Chapter 308

When I made my way back from the empty plaza, Leto was waiting exactly where he'd seen me off.

"Sir."

The moment the half-ogre laid eyes on me, he ducked his head in a bow.

Watching him, something occurred to me, and I asked carefully:

"This might be rude, but do you mind if I ask how old you are?"

"Sir? Ah, yes. Not rude at all."

The man, whose frame stood close to three meters tall, broke into a grin.

"I turn thirteen this year."

"Kkh—"

I choked on my own breath and ended up coughing in spite of myself. Leto just grinned, like this was something he'd seen plenty of times before.

"I shoot up pretty fast, sir. It's the ogre blood in me."

"Ah, sorry. I didn't mean it like that."

"I know, sir. There's no way someone from my master's family would ever mean it that way."

Leto nodded as he said it.

"My master talked about you so much... so much that I recognized you the moment I saw you, sir. And I know the man my master described would never look down on me for that."

His expression said he genuinely meant it.

Then he gave a deliberate little cough and fixed me with a more serious look.

"...So, as my master instructed, I'll hand over the items she asked me to entrust to you, sir."

With that, Leto began unfastening his tightly-buckled clothing.

His outfit, which looked more like armor than anything, unwound layer by layer, and as the layers came loose and what lay underneath was exposed, all I could do was sigh.

"I'm dim-witted," Leto muttered flatly.

"Slow, too. I was always causing trouble and getting into scrapes. When my master sent me out to do the shopping, I'd forget what I was supposed to buy, or the money and the goods would get stolen off me."

Buried into his chest and stomach were layers and layers of iron plates.

An ogre's regeneration was famous enough that even with its head torn off, the body and the head could keep on living separately. The strength carried in their blood, even diluted, didn't fade away easily.

Without hesitating, Leto began to pull the iron plates—smeared with his blood and bits of his own flesh—out of himself.

His wounds, no matter how I looked at them, didn't appear to be anything older than freshly inflicted.

His body had been regenerating endlessly, only to be crushed against those iron plates again.

For years.

"But these two, those couldn't be like that. My master—she came to me for the first time and asked me to deliver these even if it cost me my life. And dim-witted Leto couldn't think of any way to do it but this one."

Once he'd pulled out every last plate, what was revealed underneath was—a mold, almost. Like a casting form.

A casting form. I'd never imagined I'd ever describe a person's body that way.

Carved into his torso, like fitted cases for storage, were two hollows.

Two items had been slotted into those hollows, kept there in the most literal sense.

"Holy—"

I cursed under my breath without thinking, and Leto's face crumpled.

"Ah—s-sir, my master didn't order me to do it this way. She only asked me to keep them safe and hand them to you... I just did this on my own. So please, don't think badly of her over it."

Even now, he was afraid I might say something against Ji-na.

He pulled the two items from their hollows and held them out to me in both hands.

The head of a harpoon.

A chisel of some kind.

"These are what can pierce Venus's and Juno's hearts. They're the possibility my comrades, who stood by my master's side along with me, risked their lives to protect."

Leto knelt and bowed his head as he murmured:

"Please..."

"......"

What could I have said to him?

Without a word, I picked up the harpoon piece and the chisel from his enormous palms.

"The harpoon piece is for Venus, sir, and the chisel is for Juno."

"Got it."

I carefully tucked them into the shadow.

Then I took hold of him, still on his knees, and lifted him to his feet. I felt like I had to say something.

"Look—Ji-na left a letter for me back there."

"Ah, yes, sir. I know. She was writing something for you, very hard."

"She wrote about you in it, too."

He went still, and I gave him a small smile.

"She said to tell you she was really, really grateful, and really, really sorry. Asked me to make sure you heard that."

"My master..."

Leto let out a quiet sigh.

His lips moved in a small, uncertain way, like he hadn't even decided yet what he wanted to say.

While he sorted through his thoughts, I waited for him in silence.

"...About a hundred and fifty years from now..."

Eventually, he spoke carefully.

"I'll be able to serve you, sir."

"Serve me—"

"You are my master's only blood, and my master told me to help you. You absolutely have the right to my obedience and my service, sir."

Leto bowed to me once more.

"There's nothing else I have left to pass on to you, sir. And I know full well that your body can't remain in this world for long. ...I'll be waiting—happily—for the day we meet again."

"...You're seriously planning to stay here and just keep waiting?"

The half-ogre, who would be alone in this place for the next hundred and fifty years and more, grinned at my question.

"Someone has to stay and watch over what my master left behind. It's a huge place, sir—just cleaning and maintaining it will eat up a few years easily."

"All right."

I just nodded at that.

His decision wasn't something I had any right to comment on.

"See you in a hundred and fifty years, then."

"Yes, sir. A hundred and fifty years."

With that he excused himself and turned, heading off toward where Ji-na's crystal had been.

He'd probably hold his own kind of ceremony in there—his own goodbye.

And then he'd spend the next century and a half guarding this place alone, and right after that he'd be defeated by Jin Ye-seul when she came down here on her own—handing over the information about Shadow Walker's legacies and the 'Flowing Snake' to her, like loot stripped off him.

I couldn't bring myself to say anything more to him.

[So what now?]

"Find Su-yeong first."

I started back the way I'd come, leaving Leto behind, and answered as I walked.

"She's probably with the Milited bastard. We need that thing to get the two of us back three hundred years—well, a hundred and fifty years forward —so I've got to find both of them anyway."

[Hmm. True enough... in this era, all of the Seven Calamities are sealed, after all.]

[Wasn't Margo loose, though?]

Minerva snorted at Sbeungali's question.

[The only trick that vermin ever had was shaking like a leaf and running for his life. He was so good at hiding that even I had trouble pinning him down. Once that one set his mind to hiding, who do you think would actually find him?]

[Fair... that's true, I suppose.]

"......"

I didn't say anything in response, but I felt the same way.

Honestly, if Margo hadn't suddenly come at me, I'd probably still be out there chasing after it.

"More than anything, I'm uneasy about leaving her alone with something like that. Su-yeong seems pretty no-nonsense, but underneath she's got this soft, sort of naive side... I'm not saying I don't trust her, I just worry."

[......]

[......]

...For some reason, neither of them said a word to that.

What?

[Well... yes. Suppose so.]

That was all Sbeungali muttered.

I was about to ask him what exactly he meant by that when a heavy thud rolled through the air.

[Wh—what was that?!]

Sbeungali jolted, but Minerva and I didn't.

We'd both already recognized that the sound just now was the kind of thing that happens when something gets hit hard, and the sound carries through an enclosed space.

Instead of answering Sbeungali, I picked up my pace.

The source of the sound was at the outer edge of this tomb, the part closest to the surface—where I'd first met Leto.

"...Huh?"

There, Han Su-yeong was punching the wall.

She'd settled into a stance like a pitcher winding up to throw, and she was driving her fist into the wall over and over, putting everything she had behind it.

She looked exactly like someone working out their frustration.

"Aaargh!"

In the middle of it, she let out a snarl, loud enough to echo.

"Where—the hell—am I now!"

...So she really was just venting.

For a moment, in the face of something I hadn't seen coming at all, I forgot to call out to her.

"Who's there!"

She whipped her head around with a furious yell and glared straight at me.

When her eyes locked onto mine, I finally understood why Choi Hyun-woo used to complain that I "had no idea how scary Su-yeong gets when she's angry."

The outer corners of her eyes were drawn up into a fierce, savage angle, and her irises were half-stained red, like the vessels had popped. The smeared streaks of a hastily wiped nosebleed were still on her face, making her look like she'd just come out of a fight that had almost killed her.

The moment she registered it was me, Han Su-yeong was so startled she literally jumped where she stood.

"J-Ji-hyeok?!"

She was so flustered her words came out in a jumble, and she hastily yanked her fist behind her back. Then her eyes landed on the wall, cracked and broken to pieces in several spots, and she shouted at me in a desperate tone:

"Th-there was a bug!"

She broke off mid-sentence and shook her head frantically.

Then she lifted the potion bottle holding Milited and said:

"Milited! Yeah, Milited tried to escape! I was trying to catch it and that's how it happened!"

...All I could really do was nod and pretend to accept what she was saying.

Reacting to that nod, Han Su-yeong made a strange little noise, then dropped to a crouch and clutched her head in her hands.

"Anyway—I'm really glad you're safe too, Su-yeong."

"Mm-hm..."

After explaining the situation to Leto, who had come running at the sudden noise, the two of us moved somewhere more suitable and sat down across from each other. The point was to talk through what had happened on each side and share what we knew.

I started with everything related to Ji-na and slowly worked my way through the whole story.

How I'd come back a hundred and fifty years to meet my little sister, only to find I was already too late.

How she'd been struck down by Juno, one of the Seven Calamities, and sealed inside a crystal—and how, for now, I'd at least managed to recover the crystal she was sealed in.

How I'd obtained the items that could be called Venus's and Juno's weaknesses.

And finally, how, when we made it back to our original time, Ji-na's companions would be waiting to help us.

After hearing all of it, Han Su-yeong asked me quietly:

"...You okay?"

...Her words, just like the last time, sounded like nothing in particular and somehow still managed to shake me to the core. Words caught in my throat in spite of myself, and I just barely managed to answer Han Su-yeong, who was looking at me with concern.

"I'll have to bear it."

...I knew, with absolute certainty, that since there was no choice but to bear it, in the end I'd bear it.

There was still a chance to bring Ji-na back. More than that—if I broke down and fell apart here, I'd never be able to face the little sister who had chosen what amounted to dying for my sake.

"So, um. I've been thinking about something."

"Yeah."

"There's the option of just going back to our own time as is... but honestly, I think going back another three hundred years from there might not be a bad idea."

Han Su-yeong's brow furrowed slightly, and she asked:

"...Are you planning to weaken Venus and Juno and seal them away?"

I nodded.

"That's the idea. On top of that, in that era we're technically allied with Milited on the surface, so we could probably get some help out of that. Better than nothing, anyway. And on top of all that... well, Minerva told me she'd met me and spent some time with me, back in that era."

Even with the items that could serve as their weaknesses in hand, Venus and Juno.

Taking those two on alone was practically suicide.

Going at them one at a time might be one thing, but the relationship between those two was tangled, and no one could predict how they'd react. For all I knew, Ahriman could pull something mid-fight, or whichever one wasn't being attacked might feel threatened and jump in halfway through.

But if I could get help from the Minerva of that era...

And if I could manage to weaken them and seal them away, things going forward would become a whole lot easier.

"Yeah, that's true..."

Han Su-yeong nodded along.

I added, with a shrug-it-off kind of tone:

"More than anything, Milited's never going to accept us heading back. We haven't sworn the oath with that thing yet, so the second it thinks we might walk off with the pendant, it's going to foam at the mouth trying to stop us."

"......"

For some reason, at that, Han Su-yeong went quiet.

Then, as if she'd made up her mind, she pulled out the potion bottle and set it down on the table.

"That's not going to happen."

"Hm?"

"The Milited that's in here is basically already dead."

She slid the bottle toward me, as if telling me to see for myself.

"And the memories from this time aren't going to be synchronized, so we don't have to worry about anything leaking back to it. More importantly—you had to absorb Milited's remnant anyway, didn't you? So this works out perfectly."

"...Su-yeong."

I asked her quietly.

"What happened?"

She answered:

"Ahriman."

The word came out so softly that my breath caught for a second.

"I met that thing."

With that, Han Su-yeong just looked at me, steady and unblinking.

And—

"There's something I want to talk to you about, Ji-hyeok."