Even in the midst of all the chaos, time passed indifferently.
Maleus was still in a closed battle, and the dead were guarding the front of such a battle.
While the group is busy running around looking for something to do in the cradle.
In those days, Vera, who was continuing his training to awaken his will as usual, took a moment to enter the reception room with Renee.
“Lady.”
“Oh, Vera?”
The center of the reception room.
Renee, who was alone in the middle of the large table opposite Vera, groping through the papers, lifted her head.
Vera smiled mischievously and put Renee’s image in his eyes.
The white wave glistens with the movement of the head.
The smile that crept up slowly spread across his lips like ripples in the lake.
The eyes, resembling the transparent sky, were folded finely toward the air, perhaps not knowing where to go.
Vera felt the promise burning in his chest at the sight.
There was a place for his thoughts to go. There was a light that the white sword should follow for the rest of its life.
Vera reached out and reached out to Renee, remembering how delightful the tickling warmth she felt whenever she was with her.
The place where his hand reached out was on the table, where thick paper was cluttered.
The paper she picked up was a pile of papers just for her, which the party had prepared for René, on which the letters on it were embossed so large that they could be distinguished by touch.
“Are there any inconveniences?”
The question posed by gathering and organizing the documents one by one. Renee answered the question with a smile as he was not familiar with the concept of embossing letters on paper.
“yes? Oh, paper? None! It’s so good.”
The hair that had fallen over her shoulders swayed along with the giggles of laughter.
“What should I say about this… . Oh yeah. fun! It’s all about turning the paper with my own hands, touching and feeling each letter one by one, and assembling those letters into sentences in my head.”
Vera’s smile widened as Renee patted the paper as he spoke in an exhilarating tone as if what he was saying wasn’t a lie.
‘I was worried about something.’
As Renee who had never seen a book with his own eyes in his life, Vera, who expected to have a hard time with things like turning the pages or reading and understanding the letters from the top, felt relieved by the bright look of Renee.
I also felt a really strange feeling at the same time as relief.
It comes up with a mixture of reverence for René’s growth and emptiness for some reason.
“It’s fortunate.”
“Thanks to everyone who worked hard.”
Somehow Renee was growing in a different direction than he knew, but Vera never thought that it was a bad thing at all.
No matter what happened, Renee was Renee, and he was a Renee who never sat down and always tried to move forward.
“Don’t push yourself too hard. Health always comes first… .”
“Pooh! what. that is. He’s like an uncle.”
… No, it could be a little bleak.
Vera narrowed his eyes and stared at Renee, then reached out and pinched Renee’s cheek.
“It’s not a good habit to enjoy making fun of others.”
“Behaha Theme is like this… .”
“Then it is a bad habit. It is a very wicked attitude to take pleasure in harassing someone.”
Renee pouted her lips to reveal a bulging look as her cheeks were elongated, then removed Vera’s hand and said:
“… But, if you don’t do this, Vera won’t respond. This is Vera’s bad.”
Vera’s mouth shut tight at the angry words. A look of trouble began to fill his face.
The atmosphere rapidly subsides.
In the meantime, Renee stopped rubbing Vera’s wrist, which was holding him, and asked with a smirk.
“Why are you shutting your mouth? Sorry?”
In a tone full of playfulness, Vera realized later that René had been playing a prank on him again, narrowing his brows and answering with a frown.
“… I am not at all sorry.”
“Oh, that’s the first I’ve heard of it. No sorry Vera! This is so precious.”
“It’s not fun.”
“I am having fun.”
Renee giggled.
Vera took a deep breath at it, then smirked along with it.
It was a laugh that he shed because he was so excited to see Ren’s bouncing around that he couldn’t hate it, and that even his appearance made Vera happy.
“Would you like to go for a walk?”
“Are you asking for a date?”
“It’s exercise.”
“Well, I’ll do it like that. At the same time, I also had a sore back. Let’s go for a little walk.”
Renee stood up with a cane leaning beside the table. He reached out to Vera.
Shortly after, Vera put his hands together, and Renee grinned and said to Vera.
“Then shall we go?”
Renee’s fingers wiggled in Vera’s hand. Vera replied, feeling it tickle his heart, not his hands.
“Yes.”
It was in the midst of thinking of such a nonsensical thought that maybe Renee might really have the ability to tickle the heart with his hands.
*
Hodrick thought about a change that had taken place in him recently.
‘It’s a dream… .’
A dream that I suddenly started to dream from one day.
It will raise concerns.
It was a cause that could not be understood by Hodrick.
Even so, he is not a dead man. It means a moving corpse that lives for eternity due to bitter regrets.
Wouldn’t it be rather strange that such a person, who does not even sleep, does not care much about dreaming.
In front of the castle gate.
Hodric stared blankly at the view of the cradle unfolding before his eyes, reflecting on his dream with a calm mind.
Burning wooden buildings and endless screams. It was to reflect on the meaning of the scene by reminiscing about the monsters who were making a riot with their clumsy swords and the weak civilians running away from them.
Literally, it was a matter of revisiting the ‘meaning’.
It was because Hodrick already knew what the dream was.
The dream was his own regret.
It was a memory of the moment when the past self, who only knew how to speak up and made promises that could not be kept, was finally punished.
Deep and vivid memories began to superimpose over the cradle’s foreground.
-honey!
Under a burning building, his wife, Della, soaked in blood, cries out. In his arms, his most precious treasure, Usher, was getting cold.
Awkward-.
No matter how many times he thought about it, he gripped the sword as if it would crush Arin’s memory, but Hodric couldn’t pull it out.
Because this is already the past.
Because Hodric didn’t know how to cut the past.
-Ahhhhhhh!!!
The monster fired a sword.
pooh-.
Della’s heart was pierced before Hodric’s eyes.
A pure white sword pierced through her body, adding red decorations.
If he had been in a living body right now, he would have stopped breathing.
Hodrick simply watched the moments with a terribly trembling heart.
It was because of the reason that he now defined this illusion as a ‘dream’.
The sword pushed Della away with a creepy movement. I scattered the red stucco around my body on the floor.
Immediately after, the assassin holding the abominable sword exhaled a long breath.
He turned his head and turned to Hodric. He took off the mask he was wearing.
[…] .]
The face that the assailant was wearing, that ugly brown hair and shaggy beard, belonged to him while he was alive.
creak. creak.
The monster approached while stepping on the half torn wooden floor.
After that, other monsters came, taking off their masks one by one.
What’s unique is that all the monsters are wearing their own faces while they were still alive.
This was it.
Why did Hodrick define what happened to him as a ‘dream’?
Why was it defined as a nightmare made of regrets.
Hodrick defined this as a ‘dream’ because he was still guilty of being the one who made the moment he regrets.
[Stupid.]
Hodric fired at them in an angry voice.
[Why did you make a promise that you can’t keep?]
I poured out my resentment.
However, that didn’t mean they didn’t come up with an answer.
Since they were fools who only knew how to make tragedy, they simply raised their swords and started preparing to attack Hodric.
For a moment, Hodric’s hand was out of recognizable speed.
With a rattling sound, the man who had pierced Della’s heart, who was at the forefront, fell.
Whether it was a catalyst or not, the remaining monsters began to attack at once.
Hodric loaded his sword with blazing cold rage and slashed them.
They were sword strikes with a stronger will than ever.
It was a sword chasing delusional illusions.
It was a sword that could not cut through the past, and cut only the virtual image of the past.
It was the sword that was exhausted and became a virtual image.
Hodric’s sword, which Vera once described as ‘like a mirage’, made fun of his body with great joy as if this was his stage.
As soon as everyone fell down to the last assassin, Hodric suddenly shook his head.
[…] ah.]
He stopped moving and looked at his hand in surprise.
I thought it was just recollecting my memories, but before I knew it, the sword was in my hand. When I looked up, I saw the cradle’s gates, which were all messed up.
Meanwhile, he fell into a dream again.
A sense of crisis emerged in Hodrick.
‘Dangerous.’
It wasn’t normal. I don’t know why, but it’s obvious that something is wrong with me.
Hodric made the lead sword with a trembling movement, then raised his head and looked in the direction of the cradle’s battle.
[Actually… .]
Why does an accident happen at such a point in time when Maleus is away?
Hodric, who felt a shuddering feeling in his heart, soon remembered the tooth that would hurt him if he had a bigger problem.
‘… miss.’
It reminded me of Jenny.
He remembered the tears that Jenny would shed.
A child who really resembles Usher. A lovely girl with a lot of respect and shyness. A warm girl whom even these sinful souls know as a family.
For her to be sad, Hodric didn’t want it.
[…] .]
Hodrick’s head turned to the sky. The gray sky that covered the cradle was there.
While thoughts that should have been called afflictions ran through his head, Hodric made a decision.
[…] your majesty.]
It may not have been heard, but Hodrick opened his mouth and vomited out an apologetic heart.
[Sorry. I don’t want to regret it twice.]
He didn’t want his loved ones to be hurt because of his sins.
If someone had to get hurt, he wanted it to be him.
Hodrick stood up straight.
He refined the morale that had been flowing one after another.
Hodric, who had stopped for a moment as if he had been a stone statue, then slowly moved into the castle.
The direction he was heading was the direction of Vera’s divinity.
*
A corner of the castle.
Vera stared at Hodric with a breathless look.
The expression on his face was hardened, and his mouth, which was constantly crooked, was expressing a feeling of surprise to the extent that he could not find anything to say.
“… what.”
Fragments of words that barely flowed out.
Hodrick on the other side answered, feeling guilty about seeing Vera like that.
[You are right. Kill me.]
Hodrick, who had spoken, continued, recalling the thought that for some reason this seemed to be an insufficient explanation.
[No, it’s a little strange to say that someone who is already dead should be killed. I’ll say it again. annihilate me Believe me, you can do it.]
The words that came out of Hodrick’s mouth seemed to be insignificant, as if they were joking.