Chapter: 154
Sudden floods surged as acid rain poured down.
Before they could react, the rising waters swept everything away in an instant.
And to protect everyone, Muzkan, the magician, burned through his magic to hold back the flood in the lake.
As a result, he exhausted all his strength and ultimately lost his life.
It was the price paid for everything.
There was no regret on his face.
The regret, instead, belonged to those who remained.
“This fool, this idiot…”
Especially Ruze was having a tough time.
“…We can’t take the body with us.”
Just before dying, Muzkan had laid everything he could offer from his spatial pockets.
Now, there was no magician to pack their gear.
Each had to carry their own burdens.
Besides, they could no longer enjoy magical protection.
“I’ll take care of it.”
“No, it’s fine.”
Ruze, wiping away tears, shook her head at Ebelasque’s insistence to take the body with her.
“Your heart isn’t limitless. This is enough.”
Ruze wrapped her arms around her belly.
Seeing that, Ebelasque realized what she meant.
In the acid rain, Muzkan, with his regret-free face, faded into nothingness.
The journey of the remaining trio continued.
And shortly after, the second casualty emerged.
Ruze was the second victim.
She had demonstrated her elite skills as a one-armed swordsman, but being one-armed led to her demise.
The creatures attacked, and the poison from their attacks hit her empty arm, claiming her heart.
“Ruze, no! No!”
Ebelasque screamed and poured all the potions she had saved for her, but her life was slipping away quickly.
“Haha, Muzkan… I couldn’t even protect the connection to Seok.”
Ruze, spitting out blood, slowly closed her eyes, regret written all over her face.
“If I were alone, it would have been okay…”
Wrapping her arms around her belly, filled with deep regret, Ruze met her end.
Naturally, they couldn’t take her body either.
Ebelasque’s mana was reaching its limit as well.
“…Let’s go.”
The Iron-Hand and Ebelasque continued on, eventually left alone.
The conversation between them began to dwindle.
Sensing the change, the Iron-Hand slowly talked about his daughter, almost to himself.
Ebelasque could only listen in silence.
Then one day.
As always, the ground confirmed by Ebelasque collapsed beneath her feet.
Unluckily, underground acidic water surged up, instantly melting everything below, causing the ground above to crumble as well.
Ah, so this is how I die.
Thoughts of Aimi flashed through Ebelasque’s mind as she gazed at the fading sky.
She wanted to see Aimi again.
Having long since given up hope and worn out by her body, it was then her eyes closed, filled with regret.
In that moment of near plummeting into the acidic lake, she was caught by the Iron-Hand.
He swiftly lifted her body upward.
When Ebelasque opened her eyes wide after being hauled up, she found herself rolling on the surface.
After rolling around for a while and coughing, she lifted her head.
What lay ahead was just an empty wasteland.
“…Iron-Hand?”
Ebelasque called out to him, but he was nowhere to be found.
Her face went pale.
Rushing back to the spot she fell, all that greeted her was rushing acidic water.
In that final moment, the Iron-Hand had thrown himself to catch her, plunging into the acidic lake.
“A, ah…”
Overwhelmed with despair due to her mistake, she sank deep into sorrow.
He had come to the surface to save his daughter.
Yet he prioritized himself over her.
Ebelasque understood.
Subconsciously, he had been treating her as if she were his daughter.
Because she was of the same age as his daughter, such behavior had naturally slipped out.
In the Iron-Hand’s eyes, there had always been a mix of longing and regret.
And at the very last moment, the Iron-Hand chose to save her instead.
Ebelasque rose from the ground.
Exposed to the acidic rain, with her skin and legs melting, she began to move forward again.
Since the Iron-Hand had saved her life,
she now had to fulfill his goal.
His singular goal:
To save his daughter.
And the goal of Benapoch:
To save the city.
With the name of hope held close, she did not let it go and kept pushing forward.
It was tough.
The world, heading towards destruction, kept binding Ebelasque’s ankles, and her body became increasingly battered.
“Cough, cough.”
Eventually, her body reached its limit.
Death was looming near.
But she couldn’t die.
Everyone had sacrificed so much to send her this far.
So she decided to become a corpse herself.
“AAAHHHH!”
Screaming, she extracted her own heart and cast necromancy.
As a result, she transformed into a monster that was human yet not human.
Holding the blood-dripping heart, she began to move her lifeless body.
Free from death, her body could now keep moving onward.
“It’s close, it’s close.”
The signals were growing stronger.
Thus, she pushed herself to keep going.
And.
And at the end of it—
Finally, her journey reached its conclusion.
Thud—
She slowly picked up the magical signal device, half-buried in the sand.
Where the acid rain was clearly absent.
This was the place the previous exploration team had risked their lives to discover; surely, the acid rain was gone.
However, it was not a place where anyone could live.
It was simply devoid of acid rain.
The sunshine, shining fiercely without a filter, melted everything away.
Ebelasque looked at the sun she had seen on the first day and felt its warmth.
But the ozone layer and atmosphere were destroyed, making it impossible for humans to survive directly under the harsh sunlight.
The investigation team looked at the clear sky without clouds, believing the surface had recovered.
Yet the reality was different.
There were no bodies from the first exploration team.
The supply had all run out, and amid the storm of acid rain and magic barrier, they had lost their path back.
Thus, under this sun, they had melted into nothing but sand.
Only the remaining mana in the rescue request magic signal faintly sustained a protective spell.
“Too much, isn’t it?”
With a cracked voice, Ebelasque began to cry.
This was the place they had risked their lives to reach with the four of them.
Some were looking for their daughters.
Some sought friends.
Some desired to be the hope.
Some yearned for paradise.
They had come this far.
But for this to be the outcome?
Ebelasque plunged into unbearable emotions, feeling all their efforts had gone to waste.
Whoosh—
Boom!
And then, as if proclaiming her end, the storm of acid rain roared back on their path.
Standing there, she smiled as if liberated.
Then she began to wander beneath the sun she had believed was paradise.
Hoping there might be a shred of paradise here.
Amid destruction, she walked aimlessly.
Having poured all her mana into protection, once she had used every last bit, she finally collapsed.
The blazing sun began to melt her body.
But she lacked the strength to counter it now.
It occurred to her that she should have done this much sooner.
To see her comrades again.
To see her friend Aimi again.
It was when she closed her eyes for the last time.
The sand beneath her crumbled away.
And when her weary body was sucked into the fallen sand, she opened her eyes again.
Cold water touched her head.
When she regained her senses, she was surrounded by lakes and forests.
The moment she stared in awe at the scenery, which she had only seen in books, the word paradise popped into her mind.
“Everyone!”
Just as Ebelasque hurriedly sat up, the same forest greeted her.
She moved forward, dazed.
There was nothing.
The intense sun that had just shone and the acidic rain were nowhere to be found.
And her companions and the world; all were gone.
Even after finding paradise, she had nothing now.
The moment she confronted that reality, she felt shivers of deep loneliness creeping in.
So cold.
So cold it felt as though her insides were rotting away.
The feeling of being abandoned alone in the world quickly gnawed at her.
“Ah, no! No! I’m here! I’m a necromancer!”
Then she began to deny reality.
She was a necromancer.
One who dealt with corpses.
The ultimate goal of a necromancer is to revive even the dead to the point of indistinguishable from the living.
If she reached that state, she could be together with her companions in paradise.
Despite the reality where there wasn’t even a handful of corpses she could revive, she clenched her fists tightly.
Ebelasque Benapoch.
The world’s one and only necromancer thus became a world eroder.
And this world eroder now faced a lone boy.
“Ebelasque Benapoch.”
The boy, with blue eyes, looked directly at her.
“When will you stop denying reality?”
Kraush’s words pierced deep into Ebelasque’s heart.
Her hair trembled.
She understood.
She had lived long denying reality until now.
And so, wanting to avoid facing that reality, she shut herself away even more.
“What do you know? What do you know!?”
Thick tears began to fall from Ebelasque’s eyes.
It had been such a hard journey.
Yet she wanted to return to that journey.
It was the only time in her life she could have moved forward the most.
In this place, she was an eroder.
Just a stranger.
“I know.”
Kraush chuckled lightly, looking at Ebelasque.
Indeed, he had heard plenty of her tales.
Locked away in prison, she had spoken of her past daily.
Back then, Kraush couldn’t understand Ebelasque’s feelings.
But now he did.
He too had desperately fought for survival even after losing everyone.
That day when they couldn’t prevent the destruction.
Kraush had also fallen deep into despair.
The weight of all that hope crushed down on a person’s shoulder.
“I’ve lost everyone I was close to in this world.”
Though they might be the same people, the ones in Kraush’s memory no longer existed.
They could never return from the world they had lost.
Just as Ebelasque couldn’t save a single one of her friends,
Kraush couldn’t save even one of his comrades either.
All that remained were memories.
“But I keep living. Because they saved me and brought me this far.”
To avoid repeating the same mistakes.
Kraush fought with all his might to live for today.
He thought that was the only way to repay those who had been with him.
“And isn’t that the same for you? You’ve been living on without being able to hold onto your goal.”
Kraush took a step forward.
At that, Ebelasque’s body jolted.
“It’s frightening. Being left all alone.”
Loneliness is severe.
The loneliness that no one remembers the world she once knew is inexpressibly harsh.
So Ebelasque had denied reality.
For if not, she felt she would be forever alone in this world.
“That’s why you hide then. Even if you try to leave something behind in this world, you’re afraid you’ll lose it all again.”
Ebelasque’s eyes wavered.
Snow began to fall slowly from the sky.
And through the falling snow, Kraush’s eyes shone blue.
With snow descending, Ebelasque trembled.
“Ebelasque.”
Kraush spoke to the tear-filled, speechless Ebelasque.
“Let’s make a deal, like back then.”
Ebelasque’s past and Kraush’s beginning were surely different.
“Just one deal, Kraush.”
After the Black Witch’s death, she had asked Kraush for that in prison.
“I’ll tell you one secret the Ephania Palace has kept hidden.”
With a relinquished smile, she leaned her head against the bars in that moment.
“Break my heart that Aria possesses.”
Back then, Kraush had definitely taken a deal for death from her.
“I will inherit the immortality of Crimson Garden.”
But now, she was uttering a completely different deal than before.
Ebelasque’s eyes widened.
Ebelasque was immortal in a sense different from Crimson Garden.
However, she could choose to break her own heart and die if she wanted.
She merely chose not to die for the sake of her old comrades.
She was a half-baked immortal.
But Crimson Garden was different.
She was genuinely immortal.
And Kraush would inherit that same immortality.
“Even if you crumble and vanish, I will continue to live in this world.”
Everyone who had once been by her side had crumbled away.
Not a single friend, comrade, or world remained for her.
This loneliness had scared her, making her cling to resurrection.
She was still terrified now.
Terrified of seeing those beside her leave her and the loneliness that would come next.
Amidst this loneliness she had entrenched herself in,
the boy who had stepped into her life began to color that darkness.
Kraush’s hand cradled Ebelasque’s head.
Thanks to using Annihilation Erosion, warmth flowed through his hand, soaking into her.
Ebelasque raised her head.
The boy reflected in her teary eyes wore an innocent smile.
“If you’re lonely, just stick by my side. I won’t leave you alone.”
Tears streamed down Ebelasque’s trembling cheeks.
She could inherit all the loneliness she had experienced so far.
Stealing was her specialty when it came to curses.
“So help me out.”
Kraush pointed to the mountain.
“How about we try saving this world together this time?”
On the snowy peak,
the two who had experienced a ruined world and lost everything now faced each other in the current one.
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