episode_0001

In the emptiness of losing everything I had built, sacrificing more than half my life…

The faint warning of the Fox God, dimly remaining in distant, hazy memories, echoed in my mind.

“Little one. Creatures living on this land must always abandon greed for things that don’t suit them.”

Though in the form of a small fox, the self-proclaimed god showed such wondrous divine powers that the young child’s eyes would shine.

It would find expertly hidden herb patches on the back mountain…

Or find the site of a well that produced water during unrecorded droughts…

Or even teach strange ancient farming methods unknown to the elders, preventing bad harvests…

True to its name as the God of Abundance and Fertility, the Fox God’s advice, relayed through my mouth, brought prosperity to our village.

Carrying such a Fox God on my back, my younger self dreamed the foolish dream of becoming a hero who would save the world with the Fox God’s help.

“From the eyes of a god, I regret to say, little one, that you are not the talent to become a great figure like a hero… If you dream such a wish, you might truly face great misfortune later.”

Each time, the Fox God would gently pat my head with its small paw, curbing my wish filled with inappropriate greed.

As time passed, the boy who dreamed of being a hero grew up, no longer looking at fantasies or wishes, but facing reality.

As the Fox God said, I didn’t have even an iota of talent to become a great figure like a hero.

It’s embarrassing to admit, but I feared pain and fatigue too much to train with a sword, and I was too ignorant and lazy to train in magic.

In the end, I became a merchant, fitting my station, and the Fox God, as if greatly pleased that I had chosen the right path, praised me for deciding to become a merchant.

“As long as you don’t chase desires beyond your station, little one, your path will be filled with my blessing!!”

That was my last farewell with the Fox God.

The Fox God, unable to leave our hometown village, bestowed its blessing as a god upon me as I embarked on my journey as a merchant.

Was it due to the Fox God’s blessing, or perhaps my humble luck and keen eye…?

I, from a small, nameless village, was able to succeed astonishingly well as a merchant.

But that was only until yesterday.

Was it the price for the excessive ambition of a boy from a small, nameless village who coveted an emperor’s position…?

The merchant group, to which I had dedicated almost my entire life, vanished overnight.

All I held in my hands now were a few silver coins, full of the pity left by the departed workers, and a small fox doll carved by my own hands, modeled after the Fox God, during the long journeys between villages.

I exhaled a sigh filled only with emptiness, where even despair couldn’t be felt.

Before the grotesque and cruel reality that negated all the years I had lived, even the emotion of despair seemed like a luxury to me.

It just felt as if all of this was a terrible nightmare, and if I closed my eyes for a moment and then opened them, a new day would greet me with warm morning sunlight.

“Damn it…”

I briefly closed my eyes, harboring a fleeting small hope, but the chilling night wind seeping through the thin gaps in my clothes emphasized, more than necessary, that this moment was a cruel reality that could not be ignored.

“For someone so renowned, you look quite disheveled.”

What opened my closed eyes was not the warm morning sunlight, but her voice, seeping into my ears like the chilling night wind.

A girl with mysterious silver-white hair that shimmered faintly even under the dark night sky.

Clad in a nearly pure white cloak befitting her epithet, she looked down at me, who had lost everything and was shabbily slumped on the ground, with black eyes like beautifully polished obsidian.

As I stared at her mysteriously black eyes looking down at me, as if possessed by a ghost, the girl smiled, her eyes crinkling.

“I still have an open secretary position. Interested?”

This was the encounter between me, who had fallen to the abyss, and her, who stood at the apex of this world.

——————————————————-

She, who hired me as her secretary, was known as the White Sorceress, the absolute strongest in this world, and the de facto owner of the entire continent.

Even kingdoms, empires, demon races, or other humanoid races and the territories they claimed would appear to her as nothing more than trivial territorial squabbles among ants.

This was by no means a subjectively exaggerated story fueled by my personal bias.

Numerous heroes and mages were recorded and described in histories, legends, and myths, but the White Sorceress was an incomparably powerful being.

She effortlessly traversed space, connecting the east and west of the continent as easily as opening a window.

When the Demon King, said to be the strongest among the demon race, gathered all his power to cast a terrible spell that would devastate the entire continent…

The moment she waved her hand like a fan, as if brushing away an annoying stench lingering at her nose, and effortlessly blew away the Demon King’s magic, on which he had staked everything, was so absurd that everyone who witnessed it burst into laughter.

She even discovered an unknown eastern continent beyond the Sea of Death to the east, treating it like a casual stroll.

Ah… that eastern continent treated her, who had crossed the ocean alone, as a monster and declared all-out war. Annoyed by such outrageous behavior, Magic-nim reportedly crushed and submerged the entire eastern continent.

The White Sorceress possessed power beyond measure, capable of submerging an entire continent beneath the sea if she truly put her mind to it.

Within the continent, there was not a single person who would dispute the claim that she possessed power nearly akin to a god.

Serving as her secretary, organizing her schedule, plans, and the warehouse filled with spoils of war beside such a Magic-nim, I too was living a rather rewarding and fruitful daily life.

However, even for a magnificent mythical figure or an seemingly absolute legendary character, there was something they had to experience at least once.

That was a crisis.

“Run!!”

Magic-nim, with a desperate and urgent expression I had never seen before, was frantically flailing her limbs as she ran towards my direction.

And behind her, immense beings were closing in, targeting her.

A newly appointed Demon Queen, who had just become the new Demon King after the previous one was broken by Magic-nim…

The elite troops handpicked and assembled by the Empress, the ruler of the empire. And even the continent’s strongest Swordsman leading them.

Fortunately, the Demon Queen and the Empress’s elite troops were keeping each other in check, so they couldn’t easily catch Magic-nim, who was sprinting desperately.

Boom!

“Aaaah!”

The continent’s strongest Swordsman, true to his reputation, struck away a black mass of magic power thrown by the Demon Queen with his sword.

As the deflected mass of magic power fell next to the approaching Magic-nim in a gentle arc, a loud explosion erupted, and Magic-nim’s small body was sent flying towards me.

“Ca… catch me!!”

Magic-nim flailed her limbs in the air, but merely flailing her arms and legs couldn’t slow her descent.

At the overwhelming might of the Demon Queen, the continent’s strongest Swordsman, and the countless elite troops following him, Magic-nim’s other subordinates, who had been following her, were already fleeing in utter panic without looking back.

But I, who had been saved by her from the abyss of life, couldn’t bring myself to ignore her scream and stepped forward, preparing to catch her as she fell.

Thud!

“Yelp!”

“Ugh!”

However, I, her secretary, who was quite unfamiliar with physical exertion, couldn’t even properly catch Magic-nim’s small body, and we tumbled across the floor, entangled almost as one.

“I told you to exercise more often!!”

Magic-nim, who had barely cushioned her impact using my body, shrieked at me as if scolding me for failing to even properly catch her.

Around her neck, an empty pendant, where only faint remnants of magic power could be felt, swung wildly with her cries.

“Magic-nim, surely your magic power…”

“There’s enough magic power left to get out of here! You’re really lucky you caught me!”

Magic-nim, gripping my collar tightly so as not to lose me, gathered all the magic power faintly remaining in the pendant.

Then, centered around her body where she had gathered magic, a long-distance spatial teleportation magic circle, densely filled with complex characters and formulas, instantly manifested.

“Th-that damned woman is getting away!!”

The first to notice Magic-nim’s escape was the Demon Queen, sensitive to magic and magic power.

At the Demon Queen’s cry, the continent’s strongest Swordsman and the Empress’s elite troops, who had been confronting her, ceased their mutual vigilance and glared at us simultaneously with blazing, fiery eyes.

It was a gaze overflowing with such terrible killing intent and hatred that merely making eye contact was enough to choke one’s breath.

“You let your guard down, you idiots!”

But unlike me, who couldn’t even breathe properly just from making eye contact, Magic-nim defiantly raised the middle finger of her left hand towards them.

“Go suck on the Golden Empress’s plump breasts some more! They say golden liquid comes out of that woman’s chest, don’t they!?”

At her provocation, which mocked the Empress instead of herself, the eyes of the Empress’s loyal subordinate and the continent’s strongest Swordsman went wide with fury.

“Go take a bath! Thanks to that disgusting piss stench, I keep remembering you rolling around in a puddle of your father’s piss!”

At the taunt, which reminded the Demon Queen once again of the shameful spectacle of her predecessor, who had realized his powerlessness and retired, her eyes narrowed menacingly.

“Ma… Magic-nim. Any more provocation…”

Her excessively aggressive provocation, even with such formidable beings right in front of her, was so terrible it nearly brought tears to my eyes.

Her primal and intense provocation was met with an immediate reaction.

The continent’s strongest Swordsman, who had been leading the elite troops and keeping the Demon Queen in check, abandoned his troops, his eyes rolling back in fury, and charged at us, intent on severing Magic-nim’s neck in a single blow.

The Demon Queen also, not caring about the consequences, gathered all her magic power and unleashed it with all her might, targeting only us.

Bang!

But fortunately, as if she had calculated all of this, Magic-nim’s spatial teleportation magic activated half a beat faster.

Space twisted strangely, and Magic-nim, gripping my collar, along with my body, was sucked into a subspace connected to another dimension.

The moment I felt relief seeing the sword light of the continent’s strongest Swordsman, which seemed capable of simultaneously severing Magic-nim’s neck and my chest, vanish before my eyes…

Boom!

With a strange shock that felt as if only my mind, not my body, was being rattled, the entire subspace, a mixture of gray and blue, violently shuddered.

“That damned woman’s magic aftershock reached even here?!”

Perhaps her status as Demon Queen wasn’t merely gained through connections, as the attack, unleashed with all her might, had managed to damage Magic-nim’s subspace.

At the end of the vibration that shook the subspace, sharp cracks, ominous at first glance, began to spread slowly like gaunt branches.

“W-what is that!?”

I had occasionally experienced spatial teleportation through such strange subspaces with Magic-nim, but cracks appearing inside the subspace was a phenomenon I had never witnessed before.

At the same time, the entire subspace, which had always been peaceful and quiet, began to churn violently, like the belly of a hungry beast.

“It’s nothing!”

Magic-nim said it was nothing, but watching her hands frantically move towards the cracks, her lower lip bitten as if in tension, it certainly didn’t seem like nothing at all.

She squeezed out every last bit of magic power remaining in the pendant, gripping tightly to prevent the cracks carved into the subspace from widening further.

But despite her efforts, the cracks in the subspace continued to widen, and the unsettling vibrations gradually intensified, threatening to collapse the entire space.

“Magic-nim! It’s the exit!”

In the meantime, I found an exit through which we could escape this subspace.

Our bodies began to be pulled towards the brightly glowing exit, as if by a powerful gravitational force.

“Ugh… Ju… just a little more…”

Magic-nim seemed to be pouring all her strength into preventing the cracks from widening further until our bodies exited, as she merely continued to squeeze her gripped hands, her lips bitten tight, apparently unable to hear my cry.

Holding her waist tightly so as not to be separated from her, I gazed at the approaching exit.

I didn’t know what kind of world awaited us beyond the spatial teleportation magic, destabilized by the Demon Queen’s attack.

But what was clear was that Magic-nim, whom I held in my arms, had lost all the power and magic that had once rivaled a god.

Magic-nim, who had lost all her power, wealth, and subordinates, and fallen into the abyss, just like me in the past.

Just as she had saved me, could I save her this time…?

…Could I?