Ch.221Interlude, A Story (2)

Anton Kehano has eight stars.

When Najin heard this, he was surprised, but thinking about it, it wasn’t that strange.

‘Anton is a transcendent who has lived for at least 400 years.’

Additionally, Anton had hunted witches for decades and was a hunter who killed transcendents associated with witches. Anton once casually mentioned that he had killed dozens of witches himself.

Considering that even the weakest witch possessed strength comparable to a transcendent, this was a story that couldn’t hold true unless Anton was “considerably strong.”

‘And……’

Najin recalled what had happened earlier.

Anton’s attitude as he pointed his middle finger at the Empress of Bliss’s star, as if asking what she was looking at. Come to think of it, if the information Anton Kehano had about “La Mancha” was threatening to the Empress of Bliss, she should have killed Anton or turned him into a clown long ago.

Yet Anton had been walking around unharmed for 400 years.

“Huh.”

Najin laughed incredulously as he understood the situation.

“So it’s not that the Empress of Bliss didn’t touch you, but that she couldn’t touch you.”

“Well, if that demon had really come at me, I would have had a hard time too. But the Empress of Bliss is basically a coward. If she thinks she might suffer even the slightest damage, she becomes cautious.”

Anton shrugged.

“To kill me, she’d have to accept some losses, and it seems she didn’t want that. So she left me alone. Besides, I fight pretty dirty.”

“Dirty… you say?”

“Not all fights can be honorable. Nor can they all be dignified. Sometimes there are fights where you must ‘win at all costs,’ even if it means abandoning such things.”

Do you know such fights?

Anton asked with his eyes, and Najin nodded. He did. Quite a lot of them.

“Fights like mud wrestling. Dragging your opponent into a swamp where you can’t tell front from back, where you don’t know where to step. Difficult battles in chaotic situations. That’s my specialty.”

“You were famous for that, weren’t you? The Witch of Heat you killed was also an eight-star witch.”

Lapis, who had been listening, added.

She looked at Najin with concern.

“By the way, the Empress of Bliss? You really picked a difficult opponent.”

“Do you know about the Empress of Bliss?”

“I’ve lived quite a long time, you know? So I know what she was like before she was called the Empress of Bliss.”

Lapis spoke with her eyes closed, as if searching through her memories.

“Was it 700 years ago? Or 800? I once saw a demon hunting. It had no name and was the weakest demon I’d ever seen… but it was trying to hunt a top-tier demon. I was curious, so I watched.”

The Empress of Bliss was originally such a being—the lowest of the low, even below that, barely maintaining the form of a demon species, Lapis explained.

“Demons are basically like dragons. Their strength is determined from birth. And that strength is absolute, so even with growth, it’s rare to overturn the difference in rank. It means a lower demon cannot defeat a higher demon no matter what methods they use.”

But, Lapis continued.

“That demon I saw, despite being the lowest rank, tried to hunt the highest-ranking demon, and eventually succeeded. Can you imagine? A being with not even one star hunting a demon with seven stars.”

“…Is that possible?”

“It’s impossible. Even though the number of stars doesn’t guarantee strength, there’s fundamentally a difference in rank. It’s as absurd as a Sword Expert defeating a Sword Master.”

But impossible as it was.

“That one did it.”

“……”

“It prepared traps, corrupted concepts, incited humans, led a procession of star-eating beasts, and finally made the highest demon’s star fall. Then it devoured the corpse greedily.”

Ugh, Lapis frowned.

“It gave me chills. As time passed, it came to be known as a mid-tier demon, then high-tier, then top-tier, and now it’s called the Demon Lord, the pinnacle of all demons.”

A being born weak.

A species of demon that supposedly cannot overcome differences in rank.

“Anton called it a ‘coward,’ right? Yes, the Empress of Bliss is indeed a coward. But that doesn’t mean she’s weak. Quite the opposite.”

Lapis warned.

“A fearful being is fundamentally forced to be thorough. It prepares meticulously against elements it fears and develops countermeasures through that preparation. In my thousand years of life, I’ve found that the truly frightening opponents aren’t overwhelming powerhouses.”

She spoke with a disgusted expression.

“Humans who can abandon everything. Humans who charge relentlessly. Fiends who try to win by any means necessary. Hunters who set all kinds of traps to hunt their prey.”

As he listened, Najin recalled someone. The person who had given him the most trouble on the continent. The ranger of the Tetzel Mountains, Kapman Theosis.

“The essence of the Empress of Bliss is that of a hunter. A schemer.”

Lapis, who had been speaking, suddenly exclaimed “Ah” briefly. As if remembering something. Her face turned pale as she shook her head.

“No, let me correct myself. Such hunters are scary, but there’s something even more frightening.”

When asked what that was, Lapis pointed to the sky with her finger, as if reluctant to even speak of it. Both Anton and Najin looked in the direction she was pointing.

There were eleven stars floating there.

The Wizard of the Lake, Merlin.

Lapis’s face was deathly pale as she pointed to her constellation. As if terrified.

“It probably won’t happen, but…”

Lapis said with a slightly trembling voice.

“It would be best not to catch the eye of that crazy… I mean, Great Constellation Merlin. Really.”

At the words “Merlin-nim” rather than just “Merlin,” Najin glanced at Merlin standing beside him. Blinking, Merlin exhaled with disbelief, “Huh!”

-Would you look at that? Just because I stuck a few ice shards in her, she treats me like some kind of lunatic.

‘You stuck ice in her?’

-Huh? Oh, yes. Not many though.

Merlin spread out both hands. Counting by folding her thumbs first, then one by one… Merlin nodded.

-About six? She had six stars back then. So I only used that many.

‘……’

-What? She was a witch.

‘It’s nothing.’

Well, by Merlin’s standards at the time, not gouging out eyes or ripping out hearts would have been considered very merciful. Indeed, the Merlin from 1000 years ago that Najin had seen was quite brutal.

‘Gouging out eyes, dragging people by their hair, piling up mountains of corpses……’

And hadn’t she done the same to him as soon as they made eye contact? Asking what he was, if he had a death wish.

‘Fairy Merlin was quite brutal.’

As Najin recalled the fairy Merlin grabbing him by the collar, human Merlin narrowed her eyes.

-Fairy Merlin?

Merlin tilted her head.

-What are you talking about? Are you saying I’m like a fairy?

‘Not you.’

-……There’s another Merlin besides me?

‘There is. Something like that.’

Merlin screamed that what was he talking about, there was only one Merlin in the world, and the real one was right in front of him, but Najin let it go in one ear and out the other.

2.

A tower built on a remote island in the middle of the sea.

Since they needed to return to the coast, Najin and Anton were gathered on the island’s shore, carving wood. It was to reinforce their sailboat.

“Um, I hate to say this, but.”

Lapis, watching them, looked at Anton and Najin with a disgruntled expression.

“What are you two doing?”

“Hm? Just carving wood.”

“We’re carving wood.”

“But why?”

“Isn’t the sailboat damaged?”

Anton and Najin pointed to the sailboat they had arrived in. Due to the rough voyage, the sailboat was half-broken. Since it was broken, shouldn’t they fix it?

“You’re planning to sail on that? In this sea?”

“We came all the way here on it.”

“We managed just fine.”

The oarsman and the captain nodded.

Lapis pressed her forehead and sighed.

“You two, you haven’t forgotten who I am, have you?”

Lapis snapped her fingers.

Trees on the island’s shore uprooted themselves, and within seconds, a boat was completed.

Najin and Anton’s mouths fell open. They alternately looked at the sailboat they had painstakingly carved piece by piece, and the boat Lapis had created with just a snap of her fingers.

Then, like primitive humans discovering fire for the first time, they smacked their foreheads with a “thwack.”

“Damn, oarsman. Before magic, we’re no better than primitive savages.”

“I should have learned magic too, Captain.”

The boat carrying two primitive swordsmen and one great magician set sail. There was no need to row or set a direction. Magic took care of everything.

“……”

The captain and oarsman, who had lost their jobs to magic, crouched in a corner of the boat with gloomy expressions.

“Oarsman, what can we do?”

“I don’t know, Captain.”

Deep-sea monsters and reefs occasionally blocked their path, but unlike their first voyage, Najin and Anton didn’t need to step in. Whenever Lapis, sitting in a chair at the bow, waved her finger, these obstacles shattered into pieces and sank into the sea.

“By the way, oarsman. What have you been organizing there?”

Anton pointed to the letters in Najin’s hands. Since leaving the tower, Najin had been continuously organizing what looked like letters.

“Oh, this?”

Najin pointed to the pile of letters and said.

“Do you remember what you said when we first met, Captain, when you introduced yourself?”

“What I said? The century’s greatest lover?”

“Not that.”

“A fool living for romance. One of only three idiots in human history who loved a witch?”

“Yes, that last one.”

Najin nodded.

“Excluding you, there are two left. These letters are related to one of them.”

“…What?”

“What are you talking about?”

Lapis, also becoming interested, peered at the letters beside Najin. Then, after checking the name written on the letter, her eyes widened.

“Lena?”

As if she had heard a name she missed.

3.

Among the words Lapis had spoken in the Black Tower.

There was this line:

“I never thought I’d make such a choice after mocking the witch Lena, who loved a human, as a madwoman. It’s all because of you, Anton.”

The witch Lena who loved a human.

Like Lapis, and even before her, a witch who committed the taboo of loving a human. A being mocked as a madwoman among witches.

When Najin heard that name, he couldn’t help but recall a certain witch he had encountered while climbing the tower.

A part omitted while focusing on Anton’s story.

It took Anton about 30 days to break through the final floor. During those 30 days, Najin wasn’t always by Anton’s side. It wasn’t easy to endure 30 days doing nothing.

‘What is this, Merlin?’

-Oh, that?

While exploring the Black Tower, Najin would listen to old stories, consulting the Merlin Encyclopedia. One day, while exploring the tower, Najin found a hidden room in the Black Tower.

The Black Tower was fundamentally a prison.

And in a prison, there are naturally imprisoned criminals.

And in the hidden room, there was one prisoner who had been incarcerated for even longer than Lapis.

“……”

The prisoner’s hair was red.

Her eyes were also red.

“Roseline.”

With a voice dried and cracked from years of neglect, the prisoner stared into space, murmuring someone’s name.

“My beloved child, Roseline……”

A witch who was endlessly murmuring someone’s name looked at Najin. In her red eyes, Najin recalled someone.

The red-eyed mercenary, Roseline Askarlo.

The witch who resembled her looked at Najin and murmured.

“Let me meet Roseline.”

The red-eyed witch pleaded.