Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong

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

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Chapter 12: Absolute Taboo

Myss sounded completely casual, as if he were asking, “The pears at breakfast were too sour, how about apples instead?”

Salaar rubbed his temple. “Using a human corpse is an absolute taboo.”

“They say it causes magical backlash. The offender drops dead on the spot, and even if someone survives by luck, they won’t live more than a few days.”

“What about the young lord’s live offering?” Myss glanced at him.

Salaar: “That was a demon summoning ritual of his own invention. Come to think of it, ‘Patience’ never shortened demon summoning to just ‘the Summoning Ritual’. I suppose that was to keep it distinct from the ‘Magibase Summoning Ritual’.

“Interesting, I sealed you for not even ten years and the ‘Magibase Summoning Ritual’ appeared.”

Assuming Lord Karns’s memories were correct—

The creator of the “Magibase Summoning Ritual” was unknown. Several scholars published similar theories around the same time, and each faction had its own view on who should count as the founder.

As for why it emerged, some say it was due to the Archdemon’s “whale fall” dispersing magic, while others credit the prosperity that followed the end of the Night Scourge.

In effect, it allowed everyone to use magic, and humanity stepped into the “Age of Magical Enlightenment”.

The topic became increasingly academic, and Myss felt a headache coming on.

“Let us stick to common knowledge,” he said dully, and casually took the tea Salaar had just set to cool.

Salaar nearly sighed in his face. “All right. The basics are simple.”

“First, a Magibase takes the form of an animal, and it is equivalent to a spiritual organ acquired after birth.”

“Second, when a person gets emotional or uses magic, the Magibase becomes highly active.”

“Third, if the Magibase is destroyed, its owner dies with it, so people do everything they can to keep their Magibase hidden.”

Fourth, Magibases aren’t supposed to talk, Myss added quietly to himself.

That did clear up quite a few things.

…No wonder when he crushed Old Aiken’s hamster, Old Aiken exploded along with it.

…No wonder the mage and Covington showed their Magibases at the moment of death. Apparently, the principle is similar to incontinence.

It was a shame that he was too focused on Salaar as he was killing people, that he didn’t pay attention to the bandits, or he would have noticed more.

To be honest, Myss didn’t think humans hid their Magibases very well.

After the old carpenter drew his Magibase back into the back of his hand, Myss looked a few more times. He was certain he could still pull it out of the flesh, quite simply as if yanking a human heart out of a chest cavity.

They couldn’t hide from him. All he had to do was focus to feel that distinctive magical aura.

Thinking of this, Myss couldn’t help running his eyes over Salaar from head to toe again.

Unfortunately, the man truly had no Magibase, so Myss couldn’t pinch at a weak point. Then again, if Salaar did have one, it would certainly be just as annoying as he was.

……

They kept talking intermittently, waiting for the “Resolve to Elope” to wear off.

The hands on the clock moved at an unhurried pace, and the tavern filled up bit by bit. Ruffians and drifters came to kill time, merchants dropped in for a drink on their break, and even some prostitutes came by to sell themselves.

Proprietor Hammer sat rigid behind the counter, muscles taut, and the tavern’s mood was unusually harmonious.

By the time Salaar finished his fourth cup of herbal tea, the effect finally faded.

The two of them were striking in appearance. Without the potion’s cover, glances brushed them like feather tips. A few ruffians were itching to sidle over and chat, but Salaar’s piercing stare drove them off.

It had to be said, the villainous aura of that face was quite effective.

Some people were more polite. An elegant lady came over with a drink and praised Salaar’s eyes. “Such a rare cobalt blue, very much like Karns’s lapis lazuli,” she praised him while edging her body closer to Myss. “…Dear, who is this little lamb? Your younger brother?”

At the second half, Myss frowned. “You people have a remarkably varied range of insults.”

“Perhaps I am a member of House Karns,” Salaar subtly steered the topic aside.

“Heh. As if the Karns would come to a place like this.” The woman smiled with her eyes. “Plenty claim to be Karns bastards. Your eyes are a lot more convincing than theirs.”

“Thank you for the compliment.”

Salaar lifted his cup and made a toast in the air, without actually touching her glass. It was a tactful and proper dismissal.

She gave them a sweet smile and glided away. Seeing even she had failed, no one else came over.

“We can skip the potion for now,” Salaar said once she had gone. “It seems this eye color isn’t that rare, and there aren’t many who dare to judge bloodlines.”

Myss remained silent. He still thought gouging out this brat’s eyes would be the simplest solution.

By afternoon they stood in front of the largest building in the Lower City.

It had started as a church of some religion. Later that religion vanished into history, and most of the structure was burned down. During the plague, the city lord repaired it as a temporary hospital for the Lower City.

Now it had changed once more and had become Rosha’s designated venue for the “Magibase Summoning Ritual”.

It’s said that the people of the Upper City chose this site to display their “goodwill and inclusiveness”, while the people of the Lower City generally believe the nobles simply don’t want crowds from the Lower City marching into the Upper City and dirtying their fine neighborhood.

The first Saturday of September was almost here, and the church was nearly ready.

Its crack-veined walls had been newly painted, and the badly damaged spire had been reinforced with magic. The exterior was decorated with laurel branches and silver bells that symbolized blessing, and a long red carpet ran up the stone steps, giving the place a touch of festive atmosphere.

Two long tables stood crosswise by the church doors.

The table on the left was piled with free candies and croutons. The one on the right displayed neat rows of small bones, insect wings, and pig bristles and horsehair tied up with bows. These were free as well for poor children who had brought no offerings. All of the above were provided by court mages who organized the ceremony.

Merchants from the Lower City didn’t want to miss this once-a-year chance either. They set up rings of stalls farther out, selling all manners of offering materials, snacks, and sundries.

Myss looked around with keen interest. As a slave he only had memories of being confined indoors, so all this was new to him.

“Here. Buy whatever you want, and don’t steal anything.” Salaar produced two silver shields in advance. “The last thing we need right now is a commotion.”

Myss: “I’m not stupid.”

As he said it, he kept sneaking looks at a stall where a woman was selling cheese mixed with berries. The portions were served in leaves folded into bowl shapes, bright with reds and greens.

Then he sensed something was amiss. “So you would rather risk letting me buy things on my own than go with me?”

“I’m not your babysitter,” Salaar stated frankly. “I’m also curious what you’ll do.”

Which meant he would be watching Myss every second. Myss gritted his teeth.

Business was brisk at the cheese-and-berries stall. Myss suppressed the urge to scatter the crowd and lined up obediently.

“We meet again, handsome young man.” The woman in front of him turned around.

It was the middle-aged woman from the bookshop. She still carried a faint aroma of food, although this time it smelled less like hot pancakes and more like butter cookies.

Remembering that she had bought the trash called “Brave Salaar”, Myss had no desire to talk to her. He only nodded perfunctorily.

“My daughter has wanted that book for a long time. Thank you for letting me have it,” the woman went on, apparently unable to read his aversion. “She even pestered me to read it to her last night.”

Unfortunate child, Myss thought. So young and already forced to listen to such a lousy story.

“My name is Mina,” the woman, Mina, continued to chatter. “The cheese here is very good. It has a clean, refreshing tang…”

“Oh my, Mr. Myss!” another voice sounded behind him.

This time it was Hailey. The inn girl’s cheeks were rosy, and her nose was still a little swollen.

She was clearly excited, since Myss could see a translucent long-tailed tit above her head.

The fluffy little bird hopped and chirped, “Good person! Good person!”

At last, a well-mannered Magibase. Too bad he was neither good nor human.

Why are you here?” Myss turned his head and decisively ignored Madam Mina.

Hailey said brightly, “My nose was injured. The boss was afraid I would scare customers, so he told me to stay home for now. There are few customers anyway, and the shop isn’t busy.”

Myss: “Oh.”

“By the way, are you here to watch the Summoning Ritual?” Hailey was very enthusiastic.

“Something like that,” Myss replied absently.

A couple more chattering of small talk and the line would move. He would reach the front soon.

“My uncle brings me every year,” Hailey chirped. “The children summon all kinds of Magibases. Last year someone summoned a puppy. It was especially cute.”

Myss watched her for a moment, then a thought struck him. “When did you take part in the Summoning Ritual?”

Hailey was just fifteen. If she had taken part on schedule, her ceremony would have been ten years ago, which would put her in the same session as “Patience”.

“Ten years ago.” Hailey blinked. “As soon as I reached the age, my uncle sent me.”

The tit on her head cocked its head and blinked along with her.

At the same time, the line reached Myss. “How many?” asked the woman selling cheese and berries.

“This much,” Myss said, tossing down a silver shield. His eyes stayed on Hailey. “Were the children in your session all five years old? Was anyone unusual?”

The question didn’t sound like small talk, and Hailey was a bit at a loss. “There were definitely children of other ages.”

“The Upper City is strict about age. In the Lower City people are less particular, so some are registered a year or two late. The oldest in my session was eight, maybe nine. Sorry, I don’t remember very clearly…”

“But there were definitely no adults,” she added briskly.

“Then did anything strange happen?” Myss paused, then asked.

---

The author has something to say:

How they currently see everyone else:

Myss’s view: Hateful Salaar >>>>>> other insignificant humans (regardless of age or gender)

Salaar’s view: Research subject Myss >>>>>> other juniors with a massive generation gap (regardless of age or gender)

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

Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong

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

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Chapter 11: The Summoning Ritual

A middle-aged woman stood at the door, holding a candlestick.

She had a kind face with fine lines at the corners of her eyes, wore a long linen nightdress, and had tawny hair pinned at the back of her head. She carried no weapon, and her presence was no different from an ordinary person.

“We’re fine, thank you for your concern.” Salaar didn’t open the door fully. He stayed in the half-open doorway, giving her a genuine smile. “May I ask who you are?”

Thanks to that brooding face of his, the smile made the woman a little uneasy.

“I help in the tavern kitchen,” she said softly. “I am glad you are fine… By the way, there’s always some light wine and dried figs in the kitchen cupboard. Help yourselves.”

With that, she gave a small nod and hurried away.

Salaar didn’t close the door immediately. Only when a door clicked shut at the far end of the corridor did he close theirs and turn the lock with a snap.

He then lowered the ritual dagger he had been hiding behind his back. In the shadow-draped room, Myss rolled over and smacked his lips in his sleep.

The next day.

At the table, Myss was still drowsy.

There were few patrons at the tavern in the morning, and most of the diners were lodgers from the second floor. The “Resolve to Elope” still had a lingering effect, so few people paid them any attention.

Breakfast was decent. Hammer provided them with crispy fried bacon, black bread that was somewhat soft, and pears that were firm but not tough.

There was only water to drink, served in a round-bellied jug. The surface caught the soft light of morning.

Myss squinted against the glare and gave a huge yawn. “I didn’t dream about anything last night.”

“Humans don’t dream every day,” Salaar said as he buried his head into the thick bacon. “But humans get up every day. You need to get used to that.”

Myss gave a disgruntled “oh.” He secretly infused a little magic into his table knife, which made slicing the bacon easier than cutting butter, although a small portion of the bacon mysteriously evaporated.

“I am practicing magic control,” the Demon Lord announced at once when he noticed Salaar glancing at him hesitantly.

The bacon was a little salty, but the fat was wonderfully flavorful. He glanced at the bright sunshine outside. Fresh air poured in through the window and loosened him up.

Myss suddenly felt that this kind of life wasn’t so bad, although it would be even better if Salaar wasn’t watching him.

Once he shook off his drowsiness, the events of the previous night flooded back to him.

In short, the mysterious pen pal “Patience” had studied demons and summoning rituals, then the bird-beaked demon and the strange illness appeared, and “Patience” cut off contact around the same time.

Unfortunately, there was no definite link between them.

There was one thing Myss couldn’t figure out.

If they were truly connected and “Patience” had botched a summoning ritual ten years ago, why did the bird-beaked demon and the strange illness only appear in the last two months?

Ultimately, what they most ought to investigate was this—

“We need to look for death records from ten years ago,” Salaar said. “‘Patience’ seems to have used the summoning ritual in an attempt to resurrect someone.”

“You don’t want to investigate the disease first?” Myss bit down on his fork in surprise.

They had three leads right under their noses: the summoning ritual, the bird-beaked demon, and the disease. Only the disease was actually killing people, yet the great hero was willing to let it go for now.

Salaar was silent for a few seconds. “If it really is a plague, a small border town like this is easy to seal off, and the losses are still controllable.”

“But if my delay lets you return to your true body, the death toll will multiply a thousandfold.”

“Wow.” Myss sighed. “You hate me that much and you are still willing to talk to me.”

Salaar smiled as he sprinkled some cracked pepper on his bacon. “If you were human, I would make you regret being born into this world.”

“Humans have choices. We can survive without harming the innocent. Some people insist on trampling others, and if they are trampled in return, they brought it on themselves.”

His tone was almost calm. “For those people, I am more than happy to be the one who tramples. As for you…”

Salaar didn’t finish. He stared at Myss, speared a piece of bacon, and chewed in silence.

Myss watched that piece of bacon go. Was this his way of saying he would love to kill me and turn me into bacon?

So he issued a solemn warning. “Listen. I don’t know exactly what I am, but my flesh would definitely poison you.”

Salaar nearly choked on his bacon. He silently gulped down half a jug of water and let out a long sigh.

……

“You want to see coffin orders from ten years ago to find information on someone who died? That’s hard. I didn’t keep any copies.”

The old carpenter frowned and puffed on his pipe. Hammer had sent them to him, and he was the only coffin-maker in the Lower City.

“Is there really no way?” Salaar asked earnestly. “All I remember is that ten years ago my pen pal lost someone important… we truly have been out of touch for too long.”

“You don’t even know where the deceased lived. Best give it up.”

The old carpenter shook his head. “For the Upper City, it’s customary, but the Lower City doesn’t keep track of the dead. Everyone just dumps the bodies into the communal grave. No one bothers with much else.”

“Would the church have records? Requiem rites or something like that?” Salaar asked.

The old carpenter shook his head even harder. “Rosha has plenty of religions. Each has its own believers. There is no way to keep a unified registry.”

“How does that saying go? In this day and age only one number can be trusted, and that is the count of five-year-olds. Not even the royal genealogies are recorded as reliably as the Summoning Rituals.”

Myss: “?”

Salaar: “???”

Did you just say “Summoning Ritual”, just outright?

“What’s with those faces?” The old carpenter looked puzzled. “What, you don’t call it a ‘Summoning Ritual’ where you are from? Then what do you call the ‘Pure Soul Magic Initiation Ritual?”

Myss immediately looked at Salaar. Salaar let out a few awkward grunts. “Maybe it’s a cultural difference. Would you mind describing it?”

“It’s a free initiation for magic. The one every child goes to at five years old. Even the smallest country has it. Only slaves aren’t qualified to attend.”

As he spoke, his gaze turned a shade more sympathetic. “Don’t tell me you two are slaves who escaped from somewhere…”

Half right, Myss thought. He continued to glare at Salaar in reproach. You, kid, have Lord Karns’s memories at least. How do you not know something this important.

Salaar looked like he wanted to smack himself. He kept a straight face and bluffed, “It’s all in the past. Could you tell us about this ‘Pure Soul Magic Initiation Ritual?”

“Of course, of course.” The old carpenter looked them over with pity and tapped his pipe hard.

A faint magical ripple spread out.

A half-transparent red-headed woodpecker emerged from the back of the old man’s hand and gradually solidified. When he saw the bird with the unusually long tail feather, Myss’s pupils widened a little. Wasn’t this the odd thing he had seen before?

Compared with Old Aiken’s hamster and the bandit mage’s weasel, this red-headed woodpecker felt especially real. Salaar stared straight at it, so he clearly saw it too.

“This is the Magibase, the foundation for using magic.”

The old carpenter spoke while the bird hopped merrily about on the back of his hand. “This isn’t innate. You have to summon it with a special ritual, which requires…”

“… personal participation in the rite, chanting an incantation, and offering a sacrifice. The offering is prepared by the individual and must be the essence of a nonhuman species.”

Salaar murmured in a low voice, “A Magibase is a symbol of its owner’s spirit and magic. Its strength correlates directly with the person’s talent and the quality of the offering…”

“You do know quite a bit.” The old carpenter made a gesture, and the woodpecker vanished. Yet in Myss’s eyes it merely returned to being half-transparent.

Only when the old man’s magical fluctuations settled did it give its wings a shake and burrow back into the back of his hand.

“What are you staring at, brat!” Before it went back, it even glared at Myss on purpose.

Wonderful. He had now witnessed a screaming hamster, a foul-mouthed weasel, and an irritable woodpecker. What a kind world this was.

Myss turned to Salaar speechlessly. “Can Magibases talk like people?”

The old carpenter and Salaar shook their heads in unison.

“In theory they are only a kind of totem and have no ability to communicate,” Salaar explained dryly.

“More or less.” The old carpenter chuckled. “The Summoning Ritual takes place every year on the first Saturday of September. You can still attend even if you are over five. It’s coming up in a few days, and the venue is right here in the Lower City. If you need it, you might as well go and take a look.”

Interesting, Myss thought.

He had no Magibase at all, and Salaar clearly didn’t either, yet both of them could use magic normally. As for seeing Magibases and communicating with them…he was undoubtedly a special case.

But he wasn’t some small human to begin with, so he should be a special case. Myss felt perfectly justified.

“The Summoning Ritual ‘Patience’ had done ten years ago may have meant the Magibase summoning ceremony.”

Back at the tavern, Salaar poured himself a cup of herbal tea. “We jumped to conclusions and assumed it had to be a demon summoning ritual.”

Myss regarded him with great gravity.

“Hey, I didn’t mean to hide anything. That young lord only called demon summoning a ‘Summoning Ritual’. He called the Magibase one ‘creating a Magibase’.”

Under Myss’s complicated look, Salaar added, “Yes, Lord Carnes did have knowledge related to Magibases. I just couldn’t tell what was real and what was fantasy on his part, since the whole thing sounds too far-fetched.”

“It wasn’t like this three hundred years ago?” Myss asked.

“At that time Magibases didn’t exist at all. Only very few people had the talent for magic. If you could do it, you could do it. If you couldn’t, you couldn’t.” Salaar pinched the bridge of his nose. “The world has changed a lot.”

Myss let him off for the moment. “All right. I have only one question left. You said the offering must be the essence of a nonhuman species. What exactly is ‘essence’?”

“That’s an alchemical term,” Salaar said. “It actually means body parts from a nonhuman creature. Blood and flesh, bones, scales…things like that. Most people bring livestock offal. Some use dead rats and insect corpses.”

“Oh,” Myss replied in a casual tone. “Then what would happen if you used a human corpse?”

---

The author has something to say:

Mr. Hero: some roundabout, meaningful reflections on life.

Demon Lord: blah blah blah what are you even saying, I’ve turned off my ears off.jpg

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

Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong

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

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Chapter 10: Ominous

Salaar instantly moved.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Ominous…”

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

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

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

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

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

“Don’t go over there!” Myss snapped.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I know,” Myss replied tersely.

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

Could there really be demons in this world?

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

……

Second floor of the Hammer Tavern.

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

“Last time?” “You know him?”

Myss and Salaar asked almost in unison.

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

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

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

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

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

“We’re not friends,” Myss corrected.

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

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

Myss: “…” 

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

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

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

Ten minutes later, Hammer returned to the room.

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

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

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

Then he began to write.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Dear Pilgrim, 

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

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

Mother sends you her regards.

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

[Large section illegible]

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wishing you good health.

With love, 

from Patience.

P.S. Mother sends you her regards.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Salaar couldn’t help looking at Myss again.

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

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

…It was quite good.

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

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

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

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

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

---

The author has something to say:

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

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

---

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

Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong

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

---

Chapter 9: A Deadly Malady

Myss stepped half a pace forward, blocking Salaar.

Salaar was used to close combat, which was good for knocking around rural bandits; in a scene like this, they would have to count on Myss.

After shielding his mortal enemy, Myss felt something was off. Salaar excelled at healing magic. The kid was clearly better suited to being the tank.

He was still weighing whether to keep Salaar behind him or in front when Salaar grabbed his collar and the two of them tumbled into the wardrobe.

Myss had no time to speak before Salaar clapped a hand over his mouth. The wardrobe wasn’t large, so he was forced up against Salaar, almost unable to move.

Salaar’s timing was perfect. The instant the doors shut, the room door was kicked open.

“Demon!” an angry roar came from the doorway. “That demon again!”

“Damn it, he’s trying to escape!” “After him!”

Salaar let out a breath. He had guessed right. The two sides weren’t together.

The “demon” had alerted them too early, and the people at the door had arrived too late. If they were coordinating a pincer move, a rookie mistake like that shouldn’t have happened.

There was a tremendous crash of tables and chairs toppling, and footsteps raced toward the window. The cawing of crows drifted farther away. The “demon” seemed to have left.

But the other group didn’t all clear out. Two sets of footsteps were still circling inside the room.

The “Resolve to Elope” was still in effect, and the men didn’t notice anyone in the wardrobe.

Unfortunately, the potion only lowered one’s presence and didn’t make one invisible. The room was small, and they couldn’t just walk out in front of the others.

“Four investigators are dead. Covington wouldn’t wander the Lower City. Where did he get infected?”

“Must be the demon’s doing!” the other man said, voice shaking. “If the demon keeps contaminating the Upper City…”

“That’s not for us to consider. Seal the windows first.”

“Sir?” came a timid question from outside the door. “Sir, is everything all right?”

It was the young girl, her voice full of worry.

“By regulation, this guest room must be sealed permanently, and the incident kept confidential.”

The men inside didn’t open the door. “A mage will arrive shortly to place a seal. No one may enter or leave in the meantime.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Go and close the front door. Pay particular attention to those who clashed with Covington. Under no circumstances are they to leave.”

The girl fell silent.

“There’s a killer among them. They must all be taken in,” the man inside the room said impatiently. “Do as you’re told and don’t obstruct the investigation.”

“Yes, sir.” She suddenly raised her voice. “Um, the standing mirror in the room is an antique. Could you move it out for me? I mean, since the room is going to be sealed…”

Unsurprisingly, men inside refused.

“A clever girl,” Salaar whispered. “If I remember right, the mirror is to the left of the wardrobe.”

What, are you reluctant to part with antiques too? Myss tried to bite Salaar’s palm and failed.

“Listen, top-tier suites usually have a secret passage for… various purposes.”

Salaar pressed his mouth to Myss’s ear, his voice thin and sticky like a spider thread. “To seal the room, they will clear it first. Once no one is inside, we can slip out through the passage behind the mirror.”

Seeing that Myss didn’t object, Salaar loosened his arms a little. Myss darted free and clapped a hand hard over Salaar’s mouth.

He was about to pin him against the side of the wardrobe, but Salaar refused to yield. The two wrestled silently in the heap of clothes until a bathrobe somehow tied them into a knot. Only then did they settle down.

……

Around midnight they slipped out through the little door into the inn’s back alley and found a figure waiting there.

Myss’s deadly fork was about to strike, only for Salaar to stop him again. The figure was the inn girl’s uncle.

“Thank goodness. You really are all right.”

The man saw their faces and relaxed at once. “Hailey didn’t see soldiers dragging you out, so she guessed you were hiding. Oh, Hailey is my niece.

My name is Huey. Please allow me to thank you properly, both of you, especially you.” He turned to Myss and said solemnly, “Hailey is only fifteen. If she were convicted of illicit relations, she would never find work in the Upper City for the rest of her life.”

Myss said, “I didn’t—”

“I should be the one saying thank you. Miss Hailey helped us a great deal,” Salaar cut in first. “If not for her quick thinking, we couldn’t have gotten away so easily.”

Huey smiled and handed them a dusty cloth bag. “I took some money and food from your room, as well as that bottle of medicine.

I’m sorry, I had to leave most of the luggage. I said you were out on business and not yet back. You signed in at the front desk, so they can check.”

Myss glanced at the bag. He didn’t see any croutons or any books. Huey had packed only the bare essentials.

“You were terrified of Covington, yet now you dare help like this,” Myss asked, puzzled. “Where do you get the nerve…”

“What he means is, it sounds like you know some inside story,” Salaar translated smoothly, taking the bag with both hands. “We only just arrived in Rosha and know nothing.”

Huey’s expression tightened. He pressed his temples and sighed. “All right. I will take you to the Lower City to lie low, and we can talk on the way.”

Rosha’s Upper and Lower City were sharply divided, with a high wall between them. Many iron gates pierce the wall, their bars mottled with rust that quietly testified to their age.

“Rosha has suffered multiple plagues. Each time the Lower City was always worse. That was when the wall was built.”

Huey held the lantern high and led the way. “A strange disease has appeared in the Lower City again lately. Everyone is on edge.”

Salaar: “A strange disease?”

“Hailey and I both live in the Lower City, and we have seen it with our own eyes. In the past two months people have been dying in a…” Huey struggled to choose his words. “A bizarre way. The corpses curl up in midair, and no one can move them.”

The manner of death sounded familiar, and Myss, for once, listened in earnest.

“The city lord believes it’s some kind of plague. Yet most people around the patients are fine, and no one knows how it spreads. The soldiers can only seal off the area where the dead are, and everyone else carries on as usual.

There are rumors the deceased were cursed by a demon. The city lord arrests anyone who quarreled with the deceased, and those people never appear again. If you two were taken away…” Huey shook his head and did not go on.

“Hailey will be all right, yes?” Salaar asked. The girl had technically clashed with Covington too.

Huey’s mouth curved. “She can say she slipped in the corridor and bumped her nose.

After all, the only witness besides Covington was Mr. Myss. I don’t think Mr. Myss will report her.”

Mr. Myss agreed. He had better things to do.

Talking about Hailey brightened Huey’s expression.

He said Hailey was the child of his late sister and his only family. The girl was healthy and quick-witted, raised by his own hands, and the two depended on each other.

“My parents were both drunks, and it was my sister who raised me,” Huey said affectionately. “Of course I will raise Hailey well and let her grow up smoothly…”

Myss let the words pass in one ear and out the other and let his eyes roam.

Beyond the wall and its iron gate, the air grew murky and clammy.

The night in the Lower City seemed even deeper. The wind carried acrid smoke and the sour stench of garbage. Clouds of gnats and flies drifted above the river. The stone steps were as crooked and broken as an old man’s teeth.

“Please put up with this place for a few days. Once the fuss over there is done, I will send word at once.”

Huey stepped over the stone steps with practiced ease. “I have a contact nearby who can arrange lodgings.”

The conditions were a world apart from the Upper City, and he glanced at them apologetically. The two looked utterly unconcerned—one out of an inability to tell good from bad, the other out of long-habituated indifference.

Myss crooked a finger and pinched a flying insect dead with a pop. He found the place rather lively.

That “demon” had dressed without much care. Perhaps he lived in the Lower City too. For now the guy had hidden his aura. If Myss hadn’t lost his power, he could have…

Salaar grabbed the back of his collar and hauled him up. Myss’s feet left the ground, and he narrowly missed a ditch.

“Watch your step and don’t waste my cleansing magic,” Salaar said.

Once upon a time, the Demon Lord had a massive body and no habit of watching his path. Myss looked down at his two human feet and gave a mournful hum.

Huey’s destination was hard to miss—this late at night, the Lower City lay pitch-black, and only one tavern still had its lights on.

The two-story wooden house was crooked, and the sign that read “Hammer Tavern” hung at an angle, as if the building itself were drunk. It was unclear whether it was a construction error or the designer’s intent.

They hadn’t even reached the door before rough laughter rushed out to meet them, and Myss caught the rank smell of alcohol and tobacco.

“Our Huey!” “Huey is off work?”

The customers called to him enthusiastically.

Myss and Salaar followed close behind. The moment Myss stepped inside the greetings turned into a chorus of whistles. When Salaar came in, the whistling continued, only with less breath behind it.

So the “Resolve to Elope” couldn’t withstand that many eyes, Myss thought.

“Hey. They are my guests,” Huey called out.

“Of course, who else would they be? No way you could score someone this—ow!”

Huey raised his palm and smacked the man hard on the head.

“Sorry,” he said to the two of them. “They are unbearably crude. No offense intended…”

Halfway through he noticed Myss was busy examining the drunkard’s rum, and Salaar was staring fixedly at Myss as if he might swallow the glass in the next second.

Forget it. Huey shook his head and led the two of them to the counter.

A bearded burly man sat there polishing glasses with a creak. His arms bulged with exaggerated muscle, and the tattoos writhed with his skin.

“Uncle Hammer, look after these two guests,” Huey said. “They’d helped me out.”

“How much did they help?” Hammer paused.

“They saved Hailey.”

“Then they should be looked after,” Hammer rumbled with a laugh. “I will clear a room for them on the second floor.”

“Thank you,” Huey exhaled.

His thanks were swallowed by the caw of a crow.

The tavern’s clamor cut off at once. A shadow darker than night appeared in the doorway.

The “beaked demon,” nearly two meters tall, stood at the threshold. A few black feathers drifted out of the night and dropped into the warm light.

---

The author has something to say:

Natural-born nonhumans are undemanding, hardy, and full of energy.

You do have to keep a good eye on them, otherwise they are liable to fall into some very strange places.

---

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

Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong

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

---

Chapter 8: Death Scene

“Are you blind?” a roar came from behind him.

How could anyone ask such a stupid question? Myss turned around and regarded the speaker with his fresh, warm eyes. Only then did he realize he seemed to have bumped someone’s shoulder.

The person he’d hit was a middle-aged man in fine clothes. The instant he saw Myss’s face, his anger miraculously disappeared.

“I mean, you should watch where you’re going, young man.” The man’s tone suddenly softened.

“……” Myss rifled through his memory and chose the word that would end the conversation fastest. “Sorry.”

Taking offense is a kind of caring, and he couldn’t care less about the humanoid in front of him.

But the man had no intention of leaving. Smiling, he stepped half a pace closer. “If you’re really sorry, how about having a drink with me?”

Myss decisively sidestepped him and headed straight for the inn’s dining room. Whatever. It wasn’t as if he’d killed the man on the spot; he had already apologized.

The man’s expression soured, and he reached out to grab Myss.

“Please stop, Lord Covington!”

A young girl hurried over, the broom still in her right hand. Myss remembered her; she was the one who had upgraded them to a suite for free. She looked no more than sixteen.

“Please don’t start anything inside the inn,” the girl said anxiously. “If you’re unhappy, we can comp you a…”

“Out!” Covington shoved her aside with contempt. The girl gave a little yelp and nearly lost her footing.

“I need to teach that brat some manners,” Covington shouted. “A rude, arrogant ranger has offended a nobleman, a royal investigator, a universally recognized gentleman—”

Myss stopped and looked back in puzzlement. “Where are the other two?”

The girl couldn’t help but burst out laughing. Covington’s face lengthened and he punched her in the nose. The faint smell of blood instantly wafted in the air. The commotion brought out another employee, an older man. At the sight of him, the girl cupped her swelling nose and whispered, “Uncle.” She tried, unsuccessfully, to swallow her sobs.

“I apologize, Lord Covington. We are truly very sorry,” her uncle said, bowing low without asking a thing.

“You certainly should be sorry,” Covington said coldly.

He pointed at Myss and launched in, “That ranger seduced a young girl and lured her to a nighttime tryst—I saw it all! That’s illicit relations!”

Faced with the charge falling out of the sky, the girl froze in fright.

She pressed her nose tight; blood dripped between her fingers. Her uncle turned pale and looked at Myss, nearly in despair.

They could all guess what would come next—the ranger could roam the world, so Myss could easily offend him and walk away. Convington would then make the charges stick and bar Myss from entering Rosha ever again. As for whether this would implicate the mere girl, Lord Convington couldn’t care less.

However, Myss didn’t leave immediately.

Illicit relations—Myss had heard of it. The slave traders had said unmarried men and women were forbidden from having intimate physical relations.

It was a delicate offense that people usually didn’t bring it to light, just as no one questioned what a slave owner did to his own slaves. But once the charge stuck, both parties would be imprisoned.

He didn’t care about that; no human prison could hold him. But this man claimed to be a royal investigator. He might know something useful.

Myss thought for a moment, then walked up to Covington. “Looks like you really do want to have a drink with me.”

He stood very close. Covington flushed, still speaking loudly. “I mean, if you come with me to make a confession… since you and that girl didn’t have time to do anything, I’ll let it slide…”

“Then let’s go,” Myss said.

The girl gave a sob; she seemed to have misunderstood, her eyes full of apology. Myss didn’t acknowledge her look and just followed casually behind Covington.

Covington’s room was at the other end of the corridor. It was a single suite furnished with luxury.

The lighting was warm, the flowers in the vase were still beaded with dew, and the table was piled with refreshments and fruit. Beside a silver bowl of whipped cream, Myss spotted fresh raspberries.

“You shouldn’t have made this so complicated,” Covington said as he drew the curtains, his voice a mix of annoyance and self-satisfaction. He puffed out his chest, turned with great presence, and then—

He discovered Myss eating his late-night snack.

Myss sat properly at the table, focused on dipping raspberries in cream, as if Covington were nothing more than a squeaky clothes rack.

Convington: “……” 

His face flushed again, his chest heaving violently. “Don’t play dumb. I only have to say the word to have you locked up in Rosha for half a year!”

Only half a year? Myss couldn’t help laughing.

The one who had locked him up for three hundred years hadn’t been this arrogant. He wondered whether Salaar had finished that bag of croutons; his own midnight snack was far more sumptuous.

At that laugh, Covington’s tone softened again. “Listen, as long as you behave…”

“Mm-hmm, I’m listening,” Myss said offhandedly, then steered the topic. “If you really are a royal investigator, you should know Rosha pretty well.

Are there any lunatics in town who like to tinker with magic? Or other abnormal people?”

He asked so naturally that Covington was thrown for a loop. “You mean that demon…”

Halfway through, he snapped back to himself. Damn it, the other’s attitude was like placating a wailing child. 

“Boy, what’s that tone?!” Covington roared.

Myss didn’t answer—he had finished the raspberries and cream and was busy enjoying a plate of roast quail with sauce.

Veins bulged at Covington’s temples. He whipped out his staff and muttered under his breath for quite a while. A chain of blue light sprang from the staff’s tip and quickly wrapped Myss’s wrists and ankles.

“I didn’t want to be this rough.” He gritted his teeth. “If only you would… you…”

Myss easily crushed the chains and kicked them aside. “‘That demon’? And then what?”

Covington choked. It was as if he suddenly sobered up; a fine sweat broke out on his forehead.

Myss had used no magical artifacts and didn’t chant any incantations.

Mages would spend their lives trying to shorten casting time. Covington had heard of mages who cast with extreme speed; without exception, they were powerful figures.

And this kid was young and arrogant. Could he be the prized disciple of some archmage?

“That demon, well,” Covington replied dryly. “That’s classified. I can’t disclose it…”

But if he didn’t talk… he was in the wrong right now, and if this guy went back and complained, his career could be finished.

“The Demon of Rosha” was a thorny case. He had already been anxious to the point of life and death, and his migraines were getting worse by the day. Damn it, how was he supposed to clean up this mess?

Maybe he should confess to this kid, say he had been under too much pressure lately and that was why he had done something so ridiculous…

From the bottom of his heart he wanted to get out of this hellhole…

…He was homesick…

“Mom…” Covington let out a faint, abrupt cry.

Myss found himself standing up without realizing it.

He smelled the fragrance again. It came from Covington a few steps away, even sweeter and richer than the woman in the bookstore.

Myss knew it was just beneath Covington’s skin, seeping out as a warm aroma. It was like freshly baked butter cookies slipped into a paper bag; all he had to do was tear the wrapping and devour it.

Maybe he could eat Covington and see what would happen.

But a part of his mind—the part Salaar had nagged ragged—told him not to. Covington’s status was troublesome. If he ate him on a whim, they could forget about a quiet investigation afterward.

Fine. The priority was to ask about the demon.

Lord Karns had tried to summon a demon, and a demon had actually appeared in the city of his pen pal. What were the odds? The “demon” was almost certainly connected to that mysterious correspondent.

Myss was still thinking when that wonderful scent suddenly weakened.

Covington gave a bewildered burp, his limbs twitching like an insect’s. A moment later his staff clattered to the floor, and his arms and legs bent rapidly, folding unnaturally across his chest.

Covington was obese and this posture didn’t suit him. Yet his bones curved stubbornly, sinking his head and limbs deep into his own flesh. His skin sealed over as swiftly as honey, drawing out flesh-red threads.

A translucent wild rabbit poked its head from the back of his neck, but it had barely emerged halfway before it snapped back, as if yanked to where it came from.

Like that, Covington arched high and began to float, his whole body congealing into a flesh-colored egg, or a chrysalis.

His heartbeat grew fainter and fainter until it vanished into the silent room. The fragrance vanished with it, slipping away and leaving only a tasteless husk behind.

At the instant Covington died, a hoarse caw of a crow sounded outside the window.

The transformation was so swift that Myss hadn’t even finished his roast quail. With the quail bone between his teeth, he regarded the corpse in displeasure.

How did this guy transform at the drop of a hat and then die in such a grotesque shape—

Bang!

Covington’s door flew open. Salaar rushed into the room, then fell silent.

Why did the scene look so familiar? He had just finished appraising the Old Aiken mincemeat, and now he was greeted by Lord Covington’s corpse.

The body was curled like an embryo, bobbing in the air like a nightmare. In the dim light, the space right around it warped slightly; something was clearly off.

Salaar threw a cup at the corpse. The little wineglass passed straight through, as if it were only a phantom.

“Believe it or not, this time it wasn’t me.”

Myss picked up a bowl of custard from the table. After saying it, curiosity struck him. “Did you come to save him?”

“More or less.” Salaar sighed. “That little girl is very brave. She hesitated for a bit, then still ran to find me and said my companion was in trouble… Speaking of which, why did you go with him?”

He didn’t think Myss had been trying to help the girl.

Chewing custard, Myss said, “He claimed to be a royal investigator, so I wanted to pry some things out of him. I wasn’t planning to kill him.”

“But he’s dead,” Salaar said. “You say it wasn’t you, and I believe you. Others may not see it that way.”

“‘You believe me’?” Myss couldn’t help repeating. Was this guy really that trusting?

“All right, my Demon Lord, there’s no need to lie about something like this.” Salaar snatched the custard from his hand. “We can discuss details later. For now let us leave—”

Crash!

Another huge sound, this time from the window.

Countless shards of glass crashed to the floor as a pitch-black figure hurtled into the room.

The man was swathed in a tattered cloak and stood nearly two meters tall. He wore a top hat and a mask that looked like a bird’s beak.

With his heavy breathing, a choking herbal smell spread through the room. Three to five crows settled at his feet, cawing at the top of their lungs.

Myss tensed at once. A rainstorm of power slammed into his brain. Without a doubt, another predator had stepped into his territory.

At the same time, dozens of chaotic footsteps sounded outside the door, clearly rushing towards them.

---

The author has something to say:

The beaked mask is a plague doctor’s mask!

Salaar: My friend, why does anyone who is alone with you end up dead? Am I the only survivor?

I am planning a new novel—if you are interested, little angels, click on it and bookmark it.

A Crime Unworthy of Death

Original • Pure Romance (BL) • Modern and Contemporary • Fantasy

Childhood friends (?) becomes sworn enemies

Tags: strong x strong, soul swap, twist of fate, supernatural abilities

---

Kinky Thoughts:

Summary for Nian Zhong next upcoming novel:

On the night of their decisive victory, General Luo Xia was mysteriously attacked and his consciousness slipped into a parallel world.

In this unlucky timeline, they failed to stop the apocalypse, the base was destroyed by enemy espers, his special-ops unit never even existed, and he lost contact with all his subordinates. His childhood best friend and brother-in-arms, General Yi Beiwang, had no memory of him at all.

Then Luo Xia discovered that in this worldline the enemy organization’s world-ending boss—whose identity was shrouded in mystery and “deserves a thousand deaths”… seemed to be himself.

Grim, justice-obsessed gong × adaptable, sly shou

Post-apocalyptic espers. A story where he tragically becomes the enemy boss and, while being hunted by his comrade (?).

————

A note: The title is based off the idiom “Deserving of (ten) a thousand deaths” (罪该万死), which refers to a crime that is so great, even a thousand deaths won’t be enough to atone for it.

In this case, one word is replaced to make it “Undeserving of death” (罪该不死), which basically means the opposite, where the crime doesn’t deserve death.

---

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

Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong

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

---

Chapter 7: A Strange Scent

Myss was shaken awake by Salaar.

When he opened his eyes, the caravan had just stopped at the city gate. The caravan only took them as far as the gate of Rosha; everyone had to pass the entry inspection independently.

Rosha’s city walls were high, with wilted weeds growing from the cracks. The sun had just set, and the bluish-gray stone merged with the shadows, turning dim and indistinct, its power to intimidate dropping sharply.

Something must have died nearby as the top of the walls were packed with crows. Their hoarse cries were incessant, setting people’s nerves on edge.

Kai said his goodbyes first and trudged off, dragging his suitcases with difficulty. Before leaving, he remembered to recommend the best-value inn in the city.

Salaar took a “Resolve to Elope” pill, then handed one to Myss and motioned for him to swallow it.

“The medicine is fine. I checked it,” he said.

“Why should I take it?” Myss asked warily. He suspected Kai was a swindler. At least to his eyes, Salaar’s presence hadn’t diminished at all.

“The Karns family is trouble. They will not let ‘me’ go so easily.”

Salaar didn’t explain much. “It’s best if we’re not remembered by the guards. If only I hide, the guards will remember your face all the more clearly and that will indirectly implicate me.”

Myss offered a very sincere suggestion. “Then allow me to gouge out your eyeballs. I guarantee no one will recognize you.”

Salaar: “Brilliant. Why didn’t I think of that?”

“Excellent. You can handle all the socializing and odd jobs next, and I’ll only heal my eyes when absolutely necessary…”

He hadn’t finished speaking when Myss gulped down the “Resolve to Elope”.

Myss wasn’t sure what raspberries tasted like, but this stuff was actually kind of good.

……

While the effect lasted, Salaar headed to a bookstore first. In one go he picked out about ten books and, just to be safe, added a dictionary.

As long as you did not touch the beautifully bound premium editions, ordinary books weren’t expensive. The tradeoff was that their pages were thin as a cicada’s wing, and the ink had a strange astringent smell.

“A Brief History of the World”

“The Foundations of Magic”

“One Hundred Common Spells”

“Eight Possible Causes of the Calamity Scourge”

……

A slave’s vocabulary could only handle trashy novels; the words in serious books were long and complex, making it difficult for Myss to decipher.

The only thing he could be sure of was that there were no books about the “Chaos Archdemon” or “Saint Salaar”. To be exact, there were none on the nearby shelves either.

While Salaar had his head down choosing books, Myss slipped off to a more distant corner and stopped in the storybook section.

Here, their names were written on covers and set alongside fairy tales and bedtime stories.

One book even had a stick-figure cover. In the picture, Salaar wore a red cloak and raised a comically large sword. His eyes were just two black ink dots, while a laughing mouth took up half his face, giving him a goofy look.

Myss opened “The Brave Salaar”.

It was a picture book for children, with only one or two lines on each page.

It told Myss that Salaar had been born into a happy commoner family and showed an extraordinary gift for battle from a young age, and that he was summoned by the king after he grew up.

For no clear reason, the king announced that Salaar was the only one who could defeat the Chaos Archdemon and Salaar inexplicably believed it. With a cloak on his back and a jeweled sword in hand, he rushed off all by himself toward the ferocious… er, Chaos Archdemon?

Myss frowned at the “Chaos Archdemon” in the picture. The author had no imagination and drew him as a bedsheet ghost, only extra large and extra black.

On the last page, Salaar’s sword pierced the Archdemon’s heart and ended the Night Scourge. He himself died under the Archdemon’s curse, a silly grin still plastered on his face.

Myss: “……”

Salaar’s three hundred years of being sealed were completely omitted, and the thousand-strong elite soldiers he led weren’t even mentioned. The story’s only “brave” element seemed to be that Salaar had the guts to believe the king’s nonsense.

What a mess! Even he felt Salaar didn’t deserve that.

“Are you buying that book?” a gentle woman’s voice sounded beside him.

Myss turned and saw a woman in her thirties with a basket on her arm. She gave him a timid smile and repeated, “Are you buying that book? …If you do not really need it, could you let me have it?”

Myss couldn’t be bothered to answer and chose to put the book of lies back where it belonged.

Only then did he realize that “The Brave Salaar” was actually selling well. This was the last copy on the shelf.

“Thank you, handsome.” The woman let out a breath of relief, then took a bag of croutons from her basket and offered it to him kindly.

It was a common snack in the area. Bakeries cut scraps and unsold loaves into small pieces, toss them with butter, minced garlic, and salt, and bake them. Children loved them.

Myss caught a faint fragrance.

It wasn’t the smell of bread, but more like the woman’s own scent. It was exactly what the magical artifacts merchant had lacked, and it was much stronger than in other humans, Salaar included.

The scent was sweet and soft, reminding him of pancakes drenched in hot syrup. It made him feel a little hungry. What puzzled Myss was that the hunger didn’t come from “his” stomach, but from deeper in the darkness, an impulse that belonged to “Him”.

Myss had no interest in preying on humans, just as humans wouldn’t eat horseshoes. Yet right now, the “horseshoe” in front of him was giving off the aroma of tempting food, which left him confused.

Perhaps he had stood there stunned for too long. By the time Myss came back to himself, the woman had vanished, and a bag of croutons had appeared in his hand.

Myss decisively picked up the bread cubes and strode back to Salaar. He grabbed the other’s collar, buried his face in the crook of his neck, and sniffed intently.

Salaar tensed, nearly dropping all the books in his hands.

“What are you doing?” he exclaimed in shock. “There are too many people here. Even if the pill’s effect works—”

No. Myss let go. There was indeed a faint scent on Salaar, but it was tender and green, like unripe fruit, and it did nothing to rouse his appetite.

Salaar: “I am telling you, you—”

“Shh. Croutons for you,” Myss muttered, shoving them into Salaar’s arms and hoping that would shut him up.

Salaar did shut up, and he even looked a little dazed.

The Demon Lord had made a circuit of a human bookstore, ended up with a bag of croutons, and then took a good long sniff of him. Every part of it was incomprehensible.

“Why give this to me?” Salaar chose the simplest question.

“Don’t you like to eat while you read?” Myss said, as if it were only natural.

Back when he was sealed, Salaar always enjoyed his mushrooms while reading. Even if he had read those books countless times, he kept eating mushrooms for hundreds of years. Myss had noticed all along.

Salaar froze for a moment, his gaze shifting.

He accepted the croutons and didn’t ask any more questions. Before the night grew deep, the two of them left the bookstore. Outside it was dim, the air clammy, and rain could fall at any moment. Myss’s skin felt as if it had been licked, sticky and stifling, and he gave an uncomfortable shiver.

Perhaps because Rosha was relatively isolated, the city’s inns felt a bit empty. They went to the inn Kai had recommended. When the enthusiastic clerk heard that Salaar and Myss would be staying for more than a week, they were upgraded to a better suite for free.

The room was four times the size of the little cabin from before. The windows faced the square, with a view of the fountain at its center.

There were even two huge double beds, supposedly prepared for family trips. The original guests had suddenly canceled, and the staff had already made the room up.

Myss sprang first and claimed the bed by the window. Salaar didn’t contest it; he set the books he had bought on the headboard of the other bed.

He also took out the bottle of “Resolve to Elope” and placed it beside the stack of books.

After several hours of testing, Salaar had roughly figured out its effect—it was hard for others to notice them in a crowd. However, if they took the initiative to greet someone, or if anyone touched them, they would still be noticed.

“That thing only works for twelve hours. You will be exposed sooner or later,” Myss said disapprovingly. “What a hassle! Can’t you just use magic to change your eye color?”

“I can’t.”

“What?”

“I am only skilled in combat and healing. Everything else I would have to learn from scratch.”

Salaar switched on the bedside lamp and picked up “Foundations of Magic”.

“Three hundred years ago, magic was a talent possessed by very few. People preferred to use it to save their lives. No one would waste time on little tricks like ‘changing an object’s color’.”

That’s surprising, Myss thought.

Salaar and every soldier under him possessed magic, and with Lord Karns going mad from a lack of magical talent, he had assumed humans were born able to use magic.

“Fine. I had hoped you would be more useful,” Myss said, thinking of the all-powerful ink-drawn hero from the picture book. “Shall we go find that guy’s pen pal tomorrow? You said there were leads…”

Salaar tossed a crouton into his mouth and then threw a few letters onto Myss’s bed.

Myss lowered his head to look at them. The envelopes with addresses were nowhere to be found, and those damned pages had been soaked in corpse fluid, the fishy stench stabbing straight up into his skull.

Very reluctantly, he pinched them up and read the remaining writing.

In the correspondence, Lord Karns, under the pseudonym “Pilgrim”, had a lively rapport with someone called “Patience”. They discussed many topics about souls and corpses.

The difference was that Lord Karns was very interested in the “magical spirit that lingers in corpses”, while “Patience” preferred to talk about souls. Compared with the young lord’s rambling, his—or her—prose was neat and concise, suggesting a well-educated person.

In one exchange, the young lord complained about the harsh conditions in Ring Town, and “Patience” replied, “I understand. Winters in Rosha are always hard to endure.”

Beyond that sentence, “Patience” said nothing about themself.

Myss looked at Salaar in disbelief.

“Patience” had mentioned Rosha only once. For all they knew, that person had already moved. Even if “Patience” was still here, let alone their real name, they didn’t even know the person’s sex or age.

With Rosha this big, how were they supposed to search?

Salaar crunched his croutons and spread his hands at him innocently, as if to say, “Do you have a better idea?”

Myss flopped straight back onto the bed and buried his face in the pillow.

Then he decided Salaar’s breathing was too loud and chose to go for a walk. He had heard the inn offered free late-night snacks, so he could pad his stomach and fend off hunger.

However, on the way to the snacks—

“Are you blind?” a voice roared at him.

---

The author has something to say:

Why are those two not eloping yet? Elopement requires both determination and presence of mind.

---

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

Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong

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

---

Chapter 6: Kai

He was a young man in his mid-twenties. His eyes were tawny, his short hair the color of brass, and a dusting of freckles lay across the bridge of his nose. He was short. His white shirt was wrinkled, and the overly loose black vest he wore with it made it hard to tell what profession he was.

What was most striking was his luggage—two enormous suitcases, big enough to hold two grown men. God knew how he managed to carry them here.

His gaze swept over Myss and Salaar’s faces, and his eyes opened a little wider.

“Kai,” he introduced himself in a slightly high-pitched voice. “Pleased to meet you both.”

“Salaar.” Salaar offered his hand without hesitation. Myss crossed his arms and pretended not to hear.

“Oh, ‘Salaar’.” Kai shook his hand. “Looks like your elders were fond of heroic legends.”

“I think the bigger reason is these eyes.” Salaar blinked his lapis-lazuli eyes. “Plenty of people guess I am a distant relative of the Karns family.”

Kai chuckled. “I am a little curious too. Are you?”

“I wish I were. Then I would never worry about money for the rest of my life,” Salaar said, lowering his voice.

“Lord Karns” gave off a brooding demeanor; Salaar’s bluntness neatly balanced that. After just a few exchanges, Kai relaxed considerably, and the mood became incredibly congenial.

Myss wrinkled his nose. With anyone other than him, Salaar’s social intelligence shot up a hundredfold and that provocative attitude vanished without a trace.

How fake. He stared so hard at Salaar that Kai began to feel awkward.

Kai cleared his throat. “Uh, and this is…?”

“My friend,” Salaar said with a straight face.

Myss’s expression suddenly changed as if he had swallowed a fly. For the first time he discovered that human faces could change shape; who knew he could pull his face that long.

Perhaps his murderous intent was a bit too obvious, because Kai gave an uneasy laugh. “R-Right, is that so?”

Salaar’s eyes curved. “Don’t mind him. That’s just his temperament.”

He pointed at Myss’s murderous expression. “His looks are too striking, so an easygoing personality would only invite trouble.”

Kai’s eyes flicked between them, then suddenly lit up.

With astonishing speed, he flipped open one suitcase, revealing a jumble of trinkets packed to the brim. “These are all magical artifacts of my own making. You can say, I’m somewhat of an alchemist.”

“If you do not want to draw attention, I can help you with that,” he said, rubbing his hands enthusiastically.

It turned out he was a magic artifacts merchant. Salaar brightened. “Any recommendations?”

“This one is called ‘Down-and-Out Gentleman’.” Kai produced a pair of sunglasses that came with a ruddy nose and a big beard. “It sticks to your face and only comes off with a special potion.”

Myss was a little interested in that furry thing and glanced at it out of the corner of his eye.

Salaar: “…Anything else?”

Catching on, Kai set the glasses down and fished out a tiny vial. “Brand-new ‘Vertigo Eye Drops’! Put in a drop and anyone who makes eye contact with you will unconditionally become nauseous.”

The vial was full of bright green slime, a rather ominous color. Kai looked at Salaar full of hope, and Salaar subtly avoided his gaze.

“Okay, okay. A discerning customer.” Kai put the potion away dejectedly, then swapped in another.

This time it was a small bottle of pills.

Each pill was about the size of a pea, blood-red, and shaped like a tiny heart. Pressed together, they gave a faint, gentle throb and released a strange sweet-and-sour scent.

“This is the best-seller.” For some reason, Kai didn’t look happy about it. “‘Resolve to Elope’. Take one and your presence fades. The effect lasts twelve hours.”

“If both of you take pills from the same bottle, you will be immune to each other’s effect, so you won’t lose track of one another. By the way, they taste like raspberry.”

Kai asked for one gold ring per bottle.

That wasn’t cheap. One gold ring would cover a commoner’s expenses for a month, and Lord Karns’s allowance was only ten gold rings a month.

Of course, they had taken some money off the bandits and sold the horse. Even so, after hiring a caravan, Salaar had only five gold rings left in his pocket, plus half a small sack of jingling silver shields.

Their funds weren’t exactly abundant, but that bottle of “Resolve to Elope” was truly useful.

“We’ll take one.”

Salaar handed over a gold ring without haggling. “Pleasure doing business. How about you throw in a bit of news?”

Kai was taken aback by his generosity. “No problem!”

Then Myss listened as the two of them chatted away.

Salaar spun them brand-new identities: a twenty-year-old fledgling scholar and his nineteen-year-old ranger partner.

According to Salaar, his specialty was the history of the Night Scourge era. Myss had known him since childhood, a genius ranger who was cold on the outside but had a warm heart. They had just saved up a little money and decided to set out adventuring together.

“We have always gotten along especially well.” Salaar gave a hearty laugh. “I can guarantee Myss knows me better than anyone in the world, and it goes both ways.”

Myss couldn’t help but sneer. “‘Get along well’?”

Salaar turned to Kai. “See, he didn’t even deny the second half.”

Myss: “……” Unable to kill and unskilled in cursing, he didn’t want to continue to speak anymore.

Beside him, Salaar kept right on talking. His words were full of a naive yearning for the world and high praise for Kai’s alchemical craft. Kai grew a little embarrassed listening to it and voluntarily refunded him two silver shields.

“Small business lives on wandering around and trying one’s luck.”

Faced with two “naive youngsters”, Kai unconsciously adopted the tone of an elder. “To be honest, Rosha isn’t a good place. It is a bit closed off, and there’s been ugly rumors.”

“Ugly rumors?” said Salaar.

Myss pricked up his ears as well.

“They say there are demons in the city of Rosha,” Kai said mysteriously. “A friend of mine just came back from there last month. He says he saw one with his own eyes.”

“My heavens, demons actually exist? I have never heard such things!” Salaar exclaimed in shock.

He even patted Myss soothingly, pretending this wasn’t the biggest demon in the world. Myss caught his hand and firmly pressed it back where it belonged.

“Haha, I’m joking. Of course demons don’t exist. My friend probably saw some kind of monster, or some lunatic pretending to be one.”

Kai was amused by their reactions.

“Listen, demons and gods—they’re just tricks. Remember that and your chances of being duped drop by ninety-nine percent.”

Myss lifted his eyes and stared at Kai for a while. “If there are no demons or gods, then what is the ‘Chaos Archdemon’?”

“The Night Scourge is only a natural phenomenon. There’s no evidence it was caused by anyone. The ‘Chaos Archdemon’ is a folk tale, since no one knows the cause of the Night Scourge.” Kai explained patiently, “You know how people are. They like to pin whatever they cannot understand on ‘gods’.”

As he spoke, he picked up the bottle of “Resolve to Elope” and shook it in front of them.

The bright red little pills rattled. Seen through the glass, the amber of Kai’s eyes looked slightly distorted.

“Just like this bottle. I never expected to sell many of these. How many people are really going to elope? Yet its sales have been like a ‘miracle’.

Only recently did I realize that everywhere I sold it, theft cases shot up… Those bastards chose actual stealing over stealing hearts or stealing lovers.”

“With the option of a sneak attack too,” Salaar added, full of sympathy.

Myss’s scalp tightened. He suspected that was Salaar’s true purpose for buying the stuff.

He actually had one more thing he wanted to ask Kai: if you think the ‘Chaos Archdemon’ is a fabrication, what about Salaar, the one who sealed said demon?

But seeing how unconcerned Salaar looked, Myss couldn’t be bothered. There was something else that deserved more attention right now.

Myss glanced at the other suitcase that hadn’t been open yet. Its magical fluctuation was very faint, yet it nagged at him inexplicably.

Kai himself was the same way. He bore no hostility toward them at the moment, but his scent was thin, lacking something other humans had.

Myss shifted his body and edged Salaar toward the carriage door.

If anything went wrong, he would kick this guy out of the carriage. That way Salaar would survive and wouldn’t get in the way, and it would be oddly stress-relieving—truly killing three birds with one stone.

…But the rest of the journey was painfully dull.

The route the caravan chose was level and safe. The carriage rocked lightly like a cradle, making Myss drowsy. At noon the caravan stopped and offered the passengers corned beef and small rolls.

The rolls were decent. The corned beef came in a thin slice and was startlingly salty. Kai took a tiny bite, frowned, and set it down. He fished cheese, smoked fish, and pickles out of his pack and generously shared with his two companions.

Both declined.

Myss wasn’t picky about food, and neither was Salaar. When a man has eaten salt-roasted mushrooms for over three hundred years, it’s hard for him to fuss about anything else.

After their meal, feeling full and drowsy, Myss felt the lull sleep press down heavier and heavier. Human impulses were too unfamiliar to him, and he hadn’t yet learned to resist them. At last, in the warm afternoon air, he drifted off.

As the carriage swayed, Myss gradually tilted over. With one bump, his head thumped onto Salaar’s shoulder.

Salaar didn’t dodge. He stared at Myss for a long moment, then lowered his gaze. A ray of sunlight slanted across the floor and just touched the tip of his boot.

“Ah.” Across from them, Kai shook his head and silently mouthed, “Our ranger isn’t very vigilant.”

“Never has been,” Salaar whispered.

Myss seemed to be born without whatever “vigilance” was. The Demon Lord slept soundly on his shoulder; Myss’s chest pressed to his arm, and each heartbeat pounded against his skin.

Not long ago, Salaar could only see the tips of His countless tendrils, roaming freely over the ground. His heartbeat—if that symphonic rhythm could be called a heartbeat—filled the vast darkness.

That sound never varied and never ceased, precise as the hand of a clock. To this day it still echoed deep in his mind.

Salaar closed his eyes. His head lowered by an almost imperceptible degree, then a little more. At last he caught the warm breath of something living.

The fingers resting on his knees twitched, as if they wanted to calibrate something.

But in the end, he did nothing.

---

The author has something to say:

It’s fine. The pills are already bought. There will always be someone who chooses to steal hearts rather than steal goods or spring a sneak attack.

Myss: Humans are far too slow on the uptake. I will eliminate every hidden danger.

Myss: (two minutes later) Out cold. Head-butting his nemesis and still not waking.

Salaar: …

— — — —

On currency units and purchasing power:

1 gold ring = 10 silver shields = 1,000 yuan

1 silver shield = 100 copper teeth = 100 yuan

1 copper tooth = 4 copper kels = 1 yuan

Right now the two of them have four gold rings and some silver shields in cash (not counting the jewelry), which is about six to seven thousand yuan.

After Lord Karns was exiled to Ring Town, his living allowance became ten gold rings per month. Back in the capital, it must have been over a hundred.

---

Kinky Thoughts:

Just a note, Myss is a considered a (Chaos) “Demon God”, the term being used is (魔神) which broken down is Demon + God. This is why there’s reference to him being a ‘God’ but in terms of western standards, he’s technically not a “God” but more of an extremely powerful demon (think the Devil, Lucifer, ect.), so I decided to go with Archdemon instead.

---

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

Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong

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

---

Chapter 5: Dream of the Past

Sepanti, the Karns estate.

Queenie Karns stood in the center of the entrance hall, admiring the painting before her.

It was the only surviving portrait of “Saint Salaar”. No, strictly speaking, it was a replica of that portrait.

The original was small, not much bigger than a diary, and had long been kept under tight guard in the underground vault. The moment the Karns family obtained it, they commissioned a large version and hung the replica in the very center of the great hall.

Three hundred years later, everyone took the copy to be the original itself.

In the painting, Saint Salaar had blond hair and blue eyes, strikingly handsome features, and a completely blank expression. He sat on a dull wooden chair, staring fixedly toward something outside the frame, as if waiting for it.

Such a portrait was unusual. Normally the subject should be smiling and looking at the viewer.

Queenie disliked the painting. She always felt it was unfinished. The Saint Salaar in it was cold and hollow, though the guests all explained that as “compassion” or “humility”.

“Queenie.” A voice interrupted her thoughts.

She turned, the curls of her black hair sliding over her shoulders. “Brother.”

“What are you going to do?” he asked with a smile. “It looks like our little lunatic isn’t dead. The manor in Ring Town burned to ash, no one saw him leave, yet his status crystal doesn’t have a single crack.”

“Grandfather was explicit. Whoever kills him first gets his share of the inheritance. You’re really not tempted?”

“Not interested,” Queenie said coolly.

The Karns family was flourishing. This generation had eight heirs. Queenie was the seventh. Kendrick Karns was the youngest, two years her junior.

They had tried to set him straight once, but Kendrick was an exceptional fanatic. When he was young the elders still hoped for the best and merely sent him to the border. Now he was nearly twenty-one, and far from restraining himself he had only grown more violent.

So the elders now had to choose between “family honor” and “Kendrick Karns”.

“I inherited enough to keep me comfortable for life. I don’t need more,” Queenie said. “It’s Kendrick I am thinking about. He slipped away too cleanly, which may mean he had help.”

She paused, and her tone turned meaningful.

“If he has colluded with someone he shouldn’t have, hunting him won’t be easy.”

“Opportunity always comes with risk.” Her brother shrugged. “Forget it then. It’s fine if you don’t get involved.”

“Mm. Be careful, all of you.”

Queenie ended the topic without much interest and turned her eyes back to the likeness of Saint Salaar.

In the dim background, the Hero wore gray and still gazed toward a vague, far-off place.

……

Salaar quietly looked up at… Him.

Gravestones surrounded Salaar—some rough stones, some planks, some swords and shields carved with names. They were tidied spotlessly and stood silent on the earth.

Salaar, clad in battered armor, lifted his head in silence, and seemed almost like one more grave marker among them.

It was a dream. He suddenly realized that a human body dreams.

This was the first dream Myss had ever had, and He dreamed of long ago.

Back then Salaar hadn’t been so unruly, and back then some of his people were still alive.

Yes, when Salaar sealed Him, he had brought over a thousand elite warriors. In the eternal darkness they had built a crude settlement and lived on mushrooms, salt, and clear water.

Salaar was the strongest among them and aged the slowest. The other humans couldn’t live that long. In only a hundred years they died one after another, leaving the ground littered with bones.

In the end, Salaar carved everyone’s headstone, everyone except his own.

Myss watched it all in silence.

His countless eyes hung high above, their black pits hidden in an even deeper dark. Yet Salaar seemed able to feel His gaze and would always lift his head and look back.

What expression had Salaar worn then? He couldn’t remember.

In those days His feelings had been faint, not enough to sustain an emotion like curiosity. He simply looked at him and only looked.

The dream wavered and drew away. Myss blinked awake, dazed, and found himself facing Salaar’s face.

The man was sitting by his bed, observing Him…him, with the spirit of a researcher. That face was very close, close enough that Myss could feel his breath.

Myss jerked upright and loosed a streak of black light. He moved too fast and yanked his long hair hard, letting out a cry of pain.

His attack slammed into a golden shield; Salaar had clearly prepared for it.

“Good morning, Myss,” Salaar said, straightening his collar and greeting him with mock solemnity.

“What is wrong with you?” Myss threw the pillow at Salaar again. The latter snatched it out of the air.

“You never slept before. I was curious, that is all.” Salaar tossed the pillow back. “It seems the human body affects you a great deal.”

“How do you know I never slept before?”

Even though Salaar was telling the truth, Myss couldn’t resist snapping at him.

“I prodded you at different times on purpose, and your reaction speed never changed.” Salaar tidied up the sheets and blanket. “Back then you never tired, or at least that was how you seemed.”

So this man had been studying him and had never stopped.

From Salaar’s standpoint it was not edifying research. It meant that from then until now, Salaar had been looking for a way to eliminate him.

Myss didn’t want to pursue the topic. He grimaced and took stock of his surroundings.

Last night Salaar had ridden at full speed. Myss’s backside was sore from the jolting, and his head was so sleepy he felt like dying. Once he dismounted, the ground still seemed to buck like a saddle, making him stagger along. His mind and body were in a state of semi-shutdown.

So the moment Myss found a bed, he fell onto it at once. Salaar seemed to have said something like “take off your shoes first,” but the words slid past his ears like the wind.

Now he was surprised to find himself in a cozy little cabin.

There were two single beds, each against a wall. His shoes had somehow slipped off by themselves and were neatly placed by the bed, and his coat was draped over the headboard.

The morning light was growing stronger and bathed the whole room in a bright golden glow. In the middle stood a small round table already set with fried eggs, hot milk, and oatmeal cookies.

Myss’s nose noticed them before his eyes did, and his stomach answered with an enthusiastic rumble.

“Pain, drowsiness, and hunger, you have experienced them all.”

Salaar spoke around a cookie held in his teeth. “It is a bit late to say this now… Welcome to the human world, Myss.”

Myss sat at the table without ceremony and grabbed a cookie. He stared at Salaar for a moment, then said suddenly, “So this is your plan?”

Salaar showed a politely puzzled look.

“You want me to empathize and see how pitiful humans are, maybe even develop some fondness for the human world, then go to my death willingly… or something like that.” Myss snapped the cookie in two with a crack as if it were Salaar’s skull.

Humans seem to love this kind of redemption script. At the very least, bards love it.

Salaar blinked, then burst out laughing, almost to the point of tears. Myss had never seen him laugh so hard.

“So you mean… ahem, sorry.”

Salaar coughed twice from laughing and wiped the corners of his eyes. “You mean I am begging you for mercy?”

Was he not? Myss stopped chewing.

“Good heavens, of course not.”

Salaar said it with his face still smiling, yet there it was devoid of laughter in his tone.

“I would never do that, Myss. Never.”

Myss watched him quietly. He suddenly remembered last night’s dream. For a brief instant Salaar seemed to turn back into that man who stood among the gravestones and looked up into the dark.

“…Very well,” Myss replied.

He lowered his eyes with a sigh, then noticed that Salaar had taken all the fried eggs from the plate.

Yes, Salaar wouldn’t beg for his pity, but he had better beg for his forgiveness. Myss bit the cookie with hatred and added another mark against him in his heart.

For a while the only sound in the room was the crunch of chewing.

While they ate, Myss took stock of his body.

Magic flowed through his new shell and methodically refashioned flesh. Given time, he could recover a little power.

This was a good sign. His magic was flowing freely, which meant his true body was intact. It still lay in the deepest dark and waited quietly for his return.

Myss ate while spacing out and suddenly bit into something dry and tough.

Oh, hair. He had been thinking too hard and had sent a strand of hair into his mouth along with the cookie.

To be honest, the long hair was a nuisance. It was nothing like the tentacles he once had and refused to obey him. Myss pinched the ends and kept gesturing, thinking about how to deal with it.

“Keep it,” Salaar said with interest as he watched. “Unless you can find a professional barber, for example me.”

“Right, having you stand behind me with scissors would be so reassuring,” Myss snorted.

Salaar brushed the crumbs from his hands. “No scissors needed.”

He walked behind Myss and gathered the hair with quick motions. Then he pulled off his cravat and tied the ends neatly. The whole process took less than half a minute.

“Done.” Salaar sat back down.

Without the cravat, his shirt collar sat slightly open and looked less formal.

Myss reached back to feel it. The top half of his hair still hung loose, while the lower half was loosely braided, the end tied with a cravat the color of lapis lazuli.

The hair did stop wandering, but the color of the cravat displeased Myss. It felt as if Salaar had marked him.

He suspected Salaar had done it on purpose. Taking it off now would look childish yet leaving it on was irritating.

Myss quickly talked himself around. Better to keep it than let the hair make trouble. It was behind him anyway and wouldn’t be in his line of sight.

Things went smoothly after breakfast.

Salaar sold the horse to other guests at the inn and switched with Myss to a carriage.

A caravan happened to be heading for the city of Rosha and had taken on quite a few passengers. According to them, they would reach Rosha before sunset today.

Salaar paid extra, and the two of them were assigned to the last, upscale carriage. The space was small but clean and quiet, with pretty good privacy.

Unfortunately, besides Myss and Salaar, there was one more person in the compartment.

A slightly suspicious person.

---

The author has something to say:

Their looks are finally locked in. ☆

Myss: feels like I got marked.

I support the Archdemon making one back.

Also, “Sweet Trap” is basically an over-the-top gag. We won’t actually do the content. In our canon we cannot accept single-gender reversal (…) 

At most it is a pure hero seducing a Chaos Witch (♂).

---

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

Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong

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

---

Chapter 4: New Destination

“If ‘my’ memory is correct, there are also dwarves, goblins, and centaurs who claim to be descendants of Saint Salaar.”

Salaar spoke in a tone that was hard to describe. “Salaar’s preferences are truly astonishing.”

The mage was unsure how “Lord Karns” felt about this. “Uh, the Karns family also has Saint Salaar’s token.”

“Oh? So a ‘token’ is all it takes?”

Salaar casually plucked a button from the mage’s clothes and tossed it to Myss. “Look, your token button. This guy is now your grandson.”

Mage: “…”

Myss, who instinctively caught it: “?”

He stuffed the button back into Salaar’s collar. “You are the grandson.”

Salaar’s neck was warm and solid, brimming with life. Myss barely held back the urge to curse him to death.

Letting Myss fuss with his collar, Salaar kept threatening the mage. “In short, you had better cooperate and throw away those unrealistic fantasies.”

The mage fell silent.

……

The bandits’ base wasn’t far from town and looked like an abandoned farm.

A single horse stood alone in the stable. The sheep pen was heaped with junk. Insects shrilled in the shrubs. The cabins were in decent repair; the largest one had a light on. The smallest served as a storeroom, and a duty roster was nailed to its door.

It was late summer turning to autumn. The night still held humid heat, and the air felt like fog even though there was none. In the clear moonlight, everything was plain to see.

Myss, however, smelled cold soup, wastewater, and rotting blood. He knew they lurked in the shadows.

The sharpest stench came from right under his nose. He tugged at his clothes, face full of distaste.

Before leaving the manor, Salaar had made him change out of the ritual robe and stripped a set of clothes from a bandit’s corpse for him.

The outfit was bulky and filthy, the fabric soaked with blood and sweat, clinging to his skin like a slug. The hat was a size too big and reeked of rancid scalp oil.

Salaar, for his part, had wrapped himself in four full layers and at a glance looked like a clumsy burly man.

The mage led the disguised pair over the fence and stopped before the storeroom. He fished a key from under a flowerpot and handed it to Salaar with shaking hands.

“As long as you spare my life, I…”

Before the mage could finish speaking, a flash split the night, and a ritual dagger was plunged into his heart.

A clean, decisive execution. The mage collapsed on the ground with a look of bewilderment still lingering on his face.

Salaar stood with his back to the moon; his features steeped in shadow. He drew the dagger back, his breathing perfectly steady.

Myss stared at the wound that kept welling blood.

Something crawled out of the mage’s chest. It was a half transparent weasel with exaggerated fangs. It twitched atop his chest, its eyes rolling, cursing feebly.

In a few seconds the weasel dissipated like mist, as if it had never existed.

“What are you looking at?” Salaar asked gently, still holding the bloody dagger.

“Nothing.” Myss pulled back his gaze. “Why the rush to act? I thought you would scout for information first.”

Salaar: “Do you want the pleasant reason or the unpleasant one?”

“Pleasant? From you?”

“All right, I will give you a buy one get one free.”

Salaar wiped the dagger with practiced ease. “First, he saw your special magic and might leak it. Second, there are many ways to get information, so why would I keep a villain like that at my side?”

He shot Myss a meaningful glance, and their eyes met.

“Fair point. One of you is trouble enough,” Myss said with a sigh.

Salaar: “……”

Smiling, he turned the key. The keyhole gave a brittle protest.

Just as Salaar had expected, the bandits’ base was well stocked.

Cash and jewels went without saying. The storeroom held plenty of everyday clothes and even a few passable old formal suits.

Food was stacked by the door, including cheese, jerky, and light wine. Myss dug into the back of a shelf and came up with sugar and butter as well.

Salaar picked up a sharply scented red rind cheese, and a hint of nostalgia crossed his face.

“What is that?” Myss had no memory of this type of cheese.

“This one is good grilled. When you eat it, you should dip it in plenty of sugar or honey. It is quite good plain too.”

Salaar sliced a piece with the freshly cleaned dagger and chewed with care.

Then he gagged and spat it out, which gave Myss a start.

“Quite good plain,” was it?

How terrifying. When this brat gets ruthless, he lies even to himself. Myss immediately backed away from the cheese as if it might launch an attack.

“The taste is a bit off.” Salaar weakly wiped his mouth. “…Maybe I remembered wrong.”

Even so, he tucked the cheese away.

His scavenging technique was unusually practiced. He stacked a large amount of supplies neatly into the packs, so tidy it was as if those shabby bags had spatial magic. They swallowed all the cash and jewels, the lighter foodstuffs and daily necessities, and several carefully chosen sets of clothing.

Unfortunately, these bandits didn’t care much for reading.

As for paper documents, aside from a world map, Salaar found only a pile of erotic novels, several of which even starred him as the lead.

Myss picked up “The Goblin Queen’s Invitation” and deliberately rustled the pages, one step short of reciting the contents on the spot.

Salaar lowered his head and dutifully played the deaf man. He patiently opened each book, read a few pages, and checked whether the cover was a misleading disguise.

Suddenly the sound of pages turning stopped without warning.

Myss glanced over on instinct and found Salaar studying a book titled “Sweet Trap”. His expression was subtle, and his eyebrows climbed higher and higher.

Did he find something? Myss hurried over to take a look, and his smile vanished at once.

In that slim booklet the author explained in two or three lines why a “pure hero” would seduce a “Chaos Witch”. Everything else was details of the “seduction”. The prose was vulgar and showy, and the content was unfit for the eyes.

Of course, no names were mentioned. Who it was about was so hard to guess.

By the time Myss realized what he had just read, it was already too late.

For a second Myss even hated the fact that the slave was “literate”. He snatched that damned book, black magic surged out at once, and “Sweet Trap” was reduced to nothing.

“What a pity,” Salaar said with a tease.

A pity? Remembering the last part he had read, Myss felt a chill over his whole body, as if that passage had taken a bite out of his mind. In three hundred years of trading blows with Salaar, he had never been hurt this badly.

“How can humans be this crazy,” he muttered, then suddenly realized something. “Hey, don’t tell me you really did it with the goblin queen…”

“If you insist on knowing, the only beings I have ever had carnal relations with are the mosquitoes of the Crimson Marsh.”

Salaar barely held back a laugh. “I must say, it was a night to remember.”

Myss shot him a glare and rummaged even louder.

Half an hour later they had gathered the necessities. In “Common Treatments for Injuries and Illnesses”, Salaar found several identification papers. The bandits had used those parchment slips as bookmarks, all tucked into the chapters “Knife Wounds”, “Snakebite”, and “Plague”.

Salaar chose two with the most suitable birth dates, uncorked a bottle of alchemical ink, and neatly altered the names.

When they left the storeroom, they looked completely refreshed.

Salaar picked a simple dark blue suit. The fabric was nothing special, yet he wore it with a hint of refinement. Myss donned an overly loose dark gray cloak with a few belts cinched at the shoulders and waist, a look both elegant and uninhibited.

Their packs bulged with essentials and their freshly minted identities—

Scholar Salaar and Ranger Myss.

“Let us swing by the manor first,” Myss calculated. “There are still plenty of things we didn’t take, and I need a bath…”

Bits of Old Aiken were still on him. Compared to that, a bath didn’t seem so bad.

Salaar slung the packs onto their only horse. The white horse snorted in impatience.

“I already burned it down,” he said lightly.

“What?”

“A little delayed magic.”

Salaar waved it off. “Have you thought about why those bandits knew I was ‘Lord Karns’ and still dared to go for the kill?

And Old Aiken knew very well what status the Karns family holds. He wouldn’t be stupid enough to suddenly murder his master.”

Myss frowned in confusion. He truly didn’t understand the complexity of human hierarchy.

Salaar saw his puzzlement. “Long story short, killing ‘me’ had to have been done with the family’s blessing.”

Kendrick Karns had been too deranged. It was no surprise if the family wanted to erase him.

From what Salaar knew of nobles, they would never leave everything to Old Aiken. They would certainly investigate afterward. So he had burned the manor to the ground and killed the mage in the bandit base’s storeroom, creating the look of a bandit raid followed by an internal dispute over the spoils.

It was only a stopgap, though. The Karns family might have other means of inquiry, and he had to prepare for the worst.

Dawn was near. Returning to town would only invite complications. They had to leave as soon as possible.

Route planning, disguise techniques, the noble way of doing things… The thoughts crashed through his head like a collapsed dam.

Amidst the faint ringing in his ears, Salaar pressed his temples.

Two steps away, Myss gave a loud grumble. The sound scattered the suggestive ringing, and Salaar turned his head.

“In short, the manor is gone, so no bath,” Myss concluded, still wearing a puzzled look.

It was the puzzlement of someone not personally concerned. The Archdemon clearly didn’t care about the schemes of human nobles, just as a giant beast of the deep sea didn’t care whether it would rain tomorrow.

“Yes, no bath. Which means we need to find the next bathtub.” Salaar patted the white horse’s newly set saddle.

Myss looked him up and down and didn’t move. “Destination?”

“The northern mountain city of ‘Rosha’, not far from here,” Salaar said. “The young lord has a pen pal there. They once had an enthusiastic discussion about how to put a human soul into a corpse.

Want to read the letters? I have them on me, since you know how to read.” He couldn’t help laughing at the last part.

Never mind human souls, that “Sweet Trap” clearly refused to die, Myss thought darkly.

Salaar mounted first, leaving space behind him. He tapped the saddle to signal Myss to hurry up.

Truth be told, Myss was extremely reluctant. Yet compared with running after the horse, or sitting in front of Salaar—the thought of that damned book made his hair stand on end—sitting behind Salaar felt less awkward.

Fine.

Myss climbed on properly, gripped the edge of the saddle with both hands, and didn’t touch Salaar at all.

Salaar gave a casual wave. A warm breeze swept past, and the flecks of flesh stuck to Myss vanished without a trace, leaving Myss feeling clean and fresh.

“Didn’t you say your magic was low and you needed to conserve it?” Myss frowned.

Salaar shook out his new clothes. “I’m afraid you will smear mine.”

Myss drew in a sharp breath. He had been careless. How had he not thought of that move just now?

…Next time for sure. He clenched the saddle and silently resolved himself.

---

The author has something to say:

Myss: How can humans’ kinks be this crazy?

They can, my friend, they can. That’s exactly what being into non-humans is like.

“Sweet Trap” is only disreputable gossip not worthy of public release. For the official version, read “A Contract Between Enemies”.

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

Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong

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

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Chapter 3: Escape

At midnight, the two men, each holding a candlestick, sighed in the secret chamber.

Myss didn’t understand human magical theory, but he could gauge the residual strength of the magic at the scene.

As he had expected, the strength was nearly zero. A minor noble who couldn’t do magic could never yank his spirit out of his body. It would be like an ant trying with all its might to move an elephant.

Yet here they were, which meant Lord Karns had definitely done something out of the ordinary.

Wonderful, Myss thought through gritted teeth. He had found no clues at all, so he would have to tolerate Salaar living to see tomorrow’s sun.

Salaar frowned and tried to decipher the scattered arrays. He cocked his head this way and that, looked left and right, then turned to Myss in frustration. “See anything?”

Myss’s reply wasn’t especially friendly. “Take a guess.”

“My guess is no, because you don’t look happy in the least,” Salaar said. “Cheer up, because I haven’t found anything either.”

From Myss’s expression, it told him the Archdemon didn’t believe a single word.

“Is it so hard to be straightforward? We have known each other for more than three centuries, and I have never stabbed you in the back,” Salaar said, giving the candlestick a wag.

Myss: “That is because you cannot tell where my back even is.”

Salaar: “…Fair point.”

“Do you have any clues in his memories?” Myss paused and forced himself to ask patiently. “You inherited that guy’s body, after all.”

Salaar shook his head. “I only know his experiences. I don’t know his thoughts and feelings.”

“Besides, he tried all sorts of quack remedies and ruined his brain. His memories are riddled with hallucinations.”

As he spoke, he crouched to examine the bones in the chamber. Corpses in varying states of decay were piled in a corner like garbage, emitting a grotesque stench that filled the air.

Sacrifice a beautiful virgin to summon a demon, and the demon will grant your every wish.

All for an absurd rumor, Lord Karns had beggared himself and sacrificed slave after slave. The former owners of their bodies had been one of a fool and one of a lunatic. In a way, fate had been quite fair.

In the end, Salaar dug a handful of incomplete letters out of the bone pile.

Most were orders and receipts exchanged with slave traders, and a few were from the young master’s pen pal. Those were filled with wild magical theories and read like patients swapping notes.

“Ridiculous,” Salaar concluded helplessly. “The little lord’s memories are a mess, the ritual site was wrecked by our fight, and even these letters are incomplete.”

“If we want to figure out the so-called summoning ritual, we will have to visit his deranged pen pal.”

However, there was still a hard fight waiting for them outside the chamber—

A few minutes later, the two stood on opposite sides of the bed, glaring at each other on guard.

Yes, they were both tired and both wanted to sleep on the soft bed. Even if it was covered in clutter and its comfort level was highly questionable, it still beat a floor full of dust and hair.

“Since you like bathing so much, you should sleep in the bathtub,” Myss said, feeling very justified.

Salaar: “And you won’t even take a bath. I thought you didn’t care about such trifles.”

“I care about whatever I choose to care about, and right now I care about the bed more than anything in the world.” Myss plopped down on it and shooed Salaar away with a flicking gesture.

“Fine, if you insist.”

Salaar thought for a moment and replied with sincerity.

“But when I don’t sleep well, I tend to sleepwalk, and when I sleepwalk, I like to splash people with water. You will understand, right?”

Myss: “You bas…” 

He had begun to speak when he suddenly looked toward the window in confusion.

Hostility.

A group of people was approaching fast, brimming with hostile intent.

“I will go outside and check. You go wait in the butler’s room,” Salaar said, having sensed it as well. “Move!”

……

In the butler’s room, Old Aiken ladled out a fragrant creamy stew and opened a bottle of red wine for himself.

The day had finally come.

He had been sent out to buy food, and the moment he stepped outside he received a message from the Karns family. They wanted him to get Kendrick Karns killed as soon as possible, preferably by hiring bandits so the whole thing would look like an accident.

If Old Aiken did a clean job, he would be recalled to the royal capital.

He knew it. That little madman would be abandoned sooner or later.

Old Aiken immediately took out a few gemstones he had skimmed to pay for wine and went to a bandit gang near Ring Town.

There were twelve bandits in all, and among them was a mage with a modestly nasty reputation. Poor Young Lord Karns couldn’t do magic. Killing him would be easier than wringing a chicken’s neck.

Afterward they would burn the manor and destroy all evidence, and Old Aiken’s task would be complete. Thinking of the bright future awaiting him in the capital, he didn’t even plan to ask for a share of the loot.

“Good heavens, you really hate your lord.”

After accepting the commission, the mage lamented. “I have heard the rumors… Seems he’s not ‘a monster who bathes in blood’, just a boring lunatic.”

That was right. Tonight the little lunatic would die screaming.

By the look of the time, the bandits would be arriving soon. Old Aiken decided to fetch a bit more cheese to go with his wine and celebrate properly.

As he stood up, a prickling sensation ran across the nape of his neck. He felt as if a beast had fixed him in its sights. He turned his head slowly and saw a pair of blood-red eyes.

It was the slave who should have been dead.

The slave wore an ill-fitting ceremonial robe, his gray hair hanging loose. The face was still stunningly beautiful, but Old Aiken had no mind to admire it.

Something was wrong.

Those blood-red pupils stared at him, and that wasn’t at all how one looked at one’s own kind, or even at an ant. When humans look at ants, they feel some curiosity or some arrogance, and at the very least there is a sense of appraisal.

But those eyes held nothing. It was as if… he was nothing more than a speck of dust floating in the air. Old Aiken shuddered.

The slave from before had reminded him of a gentle lamb. The being before him now, wearing a lamb’s hide and baring a mouthful of fangs, was something else entirely, completely alien.

The excessive beauty of that face only deepened the sense of estrangement, making one’s whole body go cold.

Old Aiken tried to say something, but no sound came out. He collapsed to the floor with a thump and shook uncontrollably.

Myss: “…”

He had done nothing, yet the old butler already looked half dead. And that wasn’t even the strangest part. On the butler’s left shoulder Myss saw a hamster.

Yes, a hamster. A half transparent, sparsely furred, fat hamster. It was larger than normal, and a strange fleshy growth bulged on its head like a cork.

“No…” it squealed in a thin voice, trembling so hard it almost left afterimages. “No… don’t…”

There had been nothing like this in the slave’s memories.

Myss instinctively reached for it. It felt like a lump of warm water, and it was as solid as such. He hadn’t even applied force before it broke apart between his fingers.

At the same time, Old Aiken shattered as well.

The old butler’s face flushed purple red, a gurgling sound rose in his throat, and thick bloody bubbles surged from all his orifices. The instant the hamster vanished, Old Aiken exploded on the spot into minced meat.

Myss wiped the flecks of flesh from his face and fell silent.

So much for that bath.

“There are twelve attackers. We…” Salaar arrived a moment later and found Old Aiken evenly smeared across the floor. He quietly swallowed the rest of his sentence.

Myss turned to look at him, waiting for the great hero’s possible condemnation or fury.

Nothing came. Salaar’s gaze skimmed over the body—if a pool of mincemeat still counted as a body—his expression stayed as calm as ever, as if a sight like this were the most ordinary thing.

“What happened?” Salaar asked.

“He had a strange hamster growing on him, and I pinched it.”

Unsure how else to respond, Myss simply told the truth.

Salaar studied him, not with the sort of inquiry that asks, “what is the mechanism,” but the sort that asks, “what nonsense are you spouting.” He didn’t dwell on it. He lifted his hand and tossed Myss a fork. Bits of sausage still clung to the tines.

Myss: “?”

“A weapon,” Salaar said.

Myss looked at the sharp ritual dagger in Salaar’s hand, then at his own fork. “?”

Salaar added helpfully, “Your magic isn’t very stable. Best not to use it if you can help it.”

No, you know that is not what I was asking.

Unfortunately, there was no time to bicker. Myss clenched the fork and turned toward the intruders at the door.

At the sight of the carnage inside, the bandit leader took two steps back on the spot. The mage swung his staff and stepped to the front.

“Who are you?” He narrowed his eyes at the two men beside the mincemeat.

Both had striking looks and solid builds, and they wore identical strange long robes. The gray-haired young man was covered in blood. The black-haired young man… The black-haired young man kept his eyes tightly shut, apparently blind.

According to Old Aiken, “Lord Karns” was as skinny as a rack of bones. Neither of these two matched the description, so they were likely outsiders.

Could that fool Old Aiken have placed the job twice, so that these people snatched it first?

But he hadn’t heard of any other assassins nearby, much less ones this conspicuous.

While the mage was still calculating, the black-haired young man took a step forward and pointed at the heap of mincemeat. “Please head back, everyone. Lord Karns has already been taken care of by us.”

“What?” the mage protested. “Fuck, we clearly agreed on a time—”

Myss almost blurted the same question along with him and barely held it back.

A look of understanding flickered across Salaar’s face.

These people were here for Lord Karns, who was hiding his identity. They had rushed straight to the butler’s room the moment they arrived. It was obvious who they had “agreed” with.

“Did Old Aiken not tell you? First come, first served.”

Salaar smiled. With that face, he looked like a real demon.

“He should have just left Ring Town. You can still catch him and demand an explanation.”

The bandits looked at each other and reached a consensus in seconds.

“To hell with explanations!” one of them shouted. “Kill them, and the manor is ours!”

The two pretty boys had odd tricks, but there were only two of them. With fat prey delivered to their mouths, why would they not bite?

Salaar let out a soft sigh. “What a pity. I did give you a chance.”

Though he said it, he didn’t sound the least regretful.

Myss blinked.

Deep in the slave’s memories, the bards’ saccharine hymns still floated into view—

[Saint Salaar is noble and pure. He will protect every living kin.]

Salaar flickered behind the shouting bandit and slit his throat without a sound. The entire motion was smooth and cold, like raindrops sliding down a windowpane.

He didn’t look as if he enjoyed killing, yet he showed not the slightest hesitation. He hadn’t even used magic.

[Saint Salaar pities the world. He will pardon every sin.]

The ritual dagger opened a third throat, and the bandits finally reacted. They surged forward, trying to pin down this “assassin renowned for his agility”.

The leader had just reached out when Salaar seized his wrist. With a crack, the bones in the man’s wrist were crushed by pure force.

[Though Saint Salaar’s body is gone, he keeps his watch from the skies.]

[The sun and moon, twin lanterns set, are his unblinking eyes.]

From start to finish, Salaar kept his eyes closed.

The mage reacted more cleverly.

Realizing Salaar was formidable, he directed several comrades to charge at Myss, who was watching from the side. Myss was spattered with bits of flesh, and they guessed he had “worn himself out in the fight”.

Maybe Salaar’s recommendation had its logic. Myss raised the fork with a sigh.

The silver tines stabbed into the first charging bandit’s shoulder. The man screamed, and only a little blood came out.

Myss: “…” What the fuck? He had been played!

He steadied his breathing. Dusky power ran down the fork and drilled into the man’s body.

It was as if black mold had infected him. Darkness raced over his skin from head to toe. In less than two seconds his body collapsed like flowing sand and vanished into the air.

Myss flicked the fork. The tip grazed two more bandits. Residual power stuck to their skin. Before panic could rise, they went through the same black infection and their bodies disintegrated entirely.

Three sets of clothes fluttered to the floor. The whole process was silent and uncanny.

The mage ripped open a spell scroll on the spot and raised a magic shield, barely saving his life. He stared at Myss in horror and even forgot to blink.

“You didn’t chant, and you didn’t use any magic weapons,” he groaned. “How did you… What are you…”

Myss didn’t care what he was babbling. He poked the shield and popped it as if it were an oversized soap bubble.

In the spray of gleaming motes, the mage stood frozen and drenched in cold sweat.

Myss lifted the fork to send him on his way, but before the bent tip could fall, a hand slapped around his wrist.

It was Salaar.

A glance toward the doorway showed that the other bandits were all dead. They lay sprawled, blood pooling into a scarlet lake. Salaar’s palm was warm and dry without a drop of blood on it.

Myss raised an eyebrow and said with a touch of irony, “What, I’m not allowed to kill?”

“That is not it. Leave one alive so we can find their base,” Salaar said.

Myss: “…Base?”

Salaar: “Yes. A base delivered to our door, perfect for robbing.”

“…Robbing?” Myss repeated blankly.

“Unless you want to wear Old Aiken’s clothes. Little Karns rarely went out, so his wardrobe holds only ceremonial robes. We also lack cash, supplies, and identification. I’m guessing their base has all of that.”

Salaar opened his eyes again. His lapis lazuli pupils glittered.

Myss lowered the fork in silence.

He could now be sure those poems about Saint Salaar were bullshit. This kid was absolutely a walking scourge.

On the other side, the mage finally came back to himself when he saw those signature eyes. “Those eyes… You are Old Aiken’s master, Kendrick Karns?”

Salaar: “Not for long. I don’t like names that are too long*.”

*Clarity: In Chinese, Kendrick Karns is (肯德里克 ·卡恩斯). Given naming convention in China, which is usually only 2-3 characters long, this is quite long, though by western standard, it isn’t.

“That old bastard lied through his teeth.”

The mage licked his dry lips and tried to curry favor. “He wanted to use us to murder you. I knew it. How could a descendant of Saint Salaar kill indiscriminately…”

He pretended he had not heard the part about “robbing”.

How does a menace like this still have living descendants? Myss immediately looked at Salaar in curiosity.

Salaar’s smile faded.

---

The author has something to say:

“What does it feel like to be slandered in front of your future partner?”

---

Kinky Thoughts:

The title of this chapter is “The golden cicada sheds its shell” (金蝉脱壳). It’s an idiom referring to creating or using a false appearance to escape, so that the other party can’t detect you in time.

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