Chapter 260
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 260
Chapter Title: Future Man?
-----------------------------------------------------------------
[Kwaaang!]
A massive lion's roar... or not.
A tiny wind spirit, about the size of a kitten, let out a cry right next to Aiden.
"Uh... it's a bit more petite than the one we saw, huh?"
Eleanor's words, comparing it to the Penril they'd seen just moments ago, made the wind spirit bristle.
[Human! That's wrong! I'm stronger than that guy!]
"What if it gets bigger?"
[Then yes!]
In other words, not yet.
Of course, the spirit wasn't wrong.
Aiden knew the reason well.
"Probably... during the awakening process, it transferred a large amount of its magic power to hyung."
"Ah-ha. So that's why our captain's like that?"
Jun had been sitting cross-legged with his eyes closed since earlier.
He was in the midst of awakening his third innate attribute.
"Yeah, I can definitely feel some incredibly vast energy around the captain."
The super-gigantic hurricane that filled half the field, and the wind spirit Penril that created it.
Absorbing those two energies to awaken Aiden's wind spirit, then converting some of that energy into magic power and imprinting it onto Jun's heart.
It was only natural that an enormous amount of attribute power was contained within.
'But... do innate attributes normally get absorbed that quickly?'
Even the spirit elixirs that warriors consumed, made of pure magic power, usually required tremendous effort to absorb.
Typically half a day, and depending on the elixir and the consumer's talent, it could take several months.
Yet absorbing magic power infused with attributes that quickly—was that even possible?
"Well, the captain's always been doing ridiculously impossible stuff since way back."
Their first meeting came to mind.
At first, his clothes were little more than rags, and Aiden beside him was the same.
Then that guy suddenly realized the Fairy Queen's awakening, gathered people, and in the crisis, even uncovered the secret of his own staff.
"How the heck does he know about this staff..."
Aiden had wanted to ask several times in the past, but whenever their leader spoke of things others didn't know, it shook their souls.
He couldn't rashly pry into it. It felt like forcing it would make him leave for good.
"Maybe the leader's a man from the future?"
So Maya's out-of-left-field remark caught him even more off guard.
"What're you talking about, Maya..."
A single line from Maya that left even novel-loving Aiden baffled.
Eleanor was no different.
"If the captain's from the future, then I'm a goddess?"
"What kind of talk is that, Eleanor..."
A priestess who served the gods claiming to be one herself—what nonsense was that?
Aiden glanced up at the sky, which looked like the universe might peek through. He half-expected lightning as divine punishment.
"No, hear me out. The captain knows a ton of stuff others don't sometimes. Eleanor, you were just thinking that about the staff, right?"
"True, but."
"Maybe the leader's someone from the future. Worth considering."
When the Fairy Queen awakened in the Black Forest.
When he found a hidden dungeon no one else knew about.
When he rescued Eleanor from the aptitude test.
"Didn't the captain always move like he knew everything?"
"Argh, why does this nonsense sound so plausible?"
"Even so, a man from the future is a stretch..."
But Maya shook her head and continued.
"In this damn world, nothing's impossible. Gods exist, monsters exist, even the dead walk—so why not someone from the future?"
"Hmm..."
Aiden thought it was still too much, but Maya's persuasively(?) grounded logic left him without a retort.
Indeed, their leader occasionally pulled out strangely knowledgeable insights.
In the past, he'd chalked it up to him being a mage, but now with more experience, he knew.
Mages were just people who knew 'magic' well—they didn't possess nonsensical knowledge.
"Think about it. At that Orc... whatever war plains, when the Orc Lord awakened—what happened?"
"Uh..."
Orc Lord Hargone.
When it revived, Jun had acted like he knew exactly how it would move.
And that wasn't all.
His oddly hostile attitude toward the Celestial Church.
Of course, anyone who knew what the Celestial Church had done wouldn't like them.
But Jun had an uncanny knack for tracking down the Celestial Church's tails.
"Maybe he got done in by the Celestial Church in the future or something."
Of course... the other two couldn't properly refute Maya's words, but they didn't believe them either.
Reading their skepticism, Maya snorted.
"Hmph, just wait. When I'm proven right later, you'll see. Time will tell if I'm right or wrong."
Jun successfully separated his innate wind attribute from his circle.
After a short rest, he and the party boarded an air carriage and promptly left the Wyvern Mountains.
Normally, wyvern attacks would make carriages impossible, but thanks to the boss wyvern's magic stone, none approached this area now.
"From now on, we'll tackle Count Mordenaine's commission for real."
"The request to find the person who vanished 30 years ago, right?"
"Yeah. But actually, I have a pretty good idea where that person is."
"As expected of the future man..."
"...?"
Maya's mutter was so soft it was barely audible.
Jun tilted his head, not quite catching it, as Aiden asked with an awkward smile.
"Haha... hyung. So, are we heading straight to Duke Randel?"
"No, not yet. We need to prepare first."
"What would that be?"
"Duke Randel's three children. We need to find their belongings."
"Belongings...?"
"It's a famous story. Why Duke Randel abandoned even his position as lord of the east and came to Blackout. It was because of his children's mysterious deaths."
But why were those necessary for finding Duke Randel?
Jun quickly answered the party's confusion.
"To cut to the chase, Duke Randel's disappearance was the Celestial Church's doing."
"Ah...?"
"30 years ago, and because of the Celestial Church?"
"Yeah. Those bastards have been preparing ever since then."
For the chaos in the Empire.
To put it simply, even the eastern war was entirely the Celestial Church's scheme.
Pushing from the shadows, piling up grudges to the point they couldn't be undone.
Dragging the war on to this very day.
"Why... why do something so horrific...?"
Aiden, who knew a fair bit about the eastern war, asked with a pale face.
"Basically, to make the Empire hard to unite when chaos hits. And the souls of the dead are useful to them in all sorts of ways."
Like the ominous old woman or the slaughter monk they'd seen in the aptitude test.
"They contract with otherworldly beings using the souls of humans who died that way. It's the easiest and fastest way to grow strong."
"That's..."
Suddenly, the party felt they understood why Jun harbored such deep enmity toward the Celestial Church.
"So they kept Duke Randel alive for some other reason? And the three children's belongings you mentioned are related to that."
Quick-witted Eleanor neatly summarized it.
"Right. Before his disappearance, Duke Randel had just reached level 8."
And from the Celestial Church's perspective, a level 8 user's body would be prime prey.
"The most straightforward example is the Evil Spirit Orb."
An Evil Spirit Orb implanted a corrupted spirit into a human body.
The party had already seen what happened to humans who accepted corrupted spirits.
"Th-that Dermane from Slayer Coast Island, right? The one who turned into a monster. Viscount Boletic's illegitimate brother or something?"
Even Dermane had become that much of a monster thanks to an Evil Spirit Orb.
What if they implanted one in level 8 Duke Randel?
'It'd be insanely powerful...'
Even bringing a full party of level 8 users, it'd be a coin flip whether they'd win against the calamity that returned.
Fortunately, in the game, the story allowed blocking it beforehand.
And Jun knew the method well.
"So... where are we heading now?"
"First stop is layer 5. Medelin Citadel."
"Oh, that's..."
"Famous place."
A field made of a citadel, as the name suggested, without any particularly strong monsters.
No magic stone mines either.
But Medelin Citadel was geographically close to most of layer 6.
If Birdless City was the 'starting layer'...
Then Medelin Citadel was the 'middle layer.'
"Even the Gilenoi Merchant Guild recently set up shop there—it's got insane population flow."
"What are we getting there?"
"Like I said earlier, the belongings left by Duke Randel's three children."
This mission might turn out to be surprisingly easy pickings.
Of course, Jun didn't say that out loud.
Maya and Eleanor were most wary of his line, 'This'll be easy.'
"Pommel's an idiot~."
In a space filled with crystals.
A man with a clownish tone removed his mask and took a swig from his hip flask.
"Stupid Pommel~."
The rhythm was all off, but the man muttered along happily.
"Haa..."
Then, abruptly, the mood plummeted.
"Nothing goes right for real."
His eyes gleamed.
His body still hadn't fully recovered.
The aftereffects from the line he crossed during the battle with Sword Soul Aden lingered.
'I want to move even in this state, but...'
If he broke the rules again while the penalty still gripped his body, there'd be no turning back.
He'd be permanently banished from this world.
But Pommel's failure stung deeply, alongside his own.
Pommel, at least, was meant to shake the Empire on the surface massively.
"Complicated..."
Did Pommel absolutely have to succeed?
No.
Pommel had clearly aimed to kill the 'vessel' he was after.
He'd disguised it as the impulsive act of that foolish God of Death, but Pommel's intent was clear.
They couldn't lose that vessel so pointlessly.
"Things have gotten tangled."
Conflict with Pommel had already begun. It was somewhat foreseeable.
Their ideal worlds had always differed.
"Still... we need to recover the vessel for now. Soon as the chance comes."
He couldn't move personally yet. But he could issue orders freely.
He closed his eyes tightly and brought the flask to his lips.
Anticipating the moment that would soon arrive.