The Peaceful Life of a Maid Who Hides Her Power and Enjoys It

<Episode 67>

 

Gavroche raised his hand into the air.

After giving her some first-aid to stop the bleeding, he was thinking of taking this sword-demon to the Berkeley-Gratten family.

 

However, the knights who were supposed to jump into the waterfall one by one at his call did not respond.

 

Only then did Gavroche realize that his surroundings were suspiciously quiet.

Someone else was nearby.

 

‘Are all the knights dead?’

 

Without so much as a scream?

His agony was short-lived. He put his sword on the ground and tore the woman’s sleeve. He had to stop the bleeding on her shoulders first.

 

When the pale skin under her garment was revealed, Gavroche was enveloped in confusion a second time.

 

This was not the arm of someone who wielded a sword.

Sure, for a woman, she had strong muscles and a good posture, but that wasn’t enough to be able to wield a sword.

 

‘What on earth is this swordswoman?’

 

When he faced the doubts he’d been ignoring head-on, questions upon questions flooded his mind as if a dam had collapsed.

 

At first, he was simply supposed to deal with the risk-factor that would crawl out of the vault.

He was assigned an important confidential mission by the swordmaster.

 

While on the mission, a latecomer belatedly informed him that an intruder had entered the treasury, and he was waiting near the entrance for them to get out.

 

But.

 

“How well do I know you? Shall I start with what I remember? Let’s see. There’s a mole on the back of our dear Gavroche’s neck, right? And unfortunately, you get uncomfortable when it’s sunny. Does drinking milk give you an upset stomach? I think if these details are correct, I must know you pretty well. So? You must be curious as to how I know all this, right?”

 

Right. It was all correct. Nothing was amiss in the facts she told him.

 

‘I’m bewildered.’

 

So he was even more curious about this woman’s identity.

 

Surprisingly, the moment he recognized his curiosity, the desire that he’d been trying to forget and suppress all this time began to make itself known.

The desire to find the past he’d forgotten.

 

‘This damned woman. I’d been trying to hold it in.’

To embrace his new life as Gavroche Berkeley-Gratten, he’d been trying very hard to ignore it.

 

Gavroche tied the left shoulder of the sword demon firmly with her torn sleeve. Then when he was about to rip off the rest of her sleeve,

 

He raised his head at the unfamiliar voice. 

A tall man with blue hair was sitting cross-legged across from the sword demon. 

And surprisingly, he was wearing his pajamas.

 

‘This must be the blue haired man she was talking about.’

 

First of all, he looked half-crazy just based on his appearance.

However, Gavroche was less taken back by the stranger’s unconventional hair color than the luxurious features beneath his hair. 

 

He had never seen a face in his life that was as chillingly beautiful and melancholic as the one right in front of him. He was not at all ashamed by the fact that he was captivated by the beauty of this man.

 

He didn’t even pay attention to his pajamas. Not even his pink slippers.

 

“Sit down.”

What was up with this crazy guy?

Many surprising things were happening to him today.

Just like how he couldn’t ignore the man’s command and ended up sitting on the floor.

 

‘Wizard?’

 

Gavroche raised his mental walls to resist the magic. 

But it was in vain. He could usually overcome most magic with his resilience, but this man’s magic was unbreakable. 

 

“Sigh.” 

 

Damn it. It seemed like only ridiculous things kept happening one after another. 

He was not used to feeling helpless.

That’s why he was annoyed. Now the blue-haired magician was reluctantly glancing at him with disinterest. It made him twice as annoyed. 

 

“Do you look alike? Well, not really… I don’t really see the resemblance.”

A sword-demon and a crazy wizard. They were truly a perfect combination.

 

Settling in comfortably in his seat and having half-resigned, Gavroche found an object hanging from the man’s left hand.

 

Dian Cecht’s diary.

His eyes narrowed slightly.

 

Upon the swordmaster’s orders, they’d brought the item with them here, and now it was in the hands of this man.

 

‘This diary must’ve been what the sword-demon was after.’

 

The wizard tore his robe-like outerwear and used it to staunch the bleeding on the sword demon’s right shoulder. His expression was cold. 

 

Surprisingly, with a few gestures of binding the cloth, the blood that had been gushing out quickly stopped.

 

“Who are you?”

No answer.

“Was that object your objective? Did you kill all the others?”

Again, there was no answer.

“Damn it, just say something. You were babbling to yourself just fine before, but you can’t answer a question?”

 

The wizard muttered with slightly more understanding in his eyes.

 “Well, maybe the personalities are somewhat similar.” 

“You also resemble this sword-demon a lot. You’re both crazy people who like to babble away by themselves, huh?”

 

Hah. Finally, the wizard laughed. 

 

“Now that I think about it, you might be quite a useful talent. But if you continue like this, you’ll only hit the wall at the doorstep of truly becoming a master. For the entirety of your life.”

“Are you a scamming fortune-teller?”

 

“Wielding the sword and being wielded by the sword only have a hair’s breadth of difference. A master maintains a balance between the two. In other words, it is the state of becoming one with the sword. People call this state resonance or harmony.”

To think that a wizard would talk about the sword in such a poetic manner. It was like a cat meowing at a dog’s tail. 

 

“Are you still able to spout that nonsense after seeing that sword-demon?”

 

Gavroche lightly pointed his chin at the woman lying in front of him like a lifeless body. 

 

“Hey, wizard. Resonance is not some good thing. Swordsmen are instinctively drawn to the voice of the sword. It’s hard to resist. The stronger the resonance, the longer it lasts, and the swordsman eventually loses control over the sword. That’s how they become a sword-demon.”

 

And when they completely lose control over the sword, they undergo a phenomenon called complete assimilation. 

Gavroche thought of Jean.

Jean was an excellent example of how a swordsman becomes a sword-demon.

The swordmaster has warned Jean several times.

 

As long as she didn’t abandon the sword, she would wound up like that, he said. So if she had no intention of discarding the sword, he at least advised her to not walk the path of a sword-demon.

 

In the end, she ignored his warning and left the house.

 

“Is your world only so black and white?”

The smiling wizard picked up his right index finger.

“Power is balance.”

Two spheres slightly larger than pearls appeared at his neatly trimmed fingertips. One was white, and the other was black. 

 

‘Silent magic.’

 

Indeed, he wasn’t an ordinary wizard.

 His hair stood on edge with tension. 

 

“A perfectly black object cannot contain white, and a completely white object cannot contain black. Therefore, those who seek only the black will find only black, and those who seek only the white will find only white. But how can it be considered perfect to obtain only one thing without obtaining both? That is not perfection; it is precariousness.”

 

The black and white spheres overlapped. The merged sphere was dyed a gray hue.

 

 “Both the black and the white. Balance is achieved when both are pursued. Strength is equilibrium. One must both wield the sword and be wielded by the sword.” 

 

Wield the sword and be wielded by the sword.

“…You speak difficult words.” 

 

They were not just words.

 Gavroche found it extremely difficult to comprehend the situation he was facing. 

 

What was he doing, face-to-face with a strange conman?

Nevertheless, he could not take his eyes off the wizard.

Funnily enough, the man’s argument sounded very interesting.

 

Power and Balance. It was natural logic.

However, it was also an argument that went against the teachings he’d been given by the swordmaster so far.

“That’s easy enough to say. You mean not to become a sword-demon and be devoured by the sword, don’t you?”

 

 “Easy enough to say? Does this woman you call a sword-demon seem like that to you?” 

“…” 

“As you said, this woman became a sword-demon, but she wasn’t devoured by her sword. She wielded the sword and was wielded by it. No one would oppose her if she claimed to know her sword perfectly. But what about you?”

 

 “…” 

 

“Have you ever heard what your sword is saying?”

 “No. My sword does not resonate.”

 “Then you don’t understand your sword.” 

 

He thought it wasn’t a wrong statement.

Gavroche forgot that he was kneeling on the ground like a hostage and stared silently at the gray sphere floating in the air.

The words left by the wizard strangely calmed him down.

 

The wizard, who had been gazing at the sky as if measuring the time, slowly parted his lips.

 “You may go.” 

 

His rigid body magically became free.

However, Govroche didn’t move. He felt somewhat awkward. 

 

He couldn’t just leave Dian Cecht’s diary behind and go back. But he also didn’t have the confidence to confront the magician and retrieve it.

‘Since when have I ever acted with conviction?’

 

Anyways, it was his duty to take the relic back with him. Therefore, even if it seemed impossible, he had to take it back with him at any cost.

It was when Gavroche, who’d made up his mind, was about to rise.

 

“If you’re not in a hurry, however, you can stay here and watch over this sword-demon.”

“…watch over?”

“Yes. It will be an interesting sight that you only get to see a few times in life.”

 

What the hell did he mean by a sight to see?

The wizard had solely been focused on the sword-demon from the beginning.

It was intriguing how he was giving him instructions about the swordswoman, someone who was irrelevant to him. 

 

‘Is he really telling me to just watch over the swordswoman?’

 

Gavroche settled back into his seat across from the man. 

Sure.

 

If he was destined to die here, then it would be fine to die after a little delay.

As the wizard did, he also fixed his eyes on the face of the swordsman.

---

Rue stays a conman in the eyes of both siblings

 

Also, Rue def knows omg