My Wife Waited in the Wheat Fields - Chapter 27: The Demon Hunt (4)

At Tyria’s sudden fainting, Elric unconsciously caught her before she touched the ground.

“Mmph…!”

Pain shot through his knee as the load on it increased.

Startled, Luton reached out his hand, but Elric shook his head.

“I’ll carry her. Come on, just show me the way.”

“But Captain, your knee is…”

“It’s okay. Let’s go.”

Luton gritted his teeth, then began to lead the way, quickly.

Meanwhile, Elric slung Tyria over one shoulder and started stumbling along, barely keeping his balance with his cane.

The snow was getting thicker, making it harder to see, which meant he had to rely more heavily on his mana-based spatial detection.

And then he heard it.

“Captain, I see it!”

Luton, who had been leading the way, spotted the hut.

Elric narrowed his eyes to see where he was.

“There it is…!

The hut was there, as it had been in his memories.

Yet, there was not the slightest hint of life, as if his Master had never returned since the day he had left.

Still, it didn’t matter now.

Elric walked straight to the hut and opened the door.

Chiiiit-!

An unpleasant noise echoed throughout the interior.

“Cough! Cough!”

Luton coughed, waving his hands in the air to try and clear out the dust.

Just as his reaction indicated, the interior was filled with a faint, hazy dust, making it almost impossible to breathe.

“Let’s get some ventilation in here, and you guys, get that fire going.”

Elric ordered the hunters to start up a fire, before laying Tyria down on the wooden bed.

Even bundled up as she was, she looked pitifully lifeless.

‘What the hell…’

How the hell had she ended up like this?

At this point, that was all he could think about.

“I’ll go down to the village and come back. I don’t know how much longer it’s going to snow, so I might as well go ask for help.”

“Please.”

“Hey, gentlemen, follow me.”

After a quick dusting, they were able to get the fire going in the fireplace.

It was certainly warmer inside the cabin now, and Tyria had begun to drift off to sleep in a more restful manner than before.

And Luton had left the hut with the hunters to seek outside help.

Elric sighed and sat down, alone in mind in the hut.

‘What an ordeal…’

A chuckle escaped him.

Was it because he had gone on this hunt with a bad body?

No, this was an accident.

What else would cause such sudden, heavy snowfall under a clear sky?

Elric shook off his thoughts and warmed himself by the fire.

His expression was not a happy one.

‘Trouble’s coming.’

He’d long since passed the point where he was affected by the heat or cold, so he wasn’t worried about illness, but his knee was still a problem.

He was in the middle of an injury that was progressing in its recovery, but he was overdoing it and prolonging the recovery period.

It was very troubling, but at the same time, it was a relief…

‘…Am I, lucky?’

He asked himself.

Elric made a “hmm” sound and rubbed the back of his neck.

‘Master would have surely gotten a kick out of that.’

He was the one who had taught him that taking care of oneself was the most important virtue a knight could have.

Now that he was sitting in his master’s cabin, his thoughts were even more intense.

Elric looked around the cabin.

Everything remained unchanged.

The wooden sword on the wall, the quill and parchment on the desk, the fireplace, the rickety wooden bed.

It was not surprising, given that the only thing he had taken with him when Elric left was his sword.

‘Where are you now and what are you doing?’

Once his mind became at ease, his thoughts started to wander to other places.

As he was confronted with traces of his existence, Elric suddenly remembered his first meeting with his master.

It was eighteen years ago.

It was a snowy winter day, just like today, and Elric was just a six-year-old boy who had been making a name for himself in the village as a troublemaker.

Elric, who had been immersed in knightly play at the time, had led the village children into the back mountains…

…on a demon hunt.

A group of kids who hadn’t known what they had been doing, risking their lives.

Up until that point, they had often played in the back mountains in the name of hunting demons, so none of the children had realized the danger.

It was a time when adults’ words had been considered nothing but nagging.

He had been with a bunch of friends with now blurred out faces, plus Luton and Bart.

Elric had run up the mountain with his friends in tow.

“Grrrr-“

They had encountered a demon that day.

A jet-black body, piercing yellow eyes.

Elric’s remembrance ended with the sight of it.

The rest of the day had become a foggy blur to this day.

All he knew for sure was that he had met the beast that day and had suffered a gaping wound to the nape of his neck, a scar that still lingered beneath his earlobe.

His master had been the man he had met that day.

-“You’re awake.”

Elric had woken up on the bed in his hut to his voice.

His shaggy white hair, his haphazardly grown beard, and his raggedly woven clothing cut from beast skins had given him the appearance of a bandit living in the middle of the mountains.

Yet, he was a mysterious man, with a strange power in his gravelly voice.

“You have the nerve to confront a demon.”

His Master had been the one to save Elric’s life during his confrontation with the demon.

According to him, he had been holding a branch in front of the beast.

It wasn’t until later that Elric was told that if the demon hadn’t been playing, and if his teacher hadn’t spotted them, he would have been killed.

What happened next was still vivid in his mind to this day.

Elric had thanked him through the bandages around his neck and chin.

And that was when the Master had made his offer.

“Th-Thank you…”

“There’s no reason to thank me. I didn’t save your life for free.”

“What?”

“Kid, learn the sword from me.”

On second thought, it was kind of funny.

“Who are you?”

Remembering how reckless he used to be, Elric felt that his past self was truly naive.

And he admired his teacher for putting up with it.

He had answered Elric’s question with one word.

And with that single word, Elric had become captivated.

“Knight.”

His vivid memory of that day still remained clear.

“I am a knight.”

That had been his first meeting with his Master.

Crackle, crackle–

The firewood in the hearth crackled.

Elric poked at the wood with his skewer and smiled wryly.

‘What a strange man.’

Thinking back on his time with his master, there were so many things that seemed strange now.

First of all was his identity, Elric still didn’t know who he was.

He had no ties to the villagers, having lived a life of hunting in the middle of these dangerous mountains.

“I only interact with humans,” he replied one day, when asked why he didn’t go down to the village.

This wasn’t the only oddity.

‘When I think about it, the way he trained was also strange.’

For a man who called himself a knight and who was deeply skilled in the actual art of swordsmanship, his training methods were, in retrospect, strange.

Having spent his life on the battlefield, Elric now understood that a strong body and a refined form of mana were essential to being a knight.

For that, physical training was necessary, and training control of mana through mental cultivation was needed.

But his training had been different.

-”Open your Sword Realm.”

He would only utter that one phrase and then repeatedly spar with him.

No, even the word “sparring” was ridiculous.

What he had done had been to constantly place Elric on the tightrope between life and death.

-”Arise. Humans don’t die that easily.”

All whilst he swung his sharpened sword at Elric.

Sure, he taught mana training, but it was a far cry from training that made you stronger through mental discipline.

Elric still didn’t know the name of the mana technique he had been taught.

He simply borrowed his master’s words and called it “Sword Realm” for convenience.

And the funny thing was, it actually worked.

His swordsmanship had been all about offense, with no defense. And his bizarre mana cultivation technique had the ability to emit more power the more one’s life was at stake.

Even Elric couldn’t deny that these two arts had played a huge role in his rise to become one of the 7 Great Masters of the Continent at the age of 19.

As he continued to think, a question came to his mind.

‘Are you still alive?’

He had left the cabin the day Elric had turned 12 years old.

He had simply said that it was time to go, and even Elric didn’t know his current whereabouts.

He was too strong to have been killed by a sword, but he had already been an old man.

He might have died of old age.

‘Hmm… for some reason, I don’t think so.’

Even when thinking of him dying of old age, Elric could not picture the scene, not even when he thought of cancer.

He let out a wry laugh in this moment.

Hm–

Elric’s body trembled.

His head snapped up.

And his gaze was cast in the direction of the village.

A presence had been caught in his mana net.

“What the…?!”

Elric jumped to his feet.

It had been a strong, mana-covered creature about the size of a Blade Wolf.

‘And not only one!’

They were in a pack.

Five of them.

Spread out in a formation, forming an encirclement around,

“Luton!”

It was Luton.