Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong
Translator: Kinky || https://kinkytranslations.com/
Chapter 52: Perfect Love
Tass didn’t hold a public funeral.
Antis Crosien never took private commissions, nor did he have any clients he was personally close with. Other than Tass and Iver, he didn’t even have any other intimate relationships.
As for Iver, he had already said goodbye to everyone he needed to say goodbye to.
After becoming a living specimen, all that remained of Iver was his most “social” side. He claimed that he had miraculously improved, and no one looked into it too deeply. Malignant Magibase Rejection Syndrome was too rare, and naturally Iver wasn’t going to make a public spectacle of it. People simply assumed he had consumption.
In the end, the two of them were laid to rest beneath the garden of Antis’s home. There was no coffin, no tombstone.
Other than Tass, only Myss, Salaar, and Father Kalen attended the funeral. With Father Kalen present, Tass didn’t even hire an officiant.
Still, there were over a dozen cats in attendance, as well as the little dog named Pinecone.
The sleepy pup had finally woken up. It sniffed at the freshly turned earth, completely unable to understand what had happened.
Its time with Antis had been too brief, after all. It had never had the chance to fall in love with this master who so rarely appeared, nor did it remember Iver, the one who had given it away.
Even so, it still wagged its tail lightly and licked Antis’s hand, the one wrapped tightly around Iver.
“Are you really sure you don’t want a coffin?” Father Kalen asked, seeming uncertain whether he should speak.
“If he got to lie peacefully in a coffin, that wouldn’t count as ‘ugly decay,’ would it? Besides, I can’t hear the two of them complain anyway.”
The Dragon Fae’s nose was a little red. “And besides, they also… shouldn’t be separated. If they were crammed into one coffin, that would be uncomfortable too.”
Father Kalen didn’t ask any further questions.
Tass buried the two of them beneath the shade of a tree.
The surrounding grass was lush, and flowers bloomed in clusters. Sunlight filtered through the leaves, scattering dazzling patches of light all around. It was a pleasant place suited for resting, with nothing to do with “ugliness.”
Where a gravestone should have stood, Tass placed an easel and set up the portrait Iver had given Antis. He layered it with spell after spell against water, dust, theft, and decay, making sure it could stand there forever.
The bright painting was steeped in sunlight, as if it had been born for this place.
At a glance, it looked as though some painter were working here. The painter had only set down his brush for a moment and might return at any time.
Clear birdsong rang from the tree overhead. Two birds flew back, and part of a nest could be seen between the branches.
Tass glanced up. There were robins. When he and Anti first met, the chick Antis had rescued had also seemed to be a robin.
Was one of these birds that chick from back then?
Tass didn’t know, and he thought he never would.
The cook Antis had hired hadn’t yet left, and silently prepared food for them. Tass forced himself to eat a little, then said that he wanted to be alone for a while.
“I’ll turn down the commission from the Karns family, and I definitely won’t leak anything about you… I’ve already gotten more than enough payment.”
The Dragon Fae lay on top of the bewildered pup’s head, looking listless.
Salaar said he understood and also dragged out Myss who was happily munching on snacks.
The afternoon sun was just right. Myss narrowed his eyes in contentment and decided not to pursue the matter of Salaar dragging him out.
Father Kalen, meanwhile, returned to the place where Antis and Iver were buried and softly offered a prayer for them. The cats gathered around his feet, meowing and reporting things to him.
“Without the Perfected Creation, things really are a lot easier.”
Myss scooped up a spoonful of pudding and felt abundant power coursing through his body. “You can leave whenever you want, and there aren’t weird people coming over to bother you either. It’s pretty nice.”
As he spoke, he casually wiggled his fingers.
Threads of magic wove themselves into a net, then into black gauze, then into a dense “fabric.” Then with a flick of his fingertip, the black cloth instantly unraveled back into magic threads, all of which he drew back in.
Salaar raised a brow.
The Archdemon wasn’t the sort to show off so childishly. He looked Myss up and down for a while and soon discovered that the material of his ranger outfit had changed.
The original dark gray fabric had become deeper in color, and its texture far denser, almost like…
“You wove clothing out of magic threads?” Salaar asked.
“Yes. Human flesh is far too dull.” Myss snorted. “With these clothes, my senses are far sharper than before. No magic can escape my perception. If you’re thinking about pulling any tricks, I suggest you think carefully before you do.”
“What kind of thing is that to say? Am I that kind of person?” Salaar said sternly.
Myss stared at him in silence.
“…All right, even if I were that kind of person, don’t forget we have a contract,” Salaar continued in the same stern tone.
As if the contract had ever stopped you from dancing right along the edge of it.
Thinking of that “Salaar” with the peculiar mannerism, Myss glared at him even harder.
Salaar looked away and softly whistled, using that same awful song that had disturbed the peace before.
…Whatever. As long as the threat had gotten across, that was enough. Myss snorted through his nose and ate the last spoonful of pudding.
This fight against the Perfected Creation had brought him quite a harvest.
Now, Myss could control the annihilating power of his magic very well. The clothes made of magical fabric were as smooth as water and as light as nothing at all.
If he wanted, they could vividly sense the warmth of sunlight, the touch of the breeze, and every flow of magic… Best of all, they could annihilate dust and grime that didn’t know its place, so he no longer had to worry about washing clothes.
Of course, Salaar had gained something too. That bastard’s magic had increased dramatically, and he had also acquired the Perfected Creation’s “perfect mental lashing.”
That mental lashing, however, had no effect on Myss whatsoever. He, Myss, was perfect. He was the one who lashed others.
All things considered, Myss felt he had won completely.
These Abnormal Fruit were wonderful stuff. To tell the truth, Myss wasn’t even especially eager to return to his true body anymore. He only wanted to get his hands on a couple more.
At that thought, he couldn’t help but look toward the source of this Abnormal Fruit. Antis was already sleeping beneath the earth, so all he could see was a patch of green grass.
“…Hey, Salaar.”
“Mm?”
“Why didn’t Antis ask you to wake Iver too? Iver’s Magibase still had quite a bit left at the time. It’s not like Antis didn’t know that.”
Myss still had the little silver spoon from the pudding in his mouth, so his words came out a bit muffled.
“He desperately wanted to live, yet he chose death. I can understand that as ‘self-execution.’ But he definitely wanted to see Iver. So why didn’t he ask you for help?”
Salaar looked at Myss in surprise.
He wanted to ask why Myss was curious about this, but then he seemed like some researcher who had just had a wild animal come over of its own accord and was afraid that the slightest disturbance would scare it away.
“Do you think the living-specimen Iver was like the Iver in his memories?”
In the end, he posed a gentle counter-question.
“Well, no, not really.”
After thinking it over, Myss didn’t believe the real Iver would have mocked Antis the way the living specimen had.
“Maybe Antis understood Iver’s way of thinking and believed that an incomplete Iver was no longer truly himself… or maybe he understood Iver’s resolve and thought that forcibly waking his beloved from a specimen would be too cruel.” Salaar said softly, his lapis-lazuli eyes also turning toward the grass, drenched in sunlight.
“…No matter what, at the very end, he truly did ‘understand’ Iver.”
Myss frowned at him for a while, then finally gave a dismissive, half-hearted resignation.
Humans really were too difficult to understand. He couldn’t even understand Salaar himself. He decided it was better off to stick to his own research on Salaar.
“Humans are really troublesome. Cats are much easier to understand,” Myss judged fairly.
“That, I do more or less agree with.” Salaar smiled. “As for those two, is there anything else you’re curious about?”
Myss thought for a moment and, surprisingly, did come up with a question. “What exactly does kissing someone on the forehead mean? Is it only something you do to the dead?”
What a wildly off-base interpretation. Salaar nearly choked on his own saliva.
But when he thought about it, Myss’s body was that of a slave, and he probably had never seen such reserved tenderness before.
The Great Hero cleared his throat with great ceremony and decided to tease his enemy a bit. “Yes. It’s something you can only do to the dead.”
Myss bared his teeth. “You’re messing with me, aren’t you?”
“How could I be?” Salaar said with perfect sincerity.
Myss narrowed his eyes at him and brought his face closer and closer. Salaar widened his eyes, looking more innocent than a child who hadn’t even learned how to walk.
A sot breeze passed through as a robin hopped onto a tender branch.
Myss rose onto his tiptoes and kissed Salaar on the forehead.
Warm, soft contact landed in the center of his brow. It was as light as a dragonfly skimming water, gone the instant it touched.
Salaar froze in place like a specimen. He looked even more stunned than when Myss had hugged him. His face hadn’t even managed to shift into shock before it, together with the rest of him, locked in place in the air. He even forgot to breathe.
“Aha!”
Myss leapt back in triumph and vigorously wiped his mouth.
“If what you said is true, then this is a declaration of your death. If you twisted the meaning, and it is actually one of the ways humans show affection, then I have added a stain to your love.”
“Look how thoroughly I ‘understand’ you!”
Humans were so obsessed with love that Salaar surely must also hold some beautiful yearning for it. With this one kiss, from now on, whoever Salaar loved in the future, whenever they kissed him, he would remember this moment.
A perfect defilement.
Even better, just as the Perfected Creation could do nothing to him, Salaar couldn’t retaliate in kind. Myss would never fall in love with a human, much less long for romance.
Served him right. Who told Salaar to keep bothering him with “Sweet Trap” all the time? Myss wore the smile of a victor and pulled a face at Salaar.
…Still, just in case, he moved a little farther away.
Salaar would soon come back to himself, then start needling him with a smile, or have a few exchanges of magic with him.
…Myss waited ten seconds. Salaar still stood frozen in place, utterly motionless.
Well now. Salaar might really be angry. Maybe one of those wild histories was true after all. Maybe he truly had some childhood sweetheart or a beloved he couldn’t forget.
That would be fantastic. Myss had never seen Salaar furious before.
…Myss waited in delighted anticipation for two full minutes, but Salaar seemed to have really turned into a living specimen. One hand covered the lower half of his face, and his gaze remained fixed on empty space.
Strange. Had he kissed Salaar’s brains out? He had definitely not used magic just now, had he?
Myss suspiciously touched his own mouth, then gave the back of his hand a quick kiss. Sure enough, nothing happened.
Myss circled Salaar twice, only to find that the Great Hero still wasn’t moving at all, as if something in him had malfunctioned.
He gradually found it all rather boring.
Salaar’s reaction was dull as hell. Myss couldn’t feel happy about it at all. Instead, some strange discomfort started to grow in him.
All right. If this was what Salaar had intended, then Salaar had done rather well. Myss slapped his own face a couple of times.
Then he took the little silver pudding spoon in his mouth and headed alone toward the manor doors, deciding to go get himself more pudding.
Yet the moment his back disappeared past the doorway, Salaar dropped into a crouch.
He covered his face with both hands and breathed rapidly. A thin layer of color had spread across his ears and the back of his neck.
“Mr. Salaar?”
Father Kalen had finished his prayer and instantly spotted the Salaar-shaped bundle on the ground. “Mr. Salaar, are you all right?”
Salaar didn’t answer.
Father Kalen hurried over to his side, and together with the curious cats, gathered around him.
“Are you feeling unwell? I can help you back to your room—”
Kalen tried reaching out to grab Salaar’s arm, only for Salaar to block him at once.
“…I’m fine.”
Salaar said in a low voice. He snatched up the ragdoll cat Apple from beside him and buried his face in its fluffy fur. Father Kalen couldn’t see his expression at all.
Apple let out a confused meow. It blinked its sky-blue eyes and obediently let Salaar hold it.
“All right, understood.” Father Kalen withdrew his hand in confusion. “If you really are unwell, I can prepare some medicine for you.”
Salaar buried his face even deeper into the cat’s fur and took several deep breaths, as though trying to suffocate himself with all that fluff.
“I’m fine…”
His voice was low. It was impossible to tell whether he was saying it to Kalen, to the cat, or to himself.
…Half an hour later, Salaar stepped back into the manor, his expression giving nothing away.
They had watched the origins of the Perfected Creation in full and had also obtained the letter as evidence. The three of them briefly reviewed the Perfected Creation incident and found quite a few new leads.
“Scintilla, Antis, Iver. All three were ‘geniuses’ who could use magic innately.”
Salaar rubbed his chin. “V.O.R. seems to be deliberately gathering geniuses, giving them Abnormal Fruit when they are most vulnerable, and guiding the birth of ‘gods,’ assuming those things can even be called gods.”
“Miss Scintilla wanted her mother to come back to life. Mr. Antis wanted to heal his beloved… These are clearly no more than the most ordinary wishes.”
Father Kalen sighed. “And yet the wishes the Abnormal Fruit fulfilled for them were deformed in the end.”
“No, wait. If V.O.R. is only interested in geniuses, then why did he contact Kendrick Karns?”
Myss pointed grandly at Salaar. “Wasn’t that guy a complete waste of space?”
Forget using magic innately. Young Master Karns couldn’t even produce a Magibase after the fact. He was useless among the useless.
“If he managed to bring you and me together, I don’t think he was quite that useless,” Salaar hinted vaguely. “In any case, ‘targeting genius’ is a criterion worth keeping in mind.”
Myss clicked his tongue and couldn’t be bothered to dig deeper. Just be a little more mindful of geniuses during the investigation. There was no harm in that.
Compared to that, something else interested him more.
“Malignant Magibase Rejection Syndrome,” he said. “Humans can actually be allergic to their own magic circuits.”
“Geniuses are already rare. A disease unique to geniuses is even rarer. This is the first time I’ve truly come into contact with it. Before this, I had only heard of it.”
Father Kalen said solemnly. “The most common academic view is that the afflicted person came into contact with dangerous magical artifacts they should never have touched, or that their body suddenly weakened, causing their constitution to change unexpectedly. However…”
Myss prompted, “However?”
“When my brother spoke to me about this, he said he didn’t agree with the mainstream view. He didn’t state his own view outright. He only used a metaphor…”
Father Kalen tried hard to recall it.
“If you place a fledgling in a birdcage, it may survive there its whole life. But if you place a newborn tiger cub in a birdcage, then once it grows a little bigger, it will only die in pain.”
Myss: “…”
Myss wrinkled his nose. “Couldn’t your brother just speak normally?”
Salaar jumped in at once. “So your brother believes that these patients are actually being bound by ‘mismatched’ Magibase, which causes their magical circuits to collapse.”
Father Kalen nodded good-naturedly. “The problem is that a Magibase ought to be a kind of purely spiritual organ. It’s part of its owner. Such a thing shouldn’t happen.”
“Why do you ask, Mr. Myss? Have you discovered something new?”
“Oh, I’m just curious.” Myss gave a noncommittal hum and changed the subject. “So then, have we picked the next destination yet?”
Father Kalen shook his head regretfully. “I made a special divination. So far, there’s no obvious ominous sign nearby.”
“We’ll have to switch to another region and test again, but I can’t guarantee there will be anything next time. Investigative journeys are always like this. Too many things sink into shadow.”
“That’s fine, that’s fine. If every one or two cities had a bad omen on this level, then the world would probably be beyond saving.”
Salaar, on the contrary, seemed relieved.
“In that case, Myss and I will first finish the Red Amber’s commission.”
……
To his surprise, Myss discovered that even though Salaar, like “Salaar,” didn’t say a word while painting, facing the real Salaar made him feel much more at ease.
At the moment, he was draped lazily across the model’s chair, almost melting into the autumn sunlight.
The disappearance of the twins had become the biggest piece of news, while the ripples from Danton’s death still hadn’t faded. People had become slightly more normal, and no one was foolish enough to provoke him anymore.
As for Truman, after being “dealt with” by Salaar once, he had gone on long-term sick leave and no one knew how long he would need to recover.
What hadn’t changed was that their contract with “Iver” was still in effect, only now it had been handed off to another employee.
“All right, I’m done.”
This time Salaar didn’t use magic to finish the painting. By the Red Amber’s standards, he lightly covered it with a specially-made magical silk cloth.
“Why did you cover it up? I want to see!” Myss jumped down, displeased.
“No. That magical silk dries the paint automatically. If you just pull it open, you’ll ruin the surface.”
Salaar pressed one hand against Myss’s shoulder and pushed the dangerous Archdemon away. “What, are you that concerned about my ‘Perfect Love’ for you?”
“Who cares about something like that?” Myss bristled at once and jumped back several steps. “Since you’re done, we can get the money now, right? Come on, let’s go get paid!”
Salaar smiled and sighed. “Mm. Let’s go.”
The two of them left the studio bickering and shoving, leaving the room full of sunlight behind.
The clock ticked softly. The sunlight shifted from pale gold to rich gold, then into the red-gold of evening. After most of the day had passed, an employee hurried into the studio and carefully lifted the silk cloth.
The moment he saw Perfect Love, he froze on the spot. Then, very slowly, he drew in a breath.
The canvas was pitch-black.
It wasn’t the careless daubing of a lazy painter, nor some kind of abstract art.
No one knew what method the painter had used, but that black surface reflected no light at all. The human eye couldn’t make out the thickness of the pigment or the texture of the canvas. It had an eerie unreality that sent a chill down one’s spine.
Against the brilliant sunset, that square of darkness looked as though a corner had been carved straight out of the world itself.
It resembled the entrance to another world, or the mouth of a bottomless abyss.
“…Ah.”
Only after several minutes of staring in held breath did the employee come back to himself.
“Right, right… I need to hurry and find Mr. Karns and Mr. Myss…”
Professor Gentry had entered the Red Amber five minutes ago and specifically asked to see the two of them.
That was the renowned Professor Gentry, one of the kingdom’s Archmages of Aufon. The employee gave an involuntary shudder.
That Archmage had always been indifferent to oil paintings, so why would he take an interest in them?
Strange things really had been happening one after another lately, he thought.
The author has something to say:
A new volume starts now! [blowing rainbow kisses]
As for Salaar’s Perfect Love… you could say it’s perfect or not perfect, but it doesn’t have a single flaw! (…
Kingdom Archmage: Even if other people can’t tell something’s wrong, doesn’t mean I can’t! A whole divine realm just went poof, vanished in an instant! [scared]
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