Chapter 51
#051
1.
Ceres just stood there, frozen.
Behind her back, the remnants of golden threads drifted down like pollen, shimmering faintly.
Li Cheng seems to have a knack for stage direction too.
What a performance, perfectly suited for a climax.
Ceres looked at me, then at Yiming, who had died in my arms.
“…….”
From the outside, it was hard to tell what she was thinking.
Ceres was already the kind of poker face who hardly ever showed an expression.
Still, I could tell her emotions were a tangled mess.
Just as Ceres was about to speak after a long silence, it wasn't her who broke it.
“Ceres Cassian.”
Shit, that startled me.
An illusory carp head poked up out of the pool of blood.
The carp opened and closed its mouth, speaking in a neutral voice.
Was that the Geumri clan head's surveillance spell, 'Taksu-eo'?
“This is a warn….”
But when Ceres waved a hand once,
it vanished without even a dry rustle.
Ceres let out a long sigh and said,
“I… honestly don't understand you at all.”
Let's take a calm look at this for a moment.
First, quantitatively speaking, I'd gotten a lot from Ceres.
She comforted me when I was at my most exhausted and worn out, and she taught me magic too.
Thanks to Ceres's help, I was able to shut down Project Z smoothly as well.
If I hadn't been able to earn her trust in this hellish city, I never would have made it this far in the first place.
I could understand her reaction too.
My movements this run did make me look a bit like a snitch, after all.
And I think Ceres probably has something to do with the fake cops too…
From her point of view, she'd taken me in as a spy, only for me to collude with Yiming and steal the fake cops away.
Even so, she didn't cast me aside right away.
She kept trying to understand me to the very end, even though anyone could see I was a traitor.
She even tried to protect me from the Geumri who wanted me dead.
Right up until the very last moment.
She gave me a chance, saying that if I told the truth she'd cover everything up and stand on my side.
In the end, she only abandoned me because I missed that chance due to the 'penalty.'
Even then, after hearing that I had an ailing older sister, she went out of her way to take care of Arbel too.
Given that the premium route still hadn't been cleared, that promise must have been kept.
I admit it.
Honestly, I never even expected Ceres mama to go this far for me.
From the start, ours wasn't a relationship built on solid trust and a deep bond.
I approached Ceres intending to use her,
and Ceres was more than willing to use me too.
The strange chemistry between us was, when you got down to it, little more than a byproduct—a residue of mutual interests.
“Good. Since Lady Ceres wanted Yiming eliminated and he's dead, that means I did the job right, then?”
Even so, the reason I kept using this sarcastic tone was
that, paradoxically, I might have been leaning on her emotionally.
If I thought about it, it was kind of infuriating too.
So you've laid all the rules bare and now we're done here? Huh?
Even loyal gigolo Cedric can't help but go through puberty at this point.
Ceres's straight brows twitched.
After steadying her breath, Ceres suppressed her faint anger and said,
“Quit your nonsense and just follow me.”
“Where to?”
“What, are you planning to stay here forever? Whether you stay here or go to Aden, you're dead.”
Ceres grabbed my wrist.
Her slender fingers, as always, now carried an urgency that wasn't usually there.
“Are you going to save me?”
Ceres whirled around and snapped in a sharp voice,
“Yeah, you stupid bastard! Do you even know what you've done?”
Hmm.
So she really is going to save me after all.
Okay.
That eased Cedric's hurt feelings a little.
If she later does a one-woman, two-role mother-daughter act for me, I might be completely over it.
“...I'm sorry.”
But I couldn't follow her now.
I quietly let go of her hand.
“What do you mean?”
Yiming Ham never would have dreamed…
that he'd activated Death Echo and gone off with such a touching final testament.
The moment Manneunghwa was in my hands, this run was over.
Now, Yagyu Kisara would arrive here in about three hours.
Enforcer.
The hound of the Paradise Administration Bureau, guardian of Aden's order.
One of humanity's strongest.
It's hard enough to get tangled up with them in the first place, but if you do, you'd be better off just swallowing cyanide.
The problem is that the moment that great enforcer Kisara pops up in Necropolis, she tries to kill Arbel and me.
My death doesn't matter much.
If Arbel dies first, the run clears, and then I meet Kisara to refresh the save point?
That would be a total, utter catastrophe.
I'm never losing my precious plushie!!!
I've put way too much work into this already!!!
Even Yiming Ham would end up dead.
And my relationship with Ceres would still be in ruins.
Maybe this time she'd even arrive faster than three hours.
I had to move on to the next run as quickly as possible.
“Ha.”
Ceres gave a dry laugh.
It was a short, sigh-like laugh, as if she were mocking herself.
“I don't get it. Why are you mad at me?”
“I'm not mad.”
“You are angry. Right now.”
No… I'm really not angry.
My emotions are a little heated, that's all, but I don't have any particular grudge against Ceres mama.
I'm just a little disappointed, that's all.
“Do I look like someone who can just move however I want, whenever I feel like it? Are you telling me I should've saved Yiming? That corpse-loving bastard who was always trying to grind me into the dirt?”
Ceres bit her lower lip hard and said, as if making an excuse,
“Fine, let's say I saved Yiming as you said. Twilight Resource Development director Ceres Cassian saved Yiming Xiangju of the Xianggui family, who was on the verge of being purged. Then what? Do you think I'm some kind of god?”
Ceres kept lashing out, pouring out her words without even giving me time to answer.
“You were the first to betray my trust! Even so, I tried to protect you! I knew you'd betrayed me, but I still gave you one last chance to explain yourself! All you had to do was say one word! You were the one who kicked that chance away!”
Right now, she somehow looked like the smallest Ceres I'd ever seen.
Like a child at a loss after being scolded by their parents.
Wait.
This situation feels strangely familiar.
#Regret#Despair#Obsession
The tags flickered in my head.
Ah, no way.
Our Ceres mama isn't that kind of character.
She has a surprisingly soft spot, so maybe she promised to take care of Arbel?
That could happen.
Taking on political risk one more time to save the traitor Cedric?
That one is a little surprising too, but…
Still possible.
But Ceres, unable to keep her composure and on the verge of tears because it felt like she was being hated?
That's a bit too much otaku-romance for me.
Ceres had always been iron-blooded.
“So you're going to cling to that pathetic pride of yours and die? You think it'll look cool if you die after acting all reckless like that?”
At the point where I was pouting and saying, 'Hmph… I'm sulking.'
What she should've said was 'Then die,' not desperately gone, 'Do you think you'd look cool if you died after acting all reckless like that?'
Hmm…
It feels a little like messing with someone's heart, though.
Ceres mama.
Let's just confirm this one thing, and agree to start the next run with no hard feelings between us.
“Phew….”
I closed my eyes.
When I opened them again, my eyes were perfectly acting out a sad, clear, deer-like gaze.
The faintly curved corners of my mouth held resignation and forgiveness.
“Lady Ceres, I'm sorry.”
“What?”
“I wasn't honest with you. But… there are circumstances I truly can't tell you about.”
Ceres narrowed her eyes.
“I know you gave up a lot for my sake. I know you thought of me as special too.”
“You….”
“This is really shameless of me… but please take good care of my older sister.”
Ceres's face hardened.
Her eyes trembled violently.
“Don't joke around. You think I'd even blink if you acted like that?”
Blue veins stood out on Ceres's clenched hand.
Unconcealable killing intent, and an even deeper agitation.
I closed my eyes as if in resignation.
“Please kill me.”
“…….”
“If I'm going to die, I want to die by your hand, Lady Ceres. I….”
And I topped it off with a bitter smile.
“...Because I'm a traitor.”
At least that wasn't a lie.
And now I really do need to die soon.
Ceres's response to that…
“Do you think I can't do it, so you're pulling some childish stunt?”
She was beyond furious.
-whoosh
Black mana bloomed in Ceres's hand.
An overwhelming, almost tangible density on a completely different level from any mana I'd seen before.
“Then die.”
-KWAJIJIJIK!!!
Ceres gave a light sweep of her arm.
With that simple motion alone, space was crushed flat.
It was as if everything in that space had been cleanly erased, like it had been chewed up by the jaws of some giant invisible monster.
The searchlight that had been there a moment ago, the brick wall, even the pouring rain.
All of it vanished without a trace.
More accurately…
not me, but the space right beside where I was standing.
“...Why am I… doing this….”
But Ceres, the one who had unleashed that terrifying strike, was muttering weakly with her head bowed.
Her hand, with nowhere to go, was trembling violently.
Ceres turned her back on me.
Her shoulders, rounded and hunched, looked especially forlorn.
Ceres's figure faded away like a heat haze.
“Die. Just die somewhere I can't see you. Cedric.”
Her cracked voice lingered in the air, then dispersed.
I waited, wondering if she'd come back to kill me before leaving.
“…….”
No. Seriously?
She's letting me live?
I guess it's fair to say Ceres's attachment to Cedric was stronger than I'd expected…
I had my doubts too,
but seeing it with my own eyes left me speechless.
“Anyway… it's really, really, really over.”
Either way, I'd squeezed out all the information I could before the next run.
All that was left was to run toward a happy ending with this as my foundation.
“No.”
There's still something I can do.
.
.
.
A little later.
I stood before Yiming's corpse.
“Phew….”
The more deaths I'd experienced, the more vividly I could recreate their manner of death.
And right now, I was under the effect of Premium Fever.
In other words, every death this run was a Cedric super-buff event.
My body was slick with oil now.
I had drenched my whole body in the Zippo lighter fluid I'd pulled from the Old World shop earlier.
“Fuck… but is this really right?”
This looks like it's going to hurt like hell.
No.
Enough with the weak thoughts.
Arbel still has to be dressed in a bunny girl outfit, doesn't she?
And I still have to see Ceres mama's one-person, two-role act.
“Big bro, watch over me!!!!!”
Thinking of Yiming's gallant figure right up until the very last moment,
I steeled my heart as it tried to weaken.
“All for the sake of a happy ending!!!!”
I gripped the lighter.
“El Psy Congroo.”
2.
Magic is
the act of painting one's delusions over the solid laws of the world.
To deny cold reality, you need a stubbornness even hotter and denser than that.
Something so vast it can't be controlled, something that sometimes even swallows reason whole.
The only anchor that keeps yourself tied to the world.
The word that pretties that up is the Mandate of Heaven.
“...Cedric.”
Ceres lifted a charred corpse into her arms.
Her shoulders trembled slowly, as if they might shatter.
That is why the Mandate of Heaven can never be a noble mission.
A terrible lack. Or a beastlike craving. Or an endlessly twisted desire.
Soon, an eternal curse.