The Master of the Blue Castle
“The master of the Blue Castle?”
I distinctly remembered seeing a message, right before I blacked out, saying I'd been granted access to the Blue Castle.
[The master of the Blue Castle urges you to come.]
There it was again.
“I guess I need to hurry and take care of this….”
“Huh?”
“Hyuk, I'm heading out for a bit.”
I unilaterally informed Hyuk and moved to the Blue Castle. The moment I vanished, the two people who'd been sleeping until just now opened their eyes.
“Mmm…, Jina?”
“Where did he go?”
The two of them immediately began searching for me, and of course, their gaze naturally slid over to Hyuk, who had been innocently standing nearby. And so, while I was gone, Hyuk ended up at their mercy.
A cold wind swept across my skin.
“Ngh, it's cold….”
Since I'd come without any preparation at all, I was dressed in nothing but my underwear and a thin layer of clothes. I'll be dead before I even meet this castle's master.
To sum up where I was in a single word: a snow mountain. A vast expanse of white snow stretched out in every direction, and my current situation was precisely the kind people got lost and froze to death in.
[The master of the Blue Castle guides you to its home.]
As the message appeared, a blue arrow materialized over the snowfield. I stared at it, dumbfounded. Then another message popped up.
[The master of the Blue Castle scolds you, asking if you want to freeze to death.]
“Okay, okay, I'm coming.”
Grumbling at this master of the Blue Castle who had the audacity to scold me through system messages, I followed the arrow. If you're going to talk to me like that, the least you could do is summon me straight to your front door.
After about ten minutes of walking, the feeling drained out of my feet. Ten minutes after that, I could barely register that my legs were still moving. Another ten minutes, and my mind began to blur at the edges. I'm going to die.
Just as I pressed on, a system message appeared.
[You have arrived at the Blue Castle.]
[A warm wind blows.]
The wind wrapped around me like a blanket, and the senses that had abandoned me moments ago came flooding back. My consciousness sharpened.
“So this is…, the Blue Castle….”
It was, in a word, overwhelming. A magnificent ice fortress, the kind you'd expect to see in the DetermXnation Kingdom — that was the Blue Castle.
[The master of the Blue Castle tells you to come in already.]
“Th-then, pardon the intrusion….”
Perhaps it was the sheer majesty of the ice fortress, but my words shrank on their own. I carefully pushed open the door and stepped inside.
Unlike the frozen exterior, the interior was furnished with all sorts of furniture beyond just ice.
[The master of the Blue Castle puffs up its shoulders.]
The moment I expressed my astonishment, those unseen shoulders shot up. Whoever this was, someone who got that giddy over a single compliment was clearly an easy creature to deal with.
“So? Where do I go to meet you?”
I hadn't come here to sightsee, and I certainly hadn't come to nearly freeze to death. I had answered the invitation simply because the master of the Blue Castle — that existence — had called for me.
[The master of the Blue Castle huffily tells you to follow.]
When I stopped reacting, the thing sent another sulky message. Still, it did guide me properly toward the arrow.
But wait — why am I sensing emotion from a system message?
System messages were supposed to be curt, mechanical, devoid of any feeling whatsoever. Yet ever since I arrived, I'd been holding what felt like a conversation with this so-called master of the Blue Castle.
“…You're sending the system messages yourself?”
The moment that thought crystallized, my head started to ache. The System was an inviolable existence that no one could touch. And yet the entity messaging me right now was manipulating that untouchable System.
Gulp.
My swallow was audible in the silence. I gripped my sanity tight and cautiously followed the arrow. It led me to an enormous ice door.
[The being of the Blue Castle howls that it is just beyond this door.]
“Awooooo!”
In the same instant as the message, a wolf's howl rang out from behind the door. With a sinking could it be… feeling, I pushed it open. And there, exactly as I'd expected, was a great white wolf.
“Welcome, human.”
“Hati….”
The wolf gazing down at me was Hati, younger sister of the divine beast Sköll — the very being I had promised to set free.
“The Moon's divine beast is the master of the Blue Castle….”
“Well? Doesn't it suit me?”
Honestly, I didn't quite buy the idea of the Moon's divine beast wielding ice, but I let it slide.
“Wouldn't gray suit the Moon better?”
“What did you just say?”
“Nothing at all.”
Hati frowned at me, apparently having caught my muttering, so I deflected. Then I got to the point.
“So, why did you call me here?”
“Hmm. Because your scent carried traces of me — and of my brother.”
“It's probably this.”
I pulled the black dagger from my waist. Hati sniffed at it and immediately wrinkled her muzzle.
“This smells of my brother's essence….”
“Right. It's a dagger made by fusing the heart and essence of your replica from the Tower with the heart and essence Sköll gave me.”
“Gave you?”
At my words, Hati's expression darkened in an instant. Not a trace of the earlier warmth remained.
“…My brother handed over a divine beast's heart and essence — the same kind as ours — and you're asking me to believe that?”
“Ah, yeah. I received his essence directly. That part is the truth.”
“…….”
Hati trembled, jaws clenched, but said nothing more. It had to be a bitter pill to swallow. If your family gave up their own essence of their own will, you'd worry yourself sick. I knew that feeling all too well. When I'd lost my family, it had felt like losing the entire world.
After a long silence, Hati seemed to regain a measure of composure and asked in a level voice, “…Can you tell me how you came to receive my brother's essence?”
“Sure.”
And so I began to recount what had happened in the Tower — Sköll's trial, receiving Hati's replica, everything that had transpired there.
“I see….”
Having listened to the whole story, Hati immediately grew sullen. I decided to change the subject fast. If I let this mood drag on, the atmosphere alone is going to crush me.
So I brought up Hati herself. “How do I go about breaking your seal?”
“You mean this?”
As she spoke, Hati lifted a forepaw — and a chain that hadn't been there a moment ago materialized around it.
“It's the shackle that infuriated god clamped on me because I refused to become her pet.”
“A god?”
“Yes. She declared that if she couldn't make me bow to her, she'd make sure no one could have me — and so she bound me to this land.”
“Ha. What a lunatic.”
“A lunatic indeed.”
At her words, I ran through the gods I knew. Whoever coveted Hati was very likely a deity holding the authority of the hunt — wolves had symbolized the hunt since time immemorial. And considering Hati's lineage…. She was a child of Fenrir, a divine beast of Norse mythology.
“Skadi?”
“No.”
The moment I voiced my guess, Hati shot it down. “Then Artemis?” “No.” “Rudra?” “No.”
I named every famous hunting god I could think of, and every one was rejected. I'd assumed that anyone who'd covet a divine beast of Hati's caliber had to be a top-tier god, but apparently not.
“Then which god was it?”
“Aphrodite.”
“Aphrodite?”
A Greek goddess, not a Norse one. I was taken aback for a moment — but thinking about her temperament, it was entirely plausible.
If it's that beauty-obsessed madwoman, sure, I can believe it. Frankly, even by my standards, Hati was beautiful. It made perfect sense that Aphrodite would covet her.
“But I doubt the goddess of beauty possesses a divine relic powerful enough to seal you.”
“Have you heard of Gleipnir?”
“Of course.”
The chain that had once bound Fenrir. Fenrir had eventually snapped it himself once he'd grown stronger, but for an immense span of time before that, it had held him fast — a true divine relic.
“That is what binds me now.”
“But from what I know, Gleipnir was broken.”
“It was indeed severed once, by my father. But that accursed goddess brought the fetter back.”
That made no sense. There was no way Aphrodite could wield Gleipnir. Even if she had somehow restored it, the Norse gods would never have stood by and watched a foreign goddess use their relic. Whatever anyone said, Gleipnir belonged to them.
Which would mean Aphrodite did it in secret? That couldn't be it either. She had neither the power nor the craft to restore Gleipnir.
“May I take a look at the shackle's information for a moment?”
“By all means.”
Hati readily extended her forepaw. I stepped close and checked the information on Gleipnir.
[Mythic]
Classification: Fetter, Rope
Description: A divine relic once severed by Fenrir, restored by He?????. Its power is diminished from what it once was.
Effect: ???
My power apparently fell short — I couldn't read the description of its effects — but one thing was now certain: this fetter really was Gleipnir. A mere replica could never carry the Mythic rank, a grade I'd never even seen before.
“So it's He?????….”
Something starting with He, and close enough to Aphrodite to do her a favor like this. One name came to mind at once.
Hephaestus. It's him, isn't it.
The only god who sympathized with humanity and had aided us in the war against the demons. The one problem was that he was hopelessly, endlessly weak when it came to Aphrodite alone.
So that's why he was sometimes absent when we fought the demons….
Recalling those days drew a wry smile out of me. Then another question occurred to me.
“Can't you break it yourself?”
Hati was Fenrir's child. I asked on the off chance she might manage it — and the answer I got back was on an entirely different scale.
“It isn't impossible. The problem is the time it would take.”
“How long?”
“Perhaps another hundred million years or so….”
I decided to stop listening there. A hundred million years was more than enough time for me to be long dead. If I intended to keep my promise to Sköll, breaking the seal now seemed like the only real option.
“So there's no way besides you breaking it yourself?”
“There is. If you kill the shackle's guardian, this seal will be undone.”
“Its guardian, then.”
As things stood, that seemed to be my only path to keeping the promise. “Where is this guardian?”
“Leave this castle, and in a cave halfway up the mountain to the right — that is where it dwells.”
“Gah! That's far.”
I was taken aback by the distance, but it wasn't beyond me. “Give me a moment.”
With that, I turned to leave the room. Or rather, I tried to.
“Hey, uh — you wouldn't happen to have any clothes, would you?”
At my question, Hati fixed me with a look of profound pity.