episode_0068

The boots that reached up to her knees blurred and distorted, repeating the motion. The repulsive face swayed as if being swallowed by a hazy mist.

Between the swaying, Iris felt a creepy sensation from the faint traces that softly appeared and disappeared.

Her body tensed involuntarily, and her breath stopped. Without even blinking, she looked at the blurry slave trader with a vacant expression.

“Why… why is this happening?”

Her stomach churned, feeling like she might vomit at any moment. Her head felt dizzy as if suffering from a high fever.

“C-cough…”

Her blocked breath intermittently burst out, causing her shoulders to shake violently. Was it because of the bright red mist? Or was the sword the slave trader wielded poisoned?

Various questions circled in her mind, but none could provide an answer.

Blink, blink.

Every time she blinked, the slave trader’s arm looked familiar, and his blood-soaked clothes became recognizable. Iris quickly thought of a possible “answer” but swiftly erased it from her mind.

There was no need to keep something in her mind that she couldn’t act upon. While staring blankly at the blurry slave trader, someone approached and lightly tapped Iris on the shoulder.

“Hey, come on, get inside. You need to prepare for the next match.”

When she absentmindedly turned her gaze, a man she had never seen before stood there. His broad shoulders, a head size larger than an average person, and a height that seemed to be around 2 meters made him look quite powerful.

He definitely looked like he used quite a bit of strength.

After staring blankly at the man, Iris turned her gaze back to the collapsed slave trader. Since the air cleared, the number of times the slave trader’s brother crumpled increased.

“Can’t you hear me?”

With an irritable voice, one of his arms was roughly grabbed and pulled.

“What? You fought with such a frail body?”

The man grabbed Iris’s arm, looking surprised.

“Oof..”

With her head spinning and her body shaking, Iris felt like she was about to vomit right away.

“Oh, gosh…”

Seeing her in that state, the man roughly threw Iris aside. After rolling on the ground, Iris instinctively grabbed the sword lying next to her. The cursed demon sword, Gargantua, which had been released from its contract upon Lian’s death, ended up in Iris’s hand.

Thud!

As she gripped the demon sword, Iris’s vision shook violently.

Monster, a monster like you shouldn’t be alive.

How, how are you alive? A monster?

Horrible! Monster! Monster! Monster!

A scream-like voice echoed in her head. Feeling her vision sway even more, Iris lowered the hand that covered her mouth down to touch the ground. She felt like she would collapse if she didn’t do so.

Useful! An item?

Sister, sister, sis-sis-sister.

Right? I want to live, don’t I?

Hehe, that’s right, hehe, that’s right, hehe, that’s right?

The dreadful memories that Iris had barely suppressed began to surface on their own. The tone of the voice jumped around, and the same words repeated over and over again. The voice scratched at her ears, almost making her burst into laughter.

“No, please, please stop…stop!”

She screamed and shook her head wildly. But the voices only grew louder, never stopping. Suddenly, as if someone who had regained all their memories, all sorts of memories popped up and confused her vision.

“Ugh…I hate it, aaah! Oh, bro…bro..bro, save me. Lian!”

As she raised her voice, her mind suddenly became quiet.

Lian, you killed him, didn’t you?

The clear voice sounded like a mix of a woman’s, a young boy’s, and an old man’s voice all jumbled together. More than the eeriness of the voice, Iris was surprised by its content.

Now, see what you’ve done.

The face turns to the side on its own. As if someone forcibly turned the head to the side, it turns to the side to the limit and soon looks down.

“Uh…?”

Iris looked down at ‘Oppa’ with a blank face.

“Why…? Why..? A sl… slave trader…”

Iris distorted her expression and laughed while looking at her deceased Oppa. It was a reflexive laughter in the face of unbearable stress.

“No, it’s not… this isn’t it…”

Iris muttered absentmindedly. At that time when her mind was falling apart.

Suddenly.

The man from earlier grabbed Lian’s neck and lifted it up.

“Phew, luckily it’s still attached. It would be hard to clean up if it got cut off.”

After saying that, the man started dragging Lian somewhere. Iris only watched her departing Oppa without following.

She still couldn’t accept that what she stabbed was her Oppa, that her Oppa had died. It was natural.

To her now, the only solace and goal in life was solely Lian. Could she have directly stabbed him to death? It was impossible.

“I, I killed the slave trader. So… so no. Yes, this is all because of that strange fog.”

Iris constantly murmured to herself and stood up.

Swish.

Ignoring the sword in her hand, she quickly moved towards the entrance she came out of. As Iris entered the waiting area, she saw the figure of a rat person.

“Can I… go up now?”

“Yeah. You can go up right away. First, get your things from the original floor -”

“No, I want to go… right away.”

The rat person pondered with a smirk.

“Did something suddenly slip out?”

I had doubts about Iris’s much more flexible way of answering than before, but soon brushed off those doubts lightly. The arena is a place where someone suddenly goes crazy and changes widely.

Iris suddenly opening her mouth was not much of a change.

Jui Su-in immediately took Iris to the floor where Ryan was staying in the elevator.

“There is one empty room, but I haven’t tidied it up yet -”

“Oh, what about Oppa’s room?”

Jui Su-in, with a smirk on his mustache, was about to say more, but instead told a slave who was cleaning the corridor that he didn’t want to deal with Iris, who was covered in blood, to take her to Ryan’s room.

Watching Iris leave with the slave with a bright expression, Jui Su-in burst into laughter.

“Doesn’t she even know who she killed, pussy?”

Since there might be a commotion later, for the time being, it seemed that things assigned to Iris should be communicated through someone else. Jui Su-in left on the elevator, and Iris arrived at Ryan’s room.

The door was not locked, so she could go in right away. Iris looked around eagerly to find Ryan, her eyes sparkling.

Clang.

The dark magic she held in her hand fell to the ground. She dropped it without realizing it, her strength leaving her hand.

Iris began to search the much larger room, paying no attention to the dark magic rolling on the floor.

“Oppa, Oppa…”

She kept calling for Ryan and searched the entire room with her flickering eyes.

She rummaged through every room, from the bathroom to the closet, but couldn’t find Ryan anywhere.

Her fingertips trembled, and her collarbone fluttered as if she were about to suffocate. Feeling her whole body growing cold, Iris said with a voice mixed with laughter.

“Surely, surely he just went out for a moment because of something.”

A roaring sound began to surge in her head. Iris lowered her head strongly and pulled out Ryan’s clothes from the wide-open closet, embracing them in her arms as she sat down hesitantly.

Clothes, all the clothes are here. I’m here too, I’m his younger brother… so I’m here! That’s why he’ll be back soon!

Iris trembled her lips and tried to erase the scene that came to mind.

Holding Lian’s clothes, she lay on the bed filled with his scent, hunched over, and swallowed her breath.

She heard his footsteps in the distance, quietly the door opened. Then she would jump up and run to him… then…

Iris waited and waited for him to come back while clutching Lian’s clothes and fumbling through the past.

…But he didn’t come back.

The boundary between night and day. At a time when the world began to be engulfed by darkness, someone came to Iris’s room where she was holding her breath.

Iris immediately realized through the footsteps that the person who came to the room was not Lian.

Knock, knock.

So even when she heard the knocking sound, she didn’t move.

“Hey! They say they’ll let you meet your brother, so come out!”

….!

Bang!

Iris jumped up from the bed and rushed towards the door. She was so flustered that she didn’t realize a thin black dagger-like blade stuck to her ankle.

Clang!

As she roughly opened the door, the man who had thrown Iris in the arena was standing there. He frowned and tried to grab Iris’s wrist, but Iris dodged agilely like a cat.

“Well… do as you please. Try to follow me properly.”

The man, realizing there wasn’t enough time to wrestle with Iris, started walking ahead.

Iris, who wanted to see Lian, followed him without a word.

“Go in.”

They arrived at the entrance of Ansho’s room. Since Iris was already in a daze, she immediately opened the door and went inside.

Clang, squeak.

She made a sound as if the door might fall off due to difficulty controlling her strength, but she didn’t care. Iris walked quickly and eventually ran out.

“Haak, haaak…!”

She wouldn’t have been tired just from running this much, but her breathing became rough due to heightened emotions.

As she quickly passed through the dim corridor illuminated only by candlelight, she found a door at the end of the corridor that opened on both sides.

Kwaang!

Iris opened the door as if she were going to break it and went inside.

“Haak, haak… Oppa!”

Arriving in the spacious living room with a loud voice, Iris quickly scanned the surroundings. Then her eyes met his.

“Oh, you’ve come at a good time.”

Lian’s empty pupils, pierced through the chest, stared at Iris from the table in the living room.