A Runaway Villainess, Now Healing In An Enemy Country - Chapter 64

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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【Chapter 64】

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Davuer opened his eyes in a completely white space.

His limbs felt heavy as if crushed by magi.

A splitting headache and empty gaps in his memory. His senses were so scrambled he couldn’t tell if he was standing on ground or water.

However, his senses had been broken for a long time, so they couldn’t serve as a measure to assess the situation.

The only proper senses he had were hearing and sight.

Just as he thought that, text written neatly in black ink appeared in the white space that had contained nothing else.

It was a familiar handwriting.

[Hello, Davuer.

I want to tell you an old story.]

“…This is.”

He knew the letter that began this way.

Though it had been a very long time since he’d seen this passage, he remembered it as clearly as if he’d read it yesterday.

He had no choice. Even after burying this text, it had stuck in his mind like a nail, often tormenting him.

Just like now.

[This is a story from about a year before our first meeting.

When I was around ten, I found a square-folded piece of paper under grandmother’s desk. It was the day the death notice arrived at the Mage Tower.

I still remember the Butapju’s expression when he received that telegram. His eyebrows contorted, his pupils dilated, his lips parted slightly, and his jaw trembled finely. But soon he returned to his usual stern face.

I did the same thing. I wasn’t trying to imitate him, but when I came to my senses, I was doing it.

In that brief moment, I realized that something inside me had shattered into pieces and could never return. I felt frustrated, then sad, then turned away, then angry, and accepted it in a difficult but quick process.

I know why I acted that way then.

It was because before being grandmother’s death, it was the death of the Mage Tower’s master. She was a strong mage who had lived her entire life on battlefields where life and death hung in the balance.

So regardless of my reluctance to accept it, both reason and instinct had no choice but to understand.

That night I went to the study that grandmother had used while alive. She had a habit of writing a will before each expedition and keeping it under her desk.

The will I opened contained conventional greetings saying she was in good health. Stories about me, worries, affection – those things were in there.

It was more like a letter to me than a will. And that letter ended like this:

I pray that my death will not become your sorrow.

I think I cried a lot. I sobbed so much that all the moisture seemed to drain from my body, and the next day I couldn’t even open my eyes properly.

But I became okay. I did become okay.

As time passed and other memories covered it, as I grew and the smell of ink and the rustling of paper gradually faded, there came moments when I couldn’t even recall her face.

Davuer.

If someday you read this letter to me, what I want to say is…]

During the period when the Holy War broke out, when the final battle was not far off. The Countess, who stood at the forefront of the war, had a habit of leaving letter-like wills.

Davuer found this unsettling but couldn’t bring himself to stop her. So every night he would visit the Countess’s brightly lit tent and listen to the scratching of her pen like a lullaby.

Back then, he never thought he would actually read that will. Unconsciously, he believed that even if everyone who participated in the Holy War died, she would be safe.

But that was just a wish, and the result was the opposite.

[I hope my death became the salvation of the world.

I hope the final Holy War I will experience was successful. I hope that I, that my sanctum, was helpful to you.

I hope I can save you until the very end.

You’re absurdly strong, but that doesn’t mean you’re invincible. You’re also a person who bleeds when hurt.

Moreover, you have the bad habit of not considering your body’s condition when manifesting magic. I keep telling you to fix that, but you won’t listen. Who do you think gave you that magical power?

You don’t need to worry about me. I’m a great Countess, after all.

Since this is a war against the magi, I was prepared for death from the beginning. It would be a lie to say I’m not afraid, but it’s okay.

I like protecting things. And that’s also my duty as the Countess, right? Maybe it was fate that I, who didn’t believe in God, became the Countess that day.

Actually, you know what, I am.]

An ink stain as if the pen tip had been pressed down hard. Lines were drawn over the unfinished sentence.

Rather than reading the text spread before his eyes, he pictured the sentence that would follow next.

‘I will definitely…’

[I will definitely protect everyone.

For that, I feel like I could do anything. Even if it means making God my enemy, I want to accomplish it.

So, Davuer.

If you’re reading this letter, then I must have safely fulfilled my wish. How is the world without magi? Has war disappeared? Are those streets we saw now peaceful?

I hope so. That’s what would make our life-risking battles worthwhile. When this Holy War ends, I hope there will be no more bloodshed.

Don’t be sad even if I die.

It might be hard at first. But you’ll be okay soon. Just as I was, there will come a moment when you can’t recall my face either.

You must live well. You must live happily for a very, very long time.

For so long that you’ll be the only person left in the world who properly remembers me.

That is my last will.

With the Countess’s blessing, your Countess.]

“…The magi did not disappear.”

As soon as the Holy War ended, another war broke out. He contained unprecedentedly evil magi within him, and the world wasn’t very peaceful either.

But he couldn’t say that sacrifice was useless. That would diminish the value of the battle she fought.

So. Nevertheless.

“I am keeping your last will.”

Still, he continued to live. She had been his god, and he managed to live even in a world without god.

“You know. I do everything according to your will.”

He had never once broken that stubbornness, never refused any request. So he couldn’t even control his own life as he wished.

When she looked into his eyes with a smile despite being a mess on the battlefield. When she called his name as if seeing right through him. When she said there was work that needed to be done.

He realized anew, instinctively.

She intended to die burning herself up. Without leaving anything for herself.

Leaving me, in this place.

…Then. If she was going to disappear after making him remember every text she left, every word she spoke, every small habit. At least her name, at least her face should have been left for him to remember.

But it doesn’t come to mind. He can’t recall it.

…

“…Please. I want to see you.”

Davuer murmured without realizing it himself.

Then, as if waiting only for those words.

In his mind wandering through an irretrievable past, a not-so-old memory surfaced.

“…Do I really resemble her that much?”

A gaze looking up with worry, a face stiff with slight tension, a delicate but determined voice.

Irene.

…He had to go find Irene. Right now.

That was the most important thing above all else, and there was no time to waste meaninglessly here.

He must not remain in the past anymore. Now he had someone who existed in the present.

The blank space where only letters existed.

This place where he stood was an unreal fake.

It was an illusion filled with ghosts of the past to hold him captive, a world that existed only in consciousness.

Once he became aware, Davuer was able to grasp with surprising clarity the letters that had somehow surrounded him like a cage. Even the peculiarities of the phenomenon.

These letters could be ‘seen’ even with his eyes closed.

From the beginning, he hadn’t ‘seen’ them but ‘heard’ them.

“…Yes. I understand.”

Davuer paralyzed his hearing with magic.

Even with his body that had already lost its magical power, he dared to make it possible. Because this was a place composed only of consciousness, not matter.

Simply by breaking the framework of thought, imagination alone could produce sufficient effect.

And mages, after all, are beings who sustain outrageous imagination to make the impossible possible.

Therefore, here in this place, in this moment at least, he was not a corpse being consumed by Magi but a mage.

“So I didn’t die completely back then…”

Keeing—

Blue-gray magical power swirled around him like a fierce blizzard. Soon, in an instant.

A bitter cold that froze everything arrived.

Absolute zero.

This unique magic that made him called an archmage had no earth-shaking roar. It simply fell into quiet slumber.

In a world where everything was frozen, Davuer slashed through the letters before him, the letter, the empty air.

Riiip!

As the space surrounding him tore away like paper, the full view of a vast library came into his sight.

Along with the back of the person he had been searching for.

“Irene.”

He ran to her in one breath and embraced her from behind.

Perhaps because they were spiritual bodies. His sense of touch, which had been dull under the influence of the sensory magic circle, was more sensitive than ever.

Her anxiously pounding pulse, the hot warmth of her body, the intermittent trembling as if facing a cold wind—he could feel it all clearly.

Davuer covered Irene’s ears with his magical power and whispered.

“Don’t listen.”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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