There was one thing no one expected. Especially Corelia and Charlotte couldn’t have imagined it at all.

In werewolf territory, there was a Sword Master.

What Duke Asili had jokingly said to Ferdin became reality.

“You never know. Perhaps a passing Sword Master will help this time too.”

Meanwhile, Erin, who had reached the realm of Sword Master through three lifetimes, looked at the figure that appeared before them with heavily downcast eyes.

The one who threw the spear at Lilia was the werewolf chieftain who had suddenly appeared.

His eyes had lost all reason, and uncontrolled mana surged throughout his body.

He definitely didn’t look normal. But Erin had also lost her composure.

The person she wanted to protect got injured in a moment of lowered guard.

Fortunately, Ferdin’s condition wasn’t as serious as expected after taking the spear meant for Lilia.

This was because the child they had rescued raised mana and momentarily slowed the spear’s speed just before it pierced Ferdin’s body.

But it was still a spear thrown by a Sword Master. Even slowed down, it was enough to cause internal injuries to Ferdin.

Amon ran to Ferdin with a scream, while Lilia continuously performed healing magic beside him.

Erin tried to stay calm watching the scene.

It’s not a fatal wound. You know that, Erin Liserth. So calm down.

But no matter how much she tried to comfort herself, her hands trembled with anger. Erin had seen countless deaths, and she herself had experienced death directly.

Ferdin had suffered internal injuries, but since the wound wasn’t deep, he would fully recover after a few months of rest.

But the moment he got hurt, fragments of past memories flashed through Erin’s mind.

Ferdin leaving to carry out the Emperor’s mission. And her waiting for his safe return in the cold Marquis’s mansion.

The messenger who finally arrived with news and Amon’s shocked face upon hearing it.

Even the helplessness she felt while screaming at that time…

Erin felt something inside her snap. Looking at the chieftain before her, she muttered, “Who exactly are you?”

Erin’s eyes sank low.

In truth, she had harbored a small hope until now.

Could she just live like this? Could she just… forget the past and live peacefully?

Life at Atenz Academy had changed from the past.

Training in swordsmanship with the Swordsmanship Department students there, laughing and chatting, wasn’t bad at all.

No, actually, it was happy.

Happy enough that she thought she might be able to forget everything Corelia had done to her in the past if she could just live normally like this.

‘But you know, Erin.’

Erin felt someone pulling her into a swamp.

Unless she discovered who wanted to destroy the Marquis’s household… and unless she eliminated them all, the future would flow exactly the same way again.

Ferdin had been severely injured here in the past. Erin knew this fact, which is why she didn’t want to leave his side.

But he ended up getting hurt again.

The injured area was different, but… just the fact that he was wounded made Erin feel she was falling off a cliff.

“Why couldn’t you just leave me alone…”

Why do you make me angry?

ROAAAAR!

The werewolf chieftain charged at Erin with a terrible howl.

At that fierce momentum, Amon shouted to Erin with a face drained of color.

“Erin, it’s dangerous!”

Something was wrong with the chieftain’s condition. Could knights contaminated by black magic, which she had only heard about in rumors, look like this?

The power of the werewolf chieftain, already known to approach that of a Sword Master, was beyond his ability to measure.

The chieftain’s eyes were rolled back, and mana swirled around him like a storm.

Amon sensed that even an experienced Sword Master would have struggled against this opponent.

No matter how much of a Sword Master Erin was, she couldn’t win against that.

In that moment, the werewolf chieftain’s claws pierced her side.

The force shook Erin’s entire body.

It happened so quickly that Amon couldn’t follow it with his eyes. Lilia, who was beside him, screamed.

“No!”

Erin’s clothes were torn away, and her body became covered in blood.

The werewolf chieftain tried to attack her again using his claws.

He intended to cut off the human woman’s breath in one go. But he couldn’t move any further.

Erin had grabbed the chieftain’s hand that was embedded in her body.

Amon could tell that she had deliberately allowed herself to be hit by his attack.

Veins bulged on the werewolf chieftain’s arm. But caught in Erin’s small hand, he couldn’t move an inch.

She held him with the maximum mana she could muster and smiled leisurely.

Then she slowly raised her sword with her other hand. Blue mana had already gathered at the tip of her sword.

Erin drove that sword straight into the chieftain’s heart.

* * *

Lilia’s hands trembled slightly.

Erin Liserth lay collapsed, covered in blood.

Lilia felt dizzy from casting healing magic without rest.

“She’s crazy…”

Erin Liserth is crazy. Why did she go that far? Is she really in her right mind?

Those words escaped her involuntarily. She looked even more seriously injured than Ferdin.

Lilia’s mana was already depleted from healing Ferdin, but she still frantically poured healing magic into Erin. While doing so, she suddenly questioned her own actions.

‘Why am I doing this?’

If she stopped here, she might be able to kill Erin Liserth without any effort.

She could take the revenge Charlotte had repeatedly urged her to take.

But the reason she was using all her strength to heal Erin was… because Ferdin’s words had shaken her.

If Erin Liserth really… wasn’t the target of revenge she firmly believed in…

Lilia felt her throat tighten, making it hard to breathe.

Someone grabbed her wrist. Lilia stared blankly at the person holding her wrist.

Erin Liserth was looking at her with half-open eyes.

“You… what are you…”

“Not me… Lord Ferdin…”

“What nonsense is that… Ferdin isn’t hurt as badly as you! He’s already stabilized with healing magic! There’s nothing more we can do for him here.”

“I’m… fine.”

“How are you fine!”

Why did Erin Liserth sacrifice herself to this extent?

Lilia wanted to look away, but she knew why Erin had killed the werewolf chieftain in one go, even at the cost of injuring herself.

If she hadn’t sacrificed her body to hold the chieftain, everyone around would have been severely injured in a battle between a Sword Master and someone of comparable skill.

Lilia knew it too. Erin ended up like this purely to protect them.

‘But that doesn’t make sense. If she’s such a good person, why did Calips…’

As she was thinking this, Lilia noticed a dark-colored orb hanging around the chieftain’s neck.

“That… why is that here…?”

It was the unusual mana stone that Charlotte had shown her.

She hadn’t always trusted Charlotte, who came to her when she had nothing and constantly whispered that she could get revenge.

But after Calips died, Charlotte was the only one who stayed by her side.

Whenever Lilia saw Charlotte, who claimed to be Calips’s close friend, she thought of her brother.

She wanted to feel even a trace of him. That’s why she deliberately tried to dismiss her suspicions about Charlotte.

‘Even if she was hiding something from me, after Calips left, she was the only one who cared about me…’

Thinking about it, everything was suspicious from beginning to end.

That Erin Liserth killed Calips?

A child about her age at that time?

As all the clues came together, she felt a strange sensation, like the murky fog filling her mind was lifting.

‘Come to think of it, why did I believe it so easily?’

Lilia covered her mouth as she felt nauseous.

She couldn’t forget the chieftain’s state of lost sanity. And even how the dead chieftain’s body slowly crumbled.

Why on earth was the dark mana stone that Charlotte had promised to give her hanging around the chieftain’s neck?

Lilia didn’t know what had happened.

But she could understand what Charlotte had intended to do. She clearly planned to deceive her and turn her into the same state as the werewolf chieftain.