Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong

Translator: Kinky || https://kinkytranslations.com/

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Chapter 10: Ominous

Salaar instantly moved.

He pivoted and shot forward like an arrow, slamming hard into the bird-beaked demon. Unable to dodge in time, the demon was carried out of the tavern with Salaar.

The crows burst up after them, wings thundering, cawing without pause.

Even through the night, Salaar’s aura shone like fireflies. Myss ran straight for it, black power gathering to strike.

The beaked demon was pinned to the ground by Salaar when his face snapped toward Myss.

The crows seemed to receive an order. They beat their wings and flung themselves at Myss’s face with reckless abandonment. Myss hesitated for a heartbeat, and the demon used the chance to slip free of Salaar and spring back to a safe distance.

Thrown off, Salaar’s face turned grave. He lowered his center of gravity and set himself to defend.

“Ominous…”

The beak of the “demon” pointed at Myss, and a muffled voice seeped from the mask.

You dress like that and have the nerve to call me ominous?

Since Salaar was unharmed, this guy had to be taken alive. Myss broke off a piece of iron railing and whipped it at the “demon’s” right leg.

Relying on three centuries of tacit understanding through mutual brawling, Salaar lunged for the bird-beaked demon at almost the same instant. Caught between the two, the “demon” reacted a beat too slow, and the iron rod punched straight through his shinbone.

Salaar’s hand pressed for the back of the demon’s neck and was about to pin him again when—

“Don’t go over there!” Myss snapped.

Salaar abruptly stopped, as if that shout had hit a pause button.

Every hair on Myss’s body stood on end as he fixed on the bird-beaked demon. A wildly wrong aura burst from the man, like a fragrance made too rich, already edging into stench.

Sure enough, the bird-beaked demon yanked the iron bar out in one clean pull, flinging a spray of blood. The ghastly hole sealed over in an instant, and he stood up as if nothing had happened.

That wasn’t Salaar’s healing magic. It was something more primitive, akin to an earthworm dividing or a salamander regenerating—a power drawn from the body itself.

…Is this guy truly human? Myss was not sure.

The bird-beaked demon turned toward Myss again, and Myss could feel the scrutiny behind the mask. It clung to his skin like burrs and showed no sign of letting go.

Amid the beat of wings, the figure slid into the shadows without a sound and vanished before their eyes.

Myss took a few steps to reach Salaar. He hauled him up and checked him over from head to toe. Luckily this fragile human was at least intact, with no parts missing.

“His physical strength is high, about one tenth of me at my peak. In strength alone, I’m not his match as I am now,” Salaar said gravely, patiently enduring Myss’s prodding. “And he didn’t chant a spell to either control the crows or heal his wound.”

“I know,” Myss replied tersely.

After being forced to change bodies, his power was roughly neck and neck with Salaar’s. His magic might not be that effective on the bird-beaked demon. He could only be sure of one thing: if they ran into that “demon” again, he would have to fight with everything he had, with no room to hold back in order to keep himself alive.

Could there really be demons in this world?

While the Demon Lord pondered, he pinched Salaar’s face and reached in to check his teeth and tongue. Salaar finally had enough and bit his finger.

……

Second floor of the Hammer Tavern.

“You two have guts,” Hammer said, chewing tobacco as he threw open the window. “Last time that guy showed up near the tavern, everyone was scared out of their wits.”

“Last time?” “You know him?”

Myss and Salaar asked almost in unison.

Hammer leaned at the window and looked out at the silhouette of the Lower City.

“He’s an unlucky sort,” he said with a touch of awe. “Huey told you about the strange illness in the Lower City, right? He appeared around the same time the illness did and showed himself to the patient twice.

The first time means the person has contracted the disease. The second time means the attack comes and the person dies. It’s no secret down here, but no one likes to mention it for fear of attracting him.”

“Oh,” Myss said. “So you never chatted with him.”

“…Well, he doesn’t seem very talkative.” Hammer gave a dry laugh and shot a glance at Salaar. “Not until your friend tackled him out the door tonight did we realize he’s not some kind of grim reaper.”

“We’re not friends,” Myss corrected.

Hammer raised his brows high and let his gaze travel between them a few times.

“All right, I get it. You two are in that kind of relationship,” he said with sudden understanding. “I can swap the single beds for a double.”

Myss: “…” 

Myss swallowed his pride. “Just think of us as friends.”

Hammer gave him an “understanding” look. “No need to be so reserved. No one here cares what anyone else does in their beds—”

“No need to trouble you. We’ll just push the beds together ourselves,” Salaar cut the topic short before it spiraled into more dangerous territory. “Do you have paper and a pen I can buy?”

Ten minutes later, Hammer returned to the room.

He brought a bottle of mead to help with sleep and a thick blank notebook. The cover was sheepskin with a distinct grain and was completely blank.

“I picked a blank ledger. Use it as you like,” Hammer said, setting down a quill, ink, and a bundle of fine charcoal sticks wrapped in rough cloth with a clatter.

He also threw in a bonus jar of sweet-smelling lube. After he left, Salaar promptly tossed it into the very back of a drawer.

Then he began to write.

The pen tip slipped over the parchment with a soft rustle. The ink became countless lines of text, the scripts varied as if written by different hands.

Myss found among them the correspondence between the young lord and the one called “Patience”.

The wording, the punctuation, even the scratched-out edits and the blurring from corpse fluid were perfectly reproduced. It seemed they didn’t need Huey to fetch the letters after all, since Salaar had copied every one of them into his mind.

Myss drank more than half the bottle of mead in slow gulps, just as Salaar finished recopying the letters.

“The young lord and ‘Patience’ last exchanged letters exactly two months ago,” he said as he turned the vellum notebook and pointed to a page where the ink was still wet.

The sweetness of the mead swirled on Myss’s tongue, and his head went fuzzy. With one hand braced on the table and half his weight leaning on Salaar, he tried to make out the words on the page.

Judging from the handwriting, this was a letter from “Patience” to Lord Karns—

[Dear Pilgrim, 

Perhaps you’re right. “Consciousness” is a privilege of the living, and what people call a “soul” doesn’t exist.

Death is so cruel that no one can call the dead back from eternal sleep. A revived body would be a walking corpse, and any soul that reappears would only be a composite afterimage patched together from memory.

Mother sends you her regards.

Looking back now, the summoning ritual ten years ago can’t be considered a success. I made a mistake, an irreparable one. I naively believed that I truly brought [illegible] back, yet in the end it was only [illegible].

[Large section illegible]

I want to stop, but I can’t. We always have to pay the price for our madness, do we not?

Mother sends you her regards, Mother sends you her regards, Mother sends you her regards.

This is the last letter I am sending you. At present I can scarcely think clearly, and I don’t know how long I can go on living. I have decided to meet death calmly and wait for it to step through my door again, the way it did ten years ago.

For me it’s no longer a heart-rending poison but a sweet release.

If back then [an entire line has been struck out] Mother sends you her regards. Mother sends you her regards.

Lastly, I will remember to say goodbye to our mutual friend. Thank him for introducing us. My exchanges with you have inspired me greatly.

Wishing you good health.

With love, 

from Patience.

P.S. Mother sends you her regards.]

Myss: “?”. Perhaps he had drunk a little too much.

The content of the letter was a bit absurd. The Demon Lord even hesitated for half a second, unsure whether to doubt his own mind or Patience’s.

“As you can see, two months ago ‘Patience’ had basically gone mad.”

Salaar pointed at the line “Mother sends you her regards”. The strokes there were clumsy yet gentle, at odds with Patience’s crisp hand, as if written by someone else.

“The timing is too coincidental. If the new plague in Rosha is connected to ‘Patience’…”

Salaar talked on for a while, and his shoulder grew heavier. Myss was half draped over it, giving off a fine snore, with a faint scent of mead lingering on the corners of his lips.

Myss clearly didn’t hold his liquor well. The Demon Lord would have to learn that humans can’t sample every edible thing they see.

Salaar scooped up the now limp Myss and tossed him without mercy onto the single bed. He yanked off Myss’s shoes with brisk efficiency, pulled the blanket over him, then began to worry. How had they arrived at this point?

At this time last year, he had still been battling one of Myss’s trivial tentacles that never wore shoes, and he had never imagined that the word “taking off shoes” would enter their relationship.

Back then Myss didn’t tire and wanted nothing… He simply existed with blinding clarity.

Now, the Demon Lord lay down when tired, slept when sleepy, and stuffed every edible thing he saw into his mouth. He was lively as he practiced “being alive”, but he wasn’t very adept at it.

Salaar couldn’t help looking at Myss again.

The Demon Lord slept curled like an infant, out cold. By reflex he had cocooned himself in the blanket, becoming a puffing bundle of cloth. His long gray hair spilled over the pillow, and the blue scarf tucked among it stood out conspicuously.

Salaar sat at the bedside, picked up the mead with only a little left, and took an unhurried sip.

…It was quite good.

Knock, knock! A gentle tapping suddenly sounded at the door.

“Salaar, Myss,” a soft female voice came through the door. “There was quite a noise in your room just now. Are you all right?”

Ah, that was probably the sound of him tossing Myss onto the bed.

She knew their names, so she was likely from the tavern, yet even so…

Salaar tiptoed to the door. He hid the dagger in his right hand behind his back and slowly opened the door with his left.

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The author has something to say:

I suddenly wish Jinjiang could support font effects, things like italics or strikethrough… I would really like some new ways to present text.

The Demon Lord can’t hold his liquor at all, while the Hero should be the sturdier drinker in theory.

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