The King of Lies
Quaaaaang!
The sound of the airship crashing echoed through a corner of the Fairy Forest.
No matter how slowly it fell, that much weight hitting the ground was devastating.
Trees toppled and the surroundings were reduced to scorched earth.
If anyone had still been aboard, they wouldn't have even left bones behind.
Harua and Aranseol had escaped safely aboard the emergency lifeboat.
The lifeboat was designed to descend automatically to the ground without a pilot.
Of course, it also had manual controls.
If either Harua or Aranseol had any piloting experience, they would have flown it out themselves.
But neither of them possessed that skill.
So they settled for a ground landing.
“……We’re alive.”
Aranseol muttered blankly.
Just as she said, they had somehow survived.
Even though they now had to traverse the Fairy Forest without the airship’s help, they were still breathing.
A cool breeze slipped between the trees and brushed across their faces.
It felt different from the harsh winds they had faced in the sky—pleasant.
People really do belong on solid ground.
“Let’s hurry up and finish this errand.”
He already missed the mansion.
Perhaps because of his calm reaction, Aranseol stared at him with an incredulous expression.
“Why are you looking at me like that? Am I that handsome?”
Aranseol’s face twisted in disgust.
He should have just kept his mouth shut. That actually hurt.
“I’m just surprised you can stay so calm after everything that happened. You act like you’re never going to die, Harua.”
Sharp.
After dying and coming back so many times, it had probably become an unconscious habit.
“Nobody in this world is immortal.”
Present company excluded.
“I’m just pretending not to be.”
That didn’t mean he planned to carelessly reveal his resurrection magic.
“Right.”
A bitter smile touched Aranseol’s lips.
“Shishiroka probably felt the same way.”
Shishiroka.
The name came up.
“I heard you were there for Shishiroka’s final moments, Harua.”
Aranseol finally spoke about Shishiroka.
Maybe she hadn’t wanted to fully accept her friend’s death either.
After all, she and Shishiroka had been friends.
“How was she?”
Aranseol asked carefully.
A faint tremor passed through her eyes.
She was worried Shishiroka might have despaired or given up on life.
“She regretted things.”
So Harua answered honestly.
“She regretted not being able to try harder.”
Aranseol fell silent.
Her eyes held a deep well of emotion.
“……I see.”
Flowers that hadn’t been there before now rested on Shishiroka’s grave.
They were the same pure-white blossoms that often decorated Shishiroka’s room—flowers that resembled her.
He didn’t know their name.
Memorizing every flower in another world was impossible.
But he could tell these were the ones Aranseol had often given as gifts.
Harua walked on without a word.
Aranseol followed quietly behind him.
A single death had a way of stirring up countless memories, even in small things.
Yet amid so many deaths, they kept living.
Because in the end, death was inseparable from life.
All they could do was feel its approach from a distance.
Harua and Aranseol pressed onward through the Fairy Forest.
The forest was far more rugged than it had appeared from outside.
Unlike the woods back in Korea, sunlight barely reached the ground. The grass grew thick, the trees were enormous, and everything was a vivid green.
It reminded him of the dense jungles he had seen in Southeast Asia.
Fortunately, the dense canopy kept the heat down, and Aranseol’s expression had improved.
“So this is where it crashed.”
Before they knew it, they had reached the crash site.
Luckily, the fire from the wreckage hadn’t spread to the forest.
The trees were too damp for flames to catch easily.
“Just a little farther and we’ll be there.”
They were almost at the Breath Tree where the fairies actually lived.
Harua took another step—
—and Aranseol shoved him aside.
Kaang!
A metallic clang rang violently in his ears.
Before he realized it, Harua was tumbling down a slope.
“Ugh—ack!”
He couldn’t even scream properly as he rolled to the bottom. When he finally pushed himself up, his ribs trembled.
He was reminded once again how fragile a human body really was.
“Keh—cough.”
A mouthful of dirt spilled from his lips.
Lesson learned: don’t scream when you’re falling. You just end up eating dirt.
He didn’t blame Aranseol for pushing him.
He had spent months as an explorer himself.
That metallic sound just now—
She had shoved him to protect him from someone.
The slope had made the landing rough, but something had definitely happened.
And he understood exactly what.
“Son of a bitch.”
The airship had been shot down.
That meant someone had deliberately targeted it.
He should have considered the possibility that whoever attacked it was still nearby.
The dopamine from surviving the crash had clouded his judgment.
He felt disgusted with himself.
This was basically walking straight into the afterlife.
But there was no time to dwell on it.
The attacker had already appeared, and the situation had exploded.
All that remained was figuring out how to survive it.
Kaang!
Another metallic clash rang out from above.
Grabbing roots and thick grass, Harua scrambled back up the slope just in time to hear the sound again.
Between the trees, he saw Aranseol facing a man wearing knuckle dusters.
And then he froze.
What the hell was that?
The man had no head.
Where his head should have been, a massive red flower bloomed instead.
Was he some kind of other-race too?
Even among other-races, could someone really move without a head?
At least this man seemed capable of it.
This ridiculous fantasy world.
It was driving him insane.
Kaang!
In that moment, Aranseol and the mysterious man clashed again.
Aranseol wielded a long-reach longsword.
The man, by contrast, only had knuckle dusters on his fists.
Yet he fearlessly closed the distance and threw punches straight into her range.
Charging someone with a sword was either madness or proof of overwhelming confidence in one’s skill.
In reality, Aranseol looked strained.
The forest’s limited space already restricted her swordplay, and there were too many obstacles.
The man only needed to swing his arms.
The closer he got, the more advantageous it became for him.
“Harua, run!”
Aranseol shouted.
She hadn’t pinpointed his location—she was just yelling on instinct.
She knew she was being pushed back.
She had done the same thing during the airship incident. She never changed.
What now?
But he had no intention of running.
He was already racking his brain for a way out.
His combat ability was pathetic.
All he had was a bit of holy magic.
And even that hadn’t sprouted its seed yet.
A holy mage who hadn’t even reached the basics.
That was his current standing.
Could someone like him jump into that melee and actually do anything?
Surviving without getting accidentally killed by a stray fist or sword would already be a miracle.
But he didn’t die.
Even if he took stray punches and sword strikes, he would simply revive after some time.
Resurrection magic.
His hidden card.
His eyes gleamed quietly.
There was exactly one way out.
Sword Lord Soun.
One of the eleven Lords, widely regarded as the greatest swordsman alive.
Aranseol had endured countless hardships and efforts just to become his direct disciple.
She worked hard, but talent was lacking.
Soun had tried to pass on his teachings several times, yet she could never fully absorb them.
That fact had become both a complex and a source of regret for her.
Even so, she never gave up the sword.
Instead, she threw herself into training with even greater desperation.
There was only one reason.
To take revenge on the transmigrator who had murdered her parents long ago.
The killer had vanished without a trace.
Aranseol had gathered every scrap of information she could to track him, but she still hadn’t found him.
So the only thing she could do now was swing her sword.
Driven by the desire for revenge, Aranseol had lived her life.
Sometimes she wondered what meaning any of it held after her parents were gone, but this was all she had left.
A life spent struggling with insufficient talent, existing only for revenge.
When she heard that her friend Shishiroka had died—
She couldn’t help but think, for some reason, that Shishiroka had been freed from that wretched existence.
She knew how disrespectful that thought was.
Yet the fact that she had thought it anyway filled her with self-loathing.
Because it was disrespectful to Shishiroka.
Today.
The day the airship crashed.
She wondered if the revenge that had bound her for so long might finally come to an end.
And somehow, they survived.
But the real crisis came after the relief.
The man whose head was replaced by a flower.
The moment he appeared from the forest, Aranseol recognized him.
A Great Sinner.
The title given to the worst criminals recorded in Astrape.
Sloth of the Seven Deadly Sins.
Cosmic Jack.
He had shown up here.
A chill ran down her spine.
Along with the goosebumps came unmistakable killing intent.
He made no effort to hide his bloodlust and went straight for Harua first.
Harua was a transmigrator.
Transmigrators could possess unknown abilities.
So targeting Harua first was a logical decision.
Ever since her parents were murdered, Aranseol had lived with an instinctive wariness toward transmigrators.
Harua was no exception.
Even when he helped her during her heatstroke.
Even when he volunteered to save people on the airship without hesitation.
She had only felt uneasy.
Opening her heart to him was another matter entirely.
And it was solely because he was a transmigrator.
Thanks to that, she realized something.
She was eternally bound to that day’s revenge.
She understood how pathetic a life ruined by vengeance truly was.
Maybe that was why—
As if denying her own life, she had thrown herself forward to save Harua.
In doing so, she took the first hit. Her left wrist was struck directly by the knuckle duster.
The hand holding her sword throbbed.
Unfortunately, Aranseol was left-handed.
Her combat power was halved.
And her opponent was a Great Sinner.
She didn’t know why Cosmic Jack was here.
But she knew he was an enemy.
Cosmic Jack wasn’t an absurd monster on the level of Sword Lord Soun.
Soun was in a league of his own even among the Lords.
Still, the man was undeniably skilled.
More than anything, the reason Cosmic Jack was called the Great Sinner of Sloth was different.
He never revealed his true strength.
Right now, fighting Aranseol was nothing more than a game to him.
Even so, she couldn’t break through his attacks.
Every time his knuckle duster extended, she could only barely block.
He could have ended her long ago, yet he continued his relentless assault as if waiting for his prey to give up on its own.
Then, suddenly, Cosmic Jack’s attacks stopped.
“Hey.”
Aranseol used the opening to catch her breath.
“You don’t really have much will to live, do you?”
Aranseol’s shoulders froze.
The emotions she had unconsciously poured into her sword.
The emptiness of a life lived only for revenge, the exhaustion with herself.
Cosmic Jack had read all of it.
And that was proof he had killed countless people.
He understood better than anyone the swords of those who fought desperately to survive.
Aranseol’s sword carried no such desperation.
“I thought crashing the airship might draw out Ririran, but then I saw survivors and came running.”
He spun the knuckle duster in his hand with a disappointed air.
“Looks like I caught the laziest woman in the world.”
Kaang!
In an instant, his fist shot upward, knocking her sword aside and sending her body reeling.
Pain shot through her hand, and her shoulder throbbed.
Aranseol’s eyes widened.
She hadn’t seen it.
She hadn’t seen his punch at all.
And the power behind it was on a completely different level from before.
She had known he was hiding his strength, but she hadn’t expected this much of a gap.
Cosmic Jack had lost interest in Aranseol.
So he saw no value in continuing to play with her.
Once he lost interest because of her laziness, it was over.
Typical Cosmic Jack behavior.
He slipped deep into Aranseol’s guard.
His knuckle duster surged toward her abdomen.
A fist that could even repel a sword.
If it connected, her ribs would shatter, her organs would rupture, and she would die.
Aranseol instinctively threw herself backward, but it was too late.
She was already within range of his punch.
So this was how she died.
Emptiness and countless emotions flooded her.
And within those emotions—
A very faint.
Truly faint will rose up.
The instinctive desire to live that every living being possessed.
Aranseol gripped her sword so hard her hand felt like it would break and swung downward.
Muscles tore and bones screamed, but it was her final desperate struggle—even if it meant dying together with him.
Yet she realized it was already too late for that will to awaken.
His fist was far faster than her sword.
So this was how she died.
Even with a life like this, she didn’t want to die.
When Aranseol saw her death right in front of her—
Pat!
Behind Cosmic Jack.
Harua burst out of the undergrowth.
His hand stretched desperately toward Cosmic Jack.
Aranseol’s eyes widened in shock.
Harua was a No-Named, but he was a holy mage.
Unless he was on Lapiel’s level, no ordinary holy mage could be expected to have significant combat ability.
That was why she had shouted for him to run and survive.
So why was Harua charging straight at Cosmic Jack now?
It was something no sane person would do.
And in that moment—
Whoosh!
Cosmic Jack pulled back his extended fist and twisted his body with eerie precision, dodging Harua.
Harua landed awkwardly on the ground.
In that brief instant, Cosmic Jack had already put distance between them.
Aranseol stared blankly, unable to understand what had just happened.
But Harua remained in position, hand extended forward, breathing heavily.
Cosmic Jack stared silently at Harua.
Aranseol finally understood both men’s intentions.
And a chill slowly crept up her spine as horror dawned on her.
Harua was a No-Named.
The moment Aranseol had called his name, Cosmic Jack would have realized it too.
Cosmic Jack had targeted the transmigrator Harua first because of his unknown ability.
Now that it was revealed Harua was a powerful No-Named—
His charge must have been based on some overwhelmingly strong ability.
But in truth, he was a holy mage.
His ability was almost certainly related to holy magic.
Yet Cosmic Jack didn’t know Harua was a holy mage.
And because of that—
He also didn’t know what Harua’s ability actually was.
When their eyes met, Harua grinned through the sweat on his face.
The ultimate liar was standing right here.