Without disturbing Yurien's movements at all, she decisively drove her sword into the minor monsters he had missed.
Efficient. Simple. No flourishes, no wasted motion. She cut them down, and they fell.
And yet, she was captivating to watch.
Behind the silver-haired Commander, wrapped in white mana, the hem of her violet dress spread wide like it was dancing. Her flowing sleeves carved complicated lines through the air as she moved.
A redcap, hiding in a tunnel it had been digging, reached out to grab her ankle. Without looking down, she sidestepped with a light step. Her heel came down on its arm, pinning it, and the silver-dusted sword drove into its forehead without hesitation.
She avoided the splashing monster blood with an expression of mild distaste, like a noblewoman stepping around a carriage's mud splash.
The feathered hat never left her head. Its staying put was itself a measure of how precisely she controlled her balance.
Because of it, she looked exactly as she had when they set out - not a single bloodstain on her.
Entirely out of place in the misty, corpse-laden, foul-smelling gorge.
The fact that she could maintain that was evidence of skill. Even when monsters with rotting eyeballs lurched at her, her expression didn't change.
'The Commander suddenly appointed a squire.'
'A genius recognizes another genius…'
'A nest of monsters, and a monster in their midst.'
'At first I thought the outfit was strange - but at this point, what she wears doesn't matter.'
Those watching from behind found their eyes following her without meaning to, and they couldn't quite stop.
Then several of them turned their heads at once. Echinacea had casually lifted the hem of her dress as she moved. The glimpse of dark stockings beneath the lace petticoat was somehow startling in a den full of rotting corpses.
For Echinacea, it wasn't intentional. She hadn't lifted it that high. She had simply wrapped one hand around the hem and used the other to open the small bag strapped with a leather belt to her thigh.
Those without mana coated their swords with silver powder to fight monsters - a necessary tool against regenerative creatures and ghosts that a plain blade couldn't kill.
Echinacea didn't technically need it, but she used it to avoid drawing attention to the fact that she was a Master.
While she recoated her sword, she kicked a skeleton's leg out from under it and caved in its skull with her heel.
'These are genuinely useful.'
She glanced down at her boots with a private smile, then her brow furrowed. The black ankle boots, now splattered with monster blood and bone dust, were a pair she quite liked. Nothing to be done. She let out an inward sigh and raised her sword again.
Yurien had no concerns. There were plenty of monsters but no high-ranking ones - no Dullahan anywhere in sight. Worrying about Dullahans in a low-level den like this was unnecessary.
She turned her gaze back toward the rear of the formation, searching for Alice's blonde hair and caught a different gleam of gold first. Michael.
'Teresa is in the left gorge. What's he doing here?'
Curious, she watched for a moment. He was fighting well enough. Then their eyes met.
Michael had been stealing glances at Echinacea the entire time. The moment she caught him, his face went bright red and he snapped his head away.
'What's his problem?'
She tilted her head, then lost interest and went back to looking for Alice. She found her, some monster blood on her clothes, but otherwise fine. Moving carefully and methodically, as always. Echi did a quick sweep for any threats near her, found none, and returned her attention forward.
Fatima and Ian were with Teresa's group heading into the left gorge, so they weren't visible.
Echinacea finally let herself relax and looked ahead. Even while checking on the others, she had continued dispatching the minor monsters Yurien left behind, though it was repetitive enough to border on tedious.
As the sun reached its highest point and began to descend, Yurien raised his hand and brought the party to a halt.
"Short rest. Everyone, eat.
The group cleared the nearby monsters and settled against rocks, pulling out jerky and water. Echinacea nibbled at her share and noticed what Yurien was doing.
He wasn't eating. He was looking up.
She followed his gaze.
The fog was thick enough to blind an ordinary person, but for Yurien and Echinacea it was no obstacle. The sky above was packed with dark, heavy clouds. Rain by evening, almost certainly.
Lightning was possible.
'Rain. Lightning. Night.'
The conditions under which Baraha died.
Echinacea's focus sharpened.
Yurien finished reading the sky and lowered his head. Their eyes met.
His blue eyes blinked slowly. In that gaze, in that unhurried motion, something crackled - a flash of understanding.
She realized what he was thinking. They had just looked at the same sky and arrived at the same conclusion. She could already predict the order he was about to give.
He looked away from her and addressed the group.
"Given the weather, we'll postpone the afternoon sweep until tomorrow. We return to camp now."
The members trusted their commander without question. No one objected, and they began gathering their things.
Echinacea stood still. Yurien walked over and placed his hand briefly on her shoulder.
"Cadet Echinacea. Good work today. Rest well when we get back."
His hand withdrew immediately. Echinacea, face pale, watched him move ahead.
'He knows. The erased past.'
[Hey, I think for sure...]
The sword muttered in surprise. Echinacea said nothing and fell in with the others.
She gathered it all - everything that had happened, everything he had said. A certainty settled into what had been blank uncertainty.
Yurien knows. He has memories from before the reversal.
What she had wanted to deny had been forced into fact. She thought, dazed:
'Then why doesn't he hate me? Why hasn't he tried to kill me?'
She couldn't understand. As she walked back through the fog and the stench, she couldn't stop turning it over.
She thought of RanGiosa, which she could never hold. The fountain stained red. The corpses, and the ruined city, and Azenka erased from the world.
She thought of his name in history, the worst commander, the one who destroyed the Celestial Knights. She thought of his dying eyes.
If Yurien had been consumed by the cursed sword and annihilated the Roaz estate, had stood over the bodies of her parents and Lancellid and then faced her, Echinacea would have hated him.
Even knowing it wasn't truly his fault, her heart would not have forgiven him. If she had died at his hands afterward, she might have cursed him with her last breath.
She had done exactly that to him.
But Yurien wasn't simply a victim. He had been the one to trust her, to give her a chance at overcoming the cursed sword despite the risks. When he could have simply ended it, he had refused and brought her back to something like a home instead.
'How much did he regret it? How much did he resent it?'
She simply could not believe he didn't hate her.
The most optimistic interpretation she could reach was that his character might prevent him from cursing her openly. His nature was not one for that. He might bear only a cold pity.
But even at her most optimistic, there was no way that carrying those memories, he could smile at her the way he had last night.
Not at the one who had killed him. He wouldn't show her kindness. He couldn't.
"He doesn't know. If that's not it, none of this makes sense."
Echinacea murmured it to herself, her voice rough, almost a scream. ValderGiosa, who had been quiet and thinking, responded immediately.
[Doesn't know what? Who doesn't know?]
"I…"
She swallowed the rest. There were members walking nearby, and she couldn't say the words aloud. Cursed Sword.
Yurien didn't know that Echinacea Roaz was the demon of the cursed sword. Or perhaps he suspected but couldn't be certain.
She ran back over the reasoning she had formed after their first meeting.
'If he has memories but no evidence, and is simply watching me, suspecting I might be the demon who could act at any moment - then he would keep me as close as possible and monitor me until he has definitive proof. That's the only explanation that fits.'
Thinking it through now, it made alarming sense. It explained the sparring request. It explained the warmth he performed toward her.
Yurien was testing her. With time reversed and no clear cause, he would be trying to determine whether Echinacea, who hadn't existed in the erased past, carried memories from before. And simultaneously probing whether she was the demon of the cursed sword.
If he became certain that she was, then he would.
Her mouth tasted foul. Something in her chest was being quietly crushed. She stared ahead blankly. Yurien's retreating figure was clean and white and untouched. She closed her eyes, not wanting to see it.
* * *
After sunset, the rain came in sheets. It fell so hard she half-expected it to pierce the tent.
Thunder followed not long after, and lightning split the sky.
Echinacea sat at the entrance of her tent, the fabric lifted slightly, watching outside. The rain turned the world into a curtain of black.
The torches had been snuffed out by the wind; only a couple of expensive mana lamps held their glow.
Each lightning flash illuminated everything briefly, then dropped it back into dark. The rain drowned all other sound.
Despite the chaos outside, the camp was quiet. Both groups had returned with only minor injuries.
Echinacea rested her chin on her knees and stared at one point.
Her violet eyes were still.
Motionless. She wore the same dress as earlier, but the fixed gaze and the hunched, watchful stillness made her look less like a noblewoman at rest and more like something stalking its prey.
[Isn't it boring?]
"Not really."
She answered absently. She was watching Baraha's tent while simultaneously extending her senses outward in every direction. She had been holding this state for over three hours.
It was tiring, but her mind was surprisingly clear. Focusing on this was easier than thinking about Yurien.