For Furcas himself, as long as his boredom was relieved, he didn’t care about the outcome.
But somehow, every one of the King’s movements appeared more painful than anything else to him.
The Corpse King, having returned to the main stage after many long years.
His way of being… his distorted way of living, hadn’t changed in the slightest.
Keeping a half-breed of demon and angel by his side, holding hands with a wolf belonging to the Primordials, and continuing to walk with a dragon, another part of the Primordials, on his back.
And now, he was trying to have the guardian of the World Tree, the Wind Spirit Hresvelgr—who was originally built into the world’s system—serve him once again.
Did he have a death wish?
To Furcas, it only looked like the Corpse King was tightening the noose around his own neck, heading toward the worst possible end, exactly as he had one hundred and eighty years ago.
He wouldn’t say it out loud. Giving advice wasn’t Furcas’s duty.
The reason Furcas was intrigued by the Corpse King was because of his pathetic way of life—possessing great power yet being unable to throw away human emotions.
“…──That way, no one will be happy… Shiou-kun.”
Horse hooves struck the ground, and wheels scraped the stone-paved road.
Furcas’s whisper was drowned out by the sound of the carriage bouncing.
■
The time goes back slightly to before the Primordials’s manifestation.
Aleu, invited by the mysterious cloaked figure, proceeded down the main street against the flow of the crowd.
Even watching from behind, the eeriness of the cloaked man made Aleu constantly hesitate to move his feet. Suspicions welled up limitlessly against the man, who shouldn’t have been doing anything strange.
(It’s okay… the flow is coming to me. A person who takes a path a normal human wouldn’t is the chosen one.)
He kept telling himself that. He continued to mutter excuses to no one in particular in his heart.
Hresvelgr remained hidden in his pocket and made no move. That was also a major factor in his sense of security.
If danger were to befall Aleu, Hresvelgr wouldn’t just stand by and watch.
Aleu’s eyes, which had crawled on the ground in humiliation and tasted bitterness, reflected a somewhat muddy, dull light.
Hizaki, who had mockingly stimulated the inferiority complex swirling at Aleu’s core.
In Aleu’s mind, fantasies of crushing him were unfolding without interruption.
The reason he took the suspicious man’s sweet words was to obtain that power.
“…Aleu Carry. Do you have nightmares?”
The man suddenly asked Aleu. Even though it was a low, clear voice, it seemed that no one but Aleu could hear it.
The man’s voice struck Aleu’s core with a fear that felt like a finger tracing his heart. Unintentionally, his breath hitched, and Aleu coughed.
“Do you have nightmares?”
“I-I don’t have nightmares… Lately, there are many people talking about nightmares this and that, but I’m different from those boring people who are afraid of something like a dream.”
To the second question that seemed to press him, Aleu replied quickly.
He feared that taking any more time would provoke the man’s resentment.
The [Carrier], having seen through the innate cowardice Aleu hid with bluster, snorted as if bored.
“Are the rumors of nightmares boring?”
“A dream is just a dream. Was it a giant snake? If you have power, there’s no need to be afraid of something like that.”
Aleu created a sphere of wind in his hand to show off.
“I see.”
The Carrier, having given up on Aleu, curtly ended the conversation.
Aleu choked again at the man’s attitude. This time, not out of fear, but out of an indescribable anger.
This man had misjudged Aleu as an insignificant human. Just like the people his age in the village, and that Hizaki.
In his anger, he aimed the wind sphere at the man’s back. If Aleu felt like it, the wind magic would attack the man immediately. It would cause massive damage to the surroundings as well, but that didn’t matter.
His own value was higher than the people who would die from it.
(Calm down, calm down… I can kill him whenever I want. I should just let him underestimate me for now. I’m not an idiot who acts on emotion, right…?)
Seeing Aleu exerting self-control and gritting his teeth so hard that blood seeped from his gums, Hresvelgr was unimpressed in his pocket.
(…How pathetic.)
Those words were for none other than herself and Aleu.
Without even making an effort to use Hresvelgr’s power properly. Relying on suspicious nonsense about being given power.
Aleu still wouldn’t give up on himself.
The previous Hresvelgr would have mocked him but would have pulled Aleu away from the suspicious man to keep him out of danger.
However, she didn’t have that kind of energy left now.
The reunion with the young man she once looked up to as King.
As a result of the encounter she should have been waiting for, Hresvelgr still harbored loneliness and fear.
An afterimage of the brilliant past floated in her mind, and her heart rusted from the gap with reality.
He, who had gently taken her hand one hundred and eighty years ago, was no longer the “King” Hresvelgr wanted. He looked like someone else, hiding something and indulging in the kindness of his subordinates while calling himself the [Corpse King].
If he had shared even a part of his secret, she could have laughed just like before.
(Thinking he trusted me… was just a dream.)
To him, the Eight Precepts were nothing more than people he couldn’t share his secrets with.
[To me, the Eight Precepts are… like family.]
(Nothing but… lies…)
Now, all the words he had spoken in the past sounded hollow.
The past was dying.
Her disappointment in his current self was even eroding the King of the past.
He, whom she had longed for so much, admired, and given her greatest love to──was weathering away inside Hresvelgr.
It would have been better if they hadn’t reunited.
If they hadn’t, the Corpse King would have continued to live as a brilliant memory.
That’s why Hresvelgr wouldn’t stop Aleu.
She would witness the end of this lazy monster she had created by giving him power… and then vanish from this world.
That was the end Hresvelgr had chosen.
“──It’s here.”
The Carrier stopped in front of a building.
It seemed they had reached their destination.
Aleu, his heart racing at the thought that he was finally about to obtain power, followed the Carrier’s gaze and looked up at the building.
“T-this… is…”
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A familiar tiled roof and a large entrance.
What the Carrier led him to was the Explorer’ Guild.
Leaving the stunned Aleu behind, the Carrier quickly entered the guild.
Aleu followed so as not to be left behind, but the scenery was undoubtedly the Explorer’ Guild he knew inside and out.
“H-hey… can I really get power here…?”
“You should look around a bit more. Though it’s too late now.”
Frowning at the man’s words, Aleu looked around.
Then, he froze.
The scene that jumped into his eyes was an abnormality sufficient to stop Aleu’s thoughts.
──They were frozen.
The many Explorer and staff members in the guild, without exception, were frozen like a photograph of a part of their daily lives. Even the splashes of ale that had flown out from the impact of a mug being slammed onto a table were frozen in mid-air.
The Carrier, walking calmly, picked up a greatsword leaning against a frozen explorer as he passed by and turned back to Aleu, who was too shocked to speak.
THUD!!
Something exploded loudly.
A roar like a thunderbolt restored time to Aleu’s frozen body.
Looking down, the greatsword was thrust deep into the floor of the Explorer’ Guild.
“You aren’t afraid of boring nightmares. Then──I wonder what kind of face you’ll make in front of a nightmare-like reality.”
The Carrier who took off his hood──Seere’s appearance was one of peerless beauty that didn’t seem to belong to this world.
With a handsome face that could ruin a nation and gray hair reminiscent of a cloudy sky.
His golden right eye was fixed on a spot under the floor.
His otherworldly appearance. Among those features, what caught Aleu’s attention was his left eye.
What was embedded in his left eye socket was not an eyeball. It was a black gemstone, as muddy as if the silt at the bottom of a beautiful lake had crystallized.
A remnant of the black mana characteristic of demons. He didn’t have a completely human body like a King, nor was he monstrous like those of lower ranks.
The characteristics of a Lord, having remnants of a demon in human form.
The Carrier kicked the greatsword he had thrust into the floor with all his might.
CRACK! The floorboards were brutally destroyed, and wood chips scattered around.
Before he could even look at where the greatsword had gone, what jumped into Aleu’s field of vision was──.
“Even an ignorant person like you should know this material.”
What peeked out from the stripped floor was just a small part of the striped onyx that covered the entire subfloor.
“Black… Onyx…”
It is known as the most precious mineral in this world.
The primary reason for its value lies in its purity.
Ore born during the processes of the earth is a high-purity “natural product.”
It is prized for various purposes because of its property of attracting and trapping large amounts of mana.
It is sometimes used when artificially replicating Treasures, or as a [Magic Stone] that can trap magic and be carried around.
However, its most famous use is as a charm against curses.
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