My Duke Won't Die!

“Hunter.”

Ella who was sitting in a chair in the hallway of the inn, wiping the blood from her ax, looked up at the call of a young knight.

“Follow me.”

The knight showed many signs of not wanting to talk to her.

Strangely enough, from the moment they entered this village, The Winter Knights were openly wary of hunters.

It was so blatant that even hunters notorious for not paying attention to the mood noticed it.

Of course, Ella didn’t care one bit.

Although she is now Ella Lane, in the past when she was Hee-Yeon, she had a beggar-like school life, a more beggar-like job preparation, and the best beggar-like work life.

Recalling all the types of humans she met in the process, such a clear sense of wariness was rather cute.

“Stand by.”

Following the knight’s words, Ella stopped in her place.

The place where she arrived was said to be the most spacious and luxurious room in town.

Even so, from the point of view of nobles who came down from the capital, it would be a slightly larger barn, but for a hunter, it was an expensive space to stay overnight.

In front of the tightly closed door, the knight said.

“Put down all your weapons.”

At that, Ella put down the ax from her waist without hesitation. The ax that hadn’t been wiped clean from the monster’s blood was left on the floor, leaving a bleak black mark.

The knight, who unconsciously swallowed dryly at the sight of the ax, tried to calmly continue talking. 

“Put everything down.” 

“I put everything down…Sir.”

“Is this all?”

“What else do you need?…Sir.”

No, things like an emergency dagger, a small bomb, or a slingshot……

There was a lot to say, but the knight couldn’t speak about anything. It was because Ella Lane’s eyes asking like that were very sincere. 

The knight has not heard about hunters killing monsters with just one old ax. No, it was the common sense among common sense to always carry an auxiliary weapon when hunting monsters.

It was because if you didn’t prepare one, your life would be in danger if you ever missed or broke the main weapon.

But the woman in front of him made a sincere face asking what else was needed besides the ax to hunt, and to his surprise, it really looked like she could do everything with one old ax. 

Didn’t he actually see it? The ax that flew and stamped Gaira’s forehead.

“There’s really nothing else.” 

“……”

“Sir.”

The knight was not even paying attention to the honorifics that were followed with a subtle time difference. He was silent as he alternately looked at the small ax on the floor and Ella Lane who was shrugging her shoulders.

Ella, who was watching the scene, added carefully to ease the knight’s anxiety. 

“Don’t worry, I’m not stupid enough not to know that 500 gold will go down the drain if I hit someone in here.”

Of course, it had no effect whatsoever.

“Hit……people……?”

“No, I just said I wasn’t hitting anybody.” 

Right then a low voice came from within.

“Sir Miller, if you have arrived, let her in.”

It was a familiar voice.

“Ah, yes……!”

The knight, who suddenly came to his senses at the sound, hurriedly opened the door.

“Wow, it’s finally open.”

Ella threw her body through the open door, as if she had been waiting, before the knight could even stop her and montined lightly at the man who had his mouth open.

“Take care of my ax until I get out of work.”

“What?”

“Well, sometimes it seems to move by itself.”

“Wait, hunter……!”

Bang!

The door slammed shut with a roar so loud that one thought it might have been broken somewhere, and the knight was left behind in the hallway.

Alone with the ax.

“……”

What followed was a delicate confrontation.

Naturally, the ax didn’t say anything. It was an inanimate object, so there was no way it could speak. The ax just lay there on the floor. Didn’t even flinch.

Ella Lane’s last words were just meanness for making her wait outside so far and the knight wasn’t unaware of it either. 

However, the knight instinctively took a step back.

It was because the ax’s blade, which did not shine because of the densely covered bloodstains, caught his eye. There’s no way the ax had eyes, but somehow it seemed like they met.

‘What should I do with this?’

Around the time the knight was fiercely agonizing between the instinct to escape from the ax and the reason to defend his position.

“Hughes Miller.”

A knight who was coming out of the next room while brushing her short blue-grey hair greeted him, and Hughes, the knight who was confronting the ax, did not miss the opportunity.

“Dame Sharon, I have a favor to ask you.”

“What?”

“If you change your shift now, I’ll give you 10 gold.”

“What?”

“15 gold.”

“……It looks like the sun has risen in the west today. That ‘Hughes Miller’ is paying money.”

“I mean it.”

“If it’s 15 gold, there’s no reason to refuse. The soup from earlier was quite spicy, so you should have eaten it in moderation.”

A white face, cold sweat, and an urgent rescue request.

Rosalie Sharon, who saved a colleague who seemed to have been called by nature, with a loving heart and 15 gold in return, stood where Hughes had been.

And it was the very next moment when she clicked her tongue at the back of the colleague who was disappearing like the wind.

Rosalie inadvertently lowered her head and found an ax on the floor.

Silence fell between Rosalie and the ax.

But that silence didn’t last long. It was because Rosalie, shrugging her shoulders, immediately picked up the ax with a calm expression and placed it on the console table next to the door.

“Why put this on the floor?” 

Sometimes there were people who didn’t fall for the trick.

* * *

While the ax left in the hallway was embarrassed to meet someone similar to its owner, Ella Lane made the person in the room feel uncomfortable with an expression full of disappointment.

It was because she had found that the knight commander, James River, was the one sitting behind the wooden table, not Clive Winterlock.

“Hunter, what kind of expression is that?”

“It’s not much of an expression.”

“……”

It was a very strange expression.

James shut his mouth with a frown.

Skill was the only criterion for selecting guides. That’s why he never asked for great courtesy or personality and as a result, he picked a hunter with skills beyond his expectations.

It was obviously a good thing, but James couldn’t shake the feeling that somehow he had made the wrong choice.

It was because the eyes of the hunter who he met the moment the door opened were very disrespectful.

‘I’ll have to keep her as far away from the Duke as possible.’ 

If Ella knew, she would have grabbed the Commander by the collar and said ‘What, you son of a bitch?’. 

James continued with a sigh.

“Your mission is simple.”

I want you to take the lead in killing the monsters. 

The mission Ella expected was exactly that. If she were her usual self, she would have kicked the door right away, asking back why she would do such a troublesome thing while going out, but not this time.

It was because Clive Winterlock would be behind her. 

‘Fangirling’ has an old saying.

You like them no matter what they do, you hope that they will be safe no matter what happens, you lay a beautiful flower path in front of them and then becomes the world’s best shield behind them.

Of course, it was forbidden to relax because it was a character from <The End of The Abyss>. Except for the Heroine, all the characters in <The End of the Abyss> had their own crazy points. 

Ella had no idea what kind of strange personality Clive Winterlock might have under his cool expression.

But who is Ella Lane? Wasn’t it thanks to that fangirling programming that she held the craziest bastard in this world as her favorite until just three years ago?

It was not at all difficult for such Ella to have Winterlock as her new favorite, with a less trashy personality and a face that was her cup of tea.

‘Besides, I’m living because I can’t die anyway, the trouble of hunting is nothing compared to being able to stan.’

Ella, with her nonchalant shrug, was waiting for an obvious briefing of her mission, but the next words of the Knight Commander were a little different from what she had imagined.

“You will accompany us on the hunt. All you have to do is figure out the destruction rule of monsters we don’t know of and guide us to places where they’re likely to be. But you will not join the hunt. When the hunt begins, you will be on standby in the rear.”

“Hold on, standby in the rear? I won’t fight at all?”

Ella asked back at the unexpected instruction.

She didn’t understand.

Don’t people usually try to put the hunters at the front?

However, what James said next was even more surprising. It was because it was a very common sense argument that I never imagined I would hear in <The End of the Abyss>, a novel that goes downhill so bad it could not get worse.

“It is the Duke of Winterlock and the Winter Knights who have been ordered to write the book. In the process, we hired a guide out of necessity, but we can’t sacrifice someone who has no direct relationship to this mission. Above all, the Duke will never allow it. He follows the duties of a noble very accurately.”

“……My God, that was it.”

Ella sighed.

Only then did everything make sense.

This is why Clive Winterlock died early.

If a person who adheres to principles like this had survived to the end, <The End of the Abyss> would not have gone that far.

If the progress so far is the same as the original, this event was a behind-the-scenes story. A setting prepared by the author, although not described in detail in the original work.

According to the story, in the end, despite these efforts, Clive Winterlock dies before completing the book. It was a fact that would not change if it went according to the original story.

But……

‘That doesn’t mean there aren’t any changes from the original, though.’

For starters, I, who knows the future of the original work, was in this town and participated in this event held by the Duke of Winterlock. In addition, thanks to the ability to see mana stones, it was not difficult to find the rule of destruction.

That said, it meant that over the past three years, what I thought of transmigrating in an unnamed extra hunter in a border town that hadn’t even appeared in the novel due to bad luck was actually subtly connected to the original story.

If so, there was only one way.

“All right, I can’t help it.” 

“Yes, so you……”

“For now, I will do my best to protect the Duke.”

“……What?”

“Do not worry. Because monsters can be easily beaten to a pulp when necessary.”

“No, I don’t mean to protect the Duke, but to find out where the monsters are……”

“Fuck the original.”

“……”

And at that moment, James was able to realize the truth of this village that other hunters couldn’t speak of.

This kid. Is crazy.