Chapter 731
Chapter 731
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Translator: Ebonarch
Chapter: 731
Chapter Title: The Fugitive (6)
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1.
Rinne had turned Toho Temple into her battlefield, cutting down dozens of government troops and even monk soldiers.
She looked wretched, as if she'd crawled out of hell.
Her body, which she'd barely washed in the valley over a long time, reeked like a beast, and beneath her tattered clothes were wounds large and small.
But that wasn't the real problem.
Having dragged her utterly exhausted body into a desperate fight right in the middle of a temple with nowhere to flee, a long spear blade had pierced straight through her thigh and shoulder.
Rinne leaned against a wooden pillar, trying to steady her ragged breathing, but it showed no signs of calming.
The blurry statue of Buddha reflected in her eyes seemed to lament the sight of the main hall turned into a slaughterhouse.
'......'
Her body was cooling.
The bone-chilling cold made her teeth chatter as if they might shatter, freezing her marrow solid.
Rinne instinctively clutched her necklace.
At this point, Rinne already knew.
Her mother had said she needed this necklace to find her.
But that wasn't true.
It was probably just a device to make the remnant hunters see her as more appetizing prey.
Even so, grasping it in her final moments before closing her eyes must have been because those times yearning for family were her only salvation.
Was it thanks to that?
She no longer felt the cold.
As the massive blood loss cooled her body, it slowly warmed again, bringing a cozy sensation.
-Thud thud
At that moment, someone entered the main hall housing the Buddha statue.
Rinne barely lifted her head, and a shadow fell over her—it was her mother.
Even amid the pounding passion in her chest, Rinne didn't cry.
No, she couldn't.
It felt like she'd forgotten how.
'Mother...'
Her mother, crouched down, pulled out the broken spear lodged in her thigh.
Without even screaming, as soon as she endured it, astonishingly, Rinne's body was fully healed.
Rinne tried to say something.
But the moment she met her long-craved mother's eyes, no words came out.
Because the only emotion etched in those eyes was deep disappointment.
'Pathetic... to falter at this level...'
The praise she'd hoped for was replaced by a short sigh.
Far from embracing her warmly, she didn't even help Rinne stand, who lacked the strength to rise on her own.
She knew.
The mother figure she'd clung to was nothing but an illusion her master had acted out.
Yearning for the past mother was no different from feeling nostalgia looking at someone else's family photo.
Her master pondered while standing.
Rinne could tell her hand hovered near her waist, ready to draw her sword at any moment.
Like a craftsman smashing unsatisfactory pottery with a hammer, she was contemplating discarding Rinne.
The instant she saw that, Rinne felt a searing heat swelling between her skull.
The thick hatred and rage rising in her parched heart, which she'd suppressed without facing because she clung to the illusion of family—rage she'd thought she could no longer feel.
Rinne's body sprang up like a cat pouncing on a small bird.
She swept the floor swiftly, gripping her sword, and it surged up like a fountain.
But she was no match from the start.
Her master effortlessly deflected Rinne's thrust, then stomped on her chest and drew her own sword.
Just like Rinne had done dozens of times, a light push would end her life.
Pinned to the floor, Rinne writhed even before the sword tip glowing with a hazy light.
'...I'll kill you.'
She couldn't forgive her.
She would never forgive her.
'When the day comes that you die... I'll be there, holding a sword and laughing...!'
A desperate scream no different from a beast's howl.
Rage burning with resentment and grief as fuel echoed thunderously through the main hall.
'Ho.'
Was she satisfied with the venomous spite fueled by fury?
Or did she like Rinne's eyes blazing like the Heavenly Slaughter Star?
Her master sheathed her sword and spoke.
'Do it, then. I'll wait.'
2.
From that day on, Rinne followed her master into full-fledged succession training.
This was also when she truly felt the curse of deficiency in her bones.
She couldn't feel any emotions or sentiments related to happiness.
Even recalling happy old times brought no sensation, like a callused, hardened palm.
Only brief rests were permitted when striving solely toward strength.
But Rinne didn't care.
She didn't give a damn about stigma succession or whatever.
She now had the goal of one day making her master kneel and granting her the end.
Thus, the relationship between Rinne and her master was grotesquely abnormal, like immiscible liquids mixed together.
She traveled the land with her master, mastering swordsmanship.
She killed ronin and warriors using only pure swordsmanship without magic, and spent the rest learning magic.
She even left the archipelago to head far to the Western Continent.
Every moment except sleep was training to grow stronger.
One year passed.
Three years passed.
Five years passed.
No matter how unforgivable the opponent, if you receive endless teachings from them, roam the lands together pursuing strength,
and moreover, have your near-death life saved multiple times by them,
even sharp resentment dulls in time.
It probably helped that her master was the only person she could rely on.
Rinne hated her master, but loved her mother at the same time.
Deep resentment wishing to kill her someday,
and at the same time, a pathological attachment wishing to be loved by her again as before.
It had been ten years since she became an Apprentice Witch.
Rinne had changed a lot.
As she aged, she'd grown taller and regrown her hair.
She'd learned magical knowledge and accepted the world's cruelty.
She no longer shared even the slightest trait with her past self.
Her master hadn't changed.
Her values, mindset—nothing had shifted.
The only change was that her master had grown weak.
'Aaagh! Aaaah! Aaaaagh!'
Screams filling the inner quarters of Hyangwol Tower.
It was familiar.
Rinne, who had been swinging her sword, let out a short sigh and entered the room.
'More, more... I can't take anymore. No more...'
The room was splattered with red stains.
The result of self-harm, like her master's white clothes soaked entirely in blood.
The curse of deficiency drives its bearer toward strength, but if they can't grow stronger, it gifts horrific nightmares.
Unlike Rinne, who still showed promising growth, her master had hit her limit three years ago.
'Aaagh!'
A sharp scream and a wildly swung sword strike.
-Clang!
Rinne easily twisted the blade away, flinging the sword aside.
The flying sword embedded in the floor, trembling.
Her pure swordsmanship had long surpassed her master's.
'Hic! Hnngh!'
Her disheveled hair in a messy bun, sobbing—there was no trace of the tender mother, nor the master's dignity that seemed ready to behead anyone.
Every time she saw her fallen master like this, Rinne felt a base sense of superiority and pity rising in her chest.
'Stop it. You're pathetic.'
Superiority and pity have something in common.
They're emotions distant from anger.
Thus, Rinne no longer hated her master.
Her resolve to kill her had also grown hazy.
She just sneered.
Believing all this was retribution for her sins.
At the same time, though she didn't want to admit it, she secretly hoped.
Imagining her master's weakness was once unthinkable, but now things were different.
Her master could only rely on Rinne now.
If she honestly admitted her wrongs and looked at Rinne.
If she became family again like before, Rinne would pretend to relent and forgive her.
She'd wished it a hundred times and given up a hundred times.
But foolishly, she hung hope on the hundred-and-first.
3.
Her master died without fulfilling any of Rinne's expectations.
In the most peaceful way she'd looked in nearly two years, no less.
Rinne stared vacantly at her master, who had inherited the stigma and become an empty shell.
A corpse staring at the ceiling without moving or blinking.
The pathetic end of a cowardly fugitive who fled, caused trouble everywhere, and died.
Now, Rinne had no family left.
Even the one who might have become family was gone.
It was hollow.
So hollow she didn't know what to do, what emotion to feel, or how to proceed.
'......'
Rinne clutched her necklace.
The one her master had first given her when she became an Apprentice Witch.
She caressed each curved jade, now slightly dulled from habitual touching.
The largest was Father.
The two smallest were Big Brother.
The second largest was...
'Mother.'
Truly alone for the first time, Rinne felt a suffocating sense of loss.
Couldn't she have embraced her tenderly just once, like that day?
'Mother, Mother, Mother...'
Transparent tears flowed.
She collapsed before her mother, whom she could neither resent nor love, and cried.
Crying, collapsing from exhaustion, waking to cry again—repeating this, Rinne gripped her sword and stood.
Behind her stretched white moonlight and black shadows.
Rinne realized a scar of loss had formed in her chest, one that would never heal.
A wound no one could fill, eternally gnawing at her.
The flashback ended.
Rinne's body sank.
Sinking endlessly to the bottom of swirling darkness like quicksand.
It was the sea of solitude.
A life so lonely she'd forgotten what loneliness was.
Even if she painfully opened her eyes, nothing would change.
So she didn't want to open them.
She wanted to sleep forever like this.
Then, a very small voice sounded.
"...Master."
A man's voice.
Rinne's eyelids trembled.
"Master!"
The one who entered this space where only Rinne should be was Si-woo.
Only then did her memories, bound to the past, flow backward.
"Let's get out of here."
In the sea of solitude pulling everything down, he looked precarious even supporting himself.
Yet he gritted his teeth and reached out a hand toward Rinne.
"Come quick, Master! I can't hold out much longer, seriously!"
Rinne stared at him with wide eyes.
"......"
Right.
Why had she forgotten until now?
She wasn't alone anymore.
The family she'd barely found in a life of meaningless drifting was right here.
"Don't make a fuss."
Rinne reached out and took Si-woo's rigid hand.
His hand was terribly rough.
And warm.