Please Kill Me - Chapter 114
That was exactly why she had trusted the magic and jumped.
‘If I had been a little later, it could have been disastrous.’
After entering the forest with Vasily’s help, Yekaterina had been searching for Leonid. Unable to find him, she was about to head towards the forest’s edge when she spotted Dmitry.
More accurately, Dmitry and the two horses galloping towards him.
Before Yekaterina could react, one of them was hit by an arrow and fell. It took her a moment to realize it was her adoptive father.
His death seemed too trivial, too insignificant.
‘…Death is always trivial.’
It was a simple truth, yet it shocked her then.
The answer was clear. Sergei’s death felt out of place. Despite being weaker than Yekaterina, he had long been the head of Offenbach. To her, he was a figure of authority and fear.
And yet, he died from a single arrow and a fall from a horse.
Just that.
‘Just.’
The word felt foreign.
To death that’s all. Was something great waiting for Sergei? Whether rich or poor, if one’s heart was pierced, they would die equally.
Still, it didn’t feel real.
To think that Sergei, who had exploited and tormented her so much, could die from just an arrow. It wasn’t sadness. Nor was it anger or humor.
But what was this feeling that seemed to be all of those combined?
It was inexplicable. She felt sad for no reason, then angry, then almost amused.
In the end, she couldn’t react at all.
It just felt like a release, a liberation from something.
The knot that had been in her chest for so long disappeared without warning. There was so much that it took her aback. The weight that had been constricting her disappeared, leaving her breath feeling lighter.
But Yekaterina had no time to revel in this feeling.
Just as Dmitry and Leonid were closing in on each other, something flashed from Dmitry’s side.
Crack.
With a heavy vibration, the ground began to split.
Yekaterina knew exactly what it meant.
“…!”
She quickly spurred her horse forward, but she couldn’t outrun the arrow shot by Dmitry. The ground beneath Leonid’s feet began to crumble rapidly, and he fell from his horse.
Thud.
A heavy sound reverberated in Yekaterina’s ears, a sound too weighty for just a person falling.
It didn’t take long for her to realize that it was the sound of her own heartbeat.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Her pulse quickened. Her breathing grew labored. Yekaterina’s state began to resemble that of someone suffering a mortal wound. Her heartbeat pounded loudly in her head, and in her fading consciousness, only one thing became clear.
In moments of critical injury, pain becomes sharply defined. But at that moment,
‘Leonid.’
Only he remained vivid in her mind.
The thought of saving him filled her thoughts completely.
She was barely aware of how her body was moving. Yekaterina stood up on the stirrups of her galloping horse. As she approached the collapsing cliff, she pulled one foot out of the stirrup and kicked off the saddle, launching herself over the edge without hesitation.
“…Sister?”
She thought she heard a faint voice, but she wasn’t sure. The sound of falling rocks was deafening at that moment. Even if she had been certain that Dmitry was calling her, it wouldn’t have changed her actions.
Leonid quickly lost consciousness, likely due to the arrow and the fall. His grip on Yekaterina loosened as his strength faded.
In this state, falling from the cliff would mean certain death. Yekaterina held Leonid tightly, curling her body around him as much as possible. And she prayed.
She prayed that Offenbach’s protective magic, which had made her nearly indestructible, would save her once again.
Despite never having believed in any god.
‘Did my prayer work?’
Yekaterina was unscathed. More than that, she was surprisingly unharmed.
As she fell from the cliff, she felt the hard impact of the ground, but there was no pain. It was as if someone had thrown her onto a soft bed.
‘The story about the first head of the family surviving a fall from a cliff wasn’t an exaggeration after all.’
The magic was indeed extraordinary. With proper physical training, it could render one’s body nearly indestructible.
Thanks to Yekaterina’s unscathed condition, Leonid, whom she had shielded, also escaped severe injury. Falling from such a height, the fact that he had no visible broken bones was a stroke of luck.
‘Now the problem is getting out of here.’
Yekaterina quickly assessed Leonid’s condition.
Other than the arrow lodged in his arm, there were no significant injuries. She carefully extracted the arrow and tore a strip from her clothing to bandage the wound.
Then, she effortlessly hoisted the unconscious Leonid onto her back. Despite their size difference causing his legs to drag on the ground, Yekaterina’s expression remained calm and determined.
