Chapter 303

"Here, drink this. Ji-hyeok."

"Oh—thanks."

After successfully teleporting us to a remote, abandoned house, Han Su-yeong handed me a cup of warm coffee that she'd somehow prepared in the meantime. I accepted it with a sincere word of thanks. It was tuned exactly to my taste, and before I knew it I was sipping at it, properly enjoying every mouthful.

"…!"

"Yeah, thanks to you too, Rauné."

In the middle of all that, Rauné came toddling over and held out a towel to me with both hands.

The moment I'd cancelled King of Thorns, the water and salt clinging to me had vanished, but I didn't let on—I went along with it, quietly going through the motions of drying my hair with the towel.

"…!"

Rauné nodded once, deeply satisfied, its roots folded across itself like crossed arms.

Then it toddled off, scurrying away on its little stride.

I was watching it go when Han Su-yeong, who'd somewhere along the way made her own cup of coffee, sat down across from me. She glanced at me, then took a sip.

"So what on earth happened back there?"

I looked straight at her and asked.

The potion bottle holding Milited sat on the makeshift table between us.

"…I-I wasn't just hanging around there the whole time, okay?"

Han Su-yeong took my question as a reproach and answered while watching my expression carefully.

"After I escaped to somewhere safe like you told me, um… one of my skills lets me split off part of my soul and use it to scout the area. I was using that to look for you. Then I saw you in the sea, and… Minerva, and this monster I'd never seen before, fighting—I thought it looked dangerous, so…"

[Good god, a spirit body? And she splits off a fragment of her soul and materializes it without any medium? A nothing of a human girl this young pulls off something that absurd?]

Sbeungali muttered in genuine disbelief, again and again.

I was just as taken aback.

A spirit body—it was the first I was hearing that Han Su-yeong could use anything of the sort.

"Anyway, um… thanks to that skill, even while I was knocked out, I could still vaguely see and hear what was going on around me. So I ended up overhearing the conversation you and Milited had, kind of by accident."

"Right."

So that was how she'd known both that the pendant let her travel through time and that she needed a Seven Calamity's core. Han Su-yeong slumped her head forward and apologized in a near-whisper, watching my reaction.

"S-sorry. I was going to tell you sooner, but the situation kept getting awkward…"

"Hm? No, it's fine. I was going to tell you everything anyway. And it's not like you eavesdropped out of malice."

I shrugged.

"And let's be real—it's not like you'd use a skill like that for inappropriate reasons."

"…"

For some reason, Han Su-yeong stared at me wordlessly for a moment, then turned her head aside as if at a loss for words. Then she answered hurriedly, as though making excuses.

"S-still, I did eavesdrop. So I felt like I should apologize properly. And even if you say it's fine, that doesn't change the fact that I did something wrong, you know?"

"Uh… I really do mean it's fine, though."

It was so very her. I nodded, taking it in stride.

Then, as he always did, Sbeungali clicked his tongue and muttered.

[Something smells funny here…]

It was the same kind of pointless remark as ever, so I ignored him and turned back to her.

"…So, are you going to tell me why you said we should go a hundred and fifty years forward?"

At that, Han Su-yeong sipped her coffee in silence.

I didn't press her. I just waited, quiet.

It took several more sips of coffee before she quietly began.

"This is just my own speculation, so don't take it as gospel."

"If it's your speculation, I'm sure it's got something to it. You're sharp."

"H-hey, no! Don't say it like that!"

For some reason her face went a little red, embarrassed, and she scolded me.

While she was at it, she tapped her finger lightly around the potion bottle. A polygonal light bled out from her fingertip and started wrapping around the bottle.

"There. Now nothing inside can hear our conversation. Just in case, though…"

She layered several more spells on top of it—so many that Sbeungali, watching, muttered that it might be overdoing things a bit.

It took quite a while, but eventually she cleared her throat with a couple of ahems and nodded, satisfied.

"Just listen to what I'm about to say, all right? I don't have the full picture either, so if I've gotten anything wrong, please tell me whenever."

She shrugged.

"About Minerva, about you, Ji-hyeok—and about the other one too."

[Mm. So you caught on.]

Sbeungali muttered, sounding unsurprised.

[Well, after all that talking, of course she would.]

He was right.

I'd been guessing along the same lines, so I nodded and settled in to hear her out.

"Records and texts about the Seven Calamities are extremely scarce, but they're not nonexistent. And if you actually go through those records, even with some variation between them, almost every one of the Seven Calamities has documentation that drops off exponentially right around three hundred years ago."

In other words, that's when they were sealed.

I nodded at her words.

She was right. The original work made it clear that most of the Seven Calamities had been sealed away around three hundred years ago.

"And that's where something doesn't add up."

Han Su-yeong took a black pen out of her clothes and began writing on the table.

"Milited was sealed three hundred years ago. And for Milited to summon a body double of someone, it has to consume that person's blood or flesh, and that person can't be among the living."

She wrote 300, 150, and 20? on the table in that order.

"But the Milited we met had summoned Shadow Walker—who was active a hundred and fifty years ago—and Ivan's father, both as body doubles."

"Right."

"Which means a few more assumptions become possible… If even while sealed, someone offered up those people's blood and flesh as a kind of sacrifice, Milited could still meet the conditions to make body doubles."

She was right.

She glanced at me carefully, and when I nodded, she let out a breath of relief.

"In Ivan's father's case… looking at Belluna's situation, it seemed pretty clear he was tied up with Milited and its underlings in all kinds of ways. So I figured—even though it's a cruel thing to say—he could plausibly have been used out of vengeance. But in Shadow Walker's case…"

Han Su-yeong glanced at me, gauging.

"…there are a lot of things that don't quite add up."

"…What do you mean?"

"For starters—I don't know how much of this you already know, but… for us, Shadow Walker has basically always been treated like a tall tale. He shows up in old stories and fairy tales, but real sightings and reliable records are rare. Um… honestly, there's even a theory that the whole Shadow Walker thing was something gossipmongers of that era made up."

"Yeah."

"And if it had ended there, I would've just let it go, figuring he was a real person after all. To be honest, since Milited already has the body double of someone like the World Tree's first priestess, there's nothing particularly strange about it. But…"

Han Su-yeong steadied her breath several times and asked me carefully:

"…She's your sister, right? Shadow Walker."

"…"

I nodded without a word.

Han Su-yeong looked at me with sorrowful eyes and carefully reached out to take my hand.

Then, in small comforting motions, she began patting the back of my hand.

…What surprised me wasn't her gesture itself—it was that it didn't feel intrusive or annoying. Honestly, astonishingly, it was a comfort.

We stayed like that, hands resting on each other's, for a long while.

"Um, can I keep going…?"

"Yeah, please."

"Uh, well… so, your sister—"

"Ji-na. Yu Ji-na."

"Ah, yes. So Ji-na also came over from a different world, like you did, right?"

"Right."

"So that's what makes it strange."

Han Su-yeong looked at me intently.

"Your sister—Ji-na—would have known a fair bit about this world, just like you did, right? In which case, she'd have known about the Seven Calamities too, just as you do. And a hundred and fifty years ago is a period when the Seven Calamities' power was supposed to be in decline… and on top of that, just from what we saw, it was obvious she was an incredibly powerful fighter."

So how on earth did Milited get its hands on the body double of someone like that?

"It made me wonder if Ji-na was leaving you a message of some kind."

Her words hit me like a hammer to the head.

I sat there blank-faced for a long stretch, then called Sbeungali in my mind.

'Sbeungali.'

[Mm.]

'Milited's children—do you happen to know when their power base completely collapsed?'

[I don't know the details either, but… after Milited vanished, they apparently held things together somehow for nearly a hundred years. Then, about a hundred years after Milited's disappearance—around two hundred years before our own time—their power was all but annihilated, from what I've heard. Nearly half of Milited's children we met as body doubles were killed off, so effectively the whole faction collapsed.]

"…I see."

As I sat there nodding numbly, Han Su-yeong added one last thing.

"And then there's the fact that Milited knew you were from another world. …How would it have known that?"

"…"

Why hadn't this occurred to me?

Han Su-yeong was right.

No matter how I turned it over, I couldn't come up with any reason Ji-na would have lost part of her body to Milited. She wouldn't have had any chance of running into Milited itself; the timeline didn't fit. The only path open to her was to come face-to-face with what was left of Milited's children—already a shell of what they'd been—and lose part of her body to them then.

But the Ji-na body double we'd fought, even in a weakened state, had shown overwhelming skill.

If she'd also possessed every last one of Shadow Walker's legacies on top of that, she would have been even stronger.

It was hard to imagine someone with that level of strength being beaten by, or losing part of her body to, the few remaining children of Milited.

Which meant—surely…

Could Su-yeong really be…

"…"

There was one more thing that snagged at me.

Ji-na had loved Clouds on the Horizon just as much as I had.

She'd always picked Jin Ye-seul to play as, and sometimes she'd launch into a full speech to me about everything that made her appealing.

And the biggest difference between her and me was that Ji-na, unlike me, had played a fair amount of the Clouds on the Horizon sequel—the game where Milited's children appeared as the main antagonist faction.

Which meant she would have known the children of Milited in considerably more detail than I did, and she would almost certainly have set out to crush them on her own terms.

No—I was sure of it.

That was just the kind of person she was.

"…"

I quietly lifted the pendant.

Come to think of it, the pendant itself was also an item that played an important role in the Clouds on the Horizon sequel. So there was no ruling out that Ji-na had known about it too.

Could it really be…

Could she actually have been trying to leave a message for me?

If that was true…

After a moment of thought, I nodded and looked at Han Su-yeong.

"Su-yeong, drop the seal you put around Milited."

"Okay."

She lifted the barrier without question.

I picked up the potion bottle holding the piece of Milited and pulled the lid off.

"Hey."

"…"

"I know you can hear me, so don't bother playing dumb."

A moment later, the liquid inside the bottle sloshed.

"For the sake of our trust—and for my own honor," it said in a self-assured voice. "I wasn't going silent on purpose."

"Right. And that trust—you were the one who broke it first. You admit that?"

"That's…"

"Oh, looks like we've got an excuse all ready. Su-yeong, our filthy little snitch wants to say something."

At my words, Han Su-yeong immediately fixed Milited with a look of utter contempt.

It made even me flinch for a second.

"Disgusting. Even goblins know to repay a debt, but these so-called Seven Calamities don't."

"…"

It said nothing.

The surface of the liquid merely bubbled, quiet and roiling.

It wasn't showing it, but right now it was furious.

[He puts a lot of stock in face. Best to push on that.]

I gave a small nod at Sbeungali's advice.

"Would you trust someone who sells out his business partner? Well? And before you say anything—you're the one who broke the trust first, so don't even try."

"Th-that wasn't… that wasn't what I intended."

"And so? In the end, I got chased down by Minerva. Not just me—Su-yeong too. Because of you."

I didn't give it room to start making excuses.

"Now that things have gotten this far, I really don't care whether you swear on every last name you've got… let's call our deal off. Any objections?"

"W-wait! Isn't that a bit too impulsive a decision…? Y-yes, of course, I'm in the wrong. But even so, the agreement between us can't simply be tossed aside that easily—"

"Like I said—you're the one who tossed it aside first."

To begin with, I held the pendant, which meant Milited was the one in the worse position—it should've been the one bending over backward for me. On top of that, having gone so far as to sell me out to Minerva, it didn't have a leg to stand on.

"That said…"

I figured this was about the right point and quietly broached it.

"If you really want to repair our trust, there is one way."

"…And that is?"

I lifted the pendant without a word.

"We were going to send me back three hundred years, and then I'd hand this over."

"…That's right."

"Before we do that, let's make one more stop."

A hundred and fifty years ahead.