Chapter 111
Chapter 111
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: True Detective
Chapter:
Chapter Title: Domain Deployment
-----------------------------------------------------------------
No sooner had Lee Miran rolled across the ground than Isabella, the clan head, stood before her.
"Lee Miran, princess."
"...!"
"This is as far as you go. You've done well."
Thwack.
"Guh?!"
Before she could even stand, a blow as heavy as a hammer strike slammed into Miran's abdomen with a kick.
At the same time, she spat blood-mixed saliva and flew backward.
"Now, shall we go catch the rest?"
Even as a princess who had become a candidate for the next clan head, she was still just a princess in the end.
The gap between her and the clan head was like heaven and earth.
And so, without even needing to check, Isabella the clan head turned toward her next target as if it was over...
Grab!
"Lee Miran, princess, are you okay?"
"Kwon Mina...?"
"Ho?"
She had been about to move on.
Just in time, Kwon Mina, the clan head who had fallen alongside Princess Miran, caught her as she flew backward, barely preventing the unprecedented situation of an immediate retirement right from the start.
"And who might you be?"
"I am Kwon Mina, the eleventh clan head of the Andong Kwon Clan, one of Korea's four great hunter families!"
Mina helped Miran to her feet while summoning her own domain.
At the same time, she boldly declared her name to the clan head before her, as one clan head to another.
"Clan head? ...At your age? You look about the same age as Princess Miran, at most."
"Does age matter so much when ascending to the clan head position?"
"Of course it does. It's the seat at the head of a family. Wouldn't it be strange if the weight of years lived wasn't necessary for such a role?"
Mina was introducing herself as a proper clan head of a hunter family.
But to a true veteran who had lived over 200 years, she was nothing more than a novice—no more, no less. Isabella the clan head even sighed at the fact that such a young girl was leading a clan.
"Your name was Kwon Mina, was it? From the looks of it, you haven't inherited a proper form for that position."
"...!"
"No need to be surprised. With the guts to barge into the lands ruled by the world's top ten families, your hunter family must be quite renowned. But for its clan head to be this young... honestly, it doesn't make sense."
However, the fact that she was holding her own as clan head meant her talent must be exceptional.
'She's young enough now, but she must have taken that seat at an even younger age.'
Like the German Empire that rang out the guns of two world wars.
Like herself, conscripted as a soldier from birth in that war criminal nation, coming to her senses only to find herself already clan head.
"You must miss your parents... terribly."
"?! How do you..."
"Because I felt the same."
It felt like looking at her own younger self.
The innocent, naive girl who believed she could do anything, chasing ideals over reality.
Isabella the clan head had always stood at the forefront of the battlefield during those two world wars, as befitted the Dietrich clan head.
And from her twenties onward, taking over as clan head in place of her parents who died on the battlefield, forced into fights she never wanted, she had one recurring wish in the dead of night.
If only a helping hand would reach me.
If gods truly exist, please protect me from this hell.
As a hunter family under German control, she was drafted by the state regardless of her will and made to fight.
And the one who granted Isabella's wish back then was Isabella herself.
Her plea not to die was fulfilled by her slaughtering every enemy around her.
That wasn't the way she wanted her wish granted.
So, seeing this young clan head before her, who seemed destined to walk the same path.
Just like herself, thrust to the front lines the moment she became clan head, this young clan head who had fearlessly invaded the lands ruled by the ten great families.
"Kwon Mina, was it?"
"Yes, that's right."
"You. Would you consider becoming one of mine?"
"...Pardon?"
"What?!"
Isabella intended to become the goddess that her past self had so desperately longed for and "save" Mina.
"You're done for anyway."
"!!"
"The clan heads of the ten great families, each called national powerhouses. Do you really think you have the upper hand when three of them have gathered?"
"That's..."
Common sense said it was impossible.
Even if Branch Chief Im Eonnyeon took on one, it didn't seem like the remaining three could defeat the other two clan heads.
That's why, normally, she should capture this hand that reached out to help.
"I'll be your backer."
"The Dietrich Clan... will back our family?"
"Yes. Who knows? With our family's help, you might surpass the Supreme Lee Clan, fallen to monsters, and become Korea's representative family."
It was as sweet as candy-coated words.
Even Princess Miran, listening quietly, couldn't quite object definitively.
Honestly, for Mina, who had become clan head of a hunter family in her twenties, there could be no better offer.
But.
Even so.
"Shut your trap!!!"
"?!"
She had already witnessed too magnificent a scene to accept such an offer.
The sight of her precious man burning his life for her.
The A-rank hunter who had even subjugated Cassandra Liersen, clan head of one of the ten great families, just like the Isabella clan head before her.
"A woman is strongest when protecting her man!"
Inspired by Kwon Sora, who had shown her what "youth" meant, bolstering the courage of her once-cowardly self.
"That doesn't convince me!"
Mina had learned the "true power" of wanting to protect Kim Yongchan, even at the cost of her life.
"I'm the kind of woman who promised to marry Yongchan in front of my parents' graves!"
"I see... is that so."
"W-Wait a second? Marriage promise...?"
"Yongchan once carried me in his arms and made me squirt in front of my parents' tombstones. Doesn't that count as a proposal?"
"...! If it's that passionate a proposal, then yes, it's worth staking your life on."
"H-He really did something that romantic?!"
It was the act of making his daughter climax over her dead parents' corpses.
This was surely a "romantic scene" on par with stabbing an eternal vow's wedding piercing into an erect clitoris, far beyond some bland wedding ring.
So, she didn't want to hand over a man she'd gone that far with, even to death.
"Further persuasion would be pointless."
"Yes."
"Then... I'll have no choice but to crush you and move on."
In the heavy seat of clan head, amid the daily grind of a soul-crushing life when her youth was just beginning.
The thing that had saved her from that life was none other than "passionate love" with one man.
She never dreamed they would be so alike even in this.
But that was that, and this was this.
He was the bloodline of a male hunter who had defeated a princess of one of the ten great families, fought a clan head, and survived.
Unable to abandon such prime genetic stock, Isabella the clan head darted into Mina's domain in an instant, aiming to knock out this painful reminder of her past self just by looking at her.
"?!"
"A 10-meter domain... Impressive for a clan head. Abilities far beyond your years."
"You're completely unaffected by my domain's effect?!"
She was clearly visible, and the domain's effect should have slowed her limbs even slightly.
Yet, more unaffected than even Clan Head Cassandra from before—no, completely unscathed, the clan head leaped forward to drive a fist into her solar plexus.
"What are you spacing out for?!"
"Princess Miran!"
Clang!
Miran timely raised a shield made of her own blood, and the two barely bounced back, avoiding immediate retirement.
"Did you actually summon your domain? It looks exactly the same as before!"
"I did summon it! I'm still using my ability right now!"
It was strange.
No matter how strong the enemy, anyone entering a domain hunter's domain should be affected somehow.
Mina puzzled over the utterly unfazed Isabella clan head for a moment.
"...No way?!"
Come to think of it, the Dietrich Clan.
Among the ten great hunter families, she'd heard in passing that theirs was a hunter bloodline specializing in domains.
Any other hunter family might be unknown, but to the Andong Kwon Clan, domain hunter bloodline, even the distant top ten Western family was as familiar as the Supreme Lee Clan right next door.
Because they were...
"?!"
"Urk...!"
"Bunter Esstisch."
⟨ Gorgeous Dining Table ⟩
The representative hunter house of domain hunters.
The progenitors of all domain hunters, including their own Kwon Clan.
The pinnacle of domain techniques, manifesting in reality the space from the domain hunter's deepest imagery that they most wish to realize.
"Where... are we?"
"A dining hall?"
A pure white light enveloped their vision, and when the two opened their eyes, it was no longer Yeouido, where they'd been since yesterday.
The scenery shifted instantly from outdoors to indoors.
Lee Miran and Kwon Mina suddenly found themselves seated at a long dining table in a Western-style building adorned with chandeliers.
And at the left end of the table where the two faced each other, Isabella the clan head demurely eating suddenly stabbed her fork into the steak with a stab!, as if it was all over.
"Checkmate. My victory."