Ch.274274. Greetings

“Kuhub, I’m sorry.”

Only after about 10 minutes had passed could Darius finally calm down. He wiped his tears and snot with the handkerchief Deia handed him.

“As the head of the family, I’ve shown a side that shouldn’t be seen.”

After blowing his nose with a sniff, Darius tried to return the handkerchief to Deia. Looking at him with an expression of disbelief, Deia promptly raised her middle finger in response, telling him to get lost.

“I’m surprised you even know you’re the head of the family.”

Deia mocked Darius as she casually stood up from her seat, yielding the head position to him. Only then did I realize that Deia had been naturally sitting in the seat of honor.

“Ahem, shall we begin the meeting then?”

Darius said as he took his seat.

His eyes were still red, but the meeting could proceed well enough as long as he wasn’t wailing like before.

The meeting naturally began with Findenai, the only witness.

Since most incidents are witnessed by maids, it seemed fitting in a way.

“I was fighting with that hunter lion bastard when suddenly the door to the general store appeared. Then the owner jumped out from there.”

Then she closed her mouth firmly.

“…Is that all?”

When Darius cautiously asked, Findenai shrugged her shoulders.

It wasn’t like a child explaining what they saw to their parents. The room fell silent at her overly simple report.

“What can I do if that’s all? I was overpowered and sent flying.”

“…”

Findenai herself seemed to want to explain more, but she gestured dramatically as if to express that she truly had nothing more to say.

With this, naturally, all eyes turned to me.

Deia immediately asked for my opinion.

“What do you think?”

“…”

“In the end, you know the most. I want to hear your opinion. The truth is, we don’t know anything after you disappeared into the general store with Raizer, the lightning god.”

Since that day, no one knew what I had done or how I had returned alive.

Everyone had been waiting for me to tell them.

“Was the Land of Rest properly created?”

I nodded at Deia’s question, though with a somewhat troubled expression.

“It didn’t fail.”

But I couldn’t say it succeeded either.

Originally, I was supposed to use the Malseok to create the Land of Rest, but that failed, and instead, I miraculously created the Land of Rest by accepting it into Deus Verdi’s body.

“I’ll tell you now.”

I hesitated to reveal that there had been sacrifices, but I slowly began to explain the situation.

* * *

After the meeting ended and evening fell, darkness descended upon Norsweden.

Deus Verdi and the hundreds of millions of souls, who seemed ready to march across the mountain range at any moment, were now circling at the mountain peak without moving.

What had happened to the mountain spirit?

I couldn’t even sense his presence because of all the souls.

“A mountain of ghosts.”

Suddenly, I had the feeling that I was directly witnessing the Land of Rest that I had tried to create.

But I certainly couldn’t be happy that my dream had been realized.

Because in the end,

the souls had returned to the continent.

The concerns I had while trying to create the Land of Rest continued once again.

Originally, the continent was in a saturated state where souls could no longer rest, causing the boundary between life and death to collapse, leading to destruction.

But what needed to be considered was that souls contain mana but have no weight.

Being intangible, they don’t occupy space either.

In fact, the term “soul saturation” could be considered quite vague.

‘That’s why I thought I could put all the souls into a small magic stone like the Malseok.’

Since they don’t occupy space, I could force them into an extremely small magic stone or even into one person’s body.

And my goal was to move them to an entirely different dimension, away from the continent, to empty the continent.

This meant that at the time, I hadn’t properly figured out the causal relationship between the continent’s limit and the saturation of souls.

There was no need to figure it out.

But now it’s different.

‘How on earth?’

Originally, Deus Verdi shouldn’t have come out of the general store.

Mocking my resolve and determination, that being had returned to the continent and was leading the souls.

‘It’s complicated.’

For now, he was waiting at the mountain peak. But eventually, he would probably come looking for me.

Since we couldn’t fight with soldiers on the mountain, our strategy from the meeting was to evacuate the territory completely and confront him.

“This way!”

“Put your protruding mouths back in, you bastards!”

“If anyone hasn’t had dinner yet, please come this way and we’ll provide it!”

That’s why Norsweden was once again in utter chaos. The captured hunters were being dragged away by soldiers, and citizens were evacuating in a familiar manner.

I heard they were emptying warehouses because there weren’t enough facilities to hold all the prisoners.

‘They were happy about being able to clean the warehouses at the same time.’

All the hunters would be transported to Greyford as terrorists of the mountain range, becoming achievements of Margrave Darius.

Among those being dragged away, I spotted Unyeop, and by chance, our eyes met.

A brief eye contact.

Unyeop gave a bitter smile and clicked his tongue.

– It wasn’t a coincidence after all.

Unyeop regretted recruiting me, mouthing the words. Although we had traveled together longer than expected, I had no intention of overlooking his crime of attacking Norsweden.

“Um, excuse me.”

At that moment, a small girl approached me—Soho. I had separated her from the others, so she was now moving with the citizens of Norsweden.

Her situation was quite tragic. She had come to seek revenge for the monsters and the ancient dragon, but somehow ended up in a place like this.

When I turned my head toward Soho, she had a complicated expression.

“What… should I do?”

Her question had some perplexing aspects. But it was a question that perfectly matched the emotions Soho was currently feeling.

“Don’t you think you’ve achieved your revenge against the ancient dragon?”

Unyeop had been arrested, and he would likely meet the Magic Judge Tyren at the execution grounds in Greyford for his acts of terrorism.

If she wanted to take revenge herself, she would have to follow Unyeop, but isn’t this enough?

But Soho had a rather complicated expression. It seemed she was troubled by how well Unyeop had treated her.

“Then will you save him?”

“No, I won’t.”

“You’ve achieved one goal. Is my neck next?”

“…”

I knew it was a somewhat mischievous thing to say. But Soho needed to make a clear decision.

“It’s true that I killed the monsters. And if the same situation were to happen again, I would act exactly the same way.”

As each of my words seemed to weigh down on her, Soho’s shoulders gradually drooped, and she lowered her head.

“Soho, there’s nothing I can do for you.”

I have no intention of taking responsibility for her or helping her grow.

The treatment of Owen, whom I directly designated as my successor, and Soho would inevitably be different.

“The only thing I can tell you is that you need to realize it yourself.”

“…”

“Why were you different from them?”

Unlike the monsters,

the girl didn’t eat human flesh or kill people. She merely delivered them and greeted people with a smile.

“What exactly is…”

“I’ve been thinking since last time.”

“…”

“You and Ranhart have something in common.”

“What?”

Soho looked bewildered at the suggestion that she had something in common with the lion who led the hunters.

“What exactly…”

As she tried to ask again while grabbing me, unfortunately, time was up.

Leaving Soho behind, I slowly moved forward.

Through the cool breeze, I could hear the cries of ghosts.

People naturally gathered behind me.

“Wow, even though I can’t see anything, I feel like something is flowing in the air.”

Findenai, with Baekseol on her shoulders, looked around with a hollow laugh.

It seemed Findenai’s senses were more sensitive than ordinary people’s.

“Really? I can’t tell.”

“…I also feel something a bit ominous.”

Deia looked around at Findenai’s words, and Darius responded with a subtle expression.

Feeling reassured by the companions who had gathered in an instant, I answered while looking at the sky.

“It’s better not to see.”

The souls covering the sky were enveloping everything like a fog.

“Are there many stars out tonight?”

The three seemed to immediately catch the implication of my question and swallowed before answering.

“They’re twinkling brightly.”

“We should be stargazing on a night like this.”

Nodding at Findenai and Deia’s responses, I slowly looked ahead.

Like a ghost, he was already standing in the center of the city, waiting for us.

It looked quite different from what I saw in the mirror. I thought that’s how Deus Verdi appeared to others, but when I entered, he gave off a different vibe, which was strange.

Through his long, flowing hair, Deus’s eyes met mine.

He finally found me and slowly straightened his bent back.

The souls around him swirled violently in all directions, greeting us roughly.