Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong

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

---

Chapter 143: Vermin and Moss

Myss had the most comfortable sleep of his entire existence.

The bed in the bedroom was large, the sheets were soft, the temperature was perfect, and he had his favorite Hero Cushion. Better yet, he happened to have the finest sleeping aid of all: exhaustion.

Of course, by the time he woke up, the Hero Cushion was already gone. Faint clattering sounds came from the living room, and the steaming aroma of food drifted into his nose. Through the crack in the door, Myss could just make out Salaar’s back as he cooked.

Sunlight bathed the human Hero from head to toe, giving Salaar’s silhouette a hazy golden outline.

Myss watched for a while, then rolled over on the bed and buried his face in Salaar’s pillow. He stretched lazily, his entire body suffused with an almost drunken contentment.

“Awake?” Salaar asked without turning around, as though he had eyes in the back of his head.

Myss: “No.”

Salaar chuckled. “Then keep sleeping. I’ll just drink your soup myself…”

Myss sprang upright and tumbled off the bed. With his long hair a complete mess, he charged straight for the dining table in the living room. Salaar glanced at his enemy, who looked like a ball of fluff, and couldn’t help sighing again.

Myss rubbed his eyes and looked out at the daylight that had remained unchanged for so long. Then his gaze returned to Salaar, sweeping repeatedly over that excessively familiar face.

This face really was much easier on the eyes.

Counting the Prisoner of Dreams and the Blind God, he had already remodeled the bodies of two “gods.” If Salaar were willing to strip naked and let Myss remodel him however he pleased, perhaps he could twist Kendric’s body back into Salaar’s original appearance.

Unfortunately, no matter how unserious Salaar could be, he would never let an enemy casually tamper with his magic circuits.

…Forget it. They had only swapped bodies temporarily. There was no need to be so attached to a mere vessel.

It would be better to start studying the Blind God’s magic sooner, Myss thought as he bit the tip of his fork.

Clang.

A plate piled high with sandwiches was pushed in front of Myss.

The sandwiches were filled with fresh tomatoes and greens, along with perfectly cooked fried eggs and ham. The bread had been fried until crisp without burning, giving off a rich aroma of butter and wheat.

The rim of the plate was heaped with freshly washed raspberries, silver-like droplets of water still clinging to their surfaces. Salaar turned away and began ladling vegetable stew into a wooden bowl.

The rich aroma completely derailed Myss’s train of thought. After all, for the past day, or perhaps two days, they had been too busy devouring each other to eat anything beyond a little bread with jam.

“We should’ve stayed a couple more days… Mmph.” Myss greedily tore into his breakfast.

“I doubt the truth will be that easy to uncover. We probably won’t face the final showdown anytime soon.”

Salaar shoved another bowl of steaming soup toward him.

Myss gave a muffled response.

This investigation of the Blind God had only revealed a few of Salaar’s little secrets. The entire matter seemed unrelated to V.O.R. Strictly speaking, they were still on vacation.

Still, Sogné had said he had something important to tell them. Perhaps there would be some interesting news in it… Thinking of it that way, leaving today didn’t sound so bad.

After the meal, Salaar leisurely washed the dishes and wiped the water from the cutting board. Myss sprawled limply across the sofa, his eyes following Salaar as he moved about.

All of this was an illusion. Salaar’s tidying was completely meaningless. Yet Myss had a vague feeling that he shouldn’t point that out.

Perhaps it was because Salaar looked so peaceful, as though this truly were their home. As though they were simply going away for a while and would return in a few days.

In truth, they both knew they could never come back here. Once they left, it would be a final farewell.

At that thought, Myss couldn’t help looking around the room as well. He suddenly realized that this crude little wooden house was actually rather pleasing to the eye.

No wonder Salaar had enclosed himself in a little box even within the darkness of the seal. To Myss, a so-called “house” was tiny and ridiculous, but… wait. Something was wrong.

V.O.R targeted human geniuses. No matter how obscure the corner where a powerful person hid, they could dig them out and plant an Abnormal Fruit in them.

The Secret Garden was one of the famous three major faiths, after all. With a figure as significant as the Blind God hiding right in the capital, how could V.O.R have completely ignored him for three hundred years?

The Blind God was hardly weak. He had, after all, been made from the same mold as Salaar. Even Myss had to be somewhat wary of the brat. There was no reason V.O.R wouldn’t interfere.

So was V.O.R genuinely uninterested in the Blind God, or were they unable to interfere with him for some special reason…?

Myss narrowed his crimson eyes and fell into thought.

“Lift your feet.” Salaar was cleaning the floor with a broom instead of cleansing magic. “What is it? What are you thinking about?”

“If I were V.O.R, I’d definitely get rid of the Blind God.”

Myss muttered as he lifted both legs and hugged his knees. “That guy is powerful enough to stand out. He counts as more than half a ‘god,’ no matter how you look at it. But he’s also weak enough that he can’t properly protect himself, and he spends every day obsessing over being born.”

“If you killed a guy like that, whether you replaced him afterward or simply left things alone, there wouldn’t be any future trouble. The Church of Cadence is roughly from the same era, and the Rhythm God doesn’t even exist.”

Salaar paused. “Actually, I’m curious about that too.”

“Right?”

“But there’s something else I’m even more curious about,” Salaar said. “Most members of the Celestial Canopy were atheists. At most, they were loosely religious. There’s no way they had experience managing a religion.”

“Yet the Crimson Marsh seems to have begun rebuilding more than three hundred years ago, and the Secret Garden’s faith has remained clean and orderly without anything going wrong over the centuries. Most importantly…”

“What?” Myss blinked and stared attentively at Salaar.

“Sogné’s mission was to be successfully born and become my successor. Three hundred years ago, never mind whether he even possessed a sense of self, he would never have conceived the idea of ‘proclaiming himself a god.’ That would have been a complete rejection of the Celestial Canopy’s will and an insult to every person who sacrificed themselves.”

“So I’m curious who told him to do it in the first place.”

“Then let’s hurry up and leave so we can ask Sogné.” Full and satisfied, Myss immediately regained his energy.

Salaar sighed again and pushed Myss back onto the sofa. “Fine. I’ll tie up your hair now.”

“None of this is real,” Myss protested.

“Pretend it is.” Salaar spoke quietly and pressed the top of Myss’s head.

Myss grumbled indistinctly and glanced at Salaar’s face from the corner of his eye. When Salaar approached with the comb, Myss abruptly turned around and nipped Salaar’s lips.

“Fair enough,” he mumbled indistinctly. “Let’s pretend it’s real.”

The brilliant sunlight cast long shadows, and the two silhouettes briefly intertwined near the sofa. More than ten minutes later, they drifted toward the doorway.

The taller shadow reached out and wrapped an arm around the shorter one’s shoulders. Judging only from their silhouettes, they looked exactly like a pair of lovers preparing to leave the house.

“Salaar.”

“Mm?”

“You still have time to change your mind. I mean, your face looks awful, like you’re about to die. Staying another day wouldn’t matter. I’m not that curious.”

“…”

Salaar remained silent for a long while, then a trace of laughter entered his voice.

“It’s all right, Myss. I’ve memorized it properly.”

“Someday, when you kill me, or when I kill you, I’m sure it’ll appear among the memories flashing before my eyes.”

“…You should really just shut up.”

Drip.

Amid the gentle sound of water, within the cool darkness, Salaar opened his eyes once more.

A little regrettable, he thought.

He hadn’t even heard the sound of that door closing all the way.

……

“;…Have You ever heard of the ‘Order of Shadows’?”

Father Kalen urgently questioned Sogné. “I’m a priest of the Order of Shadows. This thighbone carries my God’s power of concealment…”

To make himself more convincing, he even removed the ring from his right hand and placed it beside the thighbone. The ring was only slightly smaller around than the bone, and the two were identical in color and texture.

Sogné looked at Kalen for quite some time before gently shaking his head.

“I have never heard of a religious group called the ‘Order of Shadows,’ Father.” He raised his head and tried to meet the priest’s gaze. “At least, the person who gave me this thighbone never mentioned the ‘Order of Shadows.’”

Kalen’s eyes immediately dimmed.

Tass, however, keenly caught the important point. “Would you mind telling us about the person who gave it to you, Sogné, uh… sir?”

Sogné glanced again at the thighbone and ring in Kalen’s hands, then nodded. “That person found me in the deepest part of the darkness.”

“He wore a black mask with no openings in it, as though darkness itself were covering his face. From beginning to end, he never said who he was.”

At the words “black mask,” Kalen’s breath hitched. He immediately thought of the mysterious leader of the Stargazers Society.

“Just a black mask?” For once, he interrupted Sogné. “Was there any pattern on it? A silver moon emblem, for example?”

“No. Just a black mask.”

Sogné sounded exceptionally certain. “That person was extraordinarily powerful, but when he found me, he was covered in blood and barely alive. His mental state was also extremely poor, and he spoke incoherently. In my personal judgment, his will to survive seemed… weak.”

It didn’t sound like a pleasant subject. Tass closed his mouth and quietly listened alongside Kalen.

“He didn’t even ask about my condition. He simply spoke to himself and warned me that the ‘daylight’ to come would be equally dangerous. Before I truly ‘came into being,’ I absolutely couldn’t go to the surface.”

“He gave me some knowledge and taught me how to establish a religion that could endure for a long time, not so that I could be worshiped, but so that I could continue acquiring knowledge and search for a way to be born.”

Tass finally realized something was wrong. “Wait, a religion? You founded a religion?… You don’t mean the Secret Garden, do you?”

Sogné honestly nodded. “People call me the Blind God.”

“Kalen, look! Kalen, this is what adventuring is all about!”

Tass shot in front of Sogné’s face, clicking his tongue in astonishment. “The Secret Garden really does have a god, and he’s alive! Wait, are you really the Blind God? You look way too much like two friends of mine. You…”

Before he could finish getting excited, Father Kalen grabbed him with one hand and pulled him back.

The priest seemed entirely unmoved by the appearance of the “Blind God of the Secret Garden.” He stared fixedly into Sogné’s lapis-lazuli eyes.

“What about the person who gave it to you? What else did he do?” Kalen asked urgently.

“He left.” Sogné said, “Before he departed, he removed one of his own leg bones in front of me and said it could help conceal me.”

“‘Farewell, good child. I wish you and your world the best of luck.’… Those were his final words.”

That sounds rather like a dying farewell, Tass thought. But out of consideration for the priest’s mental state, he ultimately didn’t say it aloud.

If even a bone possessed power this strong, the person wearing that black mask had undoubtedly been one of the foremost figures in the Order of Shadows. In the worst-case scenario, it might even have been the “Lord of Shadows” Himself.

Kalen remained silent. He merely stood there blankly, apparently having thought of much the same thing.

Tass coughed dryly twice and forced himself to continue. “Why did you, no, I mean why did You listen to him?”

“By your account, that person was nearly half-mad, and You didn’t know him…”

“Because the magic within him was extraordinarily powerful, far beyond human levels. I couldn’t see through his identity.”

In the end, Sogné still confirmed the worst possibility. “If what he said was true, then rashly revealing myself could very well have killed me. By contrast, following his guidance cost me nothing.”

Damn. By that logic, could the mysterious “Lord of Shadows” have fallen three hundred years ago?

Tass cautiously looked toward Father Kalen. The priest’s eyes were red, and he looked utterly lost.

“I said I was ‘returning it to its original owner’ because you also carry his aura.” Sogné sighed. “Now it appears that was because of the rings.”

Kalen lowered his eyes, the hand holding the thighbone trembling slightly.

No. Nothing could possibly have happened to the Lord of Shadows. If He had fallen more than three hundred years ago, then why did the Order of Shadows still exist?

An obscure little religion couldn’t possibly have endured for more than three centuries amid such despair. His god must have… must have hidden Himself within the darkness.

Yes. Hermit had once told him…

“Stop crying over every little thing, Kalen.”

His older brother spoke sternly. “Listen. The Lord of Shadow is indeed tolerant, but He is also a resilient and cunning god. He won’t like a whiny crybaby.”

“B-but ‘cunning’ is a bad word…” Kalen said through his tears.

“Uh.” Hermit, unusually, stumbled over his words. He cleared his throat. “What I mean is, in order to protect His devout followers, the Lord of Shadows will use whatever means necessary and do everything in His power to preserve Himself.”

“So when you face despair, don’t just cry… or at the very least, once you’re done crying, think about how you’re going to solve the problem.”

“But!” Little Kalen wiped the tears from his face. “All the potatoes we worked so hard to save have sprouted… Waaaah…”

“Look, isn’t there still one good one?”

Hermit patted his head. “We’ll eat that one first. We can sell the sprouted ones to the old woman next door. She knows how to plant them.”

“The Lord of Shadows protects us. There is always a solution.”

…Yes. The Lord of Shadows protects us. There is always a solution. Father Kalen adjusted his breathing, and his wildly pounding heart gradually calmed.

As though sensing his composure, the thighbone suddenly dissolved into countless pale-golden points of light. They drifted gently through the air, divided into two equally sized clusters, and flew into Kalen’s pair of rings.

A strange warmth rippled through the rings. Kalen raised both hands before his eyes. The rings seemed to have fused into his body. They had become lighter, easier to control, and more… powerful.

Without question, this was a gift from the Lord of Shadows!

Was it really only a coincidence that he had stumbled upon this thighbone? And Egan’s ambiguous words from not long ago… the lost glory…

Kalen’s spirits surged.

“Tass, before the Eye-Opening Ceremony begins, I need to go out for a while,” he said hurriedly. “I have to talk to Egan. That child might…”

Might be a member of the Order of Shadows.

Thinking of Egan’s prayers, so strikingly similar to those of the Order of Shadows, Kalen became increasingly convinced of the possibility. He looked up toward the opening of the enormous pit, and before he could even finish speaking, his body shot upward.

Only when his figure was nearly gone did Kalen remember to throw down a hurried, “Farewell, Lord Sogné.”

Tass had no intention of letting his companion act alone. He hastily said goodbye to Sogné and immediately flew after him.

Sogné: “…”

Young people these days really are in a hurry.

Still, he knew that those two were Salaar’s teammates. Lord Blind God decided to pretend he had seen nothing and turned around to welcome his true companions.

After all, he hadn’t told those two the truly important information.

Yes. Three hundred and twelve years ago, that strange man, covered in wounds and speaking incoherently, hadn’t given some vague explanation like “the daylight to come will be equally dangerous.”

Looking back, Sogné could still remember the sharp smell of blood. The strange man had struggled to breathe behind his mask, his voice no different from a wood saw, as though he might suffocate at any moment.

His warning had actually been quite explicit and very convincing.

“You sealed away something enormous and dangerous, a calamity that was about to be born.”

He spoke in a voice so hoarse that its original tone was impossible to distinguish. “And now… all those who fear It want to come try their luck. They want to strangle It in the cradle…”

So?

At the time, Sogné had been utterly unable to understand. What did that have to do with him?

The man laughed though there was no humor in the sound, only despair bordering on madness.

“All right, all right. Let me give you another analogy.”

“Suppose there is an immovable magical explosive here. Once it detonates, the entire continent will shatter and sink. But if you dismantle it, you can seize extraordinary benefits from it… What would you do?”

“Do everything possible to dismantle it,” Sogné answered obediently.

“Very good.”

The masked man spoke almost sorrowfully. “But that explosive is covered in vermin no larger than pinpricks, and a patch of insignificant moss.”

“They wail, ‘Please, think of another way. Don’t destroy my home.’ Do you think humans would listen?”

“…”

“For humans, there is only one choice: ‘immediate destruction.’”

“For those insignificant, pitiful creatures, there are two choices: have their home immediately destroyed and plundered until not even scraps remain or exhaust every possible means delaying it for several thousand years, until the explosive eventually detonates on its own and everyone is reduced to ash together.”

“I don’t understand what You mean…”

“Yes. You don’t understand.”

The masked man released a long sigh.

“I’m only a patch of moss that wants to survive. That’s all.”

---

<<< || Table of Contents || >>>

Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong

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

---

Chapter 142: A Single Bone

Kalen walked through the Blind God’s temple.

He circled once around the various closed-eyed statues, but in the end, he still didn’t venture too close to the enormous pit. Egan was still praying devoutly. The only difference was that he kept his eyes open, his gaze drifting over toward Kalen from time to time as though intentionally, yet not quite.

Kalen had no choice but to remain concealed, revealing only the faintest trace of his voice as he whispered to the Dragon Fae. The temple was terrifyingly quiet. There was only the faint sound of candles and oil lamps burning, along with the occasional drip of water from somewhere unknown.

For some reason he couldn’t explain, Kalen didn’t like this place very much. It made his chest feel tight and his mood increasingly irritable.

“What’s wrong with you?” The Dragon Fae keenly noticed that something was off. He poked his nose out from Kalen’s pocket and nudged Kalen’s waist.

“Nothing. It just feels like… I’ve seen somewhere similar before.” Kalen tried his best to keep his voice low.

He didn’t sense any ill omen. It was simply that the deep pit, the ghostly green flames… the more he looked at these details, the more familiar they seemed. It was as though he had seen them somewhere inside a twisted nightmare. Yet whenever Kalen tried to recall it, he couldn’t remember a single thing. 

He forced himself to look away from the massive pit. The longer he stared into it, the more strangely attractive the darkness became, as though if he jumped into it, he could escape this unsettling atmosphere entirely.

“…Praise be to my God for His generosity and mercy. May His Veil shroud you, unseen and unharmed.”

More than a dozen steps away, Egan finally finished the lengthy hymn and prayer. He slowly straightened and smoothed the wrinkles at the front of his robe.

Looking at the expectant eyes of the boy, Kalen felt somewhat awkward. 

He had heard the hymn and entered the temple. He could remain hidden here until dawn, or use the passage on this side to investigate the confession chamber.

Although Kalen was still concerned about the prayer involving the “veil,” forcibly keeping innocent Egan here would only cause trouble for the boy. He pursed his lips and forced himself to speak.

“Good child.”

“I will follow all Your instructions, my God.”

Egan smiled. He bowed toward the enormous pit with heartfelt reverence, then decisively turned around and retreated toward the door.

Just as Kalen pressed at his temple and prepared to relax, Egan abruptly stopped walking.

“My God, please proceed to the deepest part of the darkness.”

His voice was extraordinarily gentle, saturated with devotion as sweet as honeyed water. “…That is where Your lost glory awaits.”

With that, the heavy doors opened and closed again. The entire process took only a dozen seconds, leaving Kalen no time at all to formulate a response. He was already bad at this sort of situation, and on top of that he was pretending to be the Blind God. He couldn’t exactly blurt out a foolish, “What?”

The heavy doors of the temple swallowed the boy’s slender silhouette. Kalen stood frozen for a while, forgetting even to release his concealment.

“Do you think he noticed you?” The Dragon Fae squeaked. “I’m telling you, if you didn’t deliberately make noise, even I wouldn’t be able to detect you… That brat is strange. Want me to chase after him and ask?”

Kalen had finally managed to sneak in here without attracting attention. It would be rather inconvenient for him to leave. Still, even a tiny mouse could find a crack to squeeze through.

“Maybe it was just part of the prayer.”

Kalen pressed at his head again. That faint, dark discomfort lingered at the edge of perception, making him uneasy. The Dragon Fae shook his head vigorously.

“Impossible. What kind of prayer orders a god around? I’d sooner believe that brat realized we were fooling him and set a trap.”

“Too bad the magical flow here is so strange. Otherwise I could fly down and take a look for you… Hm?”

The Dragon Fae tilted his mouse head. “Strange. The atmosphere here seems different. Much calmer.”

The priest honestly shook his head. He couldn’t feel any difference at all.

Tass gritted his teeth and tried poking out a little more of his head. Sure enough, the magical vortex that had been building toward birth had stopped at some unknown point.

“My god.” The Dragon Fae sucked in a sharp breath and quickly abandoned the dead mouse corpse, revealing his battered body.

“While that thing has stopped, hurry and take out the gemstones. Once I heal myself, I can go down and take a look.”

The priest worriedly pulled out a small handful of gemstones.

“I think we should wait here for Salaar and Myss instead. If there really is a trap down there, or if the magic becomes abnormal again, your safety…”

“Father Kalen. You don’t seriously think I joined you to ‘avenge my friend’ because I’m especially cautious and value my life, do you?” Tass shrugged. “I already left my people to become an assassin. Of course I do whatever I want.”

“That Egan is far too strange. I want to know what he’s after.”

“Then I’ll go down instead.” Kalen stared at the huge pit. “There’s no warning from my sense of ill omen, and I have healing abilities. I’m not that easy to kill.”

“No warning doesn’t mean you can skip investigating properly. And you’re so huge that cleaning up after you would be a pain.” The Dragon Fae cheerfully drained four or five gemstones. Amid the dust left behind by the gems, his body rapidly recovered, his scales turning glossy black.

“Relax. If he sets some magical trap, I’ll spot it immediately.”

“I am Tass Ga the Unfailing… except that one time!”

The priest struggled with the decision for a while but ultimately agreed. 

The temple had been cleaned spotless in preparation for the Eye-Opening Ceremony. There was simply nothing here he could use as a clue. Combined with that faint sense of aversion, Kalen knew he wouldn’t uncover anything important himself.

Thinking ahead, he took out the mouse corpse and tied several gemstones around it. Then he dug out the spool of thread he used for mending clothes and suspended the mouse corpse from a length of string before handing it to Tass.

“Take this with you. If the worst happens, use the gemstones to heal yourself, then reclaim the mouse corpse. Tug the string three times. I’ll pull you back up immediately.”

“Pretty thoughtful.” Tass picked up the rigid mouse. “I’ll be right back.”

Fortunately, everything went smoothly enough. The priest waited anxiously. Instead of feeling the thread tremble, he eventually saw Tass himself return.

“It’s pitch-black down there, and there’s nothing.” Tass looked completely baffled. “Forget some ‘glory.’ There isn’t even a basic altar. It’s just an empty pit. Well… maybe whatever was supposed to be there isn’t there anymore.”

The whole thing sounded even stranger.

Normally, Father Kalen would have abandoned the attempt to explore that darkness and gone back to finding ways to help Salaar and Myss.

But he stared almost obsessively at the enormous pit overflowing with shadow. The thought “That’s enough,” never arose in his mind. Not from himself. Not even in the form of one of Hermit’s old warnings.

“Let’s go down together,” he said.

Tass studied him for a moment. “All right. This time, you carry the mouse.”

Kalen passed between the various snow-white statues. Dressed entirely in black, he stood out starkly among them. Eventually, he stopped at the edge of the giant pit. A soft, warm breeze drifted up from below, as though something in the darkness were breathing gently.

Outside the pit, the temple was cold and oppressive, but the pit itself felt like the warm embrace of a mother, making it all the more tempting.

Kalen closed his eyes and jumped.

As expected, the bottom of the pit was completely empty.

It was so dark that he couldn’t see his own hand in front of his face, yet there was no sense of confinement. Kalen felt as though he were standing in a wilderness beneath a moonless night.

But there was an aura here… An extraordinarily familiar aura. It resembled the Lord of Shadows’ divine power of concealment almost exactly.

Walking through the darkness gave Kalen the comfortable sensation of soaking in warm water.

“See? There’s nothing here.” The Dragon Fae flicked one hand and raised a magical light no larger than a bean. “I was hoping to see some exciting ruins, or… Hey, where are you going?”

Kalen strode through the darkness as though he could see straight through it. The Dragon Fae had to flap his wings furiously just to keep up.

There was something here.

The entire bottom of the pit was wrapped in the Lord of Shadows’ divine power. It was perfectly normal that the Dragon Fae couldn’t sense the divine power of concealment.

But as a follower of the Lord of Shadows, Kalen could feel the subtle variations.

The divine power here varied in strength.

In one place, for example, there was a moderately sized gap. Something should have been there. For now, it had left, leaving behind something like an indentation.

Elsewhere, however, the power was terrifyingly dense. It gushed out divine power like a spring, ensuring that this small portion of the pit’s floor remained perfectly hidden within darkness.

Kalen stopped in front of that “spring.”

The source of the power was a bone.

More precisely, it was a long human thighbone. It lay quietly in the darkness, undecorated and unwrapped, like the most ordinary piece of exposed human remains.

Yet the bone was clean and smooth, without the slightest trace of dirt. Its surface was as fine as polished jade.

Kalen’s scalp prickled. The texture was so familiar that it made him slightly nauseous. Its sheen was almost identical to that of the rings on his hands.

Except the power contained within this bone was far stronger than that of his two rings, the sacred relics of the Lord of Shadows.

Lost glory?

…Whose bone was this?

“What is it?” The Dragon Fae asked curiously. Even though the bone was directly in front of him, he seemed unable to see it.

Kalen’s fingers clenched into fists, then slowly relaxed.

He could not take it, he thought. Whatever connection this bone had to the Lord of Shadows, there had to be a reason it was here.

He could not question God’s…

“To think we have visitors.” A childish voice sounded from the darkness not far away.

Kalen and the Dragon Fae whipped around and saw… a child.

The child looked only five or six years old and was wrapped in bright red cloth. Kalen looked twice before realizing that it resembled torn flesh membrane or wet afterbirth more than fabric.

There were no ornaments on his limbs. His feet were bare, he carried no weapons, and there wasn’t the slightest trace of hostility about him.

Yet Kalen had a strange intuition. This child was extremely powerful. Definitely no weaker than “Payton” from the Middle Finger Tower.

Strangest of all was the child’s appearance. His gray-white hair was identical to Myss’s. His lapis-lazuli eyes looked exactly like Salaar’s, while his facial features faintly carried Myss’s likeness as well.

If Kalen hadn’t known that both men were male, he would almost have believed this child was Salaar and Myss’s biological son.

The Dragon Fae slapped himself across the face.

“Father Kalen, I think I’m hallucinating. I can see Salaar and Myss’s child talking to me.”

Kalen swallowed with difficulty. “I can see him too.”

The Dragon Fae turned pale with shock. “My god. Was Myss actually a woman disguised as a man? Or is Salaar actually… wow…”

The child’s expression twitched, as though he had swallowed ten thousand things he wanted to say. In the end, he still spoke politely, or more precisely, he spoke to Kalen.

“You’ve come.”

Kalen stared at him blankly. He could sense a faint trace of concealment divine power on the child. But judging by the child’s size, he didn’t quite match the empty indentation from earlier.

Seeing both of them frozen, the child paused, then smiled. “You may call me ‘Sogné.’ I won’t do anything to you…”

His gaze swept around before settling on the bone nearby. Sogné looked at the bone, then at Kalen, who was still trying to process the situation.

He seemed to understand something. He bent down, picked up the thighbone, and offered it to Kalen with both hands.

“Take it. You could say I’m returning it to its original owner.”

The moment Sogné finished speaking, the surging divine power within the bone faded, like a switch had been turned off.

The Dragon Fae’s jaw dropped.

“A bone suddenly appeared in his hands! I didn’t even sense a magical fluctuation. Kalen…”

At that moment, Kalen had no attention to spare for the Dragon Fae. “You said ‘returning it to its original owner.’ You know where it came from.”

Hot blood surged through Kalen’s head in waves, making him dizzy. “…Have you¹, no, have You¹ ever heard of the ‘Order of Shadows’?”

¹[Ni](你) vs [Nin]( 您). The former is an informal way to address someone, usually used among peers, friends, or someone younger than you, while the latter is a formal more respectful way, usually used for elders, people of higher rank, or showing deference.

……

The dream world.

Myss lay limply in the bathtub and let out an enormous yawn.

He was lying on his favorite Hero Cushion while warm water swayed around his body.

This was a dream. The water in the bathtub would never cool and his skin would never wrinkle from soaking too long. Everything was just right.

…Provided one ignored the room outside the bathtub, which looked as though a storm had swept through it.

They had tangled their way from the bathtub into the dim, ambiguous bedroom, “fought” from the bedroom into the sunlit living room, then eventually returned to the warm bathtub.

Day and night never changed here. Myss couldn’t remember how long they had been at it. He only remembered that neither of them had been willing to surrender first.

In the end, thirst and hunger became too much for either of them, and they had no choice but to call it a draw.

Myss’s legs were terribly weak and Salaar was exhausted too. He had forced himself to toast some bread with butter, spread it thickly with raspberry jam, and place it beside the bathtub.

“Your stamina leaves a lot to be desired.” Myss muttered between bites of the bread. “It was the same before. You never fought me for very long. Before even a day passed, you’d run off to chew on your mushrooms…”

“Can’t be helped. Humans are that fragile.” Salaar’s cheeks were stuffed full too. “If you don’t like it, you’re welcome not to eat and enjoy the charm of ‘hunger’ to your heart’s content.”

As he spoke, he unceremoniously reached out and pressed Myss’s flat stomach.

Myss instinctively wanted to slap the hand away. Unfortunately, both hands were occupied with bread, so he had to endure it.

“…In the future, whenever we get sick of looking at each other, we can fight this way,” Myss continued thoughtfully. “Never mind you nearly stabbing me half to death. I bit you until you looked patterned, and the contract didn’t classify any of that as harm.”

Salaar touched an arm covered in bite marks and scratches and sighed. “That’s your takeaway?”

At last, Myss was willing to abandon his bread. He tossed it back into the basket, turned around, and sat on Salaar’s stomach. “What do you want to hear? That you seduced me so thoroughly that I decided to hold my breath until I died?”

Salaar raised an eyebrow. “You know that isn’t what I mean.”

“Fine. It really did feel good. Much better than the previous two times.” Myss pressed down on the Hero Cushion covered in dark-red bite marks and announced cheerfully, “That’s why I said, before the contract ends, if we can’t suppress our killing intent… Ow!”

He looked down in displeasure at the new bite mark on his chest.

“What are you doing?”

“My killing intent suddenly became unbearable.” Salaar grabbed Myss’s arm. “Do you have any idea how infuriating you are?”

Myss grinned. “Thank you for the compliment.”

Looking at the Archdemon’s smug expression, Salaar couldn’t help laughing. His arms tightened slightly.

Myss slipped and fell straight into Salaar’s embrace. He immediately protested loudly. “Wait, let me eat first! I’m still hungry…”

“Shh. Let me hold you for a while.” Salaar tightened his arms and locked Myss firmly against his chest. He held him so tightly that Myss almost suspected his ribs would be crushed.

Apparently, Salaar really did like him. And he really did like this place.

Maybe they should simply stay here for a few years, a few decades, or even a few centuries, Myss thought.

He could use the beautiful eternal daylight, the peace far removed from the human world, perhaps even “a home,” to numb Salaar.

He could make the Hero fall amid pain and attachment. Once Myss had fastened the collar around Salaar’s neck, they could leave this place. It wouldn’t delay their pursuit of V.O.R at all.

Salaar buried his nose in Myss’s wet hair. His breath felt almost hot.

Myss’s eyes shifted. He moved slightly and gently rubbed Salaar’s earlobe.

“Forget it. Two more bites of bread don’t matter. We can…”

“We’ll have a feast later.” Salaar interrupted him. “Whatever you want to eat, I’ll make it for you.”

All this time, Salaar had never deliberately made things Myss disliked, but neither had he ever indulged his every whim. Anything abnormal had to have a reason behind it.

This time, Myss was the one to raise a brow.

“What? Are you planning to do something you’ll feel guilty about?”

“Yes. Something very much against my own wishes.” Salaar still had his face buried against Myss’s shoulder. He had never healed the marks on his body. The scratches across his back were still seeping blood.

“After we eat, we’ll sleep properly. We’ll sleep until we wake naturally. Then I’ll clean the room and lock the doors and windows. After that, we’ll leave here together and continue our journey.”

Tch. Myss’s fingers moved slightly.

Fair enough. The Salaar he knew wasn’t some character from a vulgar romance novel. He wouldn’t waver because of something as trivial as sex, much less allow himself to be trapped by an illusory dream.

Myss’s brilliant scheme vanished in an instant, yet he didn’t feel particularly frustrated by it. But leaving after a single night’s sleep? Wasn’t that a little too soon? He had not rested enough yet!

Myss frowned irritably and tugged hard at the golden hair. “Why are you in such a hurry? If you ask me, we should rest here for at least another week.”

“Because I’m the one being tempted. So I have to be the one who chooses to wake up,” Salaar said softly. “If the best memory between us turns out to be nothing more than a dream… That would be far too tragic.”

---

<<< || Table of Contents || >>>

Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong

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

---

Chapter 141: Ripples and Sunlight

Myss didn’t want to help.

He had no interest in that twisted lump of flesh, and the concept of “offspring” left him even more indifferent. If he hadn’t happened to end up inside a human body, even “reproductive behavior” would have meant absolutely nothing to him.

But what if he refused? Salaar had obviously already come up with some scheme. If Myss stubbornly refused, the Blind God would simply become “Salaar’s child,” then go on to become the inheritor of Salaar’s will. That sounded almost as special as being a “destined enemy.”

…Then it would be better if he were “their child,” Myss thought.

That way, he would get the satisfying feeling of having tainted the entire concept. There wouldn’t be such a direct one-to-one relationship between Salaar and Sogné.

“What do you need my help with?” Myss asked irritably.

“Use your magical blades, together with my healing ability, to reshape him into a human form.”

Salaar leaned close to Myss’s ear. “Remember, reshape him into a human form, not turn him into a human.”

Oh. Back in the rabbit hole, they had done something similar to the Prisoner of Dreams. But at the time, they had only removed the Abnormal Fruit from Roman’s body and reorganized his magic circuits. The Prisoner of Dreams’ divine body had already been humanoid, so Myss had never needed to consider cosmetic reconstruction.

From what Salaar meant, he wanted them to turn Sogné’s lump of flesh into something shaped like a human. Wasn’t that just deceiving oneself?

…Still, Myss had no intention of worrying about Sogné’s mental health.

He considered the feasibility for a while. “Simply changing his appearance will be difficult. I need to account for his magic circulation. Just like when we modified Roman, this guy’s magic circuits will need to be adjusted too…”

“You don’t need to worry about failure. I’m here. I can heal him at any time,” Salaar said.

In truth, Myss didn’t particularly care about failure. It made no difference to him whether Sogné lived or died; though if Sogné perished, the Secret Garden would simply come after them…so he might as well do it just to avoid trouble.

Myss diffused his pupils and began observing the flow of magic through that lump of flesh.

The Blind God had longed so desperately to be born that It had reached the point of grasping at anything. Only after Salaar explicitly pointed it out had the guy realized that It had already grown a “heart” and unknowingly been born into the world.

“So troublesome. What’s wrong with this form? Why insist on a useless human shape…”

Salaar smiled. “Because I understand his obsession.”

Fine. Myss had certainly witnessed Salaar’s obsession with “ending the Night Scourge.”

He flicked his hand. Pitch-black magic covered his fingers and extended outward into thin blades like scalpels.

The Blind God’s method of controlling dreams was quite impressive, at least far more realistic than Myss’s control magic. Since he had to operate anyway, he might as well take the opportunity to study it properly.

Keeping his pupils diffused, Myss pressed the black blade against the enormous embryo, directly over one of the faces that closely resembled Salaar.

Hm. Perhaps this would be more entertaining than he had expected.

The black blade sank into pale skin, but no blood seeped out. The incision split open like a smile, exposing something inside that resembled red cotton wool.

“I’m starting.”

Only after making the first wound did Myss leisurely speak.

The cut lay precisely along the boundary between two faces, at the position of a throat that didn’t actually exist. Even as the face resembling his own twisted apart, Salaar remained completely unmoved. He merely gathered a sphere of golden light.

“Begin,” he said softly. “Let him… be completely freed.”

……

At three in the morning, Myss withdrew his blades. He was drenched in sweat, looking as though he had just been fished out of water.

Even treating Roman hadn’t been this troublesome!

There was no Abnormal Fruit inside the Blind God, nor any Magibase. His magic circuits were countless times more complicated than Roman’s, making Myss’s vision repeatedly go dark from strain.

“How is it?” Salaar asked.

Myss shot him an irritated glance.

This time, Myss had unquestionably done all the heavy lifting. While blades flew everywhere on his side, Salaar could only provide healing when Myss requested it and use mental magic to remove whatever pain the Blind God might experience.

For the rest of the time, Salaar simply stared at Myss without blinking, lost in thought.

The floor was now piled with chunks of flesh radiating hot, bloody heat. The embryo remained suspended in midair, wrapped inside a membrane of flesh. Opaque, writhing meat enclosed it completely, giving it an elongated shape like a blood-red snake egg.

“It’s fine,” Myss grumbled. “He’ll be humanoid, damn it.”

“…I meant, how is his condition?” Salaar continued.

“Does he have anything inside him resembling a Magibase, or…”

Myss froze, frowned, and looked plainly annoyed, as though asking, Why should I tell you?

“I’m worried V.O.R may have tampered with him,” Salaar said concisely.

“Ugh, fine. No, they haven’t.”

Myss shook his head decisively. “His magic circuits are completely different from those people who use Magibases, and they’re also different from Roman’s circuits when he was parasitized by the Abnormal Fruit.”

“If I had to describe them, his magic circuits are relatively pure. They’re similar to yours, but not as powerful.”

After speaking, Myss clicked his tongue. “I mean, not as powerful as you were at your peak.”

In Myss’s memories, the Salaar who smiled while fighting him was still the strongest being he had ever seen since gaining consciousness.

…But the Blind God’s dream magic was quite impressive.

He had to admit, the tricks the Blind God had refined over three hundred years were simply cleaner and more elegant than the control magic Myss had invented on impulse, and considerably more effective.

Myss was already growing impatient. If dawn hadn’t been only three hours away, he would have started researching the Blind God’s magic immediately.

“I’m going to sleep for a while.” Myss yawned and rubbed his eyes. “Reshaping flesh is exhausting…”

Whoosh.

The instant he finished rubbing his eyes, he saw sunlight slanting across the floor at his feet.

He and Salaar had returned once again to the room called “home.” The only difference was that this time, Sogné was gone.

The door to Sogné’s room stood open, and the family portraits still covered the walls. A new sheet of paper lay on the dining table. On it was a family portrait of Myss and Salaar.

Salaar picked up the page and instinctively turned it over.

[Salaar and Myss:

Thank you for your help. Although I still need some time to adapt to my body, I can feel my limbs. In three hundred and twelve years, I have never felt this light.

I once misunderstood my mission. Now my long-held wish has been fulfilled. I will do everything in my power to assist Mr. Salaar and preserve the peace of the human world.

You may rest here as much as you like, until you decide to greet the next sunrise.

Also, I will wait patiently outside. Before the Eye-Opening Ceremony begins, I have something important to tell you, Mr. Salaar.]

The signature was only a single simple word: “Sogné.”

Myss’s mood immediately improved.

His nerves had been stretched tight for most of the night, and he had thought he would have to wait miserably for the Eye-Opening Ceremony.

Now everything was perfect. They could rest here as much as they wanted. 

Salaar’s fingers tightened slightly, creasing the paper.

Outside the window, the sky was a clear, transparent blue, and the sunlight was just right. Sogné had even restored Salaar’s original appearance directly. In the brightly lit room, his hair looked like solidified light.

Myss looked at Salaar’s silhouette, and some of his exhaustion and sleepiness abruptly faded.

The sunlight here was too bright, so bright that it seemed slightly unreal. Dust motes drifted slowly beside the bed. The air carried the scent of old wood and warm cotton and linen…

And the scent of Salaar himself.

The sweet tang of blood and bitter scent of sweat from not long ago seemed like things from another world.

Salaar standing before the sunlit window overlapped strangely with the Salaar from his memories who had stood before a window in darkness.

It was as though everything had already settled, and this was the ending.

But at that moment, Myss no longer had any interest in examining the finer details of the Blind God’s magic.

He had only one thought.

…This human belonged to him, he thought.

Without tentacles to use, Myss had no choice but to creep up behind Salaar and suddenly wrap both arms around his waist, filled with the satisfaction of having seized his spoils.

Unfortunately, Salaar was simply too tall. His shoulders and neck blocked Myss’s face, making the position rather awkward.

Myss adjusted himself several times before finally managing to get the large man properly wrapped in his arms.

Salaar set down the family portrait. “We don’t need to put on an act for Sogné anymore.”

Myss couldn’t quite identify the emotion in those words, but he was certain there was no rejection in them.

Salaar even relaxed and leaned back slightly. It was only a tiny movement, but Myss felt it.

He immediately buried his face deeper, breathing in the scent most familiar to him in the entire world. His breath slipped softly over Salaar’s skin.

“You said we were going to sleep early tonight.” Once Myss had sniffed enough, he opened his mouth and bit Salaar’s shoulder blade through the fabric.

“Even if we can’t verify anything anymore?” Salaar did not turn around.

“Even if things get worse.”

In his mind, Myss imagined a pitch-black sack, stuffing Salaar entirely inside it, then tying the mouth shut with a dead knot.

The thought of tempting Salaar into falling, making Salaar’s obsession spiral out of control, sent a burning anticipation crashing around inside his chest until his heart began beating faster.

Salaar turned around and stroked the top of Myss’s head.

“We need to take a bath,” he said.

Myss found the man completely unreasonable. “First, this is a damn dream. Second, you know that damn cleansing magic.”

Salaar: “Tomorrow is the Eye-Opening Ceremony. I need to conserve my magic.”

What a terrible excuse. You’ve already absorbed the power of an Abnormal Fruit. Who are you trying to fool?

Myss shot Salaar a disdainful look, silently expressing his protest.

Salaar met Myss’s glare with nonchalance. “If you wash properly, I’ll let you take the lead.”

As he spoke, he rubbed and kneaded the rim of Myss’s ear. “Or you can wait here by yourself, and later we can each rely on our own abilities… Even if we’re both working only from theory, I’ve seen hundreds or thousands of times more than you have…”

“…Besides, this dream was created according to our preferences. The bathroom looks the way you like it.”

Myss took a deep breath and compromised.

Sure enough, the bathroom was quite… remarkable.

It wasn’t large and was similarly built of wood, somewhat like a rural bathhouse in Ring Town. But it came equipped with the same luxurious bathtub as the Red Amber, large enough to hold three or four people, and beside it were the fruity fragrances Myss liked.

Myss jumped into the tub before Salaar, without the slightest awkwardness.

Salaar: “…”

“This is the curse of bathrooms,” Myss said solemnly. “Before you enter, it’s one thing. After you enter, it’s another.”

Salaar didn’t immediately remove his clothes, although the distinctive Crimson Marsh outfit didn’t contain much fabric to begin with. He sat on the edge of the bathtub with both legs submerged in the hot water and gathered Myss’s wet gray hair into his hands.

High on the bathroom wall was a small round window. Sunlight slanted through it and reflected directly across the water. Under the strong light, the strands in Salaar’s hands gave off a soft glow, like molten silver.

This was a dream world, and there was not a trace of dirt on them. Yet Salaar still gently washed and combed through the hair, the backs of his hands occasionally brushing Myss’s damp nape.

Salaar’s hands were warm.

Myss shifted position and moved closer. But doing so forced him to turn his back toward Salaar.

The surface of the water rippled, breaking the reflections apart, and he could no longer make out Salaar’s expression.

“You aren’t worried about the ‘Black Coffin’?” Salaar asked softly.

“I was watching the entire time. You didn’t leave any hidden measures inside Sogné.”

If Myss wanted to, he could deliberately have left his own magic inside Sogné’s magic circuits. Considering the dangerous nature of Myss’s magic, if they ever became enemies in the future, Sogné would certainly suffer for it.

Myss might not be particularly perceptive when it came to human relationships, but Salaar had never doubted his understanding of battle and power.

“Mmm…” Being washed felt so comfortable that Myss let out a long, languid hum. “Why would I worry about the ‘Black Coffin’?”

“True.” Salaar smiled faintly. “It’s only a small human struggle…”

“Because worrying is useless.” Myss casually tossed a clump of foam and hit Salaar on the nose. “Stop testing me. As if I don’t know you. Even if Sogné disappeared, there would definitely be some magical tool acting as a brain or magical storage device somewhere… What you preserve is pure information. There are plenty of ways to keep information from being lost.”

“And you aren’t the kind of narcissist who thinks ‘only I can save the world.’ If necessary, you wouldn’t mind releasing your memories to the entire human world. How could that possibly be lost?”

Having said that, Myss splashed idly at the water for a while.

The window cast a circular blue shadow across the surface, swaying back and forth like a pupil. Myss casually shattered it with his hand, then piled up a large mound of foam.

“…So.” After more than ten seconds of silence, Myss concluded, “I’m not going to suddenly try to kill Sogné. Relax. That brat isn’t even qualified to be my enemy.”

Salaar’s eyes crinkled into crescents. “You think that highly of me?”

Myss turned his head, intending to give a suitably imposing affirmation, but the instant he turned, his lips met something soft.

At some point, Salaar had slipped into the bathtub. His movements were silent and graceful, hardly disturbing the water at all. Myss was caught directly in his arms, and the bitter taste of foam mixed into the kiss.

The sound of sloshing water covered the sounds of their kissing. Myss abruptly realized that his territory in the water was shrinking at alarming speed. In the brief time their tongues tangled, his back struck the edge of the tub.

The rim was cold and hard. Annoyed, Myss raised both hands and tried to push Salaar away. Unfortunately, although the Hero Cushion was soft enough, Salaar himself was solid as stone and wouldn’t budge.

Two hands appeared against Myss’s back as well. Salaar’s fingers threaded through his wet gray-white hair and pressed firmly against his spine.

They were burning hot, made even more obvious by the contrast with the cold bathtub. Seeing that the Hero was about to pin him in completely, Myss suddenly realized something was off.

“You said I could take the lead…”

“Yes. After you finish bathing.” Salaar smiled. “But we haven’t finished bathing yet, have we?”

Myss: “…” This brat truly was shameless beyond measure.

He put on a stern expression and tried to slip away along the edge of the tub. Salaar caught his wrist in one hand and yanked him back.

Sunlight flashed across Myss’s vision. The hard sensation of the bathtub disappeared, and his back collided with Salaar’s chest.

Warm water supported Myss’s body while the soft Hero Cushion propped up his back. Sunbeams passed through the rising steam, making Myss narrow his eyes.

The fragrances Myss liked floated all around him, mingling with Salaar’s scent and giving him the illusion of being slightly drunk.

Salaar rested his chin on Myss’s shoulder again. “Do you really want to leave, Myss?”

His voice was soft, almost as though he were showing vulnerability. At the same time, his hands began moving with practiced familiarity.

Salaar’s touch was gentle, creating tiny sounds in the water like wind chimes. Myss slowly sucked in a breath, heat rising through his head in waves.

Letting Salaar attend to him first wouldn’t be so bad. He had been exhausted earlier and could use the chance to recover some strength… That was fine too…

After all, this was only a dream. None of this was real…

…Was it?

Myss’s increasingly sensitive senses told him that Salaar’s heartbeat had never been this fast before. Not when his blood had nearly run dry. Not when his tentacles were about to pierce his eye socket.

That heart had never lost control like this. It made Myss’s own heartbeat quicken in response.

Hot blood surged toward his head in wave after wave, as though this were some lethal confrontation. Salaar’s burning breath spilled across the back of Myss’s neck.

Myss couldn’t resist twisting around and biting Salaar again. His hair clung to Salaar’s body, brushing softly across him whenever Myss moved, like another kind of tentacle.

For the first time, Myss understood that killing intent could burn with this kind of thirst.

He didn’t know what Salaar meant by love. Myss only knew that at this moment, his instincts were screaming wildly.

Contaminate him.

Destroy him.

Devour him.

Make him fall forever into my darkness.

And Salaar’s love seemed every bit as sinister as his own.

Myss swallowed the fire in his throat and kissed Salaar again, as though that could lessen the burning thirst. Salaar’s movements grew rougher as well. Both hands gripped Myss’s waist tightly, leaving deep red marks behind.

At the unexpected feeling of intrusion, Myss instinctively tensed, several muffled sounds escaping his throat. Salaar’s movement abruptly faltered, and the room plunged into an eerie, deathly silence, brokenly only by the sound of their uncontrollable heartbeats.

Salaar planted a kiss, incredibly light, against Myss’s collarbone.

“Does it hurt?” he asked, his voice barely a whisper as if he was speaking to himself.

The sudden question stunned Myss. Salaar seemed to snap out of a trance at the same moment, and the two stared at each other with almost matching confusion.

Perhaps this dream was simply too unreal, or perhaps this place felt too much like a home… Myss had once believed that such a question would never exist between the two of them.

His fingertips sank into Salaar’s skin, his nails scraping out tiny beads of blood. For a moment, he could almost smell the battlefield again, filled with torn flesh and spraying blood.

“…How stupid.” After a long while, Myss finally found his voice again. He provocatively raised his chin, smiling with extraordinary arrogance. “To ask such a stupid question, the magnificent Lord Salaar… You’ve lost control… ngh!”

…That wasn’t what they had agreed on!

The previous two experiences had been good, so Myss had assumed there would be no pain. Who could have guessed that the ambush had been waiting for him here?

This time, there wasn’t the slightest hesitation in Salaar’s movements. Everything from moments before seemed like nothing more than an illusion.

Damn it. This really was a fight to the death.

Myss couldn’t break free of Salaar’s hands, so he bent down and viciously bit into Salaar’s shoulder. Blood seeped between his teeth, slid into the hot water, then was scattered and swallowed by the violently rocking surface.

Salaar made no move to heal the wound.

He even deliberately offered his shoulder to Myss’s teeth, as though encouraging him to leave more marks. Blooms of blood unfurled amidst the foam, while water continued to slosh out of the bathtub, spilling across the floor.

Before long, Myss no longer had the strength to keep biting. Instead, he wrapped his arms tightly around Salaar’s shoulders and neck, panting and coughing like someone drowning.

Myss strained his neck. All he could see was the swaying ceiling and the trembling ends of Salaar’s brilliant golden hair.

The pain changed into a different sensation… Something Myss didn’t quite understand.

The warm water around him seemed to boil, turning into soft flames. Tingling waves ran through Myss’s spine. His head grew even dizzier, and he had no choice but to free his mouth and gulp in air.

Once he recovered slightly, he would bite Salaar’s lips again, or his tongue. Spots of light danced wildly across the water like scales peeling away.

Contaminate him.

Destroy him.

Devour him.

Make him fall forever into my darkness.

Those thoughts gradually burned away until only the simplest repetition remained.

Possess him.

Possess him.

Possess him.

Make him belong to me forever.

Myss’s vision melted beneath the overly bright sunlight. He clung tightly to Salaar’s neck, licking at the wet wounds and tasting the sweetness of blood.

He couldn’t remember what he said. Perhaps he said nothing at all, only made meaningless sounds. Strangely, amid his own uncontrollable heartbeat and broken breathing, Salaar’s words were perfectly clear.

“Myss.” He kept calling his name, his voice hoarse as though scraped raw by sandpaper. “Myss, Myss…”

“You were right… I’ve never believed in anything like ‘only I can save the world’…”

When Myss could barely support his own body anymore, Salaar gently covered Myss’s ears and pressed a kiss over his heart.

All Myss could hear was the amplified rush of blood, the pounding of his heart like a drum, and the wet sound of kisses.

And mixed among them, a faint murmur —

“But if… if it’s possible…”

“You have to… You absolutely have to…”

His words were broken apart among fierce kisses, shattered like the sunlight on the surface of the water.

“…You absolutely have to die by my hand.”

---

The author has something to say:

At least the two of them finally got to eat some meat. Congratulations, congratulations. [dog head holding a rose]

---

Kinky Thoughts:

It seems these later works by Nian Zhong really push the boundaries of censorship. It feels like I’m reading something explicit but well written that it doesn’t seem like smut.

---

<<< || Table of Contents || >>>

Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong

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

---

Chapter 140: Mission and Mission

The memories that followed weren’t very different from what Myss remembered, but combined with Salaar’s own recollections, Myss noticed certain small details.

As time slowly passed and the survivors died off one by one from old age, the atmosphere in the settlement grew increasingly heavy.

Salaar, however, was the complete opposite. Whenever he faced Myss alone, the brat became livelier, more annoying with each passing day.

But when he returned to his companions, Salaar still retained the same demeanor as before: quiet, composed, and coldly impersonal.

He treated their injuries and illnesses and prepared bowls of steaming mushroom soup for them. He still patiently listened to the old people ramble, occasionally playing a song for them so they could remember sunlight from a past far too distant.

“Only a tiny fraction of them hate me. The rest are the ones with the strongest wills. I don’t want those upright people to know I’ve grown a ‘heart.’ I don’t want to increase their guilt.”

During one battle, Salaar spoke to the tentacle that had just sliced off his left leg. It was still stained with his blood, and he knew perfectly well that It couldn’t understand him.

Whenever Salaar spoke of having gained a “heart,” he would smile brilliantly, as though he had been born without the ability to feel pain.

Naturally, Myss understood none of it. It only saw that the lump of flesh was smiling annoyingly and making endless noises.

It tensed one tentacle and stabbed toward Salaar’s nose. Salaar barely dodged, losing only a few strands of hair.

“I know your attention toward me might exist only in my imagination, or perhaps it’s nothing more than the most basic instinct.”

“Even if you were only a plant that bloomed for me alone, I would still be… incredibly happy.”

In an empty room, Salaar leaned his elbows against the window and looked out over the tentacles covering the ground like capillaries.

“I’ll use the rest of my life to obtain the most valuable information possible for the human world. And I’m destined to die here, at your hands, without ever having to witness your death. Let me tell you a secret. I’ve never been this happy before.”

What would happen if you plucked a flower? What would happen if you erased a gust of wind? What would happen if you killed the only being in existence that had ever truly seen you?

Salaar calculated endlessly, day after day; yet in every single outcome, his odds of victory against the Chaos Archdemon remained zero.

It was a relief, in a way. He didn’t have to betray the human world nor would he have to stifle his own heart.

“…Right. I also need to research a method of extracting myself.” Salaar scratched his cheek. “I have emotions now, so I’ll have to strip the emotions out of my memories. Otherwise they’ll interfere with my successor.”

Then he smiled again and continued in a humming voice. “So this heart belongs only to me.”

Myss watched Salaar through the tiny window. It didn’t understand what the lump of flesh hoped to accomplish by stuffing itself into a little box. They both knew such a fragile box could be destroyed by one sweep of Its tentacles.

But in the end, It didn’t destroy it. Its consciousness had still been too hazy then. Perhaps It found the sight of a lump of flesh wedged into the opening of a box amusing… or perhaps It simply didn’t want to provoke this creature that could injure It.

…Whatever the reason, It merely watched in silence.

It watched Salaar secretly weave flowers from old strips of cloth and decorate the window with them. It watched Salaar repeatedly return to the center of the settlement to care for his dwindling companions. It watched him dig grave after grave and erect tombstone after tombstone.

Finally, the day came when the settlement fires went out completely.

That day, Salaar fought It for a very long time. Even after It broke every one of his limbs, even after Myss tried repeatedly to withdraw the tentacles that had been bent and battered, the battle still wouldn’t end.

By the end, Salaar’s clothes were completely soaked in blood. In Myss’s memories, that was the only time Salaar had ever attacked without restraint or concern for the consequences.

That day, the lump of flesh made very little noise.

“This is my coming-of-age ceremony.” In the end, Salaar said those words. “My homeland and my family have left me. From today onward, this life belongs to me alone.”

“When I leave you, will you remember…” Salaar never finished the sentence.

When the lump of flesh stopped making noise, Myss thought perhaps Salaar had malfunctioned too. After all, the other lumps of flesh always grew slower and quieter before being buried in holes.

But the next day, Salaar rummaged through the empty settlement and found a lute. A real lute, not one made from flesh.

Myss had initially mistaken it for some new kind of weapon, and in a way, the truth wasn’t far from it. When Salaar opened his mouth and started singing, Myss thought It was under psychic attack.

It furiously lashed Its tentacles around, trying to destroy the damned instrument. Salaar ran ahead, singing as he fled, laughing so hard he could barely breathe.

Myss had once thought that moment marked the ending of humanity’s harassment. In reality, it was the beginning of the long three hundred years between him and Salaar.

So Salaar remembered it that clearly.

And apparently… Myss did too.

Myss tightened his grip on the edge of the black coffin. By now, he had long since forgotten all about the Eye-Opening Ceremony and the Blind God. He no longer cared whether this was an illusion or a dream.

Only one pure, delighted thought remained. Salaar’s obsession with him was perhaps even deeper than he had imagined.

Myss didn’t know how to describe the feeling. It was like discovering a heavy fruit hanging from a branch, almost fully ripe.

He had no interest in waiting for the perfect moment to pick it. He no longer cared whether the fruit itself was poisonous. He only wanted to pluck it down, claim it for himself, and declare that it belonged to him.

He wanted to turn Salaar completely into his own, forcing that wretched creature to struggle desperately against his instincts. The mere thought made every hair on Myss’s body stand on end with excitement.

That would be the sweetest victory, the most glorious happiness..

Even if all of this was intentional guidance from Salaar, Myss didn’t care. Whatever Salaar’s purpose might be, if they were destined to fight to the death, then Myss was willing to take the risk.

Myss turned his gaze toward Salaar, who was still holding him tightly.

His heart had never beaten this fast. Blood rushed through his veins, filling his ears with a buzzing roar. He wanted to swallow Salaar whole, just so the man could become his possession sooner.

Salaar seemed to read his thoughts. He pushed himself upright and leaned his head toward Myss’s ear.

“Before this, you only ever thought about ‘annihilating’ me. You never seriously considered ‘conquering’ me, did you?”

His warm, damp breath brushed Myss’s ear. “Yes. I depend on you that much. I’m obsessed with you that much. Before I ever fell completely in love with you, I was already unable to exist without you.”

Myss grabbed Salaar’s hair, his breathing still ragged. 

“I know there’s a trap in this.” His scarlet eyes were astonishingly bright. “But I’m going to give it a very thorough try.”

Then he turned his head and bit the edge of Salaar’s ear. To Myss’s surprise, Salaar’s ear was burning hot. The heat startled Myss’s tongue, which recoiled from the heat.

Immediately afterward, the Archdemon felt an embarrassing loss of dignity. To restore his magnificent image as the one in control, Myss grabbed Salaar by the shoulder and found his lips.

He bit down on Salaar’s lower lip, not too hard and not too gently, tugging at it repeatedly as though tasting that imaginary fruit of victory.

Amid the tangle, Myss tasted the faint sweetness of blood. Salaar’s quickened breath spilled across his face.

Yes, exactly like this, Myss thought with a brain slowly boiling into mush.

He needed to tame this human, possess this human. He would turn the Hero Forgotten by humanity into something privately owned by Myss soon. This was sweeter than destroying Salaar and more scorching than killing him.

“Ahem.” From outside the illusion came an extremely deliberate cough. “Mr. Salaar, thank you for supplementing this information. However, our deal has not been established.”

Myss glared furiously toward the source of the voice. He had never found the Blind God so irritating.

Salaar didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he cupped Myss’s face and gave him a slow, tender kiss. The faint taste of blood dissolved between their lips and tongues, leaving only small, wet sounds amid their breathing.

Salaar’s kiss was long and tormentingly slow. Myss was forced to hold his breath until his head grew hazy. After several dozen seconds, he finally shoved Salaar away and gulped in air.

Salaar stroked Myss’s hair. Only then did he free his mouth and turn toward Sogné.

“Let me guess. After I left, the Celestial Canopy used the old method and entrusted all newly extracted memories to you.”

“According to the Celestial Canopy’s design, once you received ‘Black Coffin,’ you would be able to take human form, become ‘Salaar the Second,’ and replace me.”

Salaar bent down again and tightened his arms around Myss’s waist. It was difficult to tell whether he was restraining an enemy or marking his territory.

Myss was still dizzy from imagining his victory, so he generously allowed Salaar to hold him. He even let part of his weight rest against Salaar’s hands.

Sogné: “Yes.”

“The form of the ‘Blind God’ can extend my lifespan to its limit, but I cannot walk through the human world in this state. There was no news of you for a long time, and Black Coffin was never inherited. The situation outside became strange. I had to be born as quickly as possible. 

“But one day, the Celestial Canopy suddenly went quiet. I could only search for a method myself.”

Myss looked at Salaar, then toward the disembodied voice of Sogné, unable to understand what the Hero was trying to do.

He could understand why Salaar had shown Sogné the memories from inside the seal. That could at least count as an extraction with the emotions removed. If Salaar died, what had happened inside the seal would not be lost.

But what did any of this have to do with “birth” This wasn’t what the Blind God wanted, was it?

“So you began studying me. Imitating me.”

“You cared for the survivors of the Crimson Marsh, helped humans establish cities, kept them away from disaster, and behaved like ‘Saint Salaar.’” Salaar spoke softly. “At the same time, you knew I had been created by the Celestial Canopy and raised by humans. So you searched for exceptional young people, made them fall in love, and disguised yourself as the child they never had.”

“That way, you could study the process of human embryonic development and be raised by exceptional humans.”

“That doesn’t sound right,” Myss blurted out instinctively. “Then why did he try so many times? Shouldn’t he have succeeded long ago?”

Mariana had been a genius, but she hadn’t even been willing to admit Salaar was her child. Myss couldn’t see what was so difficult about imitating that. Compared with Mariana’s treatment of Salaar, Myss himself was more like Sogné’s mother.

Sogné strongly agreed. “Although I lacked knowledge relating to the Night Scourge, I came to understand enough humans, and the memories I accumulated were no fewer than those contained within the Black Coffin. I watched human embryos form more than a hundred times. I received more than a century of human upbringing within dreams. I clearly satisfied as many conditions as possible, yet I was never able to truly be born.”

“I thought I must be missing something important.”

Salaar smiled, but this time it wasn’t bright or cheerful; instead, it held a note of bitterness.

“No. You have something important that you shouldn’t have.”

Sogné didn’t respond. Everything around them returned to darkness and silence.

“Given Lady Mariana’s meticulous nature, the birth spell must include an emotional check to ensure that my successor has ‘no heart.’ After all, if one inherits the Black Coffin recklessly, a ‘human heart’ would collapse under it.”

Salaar’s voice was barely a whisper.

“Unfortunately, you and I are the same.”

“We’ve both lived too long that we’ve grown a heart of our own. Forget three hundred years, even if the Eye-Opening Ceremony continued for another three thousand years, you could never become a second ‘me’.”

The air seemed to freeze and the darkness shuddered violently.

The illusion created by Salaar shattered and the Black Coffin vanished. They were back in that bizarre home, the endless daylight outside still glaringly bright.

Sogné sat blankly beside the table, his distorted face revealed little emotion. One hand rested over his heart, as if wanting to say something, yet unable to utter a word.

If Myss absolutely had to describe it, the twisted creature looked… Aggrieved.

“Impossible…” Sogné spoke as though sleepwalking. “Every time I understood humanity a little more deeply, my body changed. You both saw it. I thought…”

“I thought I was succeeding…”

“Yes. We saw. It weakened the dream and weakened your disguise.” Salaar sighed. “But that wasn’t the Celestial Canopy’s magic approving of you. It was a warning.”

“The more you try to understand humanity, the farther you move from ‘birth.’ The Celestial Canopy doesn’t need a gentle, compassionate god. It only needed an absolutely rational leader.”

Myss suddenly understood. He looked at Sogné’s distorted face and callously let out a mocking laugh.

“I get it. The Celestial Canopy wanted you to keep sleeping exactly as you were until Salaar finally dropped dead.”

“But you thought you couldn’t open your eyes because you were blind, so you kept trying to force your eyelids open… The name Blind God really does suit you.”

Sogné looked at Myss in confusion. There was none of the hostility Myss had expected in his gaze.

Only then did Myss realize that Salaar had omitted the most crucial information from his memories. Sogné only knew what had happened inside the seal. He had no idea who Myss really was.

Even now, Sogné probably still thought Myss was one of Salaar’s companions.

A malicious grin spread across Myss’s face. “Do you know that I’m actually—ugh!”

Salaar tightened his arms and squeezed the breath out of Myss, preventing him from finishing.

“…But.” At the same time, Salaar turned toward the distorted Sogné. “You never needed to become ‘me’ in the first place. You saved the human world. You learned to understand it. You have your own thoughts, your own joys and sorrows. You are the Blind God of the Secret Garden. You even have your own name.”

“…You were born a long time ago, Sogné.”

The darkness began trembling again.

The false daylight vanished and the nonexistent candlelight flickered out. The crude little home broke apart before Myss’s eyes. Among the fragments flying through the air, Sogné’s bedroom was the last thing to disappear. And as the walls crumbled, they both saw it—

Every wall of the tiny room was covered in crude family portraits.

The sheets of paper that had never existed in reality drifted lightly into the air, revealing childish writing on their backs.

[Aikin and Belinda. Two years and six months. Aikin taught me many woodworking techniques. Belinda sings beautifully. They would make wonderful parents…]

[Scarlet and Hahn. One year and four months. Hahn is the most attentive human I have ever met. Scarlet has astonishing talent in mathematics… Scarlet misses her parents very much, so I let them wake up. There is still no progress toward my birth, but that is not their fault…]

[…]

An unfinished drawing drifted down beside Myss’s feet.

On it were Myss, Salaar, and Sogné. The Sogné they had encountered when they first entered, the one who looked almost entirely human.

[Salaar and Myss]

Only the beginning had been written on the back. There hadn’t yet been time to continue. The handwriting wasn’t particularly beautiful, but it was full of anticipation, almost as though the letters themselves were dancing.

The drawing slowly vanished beneath Myss’s feet. Behind the shattered dream, the true Sogné was revealed. He looked exactly like the “successor” from Salaar’s memories.

He hid most of his body within the darkness, revealing only an embryonic outline and one or two distorted faces resembling Salaar. Only then did Myss realize that he and Salaar were lying just inside the doorway of this room.

The room was roughly the same size as their “home”, but it was more dilapidated and darker. There were no windows anywhere, much less eternal daylight. Only tightly sealed stone walls surrounded them.

“…Stop crying,” Salaar said.

Myss turned his head in confusion. He even checked his own eyes before realizing that Sogné, or rather the Blind God, was crying.

Tears seeped from those lapis-lazuli eyes. Perhaps because of his abnormal body, they couldn’t fall. They remained as a thin film of moisture instead.

The twisted monster made no sound at all. If Salaar hadn’t pointed it out, Myss would never have realized those were tears.

“I understand. You, too, have a ‘mission’ that feels like an instinct.”

Salaar stood up and casually helped Myss to his feet. “My mission is to end the Night Scourge. And your mission—your former mission—was to be successfully born and become ‘Salaar.’”

“But you never inherited the Black Coffin. You still helped the human world using your own methods. Even without a human form, you continued guiding Mondicia, one-third of all humanity in this world.”

“But… my mission…” The grotesque embryo emitted a buzzing sound, like countless mouths speaking at once.

“Yes. Our destinies.” Salaar cast a meaningful glance at Myss. “If you truly cannot let go of your mission to be born, then change the method. Embrace it.”

What did that mean?

Myss immediately became alert, his entire body tensing.

He could barely tolerate Salaar showing Sogné the memories from the seal. But if Salaar dared hand over his mission to “end the Night Scourge,” Myss might as well kill Sogné immediately.

“—Become our child,” Salaar said. “That would still make you ‘Salaar’s successor,’ wouldn’t it?”

Sogné: “?”

Myss: “…???”

Salaar smiled and patted Myss on the back, nearly knocking the bread loose from Myss’s chest.

“Next, I’ll need your help, Mo~mmy.”

---

The author has something to say:

Myss: ???

Myss: ???????????

---

Kinky Thoughts:

LMAO. They hadn’t even done it yet but already are parents.

---

<<< || Table of Contents || >>>

Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong

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

---

Chapter 139: Birth

Perhaps “the first time he saw him” wasn’t quite accurate.

Even before possessing consciousness, Myss could “see” Salaar.

It was like a seed encountering a stone while sprouting and knowing instinctively to grow around it. That was nothing more than instinct. He held no particular feeling toward the little stone itself, much less any desire to actively observe it.

…And the very first trace of “emotion” he felt was bewilderment.

Salaar was different from the other humans. Other humans also came to challenge Him, but none persisted with Salaar’s unwavering determination, charging again and again into agony and darkness.

Bones shattered. Flesh flew. Brilliant golden light flared again and again, dazzling Myss’s eyes.

He thought that this tiny lump of flesh was different from the others.

But why was he different? More questions followed. Along with the hazy sprouting of consciousness, the Chaos Archdemon looked down at that solitary figure.

Back then, Myss’s understanding of human language had still been incomplete. But now, the scenes in Salaar’s memories merged with Myss’s own recollections, forming a river whose waves brought every forgotten detail to the surface.

“If it weren’t for Salaar, I would have killed myself long ago.”

In the settlement where Salaar’s army lived, an emaciated mage spoke.

“He saw how bad I was doing and offered to play for me… and in it, I could feel my parents again…”

He stretched his hands toward the bonfire before him, greedily soaking in what little warmth and light it offered.

“Exactly. Memory extraction really is incredible. Did you see the way he built that house? It was identical to the work of craftsmen from my grandfather’s generation. He could absolutely pass as a professional carpenter.”

The person beside him coughed twice and nodded in agreement.

“Enough. That thing is nothing but a machine made of flesh. He doesn’t possess a shred of humanity. Everything he can do was stolen… er, taken from other people. And that impresses you?”

A cold voice cut into the conversation. A young mage sat with his knees together, most of his face hidden inside a scarf. The shadows beneath his eyes were shockingly dark, and he looked absolutely dreadful.

Silence fell for a moment. Beside the young man, a middle-aged woman frowned in displeasure. “You shouldn’t say things like that.”

The young man forced two laughs from his dry throat. “Am I wrong?”

“Ah, right. None of you had to watch your friend get executed by him with your own eyes. Everyone who followed him here believed in sacrificing themselves for the human world. Hande only had a mental breakdown and said a few things he shouldn’t have, and Salaar personally killed him!”

“Heller, I know you two were close. But you know Salaar has no heart, which means he can’t possibly act from personal bias.”

The emaciated mage shook his head repeatedly. “Hande tried to spread a faith of darkness. Salaar’s punishment followed the rules. Don’t forget, before we came here, we all agreed to those rules.”

“Yes, yes. Absolutely impartial Salaar. Absolutely rational Salaar.”

The young man named Heller spoke with cold sarcasm. “Even if we obey Lord Salaar’s orders and march to our deaths, it must be absolutely correct.”

“That thing survived until now precisely because he has no heart. How wonderful it must be to have no heart. You never have to feel any pain…”

The middle-aged woman sighed. “Enough, Heller. You aren’t well.”

“I’ve been in this hellhole for more than ten years. Of course I’m not well,” Heller said, his voice gradually dropping. “At least all of you lived under the sun until adulthood. I came here with Hande when I was fifteen.”

“By now, I’ve spent more of my life in darkness than I ever spent in the human world.”

By the end, a faint madness had entered his voice, thicker and more clinging than the darkness around them.

The bonfire continued burning weakly as the group dispersed on a sour note.

Heller was the last to leave. He stared coldly at the little fire and muttered an indistinct incantation.

Above the flames, a water sphere the size of a fist slowly condensed. Heller closed his eyes. The sphere splashed down onto the bonfire. The last bit of light vanished instantly, leaving only sizzling embers.

A long while passed before Heller opened his eyes again.

He stared blankly at the extinguished fire. Without light, the charred wood blended almost completely into the gravel-covered ground and became nearly impossible to distinguish.

The young mage stood there for about half an hour before he let out a soft, solitary chuckle. Tightening the grip on his wand carved from a dead branch, he staggered toward the graveyard.

Salaar stood motionless in the middle of the graves. There was almost no light there, and his figure nearly merged into the darkness, just like firewood burned down to ash. Only his brilliant golden hair still gave off the faintest glimmer.

Heller instinctively murmured a few spells, as though even that tiny light might be extinguished with water.

“Mr. Heller,” Salaar said without turning around.

“Monster,” Heller spat out.

“I understand your displeasure.” Salaar remained entirely unaffected. “If you need help…”

“What can you possibly do?”

A strange excitement appeared on Heller’s face.

“Listen. I don’t have parents. My best friend was killed by you. This cursed place doesn’t have any memories for you to extract. Hande’s corpse is buried right here. Your bard tricks can’t fool me!”

Salaar searched his memories and indeed found no other deceased person with whom Heller had been particularly close.

Heller was still young and withdrawn by nature. He and his fellow townsman Hande had always depended on each other. More accurately, Hande had been the more cheerful and optimistic one of the pair.

…And one month ago, Salaar had personally executed him.

“Then what do you want to do?” Salaar asked slowly.

“I want all of this to end.” Heller said, “Ants can’t stop a flood. Humans can’t stop the Night Scourge. We’re all destined to die meaningless deaths anyway. Everyone is just waiting to die. This hell will only get crazier.”

Salaar listened in silence.

Heller’s face twisted, the flesh stretching tightly over his bones until he looked like a dried skeleton.

“You know it, don’t you? From the very beginning, we never had even the slightest chance of winning! We, including you, are completely powerless against the colossal monster!”

By the end, his voice was indistinguishable from an animal’s howl. Heller’s eyes were redder than rotten meat. He seemed to want to cry, but his body no longer had enough moisture or salt to produce tears.

“Everyone is suffering through this alive. Just to survive two more days, launch two more attacks, and trade our lives for information about the source of the Night Scourge!”

“No. I only made my true judgment after seeing the source of the Night Scourge.”

“And yes. We have no means of dealing with the source of the Night Scourge. As of now, the human world has no possibility of victory.”

Salaar answered calmly.

“There aren’t that many miracles in the world. A ‘seal’ is the best solution we can currently achieve.”

As he spoke, he lowered his head and looked at a tentacle twisting beside his foot. 

Myss suddenly remembered what He had been thinking at the time. Back then, He couldn’t really understand what those two lumps of flesh were making all those noises about, nor was His consciousness clear enough.

He had only felt a straightforward sense of confusion. He wanted to know what was so special about this particular lump of flesh called “Salaar.”

But this creature came to bother Him every single day without fail. Even in His muddled state, Myss remembered that He shouldn’t bring His tentacles too close.

And so, going back and forth like that, His tentacles became tangled around Salaar, quietly circling him over and over.

The young mage failed to notice the strange tentacle entirely.

He took two steps forward. “I’ve had enough.”

“Why should I care whether those people outside live or die?”

As he spoke, he subtly turned his body and hid his wand within the shadows.

A sphere of water began forming in Salaar’s blind spot, or at least what Heller believed to be a blind spot.

“The Night Scourge should continue.”

He forced the chant down into his throat and spoke in broken fragments.

“If I’m destined to die alone and insane, then everyone outside deserves to taste this kind of despair too…”

“Please take back those words,” Salaar said.

He was still looking at the tentacle, somewhat unable to understand what was wrong with it. Across the sandy ground, the narrow tentacle swayed back and forth, circling him endlessly. Every so often it would twitch, then suddenly freeze rigid, as though malfunctioning.

“I won’t take them back.”

The young mage spoke. Within the shadows, the water sphere slowly froze into an icicle as thick as a wrist.

Salaar sighed. “If you insist, then according to the rules, I must execute you.”

“If you can no longer endure your collapse, I can remove your…”

“I have no desire to become a monster like you!”

With that roar, the icicle shot forward at terrifying speed, aimed directly at Salaar’s heart.

It was as though Salaar had eyes on the back of his head. He shifted his body aside and dodged it perfectly. At that exact instant, Heller rushed forward as well, revealing a dagger that had already been hidden inside his sleeve.

For that brief moment, Salaar hadn’t yet recovered his balance.

Heller had clearly not acted on impulse. He had deliberately studied Salaar’s habits and deliberately positioned himself very close. With this strike, Salaar could guarantee only that he wouldn’t suffer a fatal wound.

Still, he was bound to suffer some pain.

Heller’s lips curled upward into a smile of pure satisfaction.

Then—

Smack!

Heller tripped directly over the twisting, crawling tentacle and went face-first into the dirt. The poisoned dagger flew from his hand, struck Myss’s tentacle, and was promptly smacked into the darkness by Myss.

Salaar: “…”

Heller: “…”

For a moment, the atmosphere became rather ridiculous.

Realizing that he had lost his only chance to attack, Heller simply remained lying on the ground and allowed Salaar to approach.

“Please take back those words,” Salaar repeated softly.

“I’m too tired,” Heller answered, not responding to the question.

Salaar fell silent for a moment. He habitually touched his left arm, then lowered his hand again.

“I’ll bury you beside your friend,” he said, almost cautiously.

Heller laughed. It wasn’t a relieved laugh, but a nearly hysterical, neurotic shriek. “I won’t be fooled by you. Who did you ‘learn’ that sentence from this time? You—”

His voice stopped abruptly.

Salaar withdrew his hand. Just now, he had used mental magic to completely burn away Heller’s brain. Everything happened in an instant, without pain. Heller remained stiffly sprawled across the ground. The only thing in the air was the faint stench of the corpse losing control of its bodily functions.

Salaar bent down and began digging a new grave.

Myss’s tentacle reached toward his hand again. His confusion grew even stronger. Why had one of the pieces of flesh suddenly gone cold? Why had “Salaar” destroyed one of his own kind?

At the same time, He couldn’t understand why Salaar was digging a hole.

So every time Salaar shoveled away a scoop of dirt, Myss would curl around a tiny pebble and carry it off, checking whether it possessed some mysterious function.

Salaar stopped moving and Myss stopped too.

He slowly bent down and reached toward Myss. Based on their previous experience trying to kill one another, Myss instantly pulled His tentacle back and fled.

Salaar’s expression shifted slightly, revealing a look that said, Just as I thought. He resumed digging the grave, treating the earlier abnormality as an accident.

The moment he began digging again, Myss’s tentacle casually wandered back. This time, He was a little smarter and knew to circle Salaar at a wider distance. 

Unfortunately, Salaar still noticed immediately. Salaar stared at the “dead branch” pretending to be a twig, then raised his head toward the endless darkness overhead.

Thump thump thump thump.

Thump thump.

Thump thump thump thump.

The Chaos Archdemon’s heartbeat echoed through the darkness That sound never changed, He never ceased. It was as precise as the hands of a clock. It was omni present, and for that very reason, it seems impossibly distant.

Yet amid that vast, orderly chorus of heartbeats, a single tentacle stumbled closer and quietly circled him. It was only five steps away.

The moment it noticed Salaar looking over, the tentacle casually froze in place and pretended not to exist.

Was it a coincidence? A conditioned reflex caused by stimulation? Or…

Cold sand struck the top of Salaar’s boot. Without realizing it, Salaar discovered that he had stopped moving again.

A sharp and unfamiliar pain struck him. It was clearer than the gravel beneath his soles. Right there, on the left side of his chest. Salaar didn’t know how to describe the sensation.

There was nothing in his memories he could compare it to.

It was like someone who had spent their entire life immersed in darkness suddenly feeling a trace of light brush across their skin.

Its existence was not meant to drive away the darkness or point toward a path. It simply…made him feel warm, as though a frozen body was slowly regaining sensation.

For the first time, he felt the existence of “himself.”

…Something wet slid down his cheek.

Heller, who specialized in water magic, was already dead, Salaar thought. But if this isn’t an attack, why did it hurt so much?

It wasn’t grief. He had held no expectations for Heller. He had monitored Heller’s condition and knew that this day would eventually come.

It wasn’t anger. He remembered the disasters and chaos caused by the Night Scourge. He understood how the human heart changed after long years spent in darkness. Before Heller, he had experienced similar situations many times.

It wasn’t resentment either. Salaar understood his mission better than anyone. A seed was born to sprout. Salaar was born to end the Night Scourge. It was an instinct as natural as breathing. No one felt wronged simply because they “had to expend effort in order to breathe.”

Then what was it?

Salaar stared blankly at the tentacle moving back and forth. He used magic to remove the wetness from his face, but it quickly appeared again.

The tentacle had clearly noticed the tears. It hesitantly reached toward the dampened sand, lightly poked it with the tip, then instantly recoiled and curled itself up.

Several seconds passed before it slowly stretched out again and resumed circling him.

Salaar suddenly felt like laughing. That was his destined opponent, the entire reason for his existence, and the grave toward which he was inevitably headed.

He understood why the Chaos Archdemon’s tentacles fought against him. All living things resisted in order to survive. Beyond that, the abnormal existence was simply too immense and too distant.

It never responded to anyone—until now.

Salaar raised his head again.

Myss happened to be looking at him too.

Just moments ago, He had been shocked to discover that this little lump of flesh could produce not only red liquid, but clear liquid as well. He had investigated rigorously but found no wound.

Questions began to multiply. This little creature was too bothersome, too powerful, too unusual, too abnormal.

Those questions gathered together like droplets of water until they became flowing curiosity.

For the first time, He truly “saw” him.

For the first time, He began to think.

Perhaps His gaze was simply too intense.

Salaar stood there for a long time. Then suddenly, he smiled. He had never seen such a strange smile. Salaar never showed the other humans such an awkward smile.

“I’m the person you know best.” His voice was slightly hoarse. “‘I’m the person most familiar to you. You only look at ‘me’… even if this is merely my own delusion.”

The lump of flesh started making noises again.

Myss moved His tentacle in boredom and began probing the half-dug grave once more, trying to determine what was so special about the hole.

“I always thought the reason I could never feel loneliness or despair was because I could never possess a heart.” Salaar murmured toward the endless darkness. “So a ‘heart’ can grow on its own.”

Those emotions belonged only to him—a unique, singular emotion. Because his instincts, his obsession, his entire existence would point toward only one being.

In truth, he had understood it long ago. Whether it was love or hatred, from the very first moment he looked toward Him, his heart had never again possessed room for anything else.

Salaar gently placed his right hand over his heart. He was still in pain, yet that pain made him overwhelmingly happy.

Yes, he wasn’t some monster incapable of understanding loneliness or despair. He was simply luckier than other humans.

An endless journey with no destination was unquestionably hell, but rushing toward a destination was merely a journey.

He had always been watching Him. And in this moment, he was willing to believe that He had noticed him too.

Salaar pulled himself together. A brilliant golden light swept toward the tentacle. Myss’s tentacle stiffened and fled in a stumbling panic. He wasn’t yet accustomed to the skill called “thinking” and couldn’t manage both thought and movement at once, so His escape was particularly undignified.

The tentacle crawled crookedly for a distance, stopped, twisted around, and checked whether Salaar was still chasing. His clumsy posture made it look like an unfortunate drunken snake.

Salaar instinctively wiped his face. This time, his fingers found no more tears.

Instead, something warm and substantial had settled deep within his heart. For the first time, Salaar discovered that the act of “smiling” was much easier than it had ever been before.

Immersed in the warm, chaotic darkness, listening to the gentle heartbeat surrounding him from every direction, he became aware of “himself” for the first time.

…His birth was no different from that of an ordinary human. It had merely come a little late.

Even though he was filled with murderous intent toward the being that had “gestated” him, that murderous intent made him immeasurably content.

……

Through the eyes of His former self, Myss once again looked down upon that familiar figure.

There was something Salaar didn’t know.

On that day, at that moment, within that darkness, two souls had been born simultaneously.

---

The author has something to say:

All right, all right, I’m setting another flag. Tomorrow we continue… At least the word count improved! [please]

Looking at it this way, their birthdays could probably be considered the same day. [dog head holding a rose]

---

<<< || Table of Contents || >>>

Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong

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

---

Chapter 138: The First Glimpse

The cage elevator started moving, rumbling as it plunged downward.

Salaar didn’t wait for the young man’s answer, nor did he even look at his expression. He simply descended alone, falling toward the deepest abyss of the darkness.

There was no firelight in the shaft. The black coffin seemed to dissolve into the shadows.

Salaar’s arms were still tightly wrapped around Myss’s waist, and the Hero still had his face buried against Myss’s abdomen, breathing slowly and steadily.

Salaar had been created.

Myss discovered that he wasn’t particularly surprised by this revelation.

During the Night Scourge, alchemy had been highly advanced. There had been all manner of bizarre alchemical lifeforms, and the Celestial Canopy so-called “Divine Blood Puppets,” which the Stargazers Society had reconstructed from its remnants…

In that case, an alchemical lifeform identical in appearance to a human wasn’t especially strange.

Myss unconsciously stroked Salaar’s hair. It was warm and slightly coarse.

It was ironic, really. They had fought inside the seal for more than three hundred years, and all Myss had ever thought about was how to stab that damned human full of holes. Not once had he ever touched Salaar’s hair.

There was no question about it. Salaar was showing him everything.

Probably because the Blind God was deeply connected to the Celestial Canopy. At this rate, Salaar wouldn’t be able to hide it from him anyway, Myss thought.

Better to rip the bandage away all at once and explain everything clearly.

And Salaar wanted to tell him something… But what?

Myss concentrated and watched the phantom of the past.

Salaar finally reached his destination. Inside and outside the cage, there was nothing but pure darkness, almost identical to the environment within the seal.

A brilliant golden orb of light ignited and obediently floated beside Salaar. Yet even though it was so bright, it couldn’t pierce the swamp-thick, oppressive darkness. Myss could only see the dark-brown soil beneath Salaar’s feet. In every other direction, there was no distinction at all.

Salaar walked unwaveringly toward a particular direction. Myss had no idea how he knew the way. Earlier, he had still been able to sense faint magical fluctuations, but here there was nothing at all. It was like a void.

Salaar walked for quite some time before he came to a halt. The golden light continued forward on its own and illuminated what lay ahead.

Myss widened his eyes. His hand, which had been idly playing with Salaar’s head, went still.

He saw lapis lazuli blue.

More precisely, he saw more than a hundred pairs of lapis-lazuli eyes. They varied in size and were embedded in incomplete human faces.

Countless faces had fused together, their pale skin connecting into a mass that faintly outlined the shape of a human embryo.

Every face covering the thing’s surface… Every single one looked exactly like Salaar.

The “embryo” floated in midair and was even larger than the adult Salaar standing before it.

The lapis-lazuli eyes across its surface blinked irregularly. The golden radiance made them narrow in discomfort. But every black pupil was undoubtedly directed toward Salaar.

Those eyes weren’t very different from the two on Salaar’s own face. They were just as cold, like exquisite glasswork.

“I’m going to leave, my…” Salaar paused slightly before continuing. “My successor.”

The embryo remained silent.

More magical devices floated around it. Countless tubes disappeared into the darkness, producing an inorganic humming sound.

“According to our current projections, I will have only one ending. I will be destroyed by the source of Chaos. Before that happens, I will buy as much time as possible.”

“The moment I am destroyed, you will inherit my mission and be born into this world. Before leaving, I thought it necessary to see you once.”

Salaar’s tone sounded less like conversation and more like speaking to himself.

He gazed intently into the countless eyes covering the embryo, as though trying to find something within them.

But in the end, he found nothing.

“…I’m not dead yet, so I can’t give you the most complete version of my memories. I’ll copy everything I remember up to this point and leave it with you as an advance reference.”

He spoke calmly and placed one hand against the floating embryo.

The instant Salaar touched it, countless specks of brilliant gold exploded outward. Like ten thousand sparks, the golden fragments ignited the darkness.

In an instant, a chaotic whirlwind began to turn through the near-void. For a moment, Myss felt as though he had returned to the instant when they first entered the Fallen Child’s Divine Realm.

Only this time, the memories filling the darkness didn’t belong to the mother of Rosha, but to Salaar himself.

The earliest memory was darkness.

“It’s too late. Our research is falling far behind the rate at which the Night Scourge is worsening. Even if every country sets aside its grudges and cooperates, we can’t increase efficiency any further…”

A middle-aged man spoke in frustration.

“The effects of the Night Scourge are simply too vast, and the information is too scattered. Our observers can’t record every detail, and there’s always a loss of information in communication.”

“Never mind how difficult cooperation with other countries is. Even within the Celestial Canopy, coordination across departments and regions is nearly impossible…”

“Perhaps all we can do is accumulate as much information as possible. Maybe future generations will be able to use it.”

A younger woman tried to comfort him.

“I heard the Nebula family is researching a magical ‘brain’ that can organize and summarize all that information.”

“If we had several hundred more years to perfect it, perhaps.”

Another dry voice cut in.

“Enough. Stop lying to yourselves. More and more people are changing directions and preparing to compromise with the Night Scourge. We lose researchers every day.”

“I’ve seen the Nebula family’s magical ‘brain’ too. It’s decent at storing information, but if you actually ask it to ‘think,’ it can’t even tell an apple from a pear.”

The middle-aged man said, “Yes. Human thought is irreplaceable. Unfortunately, a single person has far too little time to learn… Wait.”

“Tell me. If we poured all of our observations, knowledge, and experience into a single genius, might that give us a better solution?”

……

Darkness, an even longer stretch of darkness.

“No.”

This time, the middle-aged man’s voice was gone; it was the younger woman who spoke.

“He’s gone mad… I should have realized it. Pouring so many people’s memories into one mind all at once was bound to cause a mental breakdown, even if he was the strongest among us…”

“Hah. I warned him long ago.”

The dry voice gave a bitter laugh.

“Well, now the Celestial Canopy has lost another genius. He’s nothing but a heap of insane fragments now. He doesn’t even know who he is, much less how to find a solution…”

“Still, compared with simply surrendering, the method is theoretically viable. During the brief periods when he was barely lucid, he did produce several extremely useful new ideas.”

The young woman’s voice was slightly hoarse.

“We can try stripping the emotions out of the memories and attempting it again. This time, I’ll do it.”

“…”

The dry voice remained silent for a while before releasing a long sigh.

“Let me do it instead. You’re still young, Mariana.”

“I’m already old, and my mind isn’t sharp enough anymore. You’re still young. As long as the young don’t give up, there is still hope.”

……

This time, the darkness lasted even longer.

So long that Myss began to wonder whether his own perception had malfunctioned.

“…”

“…I’m sorry.” Mariana spoke softly. “Even memories without emotion still destabilize an established personality… You remained lucid only slightly longer than he did…”

“Never mind the countless scenes of carnage and horrific recollections, just the details mixed into those memories, the conflicting habits of life… even something as trivial as whether a person eats fish can disrupt someone.”

“We aren’t as strong as we imagined…”

There was no response.

It was difficult to tell whether this was a conversation or simply someone muttering to themselves.

Myss more or less understood the Celestial Canopy desperation.

The situation was deteriorating rapidly. Humanity was running itself ragged. The Celestial Canopy had tried to create an omniscient sage to face the approaching end of the world.

Magical devices and machines could bear unlimited information, but they were astonishingly stupid, and humanity had no time to improve them. Human thought and inspiration were relatively useful, but the human mind couldn’t withstand a vast flood of information.

It would only break apart into madness. At first glance, the problem truly seemed unsolvable. And yet the “answer” was currently lying across Myss’s lap, breathing softly.

The woman named Mariana remained silent in the darkness for a long time.

“But if there is no ‘heart’ to begin with, then there is nothing to collapse.” At last, she murmured those words. “Yes. Yes. The technology for alchemical lifeforms is mature enough. We only need to construct a ‘homunculus’…”

“An ordinary human body is too fragile. If we add a large amount of Night Scourge essence, it will possess extremely high resistance to the Night Scourge…”

“Then we give it everyone’s memories and experience.”

“It will become a one-of-a-kind ‘Hero’… Ha!”

Mariana’s voice suddenly grew excited.

“I’ve thought of a brilliant idea. Can you hear me?”

“The Celestial Canopy already has every material we need. We only lack a fetus with no memories!”

“There are so many stillborn infants these days. Someone will certainly be willing to donate one…”

Her voice grew quieter and quieter before ending in a sigh.

“…No matter what, I will not allow the apocalypse come to pass.”

Her tone was utterly resolute, accompanied by the faint rustling of fabric. “I will let my child see the sunlight.”

“Do you hear me?”

……

The darkness finally disappeared.

Through blurred vision, Myss and the newborn “Salaar” saw Mariana’s face together.

Her features were fairly proper, and she possessed lapis-lazuli eyes identical to Salaar’s.

Whether because of the Night Scourge or simply because of her emotional state, even Myss, who wasn’t sensitive to human ages, felt that the woman looked much older than she actually was.

Her cheeks were hollow from thinness, and her skin was covered in an unhealthy waxy yellow pallor.

Within the memory, she placed a swaddled infant onto a cushioned seat.

The baby neither cried nor fussed. He simply looked at her in silence, both little hands rested on his knees. His face showed none of the joy, anger, sadness, or pleasure that a human infant should possess.

“…Salaar.” After a long while, she spoke. “From today onward, your name is ‘Salaar.’”

“You previously called ‘me’ Selene,” the infant said in a childish voice.

His tone, however, was extremely close to that of an adult. Myss keenly noticed the hairs on Mariana’s arms rise for an instant.

“That’s not your name. It was the name of my dead child. You’re not him.” Mariana’s voice was dry.

“I’ll remember,” Salaar said calmly.

“From now on, I’ll be responsible for your daily care and education. Your body is still too… fragile.” Mariana took several deep breaths. “In the future, you will need to absorb new memory information at regular intervals and devote yourself entirely to researching a solution to the Night Scourge.”

“Remember this above all else: everything is for ending the Night Scourge.”

“I understand my mission,” Salaar said. “I have only one question. How should I address you?”

“According to ordinary human logic, I should call you ‘Mo—’”

“Madam. Or Lady Mariana.” Mariana forced a smile. “The amount of Night Scourge source used to create you far exceeds the contribution from an infant’s body.”

“According to ordinary human logic, the source of the Night Scourge is closer to being your ‘mother’ than I am.”

“Understood, Madam,” Salaar said, sounding completely unmoved.

Myss: “…?”

Myss lowered his head and looked at the adult Salaar still holding him. Goosebumps slowly rose across his skin.

“Don’t worry. I never thought of it that way.” Salaar spoke for the first time, and he even sounded like he was suppressing laughter. “Even then, I knew she only said that because she wanted to reject me tactfully.”

Myss thought for a moment. “Then do you consider yourself human?”

If Salaar wasn’t even human, Myss truly couldn’t understand where his obsession with “everything is for ending the Night Scourge” had come from.

If he could persuade Salaar to fall, that might count as a victory of its own…

Salaar didn’t answer; the shifting memory answered for him.

……

A teenage Salaar sat beneath the sunlight, writing and calculating on parchment.

“The observers in Atla have withdrawn eight hundred people and transferred them to the vicinity of the Crimson Marsh in Mondicia.”

He continued calculating without pausing his pen.

“We need to build a large stronghold in Mondicia.”

Mariana carried over a plate of cakes and gently placed it beside Salaar’s hand. “Why?”

“Even after incorporating a large quantity of Night Scourge source, my essential nature is still human.” Salaar didn’t look at her. “I will age and die or perhaps die unexpectedly.”

“More importantly, according to our current information, the probability that our generation alone can eradicate the Night Scourge is extremely low.”

Mariana smoothed her hair. Several white strands at her temples were especially conspicuous.

“What are you thinking?”

“Stop concentrating all memories in me.”

“Imagine that we reconstruct a mental magical device and use it to back up all memory information.”

Salaar continued, “It would be simple and independent. It wouldn’t need to rely on me for its existence. That way, after I die, a ‘replacement’ can inherit it directly and continue fighting the Night Scourge.”

“Like the Nebula family’s magical brain,” Mariana said in understanding.

“No. A physical object is too easy to destroy. If something happens to the Celestial Canopy, there’s a risk that the inheritance of knowledge will be lost.”

Salaar finally raised his head.

“I intend to turn it into pure magic.”

“I will anchor a powerful mental spell within my body. At the instant of my death, it will automatically extract all the knowledge I possess and transfer it to a designated target.”

Mariana understood. “Mondicia’s environment is the most suitable for hiding living things. You want a successor.”

“Yes. The closer its physical nature is to mine, the better.”

Mariana remained silent for a long time. “You’re not purely human. It’ll be difficult for you to have descendants. I—”

“There’s no need.” Salaar’s tone was indifferent. “You may use my flesh however you like. Even a lump of meat would be acceptable. A group of monsters might be better. As long as they possess thought and can survive for a long time…”

“…And most importantly, like me, they must have no ‘heart.’”

Mariana: “A name?”

“I’ll not name my successor…”

“No. The name of the spell,” Mariana said softly. “I need to enter it into the records.”

Salaar thought for a long time.

“Black Coffin.” He said, “Just as those who entrusted their deaths to me, I’ll pass everything I possess onward in the same way.”

“Even if the Celestial Canopy fails and everything is buried in darkness, as long as the spell doesn’t disappear, there will come a day when all of this sees the light again.”

Mariana’s movements paused slightly. Her eyes lifted almost imperceptibly. She seemed as though she wanted to ask something, but in the end, she said nothing.

Myss immediately lowered his gaze and stared fixedly at the back of Salaar’s head.

So that was it. No wonder Salaar had shown him all this. He had been waiting for this moment.

Even if Salaar died, his memories and experience, together with all the other memories he carried, would be passed on to his successor.

And that damned successor would rise again and continue harassing Myss. Even if there were no successor, Salaar had hidden those memories inside a spell, waiting for some other human to discover them.

Unless the entire world was destroyed, Myss truly had no way to stop it.

“You showed me all this just to annoy me? To tell me that even after you die, your ghost will keep haunting me?”

Even though he knew Salaar couldn’t see his face, Myss still bared his teeth. The muscles of his abdomen tightened with irritation.

Salaar’s body moved twice, as though he were laughing. 

“That was only one of my goals.” Salaar’s voice was muffled. “Unfortunately, it isn’t the most important one.”

“What did you say—”

“Shh. We’re almost at the end.” Salaar tightened his embrace. “Be patient. Finish watching.”

Myss tried to peel the person clinging to him away. Unfortunately, Salaar was much stronger than his size suggested. After struggling for quite a while, Myss gave up.

“Isn’t it already over?” he asked irritably.

Before them, the golden light had already faded. Salaar stood opposite the malformed embryo. It seemed he had only wanted to entrust the necessary information to his “successor” before leaving.

Salaar shook his head.

“Now I’m going to add the part that happened after I left.” There was laughter in his voice. “…The most important part, and the answer the Blind God wants most.”

The moment Salaar finished speaking, everything returned to pure darkness.

This time, Myss recognized the place. It was the seal where they had been trapped. The ground beneath Salaar’s feet wasn’t dark-brown soil but cold, dark gravel.

Salaar wore battered armor and stood among crooked gravestones. Faint firelight glimmered not far away. Clearly, many of Salaar’s companions were still alive.

It looked like an utterly ordinary day.

Myss frowned.

…No, this wasn’t right. This wasn’t an “utterly ordinary” day.

The number of gravestones. The distribution of the firelight. The damage on the armor… He remembered them all.

That was the day He has first laid eyes on Salaar.

---

<<< || Table of Contents || >>>

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’.”

---

<<< || Table of Contents || >>>

Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong

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

---

Chapter 136: Good Atmosphere, Bad Atmosphere

Myss’s rational mind told him that he should take the opportunity to probe Sogné’s memories.

But his instincts made him turn his head and give Salaar an interested, questioning, “Hm?” Under Sogné’s puzzled gaze, the magic that had just begun to stir vanished in an instant.

“I said we should rest early today.” Salaar looked as though he had just breathed a sigh of relief.

Myss had a nagging sensation of having finally won, but not quite decisively. Salaar had definitely seen through what he had been about to do and interrupted him in an emergency.

…But why? Based on Myss’s understanding of Salaar, perhaps Salaar might selfishly want to linger in this long dream for a little longer. But at most, that would make him less proactive. He would never deliberately obstruct Myss.

So was probing Sogné too dangerous? Or had Salaar already figured something out?

Myss casually abandoned the thought and reached out to pull at Sogné’s face instead. The little brat could not run away anyway. There would be plenty of time later.

“Must… protect… hope… everything is not… over yet…”

As luck would have it, several black shadows appeared beside the dining table at the same time.

They huddled together, bent over, looking deeply pained.

“Daylight has come… but daylight is not the only thing that came…”

“Hide… hide…”

“Black coffin…”

Sogné showed no reaction, as though he had long since grown accustomed to them. For once, Myss listened carefully to the dreamlike fragments and committed them to memory.

……

Night.

No, more accurately, there was no night here. Outside the window, the sky remained an unnaturally vivid blue with white clouds. But once the bedroom curtains were drawn, the room grew dim enough to resemble nighttime.

They were inside a dream world, where even cleansing magic was unnecessary, yet Salaar still solemnly took a bath. So when he entered the room, his hair was still faintly damp.

The instant Salaar stepped inside, Myss shut the door with a thud like a hunter trapping an animal. The entire room sank into a honey-thick haze.

The outline of the bedframe became soft and indistinct.

Myss was still wearing the clothes from earlier that day and stood between Salaar and the bedroom door, as though Salaar might suddenly make a run for it.

Salaar: “…”

The corner of Salaar’s mouth twitched.

“I’m not going to run.”

Myss gave a satisfied snort, crossed the room in two steps, and dropped onto the edge of the bed. He generously opened his arms toward Salaar. The gesture looked less like seduction and more like provocation.

“Come on!”

Watching Myss flap his arms, Salaar suddenly thought of a wild beast encountering a powerful enemy and spreading itself wide to appear larger. It looked as though they were about to charge into battle rather than climb onto a soft bed.

Salaar struggled hard to suppress a smile. “I have to tell you, humans have a bad habit. The more we reach moments like this, the more we care about the ‘mood’.”

Myss stabbed Salaar with a look that plainly said, Why are you so troublesome?

Salaar smiled and shook his head. He took a candle from the stand in the corner and lit it beside the bed. A layer of warm light spread through the dim room, making the shadows seem even sweeter and thicker.

Then Salaar sat down beside Myss and quietly looked up at the ceiling, lost in thought.

Myss: “What now?”

“This is Kendrick’s body. It still feels a little strange,” Salaar said softly. “Even though Kendric abandoned this body, it still…”

They had already kissed countless times before. Myss himself was using the slave’s body! In more than three hundred years, Myss had never seen Salaar agonize like this.

He strongly suspected Salaar was stalling for time.

“This is a dream, Salaar. The you here is nothing more than a consciousness. What are you overthinking for?”

“…Right. This is a dream.”

Salaar froze for a moment, then smiled again.

He raised both hands and slowly wiped them across his face, as though removing an invisible mask. His fingers passed through his black hair. The strands seemed to ignite, turning into brilliant gold.

Between his fingers, those two lapis-lazuli eyes became faintly moist, their gaze winding around Myss like climbing vines.

When Salaar lowered his hands again, Myss saw that familiar yet unfamiliar face.

Myss instinctively stopped breathing. He couldn’t help slowly raising a hand and touching Salaar’s cheek with his fingertips.

…This was the first face he had ever seen when his consciousness was born.

How strange. Kendrick Karns’s body had been altered by Salaar until its build was almost identical to his former one. Even the face carried traces of the Salaar from long ago.

But Salaar had never possessed Kendrick’s damp, gloomy air. He had always been crisp and clear, like autumn sunlight.

Logically, Myss should have long since grown accustomed to the difference.

Yet the instant he clearly saw that face, Myss felt as though something had clenched around his heart. 

For a moment, he forgot what he was supposed to do next. Forgot what goal he meant to accomplish. He even forgot where he was.

He simply looked at him, just as he had at their very first meeting.

“Salaar?” After a long while, Myss called softly, his voice slightly hoarse.

“It’s me.” Salaar lowered his hands completely. “I keep forgetting… this is only a dream, and I’m very skilled in mental magic.”

“Salaar.” Myss called his name again.

“I’m here.” Salaar smiled—a smile with his true features, wearing the same expression that had graced the face of “Kendrick”. Myss suddenly realized that inside the seal, Salaar had never smiled this gently at anyone else.

Salaar really did like him. For the first time, Myss understood that with startling clarity.

The concept that had once made him smug suddenly became real, heavy, and close enough to touch.

The candle beside the bed flickered. Myss’s mind tangled into a mess, and for a moment he had no idea how to continue.

Salaar, on the other hand, calmed down. He didn’t mock Myss as he had imagined, nor did he continue with a joking remark.

“May I hold you?” His voice was soft.

Myss nodded blankly. Only afterward did he realize what Salaar had asked.

Salaar climbed off the bed and bent down; his shadow nearly swallowed Myss whole. His arms moved around Myss’s back.

Myss sat rigidly in place, watching that face draw closer and closer… only to pull away again.

Something warm and smooth brushed across his cheek. Only belatedly did Myss realize that Salaar had just untied the ribbon at the back of his hair.

Without the ribbon holding it in place, his long gray-white hair cascaded down like a waterfall. The pomegranate blossoms tangled within slid loose as well, their vivid red even more striking.

Oh. He was letting my hair down so the bun wouldn’t press uncomfortably against the back of my head later.

Myss held his breath and waited for the Hero to approach again. A tingling sensation rippled across his skin, and the blood in his veins felt as though they had been replaced by boiling mercury.

For the first time, Myss discovered that the sound of his own heartbeat was annoyingly loud.

But Salaar didn’t climb back onto the bed. He watched the long hair spill down and gently exhaled, then he carefully bent lower and knelt onto one knee before Myss.

It was not a posture of submission. Salaar opened his arms and wrapped them tightly around Myss’s waist, burying his face against Myss’s soft stomach.

Myss’s brain seemed to turn into mush. For a while, he couldn’t think clearly.

Everything was too surreal that he couldn’t even identify his own emotions. Amid the confusion, Myss instinctively raised a hand and gently stroked Salaar’s brilliant golden hair.

At that moment, the strands were immersed in dim shadow and looked almost black.

Myss’s hand suddenly tightened.

How strange. In the span of a single heartbeat, he understood exactly how Salaar felt.

The Salaar resting against his legs was only a phantom from the past. That body had aged and decayed little by little before Myss’s own eyes, with no possibility of ever recovering.

When their journey ended, Salaar’s consciousness would return to that nearly corpse-like body and disappear completely.

After so many days, Myss once again imagined Salaar’s death.

This weight. This warmth. All of it was false.

At some point in the future, Salaar would vanish before Myss’s eyes and turn completely to dust. Just like the Salaar in front of him now, he would disappear entirely and exist only in the depths of Myss’s memories.

How ironic, Myss thought in broken fragments. He had already known that Salaar loved him, just as he had always known that Salaar was destined to die—either in Myss’s victory, or in Myss’s destruction, disappearing alongside him.

But at this moment, Salaar’s love and Salaar’s death both became unbearably real at the same time.

The most vivid Salaar Myss had ever known was already half dead. That head of brilliant golden hair existed here and could only exist here.

Just like the endless daylight outside the window —just like the home Salaar desired. They were things destined never to exist in reality.

Myss suddenly felt an uncomfortable pang. He tightened the fingers buried in Salaar’s hair, unsure how to make the strange emotion disappear. His throat went dry, and his chest felt filled with lead.

Waves of inexplicable anger battered his thoughts, but he had no idea where to vent that rage.

Myss sat there angrily for quite some time, then sniffled loudly.

“Myss?” Salaar raised his eyes slightly and looked up at him.

“I’m upset,” Myss said in a muffled voice. “I think I understand why you want to stay here now. Damn it.”

“Really? …I thought you’d never understand me in your entire life, and somehow you actually saw through me.”

Salaar buried his face again. “Ah, being understood by your enemy is never a good thing.”

Myss felt a mix of smug satisfaction and irritation at the same time. He smacked Salaar on the head.

“Shut up. Let me finish being upset first. We can do it later. Right now, the… atmosphere isn’t right.”

Had Salaar been feeling something like this ever since they entered this place? Myss couldn’t fathom how he could still smile.

Tentatively, Myss bent forward and wrapped his arms around Salaar’s head. 

Silence swayed along with the candle flame. Drops of wax slid down the candle one by one and slowly hardened on the wooden table. Objectively speaking, of course, all of it was only a trivial, fleeting dream.

One minute… Two minutes… Ten minutes.

At last, Myss’s mind cleared somewhat. He drew a deep breath, released Salaar’s head, and patted his own chest. “Let’s continue.”

That pat immediately dislodged a flattened loaf of bread. It slid down beneath the fabric and smacked Salaar directly on the head.

Salaar: “…”

Salaar: “…Pfft!”

“What are you laughing at? How was I supposed to know the dream would reproduce everything this accurately?!”

Myss pulled out the other loaf, which was still in place, and slapped it onto Salaar’s head. Salaar instinctively jerked his head aside, sending the bread flying heroically through the air. It smacked against the wall and slowly slid to the floor. 

Looking at the valiantly fallen loaf, Myss failed to suppress the laughter in his voice. The Archdemon pressed his lips together several times before finally bursting into loud laughter.

“Oh, how intense.”

Salaar couldn’t stop laughing either, tears gathering at the corners of his eyes.

“This is the most absurd ‘atmosphere’ I’ve ever experienced. Even those terrible books written about me never had this much imagination.”

Myss’s body shook continuously with laughter. Salaar rested his head on Myss’s lap, his face flushed and hot from laughing.

“I need to confess,” Salaar said once he finally calmed down, still lying across Myss’s legs.

Myss braced both hands behind himself on the bed and panted for breath. “Confess what?”

“—I feel so happy.” Salaar played with the end of one loose strand of Myss’s hair. “In this ridiculous place made entirely of lies and impossibilities, we somehow managed to put everything else aside and simply be together.”

“The home I first imagined wasn’t even this good.”

“Your first imagined home?” Myss curiously scratched the back of Salaar’s head.

“Yes. The first home I imagined.” Salaar muttered, “To tell you the truth, the first time I ever thought of ‘home’ was when I saw you… though I suppose we weren’t exactly living together back then.”

Myss thought back to the darkness inside the seal and that lonely little house. “You had a very strange imagination.”

“No. You don’t understand.” Salaar said, “That was the first time I realized…”

He abruptly stopped, his expression stiffening. Then he raised his head and looked toward the door.

“I see.” He said, “So this is what the ‘Blind God’ wants. No wonder…”

No wonder what? Myss stared down at Salaar in complete confusion.

Salaar closed his eyes and slowly released a long breath. When he spoke again, his voice was clear and calm. 

“I know what you want now, Blind God.”

“I can give you what you want. But you have to make a deal with me.”

---

The author has something to say:

I swear I’m getting them into bed in this arc!!!

First, let’s have Salaar peel a few onion layers of himself to set the mood. [applause]

---

<<< || Table of Contents || >>>

Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong

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

---

Chapter 135: Hymn of Praise

When the Dragon Fae appeared again, Father Kalen was badly startled. The little mouse staggered out, flopped beside his shoe, and nearly reverted into a corpse on the spot.

Father Kalen hurriedly took out a gemstone and hid it beneath the mouse’s fur. The Dragon Fae frantically absorbed its magic, reducing the gem to powder in the blink of an eye.

Then Tass listlessly flicked his tail to indicate that he was fine.

“They’re all right for now. I told them everything I needed to say.” He whispered into the air. “My condition is better than I expected. I didn’t suffer any serious injuries.”

Only then did Kalen sigh in relief, though that relief was soon replaced by unease. According to the Dragon Fae, did that mean all they could do now was wait?

A few steps away.

“Egan, your spell doesn’t appear to have succeeded. Has God given you any further instructions?”

After dealing with the “accidental” little fire, the High Priest and Garnet turned their attention back to the boy.

Egan bit his lower lip and gently shook his head.

The old man sighed. “Child, you must understand that the sacrifices’ dream is a beautiful dream personally created by Lord Blind God.”

“I knew you couldn’t interfere with it, which is why I tolerated your mischief. Remember this lesson and be sure to distinguish dreams from reality.”

Egan obediently lowered his head and muttered rather childishly, “But I really did hear God’s voice.”

The High Priest naturally didn’t dislike such innocent loyalty. He smiled. “Garnet, once this year’s Eye-Opening Ceremony is over, you must properly instruct this child.”

Kalen instinctively looked toward the half-dead Dragon Fae rat and lightly nudged the tip of Tass’s tail with his boot.

Tass immediately understood his question. “I merely amplified the mechanism of his spell and used it to smuggle myself into the dream. His own magic isn’t strong enough to enter so easily.”

Kalen hesitated, glanced at the tiny tail again, and tugged it slightly toward Egan.

“Hey, I can’t investigate a second time. My body hasn’t recovered yet.” Tass curled himself into a dark-brown ball, pulling even his tail inward.

Having no method didn’t mean they had to sit and wait for death.

Since they were already inside, they needed to collect as much information about the Blind God as possible before the Eye-Opening Ceremony began. When Myss and Salaar awoke, Kalen wanted to provide them with the most complete support and backup possible.

Hermit had instructed him to assist the two of them with all his strength, so Kalen resolved to investigate as seriously as he could. He stuffed the rat-ball Tass into his pocket and quietly began retreating with the two ordinary rats.

At almost the same moment, Egan spoke. “Um, I shouldn’t continue disturbing your preparations. I must return and pray for a while longer to apologize to Lord Blind God.”

His tone remained obedient, but every adult present could hear a trace of grievance and defiance within it.

The High Priest stroked his white beard, which nearly touched the floor, and smiled kindly. “Good night, Priest Egan.”

Father Kalen hurried after Egan and quietly left the preparation room behind him.

On the way in, Kalen had deliberately observed the layout. Within this spiraling, shell-like corridor, there were two routes leading toward the very center, the sanctuary of the Blind God.

One was the route Salaar and Myss were meant to take. The preparation room connected to the confession chamber, which in turn connected to the central sanctuary.

The other appeared to be reserved for clergy. It stood directly beside the preparation room, at the end of the corridor.

Compared with the small arched doors lining both sides of the passage, this door stretched from floor to ceiling and filled the entire corridor. Its panels were extremely thick and bore a dim metallic sheen, making it look impossibly heavy.

Kalen reached out and touched it. The cold instantly bit into his fingers.

Once Egan returned to his room to sleep, Kalen planned to find a way to open the door and investigate the sanctuary…

Huh?

Before Kalen’s astonished gaze, Egan turned a corner and strode toward the Blind God’s sanctuary. The child had said he would “apologize to Lord Blind God.” Had he meant that literally?

Surprised though he was, Kalen didn’t waste such a perfect opportunity to infiltrate the sanctuary. He once again became Egan’s invisible tail and followed him all the way to the great doors.

Egan placed his hand on the door and recited an obscure incantation. In a manner completely at odds with its heavy appearance, the sanctuary door slid open without a sound.

The interior was dim, and faint, bathed in a faint, eerie green glow. The moment Kalen stepped inside, the door silently closed behind him, solid as a wall.

Kalen quickly turned his head, searching for a statue of the Blind God. Instead, he was met by the group of closed-eyed sculptures in the center of the hall and the enormous pit more than ten meters wide.

Dressed in a pale robe, Egan walked step by step toward the horrifying pit, which resembled an empty eye socket. Against the ghostly green light, he looked almost luminous.

Kalen remained concealed and followed directly behind him, hiding within the vague human silhouettes. Tass had recovered a little. He gripped the edge of Kalen’s pocket and curiously examined everything around them.

Egan closed his eyes and prayed with complete devotion.

Deciding to fully commit to the ruse, Kalen stepped between Egan and the pit, drew a deep breath, and said, “Good child, you’ve done well.”

Egan immediately opened his eyes. Delight nearly overflowed from his blue gaze.

“My God, my spell failed. I thought…”

“Good child, don’t doubt yourself,” Father Kalen improvised on the spot. “When the Eye-Opening Ceremony begins, you will witness a spectacle unlike anything ever seen before.”

Egan’s cheeks reddened slightly. “Yes!”

Tass had regained some strength. He climbed along Kalen’s elaborately decorated Crimson Marsh clothing until he reached the priest’s shoulder.

“What are you going to do next?”

“You can’t order him, in the Blind God’s name, to explain the Blind God to you. This child doesn’t look foolish. Be careful, or he’ll become suspicious.”

That was true. Father Kalen frowned. Yet the difficulty didn’t trouble him for long. Egan’s youthful face reminded him of the distant past.

“A hymn.” Hermit enunciated each word carefully. “Next, I’m going to teach you the hymn of the Lord of Shadows.”

“Aren’t hymns sung by bards?” the young Kalen asked in confusion. “The Church of Cadence explains its doctrine first. Why is the Order of Shadows different?”

“No, no, no.” Hermit laughed. “Hymns are easy to remember. They also help you remember the rough outline of a god’s origin, deeds, and desires.”

“Hymns are far more interesting than doctrine, and what they represent is far greater than doctrine as well.”

“Gods have desires too?”

Hermit’s response suddenly grew distant. “Gods…”

The memory lost its shape as quickly as a drop of ink dispersing through clear water. Father Kalen rubbed his temple and decided to focus on the situation before him.

“…Therefore, I don’t need your apology,” Kalen said softly.

“Sing the hymn for me, good child.”

Egan’s eyes flickered. For that brief instant, the childishness on his face faded. His delight became complicated, mixed with something vague and indescribable.

Kalen didn’t have time to examine it closely before the hymn’s words captured his attention.

“The long night nears its end, and calamity runs rampant. Upon this green battlefield, there is only hunger, plague, and death. The emissary points toward the hidden marsh and excavates hope from the ruins.”

“The suffering walk among the relics, seeking echoes of the past. Lord Blind God sleeps in the deepest part of night. Omniscient and omnipotent, He dispels every uncertainty with His wisdom.”

“The ruins are reborn, and daylight endures forever. In this green paradise, there is only abundance, health, and a beautiful plaza where song shall never fade…”

“…Ignoring all the excessive praise, the story is rather realistic,” the Dragon Fae commented quietly.

“I’ve read the histories. The human world truly was chaotic immediately after the Night Scourge ended. It sounds like a group of displaced, bewildered people rebuilt a town under the guidance of the ‘Blind God.’”

“Does that truly qualify as a ‘miracle’?”

Compared with the hymns of other religions, the Blind God’s hymn was extraordinarily plain. It had nothing to do with creating the heavens and earth or warring among the gods.

The Dragon Fae stroked his whiskers with his damaged paw.

“I have to admit, the Crimson Marsh’s urban design is impressive. This place is fundamentally unsuitable for human habitation.”

“The Crimson Marsh we saw could never have been planned by ordinary people. I also suspect that these people’s common sense, laws, and customs have all been influenced by the Blind God.”

Kalen’s own theory mirrored Tass’s.

But ruins had already existed here during the age of the Night Scourge. By conventional reasoning, the “Blind God” might have been some brilliant human who was later deified.

Yet that wouldn’t explain the line about “sleeping in the deepest part of night.”

And how could a god “sleeping in the deepest part of night” answer human questions?

Still, speaking of the deepest place…

Kalen could not help looking toward the pit before him.

What exactly was hidden inside that darkness?

Could the legendary “Blind God” truly be sleeping deep within the shadows?

……

“Stop sleeping. You’ve already been asleep for more than an hour.”

Myss hammered unceremoniously on Sogné’s door. “Open up. Let me take a look at you.”

The Archdemon’s tone differed very little from that of a swindler. Salaar silently shook his head while washing the dishes.

Sure enough, Sogné immediately became wary. He didn’t open the door and instead spoke through it.

“Mommy, I have a right to privacy.”

“You already call me Mommy.” Myss searched his understanding of humans. “That means I have the right to pull the sheet off your bed even while you’re lying on it. I’m also going to look under the bed. I can only promise not to read your diary.”

At that, Myss even looked expectantly toward the closed door.

Since a few words from Salaar had caused Sogné’s dream to change, perhaps Myss could do the same.

Sogné became as silent as a corpse. The environment around them flickered faintly and grew even more solid.

Myss: “…” This was a blatant provocation!

Myss turned toward Salaar.

“Does this count as the teenage rebellious phase?”

Salaar answered diplomatically, “If Sogné truly is the Blind God, He is only a little over twenty years younger than I am.”

“What’s wrong with that? That’s a perfectly normal human age difference between father and son.”

Salaar sighed again. The difference between someone in his teens and someone in his thirties was indeed normal. But between someone in his three hundred and teens and someone in his three hundred and thirties, the tens digit could safely be ignored.

Still, he decided to let the Blind God bear that particular concern alone.

“…Then treat him as though he’s going through his teenage phase.”

Immediately afterward, the Hero assumed an almost serene expression and watched the two gods match wits.

Myss grabbed the doorknob. “Be a good boy and open the door!”

“No. This is my room.”

“Your father made delicious snacks.”

“You’re lying. I can’t smell anything.”

“Can you remain inside forever? Are you not eating dinner?”

Sogné fell silent behind the door. Myss thought for a moment and grinned as an excellent idea occurred to him. He transformed part of his magic into mist, quietly seeped it through the crack beneath the door, and condensed it again.

He reproduced the strange shadow from the living room almost perfectly. The shadow pressed close to the door, looking rather oppressive. Unfortunately, under Myss’s control, its words were far less normal.

“Raspberries are delicious, gooseberries are disgusting, raspberries are delicious, gooseberries are disgusting…”

The uninvited shadow startled Sogné. With a loud bang, Sogné burst through the door. Myss attempted to seize the opportunity and push his way inside, but Sogné crashed directly into him and sent him flying.

By the time Myss recovered, the door had already shut by itself again. The Archdemon clicked his tongue loudly in fury.

That little brat’s strength was suspiciously strong. It was almost certainly the Blind God itself!

“Don’t do that again, Mommy! I know it was you,” Sogné said indignantly, grabbing the hem of Myss’s robe.

Myss lowered his head and revealed an evil smile utterly unrelated to maternal affection.

“How did you know I did it? Normally, you should have run out shouting that something strange had appeared inside.”

“Is it because you’re familiar with those shadows and know they would never say anything like that? What are those shadows, hm?”

The sound of Salaar washing the dishes immediately grew much quieter. He was obviously listening with intense concentration.

Sogné raised his distorted face toward Myss. Myss remained entirely unmoved.

“Your father and I both saw the shadows earlier. Don’t try to deny it. What, do they count as your privacy too?”

Sogné lowered his head again. He seemed to want to rest it against Myss’s leg, but in the end, he stopped himself.

“They are my memories,” he said solemnly, as though this required immense courage. “They aren’t as private as a diary. I don’t mind if you see them…”

“Excellent.” The corners of Myss’s mouth rose.

Until now, he had only used his self-created magic to peer into human memories. He had never attempted to control a god. Since Sogné had said that, he might as well try it and directly analyze Sogné’s—

“Myss.”

The moment Myss’s magic began to surge, Salaar suddenly spoke. His voice wasn’t loud, but it was like a sharp piano wire tightening directly around Myss’s movements.

Salaar paused before continuing, his tone carrying a subtle shift in nuance.

“I’ll make dinner early today.”

His words held even more determination than Sogné’s had.

“We should… go to bed early.”

---

The author has something to say:

Myss: ?

Myss: Did you do that deliberately or accidentally, or did you deliberately do it accidentally? [cat paw]

---

<<< || Table of Contents || >>>

Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong

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

---

Chapter 134: Myss’s Proposal

“Try… what?”

For once, Salaar’s voice stumbled.

“Tass’s theory is unlikely to be true. The Eye-Opening Ceremony has continued for over three hundred years, with more than three hundred pairs of living sacrifices. Even if collecting ‘knowledge of birth’ once wasn’t enough, there would be no need to repeat it so many times.”

“Who knows? This is preparation for Its own ‘birth.’ There’s no such thing as being too careful.”

Myss stirred the cream soup with his spoon, slices of mushroom rising and sinking in the milky broth.

He meant every word. For the sake of ensuring his own perfect birth, he had tolerated Salaar for more than three hundred years. A “god’s” concept of time was naturally different from that of short-lived humans.

When Salaar remained silent, Myss had no choice but to continue. “Of course, there’s another possibility.”

“Sogné seemed to change because he ‘understood’ something. The Blind God selects beautiful, good-natured humans every year and brings them here. Perhaps It wants to ‘understand’ certain things… things that will allow It to truly be born.”

“And going one step further, since the Blind God’s Blessing turns the sacrifices into lovers, perhaps what the Blind God wants has something to do with emotions.”

The more Myss spoke, the more brilliant he found himself. At the same time, he grew increasingly dissatisfied with Salaar’s passive attitude. They had adventured together in the human world for so long, and this was the first time Salaar had shown so little initiative.

Ever since entering this long dream, he hadn’t offered a single good idea apart from meal plans.

Salaar sighed softly. “So when you say we should try, you mean…”

Myss puffed out his chest. “We should do something that satisfies ‘pregnancy’ and also involves ‘emotion,’ then observe the Blind God’s reaction.”

Immediately afterward, he saw genuine shock on Salaar’s face for the first time. The Hero went pale for an instant, then flushed rapidly.

“Do you understand what you’re saying?”

“I know I can’t give birth, and you don’t possess that function either. But with my control magic and your mental magic, fabricating it shouldn’t be difficult.”

Myss confidently patted his chest. Of course, that was assuming the Blind God truly cared about something like “pregnancy.”

It didn’t matter. Trying it would at least provoke some kind of reaction from the Blind God. Studying the conditions required for Its birth would be highly beneficial to him. This was only an insubstantial dream anyway, and…

And Myss discovered that he greatly enjoyed the sight of Salaar feeling flustered yet trying to maintain a façade of composure.

Salaar thought, or perhaps simply froze, for two seconds before striding away from the dining table.

“Why are you running?”

Myss abandoned his soup and happily chased after him. The room wasn’t large. Before long, the unfortunate Hero had been driven into a corner.

“…This isn’t something you should joke about,” Salaar said dryly, averting his gaze for the first time.

Myss raised a brow. “What’s wrong with you? You weren’t this resistant before. I thought you would look forward to it.”

Salaar stared steadily at Myss, complicated emotions flowing through his lapis-lazuli eyes. “This should be something private between us, not an experiment.”

“And you. You were never this enthusiastic before… You want to observe the Blind God’s birth, just as the Blind God wants to observe the sacrifices, don’t you?”

“So what? You’re the one who repeats ‘everything is for end of the Night Scourge’ every day. If we can’t get out of here, how are we supposed to keep tracking V.O.R?”

Myss curled his lip, lightly brushing aside Salaar’s challenge.

“I thought Saint Salaar had always been willing to use any means necessary to end the Night Scourge.”

It was only their usual mutual mockery, not even particularly harsh, or so Myss believed.

But the instant he mentioned “everything is for ending the Night Scourge” in this ordinary room, Salaar seemed to dim. Within the shadows, his irises looked coated in dust, like ruins buried for more than three hundred years.

Myss hesitated and closed his mouth, swallowing the insult he had been about to deliver. He enjoyed seeing Salaar angry, stubborn, or bewildered. He didn’t like this.

Salaar only gazed at him in silence. Beside them stood an enormous window, and the daylight beyond it looked unbearably false. He needed to change the subject.

Myss quietly stepped half a pace backward, his ember-red eyes darting around.

Then…

“Protect…” A muffled voice exploded behind him.

Myss jolted and leapt directly toward Salaar.

Beside their dining table, a vaguely human shadow appeared without warning. It was mostly translucent, with only the faint outline of a human form. The farther downward it extended, the paler it became, resembling the “ghosts” described by bards.

Its voice was rough and loose like sand, making age and gender impossible to determine.

“You… wait… for him… to finish…”

“Mission… continue… the legacy…”

The shadow tilted its head upward, looking toward a target that didn’t exist within this place.

“Do not… give up…”

After speaking, it vanished.

Then Myss noticed several more shadows appearing throughout the room. But they merely hurried past, disappearing even faster than the Dragon Fae.

Salaar seemed to forget their earlier unpleasantness. He gripped Myss’s wrist tightly and stared in the direction where the shadow had been. 

Myss cooperatively pretended to have forgotten everything. “What was that?!”

“Perhaps a dream belonging to the Blind God.” Whenever the subject involved mental magic, Salaar’s tone became serious. “Since Sogné exists here, this dream world is not only ours. The Blind God is its true master.”

“The environment has become distorted, and Sogné’s appearance has changed. In other words, for some reason, the Blind God’s embellishments are peeling away.”

“Those shadows and voices were probably things that had previously been concealed.”

“They didn’t look like former sacrifices,” Myss said.

Salaar nodded.

Only after a long pause did he look back at Myss.

“For now, they appear harmless.”

“Oh,” Myss said. “Good. This dream is getting closer and closer to collapse.”

“…”

Damn it. Salaar had gone silent again. He was definitely thinking about what had happened earlier. Myss scratched frantically at his thoughts until inspiration struck.

“I’ll finish the soup, and I’ll wash the bowls! You didn’t sleep enough last night, so go catch up on your rest.”

Salaar shook his head and looked again toward where the shadow had disappeared.

“This isn’t reality. Nothing will happen if I don’t sleep.”

“We should remain awake as much as possible. It would be best not to miss what those shadows say. They’re all clues.”

Myss gave an awkward laugh. “Oh. Right…”

Salaar fell silent again, and a subtle awkwardness spread through the room.

Myss continued clawing at his thoughts. He was no longer certain whether he should provoke Salaar, seduce him, or comfort this strange version of Salaar.

Especially the last one. Since the moment he developed consciousness, the word comfort had never existed in his dictionary.

“…You.” Salaar returned to the table and rubbed his face hard. “You hate Sweet Trap so much that I thought… Never mind.”

“Thought what? That I firmly believed you would use sex as a means of deception, like that Hero everyone knows?” Myss snorted dismissively. “I only hate being portrayed as an idiot who gets manipulated, controlled at will, and has no ability to resist.”

“If the story had been about a Chaos Witch seducing a Hero into destroying the world… that would be another matter.”

Salaar stared at him with an expression that seemed caught between being disappointed in unyielding steel and resenting steel for being so unyielding.

The Hero said nothing, yet Myss could practically hear the question in his mind: How did I end up falling in love with something like you?

Myss decided to go all the way. He pulled out a chair and sat opposite Salaar, then propped his chin in his hands and met Salaar’s gaze directly.

A strand of hair fell with the movement and swayed beside Myss’s cheek. The room was somewhat dim, but the pomegranate blossoms on Myss remained vivid, like countless eyes watching them.

After an unknown length of time, Salaar gave a self-depreciating laugh. “So in the end, the one willing to use any means necessary is you. You’re even more heartless than I imagined, Lord Chaos Archdemon.”

Myss didn’t understand. “What are you talking about now?”

“Do you seriously think I’m using you as a tool because I want to get out of… uh… this place sooner?”

Before Salaar could answer, Myss himself grew irritated. “Then you’re far more stupid than I imagined, Saint Salaar.”

“If I were trapped here with the Crow Priest, I would simply take that little brat Sogné hostage. No one in this world can force me to do something I don’t want to do. Not even I can force myself!”

Myss pounded the table repeatedly, his voice growing sharper.

Amid the Archdemon’s storm of anger, Salaar looked somewhat stunned. “You mean you actually want to… with me?”

“The previous two times weren’t unpleasant,” Myss said. “You know perfectly well that I’ve always enjoyed using you, and only you, for amusement.”

Salaar shot to his feet. Then, as though remembering something, he slowly sat back down. “I need to think about it.”

Seeing this enemy become so unusually anxious and uncertain, Myss found him utterly incomprehensible. When fighting Myss, Salaar wouldn’t even blink after losing a leg. They had already done similar things before. Heaven knew what this human was agonizing over.

Then again, Salaar had already fallen in love with him, and Myss had felt a certain emptiness after accomplishing that goal. Now, at last, he had found a new method of tormenting Salaar.

The two of them becoming entangled would certainly not improve the situation, but Myss didn’t mind welcoming further chaos. What he wanted should be held tightly in his hands. What he disliked should be kicked away. Wasn’t that how it worked?

…Wait, no—by that logic, he should kick Salaar away.

Strictly speaking, the Crow Priest had never wronged him. His treatment should rank above Salaar’s.

Forget it. It had to be because Myss had signed a contract with Salaar. Myss decided to abandon the irritating paradox.

“Take your time thinking.” Myss finished the lukewarm cream of mushroom soup and pushed the bowl in front of Salaar. “Oh, and now that you look slightly less like a corpse, remember to wash the dishes.”

Salaar gave him a helpless glance. “…Fine.”

Myss rose while humming, brushing nonexistent dust from his clothing. The proposal had been made, the soup was finished, and Salaar was still staring blankly at the bowl. He was surely considering how he should wash it later.

It was only shortly just past noon, with a long time remaining before night. The great genius Myss decided to find something to occupy himself, such as inspecting Sogné’s room.

Perhaps more talking shadows were hidden inside. Who knew? He had to understand this damned dream as soon as possible. After all, understanding was the prerequisite for control.

Only by seizing control of this dream early and holding its final outcome in his palm could he… Could he stop facing that brooding Salaar whose thoughts he couldn’t understand.

Myss stopped outside Sogné’s door and knocked with moderate force.

---

The author has something to say:

The true main plot of this book: “Sweet Trap” (×

Actually, Salaar cares very much! He’s a Hero who is taking this romance extremely seriously.

And then there’s the Archdemon who has no idea he’s currently in a relationship. [cat paw]

---

Kinky Thoughts:

The author’s note is really quite apt. Poor Salaar, wants to get his rocks off but wants Myss to reciprocate his feelings too and not have it be a means to an end. Though when Myss stated that no one (not even himself) can force him to do things, isn’t that quite a declaration of love?

---

<<< || Table of Contents || >>>