Chapter 108
Learning black magic entails the pain of shaving away at one's soul.
This is not a literary exaggeration. Unlike ordinary magic, which harnesses the flow of nature, black magic truly uses one's own soul as the price.
Only two kinds of people can endure such pain.
Those stained by hatred for others to the point that they are willing to carve themselves away.
Or those who never placed much value on their own souls to begin with.
Kael was the latter.
As his master had endlessly repeated, he believed this world was a false one.
Otherwise, he could not understand the contradictions of this world.
Even though there was a goddess, and people who actually wielded the goddess's power, the world's evil never disappeared. Divine retribution did not exist, either.
The rich used their wealth to enjoy ever greater luxury, while the poor struggled in poverty their entire lives and despaired before a hopeless tomorrow.
The strong abused their power solely for themselves, while the weak merely crouched beneath them and submitted.
How could such a contradictory world be a proper world?
It had to be a fake world created to prove humanity's malice.
That was Kael's conclusion.
Thus, he had no hesitation whatsoever about wielding black magic with other people's lives and souls as materials.
They were all fakes anyway.
Rather, as one of the chosen, he felt they ought to be grateful that they could be used as materials for his pursuit of the truth.
But not all black mages were like that.
“A lot of trash decided to skip out.”
It was one day before they were to demonstrate their resolve in the imperial capital.
They had planned to gather today in advance, share the rough plan, and inspect everything.
But most of the members of his black-mage guild, ‘The Lonely Wolves Who Reveal the Truth of the World,’ had failed to show up for the meeting.
It was obvious.
As was typical of assorted nobodies.
They were probably either screwing corpses in some dark back alley or decorating their hideouts by spreading out intestines.
There had been many strange ones among them from the start, unlike the true black mages who pursued the truth of the world alongside him.
Still, it did not matter much.
The black mages currently present seemed more than sufficient to burn down a ducal mansion and turn it into a heap of corpses.
“Are the stored sacrifices sufficient?”
“Yes, Pale Citrus.”
“Peach Chiffon, how are your preparations?”
“Keshisit……! For tomorrow……!”
“It’s surprising that Cobalt Blue hasn’t shown up. Wasn’t he the one with a personal grudge against the Empire?”
“He’s always acted on his own.”
Since black mages were subjected to the world’s unjust persecution, they communicated through names assigned by the guild rather than the names they had been given at birth.
Kael—codename Strawberry Shake—declared with a confident smile.
“The powers that be have promised to give black mages more opportunities to walk openly through the Empire, not just for tomorrow’s undertaking. It’s not as though we’ve only recently learned that promises made by rulers are worthless, but since we have a document bearing his handwritten signature in our hands, he is the one who has been caught with a weakness.”
Power was always a fleeting thing, but the moment people became bewitched by it, they could no longer think normally.
Most of the people here probably did not know this.
The Empire’s First Prince, who had requested this uprising, had already had half his soul devoured by the guild’s vice-master.
No one knew what methods he had used…….
But if everything went according to plan, they would cover the entire Empire in black magic, eliminate the hero and saintess who so detestably interfered with their great cause within the Empire, and then.
They would even destroy the Holy Kingdom, which was desperately trying to conceal the truth of this world.
“Heh-heh-heh…….”
That was all he could think about.
* * *
“Saintess, this bastard’s laughing.”
“Leave him alone. He must be having a pleasant dream or something.”
The moment I became certain that something was plotting in the imperial capital, I immediately discussed it with Roselin.
The result.
We smashed the skulls of the black mages skulking around like rats with saintess punches, then smashed them again with a Hector knockoff bat.
Then, when night fell, we stormed in and rounded them all up after watching the red dots that had been scattered across the minimap swarm together toward one location.
That was the end of a tense arrest scene that could have stretched for three whole episodes if it had been presented as an elaborately choreographed battle sequence.
“By the way, you’re truly amazing, Kim Yul. How did you find all their locations?”
“They hid a clue here…….”
“Hmm…….”
Fortunately, the bizarre document they carried around, something called the Book of the End, was written entirely in Chinese characters.
So I did not have to damage my credibility by babbling about the spirits of Napoleon and Yi Sun-sin appearing alongside me.
Unfortunately, I could not discover the actual contents of the Book of the End.
It only borrowed Chinese characters for its writing.
In reality, the contents were completely jumbled.
It seemed almost designed to hint at the mental state of the people who carried it around.
“So what do we do now? Should we kill them all?”
“……Is it really all right for the saintess to use such vicious language as ‘a massacre party’?”
“What does it matter? I have no intention of treating these guys like people.”
Roselin pointed toward the wall with a nod.
A gruesome sight was displayed there, as though someone had tried to make a jump rope out of intestines, so I had no intention of opposing Roselin’s extreme ideology, either.
“Well…… I’ve already contacted the church, so they’ll probably arrive soon and clean this up.”
“You’re not one of that archbishop’s lackeys, are you?”
“Of course not.”
“That’s a relief. As for the Empire…….”
“Naturally, I have no intention of informing them?”
That was enough.
In a normal law-abiding state, the standard administrative procedure would have been to cooperate with the judicial authorities and round up the criminals.
But I had never taken the Empire’s public authorities into consideration, not from the moment I began planning a cozy midnight date with Roselin.
No matter how I looked at it.
Unless the black mages had all joined together to lead the charge in slandering the Empire──
the root of all evil that allowed these guys to run rampant in the imperial capital was the First Prince.
Was this really how a country was supposed to function?
Not long ago, a duke had pulled out a knockoff of the Night of the Long Knives and tried to stage a rebellion, only to fail.
And this time, the Empire’s First Prince had summoned black mages into the heart of the Empire and planned to ‘Jeong Mong-ju’ one of the Empire’s founding heroes?
Could it be that?
‘I Thought I’d Become a Plagiarist Author Transmigrated into a Romance-Fantasy World I’d Never Read or Written 5,700 Characters About, but I Was Actually a Hero’ was my genre concept all along?
If it was a rofan, then it checked out.
Just take away the hero title.
Now a suspiciously fat Northern Grand Duke would lead 30,000 knights down south and perform an encirclement-and-annihilation formation.
Then the emperor seated on the Golden Throne would have a secretly trained unit of 300 Rekons fight back while wielding six-kilogram daggers, and the worldbuilding would be complete.
Honestly, that sounded a little more interesting.
“Roselin.”
“Yes?”
“Let’s take one of them with us. The bastard who was grinning in his sleep earlier would be ideal. He looks evil even at a glance.”
“What are you going to use him for?”
Power could turn even incontrovertible physical evidence into ‘a memory that never existed.’
Of course, he may have reached an agreement with the emperor behind the scenes, but Duke Bertus’s plan had also been treated as though nothing had happened despite causing a few casualties.
With the First Prince’s power, this could naturally be swept under the rug as well.
Therefore, we needed to cooperate with someone a little more powerful than that.
The Second Prince?
No, he wouldn’t do. He didn’t have enough clout.
Going straight to the emperor would be a little awkward, too. Unless he was a ruler born with a unique trait like King Yeongjo, a father’s arm would naturally bend inward, no matter how much of a delinquent his son was.
So.
“I’m going to tell the First Princess.”
She was someone I had gotten slightly acquainted with when she had come to see a Beethoven Orchestra performance with the Second Prince.
She was older than the First Prince and higher in the courtly hierarchy.
And since siblings were born programmed to hate one another, she was probably the person most likely to burn with fury at the prospect of bringing down the First Prince with this evidence.
That was probably the First Princess.
.
.
.
After carefully packaging the evidence and helping clean up with the church’s holy-moly holy-attribute friends who arrived afterward.
“You really worked hard today.”
“Haha…….”
I couldn’t deny it, not even as empty politeness.
I merely scratched the back of my head.
Considering the skill cooldown and the aftereffects, summoning Hector and letting it dwell in my body was a little too much.
Since I wanted to subdue them on equal footing whenever possible, I had fought using only skills and had crossed the brink of life and death several times in the process.
If not for Jo Sik’s Seven Steps, I might have died long ago. Survival skills really were an eternal truth.
Despite all that effort, I ended up using Divine Possession while subduing the black mages’ main base at the end…….
“You’re heading straight home, right? I’m sorry I can’t see you off.”
“Wouldn’t it be more appropriate for me to see you home, Roselin……?”
Roselin chuckled at my words.
“Even though you’re weaker than me.”
Her innocent joke stabbed me right through the chest.
Ha…….
Starting tomorrow, I’d have to double the training routine Senior Seraphine had put together for me.
Of course, Roselin really was an existence beyond the standard, but having my masculinity undermined to my face like this still made me angry.
After saying goodbye to Roselin.
“Agh, I’m dying…….”
Since I had been acting as calm as possible to preserve my pride in front of Roselin, I tore off that mask and began groaning loudly.
It was insanely hard, seriously.
I have no idea what riches or glory a shut-in scribbler expected to gain by pretending to be a hero…….
Still, though.
Surely it was better for me to suffer a little than for something unpleasant to happen to our Desuwa-speaking airheaded young lady’s household.
Come to think of it.
“Is it around here?”
It was near Chloe’s New Sweet Elf House, where she had recently bounced around shouting, ‘I’m finally independent, desuwa! I’m a proper adult elf now, desuwaaaat!’
It was getting a little late, but.
My legs were trembling badly…….
I figured it would be better to brazenly ask her to let me stay for just one night.
As her exclusive author and a VIP, I naturally deserved that much special treatment. If she refused, what was she going to do about it? Take the noble bike out for a spin?
Besides, I had the inner justification that I had protected the peace of her household.
That was a perfect justification.
Looking at the minimap, she was scurrying around by herself, so she did not seem to be sleeping, either.
.
.
中
.
In the end, that was the wrong decision.
Or perhaps it was precisely the right decision.
What greeted me when I arrived in front of Chloe’s New Sweet Elf House was.
“Elkieeeyaaah──!”
She was screaming over and over.
A monster with a flower on its head.
A monster whose body was made of shadow but whose face was that of a dog.
Well…… I saw Chloe wildly swinging her staff while being relentlessly chased by bizarre monsters like those.
Why was she doing this?
She seemed to be having a hard time every time I saw her lately…….
As I stared blankly at the ridiculous scene, wondering what kind of farce this was.
Chloe, hopping around here and there, once again turned one of the monster’s body parts into a seamstress doll, and our eyes met.
“K-k-Kim Yuuul──! Save me, desuwaaaak! Eek!”
Wow.
That was hardcore. Really hardcore.
She stubbornly tacked ‘desuwa’ onto the words ‘save me.’