Chapter 206: □□
“Why are you keeping her locked up in a barrier? It’s already too late!”
“······!”
The moment he heard the Frost Monarch’s voice, Rex had a hunch.
The Frost Monarch was furious.
Not just a little, but a lot.
It was understandable, after all.
To the Frost Monarch, Eugene was more than just an object of admiration.
And the child who seemed to have been kidnapped by the Great Demon was a child that Eugene cherished.
It would be strange if she didn’t lose her mind over the issue of a child she cared for like her own daughter.
“Frost Monarch! Calm down for a moment-“
“Get out of my way, Rex!”
Kwaang!
The Frost Monarch’s foot hit the ground, causing it to rumble.
It was a seemingly insignificant rumble, but the situation changed drastically when magic began to erupt from her toes.
Uncontrollable magic gushed out of Yerina without end.
Yerina’s hair, which had stopped using her mental method, shot up into the air.
White cold air leaked out from between the evil runes.
The magic in the atmosphere vibrated in response to the runaway magic.
The magic in the atmosphere, which had received an enormous amount of energy, began to run wild in turn.
The rampage gradually spread to the surroundings, synchronizing all the magic in the space.
This resulted in a limitless range of cold magic.
Neither the power, the range, nor the casting time could be controlled at all.
But that was why it devoured everything around it so powerfully.
The water vapor in the air froze instantly, turning into ice fog.
The green lawn was instantly frozen and trapped in ice.
The freezing speed was so fast that the ice could not contain itself and took the form of icicles that shot up into the air.
“How am I supposed to survive here······!”
Rex cried out in despair, but it was no use.
There was no way to stop the chain reaction that had already begun.
Rex sat down in a daze, overwhelmed by the icy hell that was approaching at a speed far exceeding that of a human running.
But then, the next moment.
“······?!”
Kwaang!
An enormous amount of heat brushed past Rex’s ears and blew forward.
It was like the heat of hellfire.
When he came to his senses after the flames died down, everything around Rex was frozen except for his surroundings.
“······I’m leaving······”
“What?!”
For a moment, it felt like a hand was placed on Rex’s shoulder, and he heard a man’s voice muttering something.
And the moment he turned around, Rex had to doubt his own eyes.
Even though he was a person who couldn’t sense magic well from birth, he could tell.
The fact that an enormous amount of magic was now tearing the space open.
The crack in the space, which had been open for a very short time, closed again without giving Rex a chance to react.
As if the crack had never existed in the first place.
“······Ah.”
And about 3 seconds later.
Rex noticed that one person was missing.
The girl who had been kidnapped by the Great Demon (presumably) was gone.
“Rex. What happened to the child?”
“Ah.”
Rex’s head was gripped with a force that seemed like it would crush it, and he shivered at the cold sensation he felt behind his back.
“I sent you to deal with the kidnapping······. Did you get so caught up in fighting that you lost the target of your rescue?”
“That, that’s. Actually, there are some complicated circumstances here-“
“Wait.”
The magic in the surroundings, which had been about to run wild again, suddenly calmed down.
The Frost Monarch had once again used her mental method to calm her madness.
Her gaze was directed at none other than Rex’s hand.
There was something in Rex’s hand that had definitely not been there just a moment ago.
“Where did you get this?!”
“Huh? Why is this in my hand······.”
A black magic stone.The magic stone faintly emitted the aura of a great demon.
The Frost Lord, who had snatched the magic stone from Rex, hurriedly held it up to the sunlight and examined it closely.
“The shape and the traces of the residual image match perfectly… This is Eugene’s magic stone, but…?”
He had met Eugene and examined it in person, so he was certain.
This was the jewel that Eugene had been using.
And it was the magic stone that had disappeared with Eugene and had not been found for three years.
But why did it suddenly appear here?
Why would it appear in Rex’s hands out of nowhere in an empty field?
Rex was also confused by the series of incomprehensible situations, when Yerina discovered something and clenched her fists and moved.
On the narrow patch of grass that had not frozen and died, a long sword was stuck in the ground, emitting magic power without end.
The sword looked as if it were trembling in fear as it emitted magic power.
.
.
.
“I almost died…”
I escaped safely.
As I sighed in relief, I couldn’t help but laugh at how ridiculous I looked right now.
“It reminds me of the old days.”
Even then, Yerina had run wild and frozen everything, and I had barely escaped the disaster.
Could this also be considered a memory?
Of course, it wasn’t a memory I wanted to relive.
‘Mania. She’s suppressing it well.’
This rampage was several times more powerful than the rampage before she learned the Heart of Madness technique.
That was proof that she had been suppressing her rampages well on a regular basis.
The Heart of Madness technique suppressed her power in normal times and amplified it when she needed to use it.
Yerina, who had been so stubborn and arrogant, had changed.
In the past, she would have asked why she had to change and told me to adjust to her.
Yerina had decided to change herself for me and for the other heroines.
Three years.
It was by no means a short period of time.
Yerina and the heroines had changed.
The world had changed as if the heavens and the earth had been turned upside down.
In that case, how much would their hearts be aching by now?
How much pain had I left them with?
This couldn’t go on.
I had to return to them as soon as possible.
I made that decision once again.
“First, I need to observe their reactions.”
There were things I had left behind for the experiment.
One was the magic stone I used.
I had given it to Rex and escaped.
And the other was Belphegor.
I had ordered him to maintain the form of a sword until I gave him a separate order, and I had left him stuck in the ground.
Belphegor was one of the few people who could recognize me now.
I wanted to see what would happen if he tried to explain to people about me.
If possible, I wanted to convey the fact that I was alive, at least for now.
No. Even if it was just a hope that I might be alive…
It would certainly be dramatic to appear suddenly like a miracle at a time when their hearts were aching and they were pushed to their limits, but there was nothing more selfish than that.
“The meeting with the White Tower Lord has been canceled.”
I could see the White Tower rising high in the distance.
And I could also see the airships floating around the White Tower, patrolling the area.
With that much force guarding the tower, there was no way I could approach Temulen.
I had to either break through or wait for another opportunity…
“Let’s wait for another opportunity.”
It was too dangerous.
Just now, as soon as Yerina realized that she had an unrecognizable enemy, she had unleashed indiscriminate area attacks…
It would be better to approach when their guard was down or when Temulen left the White Tower.
“Hwaaah! Someone help me!””······?”
At that moment, a scream came from behind.
I was startled and parted the grass to see a giant spider tangled in some vines, flailing around upside down.
It seemed to be very frightened, as it was constantly spewing white spider webs from its rear end.
A spider that could speak human language.
I felt a strange sense of unease and tore at the vines, turning the creature back over.
And then, in that instant.
The spider’s body twisted grotesquely as if it were molting, shrinking and transforming into a human body.
The figure was clearly the girl I had seen earlier, wearing a bamboo hat!
“You······!”
“Whew. Thank you. I can’t transform until all eight of my legs are on the ground. But why do you look like that, mister?”
“What are you?”
“I told you. An ordinary human······ I think······.”
The girl trailed off, her eyes darting away as she spoke.
No soul, and she can transform into a spider, but she’s an ordinary human?
It was so brazen that I was speechless.
“Why did you follow me?”
This girl had clearly intended to leave me behind and run away.
In that short time, she must have slipped through the cracks and followed me.
Even without that, the other side would be in an uproar, thinking that this girl had been kidnapped······.
“Well, I was curious. Who you are. And who I am. How could I pass up this opportunity?”
“What does it matter who you are?”
“I know I’m strange. I’m definitely human······ I am human······. But something’s different. I’ve felt it for a long time, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. But you’re the only one who can’t hear my name properly. So I thought you might be connected to my identity.”
“······.”
She is certainly a mysterious being.
From what I can tell, she appeared in the three years that I was gone.
She seems to be an important figure in the Alliance, as the Allied Fleet and Yerina were immediately dispatched when she was kidnapped.
“What’s that blue flame next to you?”
“Yes?”
I asked, pointing to the small flame that was following the creature around.
The girl looked surprised and startled.
Then, her face lit up with joy.
“You can see it?! I thought I was the only one who could see it······! This is my friend, a goblin!”
“Friend?”
“Yes. It used to be a ghost that haunted the cemetery, but when I asked it if it wanted to come with me, it followed me around. Since then, it’s been with me all the time, helping me with my magic. But no matter how much I explain it, no one believes me! You’re the first, mister! Someone who can see goblins!”
“······.”
The girl was very excited and chattered away like a child.
I couldn’t help but look a little sour.
A ghost.
Is it because I’ve been to the Demon Realm?
It seems that I have become able to see ghosts with my own eyes.
At this rate, I’ll start seeing ghosts at night.
That’s a bad thing.
“That thing on your head······ no.”
“······?”
I started to speak, looking at the chain on the girl’s bamboo hat.
This chain is only visible to me, and this girl can’t perceive it.
I can’t perceive the girl’s name, and the girl can’t perceive the chain.
I feel like something is twisted, but it’s twisted tightly.
In this sane world, only the two of us seem to be bugged, constantly breaking the rules and stumbling around.
Surely, as the girl says, there is something in common between us, or some connection.
“You said you had a master. Who is that person?”
“Hmm. I don’t remember very well. All I remember is that he often stroked my head. But that person is a very bad person.”
“Why?””He left without saying a word. It was when I was just learning to speak and trying to get stronger to be of help to him… When I woke up, he was gone. When I asked around, all I heard was that he had gone far, far away. It was only later, when I had grown a little, that I found out. That man, he died while pretending to be cool. He met a glorious end as a hero who saved people and defeated villains. Isn’t that funny? The heartless man who didn’t even give a name to the slave he took in, who left without a word, is hailed as a hero by the world… If I ever meet him again, I want to ask him why. Why did you do that to me? What did it mean when you stroked my head? What was I to you?”
“······.”
“No, think about it. Isn’t it strange? Normally, when you pick up an orphaned child, you send them to a wealthy family or an institution, right? The fact that a man who was just wandering around looking for a place to sleep took me in means that he must have had some kind of affection for me, right? And yet, that man left me without a word? He left a child who could barely speak and didn’t know right from wrong all alone. Did he not care what happened to me? Isn’t he crazy?”
“······.”
“Ah, I got a little excited. I’m sorry. What about you, sir? What kind of person are you?”
The girl, who had been speaking with her lips pursed as if she were burning with resentment, suddenly looked up at me with a bright smile.
I was speechless.
This guy…
No matter how I look at it, he’s a nobody.
From Noble mtl dot com