The darkness deepened.
The crescent moon floating in the night sky was hidden behind thick clouds, and the unidentified sounds of beasts coming from the surroundings stirred Shuran’s curiosity.
For several hundred years, Shuran had lived in hiding and had mainly been active at night rather than during the day.
Because of that, even without using magic, he was already thoroughly accustomed to hiking through mountains at night. Even with no light around him, he could find paths with ease.
“Something is strange.”
Shuran carefully looked around the village and muttered quietly to himself.
By now, the corpses should have reacted to him, a dark mage, and been summoned, but no matter how much time passed, nothing appeared.
There was no way the dark magic he had cast on them had been undone with time.
Something had definitely happened here.
Shuran immediately moved to the place where the corpses were buried and checked their condition.
Small gravestones had been set up over all the graves. There was writing on them as well, but perhaps because a child had written it, it was difficult to read clearly.
WHOOSH……
When Shuran casually raised a hand into the air, a badly decayed corpse rose from inside a grave as if it were being pulled out and floated into the air.
Then he set it down on the dirt ground as if throwing down an object. A foul stench pierced his nose. Perhaps it was a smell he was used to, because there was no change in Shuran’s expression.
Shuran placed a hand over the corpse’s head. A cold chill, without a trace of warmth, wrapped around his fingertips.
‘The dark magic has been undone?’
Even for a skilled dark mage, undoing Heros was a fairly difficult task.
Shuran hurriedly pulled out another corpse and checked it as well. In the quiet mountain, an unpleasant sound that woke the silence continued to spread.
Rustle.
Perhaps it had smelled the corpses, because a large wild dog with red eyes and a dark mane quietly approached Shuran, silencing its footsteps.
The food scattered nearby looked appetizing too, but naturally, a living creature was fresher and tastier.
Shuran was still focused on digging up the corpses.
The distance narrowed.
It was close enough to pounce at any moment.
The wild dog calmed its excitement and lunged at Shuran, who still had his back turned.
The instant it thought it had bitten him, more than ten thick tree branches flew from somewhere and stabbed into the wild dog’s body one after another, killing it instantly.
THUNK THUNK THUNK THUNK THUNK!!!
It could not even let out a scream.
Without even glancing at the wild dog, which had turned into a hedgehog, Shuran continued digging up corpses. Then, suddenly, he frowned.
‘The one I cast Balaid on is gone?’
At this point, he could not help but be suspicious.
Before he arrived, someone had either released or eliminated all the dark magic he had cast on the corpses.
There were only a handful of mages capable of doing this.
Shuran went over the names that came to mind one by one, then shook his head.
“Living this long, I really do end up seeing all sorts of bizarre things.”
It had to be a dark mage who had done this.
Now all that remained was confirmation.
As Shuran wondered how he should find that dark mage, the writing carved into one of the gravestones suddenly caught his eye.
Shuran remembered exactly what had happened when he attacked the village.
Moreover, there was no way a brat not even ten years old could have moved this many adult corpses by himself.
‘Do not tell me that bastard helped him?’
Otherwise, the situation could not be explained.
He had no idea what that dark mage was thinking by going around doing such things, but it seemed best to eliminate him as soon as possible.
“There was definitely another village near here, was there not?”
Darren lay blankly on the bed.
Ordinarily, this would have been the time he fell asleep at once. But for some reason, his eyes would not close tonight.
When Letra finished her work and returned, he would leave his familiar countryside life behind and begin living in a city.
Perhaps he felt tense because of that.
In all his life, Darren had never once left this village.
He had never attended school either.
The only things he had done were help his parents with their work or hunt fish in the mountains with children his age.
If he could have had his way, he would have liked to keep living here.
To Darren, a strange foreign place was nothing more than an unknown world still beyond his reach.
But if he continued staying here, he would only burden people.
He was truly grateful to Letra. When his parents were killed by the dark mage, she had been the first to extend a hand to him, and no one else.
‘Honestly, when Mom said her younger sister was a mage, I did not believe her…….’
He grew ashamed of his past self.
As Darren recalled memories that could no longer return and stared up at the ceiling,
THUD THUD THUD THUD!!!
A rough knocking suddenly came from the front door.
Startled, Darren reflexively sat up. The lady of the house, who had been weaving clothes in the main room, also looked toward the front door in fear.
“Who is it?”
It could not be someone from next door.
The villagers here all knew one another. If something happened that required someone to visit in the middle of the night, they would first identify themselves with their voice.
But the guest who had come today was simply knocking on the door and not saying a single word.
THUD THUD THUD THUD!!
A bone-chilling fear settled over the silent house.
A terrifying chill ran over the lady of the house’s entire body.
Her face turned pale blue, and her instincts filled with fear, but for Darren’s safety inside the room, she had no choice but to go outside and check.
“Madam……”
“Shh.”
When Darren came out of the room and spoke, the lady of the house quickly cut him off.
“You stay inside.”
The lady of the house picked up a lit lamp and gestured with her hand.
Seeing that, Darren hesitantly stepped back, then stopped.
He had an ominous feeling.
Darren seriously considered giving the lady of the house some kind of weapon.
The lady of the house seemed to have the same thought, because she looked over the objects around her one by one, but unfortunately, there was no tool within reach that could kill a person.
“Excuse me, is anyone inside?”
THUD THUD THUD THUD!
The person outside finally revealed his voice.
Judging by it, he was probably a man in his mid-twenties at most.
‘Wait, this……!’
At the familiar voice that seemed to have been heard somewhere before, Darren’s complexion turned ashen.
It had only been for a very brief moment, but it was the one voice he had sworn never to forget inside his mind.
―Why are you alive?
It matched exactly the voice of the dark mage who had attacked the village.
Feeling a violent, instinctive revulsion, Darren hurriedly tried to shout for her not to open the door, but by then, it was already too late.
“Who is it?”
CREEEAAAK……
The lady of the house slowly opened the front door of the old wooden house, which creaked as it moved.
The night in the mountain had grown deep.
With the cloud-covered crescent moon behind him, the dark mage wearing cross earrings threw his gaze quickly into the house while wearing an inscrutable smile.
Their eyes met.
Darren swallowed his breath without realizing it.
It was not that he had stopped himself from screaming.
The extreme fear engraved deep into his bones had made his breath stop on its own.
“I apologize for coming so late, Madam. I worry I may have disturbed your sleep.”
“What do you want?”
“Haha, you do not have to be so wary. Why, you ask? Because I have absolutely no business with you.”
THUD!
The lady of the house suddenly lost consciousness and collapsed to the floor. The lamp she had been holding fell to the ground with a thump.
Darren’s heart dropped. His rapidly quickening breaths screamed at him to run from the dark mage immediately.
“It has been a while, my friend. Have you been well?”
The dark mage spoke warmly, as if greeting a nephew he had not seen in a long time.
Darren did not know why he had come here again. He did not even realize that he had wet his trousers.
“Ah, aah……!!!”
His words were blocked, and only a groan escaped him. It felt as though he had returned to being a baby who had lost the ability to speak.
“I do not know what you are babbling about, but for now, you were saying you are glad to see me, yes? How touching. You must have missed me terribly, seeing as you even wet your trousers.”
Step. Step.
The dark mage stepped over the unconscious lady of the house on the floor and entered.
The distance between them narrowed. Darren forced his fear-paralyzed legs to move and slowly stepped backward. Then the dark mage raised the corners of his mouth frighteningly and approached.
“I think I was very wise to leave you alive. Normally, my principle is to kill witnesses without mercy, but thanks to the wise judgment granted by God, I gained an opportunity to prove it.”
“Pr-prove it……?”
When Darren moved his frozen mouth and asked without realizing it, he seemed slightly surprised at himself.
Seeing that, the dark mage explained kindly.
“It has nothing to do with you, but this world has grown quite heated over that very premise. You are very lucky. To think you survived me twice.”
“Wh-what did you do to the lady of the house……?”
“That? Ah, I only knocked her out for a while. There will be nothing wrong with her health, so do not worry.”
The dark mage’s words could not be trusted. Darren glared at him with a face full of distrust, but as expected, the man did not even glance at it.
Tap!
Something caught Darren’s foot as he stepped backward.
He hurriedly dropped his startled gaze and saw that his foot had caught on the bed. He could no longer retreat.
At some point, the dark mage had drawn right up to him. He tapped Darren’s cheek with his palm and spoke.
“However, depending on your answer, whether she lives or dies may change. No, perhaps it would not be an exaggeration to say that the lives of everyone in the village are in your hands.”
“Wh-what does that……?”
“Before coming here, I made every villager the same as that woman.”
“……?!”
Darren’s body flinched violently. He had immediately understood what that meant.
“In other words, you now have nowhere to run and no one to ask for help. Still, do not worry too much. If you answer my question, you will be able to live happily with everyone again.”
Gulp.
Darren swallowed dryly.
He did not know what the dark mage had come all the way here to ask him.
And yet, why did he feel as though he could guess the question?
“Your answer?”
The dark mage asked in a low, threatening tone.
Darren did not want to submit.
This man was the enemy who had killed his parents.
Moreover, even if Darren answered honestly, there was no trust anywhere that he would keep his promise.
Loeb was the hero who had saved the village.
But the person before him was a dark mage who killed people without blinking.
He was a murderer who might not keep a promise not to do anything, but would thoroughly keep his word if he said he would kill the villagers.
As if reading Darren’s thoughts, the dark mage tempted him.
“You have far more to gain. You have no relationship with that person anyway, so if you simply close your eyes this once and say it, I will leave the village immediately.”
A brief silence passed.
Darren hesitated to answer, but as if telling him he had never had any choice from the beginning, Shuran seized Darren’s head with one hand and fixed it facing forward.
“Where is the person who released the dark magic cast on the corpses?”