Chapter 58

Chapter 58 : Even Artisans Are Selective About Their Tools (9)

Murel scratched hard at his forearm as he crossed the Gate.

Frowning as though even the air itself displeased him, he looked around the forest’s immigration hall and narrowed his eyes.

I made Murel stop, crossed the barrier first, then handed him the bracelet and asked,

“That Sovereign you mentioned. Is that the existence the Phantasmal Species have been waiting for?”

“Mm…… you really have lost your memories.”

Murel, who had been rolling his eyes in thought, put on the bracelet I handed him without resistance and crossed the barrier.

The next instant, perhaps belatedly feeling the barrier clinging to his body, Murel flinched and curled in on himself. Then, understanding what the bracelet meant, he hurriedly handed it back to me.

What a hassle. Should I ask Pan to make one more?

“More importantly, explain.”

“Strictly speaking, it is closely connected to Underfolk folklore, but even several days would not be enough to explain all of that, so to state the conclusion first…….”

“To state it?”

“The Sovereign is Lord Iwon.”

Murel spoke with an indifferent expression, shading his forehead with one hand as he surveyed the view of the forest.

Who is the Sovereign again?

『Waiting for those who had vanished, unknown to anyone, and guarding the traces they left behind.

Longing for the Sovereign who would not return.

A monster without natural predators, suffering forever, unable to die even after death.

……That resembles my own situation too.』

It was the passage left in the Travel Log.

The reason Woldeer had shown me endless affection, the longing engraved in the blood of Phantasmal Species, the kindness the Ruling Phantasmal Species of Gorong had shown me.

I was that Sovereign?

No, saying Sek was that Sovereign would be correct.

I shook my head, confirmed Pering approaching from far away, and urgently asked Murel,

“You said the Sovereign is a forgotten existence. Then how do you explain the fact that Sek, or rather I, supposedly the Sovereign, sat on the lord’s seat for so long?”

“Strictly speaking, that is a matter of bloodline. All Underfolk are unable to escape the Sovereign’s influence, but among them, Lord Iwon, your blood runs especially thick…… Ah! Your Golden Eye is the same.”

My eye?

I instinctively pressed my Golden Eye, then saw Pering, yellow as a forsythia, hurriedly running toward me beyond my blurred vision, and lowered my hand.

There was plenty of time.

“I half-believed it after receiving the message, but Riwin has finally gone insane.”

Pering looked Murel up and down, then immediately frowned. Though the only Underfolk trait Murel possessed was his Red Eyes, the atmosphere he gave off was far too Underfolk.

“That is how it turned out. One more should be fine, should it not?”

“This place is not some Underfolk care zone…… Are you aware that the Underfolk who is supposed to come as part of the exchange has also been assigned here?”

“Really? Then it will be bustling. We will not be bored.”

“That is not what I mean……! Haa, never mind. My lord is suddenly talking about going all the way to the Underworld to greet them or whatnot, so let things happen as they will. As long as you follow the precautions. Please, do not cause trouble.”

Pering tore at his own hair, muttering and lamenting to himself, then questioned it, accepted it, gave up, and shook his head.

“Pan is going to the Underworld?”

“Using greeting Lady Reda as an excuse to inspect the Underworld…… roughly speaking, yes. The rumor that he has settled in Spring’s Domain because he cannot send her alone to the dangerous Underworld has already spread far and wide.”

Pering, glancing at Murel standing beside me, blurred his words and avoided the topic.

In the Original Work, there had been no good feelings between Pan and Karon all along, so perhaps this was a point where they would come into contact at least once.

I was roughly estimating the flow of the Original Work when I saw Murel’s murderous face and could only laugh hollowly. He had clearly lost it at the mention of Pan.

“We will have to leave the old catching up for later.”

“Catching up? There is a debt between that bastard and me that cannot be described by such a word.”

“Yes, yes. Greet him properly later.”

I swept my palm once over Murel’s gleaming eyes, then turned back to Pering, who looked dumbfounded.

“What?”

“You seem quite close? And one-sidedly, almost like a master-servant relationsh…….”

Pering looked back and forth between me and Murel in silence. His expression gradually turned horrified, then twisted as though he had chewed something inedible.

“I thought something improper. Please go and shut yourself in your lodging already. There are too many eyes watching.”

“I was going to do that anyway.”

“I will report this to my lord. It is my job.”

“I was not planning to ask you to look the other way.”

“Haa…… I will go first.”

Pering, who had apparently come out in a hurry to confirm the news that a new Underfolk had arrived, quickly returned as though he did not want to see any more, or perhaps as though he was busy.

His face had gone dark and dead, so I did feel a little sorry for adding another layer to his worries. Well, when I thought back to that gaze from earlier, almost close to contempt, maybe this much was fine.

I turned and called Murel, who was leaning over the railing at some point, looking around while half-hanging out.

He came flying over in a few quick steps, his eyes sparkling, sparkling…….

“Yes! It reminds me of the invasion back then! We never managed to enter this far because they hid it so thoroughly…… What a strange feeling.”

“Invasion?”

“Yes! Ah, the screams of the burning trees from that time are still so vivid…… mmph!”

Even if this was the quiet forest immigration hall, it was not completely empty.

At Murel’s booming first impression, I hurriedly covered his mouth.

I had brought him because I thought he would be useful for gathering information and offloading chores—let us forget that he had struck his own neck saying he would die—but surely this ominous feeling that I might lose my mind stopping him from speaking was only a premonition.

“I will show you around the house. Let us go.”

---

Perhaps hundreds of years ago.

Murel knelt in a snowfield where a pure white blizzard raged, looking only at the feet of Sek, his lord, as he held his breath.

He could not understand why Sek was trying to separate him at a time when the war was still far from stopping.

Even when he thought back over whether he had perhaps done something wrong, the things that came to mind were…… many, actually.

So even as Murel lowered his head at Sek’s summons, he could not complain that this was unfair treatment.

“It is a task only you can do.”

“My lord. What could someone as lowly as I possibly do?”

Murel was a half-being.

A mixed-blood of human and Underfolk.

He had inherited red hair from his mother’s blood and Red Eyes from his father’s.

The moment he realized he was Underfolk was before the blade of the Underfolk who killed his mother.

Murel, who had been an ordinary human, awakened his Frame that way.

He avenged his mother by his own will, his face buried in a pool of blood.

He endured, drinking blood that might have belonged to his own mother.

He became the same as them and was covered in the same blood, but there had been no other choice.

Starting from the lowest Underfolk rank, Murel had no desire to crawl upward even if it meant driving himself to the edge of a cliff.

He later heard stories about his father, but the reason he forgot them was that he found them uninteresting.

So at times, he lived like an idle layabout, and at other times, he used war as an excuse to ease his mood.

Then the one who placed a hand of salvation in his grasp was his lord, Sek.

“It seems as though you are stabbing a knife into yourself rather than others.”

“Bullshit? Birdshit? Stupid shit?”

“Instead of driving it into your own heart, stab me instead.”

“Do not make me laugh. If you are a lord, act like one and flaunt your dignity from above. Do not roll down into the dirt and pretend at virtue while covering yourself in the filth of lowlife scum.”

“Mm, are you done talking?”

After that, stars sparkled before his eyes. The second time, he really nearly had his heart pierced. From then on, words like hypocrisy and get lost caught in his throat and would not come out.

Sek sincerely tried to kill Murel, and Murel had to cross the boundary between life and death every day.

Because Sek would not kill him, Murel could not die. It was exhausting.

When Murel was shoved back into the muddy ground, Sek held out a hand.

He said he would give him a chance to kill him whenever he wished. If he wanted to take revenge properly, should he not at least overcome Sek himself, the pinnacle of those he hated?

Murel asked if he was mad.

Sek laughed.

Only much later did Murel hear that Sek had not been trying to kill him, but to save him.

Murel pressed his head into the blizzard-swept snowfield and asked,

“You have not forgotten your words that you would give me a chance to kill you, have you?”

“Do you want to kill me?”

“No. I will postpone that until next time. How about the promised day?”

“Mm…… that is a little difficult.”

Sek laughed off Murel’s questioning gaze with a rather troubled expression.

It was a mission with no promise, and no way to know how long it would take.

“You must guard the Flame of the Beginning. As a Creator, you know better than anyone that it is the production method.”

“You mean that cursed flame? It is an object that suffered the wrath of an Ancient Being.”

“It is for me in the future.”

“Pardon?”

Sek was someone who made everything possible even without such a thing as a production method.

‘Does that mean the future My Lord will be so endangered that he must rely on such a shoddy object? If so, then when that time comes, I will protect My Lord.’

Burning with resolve, Murel clenched both fists and overinterpreted the meaning of the mission.

“Someone will come bringing a necklace identical to this.”

“A necklace?”

The necklace, carrying a clear blue light, gave off the energy of the sky.

“Should I kill that person?”

“Of course not. Whatever they look like, whatever they say, whatever energy they give off, think of the one who brings the necklace as me.”

“Pardon?”

“You only need to remember that.”

“The necklace…… is My Lord.”

“Yes. It will take a long time before someone crosses the final barrier and comes to find you. You can…… yes, wait while playing with the Phantasmal Species.”

Murel, Sek’s confidant and the Director of “Ruka,” the secret agency directly under the Underworld First Command.

That was the reason he had guarded the cursed former domain of the sky alone for two hundred years.

…

…

Murel enjoyed the forest wind blowing softly, then pulled at the corner of his mouth and curved his eyes.

Sek’s words, telling him to think of the necklace as himself, had all been wrong.

Iwon, walking across wooden plank bridges as though washing away an ancient exhaustion, had looked so much like Sek from the moment he appeared holding the necklace.

Murel was glad. Wronged. Sorrowful. Happy. Gloomy.

He wanted to tell him everything that had happened over all the years he had accumulated, and he wanted to be acknowledged for having endured well.

Above all—

“My Lord, I have been waiting.”

He had chewed over the day he would convey those words, day after day.

Sek in his new form had cute points and clumsy points coexisting in him, but the gaze that appeared when he sank into thought……

It was undoubtedly the raw, one and only My Lord he knew.

“Wow! So you live in a place decorated like this? The thrill is no joke!! Can people fall down there too?”

“Please, could you speak quietly?”

Seeing Iwon’s pale face as he stopped him made Murel feel, for some reason, that he wanted to torment him even more.

He hoped Iwon would understand that the mere fact that Murel was not charging in, saying he would kill them, already meant he was enduring quite a lot.

“How long have you been living here?”

Leaving me behind, he added. At the question, Iwon rolled those clear Golden Eyes and rubbed the nape of his neck.

He could have given a rough answer, yet he was trying to calculate it precisely and tell him again.

Murel put more force into the swaying wooden path and hopped along.

“A few months, but I do not know exactly when.”

“As long as you have been living well, that is enough! Am I going to continue living here now too?”

“Probably. You have to behave. This place is…… as you can see, peaceful.”

It seemed he had accumulated quite a lot of memories without Murel.

Growing sulky, Murel laughed, “Ahaha,” without answering and ran ahead first.

Behind him, Iwon’s voice echoed, shouting that it was not that way.

How a single drop of ink fallen into the peaceful Forest’s Domain would change it—only My Lord Sek, now Iwon, would know.

Unable to hide how intoxicated he felt, Murel ran wild and finally fell down onto another path below.

From far away, Iwon’s startled, wide-open eyes were plainly visible as he came running belatedly.

“Lord Iwon! When do I get food?”

Did he know that drooling over the smell of food from far away was no different from how Iwon had been at the beginning?