Chapter 341

"J- Ji-hyeok! Ji-hyeok…!"

Ye-seul scrambled to try to get up, but anyone could see how frail her body had become.

…Jin Ye-jeong saying she spent most of every day just lying there like someone dead had been exactly literal — not a scrap of exaggeration.

"Ah…!"

As she tried to push herself up, the strength gave out in her arms, and she went right off the edge of the bed.

If I hadn't thrown myself to catch her, she really might have hurt herself badly.

"Ye-seul, you okay?"

"Ji-hyeok… Ji-hyeok? Is it really Ji-hyeok? Hm?"

Sprawled on top of me, she flailed her hands around, prodding at my face and patting at me all over.

Her eyes were shaking in fine, almost unbelievable tremors, and they weren't even properly focused.

The way she stared at me blankly, it was as if she'd registered that my face wasn't unfamiliar and was straining to place who I'd been — an enemy, an ally?

For her, this moment was neither real nor a dream.

It was simply now.

[…She's got a dagger tucked in her clothes, you know. If this goes wrong, isn't it going to end up buried in your throat?]

"I don't care."

Sbeungali — who for some reason had always found her unsettling — muttered like he really wasn't happy about it, but I just wrapped my arms around her.

She flinched in surprise and squirmed as if to pull away, but I only tightened my arms around her.

"Ah, ngh…!"

She kept struggling to get out of my hold, oddly resistant.

Probably because she couldn't believe this was actually happening.

Then, as she thrashed, our eyes met — and those beautiful, amethyst eyes that had been shaking without pause slowly steadied.

The focus came back into them.

"Ah."

She stopped moving and buried her head against me.

Only then did she start to tremble, a fine shudder building through her, and she let all the strength go out of her body and gave herself over completely into my arms.

The dagger — the one that would have carved into my throat without a moment's hesitation if she'd believed for a second I was fake, or an illusion — slipped from her hand and hit the floor with a loud metallic clatter.

"It's really you…."

She started sniffling.

The sniffles quickly turned into open sobbing.

"It's really Ji-hyeok…."

After that, she just kept muttering things I couldn't make out, almost as if she were wailing.

All I could do was stroke and pat her back, trying to soothe her.

"Nngh… hic…."

Only after she'd cried for a long while did she seem to settle enough, and quietly began steadying her breathing.

Figuring this was the moment, I pulled out the fine roots Rauné had separately handed me.

"Ye-seul, eat this."

She didn't even ask what it was.

Like a chick taking food from its mother, she opened her mouth without hesitation, and I carefully slipped it inside.

"Chew, then swallow."

"Mm, mhm… bleh, so bitter… hm."

Between intermittent sniffles and small gasps, she chewed on Rauné's roots obediently, doing exactly as I'd told her.

Mandragora roots didn't get their reputation for reviving the dead for nothing, apparently — her strength came back so fast that even I could feel it happening.

"…How've you been?"

"……"

When I smiled slightly and asked her, now that she'd gotten some of her strength back, Jin Ye-seul just kept staring down at me in a daze for a long while before finally murmuring:

"…I want to kill you and die too, Ji-hyeok."

"What?"

"Then it won't happen again, will it."

She was looking down at me with unfocused eyes.

"…So let's go together."

And with that, she threw herself at me while I was still reeling.

"…And that's how it went down."

In the end, I'd had to run through a rough summary of what had happened just to calm her down.

Originally I'd been thinking I'd tell the story to the others together too….

By now Su-yeong's probably already filled Yu-na and Ivan in.

Sitting glued to my side, gripping one of my hands and kneading at it, Ye-seul muttered in an ominous voice:

"…So while me and the others were going through hell for a whole month, you were off having a grand old time with that Han Su-yeong girl."

I'd told her about the brutal battles with four whole Seven Calamities — Milited, Minerva, and even Venus and Juno — but the only part that seemed to have stuck in her head was that.

"So — we going to find that Choi Hyun-woo now?"

"No. There's somewhere I have to go before that."

"Hmm…."

Even when I'd told her about Hyun-woo, she hadn't looked all that surprised.

Just as I was thinking Jin Ye-jeong must have already filled her in separately, she nodded to herself and muttered:

"I always figured he'd end up like that someday. The ones who look perfectly fine and flawless on the outside — once they crack, they crack all the way."

She said it and let out a small sigh.

"You weren't there, so you don't know, right? You and her got swept up in that weird light and vanished, and Choi Hyun-woo lost it completely, and those fragments and copies that Seven Calamity — Milited, or whatever it was — left behind…!"

Halfway through, Jin Ye-seul froze in place, then rolled her eyes over to look at me.

Wondering what on earth was going on now, I met her gaze, and her lower lip started trembling — I could see plainly how tense she'd gone.

"U- um… could I ask just one thing?"

Out of nowhere, she was speaking to me in formal, deferential language.

"S- so, back then I was too rushed to think about it and let it go… but that time, there was a copy of Shadow Walker there too, wasn't there…?"

"…There was."

"And you — you definitely called Shadow Walker… Ji-na… and I mean, what does that even…"

"……"

"And… and, the copy of Shadow Walker — she definitely called you oppa…."

She trailed the words off, looking at me as if to check.

When I gave her a slow nod, she squeezed both eyes shut, hard.

"I- I'm so sorryyy…!"

Right after, she quickly pushed herself up and dropped flat before me in a deep formal bow, forehead to the floor.

"That you weren't a descendant of Shadow Walker but her actual family…! I- I truly had no idea! And not knowing, I dared to…!"

Pressed flat against the floor, she was shaking even harder than before.

Watching her, everything from the first time I'd met her to every conflict we'd had since flashed through my mind like a passing reel.

…Come to think of it, there probably wasn't anyone as tangled up with me as Ye-seul was.

"There's not a single reason for you to apologize to me, Ye-seul, so come on — get up."

I tried to pull her up off the floor, but though she'd been barely alive only a moment ago, from somewhere she'd found the strength not to budge an inch.

"I couldn't possibly…."

"When you look at the whole picture, even I didn't know back then, all right? You didn't do anything wrong, Ye-seul. So come on…."

"E- even so, in the end, I dared to raise my hand against — the young mast — no. Aah…!"

At a loss for what to do, Ye-seul kept her head bowed and stamped her feet in agitation, then quickly used the shadows to pull something out and set it down in front of me.

The Shadow Walker's legacies.

"E- even that I dared to lay hands on these…! I'll return them right now…!"

"No, Ye-seul —"

She was even sniffling, bowing her head over and over.

"And as for the crimes I've committed, though it's hardly enough, I'll pay for them with my life —"

"Haah."

A deep sigh came out of me before I could help it.

I really hadn't seen this kind of back-and-forth coming, I was thinking, when the words Jin Ye-jeong had quietly whispered to me a moment before came back.

As if he'd read straight through my dithering — do I really have to say something like that — Sbeungali murmured off to the side:

[Was there any relationship left that could get more tangled than this one already is? What's there left to hesitate over at this point?]

…He wasn't wrong, honestly.

I made up my mind to steel myself.

The way I had the first time I'd met Ye-seul.

"Hey."

When I called her in a low voice, Jin Ye-seul flinched and her body jerked.

"Jin Ye-seul."

"……"

"Answer me."

"Y- yes. Please, go ahead…."

"Look me in the eye when you answer."

At that, she hesitated, then carefully lifted her head.

Jin Ye-jeong's voice was still lingering in my ear.

— Ye-seul had tried to take her own life.

— I couldn't stop her by force, so I had to make her stop wanting to. While we were searching for a way, Lady Lee Ye-eun offered us help I hadn't seen coming at all.

— This is what she said to Ye-seul.

— Yu Ji-hyeok hasn't said a word — who gave you permission to die?

— Didn't you say yourself, plainly, that you belonged to Ji-hyeok? Didn't you swear you'd be his sword, his dagger? So who gave you permission to end your life without an order from your master?

— At the very least, if you want to die, get his permission first, and then die….

— So — this is why I'm bringing it up — perhaps… if you, Mr. Yu Ji-hyeok, treated her with a heavy hand, she might just fall in line with it, mightn't she….

When I'd heard it, I couldn't believe it, and Sbeungali and Minerva had each dropped exactly one line.

[What a piece of work.]

[Mm — this Minerva understands.]

At first I hadn't been sure either way, but seeing Ye-seul like this now, there was every possibility… it might actually work.

"Who exactly gave you permission to die, and who gave you permission to hand those legacies back?"

"I — I mean…."

"I told you it was fine. You trust me that little?"

"……"

I fixed her with a look and pressed her again.

"Answer."

"Yes… a- ah, no! No!"

"Drop the formal speech. Didn't you promise me last time you wouldn't do that?"

"Ah, that… a- all right. I mean — got it…."

Jin Ye-seul nodded quickly, plainly afraid I might get annoyed again.

Her eyes had met mine, and now she tried to slide her gaze away — but I didn't let her.

Holding her flustered gaze, I spoke quietly.

"Now get ready — and quick. We really don't have much time."

"Huh? Wait — what? Get ready for what…?"

"You asked me, Ye-seul. Whether we were going to look for Hyun-woo. And I said there was somewhere I had to stop by first."

"Mm."

"We're going to the Shadow Walker's tomb — where you got the very first of the legacies."

"Huh…?"

At that, she blinked up at me with a blank expression.

"There are people there waiting for me."

I took hold of her, still slumped where she was, and slowly pulled her to her feet as I spoke.

"And people waiting for you, too, Ye-seul."

Han Su-yeong, Choi Hyun-woo, Lee Ye-eun, Jin Ye-seul, Lee Yu-na, Ivan Hunt.

Plus Ahn Do-hoon and Kath Ryle.

These eight, in the original story, each go through what's called an awakening — an event where they come to grasp their own abilities and power.

Lee Ye-eun goes through her final trial at the hands of the World Tree; Ivan Hunt forms a contract with a spirit king — that kind of thing.

And in Jin Ye-seul's case, only after gathering all of the legacies and passing a final test to be recognized as the Shadow Walker does she finally awaken.

Which was why, honestly, it had always nagged at me.

Because the awakening triggers in the original and the ones I'd seen in this world were similar in some ways and different in others, in subtle but real ways.

At first I'd let it go, chalking it up to the fact that I was a variable in the mix, and that the original was, after all, just the original — plainly not the same as this world.

Or rather, at this point, none of that really mattered one way or the other.

If there was one thing I could say for certain, it was that Jin Ye-seul and I had to go to the Shadow Walker's tomb together.

We headed straight to the Shadow Walker's tomb — the place where Jin Ye-seul had gotten her very first legacy, the 'Flowing Serpent.'

It was also where Su-yeong and I had met the half-ogre Reto, found Ji-na sealed inside Juno's crystal body, and received the items that were the weaknesses of Venus and Juno.

"Here it is."

Finding the hidden tomb without any trouble, Jin Ye-seul led us inside.

The tomb had a stale, musty smell of mold, and dust and cobwebs had piled up all around.

Deeper inside stood a massive stone altar, and the marks of a fight had been left everywhere around it, nothing smoothed over — things smashed, cracked, split open.

Coming back to it like this, the sight hit me all over again.

This was where we'd talked with Reto, and where Ye-seul, later, must have fought him, won, and walked out with the legacies and every scrap of information about them.

"You've come at last."

In front of the altar, a huge man was waiting for us.

Bigger than I remembered, he had a face I recognized.

The half-ogre — Reto.

"…He really is alive."

Jin Ye-seul muttered it quietly at the sight.

Along with a chilling I definitely snapped his neck off and drove an iron spike through his head.

"I've been waiting ever since that day, my lord."

The tomb's keeper bowed deeply toward us.

Slowly lifting his head, he looked at Jin Ye-seul and muttered:

"And here is the grave-robber who dared to claim to be my master's successor."

Jin Ye-seul snorted at that.

Standing in front of the group, I looked at him and asked:

"It's been a while, Reto."

"Yes — a very long stretch of years has gone by, my lord. To see you again like this, this lowly one is truly overjoyed."

"I'm glad, too. Reto, come to think of it — you've gotten bigger since I first met you, haven't you?"

"My kind grows quickly, by nature…."

"Right."

I gave a nod as I looked at him.

"I've come, as promised. To meet you and your companions."

He bowed his head once more, as if the words were more than he deserved.

"That promise still holds. As does the word that you are more than worthy of receiving the service of me and my companions."

But….

He slowly turned his eyes to Jin Ye-seul.

"Before that, she must first take the test."

"The test?"

"Yes. The test."

The half-ogre let out a quiet breath.

"A test to confirm whether the one who has gathered all of my master's legacies is truly fit to bear the name Shadow Walker."

"…Uh, Reto. We're in a real hurry — does this have to happen right now?"

"I'm sorry, my lord. On this one thing, I beg you to understand that I cannot yield."

He bowed his head deeply toward me, looking apologetic.

"If my lord were to take the legacies himself, this humble one would have no complaint. But…."

"Fine."

Cutting Reto off, Jin Ye-seul stepped forward past me and looked at him.

"Let's do it, this test of yours."

She said it, eyeing Reto with clear irritation.

"And Ji-hyeok… is busy, so if we're doing this, make it quick."

"…Very full of yourself, aren't you."

Reto — who had always been unfailingly polite with me and Su-yeong — looked back at Ye-seul with the same edge of dislike.

He raised a hand and pointed to one side.

The spot was sealed off with a massive stone door and thick iron chains.

"Head in through there."

Ye-seul made a puzzled face, as if to say was there a door like that in here?, but the second I saw where the stone door was blocking off, I recognized it.

It was where Ji-na's crystal body had been.

That was the exact moment.

Ding.

A small electronic chime sounded, and a notification window appeared in front of me.

System

You feel the vast malignant presence within you beginning to stir….

The presence of something that had remained on part of your soul, deep inside your body, has been provoked, and is beginning to move!

The Seven Calamities.

It was a notification that one of the powers I had devoured from them was slowly beginning to wake.