Chapter 33
Chapter 33
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 32
Chapter Title: Newbie Adventurer Bern (30) - Firefly
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In her hazy consciousness.
Blanca blankly recalled what had just happened.
Her vision spinning wildly.
Her body shaking like a leaf in the wind.
A curse, a plague, deadly poison. An explosion like oil squeezed from every evil and filthy thing in the world set ablaze.
And then, the arms of someone who had enveloped her, shielding her from that blast.
The moment she remembered it, Blanca reflexively shot up.
"Ugh…!"
Pain throbbed through her body everywhere, as if she'd been beaten black and blue.
Ignoring it as best she could, Blanca urgently scanned her surroundings.
The ground had collapsed, leaving building debris crumbling everywhere, dust floating in the air.
Spotting a familiar red head amid it all, Blanca rushed over, then trembled violently upon confirming his state.
"Ah… aaah…."
Bern's condition was horrific.
His right leg was crushed under a massive boulder, his skin mottled black like it was poisoned in places, and smoke continuously seeping out as if it were burning away in real time.
Once that corrosion finished, his body would probably turn to dust without even leaving a corpse behind.
Thud.
Her legs giving out, Blanca crawled almost desperately to Bern's side and cast a healing spell.
Again and again, over and over, until his wounds healed.
But it was a futile effort.
The white light she scattered couldn't push back the black magic corroding his body, nor heal his injuries.
Even so, Blanca kept chanting the spell.
"Get better… heal, damn it! If you can't use it now, then what's the point…!!"
Back in her childhood.
To protect her powerless daughter, her mother had offered herself as a sacrifice.
And now.
The one man who truly understood her, who shared her dreams, was dying because of her once more.
As Blanca's heart began to rot from that fact.
Snap.
A hand grasped hers.
"—That's enough, Miss Blanca."
Somehow, he'd come to.
The red-headed adventurer was holding Blanca's hand.
Gazing at her with calm, serene eyes that belied the fact he was on the verge of death.
"It's not a wound that can be healed anyway, so don't waste your mana. No, better yet, you should heal your own injuries first."
At his utterly nonchalant tone, Blanca knew she shouldn't, but she couldn't help the lump rising in her throat.
"This is no time for that! Why… why did you shield me!?"
"Hmm."
To Blanca's anguished cry, wrung from her depths, Bern replied matter-of-factly.
"Because your life is far more important than mine."
Who was it that gulped as if swallowing their breath?
Facing the speechless Blanca, Bern continued a bit awkwardly.
"I meant to keep it secret, but at this rate, you'll carry an unnecessary burden, so I have no choice but to tell the truth."
Bern put on a playful air, like revealing a magic trick to a child, and said this.
"Adventurer Bern doesn't exist. This body, this identity—it's all just a fake conjured by magic."
"The real 'me' is somewhere else, alive and well."
"So there's no need to worry, and no reason to feel guilty."
"Sorry for deceiving you all this time, Miss Blanca."
Blanca fell silent.
No words would come out.
How could they?
'To comfort someone as pathetic and worthless as me… you're even resorting to lies like that?'
Her throat burned like fire.
She wanted to scream at him, ask who he was calling a fool.
But Blanca couldn't.
Not when this man, even in death, was trying so hard not to burden her with guilt.
How could she ignore his final, clumsy, heartbreakingly gentle consideration?
So Blanca said,
"…Yeah, you're really something, Bern. I had no idea you were this shameless."
Did her voice tremble?
Was her acting too obvious for him to notice?
Though inwardly anxious, Bern mercifully seemed oblivious.
"Haha, sorry. I'd love to give you a long apology, but I don't have the time."
Bern's gaze turned upward.
To the hole in the ceiling where they'd fallen through.
"That last attack probably caught him in the blast too, but he'll revive soon enough. Liches have a 'heart'—a sort of spare life. So we need to move before then."
"Move? For what?"
Blanca had to ask.
With Bern—the only one who could take down the lich—out of commission, the battle was as good as lost.
So why fight anymore?
Wouldn't it be better to stay by his side until his final moments?
"For victory."
But cutting off her whims like that, Bern stated firmly.
"We haven't lost yet. Renya and the other adventurers are still up there… and most importantly, so are you, Miss Blanca."
Blanca tried to shake her head.
To deny it was impossible, that without him, she couldn't face the lich.
"I've watched you closely, and I can say for sure: you can do it, Miss Blanca. And if you win, that will be my victory—our victory."
But Bern told her it was possible.
That she could do it.
So Blanca nodded up and down instead of side to side.
It was the least she could do in return.
Bern smiled in satisfaction.
Holding back tears on the verge of spilling, Blanca smiled back.
Blanca rose to her feet.
Gripping her sword, she climbed the debris like stairs, up and up.
To offer victory to her comrades.
To turn his final adventure into a success, not a failure.
Step.
Stepping back onto their original floor, she saw the adventurers gathered together once more, locked in battle with the lich.
Even if the lich had reclaimed his purple mist from casting advanced spells, the damage the adventurers had taken from exposure wouldn't vanish.
Exhausted by the myriad negative spell effects and fatigue carried in the mist, most adventurers were utterly spent.
In contrast, though the lich had lost his death knights to Bern, he still had plenty of mana and minions left.
Having already tried fleeing once and been smashed for it, they fought out of necessity, but fighting spirit had drained from the adventurers' faces.
"Ho, come to die on your own two feet? If you'd waited until I finished cleaning up, you might've prolonged your miserable life a bit."
Had he realized Bern was down?
Leisure had returned to the lich's tone.
That low-class false charisma that only showed when he held the overwhelming advantage.
She'd feared something like that enough to have nightmares.
Because of trash like him, she'd lost precious people twice.
A surge boiled up from the depths of Blanca's heart.
She didn't suppress the emotion.
She took a step forward. —The swordsmanship and footwork he'd taught her were there.
She clenched her fist. —The ring he'd gifted her asserted its presence.
She felt her heart pounding. —The life he'd given his own to protect.
Mana's nature is the trajectory of one's life.
How you'd lived, what you'd done, where you looked.
All the fragments she'd carried fused into one, forming a towering spire.
"Tch, have you lost your mind, abandoning everything?"
Whether irritated by her silence or wary of letting her approach again, the lich fired a black orb laced with curses and poison.
An advanced attack spell that would critically wound even a knight in heavy armor if it hit directly.
Blanca intercepted it with Rock Burning Magic, but a mid-tier spell couldn't match an advanced one.
The black orb, slightly weakened, charged straight at Blanca, and she swung her sword at it.
Boom!
With a deafening explosion, Blanca's body flew back, tumbling across the floor.
Seeing her dying from burns and corrosion, the lich burst into mocking laughter.
Thud!
Blanca stabbed her sword into the ground and used it to haul herself up again.
"Putting up a fight, eh? You'd be better off giving up."
Watching her struggle with amusement, the lich fired another spell.
Blanca tried intercepting again, but lost the clash of power once more, her body rolling across the floor.
And she stood again.
"What…?"
The lich had started toying with her like a plaything, but soon felt an odd dissonance and hardened his expression.
No matter how viciously the lich attacked or tried to end her, Blanca refused to fall.
Vomiting blood, rolling on the ground, she dodged lethal blows with sword and spells, pressing on with buffs and heals.
Once could be luck.
Twice, grit and determination.
But three, four times—no, more?
"What have you done, you wench!!"
With a roar, a killing spell shot toward Blanca.
Blanca countered with flames, the two spells colliding.
It looked the same as before.
Bang!
But the flames completely nullified the lich's spell, proving otherwise.
A mid-tier spell from a mere 3rd-circle mage matching a 5th-circle advanced spell— the lich's eyes shook in shock.
Only then did he notice the strange mana flow around Blanca's body.
The mana Blanca poured into Magic to Slightly Strengthen the Body and Magic to Heal Light Wounds glowed upon contact with surrounding mana, amplifying the spells' effects.
Realizing the danger, Mortius desperately tried to finish Blanca quickly, but what was impossible before her empowerment began was even less feasible now.
No— the harder Mortius strained to kill her, the more mana she absorbed, boosting her specs further.
Mortius realized the vicious cycle, but had no alternative.
What was a mage to do without casting spells?
The only option was warriors conserving mana internally, but his decent ones had long been crushed by Bern.
Soon, struggling even to block her mid-tier spells—let alone low-tier—Mortius cloaked himself in mist and fled.
Of course, Blanca wouldn't let that slide.
Boom!
The fireball, starting child-sized, reacted with his mist and ballooned to wagon-scale before detonating.
Mortius summoned a barrier to block, but the massive flames shattered it and sent him flying.
His charred body reformed around a heart-shaped orb flying in from somewhere.
Blanca silently fired flames again, turning the freshly revived Mortius to charcoal once more.
Reviving yet again, Mortius cried out desperately.
"Stop! Stop right now!! This heart is your mother's! Her life and soul are inside! You really gonna destroy it with your own hands?!"
Blanca halted.
Seizing the opening, Mortius pressed on frantically.
"Wench, become my disciple—no, my ally! Then I'll craft a proper body and revive your mother! Easy once you hit 6th circle! But if I fall here, you'll never reunite with her! That what you want!?"
Mortius had brought multiple guild disciples.
He knew Blanca, the guild celebrity, and that she'd become an adventurer to save her mother.
Such a girl wouldn't bite at the lure of reuniting with her mom?
Trick her into stopping the fight with sweet words, then deal with her some other way.
Best plan ever, he was sure.
Results?
"—I'm fighting to 'free' my mother. You think I'd waver at sweet talk like that… in front of those two?"
Mortius didn't know who those 'two' were.
No time to think.
A sword had pierced his chest, carving out his heart.
To a lich, the heart was like a wedge anchoring him to the mortal plane.
With his final anchor forcibly severed, Mortius's soul should have departed for the afterlife.
No, it should have.
Seductive yet playful, mature woman yet innocent girl— a voice embracing contradictions.
Someone who instilled primal fear even in a death-transcending mage seized Mortius's soul.
Mortius tried to scream.
But a mere soul was denied such luxury.
The wicked lich, who toyed with countless souls and lives, finally understood his sins as a powerless spirit in his last moments.
The woman's ruby lips. The abyss within—
Gulp.
After everything ended.
Blanca returned to where Bern had been.
The red-headed adventurer, struck by the lich's vile spell, had vanished without even a body left behind.
Clutching the heart that once belonged to her mother, chasing traces of the man she loved, the girl finally let out the sobs she'd held back.