Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong
Translator: Kinky || https://kinkytranslations.com/
Chapter 137: This Is Normal
Throughout the entire journey, Myss hadn’t had the slightest clue what the Blind God’s motive might be. It was one thing for him not to understand the human world, but even the experienced Dragon Fae had failed to come up with a reliable theory.
And yet Salaar had somehow just… figured it out?
Fine. That brat Salaar was definitely hiding something from him. Myss ground his teeth and patiently let Salaar continue.
“…You have to make a deal with me.”
Salaar’s voice was clear and solemn, even though both his arms were still wrapped tightly around Myss’s waist.
Myss snorted disdainfully. Never mind whether Sogné really counted as the Blind God itself. Even if he did, why would he make a deal with some stranger like Salaar who had dropped out of nowhere…
“All right.” Sogné’s voice came from outside the door. “I never expected that the one I chose would actually be you, Lord Salaar.”
Myss jolted in shock, but Salaar’s arms were locked around his waist, preventing him from standing.
“You two know each other?” Myss grabbed Salaar’s golden hair and sucked in a breath. “According to our contract, you have to—”
“This has nothing to do with our body swap, so I didn’t tell you immediately. Strictly speaking, I haven’t violated the contract.”
Salaar showed no intention of opening the door. Instead, he buried his face back against Myss’s stomach.
Myss could feel his breathing growing slightly rapid.
Salaar seemed nervous.
“How were you planning to tell me?” Sogné asked in his usual tone. “If you intended to use the old method, then I—”
“We’re already inside a dream. What old method is there to talk about?” Salaar said. “Since you’ve already constructed a space like this, you might as well let me borrow it.”
Sogné: “Very well. Then I’ll wake Mommy up first.”
With that, he suddenly laughed.
“Fortunately, he said that the two of you aren’t truly in love. Otherwise, it would be rather inappropriate for me to call you ‘Daddy and Mommy.’ After all, strictly speaking, we are all—”
Salaar cut him off directly. “There’s no need to make him leave.”
“If something has to be shown, then compared with you, I actually want him to see it more.”
See what?
The two of them kept speaking back and forth in riddles. Myss threw his plan to sleep with Salaar completely out of his mind. All that remained in his head was pure curiosity.
The next instant, the entire space trembled.
A strange magical fluctuation passed through the door, circled Salaar once, then vanished immediately. Myss vaguely sensed that something invisible had been transferred into Salaar’s hands.
Before he could ask Salaar to confirm, the surroundings abruptly changed. The edge of the bed beneath Myss became a bench inside a black wooden boat. Salaar was still holding him in exactly the same position.
But the vessel’s shape was extremely strange. It was too narrow and too twisted. Myss lowered his head and narrowed his eyes.
Only then did he realize that what he was riding wasn’t a boat at all. It was an open black coffin.
The coffin-boat floated through the air. The honey-sweet atmosphere vanished completely, leaving only cold light like an icy river. Myss looked around but saw no sign of Sogné.
Still, since the “Blind God” was close by, it should be able to see these images.
Myss’s gaze quickly settled on a particular figure. Now he could finally be certain. This darkness belonged to Salaar’s memories.
Because at the center of the narrow, dim room, Myss saw Salaar—another Salaar.
It was a Salaar who felt unfamiliar to him, identical to the portrait hanging in the Karnes family hall.
This Salaar wore no smile at all. He looked exactly like a statue that happened to breathe.
“Lord Salaar.” A blue-eyed young man approached and bowed his head. “You came here personally. Is there something you require?”
The color of his eyes was somewhat similar to lapis lazuli, though not as deep as Salaar’s. Sweat covered his forehead. A small red blister sat at the corner of his mouth, and there were two tiny scars on one ear.
He carried a palpable, earthy vitality. By comparison, Salaar looked perfect and cold.
“I only came to inspect ‘Its’ condition,” Salaar said in an extraordinarily flat tone.
“Please don’t worry. After you leave, we will take excellent care of ‘It.’” The young man lowered his head. “Please follow me.”
“Procott!”
Before the young man had finished speaking, a shout suddenly came from the corner.
“Procott, my son, I know you can hear me!”
An old man with reddened eyes rushed forward and blocked their way.
His hair was tangled and dry, sticky discharge crusted around his eyes, and he reeked of vinegar and alcohol—a stench strong enough that even from their distance, Myss could smell it.
The young man instinctively looked toward Salaar. Then, as though suddenly waking from a dream, he stepped forward and embraced the old man.
“Mr. Marsh, Mr. Marsh, please calm down.”
“Your son, Procott Marsh, has already passed away. He was a good young man. We all miss him deeply. He was our finest data-calculation specialist…”
“No. He isn’t dead.” The old man’s lips trembled violently, spit spraying from his mouth. “My child, my child. He loved studying these things from the time he was little. He wasn’t even thirty-two, but he had already worked here for sixteen years.”
“He calculated day and night, and whenever he had time, he wrote letters to us…”
“He’s right there! He’s right there! His soul is still there…”
The old man raised one withered hand, pointing a trembling finger directly at Salaar. His gaze was unfocused, and his dilated pupils were filled with pain.
The young man grew anxious. “Mr. Marsh! You know that we only extract memories. Procott is gone. You—”
“‘I’m writing to you during work hours again, Father.’”
Salaar suddenly spoke.
“‘The pickled roots you sent me are very refreshing. Thank you. Next time, remember to add more salt. That way I can savor them more slowly.’”
“‘I hope the next time the Night Scourge comes, we can be trapped inside the same refuge. No, perhaps I should say that your remarkable son will discover some extraordinary formula and completely unravel the secret of the Night Scourge.’”
“Love you, Dad. Take good care of my younger brother and sister.”
The old man opened his mouth. A dry, rasping sound came from his throat. Yet his eyes were overflowing with moisture and cloudy tears rolled down through the wrinkles of his face.
“My son…”
“This was the last letter he wrote to you. He never had the chance to send it.” Salaar’s expression remained impassive. “If there is anything else you need, please say so.”
The tears seemed to wash away part of the old man’s madness. He sobbed for a while, then raised his reddened eyes.
“I know you’re about to go… You’re going to seek out that chaos. You’re destined never to return.”
“I know it’s shameless of me to ask for anything more. I only want to see Procott one last time…”
Salaar didn’t answer. He merely rolled up the sleeve of his left arm. Strings of flesh slowly formed. Salaar moved his fingertips lightly, and a faint magical fluctuation spread along with the soft sound.
The aura was extremely weak, almost imperceptible. To Myss, it didn’t even qualify as a “magical fluctuation.” Forget ordinary humans. Even Myss would have struggled to notice it.
Yet the instant the strings were plucked, the old man let out a wail. Like an old beast catching the scent of its cub, he suddenly opened his eyes wide and stared greedily at the empty space before Salaar.
His withered arms shook violently before reaching desperately toward it, trying to embrace someone who didn’t exist there.
Myss continued staring at Salaar. From beginning to end, Salaar’s face showed almost no expression. Only when his fingertips left the strings of flesh did that hand pause briefly in midair before slowly lowering.
“Lord Salaar.” The young man awkwardly stepped back twice. “There is no need to indulge them this way. Some people are stubborn by nature. They may end up doing something rash.”
“The dead are dead. You’re not them. You are simply…” The young man faltered mid-sentence.
He seemed to want to say, You are simply yourself, but wasn’t entirely certain whether that statement was appropriate.
“I’m already preparing to leave,” Salaar said, apparently noticing his awkwardness and finishing the conversation for him.
Only then did the young man sigh in relief. The two walked around the old man, who had collapsed to the floor sobbing uncontrollably, and left.
The black coffin floated through the air, following the current and keeping close behind Salaar.
The young man guided Salaar toward a mechanical lift suspended from chains. The lift swayed in midair and looked, at first glance, like an enormous birdcage.
“With my clearance level, I can only escort you this far. Just press the button for the lowest floor. We’ve stored ‘It’ over there.”
“Goodbye, Lord Salaar.”
After speaking, however, he didn’t leave immediately.
The young man’s blue eyes shifted uneasily and sweat gathered even more densely across his forehead.
Salaar paused before entering the lift but didn’t turn around. “…Do you also have someone from the past you wish to ‘meet’?”
“S-since you were willing to help old Mr. Marsh…” The young man stammered, a trace of guilt in his voice. “I only wanted to know more about that remarkable woman, Lady Mariana, who raised you.”
“You know she was my aunt. She spent all that time caring for you, but I barely had any contact with her…”
Oh. Salaar would surely play another song for him, Myss thought.
But before his eyes, Salaar took one step forward and entered the cage-like lift.
“Lady Mariana was only an ordinary human.”
Through the cold metal bars, Salaar turned around and faced the nervous young man. The shadows of the bars crossed his face, making his features look slightly distorted.
“In fact, fundamentally speaking, she was no different from Mr. Marsh or from you.”
“Impossible!” The young man’s voice shot upward, as though Salaar had uttered something blasphemous. “Lady Mariana respected you so much! She strictly forbade anyone from chasing the shadows of the dead in you. If she were still alive, Marsh would never have dared do something like that!”
“She was far stronger than the rest of us. She respected you so much, even though she knew perfectly well that you actually—”
“I know. She was responsible for raising me, and all of you regarded her as my caretaker. I, too, once believed she was different from other humans—that she was truly seeing me.”
Salaar interrupted him again and looked directly into the young man’s somewhat grayish blue eyes.
Only then did Myss notice that when Salaar spoke of the woman, he had never once used the word “mother” or anything similar.
“…And yet, on her deathbed, she clutched my hand, looked into my eyes, and called the name of the child who had died long ago.”
At last, a flicker of emotion finally crossed Salaar’s face. The shift was even fainter than ripples made by drizzle, yet Myss recognized it immediately.
Salaar, all those years ago, seemed a little sad.
Unfortunately, the shadows of the bars concealed it. A few steps away, the young man looked agitated and confused.
“That stillborn baby she donated. That body with no memories of its own… She was simply looking at him. That’s completely normal.”
Salaar’s voice remained as still as stagnant water. He lowered his eyes toward the bottomless darkness beneath his feet.
“After all, he was one of the core materials used to create ‘me’.”
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