The Villain Carries the Holy Sword – Chapter 133

Chapter 133: Dawn Like a Thief (2)

━ The beginning was around the end of the spring, like today.

11th Northern Expedition.

Among the numerous heroes of Airian who fought and died in the war, Edmund was naturally the most brilliant.

Behind such an Edmund, the mercenary who shot arrows silently, ‘Flash’, was also quite famous.

Of course, in the case of ‘Flash’, her skills were impressive, but her appearance also played a significant role.

“What’s going on?”

Edmund, who hadn’t taken off his armor, asked coldly.

It was late at night, and ‘Flash’ had secretly entered his barracks. But Edmund’s eyes soon widened.

The belly of ‘Flash’, who was more agile than anyone else, was swollen.

“It’s not like you ate a lot.”

“Are you joking?”

She responded awkwardly, and Edmund tilted his head as if he didn’t know what the word ‘joke’ meant.

Now that she knew what kind of person Edmund was, she sighed and continued.

“Arna. My name is Arna.”

“……I see.”

“You didn’t even know my name.”

“Is there a reason I should?”

Arna laughed bitterly.

The nobles and knights who had participated in this expedition had all wanted to hear her name.

However, Edmund didn’t seem to care in the slightest.

She sat on a chair in Edmund’s barracks.

“Could it be that you’re pregnant?”

Edmund observed Arna’s movements. The awkward movements as she cradled her belly resembled Chloe’s gait when she was pregnant with Cain.

She nodded.

“Yes.”

“Who’s the father?”

Edmund vaguely thought of the nobles and knights outside.

Although he didn’t know them well personally, he hoped that they would be a good match for Arna, who was a good fighter.

“There isn’t one.”

Edmund said that as if he couldn’t believe it, and

“To the point where you don’t even know who the father is…….”

Bang━.

Arna slammed the table down expressionlessly, cutting him off.

At her sharp gaze, Edmund realized his mistake and bowed his head slightly.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know much about people’s feelings.”

“It’s okay. In fact, it was something I had to get over. I’m a virgin.”

Edmund’s eyes turned to her belly.

A pregnant belly by anyone’s standards.

He knew well that he was ignorant and dull except when it came to swords. But he knew that children weren’t just born by closing and opening one’s eyes.

“But you’re pregnant.”

Arna sighed deeply.

“I don’t know if I should believe you.”

Edmund shook his head.

If what she said was true, something ridiculous had happened, but how could he believe her.

Thud.

Arna stood up.

She pointed to her slightly protruding belly.

“I’ll come again tomorrow. Please remember this appearance well.”

“Hmm?”

“Anyway, the purpose of showing you this today was to do this.”

Whoosh━.

Arna left the barracks after saying that.

━ She was quite clever. She knew that I wouldn’t believe her just by words. But she didn’t have anything that could be considered evidence, so she wanted to prove it.

And the next night.

Edmund, who was wiping his sword stained with elf blood, raised his head.

It was Arna.

However, Edmund’s eyes were not on her face but on her belly.

“It’s gotten bigger.”

“Yes, it has.”

Compared to Arna’s belly yesterday, it had definitely grown noticeably.

Thud━.

This time, Edmund pulled out a chair for her.

“Have a seat.”

“Yes.”

It couldn’t be considered a normal pregnancy rate. 

If it took 10 months for a human child to be born, Arna’s child seemed to be about a month at the fastest, and two months at the latest.

“Is the father of the child a demon or other race?”

Edmund made a somewhat reasonable guess. At that, Arna frowned and raised her index finger.

“From now on, it’s Lord Count’s.”

“……I’m sorry?”

“I came to you because I couldn’t find the answer to this problem on my own, but I guess I came for nothing.”

“No. You came to the right place.”

Edmund sat across from her. Then he pulled the cloth on the table.

“Communication Orb?”

Arna was a little surprised.

There was a communication orb that only wizards from before the 3rd Magic Revolution of the magic city 〈Lil〉 would use.

“It’s just for decoration.”

Back then, it was a fairly expensive long-distance communication tool, but now it was just an interior with a cool appearance.

Having traveled all over the cities of the continent and even come to Airian, she was used to seeing such uses.

Edmund shook his head.

Whooosh━.

The wind blowing through the gap in the barracks.

The wind seemed to swirl around Edmund as if it had eyes and then scattered.

“I don’t know much about it, but my wife might be able to listen to your concerns.”

Arna frowned.

Everyone knew that Edmund had come alone, so where did he get a wife…….

《The communication is fast today. Do you have guests?》

A woman could be seen beyond the transparent orb. At her words, Arna looked at Edmund in surprise, and he said expressionlessly.

“Something I don’t know much about has happened, so I have something to ask.”

《That must have happened to your guest. It can’t be something ordinary, but please tell me.》

Edmund mentioned that Arna had become pregnant without having any special encounters, and that the pregnancy was growing excessively fast.

Beyond the orb, Chloe looked at Arna with a slightly serious expression.

《Could it be a devil or a demon…….》

“No.”

Arna cut her off.

Seeing that the two of them had thought of the same thing first, it seemed that they were definitely a couple.

She wondered what kind of woman would live with a human like Edmund.

“I asked that first.”

《Good job.》

“So she said that I was the child’s father.”

《……So?》

“I apologized.”

Beyond the orb, Chloe glanced at Arna’s face.

The reason why a woman who had experienced something that could never happen had come to Edmund and said this.

And the fact that Edmund was accepting it to this extent meant that she must have been working well within the expeditionary force.

Chloe quickly understood the situation and asked.

《Do you want Edmund to be the father of the child?》

Chloe had hit the nail on the head.

Arna bowed her head for a moment before raising it and saying.

“It’s not like that…… but there was something like a revelation.”

《A revelation?》

Arna answered calmly.

She said that she had a dream while sleeping during the expedition in which a silver sun fell from the sky.

The sun fell on her.

《That’s a dream of pregnancy.》

She said that she had heard a single word at that time.

《What did it say?》

“Abel Ethelred.”

Probably the name of the child.

Chloe and Edmund could understand why she had come here.

《It’s a revelation that the child is Ethelred’s.》

“Cain and Abel.”

Edmund called out the two names. They seemed like suitable names for brothers.

Arna calmly began to unravel the thoughts she had while experiencing the strange event.

“What should take precedence over that unknown revelation is that this place is a battlefield with the elves. And I can’t deny my role.”

“If you leave, we will lose one of our best archers, so our forces will be compromised.”

The reason Edmund could run forward.

It was possible not only because of his strong force, but also because of the arrows that kept the elves’ attacks, which were aimed at his blind spots, in check.

The owner of those arrows was mostly Arna.

“That’s why I told Lord Count Edmund, who fights with me like this, first.”

“That was the right choice.”

“Secondly, I don’t know what race this child is yet……”

Arna rubbed her belly.

A child who had suddenly appeared without her knowing.

She couldn’t even give a name to her own child, who might be the devil or demon that the two of them had mentioned, but before that, one thing was for sure: it was her child.

She had been abandoned by her parents and had traveled all over the continent, so she didn’t want to let go of the first family she had ever had.

“I think it’s probably a human child.”

《Ah! The curse of the elves!》

It was a curse limited to elves, but if they had a quarter elf, it became a curse that killed the other person or the pregnant person.

The specifics varied depending on who the other person was, but it was common knowledge that the curse would be activated if they were carrying a human child.

And Arna frowned at the throbbing pain and then immediately relaxed her face.

“Yes, the curse that is approaching me is proof of that.”

《Hmm.》

“And since I received the revelation that the child is Ethelred’s…….”

She looked back at Edmund.

From the outside, it was impossible to tell what he was thinking. However, he didn’t have the usual cold feeling.

“I came to see you like this.”

《I see.》

Beyond the orb, Chloe was troubled.

《A silver sun. It can’t be a witch’s ‘miracle’…… Could it be…….》

🔹🔹🔹

Cain, who had been listening to the story, asked when Edmund stopped talking there.

“What happened after that?”

“After various things happened, Abel was born and became my son. When he was first born, he was like mud without proper eyes, nose, or mouth, but when Arna and I called out his name, he changed to what he is now.”

“Did he start to resemble you?”

“Yes. He really acted like my child, and he was a complete child who would quickly become weak if he was far away from the World Tree.”

Cain rubbed his chin.

The fact that his mother was a witch was surprising, but Abel’s birth was even more surprising than he had thought.

There were times when he simply thought of it as the result of Edmund’s reckless actions.

‘Silver sun.’

For some reason, Cain thought of the silver spider that seemed to wield thousands of legs when he killed Abel.

Silver.

There was something.

“Did Mother know about the silver sun?”

“……Hmm.”

Edmund only let out a murmur and didn’t continue. It was as if he knew but couldn’t tell Cain.

“Father. This is important.”

As soon as Cain called him ‘Father’, Edmund’s expression loosened slightly and he opened his mouth.

“……Do you know about the Witch Hunters?”

“Isn’t that an occupation that only appears in old stories?”

The enemy of witches is the Holy See.

However, long ago, when the ‘light’ of the Holy See did not exist, humans hated witches.

That’s how the occupation of Witch Hunter came into being.

They were the ones who caught witches who did all sorts of strange things and took them somewhere.

In modern times, when their power had died out, it had become established as the orthodox theory that they had carried out human trafficking under the name of witches.

“Their symbol is the silver sun. Those who want to destroy the falsehood of this world and bring about a new dawn through a new sun.”

Cain’s eyes lit up.

Edmund’s words were strangely accurate.

“Have you met them?”

He couldn’t have said such things otherwise. Edmund nodded obediently.

“Yes. A group of Witch Hunters came to the continent to capture Chloe.”

“They haven’t disappeared yet…….”

“They were hiding well. And they sharpened their knives.”

“There’s no human trafficking these days, so what are they going to do by catching witches…….”

At Cain’s murmur, Edmund pointed to his eyes.

“They were muttering that they needed to fill the Witch’s Eye again. They are probably a group that uses witches as ingredients, and Chloe called them ‘Commons’.”

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