Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong
Translator: Kinky || https://kinkytranslations.com/
Chapter 64: Survivors
Myss froze.
Everyone knew that humans didn’t fear things that could never happen—just as people didn’t fear the sun rising in the west, or ears of grain sprouting flesh and blood.
Which meant Salaar believed that he might, with a very real possibility, fall in love with his arch nemesis.
Why? Why would Salaar feel anything for him? Did the Great Hero have some kind of masochistic streak?
Half of Myss’s mind was teeming with questions, while the other half plunged into panic. How was he supposed to make Salaar fall in love with him? He didn’t understand human love at all.
His skin was still burning, and his chest felt as if someone had stuffed a lump of blazing coal inside, but it didn’t hurt. By instinct, Myss clenched the hair at the back of Salaar’s head and continued the kiss that had been interrupted.
He wasn’t entirely sure what he was doing, but when he pulled away abruptly, he found the air felt a little cold.
Coincidentally, Salaar seemed to have reached the same conclusion.
This time, however, Salaar’s lips didn’t land on Myss’s mouth, but rather on his throat. Myss felt the sharp tips of teeth as well as a hand quietly tightening on his lower back.
Strangely enough, the heat returned. His breath condensed into pale puffs in the air.
In Myss’s imagination, being kissed like this by Salaar ought to have made him feel disgust and repulsion.
Instead, his body was growing hotter and hotter; Salaar had definitely used some outrageous trick.
“…But even if I do fall in love with you, I still won’t spare you,” Salaar murmured, his lips brushing against the side of Myss’s neck. “If you think you can use that to survive, I suggest you give up on that notion as soon as possible.”
“You’re overthinking it. I just want to see you suffer.”
Panting, Myss mocked him, one hand still hooked around the back of Salaar’s neck. “Do the companions you executed know this? You… you…”
He found that “traitor” wasn’t quite precise enough, while “pervert” sounded too much like flirting, so for a moment he couldn’t find the right words to describe the sheer absurdity of it all.
Salaar suddenly stopped kissing him. He bent down and pressed his forehead to Myss’s chest. Myss felt a slight tremor.
Salaar was laughing.
“Oh, they know. Of course they know.”
He spoke in a low voice. “All of them know that I am the one in this world most obsessed with you. I…”
He cut himself off abruptly, then bit lightly at Myss’s throat, stuffing his mouth with Myss’s flesh and blood instead.
Myss was left bewildered by the bite.
Salaar was clearly resolved to kill him, yet he wasn’t tormented by the guilt over it. So if Salaar loved him—truly loved him—then what was there to fear?
But his body refused to let him think any further.
Myss discovered in shock that under the continued high heat, his body had undergone the exact same change as Salaar’s—the very same changes on that particular morning.
What kind of twisted sorcery was this!
Without hesitation, Myss punched the offending area, only to be hit with an excruciating pain he hadn’t anticipated. Lord Archdemon slumped limply down the wall and curled himself into a shrimp.
Salaar laughed heartlessly, then took an identical punch from Myss. Two seconds later, there was another shrimp on the floor.
“Heal,” Myss said from his shrimp position on the ground, wheezing.
“Of course.” Salaar lay across from him in matching shrimp form, his tone faintly melancholic.
After all that trouble, the heated air between them finally dissipated. Once the pain vanished, Myss was pleased to discover that his body had completely returned to normal.
He knew it. It had definitely been Salaar’s doing. There was no way he would want to… mate?
…Still, Myss didn’t entirely dislike that numbing, burning sensation.
And that strange hunger hadn’t disappeared completely. His stomach was full, yet he still felt as though something inside him needed to be filled. He touched his slightly swollen lips, which still carried the sweet metallic taste of blood.
The two of them staggered to their feet. Salaar chuckled to himself and wiped the blood from his lips.
“This potion is even more troublesome than I thought. The effect is too strong.”
He shook his head.
Myss could tell the bastard was only pretending to be calm. Salaar’s movements had become a bit unsteady, and this was someone who had stood firm right up until the moment he would died of old age.
Well, the slight trembling in his own fingers was different. That had to be a side effect of lack of oxygen.
A tangle ball of thoughts rolled through Myss’s head while his mouth answered on its own. “Yeah. It’s basically like children playing pretend.”
He knew that slave children were fond of such fantasies. They would pretend a pebble could make pain disappear, or a lump of mud could smell like roasted meat. A pretty leaf hidden inside a collar would, in their minds, attract a kind master.
The original owner of this body had been the same. In the slave’s broken, blurry memories, he had once hugged an exquisitely carved silver goblet and pretended it would endlessly flow with honeyed water.
Myss looked around and spotted two tall, brightly colored mushrooms growing from a corner of the ruins.
He yanked them free and thought with heavy irony, ‘Given the ridiculous fairy-tale style of this childish Divine Realm, maybe random mushrooms picked off the ground really could dispel the potion’s effects.’
Suddenly, something twitched at his fingertips.
The mushroom wriggled once in his hand. Myss sniffed, and this time caught a scent that hadn’t been there before, the scent of an Abnormal Fruit.
The mushroom also began giving off a faint magical fluctuation. Myss had a vague feeling that its magical pattern matched the moss-flower potion almost perfectly. It really did resemble an antidote.
No way. It’s actually that simple?
With Salaar’s healing ability around, it should be safe enough to try…
Myss cautiously bit into the mushroom, and then
“I like currants! I like sleeping on hard beds! I like Salaar!”
The man beside him stumbled and nearly tripped over a piece of rubble. He stared at Myss in shock, while Myss stared back—equally shocked—at the mushroom in his hand.
Before Salaar could notice anything else, Myss snatched up the other mushroom. There was only one thought left in his head. Eat it, and his consciousness could return to his true body immediately.
The mushroom wriggled again and the Abnormal Fruit scent briefly surfaced. Then the mushroom shook its cap and punched him once in the base of the thumb. Immediately after, the scent vanished and the mushroom no longer gave off any magical fluctuation.
Myss: “…”
As expected, a desire of that magnitude was simply impossible.
Then he realized the half-eaten mushroom in his hand had disappeared. Only half a mushroom stem remained at Salaar’s mouth, bouncing up and down as he chewed.
“I don’t want to end the Night Scourge. I don’t want to protect the human world. I don’t have for Myss… Whoa.”
He stopped halfway through and let out a soft “Whoa.” “The sudden stroke of luck here and now… The sudden appearance of the Abnormal Fruit’s scent… I see.”
Myss looked at Salaar blankly.
“I know this kind of mushroom. It tastes like raspberry candy. Try it.”
Salaar didn’t explain. He plucked an unremarkable little mushroom from the wall and held it to Myss’s lips.
Suspicious, Myss sniffed it. Sure enough, the scent of an Abnormal Fruit appeared again out of nowhere. Then he stuck out his tongue and licked it, tasting the familiar sweetness.
“…How did you do that?” he asked in astonishment.
“Rabbit’s foot, pocket watch, moss-flower potion, Magic Mushroom Stew. They actually have one thing in common.”
Salaar swallowed the mushroom in his own mouth and lowered his voice. “When we received them, they had all been assigned a ‘dream.’”
“The rabbit’s foot would bring good luck, the pocket watch would protect love, the moss-flower potion would make people tell the truth, the Magic Mushroom Stew would let people taste what they liked. Then the Abnormal Fruit scent appears and makes those dreams come true.”
Salaar fell into thought. “If that’s the case, then so-called good luck is easy to explain too. Luck is just another way of saying ‘dreams come true.’”
Myss thought it over and found that it really did fit.
His dream of returning to his true body hadn’t materialized because it involved far more than just the “here and now”, which was beyond what the Divine Realm could do.
Myss perked up at once. He spun around and pointed at Salaar.
“I wish you would fall madly in love with me, so madly that you no longer want to end the Night Scourge and obey my every order!”
Salaar: “…”
Salaar: “…You certainly have a nice imagination.”
“And that doesn’t count as ‘the here and now’?”
Myss clicked his tongue so loudly that the sound echoed through the ruins.
“The power of this Divine Realm definitely has clearer limits than that.” Salaar said, “If any ridiculous wish could come true, then the survivors here would have escaped long ago.”
As he spoke, Salaar picked up a stone in an air of mock seriousness. “I wish this stone would turn into gold.”
The stone remained a stone, resting quietly in his palm.
“See?” Salaar said.
“Maybe your dream wasn’t strong enough,” Myss said.
“Then go on, vividly imagine that I’ll obey you. Good luck with that.” Salaar casually tossed the stone away, triggering another trap.
Myss curled his lip and didn’t argue further.
The entire dungeon was dark and twisted, like the intestines of some beast, with thick tree roots bulging through the walls at intervals. It was obvious the rabbits had deliberately installed a lot of mushroom oil lamps, making the place look a little less like hell.
Still, the dungeon area really contained only them. Myss saw none of the supposed survivors.
Once they left the dungeon area, the architecture became much more respectable, and the number of rabbits increased significantly.
The first level had a grand entrance hall. It had been modeled after the royal audience chamber, with a towering throne and secondary seat at the far end. At present, both were hidden under ferns and moss, remade into two enormous rabbit-shaped topiaries and decorated with colorful mushrooms.
On both sides of the hall hung large cages lined with spikes, each containing two or three human skeletons. One look at the remains was enough to imagine the kinds of torture the Hope family had once enjoyed inflicting.
Now, however, the rabbits had wrapped the cages in vines, turning them into hanging lily-of-the-valley shapes so that they no longer looked quite so sinister.
The mushroom oil lamps illuminated the hall like bright daylight while fresh green firefly-like lights drifted through the air.
Every trap in the hall had been dismantled. Every trace of despair had been buried.
White rabbits carrying small baskets and dragging little carts moved mushrooms and all sorts of odds and ends through the hall.
Another group of rabbits wearing aprons cleaned up rubble from the ruins in neat formation. Others were taking apart rotten cloth in the corners and reweaving it into tidy sheets.
Huge mushroom tables were piled with cup-ferns and little mushroom biscuits so tired rabbits could restore their strength.
Everywhere Myss looked, everything was busy and orderly.
Several rabbits with servant-style ribbon ties around their necks directed the work, their hind legs thumping out a steady rhythm.
“Hurry, hurry! The mushrooms in the oven are about to overcook!”
“The cloth must have its edges hemmed! The boards must be sanded smooth! The cushions must all be wrapped properly!”
“The banquet is starting soon! Every rabbit must prepare properly! Absolutely no mistakes!”
“What about the first batch of humans?”
A plump lop-eared rabbit bounced over to one of the butler rabbits. “They want to go out for a walk.”
“Heavens, we’re busy enough already.”
The butler rabbit stomped its feet even harder. “What walk? Make them stay put. The banquet is about to begin. We should be checking on the new arrivals in the dungeon instead.”
“If they start liking rabbits, we can think about giving them a different room. Running up and down every day is exhausting.”
The lop-eared rabbit found this completely reasonable and bounced away. Before leaving, it didn’t forget to drain a whole cup-fern.
Myss glanced at Salaar. Salaar nodded, and the two of them lightly followed after the lop-eared rabbit.
The rabbit bobbed along, its white fur shining beautifully, its three-parted mouth humming a cheerful little tune. It passed through the newly restored hall, beyond the brightly colored oil paintings, beyond preserved stone tablets, heading toward the deeper and darker part of the ruins.
Salaar guided Myss through the shadows at the highest vantage point, making sure the short rabbits couldn’t spot them.
“Judging from the structure, the others are being kept in the Hope family’s residence. The conditions should be much better than ours.”
Salaar looked down at the cheerful white fluff-ball and quietly explained, “Be careful. The traps near here haven’t been cleared.”
“So the rabbits still want to keep those humans imprisoned,” Myss concluded.
He had the distinct feeling that the arm around his waist from Salaar was a little hot, but Salaar didn’t have a fever. Had his own power grown stronger, making him more sensitive too?
Then he realized that somehow, without noticing, he had been led by Salaar into searching for survivors. What did those survivors have to do with him? They should be looking for the master of the Divine Realm instead.
…Whatever. He would count it as supplementary investigation.
In irritation, Myss shifted his weight and deliberately hung all of it on Salaar.
At last, the lop-eared rabbit reached its destination.
The Hope family’s residence was extravagantly luxurious. The gilded candlestands still looked exactly as they had three hundred years ago. Beyond the lodging area doors, Salaar couldn’t find a single trap. There was even thick carpeting across the floor.
Three hundred years had passed, but it hadn’t rotted. The ornate patterns were still visible.
“At the farthest end is the master suite, the room of the head of the Hope family.”
Salaar looked toward the end of the corridor.
There were no mushroom lamps over there. More precisely, the only lit points were the branching paths the lop-eared rabbit had taken.
“The structure of the master suite is complicated. It usually connects to multiple secret passages. I don’t think the rabbits would use it to hold humans.”
Salaar added after considering it. “The path that rabbit just took leads to the servants’ quarters.”
“Are rabbits really that smart?” Myss asked skeptically.
Salaar was silent for a moment. “They know where the traps are. It wouldn’t be strange if they knew where the secret passages are too.”
Oh. He hadn’t answered directly, so Salaar probably thought the rabbits were rather dumb too.
At any rate, they had tailed the lop-eared rabbit the entire way and it hadn’t noticed a thing. It stopped outside a well-preserved wooden door, rose up, and knocked lightly with one paw.
Creak. The door opened.
A gaunt young man with hollow cheeks peeked out, his voice slightly hoarse. “Well? How did it go, Sir Clover?”
The rabbit called Clover raised its head. “No good. Everyone is busy preparing for the banquet. No one has time to look after you.”
“If we let you out on the condition that you keep watch, you’ll just cause trouble again, like last time.”
“But we have to find Roman.”
The young man said anxiously, then seemed to realize he had misspoken. “I mean, we still haven’t found the captain, and everyone’s getting nervous. We want some air. We promise, just some air. We promise we won’t run around again.”
“No means no.”
Clover said stubbornly, “The banquet is about to start. The rabbits must concentrate on preparing the banquet.”
The young man let out a heavy sigh. He looked down gloomily at the soft white rabbit, then immediately realized he had misspoken. “I mean…we still haven’t found our captain, and everyone is feeling uneasy. We just want to get some fresh air. We promise—just fresh air. We won’t go running off again.”
“No means no,” The lop-eared rabbit stated stubbornly. “The banquet is about to start. The rabbits must focus on their preparation.”
The young man let out a heavy sigh. He glanced down gloomily at the soft, fluffy ball of fur, looking as though he was sorely tempted to stage a prison break right then and there.
“Come back, Jack,” another deep, gruff male voice called out. “Thank you, Sir Clover.”
“Yes, exactly. Once the banquet is over, everything can be discussed.”
The lop-eared rabbit nodded its head and happily bounced away.
“Five people.” Myss sensed the magical fluctuations inside the room. “Three men, two women, all human.”
“One man and one woman are in especially bad shape. Probably missing limbs… Hm, and there’s another one who’s a bit strange. Poisoned? Sick?”
He still wasn’t as skilled as Tass and couldn’t distinguish the subtle ripples in magical fluctuation.
Salaar pondered a moment, then activated his gold badge. “Professor Gentry?”
“We’re here, Mr. Salaar.”
“How many people were in Roman’s exploration team?”
“Six including Roman. Four men and two women.” Beverly answered before anyone else, her voice urgent and distant.
“In that case, we have good news and bad news,” Salaar said.
“The good news is that survivors really do exist, and they are indeed Roman’s team.”
“…The bad news is that Roman Gerard is not among them.”
The author has something to say:
It’s fine if the Archdemon doesn’t understand this time. Next time Saint Salaar will teach you how to handle it.
After all, you can’t just keep whacking people over the head every time. That gets tiring… [covering face and peeking]
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