In the days that followed, Margarita began intentionally or unintentionally training one of Joshua’s passive abilities from the game.
Sword Saint’s Intuition.
This skill accompanied Joshua from the start of the game until the final battle against the Demon King.
It allowed Joshua to predict an opponent’s attacks to a certain extent. In the game, this manifested as, “What skill is this guy going to use to attack which teammate?”
“Seeing it in action, it’s really no different from a sixth sense, is it?” Margarita secretly aimed her gun at Joshua. After testing it, she found that the gun could fire even without being loaded with bullets, though it only emitted a certain impact—strong enough to stun a wild Horned Rabbit. She had tried stuffing “ammo” like pebbles inside, but not only could she only fit one at a time, but pulling the trigger failed to launch the pebble and instead left nothing but crushed debris in the barrel.
The Star-Spun Stone had been tied with a cord and hung around her neck as a pendant the day after she brought it back.
After testing the strength of the impact, Margarita spent her days greeting Joshua with shots from the gun. At first, she would give him a verbal signal, but now she often fired out of the blue.
“Bang!”
The impact grazed the side of Joshua’s ear and struck the tree trunk behind him, shaking loose a few withered leaves.
“Oops, you dodged it.” Margarita stepped out from behind the tree, her hands clasped together with a gentle and slightly apologetic smile. “Sorry, Joshua, I forgot to mention it beforehand again.”
Joshua lowered his sword and looked at her, a flash of helplessness in his blue eyes. He really wanted to say that she had said the same thing yesterday, but seeing Margarita with her eyes curved and hands clasped in apology, he swallowed the words. “...It’s okay. I’m used to it.”
“That’s good then.” Margarita smiled as she approached him, brushing the fallen leaves and dust off his shoulder. “Are you tired today?”
Joshua shook his head, his ears turning slightly red.
“Then it’s perfect.” Margarita withdrew her hand and took out a cloth pouch from behind her waist, its opening tied with a butterfly knot of hemp rope. “Ta-da! This is for you!”
Joshua was stunned. “What is this?”
“A fifteenth birthday present, of course.” Margarita tucked the pouch into his hand and tilted her head, her white braid sliding off her shoulder. “Today is your birthday; did you forget?”
Joshua’s mouth opened slightly. He looked down at the pouch and then back up at her. He had indeed forgotten. Every year on his birthday, his mother would boil an egg for him, and his father would pat his head and say, “Another year older,” and that was it. The children of Percy Village didn't have grand birthday gifts; not many even remembered their own birthdays.
He gripped the pouch, suddenly feeling a bit tight in the throat. “...You remembered.”
“Of course I did.” She smiled, her eyes curving, her tone light. “Want to open it and see?”
Joshua untied the hemp rope. Inside the pouch lay a pendant threaded with a dark brown leather cord.
It was a thumb-sized stone, flat and round, its surface polished smooth and warm. Its color was a deep blue with silver flecks, like the night sky over Percy Village. It was heavy, possessing a weight that felt solid in his palm.
“I found this stone by the stream and polished it for a long time.” Margarita pointed to the silver flecks on the stone’s surface. “These shiny parts are mica. I specifically chose the piece with the most. If you wear it around your neck, it won’t get in the way when you fight. And...” She lowered her voice, leaning in mysteriously. “I secretly asked the old nun at the church to bless it. They say it has the power to keep you safe.”
It was all made up.
The stone was indeed found by the stream, and the polishing indeed took nearly half a month, but the old nun at the church knew nothing about it. Margarita remembered that in the game, Joshua’s end-game equipment list included an accessory called the “Star-Guardian Stone” that provided powerful magic defense. She couldn't get her hands on a real Star-Guardian Stone for Joshua, but she could manage a beautiful, polished stone with a plausible story woven around it.
After all, a gentle childhood friend was supposed to give this kind of handmade gift.
Joshua clutched the pendant in his palm and looked down at it for a long time. “...Thank you.” His voice was lower than usual, the end of it trailing off slightly. He carefully placed it around his neck. The dark brown leather cord rested against his neck, and the blue stone hung just below his collarbone, nearly the same color as his eyes.
Margarita watched the stone rest quietly against his chest and secretly breathed a sigh of relief. Good, the size and position were just right.
She clapped her hands together, her smile gentle and bright. “Alright, now that the gift is delivered, remember to ask your mom to boil an egg for you when you get home tonight. Now...” She pulled out the silver-white gun from behind her waist again and spun it on her fingertip. “Shall we do one last round? I promise we’ll finish for the day after this one shot.”
Joshua gripped his new pendant and looked at her smiling face, suddenly feeling that Margarita was even gentler than usual today. He nodded and raised his sword once more.
“Here it comes.”
Margarita raised the gun, aiming slightly to the left of Joshua’s shoulder. Joshua lowered his center of gravity slightly, his gaze fixed on the muzzle. The wind blew through the grass between them, sending his black hair and her white hair fluttering backward simultaneously.
Then she pulled the trigger.
This time, Joshua stepped to the right at almost the exact moment her finger tightened. The impact grazed his left arm, tugging at the fabric of his sleeve. After steadying himself, he instinctively looked up at Margarita, wanting to say, “I dodged it pretty well that time, didn't I?” but he saw the expression on Margarita’s face had frozen.
Her gaze had passed right over him, landing somewhere far behind him.
Joshua followed her gaze and turned around.
On the western horizon, the sky, which had been painted with the colors of sunset, was being torn apart. It was as if someone had sliced a hole in a canvas with a knife. The edges of the rift glowed with a dark purple hue, and what surged from that gap was neither cloud nor wind.
It was a dense swarm of black dots, pouncing from the air toward the ground.
Before Joshua could process what that was, Margarita had already grabbed his wrist.
Her grip was incredibly strong—nothing like the gentle way she usually held his hand. Joshua looked down and saw her knuckles turning white as she gripped his wrist, the blue veins on the back of her hand bulging slightly.
“Joshua.” Her voice was very quiet, nearly carried away by the wind.
He looked up.
Margarita was staring at the rift, her long white hair flying backward in the intensifying wind. In those blue eyes of hers, which were identical to his, the reflection of that violet-black rift in the sky shimmered.
Then Joshua saw clearly. Those black dots surging from the rift were falling toward the ground, each one exploding into a small puff of grayish-black smoke as it landed.
A Demon Race attack.
Margarita’s pupils contracted sharply.
No. No, no, no.
In the game’s timeline, there was still a full year until Joshua’s sixteenth birthday. Even if they were to act early, it should have been about six months from now.
She was supposed to have time.
But the western sky was being torn open inch by inch by that rift. The dark purple light spread like a festering wound, and the shadows pouring from the rift were getting closer and closer.
The Demon Race was early. They were a whole year early.
“Margarita?” Joshua’s voice came from her side, filled with a teenager’s typical tension and bewilderment. He was waiting for her answer. He was waiting for her to tell him what was happening, waiting for her to say the words “it’s okay” with a smile, just as she always did.
Margarita’s mouth opened. That gentle and composed smile that had always been fixed on her face finally shattered completely.
“...Run,” she said.
Her voice carried a tremor she didn't even notice herself. She gripped Joshua’s wrist even tighter.
So tight that her nails were nearly sinking into his skin.
Joshua stumbled half a step as she yanked him, then he started running to keep up. The two of them rushed through the bushes by the stream, past the shadow of the old oak tree, and toward the direction of the screams rising one after another from the village.
Margarita’s mind was racing. The village—they had to go back to the village. Her mother and Joshua’s parents were all there. Moreover, she had buried a heap of “emergency measures” in various corners of the village that she had spent half a year preparing; if she didn't activate them, they were nothing more than a pile of junk metal in the ground.
She bit her lip and ran, her long white hair scattering in the wind. The pale pink pendant on her chest swung violently, the stardust inside churning frantically as if it had been startled awake.
The first wave of the Demon Race had already landed.
Margarita heard the first loud crash from the village, a sound like a wooden house being smashed by something heavy. That was followed by more screams—women’s, children’s, elders’—all jumbled together as they surged from the village entrance, passing through Margarita and Joshua and scattering into the twilight.
In the middle of running, Joshua suddenly yanked his hand free from her grip.
Margarita looked back and saw the boy had already drawn the iron sword from his back. His blue eyes reflected a collapsing roof not far away and a distorted dark shadow charging out of the dust. He crouched low, his sword tip pointing diagonally at the ground.
“My mom’s in there,” he said.
Margarita’s heart gave a sudden wrench. That direction! The blacksmith shop!
She recognized it instantly—Joshua’s home.
She reached out and pressed her hand firmly onto Joshua’s shoulder, her strength enough to make his form halt. “Don’t rush,” her voice was hurried but still carried that soul-soothing power. “Go around the side. The one in front is too big; your sword isn’t sharp enough yet.”
Your stats aren’t high enough, my Sword Saint.
Joshua glanced back at her. For a moment, his eyes were filled with shock. His sweet childhood friend, always so gentle and warm, had never spoken with such a certain, commanding tone before.
But a second later, he had already changed direction.
The two of them moved quickly toward the blacksmith shop, sticking to the shadows of the houses. Margarita scanned the surroundings as she ran; she had walked this path hundreds of times and remembered every tree and every stone. The elm tree by the library entrance with a broken branch, the moth-eaten wooden pillar on the mill’s outer wall.
She stopped abruptly at the library entrance, knelt down, and pulled a clump of weeds from under the elm tree with one hand, dragging out a piece of hemp rope the thickness of a finger. The rope was connected underground and was pulled taut. She gave it a sharp yank and heard a muffled “clack” nearby.
Without time to explain, she grabbed Joshua and kept running.
Just as they passed the mill’s outer wall, a loud crash sounded behind them. A low-tier demon chasing them had stepped right into a trap; the ground suddenly caved in, and the creature’s lower body became trapped in the pit, shrieking as it struggled.
Joshua glanced back at the trap and then at Margarita. He realized he didn't know the person in front of him at all. When was all of this prepared? What else have you prepared? Was all the training we did together also something you orchestrated?
But he asked nothing.
The moment they rounded the corner, Margarita saw it. Half the roof of the blacksmith shop had collapsed, and the wooden door had been smashed to pieces on the ground. Smoke and dust billowed from the doorway. Joshua’s mother was being dragged out by something. A grayish-black, scaly arm was clutching her shoulder as she struggled desperately, her nails scratching several white marks into the threshold.
Before Joshua could charge out, Margarita raised the silver-white handgun in her hand.
She aimed at the elbow joint of that grayish-black arm and pulled the trigger. An impact shot out with a “bang,” hitting the gap between the scales perfectly. The demon shrieked in pain and its arm loosened for a split second. Joshua had already charged in, his iron sword slashing down diagonally at the joint of that arm.
The blade cut in less than two inches, but it was enough. Low-tier demons, like magical creatures, had little intelligence; once provoked, it dropped its prey and turned toward Joshua with a low, muffled growl.
Margarita stood in the dust outside the door, her silver-white gun still radiating a faint heat. Joshua’s mother had fallen to the ground but had only sustained minor injuries. Joshua was now facing off against the demon, while sounds of crashing and shattering continued to echo from other parts of the village.
The pale pink pendant hanging from her chest glowed faintly in the twilight.
She saw the low-tier demon brace its claws against the wall—a move she had seen many times in the game. That was the wind-up for a tail swipe.
“Joshua! Watch out!” she shouted.
Joshua had already begun to dodge as she shouted, but he misjudged the direction. Margarita’s heart squeezed tight, but then she saw the boy force a twist in his body mid-dodge, wrenching his center of gravity back and just barely avoiding the tail as it swept past. The tip of the tail grazed his chest, sending the blue stone pendant around his neck flying upward.
Joshua steadied himself, gasping for breath, his forehead drenched in sweat.
Margarita’s hands were shaking.
The Demon Race had arrived a full year early. The traps she had buried underground were less than seventy percent complete. Joshua’s intuition training had only progressed to the third stage of her plan.
Far away, another loud crash came from the east side of the village. Her home was in that direction.
Margarita fired a shot at the demon.
“This way!” she shouted to Joshua. “Lure it out to the clearing by the mill!”
Her voice was loud and urgent in the twilight. Her white hair was stained with dust, and a tear had been ripped into her skirt; she looked nothing like the melancholic girl who sat on a branch swinging her legs.
Behind her was Joshua, gasping for air in the blacksmith shop, and his mother slumped on the ground. Further away, the sounds of shattering and sobbing continued to rise from Percy Village. She ran toward the clearing, her silver-white gun swinging at her waist, and the pale pink pendant on her chest shone exceptionally bright in the fading light.
She had only one thought in her mind.
Her mother was still at home.
Rate on N.U.
