Chapter 343

"No wonder something felt off about all this."

The first to react to Sharisna's words was Belluna, who had been playing around in a corner of the tomb as if she couldn't have cared less.

Whether she noticed everyone's eyes turning to her or not, she stayed there in a crouch, fiddling with a smashed piece of stone.

"What do you mean, Mother?"

"Mm-hm — that guy, you know. The one she just mentioned. He was always a bit suspicious to me. No wonder I never really wanted to get tangled up with him."

In the middle of it she was chirping happily about how she'd found a rock that looked like a platypus, and Ivan pressed her again.

"…Could you explain it to us?"

"Of course — my son wants to know."

She quietly slipped the stone into her pocket and clapped the dust off her hands.

"Us spirits get divided up into spirit kings, high spirits, lower spirits, and so on — but honestly, among us those categories don't really matter that much. We just call each other that so it's easier to tell one another apart. The idea that a lower spirit is bound to obey a higher one, strictly speaking, is just wrong."

"But isn't that actually how it works? I heard that if you can command one spirit, you can also command the spirits ranked below it…."

At Lee Yu-na's question, Belluna pushed out her lower lip.

"It's the same with humans, isn't it? Rank or class isn't decided from birth for you lot either. But if a person strong enough to kill you at any moment jabbed a weapon at you and ordered you to do something, wouldn't you just go along with it?"

She muttered that only the World Tree types held to hierarchy that strictly, and gave a sniff.

"Anyway, among us spirits, this thing called a spirit king is basically a kind of title given to the strongest spirit among a similar type. And honestly, even when there's a stronger spirit around, plenty of us just won't acknowledge it. It varies a lot from spirit to spirit. Take the earth spirits, for instance — the ones that cover sand, rock, and mud — they're the most tightly hierarchical and organized of the lot."

That's why a human recognized by the spirit called the Earth Spirit King can wield every earth spirit.

She tapped the stone with a fingertip as she added:

"On the other hand, wind and fire spirits like me — we don't really like acknowledging anyone. Water… I don't know. They're the go-with-the-flow, easygoing type. They probably don't even care. Just on our end alone, you'd find loads of them calling themselves the Wind Spirit King."

Of course, Belluna was muttering that among the ones she'd met so far, she hadn't seen a single one stronger than herself — I pressed her again with a question.

"So… what you're saying, Belluna, is basically this? Between spirits, there really isn't a hierarchy as such — but each type of spirit handles it differently. Wind and fire don't really acknowledge it, earth's hierarchy is solid, and there's no point in even talking about it with water?"

"Mm, more or less? The other kinds of spirits, though, I don't really know either."

"…I hadn't realized the world of spirits was so complicated and varied."

At my words, she gave a small laugh.

"Think about it, Yu Ji-hyeok. Even the same wind gets called by different names depending on the direction it blows in from, the season, and the region. If even you humans distinguish a mere wind that finely, would we be any different?"

Having landed a pointed jab as casually as anything, she cleared her throat with a small ahem.

"Anyway. Why am I telling you all this — well, like with wind, there were tons of fire spirits going around calling themselves the spirit king, the strongest, whatever. But at some point, all of them started disappearing, wholesale."

"…Disappearing? You mean they died?"

"'Died' isn't quite the right word for it. Um… if I had to put it in words, snuffed out?"

With a small grunt, Belluna got to her feet.

Then she walked over to Ivan, and as if it were the most natural thing, he pulled out a wet wipe from his coat and cleaned her hands for her.

"At first I thought maybe he was eating them to boost his own strength — but no, that wasn't it. Because the feel of his own presence hadn't changed all that much. So for a while I even wrote him off as unrelated…."

Holding both hands out for Ivan to clean more easily, she suddenly looked at me.

"You see, I'd wondered whether one reason he was following Ahriman was that he'd lost a bet and got stuck with it."

"A bet?"

"Mm-hm. I told you before, right? For spirits, a promise is absolute, and there have been rare cases where making a bad promise landed a spirit in a state of being effectively pawned off into slavery for its entire existence."

She had told me that before.

Along with stories of people who'd heard those old tales, tried to pull half-baked scams on spirits, and ended up paying for it with their lives.

"And that one really loved a bet. …But he was really bad at them. So I'd figured maybe he'd lost some half-baked wager and was going along with it like a slave. But…."

She shook her head.

"Now I'm sure of it. Even so, a spirit of that caliber wouldn't get himself subjugated that stupidly. He's following Ahriman by his own will. And the other high-ranking fire spirits — the ones apart from him — weren't snuffed out. They were used."

"Used? For what, exactly…."

For a beat, it hit me that his other name was the Smith of Yado.

The smith.

And Belluna, seeing my expression, broke into a grin.

"Looks like you've more or less caught on. Right — what are the two things a smith needs most?"

"Iron and fire…."

"Right. Iron is his raw material. Raw material you can find anywhere… but the fire?"

To keep a fire burning, you need fuel.

Even if spirits drew their power from nature, that power was by no means infinite.

Use it a lot and it dwindled, and recovering the diminished strength took a long time.

"Where else would you find a fire more powerful and pure than one made by burning the very life of a fire spirit — and a high-ranking one at that — as fuel?"

She murmured it quietly.

"To begin with, one of the things that symbolized Ahriman was smoke. And smoke gets thicker the more fiercely the flame burns. Looked at that way, it isn't really that strange, is it?"

"…One of Ahriman's symbols is smoke?"

I swear, this was the first I was hearing of it.

…No, it wasn't the first time.

Because I dimly remembered that back in my original world, in threads speculating about what kind of being Ahriman really was, exactly what Belluna had just said had been written down.

"Yes, that's right. Smoke and darkness. And every disease that brings harm or poison. Those are what symbolize him. Kind of fits him perfectly, don't you think?"

She gave a shrug, as if there was nothing much to hide.

"More importantly, isn't Juno the only one left now?"

She looked slowly around and tilted her head.

"We'd better hurry, by the look of it. From what I know… Juno's seal, just like Venus's, was one of that guy's own pieces of work."

She was right.

Knowing how to make something meant knowing full well how to break it.

"……"

"……"

"……"

A silence dropped over the room.

Su-yeong, Ye-seul, Yu-na, Ivan.

Belluna, and even Reto and Sharisna — all of them were looking at me.

"Let me say this up front."

Sharisna glanced around once and quietly opened her mouth.

"By our sworn friend's request and dying wish, I, Sharisna, will help you. That is also the will of Reto and of Kwakal, Kritolki, Shu Rikerishu… every one of us who once sheltered from the rain under the same roof as the woman once called the Shadow Walker."

When she finished, she slowly lowered her head.

At the sight, Belluna murmured, sounding fascinated:

"My — the proud garuda folk, bowing their heads to a human they've just met."

"…Because our sworn friend asked it."

Sharisna lifted her head again.

"From this moment on, until the day my pledge with our sworn friend comes to its end, I, Sharisna, place my life in your hands. I will follow your orders."

"I too, my lord."

Reto also lowered his head to me in a full bow.

Belluna looked over at me and gave a shrug.

"I'm not doing that."

She wore an expression that said she really didn't want to — then flinched hard under Ivan's icy stare and hurriedly took back what she'd just said.

"J- joke. I'll help. I said I would earlier, after all."

…There was no need to bother asking the others.

Every one of their eyes was on me, and yet — strangely — I didn't feel any pressure or weight from it.

"Then give the order."

At Sharisna's words, I quietly nodded.

"First off…."

"……"

Waking abruptly from sleep, Choi Hyun-woo, out of habit, fiddled with the many-faceted object in his hand.

This thing — called the Metronome — was the very reason he was on the run like this, and also the thing that, in just a few days, had carried him to heights he couldn't have imagined before.

In fact, right up until moments ago, he'd been repeating, over and over, the fights he'd had with Osei Evans and with Nam Hyun-hwa a few days back.

Training inside memories replayed through the Metronome's power gave Choi Hyun-woo — who already had talent, drive, and a body to match — the one thing he'd been missing: experience.

In not even half a year, he had met countless powerhouses and had crossed swords with them, or fought at their side.

In other words, he had no shortage of opponents.

Inside the academy, no one could stand against him anymore.

Only the friends who had stood beside him could still hold up as close matches for him.

Beyond that, through sparring with every strong opponent he'd met — the Ten Powerhouses, versions of himself from other worlds he'd encountered in Margo's dungeon, Lee Jae-jun who'd led the Thorn Cross Society, members of the villain group Red Case, Big Watch, and even the copies Milited had summoned — he had made leaps of growth.

And yet Choi Hyun-woo wasn't satisfied.

No — he couldn't be.

Against every one of them, he might manage to go down taking them with him, but an overwhelming, decisive win was out of the question.

The Seven Calamities, whose overwhelming might had driven him into despair.

And above all — because he had never, not once, beaten the Yu Ji-hyeok in his memory.

"…Ngh."

He slowly pushed himself up.

His whole body was damp with the cold sweat he'd shed in his sleep, and his fever ran hot enough that even his own breath felt warm — but there was no way he could just lie there and rest.

Even the time he was spending like this felt wasted.

"……"

Even that strong Yu Ji-hyeok had died.

When he couldn't even earn a single win against him, how on earth was he supposed to avenge them and kill the remaining Seven Calamities?

He had to repeat more.

Repeat, and turn it over, and take it in.

To beat the Seven Calamities in his memory, to beat Yu Ji-hyeok, and beyond that, to avenge the two of them.

He had to get even stronger.

"Whew."

He let out another rough breath.

The instant he closed his eyes and opened them again, a dizziness sharp as an electric shock burst through him like a firecracker going off.

He staggered, took several missteps, and only then managed to catch his balance.

In the middle of it, what flickered through his head was the thought of his birth parents.

"……"

The Metronome could reconstruct, within memory, people he had once met.

And Choi Hyun-woo had used it to earn himself the chance to slowly look over the faces of the parents who had abandoned him at the orphanage.

Two faces so unfamiliar, and so young….

"Heh."

Why on earth had they done such a thing.

Even now, when he thought about it, a hollow laugh slipped out of him before he knew it.

If Han Su-yeong had been beside him then, she would have laid it out for him bluntly, the way she always did — but no matter how hard he thought about it on his own, he couldn't figure out the reason.

In the end, even after Nam Hyun-hwa had seen straight through what he was thinking and he had done something no better than raising a hand against family — the reason he still hadn't left this orphanage was maybe something similar.

But now he really did have to leave this place.

Never mind the possibility that Nam Hyun-hwa might tell someone else he was hiding here — staying in one spot would push up the odds of being tracked through the mana leaking from the Metronome.

"…Where to go now."

Choi Hyun-woo murmured it quietly.

And to that private muttering, one that couldn't possibly have gotten a reply, someone replied.

"Where do you think you're going?"

At the sound of that voice, Choi Hyun-woo dropped the Metronome he'd been holding before he could stop himself.

It was a pathetic slip, but if anything, he was thinking it was for the best.

Because the instant the Metronome broke contact with his body, the illusions and memories it produced vanished on the spot. So the voice and vision he must have conjured up without realizing it would surely disappear too — or so he thought.

But the voice didn't disappear.

If anything, it took on a distinct physical form and stepped into view right in front of him.

"Choi Hyun-woo."

That voice soon became Han Su-yeong.

At the sight of her, Choi Hyun-woo found himself staring at her with a blank expression before he could stop himself.

"…Huh?"

The family he'd thought was dead had appeared right in front of him.

Together with the other friends.

"Su-yeong…?"

The woman standing in front of him was real.