Chapter 99
Chapter 99
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: penny
Chapter: 99
Chapter Title: Reunion with Arthel
-----------------------------------------------------------------
99
“What the hell are you…!”
Irne grabbed Sein’s pant leg and clung to it.
“What do you think you’re doing!”
Behind the Walnut Tree General Store.
The place where Irne lived.
“Don’t go!”
Irne, who harbored poison in her heart, leaped in front of Sein and gripped a dagger.
Her eyes, brimming with venom, seemed utterly sincere.
But.
Tremble.
The shaking dagger looked like it had never stabbed a person before.
“I told you not to come closer!”
Sein pushed Irne’s head away with one hand.
Creak.
The sound of a door opening.
“Irne, what in the world is going on.”
The voice of an elderly man, frail with age.
And then.
“…….”
“…….”
Sein and the old man locked eyes.
There were things Sein had hoped for upon arriving in the capital.
And this encounter was one of them.
“Looks like it wasn’t a coincidence.”
“……Irne.”
“Grandfather?”
“Leave us.”
Irne’s face twisted in confusion at the old man’s words.
This was a face on her grandfather she had never seen before.
No.
‘From before….’
It was a face Irne had seen only once in her entire life.
“But Grandfather….”
“It’s fine. He’s not a dangerous man.”
Just like that time.
The same expression, the same voice, the same words.
“……All right.”
In the end, Irne trudged out and closed the door to the general store.
“Walnut Tree General Store.”
Sein said.
“You once told me that story.”
It was different from Gallio.
“When you get too old to hold a hammer anymore, you’ll retire and build a forge called Walnut Tree and live there.”
“That’s right.”
Once Irne had completely left, the old man spoke while prostrating his frail body flat on the ground.
“It’s a general store instead of a forge, and so shabby that I almost passed it by.”
Sein and Gallio’s connection had been very slight.
In over a thousand lives, they had shared only a faint bond at most.
In the original Sanctuary, he hadn’t even seen Gallio become an official priest, let alone rise to archbishop.
But right before him.
“Do you remember?”
The old man was different.
“How did you survive?”
He was one of his people.
Even if it was just a game.
“But I can no longer hold a hammer, so I ended up opening this general store.”
He wasn’t someone who belonged in a place like this.
Over a thousand lives.
True to Sanctuary being a game, there were guides who led those lives, and he called them masters.
The old man before him had once been Sein’s master, his friend, and his disciple.
“Long time no see, Arthel.”
Arthel, the empire’s greatest blacksmith.
Why on earth was he in a place like this?
“You haven’t changed either.”
Clench.
Sein balled his fist tight.
The old man, Arthel, had been blind from birth.
For a blacksmith, blindness could have been a major hindrance, but over a thousand lives, he had always become the empire’s greatest blacksmith.
*Heart’s Eye.*
The eye of the heart.
That was why Arthel could clearly recognize that Sein’s appearance had changed from the past.
“…….”
For a moment, Sein and Arthel gazed at each other in silence.
In a past life, who knows what he might have done.
But now that he had drawn a clear line, the words Sein could say were these.
“I’m sorry.”
An apology.
“For letting you… die in a place like this.”
Arthel was one of the most precious NPCs to Sein.
“ Your Majesty. That was long ago. In any case, how long do you plan to stand there? Will you come in and talk?”
*
*
*
He was not a man who chased wealth or fame.
*I will become the greatest blacksmith.*
Making weapons was his entire world.
*My dream is to craft the greatest weapons.*
*I will become the best.*
In every connection, Arthel had been unwavering.
*So someday, you…*
*You…*
That was the promise from the Arthel he had bonded with.
*Will wield a sword forged by these hands.*
Sein looked at Arthel.
“You’ve aged a lot.”
“Over a hundred years have passed.”
In truth, the fact that he was still alive was miraculous.
“How are you still alive?”
“Have you forgotten that I have a bit of dwarf blood in me?”
Ah, right.
In Sanctuary, there were no such other races.
Like the demons, Arthel carried the blood of the dwarves, said to have gone extinct long ago.
“Dwarves live longer than humans. The blood in me isn’t pure, but I owe it to that.”
“…Your granddaughter?”
“A lacking child. I couldn’t do anything for her.”
Sein looked at Arthel’s hands.
Arthel, who had opened a Walnut Tree General Store instead of a forge.
*I can no longer hold the hammer…*
It was just as he said.
His eyes, blind from birth and thus distant, were no hindrance.
But those crushed hands—what could be done about them?
“……Why.”
How did it happen.
“It was greed.”
Arthel fell silent there.
“Don’t apologize. It doesn’t suit Your Majesty.”
“I… was like that, huh.”
A faint chuckle escaped Arthel’s lips.
“There was a time I resented you deeply. Times I wanted to ask why you did it.”
Of course there would be.
What Sein had destroyed was the empire—the continent itself.
Their world.
“But I know.”
What?
“That Your Majesty loved Sanctuary more than anyone.”
“…….”
“You were always rushing forward without rest, as if chased by something. If anything blocked your path, you shattered it and charged ahead.”
Arthel said.
“Some trembled at your ruthlessness, others feared you’d become a tyrant for your cruelty. But I saw it.”
Heart’s Eye, the eye of the heart.
“More than anyone I’d ever seen, you loved Sanctuary.”
“…….”
“I thought there must be a reason.”
A reason.
Just the greed to see the ending.
“But I won’t ask.”
Arthel didn’t pry deeper into Sein’s secret he couldn’t speak of.
“Arthel, come with me.”
He knew it was shameless.
“I’m in Demorus right now.”
“……Demorus.”
“That guy’s there too. Pariak’s grandson, I mean.”
“Pargen, right.”
“I can fix your hands. I’ll take responsibility for your granddaughter too.”
It felt like the only atonement he could offer Arthel.
“Don’t do that. It’s not like Your Majesty.”
“…….”
“But.”
Sein saw it.
A light kindling in Arthel’s eyes.
“I can’t tell you how happy I am to see you again.”
It was longing—hope.
“It’s not that I couldn’t fix my hands. I chose not to.”
Vitality seemed to return to the dying old man’s body.
He had seen this once before.
“With no more reason to forge weapons.”
Aaron, the blacksmith he’d met in Sector 8, Borfeo.
Everything broken, his will lost, he had withered in an instant—but upon finding hope, he’d regained his youth just as quickly.
“But now I can pick up the hammer again.”
*
*
*
“Grandfather’s hands got like that while searching for something in a burning forge.”
Outside the general store, Sein leaned against the wall and handed Irne a candy.
“Something incredibly precious.”
He thought he understood why Arthel hadn’t spoken of it.
On the day the empire fell, amid the crumbling, burning ruins.
Arthel hadn’t let go of the weapon he was forging, and that’s how his hands ended up like that.
And that tragedy was one Sein had wrought.
“Blood-related granddaughter?”
“You’re not supposed to ask that so bluntly, are you?”
“Well, I’m not used to this.”
Irne stuck out her tongue in a raspberry.
Grape-flavored candy, apparently—her tongue was purple.
“She’s not a blood granddaughter. Grandfather’s real children were buried with him when his hands got like that.”
“Fuck.”
“You curse too, huh?”
Sein let out a deep sigh.
“Anyway, not blood-related. What was it he said…? Oh, right—even if not blood, the same blood flows, so he’d raise her.”
From what he heard, Arthel had taken in Irne, who had been sold into slavery and wandered.
And they’d been together for quite some time now….
“Wait.”
Sein looked at Irne.
Same blood.
And the way Irne had acted.
When they met Arthel, she’d been somewhat composed, but.
“What?”
“How… how old are you?”
“Twenty-two.”
Fuck.
Sein swallowed the curse he nearly spat out again.
‘She’s older than me?’
At least in this run.
“I know that look. Don’t worry, I won’t make you call me sis.”
“……You’re not older.”
The body’s age might be that, but his actual age was far greater.
“For humans, the inner self matters more.”
His inner self, the soul’s age, was older, so it was fine.
“So, who are you anyway? Grandfather only had two customers he knew personally.”
“Two?”
“Yeah. Don’t ask me who. I don’t know. I was too young back then—we couldn’t even talk properly.”
Irne said.
“I’ve never even heard of someone like you among the capital nobles.”
That was probably why Irne still treated Sein warily.
Someone her grandfather knew.
Clearly young, but carrying some secret.
“Sein Demorus.”
“Oh, Sein Demo…”
Irne’s eyes went wide.
“Demorus…?!”
The true powers of the continent, who wouldn’t even glance at petty capital nobles.
“And Sein…”
She’d heard the name before.
“If you need help, use my name. If you can convince Arthel, bring him to Demorus. I’ll treat you like family.”
“To Demorus?”
“No.”
Sein said.
“Something even more valuable.”
“…….”
“Any bullies or annoyances bothering you?”
In that moment, Irne felt it again.
What it meant to have ties to the underworld.
“There are.”
And Irne was a woman who knew how to seize it.