Every Morning, My Mirror Saves the World - Chapter 27

Chapter 27

“Aaaah!”

Galahad let out a scream fit for a young girl and, on reflex, gripped his sword with both hands and chopped at the corpse’s kneecap. But before he could even touch the Orc King’s bones, the Black Knight had already lunged at him with ferocious speed.

One hand caught Galahad’s descending sword with perfect steadiness. He flipped the blade over, hoisted Galahad on the other end into the air, then flung him out with a flick of his arm like a discus. The entire process was effortless and smooth. Beautiful form, distance exceeding regulation standards. The judges all raised their scorecards: 9.8.

“Quiet!” he growled in a low voice. “Don’t wake him up!”

The Black Knight’s voice carried a rasp as if it had been ground over sand and gravel, and when he lowered it, it was unimaginably imposing. Galahad the discus clutched his forehead and sat up, dazed and spinning. He glanced at him with all the grievance of a wronged little wife and, for once, did not roar in outrage.

“H-h-he isn’t already awake?” Galahad stammered, pointing at the bull-headed Orc.

The minotaur stood there majestically, red light glittering in both eyes. With an aloof gaze that said, “You bunch of trash,” it looked down on the crowd with disdain, maintaining noble, contemptuous silence from beginning to end.

Everyone tensed, ready for battle…

Fifteen minutes passed. Aside from “majestic,” the minotaur had now gained the label “mysterious.” It even disdained to pull the axe out from between its ribs, simply continuing to hang there on the wall, chin raised even higher in scorn.

Everyone’s skill cooldowns finished loading…

At last, after half an hour, Lars shook out the hand that had gone numb from gripping his sword too tightly and concluded hesitantly, “It… seems like it’s just a lamp post?”

In the cold wind, one could almost hear the minotaur’s blood-weeping roar whistle past: …Damn it, I already took my pants off and you’re only figuring that out now?! My family has been playing bit parts for two hundred years, and we’ve never worked this hard just to be background scenery!!

Ruiyin silently patted Galahad on the shoulder, took the old familiar black lines from that backpack, and pasted a background onto the screen.

“Ahaha… looks like it, heh…” Galahad scratched his head with a foolish laugh, then drew his sword and roared at the Black Knight, “But in that case, why did you throw me just now?! Give me a reason! Otherwise, I will absolutely challenge you to a duel!”

“He has not awakened yet.” The Black Knight turned to Ruiyin, his right hand placed over his chest. Without even looking at the invitation to duel, he casually extended two fingers with his left hand, pinched the tip of Galahad’s sword, lifted his wrist, and shook. With an even more girlish scream, Galahad the dueling warrior spread the wings known as “mess around and find out” and flew seven or eight meters into the air, then slammed headfirst into the bull skull with a clang.

“However, he has already shown us the way.” The Black Knight solemnly finished the second half of his sentence, reaching out in passing to catch the falling Galahad, along with the Orc King’s skull that came crashing down with him.

Ruiyin: “…No, please don’t mind me. This really has nothing to do with me.”

She was willing to swear to Xisaluo, the intellectually challenged guild leader moonlighting as the God of War, that she had absolutely no interest in joining that Society of Creative Self-Destruction.

Lars quickly ran to Galahad’s side and, with righteous loyalty, extended the hand of manly friendship to help the Silver Knight up. At the same time, he cautiously tried to remove the bull skull stuck over Galahad’s head. Galahad pressed one hand to his dizzy forehead, his spiral eyes shimmering with emotional tears. “Lars! I knew you were the best after all! Tha-”

Before he could finish, Lars, who had successfully removed the intact skull, spun around in excitement and, as if tossing away a potato chip bag, knocked Galahad back to the ground with a swing of his elbow. Then he sprinted all the way to Ruiyin and called out cheerfully, over and over, “Ruiyin, Ruiyin! Look at this! This was what was glowing just now!”

The potato chip bag: “…Damn it, I will never believe in love again!!!”

The skull Lars presented to her had handsome, fair skin and deeply defined features. It was not hard to imagine what kind of beauty it must have been while alive (…). Ruiyin gazed at its cervical vertebrae, which had been snapped off alive, and at the blazing red eyes that still refused to close even after death. She deeply understood that there was probably no job more miserable than being cannon fodder for this group of people…

“There’s… something in its eyes?” Ruiyin asked hesitantly. She looked up at the Black Knight. He made no move to stop her, so she reached out and gently removed the objects from the skull’s eye sockets.

They were two crimson things, flat and about the size of a palm. They looked a little like crystals, but strangely, they were warm, and when she poked them with a fingertip, they even had a bit of give. The temperature and texture made it take real restraint not to wonder whether these were mutated versions of the Orc King’s eyeballs…

The instant those two crystals left the skull, the bull skull in Lars’s hands shattered into mottled fragments.

The darkness around them rapidly receded at a visible speed. The skeletons and battlefield fell apart like thin ice melting in water. Ruiyin stood frozen in place, still half bent over, the two crystals in her hands. She watched as black mist closed in and then dispersed, and within the twisted, grotesque light, the image of an enormous city slowly emerged.

It was made of gray stone that glimmered with a dim, murky light, stretching endlessly through the vast darkness where no dome could be seen. She saw Gothic spired churches, extravagant Baroque palaces, and the low rooftops of the slums. Yet every building was utterly still and dead, without any light or sound at all.
They were standing before a colossal city gate that towered into the clouds. The gate stood wide open, revealing broad streets wreathed in black mist beyond.

“This is… this is…” Galahad was so excited he could barely contain himself. His legs trembled as he took a step forward. “This is the Royal Capital! I never thought… I never thought I would come here in my lifetime!”

“The Royal Capital?”

“The legendary Undead City,” Lars explained to Ruiyin, his wary gaze fixed on the streets inside. “They say it was the greatest city ruled by the God of Darkness before the war. Almost every powerful evil creature returns to the Royal Capital in the form of Undead after death. But after the war, the Royal Capital vanished along with the God of Darkness. I never imagined… it was hidden here.”

“You’re saying this is a living city?” Ruiyin asked hesitantly. “But it looks empty. And I don’t see any Undead…”

Before she could finish, there was a snap, and the lampposts on either side of the gate flared to life.

It seemed to be only a signal. Under everyone’s eyes, starting from the street before them, the vast Undead City began to glow with a moon-white halo. Every shop and every house lit up. Pearl-white, translucent shadows began weaving through the streets. They were not all entirely human in form. There were slender, beautiful fairies, tall and handsome Dark Elves, and even massive wyverns. Every shadow was expressionless. They crowded the broad streets, shopping blankly or walking in silence. It was clearly a bustling, prosperous scene, yet for some inexplicable reason, it gave off a spine-chilling eeriness.

“The Royal Capital is a very hospitable city,” the Black Knight said calmly, then clapped his hands.

Before the eyes of this group of country bumpkins, which were all but popping out of their sockets, a column of uniformed knights marched out of the city gate in perfect formation. Like the Black Knight, their entire souls were encased in armor. Even in their pearl-white Undead state, the sharp clack of their boots striking the ground could be heard.

The Black Knight clapped his hands softly again, and the knights came to a halt before Ruiyin’s party. The leading knight swept his cloak with magnificent flair and dropped to one knee before Galahad. “Lady Ruiyin, the Captain of the Royal Capital Guard hereby offers you his loyalty.”

Galahad stared, dumbfounded. “?!”

The Black Knight said, “…Ahem.”

The Captain of the Royal Capital Guard, whose entire soul seemed to exude an air of natural cluelessness, raised his head and looked around in confusion. As if realizing his mistake, he hurriedly scrambled up, shifted two meters to the left, and knelt on one knee again. “Lady Ruiyin, the Captain of the Royal Capital Guard now truly offers you his loyalty.”

Lars said, “…Sorry, you’ve got the wrong person.”

The captain obediently got up at once, moved sideways again with the line of Undead behind him, and knelt. “Lady Ruiyin, this time I really, really…”

Expressionless, the Black Knight drew a greatsword out of thin air and stabbed the soul kneeling before him into a puff of white smoke.

…Somehow, it felt like a brothel madam had stabbed the top courtesan to death for failing to satisfy the customer…

Then he turned to face Ruiyin and lowered his head.

Even through the heavy black mask, Ruiyin seemed to feel the focused gaze behind the helmet. The next second, that massive body, over two meters tall, dropped to one knee without hesitation before the frail woman. He held the greatsword aloft in both hands, and behind him, the Undead Knight Order raised their swords in perfect unison with his movement. The Black Knight solemnly kissed the ground before Ruiyin, his emotionless voice like cold iron striking cold iron. “My liege, Fallen Knight Mordova, leading the Royal Capital Guard and seventy-nine thousand Undead warriors, offers you his loyalty.”

Ruiyin remained silent for a long time, and the Black Knight never raised his head. He held that posture, his pure-black form the only color amid the expressionless field of pearl white behind him. He was like boundless night, accompanying the world through the countless ages before heaven and earth first opened.

Ruiyin looked at the sword held level before her, and in a daze, she felt as though he, like the Undead City behind him, had waited in the deathly stillness of this burial ground for over a hundred years, all for the sake of this one moment, when he could offer up those endless years with his own hands.

Before her mind even had time to give the order, she had already gently raised her hand.

And in a corner behind her where she could not see, the Apprentice Knight’s hands were clenched into fists. His body trembled slightly, as though he were desperately suppressing the urge to rush forward. Crimson light flickered wildly in those emerald-green eyes, but in the end, he only bit his lip in restraint and lowered his head in silence. In that instant, all the light on his face dimmed.

Then her hand touched the greatsword.

In an instant, the scenery around Ruiyin collapsed as though it were shattering glass. Dense black mist poured from the Black Knight’s armor. Startled, she took a step back, but the black mist seized her wrist like sentient tentacles and yanked hard. She heard an oddly sharp cry from behind her. Out of the corner of her eye, she glimpsed Lars lunging toward her with a face twisted in terror. Before she could say anything, her entire body was dragged into the mist.

Author’s Note: And so, this chapter has the rhythm of the madam stabbing the top courtesan to death and personally stepping in herself…