Chapter 72

Chapter 72 : Recruiting Party Members to Grab the Past by the Collar (4)

Murel had one foot hooked over the terrace railing and was swaying with the night view as his companion when Fluffnix’s attack brought him down helplessly.

“Ahaha, I’m telling you, if you stick with me instead of Lord Iwon, you can return to your true form. Aren’t you tempted?”

[“Shut up. That is a devilish temptation.”]

“So it is tempting. You’re uncomfortable too, aren’t you?”

[“It is uncomfortable, but I will not be fooled. Are you not planning to peel me away and devour Master?”]

I looked half-lidded at Fluffnix, who was scattering sparks as he pecked with his beak, then dropped down beside him.

“Are you two insulting me right now?”

The lodging I had returned to after so long was still as usable as it had been back then.

The space was wide, and even with two beds inside, there would still be room left over, so there was no real need to go out onto the terrace.

Murel often complained that the inside felt stuffy even when he was at the office, and he played with Fluffnix on the terrace a lot, so I could let him pass.

The question was why Quiro was crouched in the corner of the terrace, giving off gloom with his whole body. If there had been visual effects, a raincloud would have been floating over his head.

Even though several days had passed, his stiff state had not improved at all. If anything, he kept digging himself deeper into the ground, making me, the one watching, feel awkward instead.

“Talk about the old days or something. Did you three bicker a lot two hundred years ago too?”

“That is not the right word choice. Back then, it was more of an attempted-murder relationship.”

“Attempted…… murder?”

“We tried to kill each other whenever we met. This one was no exception. That one digging himself into the ground was no exception either.”

Hadn’t all of you been friendly by Sek’s standards?

What Murel said next was childish beyond belief, but if I considered all of it practical crisis-response training, it was something I could let slide.

“Back then, nine times out of ten, Quiro was the winner. Now, why is he like that……? Wearing a leash does not collapse one’s essence, you know.”

I agree.

He looked as though he had lost his will.

Perhaps after handing all his decision-making authority over to Karon, he had not wanted to view his own situation objectively.

And then Sek appeared before him in that state, so pessimism and self-blame piled up and made him like that.

“Wait. You know that, and you still provoke him every time?”

“It is more fun because I know.”

“Wow, you really are a bad person.”

“You knew that, did you not?”

Murel cackled and focused on playing with Fluffnix again. His attitude said that he did not care whether boring Quiro was stuck in the corner or not.

That was how the lively yet gloomy terrace atmosphere was created.

Caught between them, I waited only for Ochel to hurry over.

But Ochel only knocked on the door after the moon began to tilt, Fluffnix fell asleep, and Murel, who had been waiting, finally got hit by Quiro.

“Riwin, the shadows under your eyes have grown darker in just a few hours.”

“Taking care of Konu was better than this.”

“Pfft, you have been through a lot. Shall I look at the symptoms first?”

I dragged Quiro, who was still outside on the terrace and refusing to come in, and set him down in front of Ochel.

After Ru had failed once, Quiro looked even more dejected and did not seem to expect much from Ochel either.

But after sitting roughly in a chair and quietly watching what Ochel was doing, his posture began straightening little by little.

Even though Ochel still had her eyes covered with cloth, she gave off an inexplicable feeling, as though she were openly digging through a person.

Now I understood that such a thing fell within the range of what was possible because she was a member of the Mist. Still, the delicacy of it was no different from actually seeing with one’s eyes, so it remained fascinating.

“I think I rooooughly understand.”

“Is it a leash?”

“You already know that Underfolk Frames assimilate with their surroundings.”

“You are saying the same thing as Ru.”

“Since I am a member of the Mist, I approached it from a different perspective. Have you ever heard of the existence of spirits?”

……Phantasm Vision.

The passive Skill I had been deliberately ignoring. It meant eyes that could see Phantasmal Existences—in other words, ghosts.

I nodded in silent affirmation.

“I think it would be right to say that the Frame has also been applied to those spirits in this form. I do not know exactly what Karon’s Frame is, but this must be a kind of it.”

Power Over Life and Death. Shadow. Black Mist.

Black Mist?

I frowned at the word that crossed my mind and looked at Quiro sitting quietly.

A clump of Red Mist still fluttered and swayed, trailing white threads.

Did it not give off an energy far too similar to the Black Mist that had seeped into the gears I had seen in the clocktower and vanished without a trace?

“Spirits that received the Frame’s command are applying the restriction in its place.”

“Black Mist. Phantasmal Existences.”

“Hmmm. Is there something like that?”

“I only heard that it is a formless power that chooses the Underworld Lord.”

Existences similar to the spirits of the Mist.

If ghosts had attached themselves to him, they could read the words spoken and the meanings of thoughts and induce him to vomit blood.

It was not remote control. It was control from the inside.

“If things go well, there may be a way.”

“Was I helpful?”

“Very.”

“I am glad.”

Assume Karon altered the Black Mist to suit his tastes with his Frame.

That Black Mist was originally the power of the Underworld Lord.

There was a part that had to be acknowledged, but I had a past where I had once been able to handle Black Mist.

And those things were not formless existences, but closer to the ideals left behind by Phantasmal Existences—or to the existences themselves.

If I could break the formula that the Underworld Lord was Karon and persuade them that Sek, the old master of the Underground, had returned―

I could disguise the restriction as still being maintained by Karon, without breaking the boundary.

---

Leaving the noisy atmosphere of the night market behind, I opened the office door and went inside.

The familiar scent of grass calmed my mind.

I swept a careless gaze over the shadows swaying in the faint light, then confirmed Quiro following me inside and went behind the bar to find something suitable to drink.

I had given the liquor I had hidden away to Ru, and while rummaging through other bottles, I wondered what I was even doing.

After telling Quiro to sit anywhere, I put water on to brew tea.

“Are you prepared?”

“It seems Lord Iwon is the one who needs preparation, not me.”

“I am burdened by the idea of applying an uncertain hypothesis in practice.”

“I am fine. If I must bear the sins of the past in exchange for reuniting with you, I will gladly accept it.”

I undid my tied ponytail and thoroughly mussed my hair.

If things went wrong, it might not end with only one person dying. This was a restriction suppressing the person said to be the strongest aside from the Former Underworld Lord.

“First, let us drink. I will drink, then try committing it.”

I had left the sleeping Murel alone because we might need someone to clean up if something happened.

If an accident happened and we were both caught up in it, at least one person had to be fine to handle the aftermath.

The Black Mist at the clocktower had not listened to me. Perhaps because it had already recognized Karon as its master, it had never reached my will, even as Woldeer swallowed it.

The worst-case assumption was that.

The restriction would be ruined, and Karon would know it.

From the beginning, Karon had readily sent Quiro to the Surface World because he blindly trusted the power of that restriction.

I hesitated until the brewed tea had gone completely cold and the night market lights began going out one by one, then finally made up my mind.

“Sit down. I do not know what will happen either, so I suppose I will do it and see.”

“Yes.”

I focused on the Red Mist visible in my sight. That was the recognition of the Power of Phantasm within the Phantasm Domain.

What I wanted was not power, but invisible existences.

After breathing slowly and opening my closed eyes again, different things entered my vision.

The old, forgotten Phantasmal Existences I had been deliberately ignoring billowed at the edge of my sight.

They were not the ghosts I had imagined, nor the grotesque monsters I had seen in movies.

Thoughts flowed in.

‘Let me out.’

Each thought, unable to form a clear shape, appealed directly inside my head.

‘It hurts.’

‘I want to live.’

‘Death is…….’

‘Entanglement.’

‘……frightening.’

All kinds of negative thoughts formed a thick mist and strangled my neck.

They did not want to be comforted. Endless salvation. Invisible hope. They wanted to strip away such things and exist on their own.

I placed my hand on Quiro’s shoulder.

The Black Mist rippling through his entire body surged and peeled away once.

It was the phenomenon I had seen at the clocktower.

Too late, I regretted not bringing Woldeer at least, but the water had already been spilled.

Reminding myself that I could not completely erase it, I slowly mixed my will into the thoughts.

‘I am your old lord.’

‘I will find you until the day my life ends.’

‘Even if I cannot grant salvation, something else…….’

The violently surging Black Mist slowly seeped back into Quiro’s body.

The large, rippling black shadow likewise vanished without a trace.

I quietly removed my hand and swept my gaze over the surrounding scenery.

‘No effect.’

Only after Quiro, who had been lowering his head quietly, opened his eyes again did I feel relieved.

“Um…… as an experiment, should we start with My Lord?”

“……!”

Quiro checked his own physical condition for a moment, then rose from his seat and knelt on one knee before me, just as he had on the first day he came here.

“My Lord, I have been waiting……!”

Unlike that time when he had vomited blood and collapsed, Quiro finished the words calmly, and nothing went wrong.

The red energies I saw with my eyes were stable too.

“I could not cut the leash, and instead I took hold of it…… is that all right?”

“……Yes!”

Despite answering vigorously, Quiro sank to the floor and rubbed his face.

Hoping the restriction that had tightened around his neck all this time would now feel comfortable, I threw away the cold tea and took out a bottle of liquor from inside.

“Now finish telling me the old story. How did it come to this?”

“I do not know where to begin…….”

I poured liquor for the hesitant Quiro and sat with my chin propped on my hand.

“Start with the story of Karon killing Sek.”

When I opened with the main point so openly, Quiro’s eyes widened. Then, with a trembling hand, he gripped the glass and emptied it in one breath.

“Yes. That day was rainy. It was the day My Lord had told us about for several days, saying the day had come. Karon was…….”

As I listened closely to Quiro, I felt the fragmented memories fitting together.

As expected, perhaps it was a structure where memories settled when there was a trigger, or perhaps it was a kind of bug caused when the Lost Data synchronized through that day’s error.

I pressed a hand against my chest and recalled the forgotten pain of that day.

One day among many, when I had spent a long time living without sleep. I had reached my limit, and I was losing control over my body.

It was not difficult to provoke Karon.

‘How about placing me beneath your feet and making your world?’

Karon was mixed-blood.

Like Murel.

The sins of the past had become accumulated karma, and Karon might have been waiting for only that day.

Sek wanted to die by his own will.

Even if it was not Complete Death, in that moment, he thought he wanted to let everything go.

Though in the end, he would not die, in that instant, he had held on to a faint “what if.”

A being who had lived for hundreds of years and walked the world longer than anyone else.

One who could not die, even if he wanted to die.

One who could not kill, even if he wanted to kill.

An immortal existence, and a Sovereign abandoned by the world.

Sek did not want revenge that ended simply.

It was not resentment aimed at a specific someone. He wanted to ruin this world itself.

“After confirming that My Lord had disappeared, everything moved as though it had been arranged in advance. I could not refuse Karon’s words. Because that was the only way I could wait for My Lord.”

Even within the line of memories being refined, Quiro quietly told me the facts they had experienced.

Hiding my complicated feelings, I pulled up the corner of my mouth.

‘Ah, now it begins.’