Chapter 41
As the morning sunshine poured in, Kraush opened his eyes.
Perhaps it was due to the fatigue from the battle with Berkman.
He slowly realized that he had fallen asleep once again.
“What kind of disgraceful guy falls asleep with a girl at that age?”
At that moment, Kraush heard a voice and turned his head.
Sitting at the edge of the bed was a raven—Crimson Garden.
“What nonsense is that?”
“Look beside you.”
Kraush, whose reaction was one of disbelief, glanced to his left and saw the person lying there.
None other than Bianca.
She was tightly holding onto her left arm, and her eyes were swollen.
After crying so much in the early morning, it was only natural.
Once she woke up, her face would have to swell up like that, of course.
At least, it snows year-round in Hadenharts, so that would be quite fitting.
“How’s your arm?”
Hearing Crimson Garden’s question, Kraush looked at his right arm.
It was nothing but an empty space.
No feeling in that regard at all.
“Doesn’t feel like anything,” he replied.
“Well, of course, since you don’t have an arm!”
Then why ask?
“So what now?”
Crimson Garden threw another question at him.
Kraush had promised to become the strongest and steal her immortality.
But now that his arm was cut off…
It was clear that this would prevent him from keeping that promise.
“Don’t worry.”
However, Kraush seemed unfazed by the current situation.
“I know how to restore my arm.”
“Haha.”
Crimson Garden chuckled softly at Kraush.
“Is this the confidence of a regressor?”
“If anything, it’s something I can resolve just by heading to the Holy Kingdom.”
The Holy Kingdom of Freeman, one of the four great kingdoms.
There was a saint there who purportedly resurrects even the dead.
“Though that’s just the propaganda of the Holy Kingdom.”
But it was true that the saint possessed such power.
She had been bathed in holy relics from the moment she was born.
Thanks to that, she was practically a monster filled with divine power.
But he couldn’t just borrow the saint’s power immediately.
Although her treatment had changed a bit recently, he was still a nobody.
It wouldn’t be that the Berkman family would spend a fortune hiring the saint.
Berkman wasn’t the kind of family that would be so generous.
At most, they might consider summoning a priest.
“Yet, you’re saying you have no intention of borrowing divine power, huh.”
Crimson Garden showed an intriguing reaction.
Seeing her, Kraush felt a bit uneasy dealing with her as a regressor, but he suggested a method to restore his arm.
“Since I lost my right arm, I’m going to replace it with the best one available.”
“Haha, if arms could be swapped out so easily, everyone in the world would be doing it.”
“But there’s someone who can do it.”
When Kraush smirked, Crimson Garden stopped her mocking tone.
“…Are you saying you’re going to save that guy?”
The person Crimson Garden was referring to was none other than Ebelasque.
The world’s only necromancer.
She was a woman who could handle even dead bodies.
Giving him a new arm would be no big deal at all.
“This is all just a coincidence.”
Even for Kraush, he didn’t want to do something crazy like intentionally cutting off his arm.
This was simply happenstance.
Ebelasque happened to be around, and his arm got cut off.
So he would just use her—that was it.
“But I am worried about what she might ask for in return.”
For giving him an arm, what would she demand?
Right now, he needed to focus on getting an arm.
“So, what kind of arm do you plan to get?”
“The Sword Demon.”
The moment Kraush answered without hesitation, Crimson Garden stiffened.
Kraush watched her and smiled slowly.
The Sword Demon.
Once a powerful force that made waves in the world; a master of swordplay.
No one in this world could even come close to matching his sword techniques.
“This rotten bastard.”
And that Sword Demon was none other than Crimson Garden’s servant.
The servant she cherished the most.
“So, can I have that arm?”
“Absolutely not! Live as a one-armed man!”
“But we made a deal! You’ve got to make me stronger!”
“The Sword Demon has been my beloved servant since I was a child!”
“Well, I might as well be raised with some love too!”
Kraush shot a look at Crimson Garden as if questioning her constant scolding.
Crimson Garden, in turn, spread her wings wide, looking utterly incredulous.
“You ungrateful brat! I painstakingly trained my talent-lacking servant, and you dare look at your master like that!”
“C’mon, Crimson, aren’t you being a bit overdramatic? The Sword Demon died ages ago!”
The Sword Demon was indeed dead.
He had died a natural death—aging took him away.
Crimson Garden could share her immortality.
In fact, she had once shared her immortality with Serah, one of Sizzley’s subordinates.
“Not that it’s real immortality or anything.”
Unlike the immortality Crimson Garden had, what she transferred to Serah was a half-baked version of immortality.
To put it precisely, it was more akin to super fast regeneration.
“And the drawback of that half-baked immortality is that it consumes the target’s life force to activate.”
That’s why the immortality she offered was decidedly inferior.
Immortality meant you could never die.
If you lost all your life force, you’d be dead—so that wasn’t true immortality.
Because of this, Crimson Garden couldn’t resurrect the Sword Demon, whom she treasured deeply.
“I know you’re attached to your servant.”
For Crimson Garden, her servants were the only window to see the world.
So she carelessly poured her emotions onto them.
Even knowing it would eventually hurt her, she still kept pouring emotions into her servants.
Kraush was well aware that Crimson Garden’s weakness was ironically her servants.
‘Arthur directly told me how to find Crimson Garden’s true location.’
The method Arthur had given to find Crimson Garden involved capturing her servants and torturing them directly.
Given that the saint was here, her servants wouldn’t die no matter what torture they faced.
Knowing that, Crimson Garden would likely reveal the location of her true body.
When Arthur spoke those words, there was something soulless in his eyes.
As if he was just doing what he had to do, repeating his actions continuously.
He had long since broken down.
“But the Sword Demon has been dead for a long time.”
Crimson Garden flinched.
“But his skills haven’t perished. You must know those techniques by heart.”
Kraush raised his empty right arm.
“If I have the Sword Demon’s arm, I can resurrect those skills.”
Kraush was already adept at mastering techniques.
With Crimson Garden’s help, he would surely be able to learn the sword techniques of the Sword Demon.
“Maybe even the Sword Demon himself would wish for that?”
“……”
Crimson Garden stood stiffly, her wings spread wide.
Then she folded her wings and glared at Kraush.
“You little brat with a sharp tongue. You think you can drop crumbs just by wagging your tongue?”
Is this a failure?
As Kraush pondered how to sway Crimson Garden, she moved to stand by the window.
“…Wait a couple of days.”
Unexpectedly, this was the response he received.
Did she finally agree?
Kraush smiled slightly.
“Thank you, Crimson Garden.”
“Calling me by my true name only when asking for something. How rude.”
Crimson Garden flared her wings in a huff and flew out.
Watching her go, Kraush breathed a sigh of relief.
He certainly couldn’t return to Berkman without an arm.
‘The real problem is that Hadenharts might have already reported this back to Berkman.’
This place, the North Sea Ice Palace, was the main residence of Hadenharts.
Which meant that Hadenharts surely knew about his condition.
There was no way Berkman wouldn’t have been informed.
‘How to cover this up…’
If he returned after losing an arm, only to suddenly regain it, Berkman would be baffled.
‘If I can align with Hadenharts, I might be able to resolve things.’
The arm situation was manageable.
But the real issue was regarding himself, who was presumably at the Green Pine Palace.
If he suddenly appeared from Hadenharts, it would create some buzz in Berkman too.
‘I’m really worried about Aliod’s side.’
After some contemplation, Kraush shook his head.
If it’s something that can’t be resolved immediately, then there’s no point in brooding too much over it.
That’s just how he was.
He could always cover things up somehow.
If necessary, he could even bring out some of his punkish side.
‘What could they do if I just acted like a madman?’
In the first place, a discarded child—what did it matter where he came from?
For now, he could just wait for Crimson Garden to bring him the Sword Demon’s arm.
‘And I’d like to research my Desolation Penetration some more.’
The Desolation Penetration was a technique he had created by combining Ignis and his Extreme Blood Poison.
In some ways, it could be considered Kraush’s original technique.
Given the firepower back then, it would undoubtedly become a tremendous card in the future.
‘The real issue is the duration.’
At his current level, even if his body overcame its limits, it wouldn’t last more than three seconds.
Having this limitation felt a lot like the restrictions of his previous sword techniques.
‘Is practice the only answer?’
Even so, he had solved the issue of the Extreme Blood Poison’s drawback, which was the light madness.
The curse of the eye doll he had stolen from Bianca would suppress that madness.
‘The effect of the eye doll…’
Kraush thought of a few memories, experimenting out of curiosity.
The anger that boiled up was certainly lesser than before.
But that didn’t mean that emotions, like Bianca’s, were completely erased.
It felt more like emotions were being forcibly suppressed.
‘The curse’s effectiveness diminishes when the target changes.’
Moreover, Kraush had realized that the eye doll curse didn’t completely erase emotions; it merely suppressed them.
The reason he sometimes felt that Bianca wasn’t entirely emotionless might have been due to this.
‘At that time, a stronger curse must have swallowed up the eye doll curse, making it completely unnoticeable.’
He had vaguely thought of it as erasing emotions.
However, from Kraush’s perspective, this was more welcome.
‘If this is the case…’
Kraush’s eyes sparkled.
‘It’s manageable.’
Kraush had absorbed countless curses within himself.
As a result, while he couldn’t handle the highest-grade curses, he knew how to deal with the lower ones.
He didn’t just claim to be an expert on curses for nothing.
So, there was a reason he had originally attempted to steal the eye doll curse.
Kraush slowly began to awaken the suppressed madness he had been holding back.
‘To offset the madness together with the eye doll’s curse.’
In that instant, he began to feel the world turning red.
Once he released his senses, it felt like the madness was about to erupt.
But at that very moment, Kraush awakened the curse of the eye doll.
Just like fastening a leash on a wild dog, the eye doll curse forcibly suppressed the madness.
As a result, the world that had been turning red began to gradually return to its original colors.
A hot breath let out of Kraush’s mouth, followed by laughter.
That laughter served as evidence that he had completely taken control of the eye doll curse.
“Nothing too special.”
As Kraush’s mastery of the powers of Desolation continued to grow, the madness would also strengthen.
Someday, there would come a time when he could not be restrained even by the eye doll.
But he could always find a way to offset it later.
At least for the time being, he should be able to live without the worries of madness from the eye doll.
That meant Bianca wouldn’t have to worry about feeling emotionless either.
A rustling noise—
At that moment, Kraush felt something moving to his left.
Turning his head, he saw Bianca slowly rising while huddled up.
“…Kraush-nim.”
She immediately looked for Kraush as soon as she woke up.
But with her eyes so swollen, she seemed to be groping around for him.
Seeing this, Kraush felt a strange mix of emotions and held her hand.
Only then did Bianca appear to relax.
“Can you see now?”
“My eyes hurt.”
Well, it was only natural for her to feel pain after swelling up like that.
“How’s your stomach?”
“I’m hungry.”
Luckily, she was still as straightforward as ever.
“Let’s eat then.”
We need to fill that belly up!
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