Chapter 400: Putting an End to That Dream

Clang, clang, clang-clang.

The greatsword dragged across the ground, its tip striking the stones and playing out a tense, urgent rhythm. Evelia’s heartbeat matched its irregular tempo, leaving her with a faint, suffocating feeling.

Armand walked forward at an unhurried pace, dragging the heavy blade behind him. The ground at his feet was already littered with the corpses of savage wolves.

He focused on clearing the ferocious wolves on the ground, while Evelia took care of the troublesome crows above.

Neither of them understood how exactly this hallucination had come about. It felt as if someone else had quietly taken care of all the other threats for them, leaving them both with a subtle sense of doubt. Almost at the same moment, their eyes met, but this fleeting connection was quickly mistaken for another trick of the mind, and they both turned their heads away.

Above, the crows fell to the ground one after another. Around them, the wolves had been hacked into chunks of meat. If the situation weren’t so urgent, Armand might have even thought to collect the better cuts for future rations.

“……”

Looking at the scene in front of him, White Dove felt troubled.

Armand and Evelia’s stamina seemed endless, while his own “animal friends” were limited. And unlike Rachel, he didn’t have the ability to bring the dead back to life.

If it were only Red Crow, things might still be manageable. But with Armand here as well, the situation was turning tricky.

As expected, a direct confrontation was more trouble than it was worth… better to bend and yield when needed. In a situation like this, retreat was the wisest choice.

Back then, White Dove had taken advantage of Armand’s illness, using the always headstrong Gray Dove to finish him off. Gray Dove’s self-destruction had been unexpected, but ultimately it didn’t change much. After all, that was the only real use White Dove had for him.

Later, White Dove used psychological warfare to break Red Crow’s spirit. Everything had gone according to plan. He had even been searching for Rachel’s whereabouts, wanting to confirm whether that alchemist could truly revive someone after being blown to pieces.

But what he hadn’t expected was that Armand hadn’t truly died. His physical body had been discarded, but his soul preserved. Nor had he expected that the nearly broken Evelia would force herself to step out of the paradise of her hallucination.

This turn of events was… quite unexpected.

White Dove had calculated each step in advance, but he hadn’t foreseen that at the very end, such a reversal could occur.

Back when Blue Sparrow saw the resurrected Rachel, she hadn’t known that Rachel had already been killed by White Dove once before, so she never mentioned it to him. That single gap in information was enough to give the revived Rachel the chance to turn the tide.

—Without me, the world really would fall apart.

If Rachel knew the true course of events, she’d probably say something like that.

And now, the “savior” herself was hiding in the shadows of the forest, cloaked to conceal her presence, watching the scene unfold from the front row at close range.

When she saw Evelia, she was stunned. Like Armand, she didn’t know if this was another trick of White Dove’s.

But compared to Armand, who was busy fighting back, Rachel had more freedom to carefully observe whether this “Evelia” was truly the real thing.

Although she stayed alert for any traces of White Dove’s hallucinogens… judging from Evelia’s movements and the way the enemies reacted to her attacks, Rachel began to feel that the Evelia in front of her… was indeed the real one.

From what had happened after the fire, Evelia was most likely taken back by the House of Nightingales, and that was the thing Armand feared most. If Evelia really had been taken there, the Second Prince might have had her silenced immediately. That man was so cold-blooded he’d dared to blow up the palace; a disposable assassin would mean nothing to him.

But now, what was going on?

If the Evelia in front of them really was her, and that was truly White Dove… how had the two of them ended up together?

Ah—could it be that White Dove had captured Evelia as an alchemy test subject, and on her way to escape or hunt him down, she happened to cross paths with Armand, who had also come here to investigate?

Could the world really have such coincidences?

Armand had originally planned to follow the route he remembered and fight his way back to the House of Nightingales, but now it seemed things might get easier.

Still… more important than that was figuring out how to deal with White Dove.

That man might be a high-ranking officer in the House of Nightingales, and capturing him could prove useful. But in Armand’s eyes, killing him was far safer.

A man skilled in poisons, illusions, and even psychological warfare, better to eliminate him entirely than risk leaving behind such a dangerous loose end.

So, in the plan he and Rachel had made, Armand leaned toward a simple approach: see him, kill him, and leave no room for future trouble. A walking time bomb like this would explode sooner or later.

If he wanted to vent his anger, he could even do to White Dove what White Dove had once done to Rachel, cut him into pieces, tear apart his organs, and then lay his flayed face on top of the pile like a grotesque gravestone.

White Dove, of course, had no intention of dying.

He decided to stall for time. His “animal friends” weren’t limitless, but there were still some in the forest that should be heading toward him, guided by the sound of his whistle.

Once things got “lively” again, he could use the chaos to slip away unharmed.

“Don’t be in such a hurry,” he said, twirling the rope dart in his hand. He spread his arms in a seemingly non-aggressive stance.

“We can have a nice talk, can’t we? You know I love a good conversation. You could tell me what you—”

Clang!!

Before he could finish, Evelia was already charging at him.

Talk? She had no interest in talking.

That jab earlier—“Do you regret it?”—might have been brushed aside by her, but as he’d said, she did regret things. That was exactly why she didn’t want to do anything else she might regret.

Like right now, if she could kill him, she would.

She had already said it: she didn’t hold grudges overnight. Which meant she wouldn’t delay when it came to striking.

Clang! Clang!!

White Dove might have his hands open, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t fight back. His mind was on high alert, allowing him to react instantly and block her attacks.

Even so, he was nearly “out of ammo.” The few remaining wolves and crows were tangled up with Armand nearby, his reinforcements hadn’t arrived yet, and the hallucinogen’s effects on Evelia had worn off considerably. Without distractions, White Dove was no match for her, though he blocked a few fatal strikes, wounds were already accumulating on his body.

“Kh—! Damn it…”

White Dove stumbled back under her assault, his rope dart spinning so fast it was close to tangling. One hand was busy blocking her attacks, while the other reached into a hidden pocket in his cloak.

From it, he pulled out a red crystal.

“Watch out!”

Armand, dealing with the wolves, caught the movement in the corner of his eye. Without thinking, he shouted a warning. He still wasn’t sure if the Evelia before him was real or just a hallucination, but instinct pushed him to shove aside the heavy wolf in front of him and move toward her.

“—Hyah!!!”

But someone else got there first, a small black-clad figure darted out from the side.

In terms of distance, Rachel, who had been hiding nearby and watching, was the closest. She threw herself forward without hesitation.

She didn’t have advanced combat skills, but she had learned brute-force charges from Armand. Accelerating straight at White Dove, she slammed into him like an iron mountain, knocking him off balance.

Evelia, quick on the uptake though unsure of the details, caught the red crystal as it slipped from his hand.

And without a second thought, with no better way to deal with it, she shoved it straight into White Dove’s mouth, wide open from the hit he’d just taken.

Crunch.

Because something was suddenly shoved into his mouth, White Dove instinctively closed his jaw, and in doing so, bit straight through the red crystal.

Crack!

Red liquid inside splattered out together with blood from the wounds in his mouth.

“Cough—! Cough, cough…!!!”

The sharp crystal shards, coated in the red liquid, tore into his throat, making even his screams hoarse and painful. Stumbling, he fell to the ground, coughing violently as he tried to spit out what he had just accidentally swallowed.

It was no ordinary substance, it was a highly lethal poison, extracted from Armand’s blood.

White Dove had studied Armand’s blood, isolating the toxins and refining them into a concentrated, deadly poison. The potency was so extreme that it didn’t need to be swallowed, simple contact with an open wound was enough to trigger its effects. That was why he made the crystal so sharp and fragile, even without applying it to an existing injury, one could simply create a cut and let the poison seep in.

Now, with his mouth cut open by the shards, White Dove felt the burn of the poison searing into the wounds, and worse, he had swallowed half a mouthful of it.

The intense burning in his stomach made him feel worse than dead, and his internal organs began failing at an alarming speed.

Of course, he had also created an antidote, something Rachel had never managed. He had both extracted the poison and invented its cure, a cure that, in theory, could have saved the old Armand.

He was a genius, but that didn’t change the fact that he was a villain.

“Haa… khh…! Cough, cough…”

Clearly, for someone who never used alchemy marks, fumbling for the antidote in a hurry was difficult.

Armand looked at him and suddenly remembered how he himself had once been lying on the ground, bleeding from every orifice.

Now, with White Dove staring up at him in desperation, he looked much like Armand had back then.

But… so what?

Armand simply watched, without a trace of pity. In fact, once he realized where the poison had come from, he felt nothing but disgust.

“Uh—ghhh…!”

White Dove’s whole body trembled as he pulled a small white vial from his pocket, the antidote to the very poison now killing him.

Clink, roll…

But before he could muster the strength to lift it to his mouth, his arm gave out. The vial rolled away… and stopped at Armand’s feet.

Crack.

With a sharp sound, Armand stomped it into pieces without hesitation.

This was something that could have saved his past self, but he no longer needed it. And he had no intention of letting the antidote survive for someone to make again the formula for the poison. He would never allow anyone else to suffer as he once had.

White Dove, his vision fading and his face covered in blood, glanced at Evelia… then at Armand.

—Ha.

Suddenly, as if madness had seized him in his final moments, he gave a silent laugh.

At least in the end, he had proven the poison truly worked.

This toxin, impossible for others to recreate, had been distilled by his own hands. And not only that, he had even made the antidote.

Unlike alchemy, which required remaking a body and losing one’s true self before curing a disease, his method only needed a single medicine. One dose, and a person could live.

Surely… that made him more of a genius than that so-called alchemist. He was the true doctor who could control life and death.

Thud.

White Dove’s hand fell limply to the ground, the white collar of his cloak now soaked in red.

This so-called “genius apothecary,” the opposite of Rachel, was the first to put an end to himself in their clash of ideals.

Rachel could live forever through alchemy, but she had long since lost everything that made her who she was. That body, that face, that name, all had faded away with time.

White Dove had always used his own body to push through medical challenges, but he only had one life. No matter how much healing he achieved, he still had only that one life.

If his thinking hadn’t been so twisted, perhaps there could have been a chance to work together and save more people.

“...Haa…”

With White Dove’s death, the wolves and crows also dispersed on their own. After seeing so many of their companions’ corpses, even the bloodlust they had been forced to hold on to faded away.

Evelia sat weakly on the ground. Maybe she was still shaken, she didn’t dare take a deep breath and couldn’t fully relax.

“......”

Armand silently walked over to her. He stared at her for a moment, then, with the clinking sound of his armor, sat down beside her.

“...Mr. Armand… thank you…”

She kept her head lowered, not looking at him.

Even though she was saying words of thanks, her tone felt heavy, like a farewell.

“I’m sorry… I really wanted to try my best on my own… but I didn’t expect to see you again… I’m sorry… I was too weak… After this… I probably won’t see you again, right… I… I’ll do my best…”

As she spoke, she hugged her knees and turned her head toward him, like she wanted to take one last look.

Biting her lip, she forced herself to look strong, holding back so he wouldn’t see her pitiful, slightly wronged expression.

“I’m sorry… thank you… and… goodbye… Mr. Armand.”

She held back her tears as she said her final farewell.

Armand blinked at her, a bit dazed, staring blankly.

“...”

“...?”

After a moment of silently staring at each other, Evelia let out a questioning sound.

“Mr. Armand… you’re not disappearing?”

“Hm?”

Armand looked around, glancing left, then right, then even behind himself.

“You mean me?”