5. Bread and Dagger (85)
The effect of the reagent Emma gave me was simple.
When a specific magic power is detected, the trajectory of the owner of that magic power is displayed.
It was a simple but useful effect.
Of course, all kinds of materials and trial and error must have been passed to make it. Nevertheless, Emma perfected this potion even while staying up all night.
Because you had to save me.
Emma was always grateful.
Thanks to that, today, I was able to save the North with this potion.
It was an exquisite coincidence.
The potion sprinkled on the ground began to draw a trail, leaving a faint aftertaste. I moved slowly along the color tones that slowly spread over the snowy field.
An army was moving behind me.
I don’t know what methods old Pope used, but as he boasted, the power of the mass of flesh was rapidly weakening. It was hard to find even traces of the once devouring coniferous forest.
If it hadn’t been for Emma’s reagent, I would have suffered a little too.
Even so, the horrors of the mass of flesh swept away were still evident.
There were not many trees left in the vast coniferous forest. The sparsely grown trees reminded me of a desolate field rather than a forest.
It wasn’t such a bad story. Because of that, it made it easier for the army to move.
Of course, it wasn’t a huge advantage.
The chunks of flesh devour surrounding life at random.
At the same time, I am gradually increasing my body size. And in the process, his innate strength seemed to grow even stronger.
In other words, it was useless to try to take the idiot with him.
It would only increase the prey of the flesh monster.
So, the military had to be the last resort.
In the end, the only person I could lean on was myself.
Yes, ‘I’.
I took a step and was lost in thought.
The sharp traces of life that had passed so far fell down like pebbles. Every time I took a step, a blunt pain swelled up.
Memories of one day float like dust.
Some of them even criticized me.
For example, a cold voice that doesn’t feel a single bit of emotion.
“Look at the bottom and come.”
It was advice from a man who looked like me.
As always, the man didn’t talk nonsense.
There was a world unknown to clumsy sympathy and narrow thinking.
The few days I stayed in the elven village, I deeply realized that fact.
The fact that I still lack a lot.
A life I didn’t know was all over the place.
Looking back, did Leoric do anything to me?
“Ian Perkus, have you ever truly been an underdog? I just did it as if it were good! You are an agent of vested interests!”
It was not wrong.
I was a noble of the empire and a hero of mankind.
I’ve never been worried about food, and I grew up in an affluent background.
Leoric’s accusations were therefore justified.
I don’t know anything.
The sound of gasping for breath is harsh. The body that repeated sprinting was screaming.
The lack of oxygen makes your vision blurry.
Tinnitus is heard, and a bloody note floats through the blank mind.
The words written there were cut into pieces and penetrated my brain.
‘Do you know the land of snow and ice?’
‘There’s nothing left here, senpai. But someone has to stay here. The power of the Seven Sins is like a curse. It never goes away, and someone has to bear the guilt.’
‘I, who inherited the sinful blood, must bear the responsibility.’
sinful blood?
There was nothing wrong with my juniors.
I just met the wrong parents. There was no life in which even birth was sinful.
Even so, she was a sinner.
The curse that turned Leoric into a monster, calling it the ‘power of the Seven Sins’.
Someone has to bear the terrible sin karma.
‘Don’t worry too much, old man. As you know, half of my body is a monster. There is no sign of going out of control yet.’
‘I just dream sometimes. A year before I was confined to this land, the dream of the day I went out with my senior… It’s a wish that can’t come true, but it would have been nice if one day I could walk in a flowery garden with my seniors.’
I walked and walked through the blizzard.
And I thought.
The fate the letter pointed to was very clear.
It was a girl’s bleak future.
My juniors should be isolated in a world farther north than the coniferous forest, where only snow and ice exist.
And that too after a grace period of just over a year.
The tragedy engraved in the bloody letter was not the only one.
‘Senior, I have a request for you.’
The typeface of the letter was written in blood, not ink.
Among the plain handwriting, the harshly written sentences stood out. It was a trace of gritted teeth and forced writing.
‘I’m starting to hear strange noises. Last night I saw a black shadow. It feels like I’m gradually not being me. Yesterday I bit off one of the fingers on my left hand. Then two, then three… more, more. I need more blood.’
It was a phrase that clearly oozes madness.
Around this time, I realized why I, from the future, had deliberately hidden the letter.
If I follow the future of the letter, I can defeat the northern monster.
However, on the other side of that future, a certain girl’s sacrifice had to be premised.
He knew from the start.
The fact that I can’t accept this ending.
To be precise, I didn’t even know I didn’t understand.
Would you have ever imagined a life born as a sinner in the first place?
Short insight, true ignorance.
The sympathy and compassion that were thrown like enemy ships.
That was my true self, called a ‘hero’ in the world.
‘So please chop me up someday.’
Today, I was just moving my steps without an answer.
‘It’s a body that doesn’t die anyway. Chop the limbs apart, divide them, and bury them in ice. Please don’t let me commit more sins.’
How could I.
He was a junior who was cherished and loved.
A girl who always had a cold expression, but now shows a warm smile from time to time.
how i
At the end of the letter, there were clear bloody letters.
It was a text with an intense color that seemed to tear my retinas apart.
‘From the junior who loves you, Seria.’
A bloody smell wafted out with a groaning sound.
Blood dripped from his chewed lips. Starting from that pain, my vision gradually began to open.
seen from afar
A lump of flesh was bubbling, and unconscious elves were scattered around it.
It looked like the monster had vomited up the elves it had eaten so far, reducing its volume.
Only four or five elves remained on the boiling flesh.
And with Leoric, who was lost in the middle of it.
I deliberately stood on the ground as hard as I could.
A blazing voice spewed out with pure white breath.
“… … Leoric.”
My hand groped for the handle of the sword.
It was proof that the hesitation was not over yet.
Is it right for me to kill Leoric?
He committed an unforgivable evil. By his hand, countless lives incited hatred and harmed each other. Of course, he deserved to be condemned to death.
Nonetheless, my struggles continued.
If I kill Leoric, what will happen to Seria?
The war between humans and elves is over. The elves who lost their center of gravity, Leoric, did not know if they would have to lose hope in life again.
Even my own people could have had a better life.
It was a perspective he had never thought of before, but it was after he had already experienced how poor the food situation of the elves was.
If Leoric quietly stayed in the coniferous forest like this.
Then Seria won’t have to sacrifice. If Delphine took control of the Yurdina family, the fights between humans and elves would disappear in the future.
If we do well, humans and elves can interact with each other and things will get better in the future.
Such self-justification was eating away at my heart in my twenties. Selfish thoughts continued biting their tail after tail.
It was the noise that a certain girl uttered that stopped the thought filled with idle thoughts.
“Cool!”
One of the elves scattered around Leoric.
It was a young child with gray hair and blue eyes.
I immediately realized the child’s true identity.
It was Avian’s younger sister, Betty, whom I couldn’t save.
It seemed that old Pope’s methods were effective. Even the elf that had been swallowed long ago, like Betty, had to be spit out by the monster.
I thanked old man Pope again.
When I get back, I’ll be sure to treat you to a drink.
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Just before Betty staggered to her feet, my arm, which hastily approached, supported the girl. Betty was letting out weak, shallow breaths.
At first glance, recuperation seemed an urgent priority.
Fortunately, it wasn’t just the military that was after me. Seria and several other colleagues would be running towards me, so I would have to entrust Betty to one of them.
It was then that the weeping pleas were squeezed out.
“Hey, about… … .”
I looked down at Betty blankly as if I was saying something.
Are you asking for a cure?
However, what Betty muttered with her loose tongue was so beyond imagination.
“About, Ju Se-hyo… It’s not a bad mood, Leoric Niiyim… … .”
Something popped and snapped in my head.
The skinny body had bony bones. This meant that I was not getting enough nutrition.
But what is this little girl talking about?
Leoric’s mouth opened after he couldn’t come to his senses for a while.
“Oh, poor Betty… I couldn’t sleep every night because I was suffering from an incurable disease. Rest in peace, sister. We’ll alleviate that pain a little bit… … .”
And the tentacles of the flesh soared up into the sky as if they were about to explode.
A grotesque mass of flesh rose from the seething flesh and wriggled at Betty. As if it were going to stealthily approach and swallow it again.
I had only one answer to that.
Pak, a solid white line is drawn in the world.
From this point, blood gushed out and colored the pure white snowy field. The tentacles of the flesh shrank and complained of intense pain.
A few more tentacles spring up.
I carefully lowered Betty to the ground and slashed all the tentacles flying toward her.
Pak, Pak, Pak!
Every time blood gushed out, the severed tentacles fell to the ground.
Even after being separated from the main body, the wriggling tentacles were very unpleasant to look at.
So I stepped on one of the tentacles rolling in front of me.
Then, the severed tentacles hardened their bodies and glowed even more.
Only then did Leoric’s eyes, which had been blankly facing the ground, turn to mine.
I wasn’t the one to miss that gap.
My body hit the ground rushing at high speed. The blade pierced through the air and pierced Leoric to the very edge.
Kang!
It was an unbelievable collision sound that the blade and the cloth collided.
Leoric instinctively swung his arm, and a power confrontation began.
A middle-aged man asked me in a muffled voice.
“Oh, Ian Perkus… poor girl Do you still believe that you are justice?”
“I don’t know!”
Kagak, as he twisted the blade, Leoric’s arm deflected in that direction.
Dig into that gap and slash once more.
The blade stuck in Leoric’s shoulder stopped going in. Leoric swung his other arm in the meantime, and I backed away, leaving my sword intact.
There was still one more weapon left.
hatchet.
I threw the ax down like a beam of light, and Leoric took a step without even thinking about it.
It was a body that could not even be cut with a sword.
At most, a hand ax could not inflict a fatal wound.
Yes, with one hatchet.
The next moment, a fountain of blood welled up and Leoric let out a scream.
“What is this… aaagh!”
It wasn’t Leoric that the thrown hatchet was aiming for.
It struck the sword that had been lodged in Leoric’s shoulder.
And according to Jung Jung-dong’s trick, the blade of the ax strikes the blade like a hammer in succession.
Kang, Kang, Kang!
At the end of three noises, Leoric fell to his knees with his chest cut in half.
Blood poured from his severed chest, and blood also overflowed from his eyes and mouth.
He stretched out his arms to me as if he was going to make a fuss.
Until just before my kick hit Leoric’s head.
With a snap, Leoric’s body collapsed to the side after being hit in the head. In the meantime, I pulled the sword and ax from Leoric’s body.
“I’m stupid because I’m in the swordsmanship department. therefore… … .”
Leoric’s body seeped beneath the melting flesh.
And Leoric, who appeared again, had numerous bodies.
It was a trick to keep people from knowing what the body was.
It was useless though.
I smiled slightly.
“Let’s die first.”
The countermeasures had already been put in place.
Familiar signs were approaching me.