When My Enemies Began to Regret

No!

She has already been caught up behind. The opponent’s blunt weapon began to swing. Fanora made a surprised face, unable to take any defensive stance.

“

!”

However, when she opened her tightly closed eyes again, the stranger standing behind her was being grabbed by his neck and collapsed.

“Uh?”

It was none other than Carl Andras who brought down that person. Fanora’s thoughts stopped momentarily when she saw Carl behind her.

By the time she showed her panicked look, Carl took down the last remaining kidnapper in the cabin with his own hands. Once he was released from the chains, there was nothing that could stop him.

“…”

In a moment, the cabin was quiet again after a bloody fight. Carl caught his breath and ran his thumb over the corner of his mouth, where he had gagged. The corner of his mouth hurt because he kept biting on it.

“Are you okay? Lady Fanora?” What came out after that was a word of concern, as usual.

Fanora didn’t answer that sentence but spoke urgently in a trembling voice. Even if she wanted to ask how he took off the chains on his own, there was an urgent matter to do first. “T-this is not the time for this, Carl. We have to avoid them quickly.”

“Pardon?”

“I heard them talking outside earlier. This is a trading place. They said their trader will be coming to get you soon. It can’t be just one or two people!”

They couldn’t face the unknown number of new enemies with the poison remaining. So let’s run away quickly. Fanora tried to hold onto her consciousness and relayed the information.

“Trade me…?”

Carl tilted his head at her words. But soon, his red gaze darted back towards the window. He silently walked to the window and looked outside. Listening to the outside for a while, he frowned and said, “I think I hear the sound of horseshoes.”

“Ah, no way they’re already…!”

Fanora looked despairing at his information that a carriage was approaching from afar. It was because she was already at her limit.

Seeing her gritting her teeth, Carl spoke softly, reassuring her. “Don’t worry. The sound I heard is still quite far away, so there’s still time.”

“Yes?”

“Did you see that the horse was tied to the stable when you came here?”

Carl said so and headed straight outside. Where he was headed was a stable attached to the side of the cabin, and Carl opened the closed stable doors one by one, perhaps intending to steal their horses and ride them.

“Let’s run away with this.”

“It’s a dark mountain road, so we won’t be able to speed up. Aren’t we going to be caught up at this rate…?”

“It’s okay. They’re pulling their carriage over there.”

He treated the kidnappers’ horse as if it were his own and naturally rode on it. He stretched out his hand, intending to put Fanora on his back, but she shook her head and climbed into the gray shire next to her.

“Lady Fanora?”

“You’re the teacher who taught me how to ride, so why are you surprised? I know how to ride a horse too!”

Although she had never ridden on such rough terrain before, she at least didn’t neglect her horseback riding practice. She honed this skill in preparation for running away from a crime scene one day.

Fanora soon took the reins of the horse with a nervous face.

Regardless of how she learned horseback riding, it was ultimately a good thing. Because Fanora knew how to ride horses, they could get out of the cabin with greater agility.

“Giddy up!”

It was not long before Fanora’s gray shire leaped out. Carl started running away from his pursuers and followed her.

“How on earth was I brought to such a mountainous valley?”

“I don’t know either. Because I walked frantically so as not to miss your traces.”

Fortunately, they didn’t encounter the pursuers while passing through the forest. As Carl guessed, it was because they were using a carriage to transport the kidnapped person, so their speed slowed down. However, Fanora still maintained her nervousness.

In this state where she was completely injured, she didn’t have the confidence to fight while protecting Carl. She ran at a higher speed so the pursuers could not see even a strand of their hair.

But her impatience soon became the cause of the accident. Just before the lights of the village, the leg of the horse she was driving got caught on something. It was a thick plant root extending in the middle of the road.

“!”

There was no time to scream. The horse bent the knee of its front leg and fell over, and as her posture suddenly disturbed, she panicked and lost hold of the reins. It happened in an instant. Fanora fell directly from this high horse saddle.

Shire then curled up with a bent knee on her front leg, and she missed the reins in panic when her posture suddenly collapsed.

“Ah!”

“

?!”

Fanora closed her eyes tightly as she looked at the horse’s back moving away.

“…!”

The impact would be severe if she fell from this height and hit the ground. However, she felt a different sensation than the pain of breaking a bone. It felt like someone was hugging her from behind with all their might, and instead, she was swept away on a stone road…

“Are you okay?”

“…”

Fanora turned around in amazement at the gentle warmth she felt behind her. Then she saw Carl, who had fallen behind her. Fortunately, there were no injuries as he quickly grabbed her body and helped her fall to a safe position before hitting the ground. But the wound wasn’t the problem now.

“Ah, that… I’m glad you weren’t hurt. I don’t think you can ride that horse any longer, so let’s ride together this time.”

Clearly, Carl was several meters away from her. As she ran behind him, she checked his location frequently, so it was clear there was a considerable distance. This situation where Carl saved her from falling from the horse didn’t make sense.

“…”

Fanora looked back at the situation alone. The conclusion came when she connected the current situation with the situation where he escaped from the chain without anyone’s help. She looked at Carl with an eye that realized something.

“…Aren’t you going to ride it?”

Carl also seemed to have vaguely realized that fact and smiled with an innocent face.

“Let’s go to my mansion first. I think I should seek help from my family.”

Surprisingly, however, Fanora got on the horse without much questioning. It was a wise choice now that escape came first.

They rode the other horse together and started moving again. After running for a few minutes like that, they finally reached a place that could be called a safe zone.

“Then please wait here for a moment.”

Arriving at the capital mansion of Andras, Carl urgently called the butler of the mansion and ordered him to do something.

Fanora waited blankly for him over the mansion’s fence, so she did not hear the exact contents of the conversation, but this could be heard directly from the returning Carl’s mouth.

“I’m glad the matriarch is here at the moment. I just asked her to shut down the forest.”

“…Shut down?”

“We need to catch the people who made us like this! Moreover, the soup the citizens were eating was poisoned. It might take some time because it’s dark, but… If we deploy the family knights, they’ll probably be caught soon.”

Carl was the victim of a sudden kidnapping. Nevertheless, he didn’t look embarrassed and started to clean up himself. Next, people with spears and torches came out of Andras’s mansion. Watching the torch move, he turned again to Fanora, standing on the side of the road.

“Um.” Carl hesitated for a moment as if he had something to say to her.

“Earlier… I was really surprised to see Lady Fanora.”

“…”

“You came to save me, right?”

She must have been sick from drinking poison, but she took a risk to save others. If it hadn’t been for Fanora, he wouldn’t have escaped safely like now. He had to deal with all the witnesses in the cabin to avoid spreading the word that he was the owner of a holy relic. Then, he would have had to fight once again while still being poisoned.

“Thank you very much…”

Carl smiled faintly, not knowing what to do. In fact, more than anything else, he was really happy that Fanora had found him. When he remembered that face, the corners of his mouth didn’t go down.

But Fanora still looked at the ground with a firm face.

“Are you still surprised because you fell off of your horse?”

Carl approached her a few steps with an expression of concern. However…

“!”

“Carl, do you have anything else to say to me?”

Fanora finally looked up as he approached. Her eyes were sharp, and her mouth was twisted as if she would get angry at any moment.

“I had no suspicions at all when I saw you had taken off the chains by yourself, but I just can’t ignore that incident earlier.”

“Lady Fanora?”

“I can’t believe you’ve been hiding this fact until now.”

Fanora said, staring at him with a look of betrayal. “Were you… already the owner of a holy relic?”

“…”

“Why is Ganimede in your hand when it should be in the Holy Kingdom?”

Carl didn’t answer her immediately. It was because his head got complicated by the sudden question.

Then Fanora raised her voice as if she was even more shocked. “If you have such great power, why do you even want eternal life?”

“What?”

“If the power of the Andras family, Ganimede, and Europa are combined…

”

Fanora’s eyes began to waver. When Carl first saw it, he thought it was anger, but as time went by, he could tell that the emotion in her eyes was anxiety.

“You too want to take control of this kingdom with the power of holy relics… Am I right?”

“Why are you being like this? Lady Fanora.”

“You never mentioned Ganimede before! Not even when I was literally tearing my hair out trying to prove my absence from the scene!”

In reality, there was no need for such an overreaction. Keeping the possession of world-class treasures a secret was entirely possible. She might have let it be if it were a few months ago. But the current Fanora had suffered from a person named Aloken Jalier. The duke killed Vasago in the novel out of his greed for the holy relic and also extended his spell on Fanora. That’s why she was afraid of ambitious people.

When she realized that Carl had tried to obtain two of the holy relics, she began to think that he had the same ambition as Aloken.

“B-but this thing…”

When Fanora pressed on, Carl rolled his eyes and cleared his throat. To be honest, it was unfair that he was being scolded.

“Lady Fanora hid the information about the holy relic too.”

“…!”

“You’re the owner of Io, right? I’ve been wondering about this since we sparred in the past. It was clear just now…!”

When he protested with a tearful look on his face, Fanora clenched her fist with a wary face. “So what?”

“Yes? What do you mean by that?”

“Now that you know I’m the owner of Io, do you also want it?”

Carl shouted straight away with a surprised face upon hearing her. “No way!”

Fanora, however, frowned with a grim look that did not satisfy her doubts about him. “Then why do you want Europe when you already have Ganimede? What are you going to do when you’re free from time and distance?”

“T-that’s…”

“You know yourself, don’t you? Suppose a person like you, who has outstanding martial art, can move quickly and have an infinite lifespan. Is there anything they can’t do? Don’t you think so?”

“…”

“If you collect everything, even Io, the kings of all kingdoms will bow before you!”

Although it was clearly her who was angry, and it was she who was scolding him, for some reason, tears began to flow from Fanora’s eyes.

“I see. As expected, you noticed that I had Io since sparring. To get it from me… you approached me with that purpose, right?”

She showed her fear with a crumbling face.

“That’s why you’ve been kind to me? After all, you too?”

“…!”