A Letter Filled With Regret
Violet thought to herself.
I want to apologize…
I still remember the first time I met him as clearly as if it happened yesterday.
In the middle of winter, I had only just started working as an adventurer, but my skills were so poor I could barely manage anything.
I was starving, without even enough food to eat, let alone the medicinal herbs needed to treat my little sister.
No one would spare me a glance. But it was the Seeker of Supreme Knowledge who reached out his hand to me.
Violet could still recall it vividly.
She hadn’t understood why a constellation would offer a contract to someone as worthless as her.
She had said to him,
And it was the Seeker of Supreme Knowledge who had told her that she didn’t need to become anything.
Lee Dohyun and Violet had been each other’s first constellation and first incarnation.
The two of them quickly grew close.
Thanks to his support, she began to make a name for herself as an adventurer.
Violet had come to think of her constellation, the Seeker of Supreme Knowledge, almost like family.
A few times before, when she had received voice messages from him, she had heard the voice of a young man and secretly imagined that he might be more than just family or a constellation.
That was why she had chosen the Ruler of Snakes and Darkness.
Because if she saw her constellation as family, then her little sister was real family.
She told herself it couldn’t be helped.
After all, the condition the Ruler of Snakes and Darkness had offered in exchange for healing her sister was to break the contract and deliver those terrible words to her former constellation.
The Seeker of Supreme Knowledge had been Violet’s first constellation.
Only after contracting with her second constellation, the Ruler of Snakes and Darkness, did she truly understand just how well her first constellation had treated her.
She had always felt that he cared about her.
But she was only human. After hearing stories about other supreme constellations, she had unconsciously begun comparing him to them.
Whenever he took in two other incarnations and paid attention to them, she had even thrown petty tantrums.
It was only after signing with the Ruler of Snakes and Darkness that she realized the support Dohyun had given her was never something to be taken for granted.
She finally understood that not every constellation treated their incarnations that way.
After the contract was severed, every single night, the vicious words she had spat at the Seeker of Supreme Knowledge replayed in her mind.
It tormented her.
And it wasn’t just guilt.
Only after ending their contract did she realize how much she had truly liked the Seeker of Supreme Knowledge.
She even wondered if she might have liked him as much as she cared for her little sister.
The snake had never intended to heal her sister in the first place.
She wanted to return to her previous constellation, but she had fallen for the snake’s scheme and hurled those cruel words at him.
So she couldn’t go back.
At the very least, she wanted to apologize. But now that she had become the main culprit behind the incident, all the constellations’ eyes were fixed on her.
If she went to apologize to the Seeker of Supreme Knowledge, there was no telling what the incarnations of the Underworld nebula might do to her.
Just as constellations could unilaterally sever contracts with their incarnations, incarnations could also break contracts with their constellations at will.
Exactly as Violet had done when she arbitrarily ended her contract with the Seeker of Supreme Knowledge.
Such things happened frequently among the lowest and low-grade constellations.
But once a constellation reached medium-high grade or above, contract terminations were almost entirely one-sided. The constellation was the one who ended things.
It was extremely rare for an incarnation to unilaterally break a contract with a high-ranking constellation.
The reason was simple: the moment you severed the contract without the constellation’s permission, retaliation usually followed.
The higher the constellation’s rank, the more likely they were to belong to a nebula.
If the constellation belonged to a nebula, the incarnation would be marked as a wanted target or even a target for execution by the nebula’s other incarnations.
Even if the constellation wasn’t part of a nebula, someone like the Great Warrior of Tartarus commanded thousands of incarnations on her own.
There was no telling when or where you might be attacked, so you couldn’t even walk around freely.
And if rumors spread through the communication window that you were an ungrateful traitor who had fled without repaying the grace you received from your constellation, it became nearly impossible to contract with any high-ranking constellation again.
At first glance, it might seem the system was only advantageous to constellations. But this world was one that had endured the monster invasions thanks to the constellations’ help from the very beginning.
Therefore, there were only two ways for an incarnation to safely terminate a contract with a high-ranking constellation.
Either the constellation agreed to the termination, or the incarnation received a scouting offer from a high-ranking constellation or nebula powerful enough to protect them.
And Violet?
She had neither.
First of all, there was no chance she would receive a scouting offer.
The only thing she possessed was the fact that she carried the bloodline of a witch, and even that power had not properly manifested yet.
No incarnation would risk antagonizing the Underworld nebula over a bloodline that might not even awaken.
Unless it was the 72 Demons, who had already become enemies of the Underworld…
[Message]
[Princess of Frost] Seeker, what do you think about taking in the incarnation named Violet?
[Princess of Frost] If you do that much, we can completely crush the Underworld bastards’ pride…
[Seeker of Supreme Knowledge] Hmm.
[Seeker of Supreme Knowledge] If any of our constellations wants to take her, go ahead.
[Seeker of Supreme Knowledge] I’m not particularly interested.
The 72 Demons had also heard what happened from Dohyun.
Her little sister’s life had been on the line, so she had gone to the Ruler of Snakes and Darkness.
But Dohyun had already spent his own money—money earned from part-time work at a convenience store—to buy precious metals, convert them into credits, and support her.
After raising her to a certain level, he had even been prepared to spend more to try and save her sister somehow.
That was the exact moment Violet spat vicious words at him and unilaterally terminated their contract.
From Dohyun’s perspective, it was impossible not to feel hurt.
Of course, unlike most constellations who were transcendents with terrible personalities, Dohyun was an ordinary human.
If he knew that every single one of those cruel words had been ordered by the snake, he probably would have understood.
But there was no way for Dohyun to learn the truth.
Violet desperately wanted to apologize to him and explain that the snake had forced her to say those things.
But there was no way to send him a message without the snake noticing.
The same went for the matter of her sister.
Violet had told him that she was becoming the snake’s incarnation in exchange for her sister’s treatment.
In reality, the snake had only healed her sister long after taking her in.
And even then, it was only done so she could use it as material to attack Dohyun.
Although that had happened because the snake broke their agreement, from Dohyun’s point of view, it was only natural to be suspicious.
Besides, regardless of the process, her little sister’s illness had been cured.
In the end, the result was good. So now, Dohyun no longer felt any particular attachment toward Violet.
Dohyun himself had been the one who heard those vicious words and had his contract severed, so he had no desire to get involved with her again.
Since he never bothered to check on her, he had no idea what kind of situation she was in.
From his perspective, she had broken their contract, moved on to a medium-high grade constellation, and even managed to cure her sister.
Her sister was already healed.
They had parted on terrible terms, so he no longer wanted to see her. He had no way of knowing she was being abused.
And because he didn’t know she was being abused, he had no reason to pay her any more attention.
Since even the 72 Demons had no intention of taking Violet in, she truly had nowhere left to go.
From the Ruler of Snakes and Darkness’s perspective, she had borrowed diluted elixir from the Great Warrior of Tartarus to resolve the situation.
It was all debt, and after feeding that elixir to her incarnation’s sister, she had still failed to resolve anything.
In truth, if one looked at it objectively, everything from the moment she took Violet in to the failure of attacking the Seeker even after using the elixir had been her own fault.
But the snake, who had fallen from medium-high to medium-low grade and was now consumed with rage, was in no state to make such a rational judgment.
Of course she planned to squeeze out at least as much value as the diluted elixir she had wasted on Violet.
But more than anything, the Ruler of Snakes and Darkness currently hated Violet so much she wanted her dead.
To make matters worse, from the Underworld nebula’s perspective, Violet was already a thorn in their side.
Her position was precarious even if she behaved perfectly, yet her mind was completely filled with thoughts of the Seeker of Supreme Knowledge.
Since she was no longer his incarnation, she could no longer send him messages directly like before.
To send him a message, she would have to go to the Pantheon.
But for an incarnation who already had a constellation to visit the Pantheon meant she was planning to betray her current constellation and switch sides.
She couldn’t do that. So instead, in the middle of the night, Violet secretly wrote a letter to the Seeker of Supreme Knowledge while hiding under her blanket.
The recipient was Aisha, the incarnation who had recently gained quite a bit of fame.
Violet sent the letter to Aisha, the only incarnation of the Seeker of Supreme Knowledge currently staying at the academy.
And the next day.
One of the Ruler of Snakes and Darkness’s senior incarnations came to find Violet with a sly smile on her face.
In her hand was the very letter Violet had written—the one filled with desperate excuses and pleas to please deliver her apology to the constellation. The letter addressed to Aisha.