Sword Saint? Like... a Knight?

Amidst the cheers, I thought to myself:

A female Knight... like in the novel I'd read. This is truly a fantasy world meant for me!

A cooking skill wasn't bad, but I think something like a mastery of the sword would be welcomed! I've been cooped up all day reading as a hobby even in this life, this change was much appreciated!

But... I'm ultimately a coward.

I was...

Unable to let go of the shell I'd always had.

"I-I see..."

I pushed away the arms of the village chief that was placed onto my shoulders enthusiastically. It triggered some bad memories.

"Hmm, you don't seem to be very excited, Soma?" The village chief questioned me dubiously.

The cheers died down slowly.

"Y-yeah... Uhm... what exactly... is a Sword Saint?"

"Dear heavens, you don't know? That's surprising, coming from the younger daughter of the Eschtalier Family... A Sword Saint is revered as the one who severs lives of evildoers on behalf of the church. The title is only given to a select few every few hundred years, you should take pride in that and serve as the Goddess Maiea's Sword! What is there to doubt?"

The village chief rambled on fanatically all of a sudden. I wished I didn't ask...

I looked behind my older sister Rien.

Although I said older, we were born just minutes apart. We were twins in this world after all.

Rien was watching intently behind me. She let out a worried look.

"...Thank you for the explanation, but after careful thought... I think, I'll stay with my family in this village and humble myself as a simple village girl." I smiled.

...

..

Eh? The surrounding seems kind of cold?

"You... want to stay... in this village?" The village chief stuttered and questioned me.

"That's right! With everyone!" Expecting a cheer, I smiled brightly.

SLAP!

Eh?

I fell to the ground, and looked upwards at the person who had slapped me fiercely.

The village chief was looking down at me with a cold gaze.

"You... you're an oddity in our village. Who would dare reject the holy tribulations of our Goddess Maiea and deny the sacred position as the Sword Saint?! You, are you of the Chaos Allignment after all? Filthy, get this lass out of my house!"

I was thrown out.

My mind was blank. What just happened?

I could see Rien giving the village chief a muderous gaze, before exiting the cottage and running towards me with a worried look.

I just... rejected the position of a Sword Saint, that was all...

On that day, Rien left her abilities unchecked and we both went home quietly.

..

The next day, the plants that we had cultivated outside our house was smashed.

Our parents were baffled.

"Who is so terrible to do this?!"

"Martha, I'll be on night duty tonight. Sleep with the kids."

"...Okay..."

Our father never found the culprit, and with each passing day, bad things kept happening to our house.

Our wheat crop for the year was destroyed by some troublemaker and our house was ransacked by a burglar. Many valuables were missing during that incident.

Our mother who had constantly experienced a sharp pain in her belly since our birth had the pain worsened during this period of time. The excruciating pain she felt internally drained her of her livelihood and her complexion. She would sometimes sit on the vandalized front porch silently, as if in a vegetable state.

Father had called for a healing magician he had kept in touch with during his active days, to cure her abnormal state as well. But there was nothing wrong that was prescribed. Mother's strange illness just kept getting worse every day.

As for me, I experienced something overwhelming in my stomach as well. But instead of feeling tired like Mother, I just felt a little dizzy and would sometimes throw up from the nausea induced by the dizzyness.

Rien who had nothing happen to her was extremely concerned, especially for my wellbeing.

She had went into the woods without anyone's knowledge and picked some herbs she had thought to be useful and fed me some medicine that supposedly cures my symptoms, but they never worked.

A week passed and our father could not take the pressure any more. He had been staying awake for a very long time and he still could not come to a conclusion who the culprit was. Deciding to take matters to his own hands, he went around and hung around the village square to look for clues and question suspicious people.

That day he decided to venture outside was the day that turned him into another person. He would not come home on days to end and when he did, he was always drunk. He became more violent in his attitude, picking on every small things that happened inside the cottage.

It reminded me of my mother.

...Until one day, our parents learnt of the truth that happened during the Rite of Occupation.

"Stop Len! She's only 16!"

"She's already 16! To have kept this behind our backs, how shameful is this to our family! To the Eschtalier name given by His Majesty!"

"L-Len, you're not like this..."

"Shut up you whore! I knew it, it's just like he said back then, you're just so intent so sullying our proud warrior lineage huh?!"

Even Rien and I were shocked at the drastic change in attitude of our father.

"L...Len...is that... your real... feelings?"

"You fucking whore, step aside. This little daughter of ours needs to be taught a less-"

"!!!"

"Y-you... .... gahhaaa!"

Blood spurted out of Len's mouth, as he looked at the knife that was plunged into his chest.

"Aha...ahahaha...ahahahahahahahaha!"

"M...mother?" I looked at the scene with dread. Rien quickly covered my eyes.

"Ggghhh... hah...ggh.."

Father tumbled onto the floor motionlessly. Mother detached the knife from Len's body strongly.

Blood sprayed onto my face.

Blood.

The laughter suddenly stopped.

Mother turned around and looked at us who were stumbled onto the ground.

"It's all your fault. You cursed existence. It's all your fault...My body began to deteriorate like this after giving birth to you. Everything fell apart because of you. You. You. You. You. You. You. You. You. You. You. You. "

"N-no... don't come closer... not again... not again..."

I clutched both of my ears with both hands and waddled backwards in fear.

The woman we called Mother walked towards us unsteadily, holding the bloodied knife in both of her hands.

Blood.

"IT'S ALLLLL YOURRR FAULT!!!"

I covered my eyes instinctively.

Martha fell. Blood flowed out of a knife wound on her left eye profusely.

"GYAAAA!!! MY EYE! MY EYEEEEEEEEE!!! RIEN, YOU'RE WITH HER TOO?! I SEE, I SEE WHAT THIS ISSSSSSSSS!!! YOU'RE BOTH MONSTERS! I GAVE BIRTH TO MONSTERS! KAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA-"

Her laughter ended with Rien's stab towards her heart.

"...It's all right now, Soma. I'm here."

Blood.

"Soma?"

Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood.

"Bea. Utiful."

Rien looked towards the location where Len had laid motionlessly.

He suddenly stood back up as if his cut strings were reattached by a puppeteer.

"So beautiful, Soma Suzuhara. It was worth every single effort I had exhausted to put you two here. In this accursed world~"

Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood.

"Tch, words aren't registering in her head... this is bad, it might develop into a serious trauma if I don't do this right... and who are you! Why do you know Soma's name from that previous life?! Wh-"

Len's body stood up, and his mouth moved inorganically, surprising Rien.

"I'm. Glad. You. Asked. I am. The. Instigator. Of this. Entire. Thing. The misfor. Tunes you have. Received. Was from. None ot. Her than. Me~"

The lifeless body made a creepy smile at the end of its speech.

Rien readied the knife, standing in between me and Len.

"Oh dear. Oh dear. A Rough One. I see. No Mat. Ter, You. Want to know. Who I a. M? Here. You. Go~"

Starting from "here", Len's body began to deflate, as the contents within began to burst out violently from its back. A part of its neck was imploded as well.

The hideous form was engraved within my motionless eyes, as blood continued splattering out from the broken organs of my father.

"I am. Har'Lus. Your careta. Ker from no. W on, Rien. Tokuzaki~"

"What... the...-!"

Rien's mouth was snapped tight by a thick and strong spider web. She was restrained in a second.

The web had come out from the monster's neck. That's right, the neck had been split open and the contents inside did not resemble a human's exoskeleton at all. It was replaced with... countless spiders, crawling upwards the head of the body.

Red and black spiders. It's back was forming a number of heads that did not look like Len's. Instead, they all looked different.

But they had lifeless eyes and blueish skin, as if they were heads severed from corpses that were dead a long time ago.

It was a grotesque scene.

Rien was quickly captured by that thing, but I couldn't move a muscle.

I watched as Rien screamed in horror, and the monster shoved her inside his bulging back with those lifeless heads.

I could not move.

Move. Move! Move!!! Move!!!!!!!

I can't... I can't do it. No more. I don't want to experience any more... I can't do it... I can't do it...

I started to leak from my bottom, as urinal fluids came out of my skirt and formed a pool beneath me.

The monster cracked Len's head sideways a little, and gave a relieved look with Len's face.

"Ah, that's better."

It made him look braindead with that weird smile while drool was coming out of its mouth. His speech became more coherent once he did that.

"I have no more business with that annoying woman..., but I do have it with you, little miss~"

I can't do it... I can't do it...I can't do it... I can't do it...I can't do it... I can't do it...

"Tell you what, it's still not enough~ So what say you we play a gameee~ You love games don't you, Soma Suzuhara?"

"Let's play a game, hey let's play a game~ hey~... Tokuzaki Rien will die if you don't respond?"

?! Rien! Rien! Rien! ... Ugh! Rien! Ri...en...she was...eat...eaten... Ugh!

Snapping out of my dizzy state, I started to puke while tears came out of my eyes uncontrollably. I was incredibly weak, I could not move after seeing the blood around me, but I tried to squeeze in all of my remaining consciousness to listen to the monster who had eaten Rien.

"Now, now, that wouldn't be any fun at all would it? If you clear this game however, I'll return her to you. How does that sound? She's in truth, alive... albeit not in a satisfactory state~"

The monster turned its back and revealed Rien who looked unconscious. But her body was still intact.

"?!"

I was now lying flat on the ground with my cheek against the wooden floor, and the monster was using Len's body to squat down and face me at eye level creepily. I was on the verge of passing out, looking at the blood on its face, but I still needed to hear what he meant before I passed out!

"Aha, now you're listening~ Alright, listen up~ I am in truth, not just any monster but a parasite. And among the various things I can do, there is something called the Mana Drugworm."

The parasite plucked out a lime-green centipede from Len's left ear. It was alive and wriggling. He flicked it a couple of times.

"The Mana Drugworm is not a combat type, but a leeching type. It drains the host of its mana and dies with the host just like a parasite. But when the host gives birth to a baby, the Drugworm can continue to live by attaching itself to the umbilical cord of a baby, and continue growing inside the new lifeform."

...?

"Yes, the drained mana is stored inside of the baby's body until they grow up and the cycle repeats itself. However, the new host can almost never be able to adapt to a foreign mana flow inside of their body. This causes basic symptoms like Vomitting and Hypertension."

W-wait a minute...

"That's right, I had planted the Drugworm inside of your mother a long time ago. And now it's continuing to live on inside of your body! Hahaha~ Oh dear, that must've been a strong stimulant... I guess it can't be helped. Shock Cure."

A strange magic enveloped my body and I no longer felt nauseous, but I was not spared from the nightmare he was spinning out like a tale he seemed to have recited a number of times.

"See, my game here, is for you to find me and try to take your friend... your sister away from me. Of course, you need strength right? That's what the Drugworm is for~ Since you weren't gifted with anything, I had everyone believe that you were the Sword Saint~ Haha, unbelievable. This village, isn't really stringent on its checks. I'm appalled. Really appalled."

"But thanks to that, everything turned out fine the way it did, didn't it~? The drugworm will grant you an excessive amount of mana, and it's up to you what you want to do with it. Maybe learn a couple of sword skills with it and maybe really take on the mantle of a Sword Saint? That'd be really amusing to watch~"

I'm... almost... losing consciousness...

"Ah... that explains pretty much everything about the game. You have a pool of mana, and you need to find me, however long it takes~ ... Ah, ah, almost forgot to leave a mark on my precious possession. The symbol of a manservant."

"Nnnnarghhh!!!"

A powerful sting of heat attacked my abdomen, as if wanting to embed itself onto my body. I felt something disgusting moving around the area where the heat was applied.

"There you go, I've left a permanent scar on your abdomen where you shall eventually give birth to more children for the Drugworm~ Do you want to know what it reads in Parvula?"

!!! !!! !!! !!! !!! !!! !!! !!! !!! !!! !!! !!! !!! !!! !!! !!!

"It reads, The accursed blood of a child-birthing slut~KAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA~

Continue and struggle with all your might and suffer, try your hardest and end with failure at the end of it all! Become fodder for a greater pool of despair! Know that one day when you stand before me, is the day you will be reminded of this curse once more!"

On that day, a deep burning hatred for Parasites was born.

"Wake up already, imbecile."

The continuation of the memories was stopped there, and I returned to the present when a commanding voice shook my consciousness awake.

I slowly opened my eyes.

I ... I can't feel my legs... my body...

Ah, that's right, we're in battle aren't we...

T-This person in front of me is...?

White Shigaraki?