༺ Incomplete (3) ༻
“……Young master!”
The title felt somewhat unfamiliar to Ferzen now.
The ones approaching him were the Knights and Wizards of the Brutein family, and the welcome faces filled him with a sense of belonging. A faint smile graced Ferzen’s lips as he greeted them.
“How have you all been?”
“We are just the same… More importantly, we smell blood on you, Young Master.”
“There was a little commotion on the way here. Anything happening on your end?”
“No, nothing. More importantly, are you hurt, Young Master? The blood……”
“This isn’t mine. If there are any scars, they’re probably just cuts on my fingers.”
Both were self-inflicted, but Ferzen decided not to mention that fact. Instead, he looked up at the building where they were staying.
“Please, Young Master, come inside. You seem exhausted. Since we’re here, you can rest in peace.”
Except for the Imperial Family’s corps, the Brutein family’s knight and wizard corps were considered the Empire’s elite.
This place should be as safe as it gets, guarded by them. However, Ferzen shook his head and touched the ring on his left hand, his altar.
“Young master?”
“Don’t see this as a lack of trust. I just want to make this place even more secure.”
Wooong!
Suddenly, beneath the pouring rain, a door to the Underworld appeared behind Ferzen. The floor number displayed on top of the door was three.
The knights and wizards couldn’t help but gasp.
“Young master…! You’ll be spending a lot of money!”
“Do you think I don’t know that?”
“Aren’t we trustworthy enough?”
“It’s not that I don’t trust you.”
For these knights and wizards who had pledged their loyalty to him, feeling that they weren’t fully trusted by their employer struck at their pride.
But Ferzen, unaware of their feelings, simply looked at the slowly opening door to the Underworld and continued in a quiet voice.
“I’m always proud of you. I’m grateful for your unwavering loyalty. But that doesn’t mean I’ll hold back from doing everything I can.”
The average lifespan of a human being in this world is 80 years.
How many deaths of others would one person experience in those 80 years?
Certainly, the number would not be small.
Yet, most people lived without fearing the death of their loved ones.
It could be said that the fact that humans didn’t fear death because they hadn’t witnessed it with their own eyes was their greatest blessing.
But it was also their cruelest curse.
After all, wasn’t there a saying that you don’t realize the value of something until you’ve lost it?
However, Ferzen was not one of those people who only realized the value of something after losing it.
He had experienced the deaths of others many times, making him acutely aware of how terrifying death truly was.
That’s why, despite his usual domineering and stubborn demeanor, he chose to become a coward who trembled with fear in the face of death, especially when it came to himself and his loved ones.
“……I don’t want to blame my subordinates if something happens that I couldn’t handle.”
“If I did that, wouldn’t I become an unwise and erroneous master?”
“Young master………”
“Please, don’t turn me into a person who can’t even realize my own shortcomings and blames all of my failures on my subordinates’ incompetence.”
“We understand.”
All the knights and wizards present bowed their heads in agreement.
They knew that there was nothing worse than a subordinate who tried to shift the burden of responsibility away from their Lord.
Seeing them accept his sentiment without protest, Ferzen continued speaking with his back still turned to the wide-open Underworld door.
“The payment method is immediate, and the deadline is two months…”
The transaction’s goal was a direct descent, not an ability to borrow.
……As soon as Ferzen was prepared to pay the price, the nameplate hanging on the door to the underworld began to change rapidly with each passing moment.
Some of the knights couldn’t help but secretly raise their heads toward the door.
How could they, born humans, suppress their curiosity when a warlock was making a deal with the Underworld right before their eyes, especially a deal with a monster residing on the 3rd floor?
“—!”
But when the nameplate on the underworld door stopped changing, indicating that a monster had accepted Ferzen’s deal, all the knights who had been covertly observing the door drew their swords, almost instinctively.
Even though it had been just for a fleeting moment, they had glimpsed dozens of pairs of eyes on the other side of that small door. Those eyes evoked a primal fear, unlike anything they had felt before.
Reason seemed to fail them, and what compelled them to move and draw their swords was their instincts, honed through years of training.
Some among them, particularly young knights with little practical experience, couldn’t maintain their posture and fell to one knee.
However, the fact that they clung to their swords until the very end despite the overwhelming fear attested to their excellence as knights.
Moments later, what appeared to be innumerable insect-like or rather, arthropod-like legs—resembling those of spiders—sprang out from the other side of the small door.
Even those who hadn’t glanced toward the door were sweating at that moment, desperately trying to hold their breath.
They hoped that the sound of their exhaled breath and their wildly pounding hearts would be drowned out by the pouring rain.
Finally, when the monster emerged, the underworld door behind Ferzen vanished into thin air.
The monster, not yet fully assimilated with its surroundings, shot a thread into the sky and climbed up.
As they saw its distorted form amidst the pouring rain, the knights and wizards couldn’t help but gulp nervously.
Meanwhile, some fractured memories began to surface in Ferzen’s mind, much like when he was inside the dream barrier. He murmured as if speaking to himself.
“Connecting the world with its thread……”
And making it its nest.
“……”
Beyond that point, there were no more fragments of memory. Ferzen naturally lowered his head.
Ferzen couldn’t deny that he harbored questions about why he possessed information about the underworld, something he shouldn’t even know existed.
However, since there was no immediate answer to this question, he decided not to dwell on it too much.
Instead, he turned his attention to the ring on his left hand, or more precisely, the subspace within it.
“You took quite a lot.”
The subspace was nearly empty. If the vanished items were converted into gold coins, Ferzen couldn’t even begin to estimate their value.
The monster, which clearly heard Ferzen’s words, stopped climbing into the sky using its thread and descended to the ground.
“……”
Ferzen could clearly see the monster bowing its head, an action that seemed out of place for its large, fearsome form.
Thump!
At that moment, Ferzen witnessed an unusual and endearing sight that he knew he would never forget: a monster from the underworld timidly returning some of the items it had taken as payment to its contractor.
* * * * *
When Ferzen closed the umbrella and entered the inn, he couldn’t help but frown as the smell of blood grew stronger. Without further delay, he headed straight to his room.
In the capital city of the Roverium Kingdom, there were few large mansions due to the kingdom’s nature. Ferzen had chosen what could be considered a luxurious inn as his base, almost a hotel by local standards.
Of course, compared to the hotels in Seo-jin’s memory, it might have seemed shabby.
However, given the difference in civilizations, ‘luxurious’ would be a more suitable description than ‘shabby.’
‘Fortunately, it didn’t take my clothes.’
The clothes he had stored inside his subspace held considerable value, and he was relieved that they hadn’t been taken as payment.
He calmly entered the bathroom attached to his room and started taking a shower.
Hot water was a luxury, so Ferzen closed his eyes and let the cold water wash over him.
As his body temperature dropped, he found himself missing the warmth of the two women his body remembered.
‘Are they already asleep? Did they have a good dinner?’
“……”
Even though he appeared as someone who could easily take a life, inside, Ferzen was worried about the safety and well-being of his two women.
‘Maybe……’
Those people also find happiness in this kind of daily life.
However, he didn’t feel sympathy, pity, or any urge to free himself from a vague sense of guilt.
On the contrary, with every life he took, he became more aware of how fragile these moments were.
Euphemia and Yuriel had nothing to do with his bloody path, and neither would his soon-to-be-born child.
In his life, there was no saintly gentleman who would renounce revenge, saying it only led to more revenge or claim – ‘I won’t become like you!’
Ferzen von Schweig Louerg.
He continued the cycle of a villain in silence, as he always did.
TL note: 15/20
IT’S MAH BIRTHDAY BITCHES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
IM OFFICIALLY ON MAH MID 20S NOW HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH IM STIL SINGLE! CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS BULLSHIT!!
I WAS PROMISED A ROMCOM ARC!
WHERE
TF
IS
MAH
HAPPY ROMANTIC LIFE HUH?!
Also also
Big eldritch spider monster ashamed….You don’t see that every day.
Btw there’s this song on youtube, Its called — A Just Ronin By Solas.
Man this shit can make my stupid hyper brain enter such a zen state.
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