared us?

Hans tried to voice a rebuttal but clamped his mouth shut.

There was no point in denying it. The fact that he was still breathing was the clearest proof of all.

The comrade continued explaining in a subdued tone.

“The elves wanted to kill us, but Sir Ian stopped them…. He said they needed witnesses and that more bloodshed wouldn’t accomplish anything. It seems the elves reluctantly agreed.”

“Then what do we do now?”

“What else? Sir Alex sent a messenger so, if we hold out, reinforcements will eventually come. Until then, we might as well make Sir Alex’s grave.”

Hans’s head drooped low at the straightforward explanation.

There was no fault in his reasoning.

In the end, his life had been spared. Even if it was thanks to Ian’s intervention, it was still at the hands of the elves—those he had thought of as his targets of vengeance.

Could there be a more crushing humiliation than this?

But his comrade seemed to think a bit differently.

He patted Hans on the shoulder once more.

“Well, you know… This incident made me rethink a lot and I think I’m done with this whole mess.”

“…Are you saying you’re retiring?”

“Yeah, especially now that Sir Alex is gone.”

A bitter smile lingered on his comrade’s lips.

He continued speaking, his gaze distant as if lost in reflection.

“I’ve spilled far too much blood…. At first, I thought it was all for revenge, but now, after being saved by the very ones I wanted revenge against, it all feels so pointless.”

“In the end, all elves are just potential murderers.”

“And we’re nothing but outright murderers.”

With that, he grabbed the handle of his shovel again and offered his last piece of advice.

“Anyway, you should think things over too. You can’t keep living like this forever, right? You’ve probably got at least some money saved up, so—GAAAAAAH!”

Yes, it truly was his last.

A flaming arrow pierced straight through his comrade’s temple. While Hans stood frozen in shock at the sudden ambush, his comrade’s head exploded.

With a sharp crack, his skull shattered into fragments, scattering everywhere. Right before bits of flesh and blood could splatter all around, Hans dropped to the ground on pure instinct.

The squelching sound of brain matter hitting the ground was sickening.

But that was only the beginning.

***

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