I tightened my hand around my sword.
Now that only clenching my teeth could barely stop its trembling, I calmed my five senses amid my ragged breath. The sensation of electric currents racing through the blood flowing in my veins.
Perhaps the old mercenary liked the heat of my breathing.
He slowly widened the distance between us, then corrected his stance again.
“For what do you raise your sword, Young Master?”
“I don’t know.”
At some point, my polite speech had vanished. Even so, I did not feel in the slightest that my manner was wrong.
“In truth, it was always like that. I never fought out of any grand mission or heroic impulse.”
“Yet you always raised your sword.”
“For the people within my reach.”
At the orphanage, the Saintess urged me to flee. But I foolishly rejected her suggestion and instead decided to destroy the ‘Flesh Nest’ to eliminate the remaining danger.
It had been a foolish choice.
“I merely wanted to save those people somehow…… I had no interest in the world or humanity.”
But if asked whether I regretted that day’s choice, there was only one answer I could give.
“Then was your desire false?”
No.
“I told you. I wanted to save the people within my reach somehow.”
There was…