Chapter 118
Chapter 118
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 118
Chapter Title: Spear and Shield (2)
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“Ah.”
I started to nod, but quickly twisted my head to the side.
“…No.”
I had just remembered who I was dealing with.
The Faceless Witch was the star of the new moon, the star of mages.
I’d be in trouble if I rashly accepted her offer and ended up with strings attached.
*Again? At this point?*
Having already received her help several times, I was at a loss for a response.
“Aren’t you going to use this as leverage to make some unreasonable demand?”
*I don’t do that.*
The Faceless Witch’s reply was firm.
*This is a matter of law.*
At her out-of-the-blue remark, I demanded an explanation.
Her response was, more or less, this:
Witches, she said, live their lives each tending to a single forest.
The forest they cultivate is their property, and other witches must respect that ownership.
In short, she was saying that I was the Faceless Witch’s forest.
Though I was more of a barren mountain than a forest, but whatever.
I was about to flare up for a moment, but I suppressed my anger.
I wasn’t bald, just a person with short hair.
This short hair would grow back and become lush again soon.
So there was no reason to be angry.
“Since when was I your forest?”
*From the moment you received Barisada. Always.*
Could there be any more absurd nonsense in the world?
I was dumbfounded by her shameless reply.
On the other hand, I wondered if there was anything more ridiculous than expecting common sense and ethics from a witch.
*So this is an act without expectation of reward.*
If I had never received her help before, it might be a different story.
She was offering to help without asking for anything in return, so there was no reason to refuse now, of all times.
*Then I’ll take that as your consent.*
My silence was my answer.
The Faceless Witch quietly chanted a spell.
The Faceless Witch’s spell was complete.
“…?”
The spell was supposedly complete, but I couldn’t feel a thing.
*Curses are like that.*
As I suspiciously inspected my body, the Faceless Witch elaborated.
Curses are inherently subtle, she explained, so ordinary humans cannot feel them come and go.
This was especially true for curses of a higher class.
Thinking about it, her words made a lot of sense.
When I was first cursed, I hadn’t known a thing.
The Faceless Witch lifted her chin and gloated.
This time, I decided to play along with her self-praise.
With a flick of my wrist, I gave her a thumbs-up.
I had just escaped a damn curse; a little praise was nothing.
The Faceless Witch continued to act smug.
The Faceless Witch mocked you for struggling with such a trivial curse.
The Faceless Witch turned her thumb down at Baegya.
She savored her victory(?).
But the time she had to enjoy her victory was exceptionally short.
“*Cough, cough.*”
Not long after the curse was lifted, my throat began to tickle again.
“What the hell? The curse isn’t gone.”
Before I could even finish speaking, the Faceless Witch’s thoughts flooded in.
They were basically thoughts insisting she hadn’t lied and that the curse had definitely been lifted.
Her sense of injustice and irritation was transmitted directly to me.
The Faceless Witch pointed accusingly at Baegya and hurled insults.
The Faceless Witch chanted a spell.
The Faceless Witch’s spell was complete.
My body quickly felt better again.
“*Cough.*”
Another cough rose in my throat.
The Faceless Witch chanted a spell.
The Faceless Witch’s spell was complete.
And the witch dispelled the curse again.
“*Cough.*”
The Faceless Witch…
“*Cough.*”
The Faceless Witch’s spell…
“*Cough, cough.*”
The Faceless Witch…
The same situation repeated itself.
“*Gack.*”
The more the witch repeated her dispelling spell, the stronger the curse’s symptoms became in proportion.
What started as a mere tickle in my throat soon became a pain so intense it felt like my throat was being torn apart.
A high fever and headache were thrown in for good measure.
The Faceless Witch carefully chanted her dispelling spell.
The time it took for the witch to break the curse was gradually increasing.
The Faceless Witch ground her teeth.
The Faceless Witch, vowing to see who would win, continued to attempt to dispel it.
Cursed, then dispelled. Cursed again, dispelled again.
“This is hell.”
I couldn’t keep my head straight.
It was like being repeatedly plunged into boiling water, then into ice water.
“*Groan.*”
In the end, I was bedridden once more.
*Wait. I’ll be right back.*
The witch’s voice echoed in my head.
*Do what you want.*
My body, having alternated between recovery and deterioration in such a short time, was already a wreck. I had no energy to care where the witch went.
The Faceless Witch disappeared somewhere.
I grasped the elixir I had tucked in my clothes, then let it go.
I wanted to save the elixir as a last resort, if at all possible.
Just one drink had made all my hair fall out; if I drank it again, all the hair on my body might fall out too.
Perhaps the hair that was supposed to grow back would never grow back at all.
Not yet. It wasn’t time yet.
“*Groan, groan.*”
I clutched and released the elixir, groaning over and over.
As I suffered from the high fever and headache, I thought to myself.
All this trouble just to mess with Roman.
“*Cough, cough.*”
I regretted and regretted this disaster of my own making.
***
It was quite some time later when the Faceless Witch, who had briefly vanished beyond my thoughts, returned.
The Faceless Witch grunted as she set down the □□ cauldron.
I didn’t welcome her return in the slightest.
It would just be the same cycle of dispelling and re-cursing anyway.
The Faceless Witch boasted that this time would be different.
No matter what she said, I felt no sense of anticipation.
The Faceless Witch pulled a ladle from her robes and began to stir the □□ cauldron.
Was she planning to dispel the curse while brewing a soup or something? It didn’t seem like this would end quickly.
The Faceless Witch is dumbfounded by your assumption.
Then why bring a cauldron and cause all this fuss?
Instead of answering your question, the Faceless Witch poured something unidentifiable into the cauldron.
As the □□ cauldron began to bubble and boil, the Faceless Witch started stirring again.
Regardless of what I said, the Faceless Witch focused solely on her task.
The Faceless Witch hummed a little song as she stirred the □□ cauldron.
Seeing her incomprehensible actions, I lost interest as well.
The Faceless Witch stirred the □□ cauldron even faster.
The Faceless Witch’s singing grew more intense.
Around that time, I was seriously contemplating drinking the elixir.
Side effects be damned.
Even if I lost more than just my hair, surviving was the priority.
I squeezed out what little strength I had and opened the elixir’s cap.
The Faceless Witch stopped her hand.
The Faceless Witch’s song came to an end.
If the headache and fever hadn’t suddenly vanished as if by magic, I really would have drunk the elixir.
“Huh?”
I sat up in bed, looking at Barisada with a dazed expression.
The Faceless Witch collapsed against the □□ cauldron, leaning on it for support.
The Faceless Witch gave you a thumbs-up from that position.
The thoughts that followed were a self-congratulation for a small victory.
“Is the curse really, completely gone now?”
It seemed she had finally succeeded in dispelling it.
“Thank you!”
Having been brought back from the brink of death, I offered the Faceless Witch my sincere gratitude.
Star of the new moon, star of mages, whatever—none of it mattered right now.
“…?”
As I expressed my thanks, I suddenly felt a sense of unease and frowned.
I had expected her to boast and gloat in response to my thanks, but the Faceless Witch's reaction was strange.
The Faceless Witch avoided your gaze.
It was the reaction of someone who had done something terribly wrong.
“…Why?”
A sudden ominous feeling washed over me, and I pressed her for an answer.
The Faceless Witch strongly insisted that it couldn’t be helped.
“What couldn’t be helped?”
The Faceless Witch asked for your understanding regarding her ‘witch’s solution.’
“Understanding for what? And what’s a witch’s solution?”
After much prodding, I was finally able to hear the full story from the Faceless Witch.
Stripping away all the lengthy excuses and rationalizations, the bottom line was this.
“You overwrote a curse with another curse?”
She meant that since she couldn’t dispel the curse, she suppressed it with an even bigger one.
I laughed hollowly.
“Ha.”
I wish all witches would just die.
***
“So you’re saying I’m now under three curses?”
The Faceless Witch glanced at you before giving a slight nod.
Her explanation was that to cover three curses, she had no choice but to cast three new ones.
“So what are the curses I’m under?”
The Faceless Witch hesitated.
“I need to know what they are so I can prepare myself, mentally or otherwise.”
Only after hearing my words did she tell me the curses that had been placed upon me.
“What? I’m going to have terrible nightmares for the rest of my life?”
The Faceless Witch nodded, looking apologetic.
Uncharacteristically for the star of wicked mages, she kept glancing at me, looking genuinely sorry.
“Is that all? And here I was thinking it was some horrible curse.”
But after hearing what the curse actually was, I felt my heart lighten.
I had wondered what kind of terrible curse she’d cast, and it turned out to be just nightmares.
It was almost anticlimactic.
The Faceless Witch urged me not to underestimate it, saying that nightmares were by no means a trivial curse.
She warned that the nightmares she spoke of were monsters that fed on the dreamer’s fear—not metaphors, but real, existing beings.
Despite her warning, I just laughed.
“I’m used to nightmares.”
Even without her curse, nightmares were already a part of my life.
If the curse stopped me from dreaming about that damn Roman, it would actually be a gain for me.
I didn’t know if it would actually happen, but the thought of that real, existing monster encountering Roman in my dreams sounded amusing.
The Faceless Witch sighed at your reaction.
“Whatever. What’s the next curse?”
Ignoring her, I asked about the next curse.
Having given up, she didn’t drag it out and immediately answered my question.
“At a decisive moment, just once, I’ll be forced to tell a lie I don’t want to?”
Unlike the first curse, I didn’t have a good feel for this one.
“Hmm.”
I thought about it.
And I came to my own conclusion.
According to the chivalric code, a knight must always be truthful.
Telling a lie violates that oath, and in some cases, simply telling a lie could diminish a knight’s standing.
This definitely seemed to be the case.
If I were someone who dreamed of being an ordinary knight, this second curse, which forces one to directly violate the chivalric code, would have felt quite terrible.
Indeed, knights treasured their code as much as their own lives and utterly detested violating it.
At least, that was true before the Great War—before the knights and the stars changed.
“The way witches think is surprisingly wholesome, isn’t it?”
I had thought that being served by wicked mages, they would be incredibly vicious and cunning, but it seemed that wasn't the case.
For all her ominous threats, none of the curses turned out to be a big deal.
Nightmares and a lie.
What was the big deal about things like that?
My past life was a nightmare from the very beginning.
“Anyway, this one’s fine too. Next.”
I asked the Faceless Witch for the third and final curse.
After a brief pause, she leaned in and whispered in my ear.