Ending Maker Chapter 18
Ending Maker Chapter 18
Chapter 4 - Holy Staff #3
Boom!
A spray of water erupted along with the thunderous roar.
The surface shattered, and the water that shot upward poured back down like a sudden shower.
Cordelia sat slumped in the water, gasping for breath, and at some point let out a sigh of relief.
'Got it.'
She had defeated the Bicorn.
The level-up effect hadn't appeared yet, but the situation was different from before. It was practically finished.
'I caught it.'
A smile spread across Cordelia's face. Yellow Storm was, as even she admitted, fairly simple-minded. That was why she could take such pure joy in the single fact that they had fought a Bicorn and won.
'He's a little cool, isn't he?'
Directly in front of Cordelia.
She saw Yuder standing with his fist driven downward.
Just as Cordelia was a peerless beauty, Yuder was a peerless pretty boy. With Yuder, who was truly ridiculously handsome, standing there in a cool pose, it made quite a picture.
'If he weren't Outboxer, my heart might have fluttered a little.'
Cordelia laughed softly, swept back her rain-soaked hair, and opened her mouth to tell him to stop posing and help her up.
But right after that.
"Ghk!"
Still frozen in his downward-punching pose, Yuder suddenly let out a choking gasp and collapsed.
"Ah, Outboxer?!"
Startled, Cordelia floundered to her feet, then forcibly pulled up Yuder, who was about to go limp and sink into the water.
"Hey, are you okay? Hey?"
"Ghk... ngh..."
Yuder kept making sounds like his breath was leaving him and moved his lips as if trying to say something, but it was hard to understand right away. So Cordelia first wrapped her arms around Yuder and struggled her way out to the water's edge.
"Gah...... hoo...... th, the Sun's Necklace......."
Once she laid him down by the water, whether his condition had improved a little or he had truly squeezed out his last bit of strength, Yuder managed to form words with difficulty.
He forced up his right hand, which looked ready to go limp at any moment, and showed the Sun's Necklace wrapped around it like brass knuckles.
Cordelia's eyes flew wide open, and she shook her head and shouted.
"Hey! No! You can't die! I'm not taking some memento!"
"Th-that's not it... ngh. M-my chest."
Yuder let out another breathless gasp and let his arm fall limp. Cordelia blinked, then understood what he meant.
Put the Sun's Necklace back against his chest.
Cordelia unwrapped the Sun's Necklace from his hand and put it around his neck.
"Don't die. Got it? Okay?"
As Cordelia kept talking to him and even cast Heal, it seemed to work; Yuder's breathing gradually grew calmer.
"Haa...... I thought...... I was going to die."
Yuder fumbled at the Sun's Necklace resting on his chest and kept gulping down air.
Thunderbolt Fist.
A single punch with speed and power like a lightning strike, and its principle was truly simple.
'Gather your power in one place and strike.'
To be precise, it was a technique that gathered the qi of the entire body into one place to strike the enemy—simple, but powerful precisely because of that.
The power of the Thunderbolt Fist combined with the demon-subduing effect of the Sun's Necklace had somehow succeeded in bringing down the Bicorn, but the aftereffects of forcing the Thunderbolt Fist were by no means small.
Yuder had only recently begun using footwork and martial arts, and the Nine Yin Meridian Blockage was still not fully cured.
'So this is what happens when I force my internal energy.'
He could not tell exactly what caused it, but for a moment an icy chill surged through his whole body and his heart felt ready to stop.
Fortunately, Cordelia was beside him. If no one had been there, he might have died a sudden, miserable death with the Sun's Necklace still clutched in his hand.
"Haa, what is he, Iron Man or something?"
Cordelia, having roughly understood what had happened, dropped down beside Yuder. The tension snapped all at once now that she knew he was safe.
But that was the very moment.
Several rings of pure white light appeared around Yuder and Cordelia's bodies. It was the level-up effect.
"Ah, so we did catch it."
Cordelia said blankly, and Yuder nodded.
The Bicorn had apparently lost consciousness from Yuder's attack and then died from the combination of its injuries and breathing trouble.
"Let's see, so now I'm level 14? And you're 15."
When Cordelia asked while counting on her fingers, Yuder answered only with a nod. Since there was no status window, they couldn't know what level they were unless they memorized it like now or visited a Level Shrine to have it measured.
'Either way...... I'll live a bit now.'
Leveling up didn't come with the kind of service that fully restored health and mana, but either way, their stats had gone up.
Whether it was because his stamina stat had risen or because of the placebo effect, his recovery felt a little faster.
'Then next is.......'
In the original story, Cordelia protected the fairies and drove off the Bicorn, and the impressed fairies invited Cordelia to the Fairy Queen's night revel.
'We went and killed it outright, so they'd give us more of a reward, not less, right?'
It was exactly when he was thinking that.
"Wow! They caught the Bicorn!"
"We have to report to the Queen!"
"But who's this one?"
"He's handsome!"
"It's thrilling, always new, handsome is the best!"
The fairies who had fled shrieking gathered around Yuder and Cordelia and shrieked all over again.
Since Yuder wasn't in any condition to speak properly, Cordelia cleared her throat with ahem-ahem and opened her mouth to speak.
"This person is my fiancé. He was keeping watch in case anything dangerous happened while I was bathing."
It was a line she had prepared in advance just in case they got caught.
The fairies who heard Cordelia's explanation looked among themselves and spoke.
"She says he's her fiancé!"
"He was keeping watch? Not peeping?"
"But she really does bathe with her clothes on?"
"Hey, this isn't the time. We have to tell the Queen right away."
"Right, right."
Still, fortunately, there seemed to be a clever one among them.
The one with green butterfly wings flew up close to Cordelia's face and continued speaking.
"Hey hey, what's your name? I'm Adel."
"Adel, I'm Yel...... Cordelia. And this is Yuder."
"YelCordelia?"
"Cordelia."
"Okay, Cordelia. Anyway, you and your fiancé caught the Bicorn that was always tormenting us. We were going to invite you anyway because you're pretty, but now we absolutely have to invite you. Come with us to see the Queen. The Queen will give you a reward."
This was the flow she had wanted.
Cordelia clenched her fist and turned to Yuder as if to show off. Yuder answered with a look asking what there was to brag about.
"Will you come with us?"
"Yes, we'll come with you."
When Cordelia smiled and answered prettily, Adel, apparently in a good mood, smiled bashfully in the same way.
"Okay, then follow us with your fiancé. To get to where the Queen is, you have to go into the water."
Fairies were called a race that was everywhere and nowhere.
That was because they were beings who crossed the walls between dimensions and space.
"Can you make it?"
"More or less."
When Cordelia quietly asked, Yuder nodded and raised himself up.
According to the original story, time would not flow in the Fairy Queen's dwelling, but either way, they had caused this much commotion, so a group led by Dahlia would come rushing over soon. It was better to finish things before that.
"Grab on, I'll support you."
"Thanks."
Yuder grabbed Cordelia's hand and stood up, then leaned his body against her just like that.
"This way."
The fairies giggled and flew ahead, and Cordelia hurried after them as she spoke.
"But hey."
"Yeah."
"We caught the Bicorn, right?"
"We did."
"Then the horns should come out too, right?"
"If we pull them out, they will."
In the game, the horns dropped the moment you caught it, but this was reality.
"One is mine."
"Sure, the other one is mine."
Fortunately, the Bicorn had two horns.
Like a unicorn's horn, the Bicorn's horns had many uses, but the most common use was to smelt them into daggers.
Daggers made from Bicorn horns could inflict various status ailments such as confusion and bewitchment.
After finishing their business with the Fairy Queen, they would ask Dahlia and the knights to retrieve the Bicorn's corpse.
Cordelia was grinning from ear to ear, as if just imagining it put her in a good mood.
"You really are simple."
"What is? The water?"
Instead of answering, Yuder just smiled, and Cordelia tilted her head a few times before following the fairies into the water.
* * *
Nothing like being able to breathe even underwater happened.
It was simply that she closed her eyes and opened them, and she was in a completely different space.
A wide clearing nestled among large and small trees.
Perhaps because the soft, warm yellow light melted into the darkness like moonlight, it felt incredibly cozy even though it was clearly a forest.
Dozens of fairies had gathered in the clearing, and as if the night revel was already in full swing, they were dancing, singing, and making a ruckus among themselves.
"It's like we've come to a land of dolls."
Cordelia said quietly, her cheeks flushing slightly, and Yuder decided to pretend he hadn't noticed. She was saying it so innocently, and this wasn't online—teasing her offline felt a bit awkward.
Either way, giants had appeared in a place where palm-sized fairies were gathered to play, so naturally all eyes were drawn to them.
"What's this, what's this."
"It's people."
"But they're pretty. And handsome."
"Are they today's guest singers?"
"They're completely soaked."
They were shrieking wildly among themselves when Adel stepped forward and shouted to everyone.
"We have to take them to the Queen. They caught the Bicorn!"
As Adel stepped forward showing off, the four fairies in her group also stepped forward and pushed the other fairies aside.
"Now, let's go. This way."
As they moved following Adel, a path opened among the fairies like the miracle of Moses.
And how far did they go?
Strangely, the surrounding scenery changed little by little with every step they took. As if skipping several meters at a time, the fairies around them dwindled, and the gaps between the trees narrowed until it became like walking down a narrow corridor.
And then a few more steps.
By the time they stopped walking, Adel, who had been leading the way, had also disappeared.
A small, round room.
Instead of a ceiling, a dark blue night sky stretched overhead, and the moonlight that drifted down softly illuminated the surroundings beautifully.
And at the center of that light.
In a place where the tree seemed not to have been carved but to have grown naturally into the shape of a throne, the Fairy Queen sat.
"It has been a long time since I have seen a human child with my own eyes."
The Fairy Queen was young and beautiful.
Brilliant butterfly wings with many colors, radiant golden hair that looked as if it had been made by melting gold, and blue eyes.
With her white skin, she wore a grass-green dress and held a staff studded with jewels in her hand.
"We greet the Fairy Queen."
When Yuder paid his respects, Cordelia hurriedly followed suit, and the Fairy Queen smiled as though she found them cute.
She was only palm-sized like any other fairy, but a queen was still a queen.
She gave off the unique aura of one who leads a group.
"I have heard the story from Adel."
For fairies who freely crossed space, even time was not a completely forbidden domain.
While Yuder and Cordelia were taking those few steps, the Fairy Queen had met Adel in a gap of displaced time and spoken with her.
"The Bicorn was one of our long-standing headaches. Since you have dealt with it, I cannot but bestow a reward."
At the Fairy Queen's words, Yuder tensed slightly.
That was because in the original story, the focus had been not on the fact that the Bicorn was driven off, but on the fact that Cordelia had devotedly protected the fairies.
'What if she gives us something different?'
What Yuder and Cordelia needed right now was the Holy Staff, Moonlight.
But unlike Yuder, Cordelia seemed to have no particular worries, and her eyes sparkled with anticipation.
"Cordelia, for you who are a mage, this seems fitting."
As the Fairy Queen moved her hand elegantly, the tree roots covering the floor parted, and a wooden rod studded with silver jewels rose up—too short to be called a staff, too long to be called a wand.
'Moonlight!'
Yuder and Cordelia almost simultaneously let out cheers, if only in their hearts.
"It is no ordinary object, but it is too large for us to use. Better that it fall into the hands of those with good hearts than rot away in a place like this. Take it."
Fortunately, the line was similar to the original story.
Yuder felt relieved, and Cordelia giggled as she reached out for Moonlight.
"And Yuder, I shall bestow a reward upon you as well."
Just as Cordelia was clutching Moonlight with both hands and rejoicing, the Fairy Queen turned to Yuder and spoke.
From here on, this was something that hadn't been in the original story, but for Yuder, anticipation outweighed worry.
'Whatever I get is a plus.'
This was different from Moonlight. Originally he wasn't supposed to receive anything, so honestly, whatever he got was a gain.
'What kind of things do fairies give? Fairy Stones? Fairy's Whisper?'
It was while he was running through various items in his head.
"Receive it."
When the Fairy Queen waved her hand elegantly once more, this time a single branch moved on its own and held out a silver ring to Yuder.
And right after that, Yuder's eyes flew wide open.
'No way?'
The identity of the ring.
Cordelia was just as surprised.
If Moonlight was a B-rank item, then the item before their eyes now was practically A-rank, and in some senses close to S-rank.
'Fairy's Footsteps!'
Its effect was simple.
Depending on the user's capability, the number of daily uses varied from one to three times, but the user could leap across space.
Honestly, from a game perspective, that was a somewhat vague description.
That was why the strategy site Hero Legend Tales summarized Fairy's Footsteps as follows.
It ignores enemy attacks.
The moment an attack comes in, the user temporarily moves to another space and completely evades the attack.
What made it different from an ordinary evasion was the fact that the user didn't even need to move from the spot at all.
Even if it was limited to a certain number of uses per day, it was truly an incredible effect.
'She's giving me this?!'
Of course, catching the Bicorn had by no means been easy.
Perhaps the Bicorn had tormented the fairies beyond imagination.
But even so, the reward felt a bit excessive.
"It is for the same reason as Moonlight. Moreover, Fairy's Footsteps was made for other races to use in the first place."
And in truth, that was not all.
Though limited, the Fairy Queen, who transcended not only space but even time, felt a strong fate from Yuder and Cordelia.
'They are connected.'
To the fate of the world.
The fates of these two would not end as merely personal fates.
'If I were a little stronger, I could have known in greater detail.'
The Fairy Queen was not one, and she was still only a young Fairy Queen.
But she was clearly a queen, and it was also true that she had felt a strong fate.
That was why the Fairy Queen did not hesitate in the slightest to hand over Moonlight and Fairy's Footsteps to Yuder and Cordelia.
"Thank you."
When Yuder carefully accepted the ring and offered his respects, the Fairy Queen smiled elegantly and looked at Cordelia.
She was happy to have obtained an unexpectedly high-grade item, but Yuder had received a better—in short, higher-ranked—item than hers, so her face showed envy mixed with a little wounded pride.
Perhaps finding that sight quite adorable, the Fairy Queen smiled even more deeply.
"There is a reason I gave the rewards as I did."
Cordelia flinched at the Fairy Queen's words, but soon nodded.
In truth, Cordelia roughly knew the reason too.
She was a mage, and Yuder was a martial artist.
Giving a magic staff to a mage and an evasion item to a martial artist who fought in close combat was only natural.
But the Fairy Queen suddenly shook her head.
As if to say that she knew what Yuder and Cordelia were thinking, and that wasn't entirely wrong, but there was actually one more reason.
"I prefer handsome men over pretty women."
Because even a Fairy Queen was ultimately a fairy.
Before the dumbfounded Yuder and Cordelia, the Fairy Queen wore an elegant smile.