The Storm Answers
Heavy rain and wind lashed against my face. A floating sensation gripped me as gravity tried to yank my legs back to the ground. The dizzying weightlessness, the heart-stopping terror of falling. Fortunately, my body never slammed into the earth. Something had caught hold of me mid-descent, lowering me slowly and steadily.
Whoosh. A strange, exhilarating thrill, as if I were flying through the sky. Below, Mirien stood with both hands raised, frantically casting magic. I had chosen freefall precisely because I trusted her. A disaster of her caliber would never fail to catch a single falling human. Even if she had ignored me, the worst that could happen from this height was a broken leg or two.
“A-Actor!”
“Thanks.”
The moment my feet touched the ground, my legs wobbled. I leaned against a nearby guardrail and spoke. Mirien flinched, her eyes darting over me as if checking for injuries. That reaction confirmed it. Contrary to Selene’s concerns, Mirien would never harm me. If anything, she seemed terrified that she might have hurt me.
“A-Actor… W-what were you thinking? If something had gone wrong…”
“But it didn’t, did it?”
I dismissed the summoned Storm Dragon Tempest, still hovering in the air, and continued. “Besides, you were down here. If anything had happened, you would’ve caught me. Right?”
Mirien’s eyes trembled at my words.
“…Actor, why… did you come all the way here? W-what about Selene?”
“Selene’s drawing attention outside. No one should be coming here for a while.”
A faint spark of hope flickered in Mirien’s gaze. Having watched her wallow in self-reproach, I realized I needed a deeper understanding of her. What she carried was a kind of dependency. Or perhaps a desperate need for recognition.
“We’ve got a little time. Want to talk?”
I already had a sense of how to handle the Scorched Saint Selene. To her, the Ruler Actor was her lord—intimidating, coldly strategic, issuing flawless commands. That was why she found my decisive actions so moving. So what was Actor to Mirien?
Oddly enough, the answer came from the game. I, the Ruler Actor, had given Mirien an artificial heart, allowing her to extend her short life. To Mirien, I was the one who had saved her.
“We’re not exactly strangers, are we?”
She fidgeted, glancing at me nervously. “B-but I… I was in Actor’s way…”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you—it was a misunderstanding.”
“…”
“I went to the tower because I wanted to talk to you. Just like this.”
There was no risk of Mirien going berserk. No overwhelmingly powerful disaster was nearby to threaten her life, and her Thunderstorm skill required concentration—she couldn’t use it alongside the Blessing of Lightning. This was my only chance to face her while she was still in her right mind.
“We couldn’t even talk face-to-face inside the crack. This opportunity doesn’t come often. We should speak as people, eye to eye. It’ll be better for you that way too.”
“…Actor.”
“Sending Tempest to save me, killing the tracker who was following me, creating the Ascension Sect—it was all you, wasn’t it?”
Mirien’s actions had been ethically questionable, but every one of them had been for my sake. She had only gone berserk because she believed Actor had abandoned her. Selene had been similar, but Mirien’s paranoia ran far deeper. A monster who had awakened human emotions, they called her. To me, she just looked like a child with terrifying power.
‘Took me long enough.’
It had only been a little over two months since the world turned into Disaster Order. Through all the trial and error, I had finally figured out what stance I needed to take. As the Ruler, I would command disasters. The countless disasters still left in this world—I had to bring them all under my control and become an overwhelming force. The Absolute Ruler the system spoke of. It had to be me. I was the only one who still honored the bonds from the game. If anyone else tried to wield these disasters, the world would end in catastrophe.
Of course, I wasn’t so different. I wasn’t arrogant enough to think otherwise. But at the very least, I knew my own limits.
“Mirien, listen carefully. Everything I’m about to say is the truth.”
“…”
Mirien nodded blankly. Compared to Selene, her petite frame left her a head and a half shorter than me. To meet her eyes, I had to bend my knees nearly in half.
“Mirien, I need you.”
“…!”
“And I need Selene too. It’s not that I need one more than the other—you’re all equally important to me. You remember, don’t you? The time we spent in the crack. We were equals.”
“…Yeah.”
Even now, the intensity of Selene and Mirien’s feelings toward me felt overwhelming. But dismissing it as nothing more than a game connection would be an insult to how deeply both of them were attached to Actor. Just as the game had become reality, the me standing here was the same Actor from the game. To Mirien, the divine figure she had once known and the human Nam Juyeon weren’t so different after all. The fact that she was trembling just from me approaching her, showing that girlish side of herself, proved it.
“Mirien.”
As Selene had said, Mirien’s feelings weren’t simple loyalty. She didn’t want to be rejected. She didn’t want to be hated. She didn’t want to be a burden, but she still craved attention. She wanted to be more useful to Actor. After everything I’d seen, the answer was obvious.
It was affection.
“Will you be my companion again?”
Still, saying it outright felt unbearably embarrassing. I decided to phrase it more indirectly. If Selene desired the role of a loyal retainer, then what Mirien wanted was to be a partner in some grand plan. I would play along with that little game of hers with everything I had.
“…”
Mirien’s shoulders flinched. Slowly, she lifted her gaze to meet mine. Her deep blue eyes lingered on my lips.
“…You won’t abandon me?”
“I won’t. Never again.”
“You won’t… kill me?”
“Why would I? Who in this world could even kill someone like you?”
Even Selene would have to risk mutual destruction to stand a chance against her. What human could possibly kill Mirien?
“Th-then…”
Mirien swallowed hard and asked one last question.
“…You don’t hate me?”
“I don’t.”
She gasped, then spoke slowly. “Actor, I… I need you.”
“Yeah. I need you too. So let’s start over.”
Perhaps because she was still channeling magic, Mirien’s star-shaped pupils trembled like an earthquake. She pressed her lips together and bowed her head deeply. Understanding it as silent acceptance, I reached out and placed my hand on her head. A faint static crackled. For the most dangerous lightning mage alive, it was an almost cute level of resistance.
“…Anyway, could you turn this skill off? I’m going to catch a cold.”
Mostly me. Mirien startled and waved her hand, and just like that, the rain stopped as if it had never been.
[5★ Storm of the North Sea Mirien cancels concentration on skill 「Thunderstorm」.]
Sunlight filtered through the parting clouds. I let out a sigh of relief. Things seemed more or less settled. Now I just needed to take Mirien back to the Abyss…
“Nam Juyeon!”
Someone burst out from the side. Short-cropped hair, leather coat.
“Jo Geon-uk?”
It was Jo Geon-uk, the A-class Awakened from the Management Bureau. I wondered how he had tracked me all the way here—then I noticed the 3★ disaster Albert and the 2★ Moss Hunter beside him. Drawing from my game memories, I recalled that both of them had tracking skills.
Come to think of it, just as Mirien hadn’t blocked tracking, I hadn’t exactly been moving in secret either. With a 5★ disaster rampaging through Seoul’s Jung-gu district, how many people would even bother tracking me? What I had underestimated was Jo Geon-uk’s persistence. Even in this unprecedented situation, he had chosen to track me down methodically. And he had reaped the results.
“Who the hell is that bastard next to you?”
Standing beside me was the Hellfire Watchdog in a raincoat—the disaster the world knew as the Ruler Actor’s pet. The fact that it was obeying my commands was more than enough to turn Jo Geon-uk’s suspicions into certainty.
Click. Jo Geon-uk drew his gun—a standard-issue revolver used by the police.
“Hands up! You son of a bitch! You’ve been lying to us this whole time, haven’t you?!”
“…”
I raised my hands. But not to surrender to Jo Geon-uk.
“Mirien, hold on for now.”
It was to stop the great disaster standing behind me. Jo Geon-uk had his gun pointed at me, but the shadows and his limited visibility had kept him from noticing Mirien. She had already hidden herself with magic anyway. A 5★ disaster’s stealth skill was far too refined for a mere 3★ named monster to detect.
“Mirien, don’t you want to be useful to me?”
“…Yeah.”
“Then this is your first order in this world.”
Instead of answering, Mirien raised a finger.
“Hey! What are you mumbling about?! Get on your knees!”
“Kidnap that man and lock him up.”
Crackle! Before I even finished speaking, a long black bolt of lightning shot forward.
It was the true earthly debut of the Ruler Actor.