Chapter 349

[Now, truly, who on earth would ever look at you and see a human anymore.]

Watching the mist slowly seeping out of my body, Sbeungali's remark carried admiration and shock mixed together.

Just sensing Juno's presence and hostility must have been enough to register as the start of combat — because the hazy mist Venus used to trail around inside was streaming out of my body.

As I checked the effects of the power I'd gained from Venus on my skill window, I tilted my head.

"Wait — if other people are inside the mist too, does the barrier's effect not hit them either?"

[In the case of the others, I couldn't say how it would work out.]

[If you don't know, all you need do is test it, hmm?]

The moment she said it, Minerva slipped out of the shadow in a single motion.

She had the crescent blade I'd given her gripped in one hand.

"Hmm…."

She stepped out of the mist's range and back in again, over and over, then gave a small nod and spoke.

"First, let me explain one thing. In essence, this Minerva is treated as your subordinate and your kin. It's because the place this Minerva took as her seat was, at bottom, the shadow attached to you."

Wearing nothing but a thin dress — cold enough to see that anyone looking at her would shiver on her behalf — she wrapped her hands around her bare white arms.

"Perhaps that's why — right now, unlike the others, this Minerva is barely feeling the barrier's effect at all."

She reversed the crescent blade in her grip and plunged it into the ground, then folded her arms.

"Far less than this Minerva had expected. Most likely, because you have the power to resist the presence of the Seven Calamity, that force is naturally being passed on to this Minerva as well…."

She sniffled.

"But it is so terribly cold…."

Curled in on herself, trembling, she sniffled again.

"Wh-why on earth am I feeling the cold…? Is this, too, because of Juno's barrier…?"

"Minerva, are you an idiot?"

I stripped off the coat I'd been wearing right away and draped it over her.

Even as she shivered, Minerva looked up at me as if that hadn't sat well with her.

"An idiot, is it — is that not putting it a bit too strongly? Do I truly look so ridiculous to you, this Minerva?"

"You're not the least bit scary saying that with your nose running. Come on — do it up properly, too…."

For a second I nearly took off my earmuffs and handed those over too, but instead I pulled off my gloves and slipped them onto her hands.

She muttered at me, still in that sulky voice.

"Carry me."

"What?"

"Look — my feet are cold. I might get frostbite and drop clean off."

With that, Minerva lifted the foot she'd had buried in the snow.

The sight brought back what had happened once in the past, and by the time I came to my senses I'd already scooped her up into my arms.

"Mm. That's better."

Minerva's tail swayed lazily through the air.

Sbeungali, watching the whole scene, muttered as if he couldn't quite believe it.

[When she could just slip back into the shadow — she really has to go and….]

"Ahem, ahem! Now then, let me continue the explanation."

Minerva cleared her throat and went on.

"First, the conclusion. Inside this mist, some measure of protection against the barrier extends to this Minerva as well. And most likely, your other companions will also come under that protection."

She ahem-ed one more time, more loudly than before.

"The problem is that the reach of this mist is far too small. Inside it, your companions could hardly fight freely — it doesn't look like they could all even fit in at once. And the speed at which it spreads is quite unimpressive too. Can you not extend it by your will?"

"Since I just got it, maybe that's why… but like you said, Minerva, it doesn't seem to be anything to do with my will."

Minerva muttered, as if what a waste.

"Such a hard-won power going to waste is a pity. Used well, it could be put to particularly good use in a situation like the one before us now…."

[Try growing the World Tree.]

Sbeungali opened his mouth in a flat, unenthused voice.

"What?"

[Grow the World Tree, I said.]

He kept up the flat tone as he started laying out the explanation.

[Even I know the World Tree is, at bottom, a plant — that it can't grow in a place as barren as this. But inside your mist, it should sprout well enough.]

"And then?"

[Idiot, have you already forgotten that you boasted to us about talking with the World Tree and gaining a new power?]

Sbeungali groused about it and then, calmly, finished laying it out.

[Didn't you say you could erode the surrounding land and take it as your own territory? You already carry the traces of no fewer than five Seven Calamities inside you. Which means you can absolutely interfere with Juno's territory and exert power over it.]

"…Ah — so there was that hand to play."

Minerva nodded.

"The two most important things in maintaining a barrier are circulation and completeness. If part of the territory is taken away, that alone strips it of the two most important things. And of course, since this is a barrier Juno laid, it may not break outright — but its power will absolutely be thrown badly out of balance."

[On top of which, didn't you say the last power that World Tree woman comes to gain is that fearsome? But by the same logic, with this place's barren environment and Juno's barrier on top, she can't grow the World Tree here. So if that World Tree woman were to grow her own World Tree on ground you've taken as your territory, wouldn't that solve it? Do that and the territory extends further still — the space in which you all can fight without worry widens too.]

"On top of that, there's clearly a World Tree bound to that woman, is there not? If she can grow it here, it will surely be a tremendous help."

It was definitely worth a try.

Following the two of them, I carefully pulled a branch of the World Tree out of my right arm.

"So it worked, after all."

"No, not yet."

I turned it straight into a seed and dropped it right below me, onto the snow-covered ground, and commanded it to put down roots.

"……"

"……"

[……]

The three of us stayed still and watched the spot where the seed had gone in.

A fair stretch of time passed with no reaction at all, and just as I was about to give up — guess it isn't going to work —

[There it is.]

Just as Sbeungali said.

A small sprout pushed up, and right after it began to wriggle and swell, growing bigger.

If it had managed to sprout once, that meant it could go further too.

I poured strength into the World Tree that had come up right in front of me and used the last of the abilities it had awakened.

— You can put down the roots of your very origin, take the whole surrounding area as your territory and a part of yourself, and place it under your dominion.

[Well now….]

Sbeungali just marveled, and Minerva, too, looked around as if in surprise.

I was startled myself.

The piled snow melted away in an instant, and around the spot where the seed had gone in, a strange mist began spreading out.

Then, from the thawed earth, small stone slabs and what looked like pillars pushed up in a few places, and only then did the changes stop.

"Well now."

Minerva hopped down out of my arms.

Swishing her tail, she muttered quietly.

"…It really is your territory, it seems. I can feel strength welling up even though I've done nothing. If this is what it's like for this Minerva, who's near enough your kin… you must be feeling an enormous force too, aren't you?"

As she said it, Minerva's tail was whipping around with fierce, furious energy.

Anyone looking would see that she was thoroughly in a good mood.

[Ohhh…!]

Sbeungali, too, was letting out something like an exhilarated groan.

He was so worked up that his feelings were carrying down through my right arm and reaching me.

"……"

But I wasn't feeling anything.

Sensing something was off, I checked myself over again and again, but the only changes were that the tightness in my chest had eased and the strange heaviness in my head had gone.

What the hell.

Was it a technique that buffed the people around me instead of me?

Come to think of it, Lee Ye-eun, too, had that unique World Tree ability of lifting up the strength of those around her, not her own.

Maybe it was that sort of ability.

"Hm!"

Right then, Minerva jolted and slipped back into my shadow.

I was wondering what had spooked her when I could feel the group coming toward us from a distance — they must have picked up on something odd too.

[In any case, best to get ready quickly, you.]

Once she'd caught her breath, Minerva left me with that piece of advice.

She was right.

Because it wasn't only they who were closing in on this place.

— Hah, haah… haaah….

With a grinding sound, the huge golem — its mouth working without pause — abruptly brought what it was holding in its hand down with everything it had.

The body of the spirit once known as the Smith of Yado, headless now and with part of it bitten away, sprawled limply on the ground.

Watching in silence as it dwindled at last into nothing more than an ember and burned out, Juno murmured quietly.

— …So now, all… that remains. Is me… alone.

The likes of Margo and Sbeungali — they didn't matter.

Milited, that grating thing — that hadn't mattered either.

What had truly been unexpected, even for it, was that Minerva and Venus had been defeated, each ending up in what amounted to being someone's kin, and that they had died a complete death.

However much it hated to admit it, itself and Minerva and Juno —

The three of them held roughly comparable strength, and had been tangled up together across ages beyond counting.

Which was why, even as it had genuinely wished for the others' deaths, now that it was the only one left, it felt a hollowness it couldn't do anything about.

— Hah….

Minerva had fallen, Venus was dead, and it, too, was staring down its own death.

What was even more absurd was that they had all been done in by a single, utterly ordinary human.

— No. Not… an, ordinary… human. Perhaps….

A man who wasn't of this world.

The very woman Ahriman, at his side, had fixated on.

— The others. Didn't notice. It seems… but….

It could tell.

Precisely because it, along with Sbeungali, had the sharpest senses among them, it could tell.

What Ahriman had been up to with those two, and thus what smell hung about it, and, in the end, what would come of those two.

Because it had known, it had gone along with Ahriman's offer.

— Even so.

To think it would end up in a state like this.

Even a fellow Seven Calamity for an opponent — it would never have been driven into a corner this bad, Juno thought, and its body twitched.

— Hah, ha.

The golem, now nothing but ice and glaciers all over, groaned and grated.

Three hundred years shut away, and all it had been able to do was throw up a barrier around itself and heal the wounds it had taken.

It had thought that at least the barrier would buy some time — but at the sense of that immense presence closing in from a distance, it realized right away it couldn't even count on that.

In the end, the only choice left was to disappear, the way the two before it had.

— Yu, Ji-hyeok….

The one human whose name it remembered.

The one who had driven it to this, the very being it hated more than anything.

But….

— That, wretch Ahriman.

If it had to pick the one it hated most, the one it wanted dead more than anything else, only Ahriman came to mind.

Because in the end, that was the one who had schemed all of this.

— I won't. Let it. All go the way you want. Wretch.

Slowly, it lifted its right arm.

Then it drove its arm deep into the spot where its core sat, and murmured again.

— Every, one of your schemes. …I've, seen straight, through.

Starting from Margo, then Sbeungali, Minerva, Milited, and finally Venus.

The powers of five Seven Calamities had been gathered into a single human.

Most likely, left alone as it was, that human would kill it too and absorb its power.

— The presence, of every Seven… Calamity, gathered together.

And at the end of that stood Ahriman.

Why, in the name of everything.

It couldn't so much as guess at what the reason might be.

But at the very least, it could tell that Ahriman wanted it to lose to Yu Ji-hyeok, be stripped of its power, and die.

It couldn't let that happen.

If only to have its revenge on those two.

And to see through its duty as one of the Seven Calamities.

— Mother… your child… only now….

With that last word, Juno bore down with its right hand and shattered what it had been holding.

Soon after, its core smashed, Juno's body began to collapse, and its body scattered into powder that drifted apart on the wind.

It was the death of the sixth Seven Calamity.