I Will Be the Greatest Knight
Chapter 196: For Agnes

Chapter 196: For Agnes

Irene was just around the corner from Felix when she heard his utterance of: "My heart was yours already. Now the mountain is yours. My life is yours. I will kill every one of those monsters, knowing what they took from me."

It struck her enough that she had to stop for a few moments and breathe in and out calmly as she tried to control the lump that was forming in her throat.

In the life she saw, she didn’t know a love like that. The man she was married to was an arrangement of convenience. She was fortunate that he at least respected her for who she was and didn’t force her too far out of her comfort zone.

For some reason, seeing Felix crumble because he lost his love was making her equally long for as much as resist a love so incredibly pure. Few must have been lucky enough to experience that feeling. The thought made her heart race.

She wasn’t someone who would likely receive love like that. If she was meant to pretend to be a man until the day she died, she was going to do it, after all.

What Felix likely didn’t need at that moment was a crying baby who couldn’t get herself together. She was meant to be a tough apprentice, and she knew she ought to act like it.

As she rounded the corner, seeing Felix with a dead body sitting on top of him wasn’t easy to handle, and she had to force herself to keep walking. She had never witnessed anything so mortifying in her life.

That was her friend under there. Agnes was her close confidant in a sea of men. She was the only girl whom Irene could remotely relate to, the only other person there who knew Irene’s real name.

Felix’s eyes, red from crying, made Irene internally grimace.

"I thought you should probably eat something," she admitted. "It was a good excuse to check on you."

Since Felix made no move to reach for the food, Irene placed it on a windowsill, hoping it would keep its warmth. She merely sat down next to the older apprentice and stared at the mountain that loomed over them, hiding its mysteries under thick forests, dense cloud cover, and labyrinths of cave systems.

What a terrifying sight when she was already feeling so awful.

"You know, I wish I had decided to be more like you," Felix admitted. "You are always so certain that you will never find someone to sway your strange insistence that you will never have any interest in marriage or a woman. I envy you. I’m the weakest I’ve ever been, and I can’t do anything to fix it."

His voice was strained by the end of his sentence. His words were angry at first, but softened and wavered by the end.

Irene could only be understanding.

"I don’t know anything, Felix," Irene reminded him softly. "I’m just a kid who would hate to complicate the path ahead of me because it already feels so complicated."

Felix turned from the view and scrutinized Irene. At that moment, the apprentice felt very old despite her younger age. It felt strange that he wanted to listen to her, but she was the only thing offering him comfort.

He turned his head towards the mountains again, but his eyes closed, and his hands squeezed the body he didn’t want to put down.

Irene realized she was speaking far beyond what her means should have been, so she suddenly stood up. There was a shovel leaning against the wall, and she reached for it. At the same time, she grabbed the bowl from the windowsill and offered it to Felix.

"Tell me where to break ground," she requested.

For the first time since she had been in his arms, Felix carefully placed Agnes on the ground next to him. He did it so gingerly as if she would wake up at any moment.

Irene felt another pang in her heart that was practically uncontrollable, but she managed to press on.

Felix took the bowl from Irene and simply held onto it as he watched her walk deeper and deeper into the grassy field.

There was a point he had been thinking of. It was halfway between the barracks and the mana pillar they created to receive letters from mages.

"Right there," Felix said.

Irene broke ground with the shovel and silently began digging the hole where her friend would finally rest.

Eventually, she decided to face away from Felix as she continued digging. It occurred to her that each bit of dirt moved and placed in the slowly growing pile was that much closer to them having to accept that Agnes was no longer with them.

She had been trying her best to be strong, but this one hit her even closer than losing Samson. She wished she didn’t have to compare the severity of her friends dying, but it all hit her at once, and even though she continued working just as diligently as before, tears streamed down her face as she dug.

Irene never knew if Felix ate any of the food since she faced away, but she soon felt the oldest apprentice place a hand on her shoulder, and she turned to see him with another shovel he must have gotten from the sheds.

When he saw the truth and that Irene had been crying, he dropped his shovel and simply hugged the girl for a moment.

"We’ll get through it, though, won’t we?" Felix asked Irene after they both found composure once more.

Irene looked up at Felix and nodded.

"We don’t have another choice," she responded. "It’s for Chemois and not us."

He didn’t want to agree, but he did.

The sun had since set, casting a beautiful array of pinks and purples all the way across the western sky. It was a surprisingly beautiful punctuation for a day that had hurt so very badly.

With the utmost care, the two apprentices lowered Agnes’ body into the hole they had dug for her, and they packed dirt tightly over her.

Irene sat down next to the freshly dug earth, and she placed her hands on the mound.

The same Sünstoian prayer that she had blessed Samson with came forward more easily than the time before. She knew she was likely saying words wrong, but it was the thought and intention that mattered. It didn’t need to be as precise as a magical spell, after all.

She placed her fingers on the tattoo that protected her and put them back down on the dirt.

As darkness settled in and they heard the clicking of goblins as they woke up for the night, Irene looked up at Felix helplessly.

"We can’t face them yet, Felix," Irene stated desperately. "We have to be smarter about it than this."

Despite Felix’s firm grasp on the handle of his sword, he knew that Irene was right, even though he absolutely hated to admit it.

He would get revenge for Agnes. Even if it wasn’t right then, it would happen soon enough.

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