Chapter 57
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Floaties for Everyone
Swim lesson at the water park, and she's demonstrating on you
“Duke, when you grow up, what do you want to be?”
“Haha! Hey, Lumiel. He probably just wants to be a shepherd, right?”
“That’s probably true for Valkar too. Duke looks like the type who’d become someone important at a glance.”
Then.
“What? Help people? Hah, Duke. So you were that kind of kid?”
“Nice! Then can you clean our house today?”
“Look at Lumiel already adding ulterior motives.”
“Why?!”
To your childhood selves.
If only I’d gotten you to say that.
“Ah... then I’ll go too.”
“Haha! Let’s clean and then go play at the ranch together!”
If only I had kept you from dreaming the same dream as me—.
“Aaaaargh!”
Kim Deokgu, who had been trying to force himself to sleep, suddenly snapped his eyes open. He tried to sit up, but couldn’t move because of his thick belly.
It was 6 p.m.
After returning from the concert, he had thrown the blanket over himself right away, but had woken up after only thirty minutes of sleep.
“Kuhup! Huf!”
He shifted his body sideways with effort and barely managed to get up off the mattress.
The cola he’d left unfinished was already lukewarm and flat, but he gulped it down like medicine.
This world is good.
Because anything here gives instant pleasure to the mind.
“Haa, haa.”
But today was a little different.
His mind just wouldn’t let go of the past whispers, like linoleum sticking to the soles of his feet.
“Ah, you followed us around and ended up dying young.”
“As for us. We’ll probably go down in history as legendary holy knights, right?”
The two childhood friends smiled.
As they sealed the demon, the two looked toward Dukarion at the center.
“Hey, Duke. What’s with that face?”
“What a shame. Still, it was fun being together, wasn’t it? We did something meaningful too.”
“Cheer up. Why are you making such an embarrassing face at the very end?”
“Don’t cry, Duke. You’ll ruin that handsome face.”
As they were swallowed by their own divine power and faded away.
Dukarion never managed to hear the two of them out.
In the end, he only kept crying like an idiot.
“How... how could I do that.”
He should have died.
He should have died there too.
If he had, the three of them could have gone all the way to the end as childhood friends and legendary holy knights.
But he couldn’t do it.
There was only one reason.
Dukarion was better than the two of them.
His friends Valkar and Lumiel eventually could not withstand their divine power and vanished, but
he was still left standing there.
“Hngh, I—.”
As fat tears rolled down his face, Kim Deokgu forced the words stuck in his throat out.
“Please, take me with you too.”
* * *
Ssshhh!
The evening of the day he watched the concert.
Us, having dinner at a samgyeopsal restaurant.
“I thought I said I’d buy Kim Yang dinner...”
While I tried to make my case by grilling the meat, Renea and Maria were just staring at it, mouths hanging open.
“Can a nun even eat meat?”
“I eat chicken, lamb, pork, beef, horse, and most types of demon beasts too, if you leave out a few kinds.”
At that point, wasn’t she more of a competitive eater than a nun?
“As for Lady Renea—.”
“You filthy pig! How dare you eat the natural parts of nature—grass, grains, and fruit? I, the former Elf Queen, will absolutely not forgive this in the name of nature!”
Seriously, what the hell.
Makes me want to ask what she ate to survive in the forest.
If only I’d known, I would have taken them to an all-you-can-eat place.
Last time we ate beef, Yuyena suddenly showed up and paid for it instead. This time, I was going to have to pay for it myself.
“Sigh, fine. Eat as much as you want.”
Since I was buying anyway.
Might as well make it easy on myself.
My stocks had gone up a bit recently too.
“Really? Auntie, make it the marbled sirloin—.”
“Don’t give that to them, give me a bottle of beer!”
“......”
The three of them were staring straight at me.
I ignored them and took the beer, pouring it into my glass.
In the end, the meal turned into samgyeopsal.
Both the old lady who had been after marbled sirloin and the nun who had never been to a barbecue place before.
In the end, once they tasted pork, they lost all self-control and devoured it.
Thinking the heat from the grill and the smell of the meat had naturally warmed up the mood, Kim Yang quietly asked.
“B-boss. W-what are you going to do?”
“Do what? The doenjang stew or the cold noodles?”
“P-pretend not to know.”
“......”
I quietly set down my chopsticks.
I’d already explained it to Seo Hajin.
That she didn’t have divine power, and that the one who did was someone else among the fans.
She was greatly disappointed.
She seemed to have cried a little.
Beyond being an idol, she seemed to want to achieve something even more special and meaningful.
But honestly, if that kind of power could be obtained so easily, wouldn’t it be stranger for someone to suddenly do something amazing with it?
“Hoo, Maria.”
“Yes?”
Maria, who had been stuffing meat into her mouth with great concentration, quickly looked up at my call.
I’d actually been thinking a lot all the way here, because Dukgu’s unwilling expression kept floating through my mind.
I didn’t know what had happened, but seeing the great holy knight broken down that badly, something had definitely happened.
“If the demon comes out of the seal, that’s an even bigger problem.”
For the greater good.
I’m sorry, but it seems I have to reveal the truth about Dukgu.
“From now on, listen carefully to what I’m saying.”
The holy knight Dukarion is still alive.
* * *
The next day.
Kim Deokgu drew the curtains while watching the sun rise outside the window.
The energy-drink cans from the all-nighter, the chicken he’d eaten as a late-night snack, and so on; he hadn’t cleaned up, but because of that, he left them there even more deliberately.
There were times when he felt like cleaning. His body would try to do it on its own.
Every time that happened, Kim Deokgu steeled his mind.
Dukarion can do that.
He cleans, maintains his sword, and works without rest.
That’s the holy knight called Dukarion.
But I’m Kim Deokgu.
I get fat, I don’t clean, I don’t work, and I just sit around every day.
This life is a kind of self-hypnosis.
Buried under thick flesh, Kim Deokgu was too tired even to walk, and today too he was gaming until dawn.
Clack-clack-clack.
“Hoo, if I’ve told you this much, you get it, right? Holy knight Dukarion.”
Clack-clack-clack.
His fingers striking the keyboard grew more forceful.
“You’ve already been found out, haven’t you? We need you. Right now Arhelak—!”
Clack-clack-clack!
“Dukarion!”
“I said I’m not—!”
Bang!
When he slammed his fist hard onto the desk, the empty can fell and rolled across the floor.
The voices he kept hearing overlapped and piled up.
“Duke, just take it easy and rest, will you? At this rate you’ll end up wetting the bed again.”
“Ugh, Valkar! Stop teasing me already. How many years are you going to keep making fun of me for something I did when I was five?”
“Lumiel was making fun of me with you until last year too—!”
“Kuhup!”
A sensation like his throat was completely blocked.
He hurriedly put on his headset and played a song. The volume was so loud it made his ears ring.
It was a song by Prism.
“Kuhup! Huf!”
He placed a hand on his stomach and steadied his breathing. The more their singing reached him, the calmer his chest became.
“Kuhup.”
Slowly closing his eyes, he was just about to drift off naturally.
Bang bang bang bang!
The shaking door sent his headset sliding off.
Startled, Kim Deokgu snapped his eyes open.
As he sat there wondering what was going on, the door was battered again.
“Excuse me!”
Even a harsh male voice he’d never heard before was coming from outside.
“P-please, let go.”
“Huh? I haven’t even missed rent.”
Kim Deokgu, who had planned to stay home all day today, slowly opened the door—
There stood a blonde nun there, looking as though she had just become an adult, gazing up at him.
“......!?”
Kim Deokgu, who tried to back away, nearly fell over, but he grabbed the shoe rack beside him and managed not to look disgraceful.
“Ah.”
But—
Something even bigger had just happened.
“I-it’s really... really was true.”
Tearful eyes.
Mouth tightly clamped shut.
Maria took one step after another toward Kim Deokgu.
“Lord Dukarion. You were really, really alive.”
“......!”
How did she know he was here?
Deokgu found the answer immediately.
The Meracle matchmaking agency.
When he’d interviewed there, he’d entered his address.
He wanted to immediately complain about where they’d gone and sold his personal information, but
more than that, the fact that the Church on the Rajesta Continent was going to learn that he was alive terrified him.
“Hup! Huuup!”
Maria was crying like a ticking time bomb that might blow at any second.
Driven by instinct, Kim Deokgu hurriedly grabbed her shoulders and brought her inside.
Bang!
The moment the door closed.
“Waaah!”
Looking at Maria clinging to his huge belly, Kim Deokgu went rigid.
The warmth of another person, felt again after a long time.
He didn’t have the leisure to get sentimental and think, This is what it was like.
“K-kuhup! D-don’t touch me! I-I smell!”
“Waaah! Lord Dukarion! I missed you! I really missed youuu!”
“I-it’s filthy! Kuhup! I haven’t washed!”
“Nooo! I’m not letting go! Lord Dukarion! Lord Dukariooon!”
The dampness on his belly.
Looking down at Maria, who was rubbing her face against him and smearing it with tears and snot, Kim Deokgu felt deep confusion in his mind.
A little girl was trying to pull him, hidden inside a massive layer of flesh, back out.
The problem was—
“Please stop—.”
He knew this girl too.
The girl he had rescued from a village burning after a demon attack.
The child who had kept trailing after him every time he returned to the church base he used as his headquarters.
“Don’t... please, let go.”
But Maria was stuck to him like a spider, her arms and legs wrapped around him.
Her arms couldn’t even reach his sides, let alone her back, but she clung on stubbornly all the same.
“No! I don’t want to! Waaah! Don’t go! Please!”
“Hey, Duke. Isn’t that girl into you?”
“Yo? Duke’s popular.”
No, that’s not it.
Valkar.
Lumiel.
Don’t talk to me like that again.
Don’t make me remember those days.
Bang bang bang bang!
What unexpectedly snapped Deokgu out of his hallucination was the knocking coming again.
This time it was harder and rougher than before.
“Excuse me!”
In fact, it was a rough male voice he’d never heard before, coming from outside.
“P-please, let go.”
“No! No! I absolutely won’t let go!”
Because of Maria plastered to his belly, Deokgu finally opened the door in an awkward crouch—
What burst through the slightly opened door was none other than the police.
“P-police?”
“We received a report that a girl was forcibly dragged into this room. We also heard a child crying.”
This quickly?
As he stared blankly, the landlord peeked out from the side.
“No, it just seemed strange because such a young girl suddenly came looking for Deokgu...”
True enough.
From the outside, it probably looked like a big man had suddenly dragged a girl into his room.
Once Maria understood the situation, she hurriedly climbed down and shouted,
“No! This man is someone I respect more than anyone else! Please don’t misunderstand!”
Thanks to Maria’s quick defense, the misunderstanding was smoothed over, but—.
“......Haa.”
Kim Deokgu’s vision went dark with helplessness.
* * *
“I wonder if she made it there okay.”
While working at Meracle, I glanced at the clock.
It was almost lunchtime.
That was when Maria would have arrived at the address I’d given Kim Deokgu.
Maybe because it was lunchtime and I’d gotten some breathing room, a reply finally came from Yuyena, whom I’d contacted.
- Yuyena: It looks like it’ll be hard to move through the Hunter Association.
- Yuyena: We’re busy with work on this side lately too.
- Yuyena: Don’t worry too much. We can handle it on the Rajesta Continent ourselves.
Honestly, I didn’t really need to pay this much attention to the demon’s revival.
Still, I’d contacted Yuyena just in case, but she seems to be busy these days.
‘Well, the only thing I can do is arrange the meeting.’
Maria didn’t pay, but I did let her meet her miracle.
That probably wouldn’t be how Kim Deokgu saw it, though.
“B-boss.”
While I was lost in thought for a moment, Miss Kim came over.
“L-lunch. What?”
“Lunch? Ah, wait. Today Lady Renea is covering a shift at the convenience store, so she said she’d bring over the lunchbox leftovers at lunchtime.”
“......”
Kim Yang glared at me immediately.
But what else could I do?
We had to make up for the samgyeopsal.
After waiting a little while, Renea came back smiling, carrying the lunch boxes.
“I’m back! I specially managed to secure hambak steak and spaghetti!”
As Renea came inside and proudly spread out the stacked lunch boxes.
“......”
For a moment, such a thought crossed my mind.
“Lady Renea.”
“Hm? What is it? Do you want hambak steak and spaghetti? Rock-paper-scissors—!”
“No, please eat that. Um, there’s that demon from the Silos Church, right?”
“Mm! Yes. Maria left home, so it was lonely, but we found someone with divine power, so that’s resolved.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
But that’s not what I want to ask about.
“Lady Renea, can you kill a demon?”
“Oh?”
Last time, she’d even landed a blow on the Azure Dragon. With Renea’s firepower, wouldn’t it be possible?
They say the enemy is a demon that can split into thousands, but it’s sealed right now.
Renea nodded proudly.
“Of course! I can! I’ve killed three demons in the floor wars.”
“Wow, wow.”
Kim Yang was genuinely impressed.
Honestly, I was a little surprised too.
You killed that many?
“Then can you kill this one too?”
“Of course! Of course! I’m super-duper strong! That’s how kids talk these days! Learn it!”
Seriously, she’s using slang from decades ago.
“So for this one, couldn’t you just go over and blast it?”
“I can. But—.”
“But?”
“If you don’t mind the church getting blown away too?”
“......”
Renea laughed, scratching her head.
“I’m getting old now, so I can’t control my power very well. Actually, back then I even turned the whole surrounding village into a wasteland—.”
As I stared at her in disbelief, Renea laughed and tapped her own head with a little “bonk.”
“Hehe!? My mistake! This is what’s popular among kids these days—!” Let’s pretend I didn’t hear that.