Chapter 71
Chapter 71
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 71
Chapter Title: Reunion
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‘To miss someone’ is like a book you had to close in the middle of reading.
‘Parting’ is like a book you lost before you could ever finish it.
* * *
“The Apostle is silent! All reactions and activity have ceased!”
When the observation team finally reported the Apostle’s death, Lorraine’s first thought was of the two men’s safety.
“Search party! Form a search party! Find Mr. Lansen immediately! Fill it with healing magic specialists!”
“Understood!”
She tended to Lansen first, then set out on trembling legs to find the other one herself.
“Mila! Senya! Dolton! Grab the healing artifacts and follow me now!”
With the healing magic specialists.
*Thud. Thud, thud-thud!*
It was a staggering run.
Her legs, no, her whole body was drained of strength, yet Lorraine ran, stumbling along.
To the place where she had last parted with Kask.
And when she finally arrived,
“Huh.”
“My god…”
Gasps escaped from the researchers following behind her.
All around,
piles of burnt leeches were stacked high.
And a black path stretched out in one direction.
A path made of red blood and charred remains.
“Ah…!”
At the end of that path, Lorraine found him.
Leaning against the rubble of a collapsed building, covered in blood,
the one with the cute, pale yellow hair and light freckles,
that chick-like boy was soaked in blood, unmoving.
“Kask!”
As she cried out, Lorraine’s heart swelled with endless questions.
‘He’s alive, right? He’s alive?’
‘Huh? You’re alive!’
You’re alive, right? Right? You’re alive? You’re not going to do this to me too, are you?
Swallowing the questions that echoed dozens of times in her mind, she approached cautiously, as if her rough steps might shatter the boy.
And then,
“Hey there, sis.”
When Kask looked at her with his listless, pale yellow eyes,
‘I found it!’
Lorraine had found it.
The book whose next page she had been so curious about.
The story that followed was now unfolding before her eyes.
*Fwump-!*
She rushed forward.
She hugged him with all her might, stroking his blood-stained, pale yellow hair and burying her face in his shoulder.
“Uh… sis?”
Kask’s eyes wavered.
He hesitated, cautiously placing one hand on Lorraine’s back. After a moment of uncertainty, he gently placed the other there as well.
He felt her hurried breaths, rising and falling.
After about a minute had passed,
a thought suddenly occurred to Kask.
‘Is this my chance?’
Was it time to say the words he’d held in his heart for so long?
Right. A man is all about courage and confidence.
He made up his mind.
Full speed ahead!
“Sis. Actually, I’ve always… you…”
“Shh.”
But Lorraine’s “shh” stopped his courage dead in its tracks.
She just buried her face deeper into Kask’s shoulder, stroking his blood-matted hair and whispering.
“Just stay still, for now… just like this.”
“Uh, uh… oh. Okay.”
Kask’s hands, which had been resting naturally on Lorraine’s back, stiffened.
Lorraine leaned more and more of her weight against him.
Her hair tickled his cheek.
The scent of her skin, heart-wrenching even without a drop of perfume.
Suddenly,
the whole situation felt awkward to Kask.
It felt… sacrilegious.
Me? Daring to?
Is it okay for me to be holding her like this?
So he quickly changed the subject.
“Uh, but sis. Lansen’s okay, right?”
The reply came instantly.
“Of course he’s okay. He’ll be alive and well.”
“Right?”
“You saw it too, didn’t you?”
“Yeah… It was incredible. I survived thanks to him. I thought it was over, then suddenly the leeches started going crazy… ahem. I mean, they were writhing on the ground and dying.”
“They did?”
“Yeah. So, I finally got an opening and used [Awaken] to get rid of them all and heal myself.”
“I see.”
Lorraine said, her face still buried in his shoulder, as she stroked Kask’s hair.
“You did well.”
Huh?
Kask felt a strange sense of excitement.
“And then…”
Kask chattered on and on, and Lorraine listened endlessly.
“Uh, so! And then! Uh…”
Then, at some point, Kask came to his senses.
His endlessly swelling chest deflated, and he suddenly felt extremely self-conscious.
‘You idiot.’
Kask berated himself.
What was he so happy about, chattering away excitedly? At a tragic moment like this!
Countless people were dead and the entire institute had collapsed. Was this the time to be excitedly recounting his tales of heroism?
Look. Because of your stupidity, even Sis Lorraine is speechless!
His shoulders slumped.
A cold sweat ran down his back.
What do I do?
Should I apologize first?
Kask first lowered his voice and changed the mood.
“Um, but… are you okay, sis?”
“*Sniffle.* Huh? What about?”
“Well…”
Kask lifted his head slightly.
The scene spread out before him.
The once-magnificent institute had completely collapsed, turned into a pile of scrap metal.
How much did all that construction cost, what about all the samples and research equipment inside, and as for the research data created through blood, sweat, and tears… there were no words.
Could Lorraine, who was always screaming about money, just money, endure this?
Kask knew well.
How fiercely Lorraine had lived to establish this institute, to build it up to this point.
How happy she was with every single step of progress.
So the words wouldn’t come easily.
Still, he had to say something.
If only to prove that he hadn’t been chattering on excitedly because he was truly thoughtless.
Kask forced out the words that were stuck in his throat.
“That… it’s all… destroyed. What you… worked so, so hard to build…”
But then,
*Swoosh.*
Lorraine, who had been burying her face in Kask’s shoulder, suddenly lifted her head.
She placed her hands on both of Kask’s shoulders and looked him in the eye.
At first, Kask flinched in surprise, but,
‘Huh?’
then he was bewildered.
The expression on Lorraine’s face was so different from what he’d expected.
“You little punk. Are you an idiot?”
She was smiling brightly, her eyes sparkling as if she was about to die from excitement.
“Wha-what! Why am I an idiot!”
“You said you saw it earlier, Lansen fighting.”
“I-I saw it. How could I not?”
“And you’re still acting like this?”
“Wh-what about it?”
“That! The dragon’s Magic Armor! My magnum opus! It worked! Even though it seemed to have a lot of problems here and there… it still worked!”
Ah.
Kask’s mouth fell open.
“That means my hypothesis about the magic of the Mythical Age, even if not entirely correct, was right in the grand scheme of things!”
“I-I guess that’s one way to look at… it?”
“Exactly! And I learned something incredible, too. That ‘Apostle’ being might be a clue to why the Mythical Age fell! This is a chance to uncover the secrets of this world!”
Lorraine’s gaze turned toward the place where the ruins from the Mythical Age had been.
Her gleaming eyes devoured the sight of the hideously melted, ash-colored flesh.
“If I study that, something will come of it. I’m sure of it! A bigger investment! A greater truth!”
This time, it was Lorraine who was brimming with excitement.
She pulled Kask’s soft cheeks and ruffled his hair, shouting excitedly.
“My story, the story of Lorraine Scottvin, is just beginning!”
Kask wore a dazed expression at her words.
Finding that cute, Lorraine began to roughly knead his blood-soaked hair and cheeks again.
At that moment,
Lorraine prayed earnestly.
That the story she was reading now would not end midway.
That this next page, turned only through Eodran’s sacrifice and Lansen’s courage,
would continue on for a long, long time.
* * *
To wonder about someone is a kind of monster.
When you live without seeing them, having forgotten them, it squats quietly in a corner…
In the training hall where you trained together,
in the brilliant talent of a confident newcomer,
in the monument in the central plaza you just had to pass by,
the moment you happen to recall the memory of that day, ‘it’ suddenly grows and multiplies.
From one to two, two to four, four to… endlessly.
‘What are they doing now?’
‘Why did they disappear without a word?’
‘Was there some reason?’
A question that starts simply soon splinters into endless delusions.
‘Could they have been a spy for an enemy nation?’
‘No, that can’t be right. A secret agent belonging to the royal family, perhaps?’
‘No. Aren’t they just fooling around with some woman on a southern sea somewhere?’
In her delusions, he becomes a prince, then a con man, then a wandering poet.
The youngest Sword Master on the continent, known as the Knight of Blue Thunder, Iodine Serom, was nurturing such a monster in her heart.
Sitting in her office, flipping through documents, her brow furrowed.
“The serial disappearance case in Rialla City.”
“The forbidden spell of the Henerian Magic Tower.”
“The strange creature of Velos Forest…”
The reports related to evil cults grew more numerous by the day.
*Grind.* She gritted her teeth.
“Damn cultists. I wish they’d just walk around with ‘I’m a cultist’ written on their foreheads.”
Then she could personally chop their heads off.
*Flip-flip-*
A document she was flipping through stopped again at a certain part.
“What’s this now? The Lorraine Institute disaster? This is… the place I was going to visit but couldn’t, right?”
Reading it more closely, her gaze became fixed on another section.
“Hm? One of the key persons of interest vanished without a trace? If they were dead, they should have recovered remnants of the Magic Armor or body parts… but there’s nothing like that? So rather than being dead, they disappeared on their own?”
It was a kind of switch.
The moment the memory of that day happened to surface.
The monsters squatting in her heart raised their heads again.
They trembled, ready to multiply once more.
No, that wasn’t it.
That wasn’t it either.
In truth, her condition had long since passed that stage.
“Hmph! Is this some kind of trend? Suddenly disappearing? Here’s another one just like *him*.”
She scoffed and pretended to be indifferent, flipping another page, but,
when the thing called ‘wondering about his well-being’ has endlessly taken root, stretched out its branches, and sprouted leaves, until it has grown so lush that its original form is unrecognizable…
it finally blooms into a flower called ‘longing.’
*Flip-*
The page turned.
Her eyes slowly read through the information.
Then, upon reaching a certain passage, huge ripples formed in her eyes.
Iodine froze like ice.
Her eyes wide, she couldn’t tear her gaze from the name written on the document.
*CRASH!*
She shot to her feet, knocking her chair over backward.
The secretaries in the office, startled, looked at her and said, “Knight?” but Iodine didn’t react at all.
She just stared at the name of the key person of interest on the document, tracing the name with her finger and muttering.
“Lansen… Vanroah?”
*CLATTER!*
“K-Knight?”
She shoved her desk aside and ran out the door.
Then she slammed the door open again, came back in, grabbed the beloved sword she had left behind, and went out again.
At this sight, the secretaries were left completely dumbfounded.
‘She… left her sword behind for a moment?’
Who was she?
The youngest Sword Master, the Knight of Blue Thunder. The epitome of all knights, perfect in every way, never showing a single flaw.
And she had made such a rookie mistake as to leave without her sword, even if only for a moment?
The secretaries were genuinely shocked.
Because they didn’t know how prone to mistakes the 24-year-old Iodine had been, unlike her 32-year-old self.
Anyway, that wasn’t what was important right now.
“Knight! Knight!”
“Where are you going! Knight! You have to approve my documents before you go!”
The clamor of the secretaries hastily chasing after Iodine was loud.
And…
like that…
many incidents passed.
Another 10,000 years passed.