Chapter 45 – What Is That, 10duck Bird!! (7)
The entrance of the ‘Wandering Mist’, a large-scale barrier of the ‘Witch of the Mist’ Mystrina, in front of the thick fog that made it impossible to see the situation inside, the hero Luke and his companions made up their minds once again.
According to what I heard from the ‘Smoke Witch’, that fog itself is the witch’s magic and will. So no matter what happened inside, it wouldn’t be strange, so Luke and his colleagues made up their minds and each held on to the ropes connecting each other.
Yes. Now, Luke and his companions were connected to each other with a long rope.
Even if it is a rope, it is not common to find it at general stores, and this magic rope that has undergone special magical processing will not break so easily no matter how much it is in the fog… ‘ Was proud.
“Special magic processing?”
“Yes. Referring to Dr. Aleista’s magic theory, the giant tarantula’s thread and the orc’s bloodline were woven in a ratio of 4:6 based on the Maginocraft formula, and then according to the Ark Radle formula…”
“What the hell is that…”
“You know you’re ignorant and show off. This is the basic of the basics for a 7th tier wizard… Oh, that’s right. You don’t know about a sloppy wizard who hasn’t even reached the 5th tier?”
“…So why haven’t you been using that fancy magic rope yet?”
‘The Witch of the Mist’ giggled as she blew smoke into Viola’s sarcastic face.
“What do you do if the rope is fine? The necks of the people who hung that rope are not fine first?”
“Cough, Cough! Mr. Ai, I’m really going to kill you someday!”
“If you could, would you kill them? One… In 100 years? Giggle giggle!”
It was so childish that it was hard to believe that it was a conversation between wizards who were famous for being smart, and Luke wanted to sigh. What the hell are you doing in front of a huge barrier magic that could put your life in danger…
No, your life won’t be in danger. At least Luke was so sure.
Circumstantially, the ‘Witch of the Mist’ is from the side of Ragnar Armageddon. And for some reason, since Baron Ragnar Armageddon is leaving him and his companions unharmed, there is no way that the ‘Witch of the Mist’ will take their lives.
Although there is no definitive proof…
Eventually, Luke shook his head vigorously. This kind of thinking is not good. In a situation where all of your colleagues believe in you and give it to you, what will you do if you do not believe in yourself? Be confident in your thoughts and move forward.
“Hey kids, are you all ready?”
“Yeah, I’m ready.”
“If this damn rope is really good, well… It’ll be fine, right?”
With the strongest Gordon at the forefront, Hochna, who has a clear ear, and Luke, who has a flexible ability to deal with the situation, set up a camp to protect Elia and Viola, the warriors, Lee and the others, moved into the thick fog where they could not see an inch ahead.
*
The current formation of Luke’s party and the direction of the rope
Gordon →↓
Hawk or Luke
↑ ↓
Elia ← Viola
*
“…It’s worse than I thought.”
The wide-range barrier magic that the ‘Witch of the Mist’ spread. ‘Wandering Fog’.
With the ‘Mansion of Mist’ she resides as the center axis, the entire western part of the capital, El Harda, has been swallowed up by the mist.
It was a fog that made it impossible to see inside even from the outside, but the condition inside was beyond imagination. All you can see is really five steps ahead. Anything beyond that is obscured by fog, making it impossible to identify.
Luke looked at me with hopeful anticipation, but she sighed and shook her head.
“I don’t know what the hell they did, but there’s no big difference between the eyesight of an elf and a human in this place. The fortunate thing is…”
Fuck!
While she was talking, Hawk I suddenly raised the bow that was strapped to her back and struck the fog right next to her. Then she said “Oops!” With a brief agony, someone broke through her fog and collapsed.
“…Your hearing is perfect, so you can quickly notice if someone approaches you.”
“This person is…?”
“I don’t know who it is, but he’s not friendly towards us. He intentionally hid his footsteps before approaching. Regardless of how he found us in this thick fog…”
Ping, ping, weedy liquid!
“Kwaaaaak!”
“Ugh, ugh…!”
Hawk I cut her off again and fired two arrows in quick succession at her unseen beyond her fog, followed by two screams and the sound of something falling.
“This is the end of the guys who were nearby. There are three of them in total, all holding weapons and smelling blood from their bodies, so this doesn’t seem like the first time.”
“Come to think of it, it’s been about a week since this fog opened. And there are cases where you can’t get out of the fog without her permission…”
“There are probably people who are forced to attack other people to survive because they accidentally enter the fog and can’t get out. Like that.”
Hawk, she said, looking down in disgust at the blood-soaked money and gold ring she found in the bosom of the man she had stunned.
Only one week They are trapped in this fog for only a week at most.
However, a week spent in this magical fog where one could not see properly was more than enough time to turn good citizens who had never hit anyone into thieves who did not hesitate to seek other people’s money.
In this unknown space where no one can rebuke them even if they committed a crime worthy of punishment, they revealed their ugly desires hidden in laws and morals.
…It’s a desire. Hawk I trembled so lightly that her companions did not notice. Before she arrived in the capital, El Harda, she remembered the story she heard from meeting the beast trainer Ray personally.
The voice of Ragna Armageddon. Those ominous whispers that can be heard even if she plugs her ears in order not to hear them, and stirs up the listener’s dark desires.
The fog resembles his voice in that it reveals his ugly desires. Maybe, maybe it’s a natural thing. It was confirmed that the ‘Witch of the Mist’, who was said to have spread this mist, had some connection with Ragnar, Baron Armageddon.
Ragnar Armageddon set out for the capital before Rey did, so by now he should already be somewhere in the capital. And the fact that his subordinate, the Witchbeast Trainer, fled into this fog meant that there was a high probability that he was also here.
Every time I think of him, Hawk I feel a sense of disillusionment with his body that makes his legs go numb, but the memory of holding him in his arms makes his heart throb.
It’s a shame because the fog is thick, but if you show this to your colleagues…
“…Uh?”
Hochna, who was lost in other thoughts for a moment, then realized that something was strange. He stretched out his hand by the waist dance, and caught the rope that had been cut in the middle.
The rope… The ropes tied around each other’s waists to keep them from being scattered in the fog had suddenly been cut. But… How?
No matter how much he was lost in other thoughts, he couldn’t confirm someone’s approach, even though he had the hearing to detect the approaching assailants while killing footsteps.
But looking at the overly neat cut of the rope, it couldn’t be said that it was cut naturally. In the first place, this rope must have been specially processed by the ‘smoke witch’, but how on earth…
One possibility I can think of. This mysterious fog. Clearly, there is more to this mist that we have yet to grasp.
Hockna quickly recovered from confusion. I don’t know what his colleagues are like now, but I can only hope that at least he’s not alone. Please, I hope you are the only one who has fallen alone…
I’m used to fighting alone, so it’s okay. But… I can’t stand it when my colleagues are alone in an unknown place.
Because I don’t want to do that again.
Because I don’t want to regret the past again.
Because I don’t want to experience that pain again.
[What do you want?]
I hear a scream I don’t want to hear. I hear voices resenting and rebuking me. The curse of resentment lingers in my ears.
[What do you want?]
I hate it no more Any more…
[What do you want?]
What I want is…
…I don’t want to hear it.
Expectations at will, disappointment at will, resentment and curses… Now I’m sick of it. The expectations that put pressure on me, the words that scold and reprimand me, the lies whispered in a sweet voice, the gossip whispered behind my back…
Now… I’m sick of it all.
I didn’t want to be like this. I didn’t want to be like this, it just happened to be like this.
I didn’t ask for much Was just wanting to be loved by someone such a big wish? Was it something I shouldn’t have?
In front of me, he appeared.
The person who just wants me purely, without any other purpose.
Even though he was an enemy, the man who listened to my opinion without being disappointed with his own expectations and straightforward demands.
[What do you want?]
I don’t want to hear anything now
I just want to close my eyes in his arms and listen to those sweet whispers without thinking.
The fog in front of my eyes changes. The fog eventually took on the shape of a person I knew well. The mist that took his form spoke to me.
“Your wish, I will make it come true.”
Hochna entrusted herself to that warm embrace and slowly closed her eyes.
*
Craving.
It is one of the primal human emotions.
If fear is a brake that restrains human behavior and protects from danger, desire is an accelerator that allows humans to move forward without stopping.
Human choice is the result of desire or fear, which one is greater. Will you go on an adventure that is close to gambling because you want the result of success rather than the fear of dying, or will you turn away because you are afraid of losing your life even if you can get a treasure that you can play and eat for the rest of your life. Pick one or the other. That’s what it means to be either.
If there is a courageous man who claims to act according to justice and conviction and not desire, I will laugh heartily after applauding the chivalrous man.
Justice? Belief? Even following it is because, if you dig deep into it, there is a ‘desire’ to protect that ‘justice’ and ‘belief’ without violating it.
To protect the one you love? ‘The feeling of not wanting to lose the person you love’, in other words, ‘the desire to protect the person you love’ is also a desire in a broader sense.
Even if you don’t want to keep it, you have to do it because it’s the right way? To be precise, it must be the ‘desire’ to avoid becoming a good person by doing what society defines as ‘wrong’.
You can think of it as nonsensical nonsense. If you argue in this way, you could argue that all human beings in the world are in fact all members of the same blood family. There may be an error in this logic, but at least I think so.
Well… In the end, what I want to say is this. Desire is not a bad thing. Desire is wanting something, and it is a natural thing for a human intelligence. So… Having a desire is never a bad thing.
The bad thing is to harm others in the process of realizing that desire.
No matter how dangerous your taste may be, if you don’t damage it by revealing it to anyone or forcing it, isn’t there any problem? Even if there is a person who can’t stand it if he doesn’t kill, if that person overcomes that dangerous desire with superhuman endurance and lives an ordinary life, isn’t that person innocent?
Yes. Desire is not bad. It’s not bad to wish for something. Because it’s a very natural thing.
“So Hawkna, you’re not bad.”
I whispered in her pointed ear as I held myself in her arms, a hawk that looked like it was about to collapse at any moment.
“Greed, desire, desire, greed, wish, wish, hope, dream, goal… All the same. Do not deny your desire. Express what you want honestly and without lies.”
I blankly looked down at Hawk me in my arms and put a smile on her lips. She lived the longest life among the warrior Luke’s companions and experienced countless things, and thanks to that, she was stronger than the brave in terms of her pure fighting ability, and now she has become a woman who is very delicate.
The experience of the day, and one temptation and one rejection. I couldn’t believe that alone would make her so shaken and weak. At this level, it would be obvious, but I admired the insensitivity of the warriors who did not notice it. Or maybe Hochna was hiding it well enough that they wouldn’t notice.
Hawk or Huntress. An elf who came out of the woods on his own, longing for the outside world and adventure.
But her coworkers, whom she met for the first time, tricked her into attacking her from her secret place and stealing her belongings and her first experiences.
Her bastards, who were her second colleagues, showed her only favorable side of her, and then betrayed her trust at the crucial moment.
A third of her companions abandoned her to live on their own, and a fourth of her companions had excessive fantasies about her because she was her elf, challenged her with unreasonable tasks, and failed. After that, I put all the blame on her and left.
It comes first, expects it on its own, then leaves disappointed and cursing. Even as a human being, the word ‘chuckan’ came out naturally, so all of the fellows that Hawkna met were human beings.
Even so, the reason she is extremely afraid of losing her comrades is because of the last humans she met before she met Luke and the others.
For the first time, her companions approached her without any other ulterior motives, just with her pure heart. Because of that, she opened her heart to them too… In a situation where she could not do anything, the sight of her colleagues who gave her heart to them lost their lives miserably in front of her trampled her tender heart. So her completely closed her mind, and she became alone.
Although Luke did not know what he was doing, he managed to recruit Hochna as a colleague, but although he became her colleague, he did not become her savior. If she really had gotten over her own nightmares, she wouldn’t have looked so disheveled when her Gordon was gone, and she wouldn’t have mingled with me. And her experience of that day and her night became a trigger for her to break her down.
[Come on, Hawk. Say it with your own mouth. What do you want?]
“…What I, wish for…”
Dreamy, hazy eyes stared at me. What fills it is a secret and dirty desire that cannot be confided to others.
“…Hug me.”
Empty eyes, tears running down your cheeks, and a broken smile.
“Expecting, disappointing, expecting, disappointing, now… I’m tired too. I’m sick of the outside world, adventures, everything now. Hug me. So that I can’t think of anything else, I don’t have to think of anything else. , Hug me tight.”
Her hero had the ability to save her, but she couldn’t save her in the end.
I am not the one who can save her.
In her stead, I only provide her with her asylum.
A haven she longs for, a place where she can turn her eyes away from a future she doesn’t want to face and a past she doesn’t want to look back on.
