Chapter 334: The Tin Knight and the Revived Myth – Opium & Dracaena (6)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 334: The Tin Knight and the Revived Myth – Opium & Dracaena (6)
So, some of the bloodline survived, the Witch of the East thought indifferently.
Then again, it wasn't all that surprising.
The Witch of the East had thoroughly obliterated the area around the royal castle, where the powerful had gathered. If a royal had been far from the castle when she unleashed her curse, it was plausible that their descendants could have survived.
What should I do? the Witch of the East wondered.
The witch's fury had caused a bloodbath, but it had since weathered with the passage of time. Her duty had been fulfilled the moment she carried out the final request of her teacher, the Queen of Ashes. There was nothing left for her to do.
Perhaps I should just kill her, the Witch of the East thought. There was no particular reason to kill the descendant of a fallen royal family now, but then again, there was no reason not to. It was less an act of anger or hatred and more a sense of duty born from sheer momentum.
But.
Just as she was about to act, the Witch of the East found herself hesitating.
Black hair, blue eyes, a sharp glint in her gaze.
The girl’s appearance was an eerie echo of her great teacher, the Queen of Ashes—the one who occupied the few vibrant memories in the witch’s otherwise faded life.
The resemblance was so striking it gave her chills.
That was why the Witch of the East hesitated, and in the next moment, she felt a sense of absurdity at her own reaction.
If the world were divided into good and evil, the witch was unequivocally evil. The kind you’d prefix with the word ‘Great.’
The Witch of the East had never once regretted overthrowing the kingdom, but she didn't consider her actions just or righteous, either.
The kingdom’s leaders and their collaborators had been undeniable scum, but among the casualties, there must have been those who didn’t even realize their actions were wrong.
There must have been those who, deceived by the royal family’s propaganda, had cursed, scorned, and dismissed the knight without ever knowing the truth.
Even among those who had sinned, there must have been some whose crimes did not warrant death.
But instead of investigating each person and judging their sins, the Witch of the East had chosen to simply wipe them all away. If she hadn't, some of the guilty would have surely slipped through her fingers like eels.
The moment she killed even one potentially innocent person to punish nine guilty ones, her actions ceased to be righteous vengeance. They were nothing more than a rampage, a lashing out in fury.
And now that same witch, that same murderer and villain, was hesitating merely because her target’s face and aura resembled her teacher’s. If the souls of those she had slain could see her now, they would either seethe with rage, veins bulging in their necks, or break into open mockery.
She had to kill her. It was the right thing to do.
But for some reason, no matter how many times she repeated the thought, no killing intent stirred in her heart.
If she found it distasteful to do the deed herself, she could have just left the girl to her fate. But looking at the pathetic state she was in, knowing she wouldn’t last a week, that option didn’t sit right with her either.
In the end, the witch took the girl in and made her an apprentice.
However, this was far from an act of one-sided charity or benevolence.
This was a witch who had watched a knight offer unrewarded loyalty and devotion for hundreds of years, only to see how the world responded. Her disgust for such selflessness was practically etched into her very being.
And so, the witch worked her young apprentice to the bone.
Under the guise of running errands, she forced the girl to procure all sorts of items, no matter the difficulty.
In truth, the items she was sent to fetch held no particular value for the witch.
Anything the witch herself would have found ‘bothersome’ to acquire would have been impossible for the young apprentice to get her hands on.
Conversely, anything the apprentice could manage to obtain was of little meaning to the witch.
It was simple harassment. An unreasonable demand born from her refusal to allow anyone to receive something for nothing.
But.
Even so, the young apprentice never gave up.
She complained, she grumbled, she ground her teeth in frustration, yet she never abandoned the tasks her master set for her, completing them with dogged tenacity.
It was a truly foolish course of action.
When she’d had no power of her own, one could argue she had no other choice, but by now, the apprentice had learned a great deal under the witch.
The witch constantly gave her apprentice stingy evaluations, saying things like, “You’re still just a novice,” or “You have a long way to go before you can pull your own weight,” but those were the standards of a witch who had lived through an age of war.
A mage from an era where the concept of ‘daily life’ was nonexistent, who spent day after day on the front lines, burying comrades she had laughed with only the day before, an era where ‘desperate’ was synonymous with ‘ordinary’—of course her standards would be different from those of the modern age.
By the world’s standards, not the Witch of the East’s, the apprentice was already a remarkably skilled mage.
And yet, she stubbornly held on, waiting for the witch to grant her a certificate of graduation. How could one not call that foolish?
Then one day, the mad prince who had once challenged the Witch of the East to a duel became king and requested her aid.
She would have flatly ignored any other king’s request, but her connection to that mad prince had been rather amusing.
More importantly, the news that the sacred treasures scattered by the heavens were to be gathered again was a matter of no small concern to the witch.
While she didn’t despise the heavens as much as the underground, with whom she had crossed swords, their constant probing and sly opportunism had never sat well with her.
When the witch promised to grant her graduation certificate if she completed this one task, the young apprentice took the bait with amusing ease.
And not long after beginning her journey, she immediately found her life in peril.
The Witch of the East, watching through her familiar, was dumbfounded.
She wouldn’t have said a word if her apprentice had been cornered due to a lack of skill, but to see her, a mage who could easily annihilate her opponents if she so chose, fumbling about because she was worried about what he might think… it was utterly absurd.
The witch didn’t bother to interfere.
She had no intention of becoming a guardian who cleaned up her apprentice’s messes.
Besides, she had faith that if the girl were truly pushed into a corner, she would find a way to handle it.
However, when her fleeing apprentice headed for the old knight’s grave, she couldn’t help but feel a strange sense of fate.
Of course, it couldn’t mean much.
When he was abandoned in that storeroom, the knight’s soul had already been in tatters.
Hundreds of years had passed since then; there was no way he could still remain in the mortal world.
If anything was left, it would be nothing more than an empty shell.
So when the knight appeared once more, the witch was, to her own surprise, utterly astonished.
He was worn and shabby after the passage of so much time.
The brilliant radiance that had once drawn the admiration and hope of all was gone.
And yet, the sight of him clutching his sword, shielding her apprentice behind him, was exactly as she remembered.
For a moment, she regretted not having forced the knight to pass on, even if it meant going against his will. But then, watching the knight’s bizarre behavior, she grew suspicious.
At first, she dismissed it as abnormal behavior caused by the degradation of his soul, but that wasn’t it. The body was the same, but its contents were someone else entirely.
The witch realized.
Just as the Queen of Ashes had entrusted her with what came after.
Just as she herself had taken on a new apprentice.
The knight, too, had entrusted his legacy to another.
At this realization, the witch couldn’t suppress the emotion that surged in her chest.
That honest, steadfast, incomparably foolish idiot, who had tried to bear everything on his own, had finally passed his burden on to someone else.
And to a cheerful, foolish rogue who lived so selfishly, so whimsically, no less.
How could she not laugh?
How could she not weep?
Far beyond the witch’s sight.
The unknowing apprentice and knight.
No, Dorothea and the ‘Tin Knight’ walked onward.
And so—
*
“—Hmm. I suppose this is as far as it goes.”
The story ended abruptly.
The succubus, Opium, whose body was fading in and out like smoke, wore an expression that was a mixture of wistfulness and satisfaction.
“I would have liked to continue until the part where you find ‘me,’ but oh well. You can just imagine the rest. You’ve seen all the important parts of ‘his’ story, after all.”
Before the succubus stood Dorothea, her arms crossed in silence, and beside her, the Tin Knight, tilting his head.
Opium looked at them and asked.
“So, what did you think?”
Dorothea replied nonchalantly, “…What did I think? You want me to share my thoughts on it?”
“Yes, exactly. It’s a surface world custom, isn’t it? Watching plays, reading books, and then sharing your impressions with others who experienced the same thing. It’s a luxury we can’t easily afford in the barren underground. I went to all this trouble to show you, even as my body fades away. You can at least do that much for me, can’t you?”
As she spoke, Opium waved her right arm, the hand of which had already disappeared. In that utterly innocent gesture, there was none of the imposing dignity one would expect from one of the eight generals.
But Dorothea knew. In this dream world, Opium could have shattered her mind over and over again if she had wished. The fact that she hadn’t was a testament to her whimsy, and to a pride that refused to be used so meekly by the heavens.
“It was… a story. I just took it for what it was. I was a bit surprised when my master’s perspective showed up in the middle, though.”
“Hahaha, she’s the link that ties you, the Queen, and ‘him’ together. She was essential for the complete story. Of course, since she wasn’t bound to us by a direct contract, trying to manifest her perspective drained my power rather quickly. That was a flaw. But is that all you have to say? The secret of your birth was revealed, wasn’t it? You even learned what your master was feeling when she took you in.”
“The Queen is the Queen, and I am me. Besides, their lives weren’t so cheap that I can stand here and pass judgment on them.”
“So rigid,” Opium chuckled. “Then what about you?”
[The ‘Tin Knight’ vows that next time, to avoid such an unsatisfying result, he’ll start by smashing those sly bastards!]
[The ‘Tin Knight’ says that if enemies from the rear are a problem, then he should just attack in all directions!]
[The ‘Tin Knight’ insists that if you just beat everyone up first, no one will see you as a pushover!]
“Uh… is that… the right answer? I don’t think it is.”
It was a response so primal it made even the great Opium tilt her head in confusion, an answer that seemed to come from the spinal cord rather than the brain.
Beside him, Dorothea sighed as if to say, Of course, that’s what you’d say.
Opium blinked for a moment, then, finding the situation hilarious, clutched her stomach and cackled. All the while, more than half of her body had already vanished. The mysterious black space was also beginning to crumble away at the edges.
Just before she vanished completely, Opium asked them one last question.
“—The Queen and the Knight were victorious. So, were they happy?”
Dorothea and the Tin Knight answered without a moment’s hesitation.
“I don’t know whether they were satisfied with the outcome,” Dorothea said.
[The ‘Tin Knight’ insists that he didn’t like it, so they were unhappy!]
Opium’s eyes lit up.
“Then don’t you two end up like that. A story where even the victor can’t grasp happiness is one that even the loser has to refuse.”
—It’s a promise, you hear?
With those words, the last of the eight generals dissolved completely into smoke.
Dragon Dracaena VS Tin Knight
Succubus Opium VS Dorothea Aschengard
─Winner: Tin Knight & Dorothea Aschengard