Chapter 175
Click—
Returning to his dorm room, Leo sat at his desk.
Before he knew it, the sun had set.
‘Summer’s almost over, huh?’
Feeling the cool air, Leo gazed up at the sky bathed in moonlight.
Then he took out the old memoir from inside his coat.
Shhh—
He carefully brushed his fingers over the leather cover.
From the moment he first met Lysinas.
He remembered often seeing her writing in this book every evening.
Leo took a deep breath and opened the memoir.
Just as he’d seen in the Forbidden Library earlier, there was nothing but blank pages.
Seeing this, Leo channeled mana to his fingertips.
A faint light shimmered across the page, and Lysinas’s neat handwriting appeared.
The memoir began before Kyle ever entered the picture.
To be precise, it started from the beginning of the Age of Calamity.
Flip—flip—
‘These are all stories Lysinas told me long ago.’
Flip—
Past memories of conversations with a friend resurfaced for Leo.
His hand paused as he recalled their exchanges.
[Today I met the “Survivor Hero.” Just as rumored, his personality is a tangled mess. He’s certainly capable, but how am I supposed to fix this pessimism? How am I supposed to bring this guy along?]
‘So she planned to drag me into the raid party from the start?’
Leo let out a wry chuckle.
He remembered that first meeting with Lysinas at Guardslone.
‘Our first meeting was at the mercenary guild, right?’
Back then, Lysinas was called the Fool.
In a world steeped in despair, Lysinas went around loudly declaring she’d defeat Erebos. To most people, she must have seemed insane.
‘That’s how hopeless the times were.’
Everyone just spent each day hoping Erebos or Tartarus wouldn’t invade.
Kyle, as always, spent his days drinking at the mercenary guild.
– ‘You’re Kyle, the Survivor Hero, right?’
– ‘And you’re the so-called Foolish Lizard? What do you want from me?’
– ‘Would you like to join my party?’
The offer came out of nowhere.
Back then, the “Survivor Hero” was considered a symbol of misfortune.
No one wanted to team up with Kyle.
He was used to being alone, so Lysinas’s outstretched hand was unwelcome.
To Kyle, the offer wasn’t welcome.
– ‘Sorry, but I’ll pass. I don’t have a death wish.’
“Our first meeting was the worst.”
Even after that, Lysinas persistently sought out Kyle for weeks.
The memoir had frequent entries for that period.
‘She sure cursed me out a lot. Well, I guess I deserved it. I was pretty prickly back then.’
Clicking his tongue, Leo recalled those days fondly.
Lysinas never gave up, even when anyone else would have.
Then, one day.
Tartarus launched a massive invasion of Guardslone.
To repel that invasion, Kyle and Lysinas teamed up for the first time.
And on the field littered with corpses, Lysinas spoke.
– “No matter how I look at it, my choice wasn’t wrong.”
Looking up at the gray sky, Lysinas said,
– “It really had to be you, Kyle.”
She smiled brightly.
And for some reason, Kyle saw a light in that smile.
– “You’re the start.”
That pale, gentle hand that she held out again and again.
– “Come with me, Kyle. I need you.”
In a world filled only with despair.
At first, that hopeful smile of Lysinas was just irritating to Kyle.
Kyle was no different from anyone else at that time.
Everyone believed the end of the world was near.
Just trying to live for today, he spent his days in reckless abandon, spiraling downward.
Maybe it was only natural that Lysinas got on his nerves.
If Kyle was taking steps into the darkness… then Lysinas was taking steps toward the light.
– “Why me?”
– “Because you’re strong. You’ll survive until the end, and…”
– “And?”
– “Even if you’ve given up and lost hope, your eyes are still alive.”
Lysinas smiled softly.
– “They shine in the darkness.”
It was the first time in his life.
The first time someone had seemed so noble.
– “Your wish is foolish. It’s impossible.”
But Kyle rejected Lysinas’s wish to the very end.
Even so, she never wavered.
– “That’s right, Kyle. My wish is a foolish one.”
She never withdrew her outstretched hand and said,
– “But, Kyle. We’re going to save the world.”
That unwavering heart.
That consistently noble figure.
– “Come with us. You’ll never have to watch your companions die in front of you again. Because I’m strong, too.”
She saved Kyle.
When he finally grasped her hand, Kyle thought to himself.
That he wanted to grant this utterly foolish wish.
[Finally, this stubborn pain-in-the-neck joined the raid party. He never listens, but at least he’s taken the first step. This meeting will surely change the fate of the world.]
The memoir continued.
The day Luna joined.
The day Arron joined.
And the day Dweno joined.
The raid party took shape.
Just as Lysinas had predicted, the world began to regain its light.
[Tomorrow, the final expedition begins. Everything is ready. We’ve done everything we could. All that’s left is to defeat Erebos. I hope my foolish dream can come true.]
That was where the memoir ended.
Lysinas left this journal behind on the last expedition.
After finishing the memoir, Leo quickly flipped through the blank pages.
Then he stopped at the very last page.
[To Kyle]
Leo swallowed hard.
It was a letter Lysinas had written to Kyle.
‘So these are letters she left for her companions… The reason I can see the one meant for me is because it reacted to my mana.’
He took a deep breath and turned the page.
[If you’re reading this instead of me… it means the world was saved, but I died during the final expedition.]
His hand tightened on the page.
[You’re a twisted one. Always sarcastic, always cursing. Honestly, there were so many times I wanted to punch you in the gut, but I always held back.]
‘…Wait. What about all those times you drop-kicked me in the gut? Were those not punches so they don’t count?’
Despite himself, Leo chuckled and kept reading.
[But… I don’t regret my choice. If you’re reading this, it means the world was saved because of you.]
“…I couldn’t do anything alone.”
Leo denied Lysinas’s words.
[Thank you for coming along on my reckless expedition, Kyle.
And I’m sorry.
I never wanted you to end up as the Survivor Hero.
But in the end, I forced you to watch your friends die.
I promised I wouldn’t let that happen, but… I couldn’t keep that promise, and I’m truly sorry.
So I hope your future is happy. I hope you’re not left alone anymore.
I’m glad we could be together.
If the world becomes peaceful… I hope you can truly be happy, Kyle.]
Drip—drip—
[I wish you blessings as you start a new era. From Lysinas.]
The letter blurred before his eyes.
Before he realized it, tears were falling down his cheeks and soaking the letter.
“You damn lizard… You said you’d never let me see you die…”
He’d never turned away from the deaths of his friends.
But that didn’t mean he’d overcome them, either.
He just thought he’d grown numb.
But the tears wouldn’t stop.
How could he not cry, reading a letter from a friend who still worried for him even after death?
Recalling a companion who’d left him first, Leo steadied his feelings.
[P.S. I really wasn’t going to say this, but I just can’t help it.]
He read the line at the bottom of the page and, looking puzzled, turned the page.
[Bastard. Idiot. Moron. Blockhead. Stop breathing. Go die. Drown yourself.]
Leo stared in astonishment at the curses and insults, filling the page and completely ruining the emotional mood.
Unlike the neat handwriting, these words were written in a very irritable scrawl.
“What the…?”
He realized his tears had stopped, looking dumbfounded as he turned the page.
[I liked you, you know. You never realized, did you?]
“…”
Leo blinked at Lysinas’s last words.
He read the line over and over.
And still, he didn’t understand.
‘Wait. So this is a letter written by Lysinas, so this is Lysinas, and this letter is meant only for me, so you means me, right? So “I liked you” means Lysinas liked me?’
“Huh?”
For once, Leo let out a genuinely dumb sound and stuck his face close to the journal.
“Huhhh?”
With the same stupid look, he pulled the book away, then finally realized what it meant and let out a shocked scream, face turning bright red.
“What the heck!!!” (T/N: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. )
—
Whooooooo—
A wind reeking of stench blew by.
It was the smell of corpses.
Any ordinary creature might have suffocated and died just from inhaling it.
This was truly the most dreadful place on earth.
The base of the Necromancer King, Supreme Commander of Tartarus.
“It’s been a while, Hell Kaiser.”
At the words of the Monster Queen, Sillatna, the Necromancer King Hell Kaiser curled his lips into a grin.
“Has it been a hundred years?”
A length of time that, for humans, would be more than a generation.
But for monsters who’d lived for thousands of years, it wasn’t that long.
“I heard all about what happened at Lumene this time. Looks like you lost all your subordinates.”
“Not just my subordinates. The King of Curses was completely destroyed as well.”
Sillatna crossed her arms.
“I took a lot of risks to bring him back, too.”
Sillatna’s plan to resurrect the King of Curses—
Because of this incident, it had all come to nothing.
Because of it, she lost everything she’d secretly set up at Lumene.
“I’m in a bad mood, I was thinking of destroying a country or two.”
“Which country?”
“That little kingdom that kid—what was his name? Leo Plov?—comes from. It’s just a minor frontier kingdom.”
Sillatna spoke as if stepping on an ant in passing.
“I thought I’d just crush it.”
“That place may be on the frontier, but it’s right in front of the Lordren Empire. It’s not so easily touched.”
“But I’m bored.”
Legion commanders.
If they put their minds to it, these terrifying monsters could destroy a small kingdom in a single day.
At Sillatna’s words, the Necromancer King spoke.
“It’s still not time to go on a rampage, Sillatna. We’ve been raising the next generation of legion commanders for many years now.”
“That’s true. We raised them well three thousand years ago, but those damn things wiped us out.”
Annoyance creased Sillatna’s face.
Back then, when the seven legion commanders were subjugated, half of the surface world’s forces were wiped out.
But if you only counted the damage, Tartarus suffered much worse.
“After that, it’s just been defeat after defeat… in the end, we’ve gotten nowhere.”
To the races of the surface, ‘legion commander’ meant terrifying horror.
But to the Necromancer King and Monster Queen, they were still just rookies.
“That’s why I tried something new recently.”
“What is it?”
“Bringing back some of our old comrades.”
“Is that even possible?”
“Our god’s power is growing stronger.”
Hell Kaiser bared his teeth and grinned.
With a flash of crimson eyes, a skull was revealed.
A white skull, as if inlaid with a giant ruby.
“If so, nothing is impossible. Not completely, at least.”
“It’s worth a try. So, how far along is your plan?”
At Sillatna’s question, Hell Kaiser let out a dry, clicking laugh.
“Soon.”