Chapter 71: Reunion

‘Missing someone’ was like a book I had to close halfway through.

‘Farewell’ was like a book I lost before I could even finish reading.

*         *         *

“Apostle silent! All responses and activity have disappeared!”

When the Observation Unit finally reported the Apostle’s death, the very first thing Lorraine thought of was the safety of two people.

“Search team! Form a search team first! Find Mr. Ransen immediately! Form it with healing magic specialists!”

“Understood!”

She first made sure Ransen would be taken care of, and then, with trembling legs, she went herself to find the other.

“Mila! Senya! Dalton! Grab the healing artifacts and follow me right now!”

Together with experts in healing magic.

Tak. Tak, tadak!

It was a staggering run.

Her whole body, not just her legs, had gone weak, flailing with no strength, but Lorraine still ran.

To the place where she had last parted with Cask.

And when at last she arrived there—

“Huh.”

“Oh my god…”

The researchers following her let out gasps of dismay.

All around them,

a mountain of burned leeches was piled high.

And in one direction, a pitch-black path stretched forward.

A road paved with scorched remains and smeared with red blood.

“Ah…!”

At the end of that road, Lorraine saw him.

Slumped against the wreckage of a collapsed building, covered in blood,

his pale yellow hair and faint freckles so endearingly chick-like,

that little one was soaked in blood and motionless.

“Cask!”

When she cried out his name, Lorraine’s chest swelled with endless questions.

‘You’re alive, right? You are alive?’

‘Hm? You are alive!’

You’re alive, aren’t you? You survived, right? You’re not… you’re not going to leave me too, are you?

Swallowing the questions that echoed dozens of times, she approached carefully, afraid even her rough footsteps might shatter him.

And then—

“Hey there, Noona.”

When Cask, with his drained pale-yellow eyes, looked back at her,

‘Found you!’

Lorraine had found it at last.

The book whose next page she had longed to read.

And now, the following chapter unfolded right before her eyes.

Warak—!

She rushed in.

She threw her whole strength into embracing him, brushing her hands over his blood-stained pale hair and burying her face against his shoulder.

“Uh… Noona?”

Cask’s eyes wavered.

The boy hesitantly, cautiously, placed one hand on Lorraine’s back, paused to gauge her reaction, then slowly laid the other as well.

He felt her breathing, rising and falling busily against him.

And perhaps a minute passed.

Then suddenly, a thought came to Cask.

‘Is this… the moment?’

Was it time at last to speak the words he had long harbored in his heart?

Yes. Wasn’t a man supposed to be brave and confident?

He made up his mind.

Straightforward!

“Noona. To be honest, I’ve always…”

“Shh.”

But at Lorraine’s soft “shh,” that courage was cut off, just like that.

She only buried her head deeper into Cask’s shoulder, caressing the blood on him as she whispered.

“Just stay still, for now… stay like this.”

“Uh, uh… uh. Okay.”

The hands that had naturally rested on Lorraine’s back froze stiff.

Her body leaned more and more against him.

Her hair brushed his cheek, tickling.

She hadn’t used any perfume, and yet the warmth of her scent made his chest ache.

Suddenly,

all of this felt awkward to Cask.

Somehow, it felt irreverent.

How dare I?

Was it really okay for me to hold her like this?

So he hurriedly changed the subject.

“Uh, but Noona. Ransen’s okay, right?”

Her answer came at once.

“Of course, he’s okay. He’ll be alive and well.”

“Right?”

“You saw it too, didn’t you?”

“Yeah… it was insane. Thanks to him, I survived. I thought it was the end, but then suddenly those leeches just went berserk and… ahem. I mean, they started writhing on the ground and dying.”

“Is that so?”

“Yeah. So I got a moment, used \[Awakening of the Sword Spirit], wiped them all out, and patched myself up.”

“I see.”

Still with her head buried, Lorraine murmured, stroking Cask’s hair.

“You did well.”

…Huh?

Cask suddenly felt thrilled.

“And after that…”

He babbled on and on, chattering away, while Lorraine simply listened in silence.

“And, uh, so! After that! Um…”

Then at some point, Cask snapped back to himself.

The chest that had been swelling endlessly shrank down, and all of a sudden, he became painfully self-conscious.

‘You idiot.’

He scolded himself.

How could he be excited and blabbing like this? At a time like this, in such devastation?

Countless people had died, the laboratory was in ruins—was this the moment to recite his exploits?

Look at her. Thanks to your stupidity, even Lorraine Noona has nothing to say!

His shoulders slumped.

Cold sweat trickled down.

What should I do?

Should I apologize first?

So Cask lowered his voice and tried to shift the mood.

“Um, but… Noona, are you okay?”

Sniff. “Hm? What do you mean?”

“Well….”

Cask lifted his head slightly.

And there it was, spread out before him—

The once-grand laboratory, collapsed into scrap metal.

How much had that building cost? What about the samples, the research equipment that had been inside? And when it came to the data painstakingly built with sweat and toil—there was nothing left to say.

Would Lorraine, who had always shouted about money, who had always thought of money, really be able to endure this?

Cask knew very well.

How fiercely she had lived to establish this laboratory, to raise it up to what it had become.

With every step she had taken toward building it, Lorraine had rejoiced.

That was why Cask’s lips refused to move.

Still, he had to say something.

If only to prove he hadn’t just been thoughtlessly babbling away in excitement like a fool.

Forcing out the words that stuck stubbornly in his throat, Cask spoke.

“Th-the whole thing… it’s wrecked. Noona, you… you worked so hard to build it up….”

But then—

Swoosh.

Lorraine suddenly lifted her head from his shoulder, where it had been buried.

She placed both hands on his shoulders and looked straight at him.

At first, Cask flinched in surprise.

‘Huh?’

Then he panicked.

Because the expression on her face was nothing like he had expected.

“You little brat. Are you stupid?”

She was grinning from ear to ear, eyes shining as if she couldn’t contain her joy.

“W-what! Why am I stupid?”

“You said you saw it, didn’t you? Ransen fighting.”

“Y-yeah, I did. How could I not?”

“And you still don’t get it?”

“G-get what?”

“That! The Dragon’s Magical Armor! The masterpiece of my lifetime! It worked! Sure, it looked like it had plenty of issues, but still—it functioned!”

Ah.

Cask’s mouth dropped open.

“So my hypothesis about magic from the Mythic Era… maybe it wasn’t all correct, but in the grand scheme, it was right!”

“S-so… that’s how it is?”

“Exactly! And I learned something huge too. That ‘Apostle’ thing—it might be the clue that explains why the Mythic Era collapsed! This could be the chance to uncover the secrets of this world!”

Lorraine’s gaze turned toward the place where the ruins of the Mythic Era had been.

Her eyes glittered as she devoured with her sight the grotesque, melted gray mass of flesh.

“If I research that, something will come out. Something will definitely come out! Greater investment! Greater truth!”

This time, it was Lorraine who was utterly thrilled.

She tugged at Cask’s soft cheeks, ruffled his hair, and cried out with delight.

“My story—Lorraine Scottbean’s story—starts now!”

Cask just stared, dazed.

Finding him cute, Lorraine pinched and rubbed at his blood-soaked hair and cheeks all the more.

And in that moment,

Lorraine wished desperately.

That the story she was reading now would not end halfway.

That the page she had barely managed to turn, thanks to Eodran’s sacrifice and Ransen’s courage,

would stretch on and on—far, far into the distance.

*         *         *

[To wonder about someone’s well-being] was a kind of monster.

It crouched quietly in a corner when left unseen and forgotten…

But in the training grounds where they once sparred together,

in the spark of talent of some overconfident recruit,

in the monument in the central plaza that she had no choice but to pass,

the moment the memory of that day surfaced, ‘it’ suddenly grew in size and multiplied.

From one to two, from two to four, from four to… endlessly.

‘What could he be doing right now?’

‘Why did he disappear without a word?’

‘Was there some kind of circumstance?’

The simple questions soon splintered into endless delusions.

‘Could he have been a spy for an enemy nation?’

‘No, that’s impossible. Maybe a secret agent of the royal family instead?’

‘No. What if he’s just somewhere in the southern seas, fooling around with a woman?’

In those fantasies, he became a prince, a conman, a wandering poet.

The youngest Swordmaster on the continent, known as the Knight of Blue Thunder, Iodin Serom, was nurturing such monsters in her heart.

As she sat in her office, flipping through documents, her brow furrowed.

“Chain of disappearances in Rial City.”

“The forbidden spell of the Henerian Magic Tower.”

“The monstrous creature in Velos Forest…”

Reports related to the cult grew more numerous by the day.

Grit. She clenched her teeth.

“Damn cultists. If only they’d walk around with ‘I’m a cultist’ written on their foreheads.”

Then she would gladly hack their necks to pieces herself.

Flip, flip—

As she kept turning the documents, her hand froze at one particular report.

“What’s this? A catastrophe at Lorraine’s laboratory? This is… the place I meant to visit but couldn’t.”

Reading a bit more carefully, her gaze snagged on another passage.

“Hm? One of the key witnesses disappeared without a trace? If he were dead, they should have at least recovered fragments of the magical armor or pieces of his body… but there’s nothing? So instead of being dead, it’s more like he erased his own trail?”

That was a kind of switch.

The moment the memory of that day surfaced—

the monsters crouching in her heart raised their heads once more.

They trembled, ready to multiply again.

No. That wasn’t it.

The truth was, her condition had long since gone beyond that stage.

“Tch! What is this, a trend now? Vanishing out of nowhere? Another one like him pops up.”

She snorted, pretending to be indifferent as she flipped another sheet of paper.

But when \[the desire to know his well-being] dug its roots endlessly, sprouted branches, unfurled leaves, until it grew so dense that its original shape was unrecognizable…

at last, it bloomed into the flower called longing.

Flap—

Another page turned.

Her eyes traced slowly over the lines of information.

Then, upon reaching one particular section, her pupils rippled with shock.

Iodin froze, as though turned to ice.

Her eyes widened, locked onto the name written in the report, unable to tear away.

Crash!

Her chair clattered backward as she leapt to her feet.

The secretaries in the office flinched, staring at her with startled faces. “Madam Knight?”

But Iodin gave no response.

She simply traced her finger over the name of the key witness written in the document, muttering it aloud.

“Ransen… Banroa?”

Thud-thud-thud!

“M-Madam Knight?”

She shoved aside her desk and bolted out the door.

Then—slam! She burst back in, snatched up the sword she had left behind, and dashed out again.

Her secretaries could only gape, dumbstruck.

‘She… left her sword behind?’

Who was she, after all?

The youngest Swordmaster, the Knight of Blue Thunder. Perfect in every respect, never showing even a sliver of disorder, the very model of a knight.

And yet she had just made the most basic blunder—leaving her sword behind, if only for a moment?

The secretaries were honestly shaken.

For they had no idea that unlike her polished self at thirty-two, the Iodin Serom of twenty-four was a young lady prone to frequent mistakes.

But that was hardly the point right now.

“Madam Knight! Madam Knight!”

“Where are you going! Madam Knight! You need to approve my paperwork before you leave!”

The clamoring voices of secretaries chasing after her rang loudly.

And then…

Just like that…

After several other events passed.

Another ten thousand years flowed by.