Children of the Rune – Winterer - Chapter 321

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 91.
Ninety-Eight Souls (4)
“Are you the same way?”
“Me?”
Kelsniti laughed as he spoke. Joshua regarded him with fresh curiosity. He had scarcely given thought to the spirit’s predicament—in fact, he’d carelessly assumed that lacking physical constraints would be convenient.
“We can talk about me later. The point is, a spirit desperately yearns for something to collide with their incorporeal form. That’s why they become hypersensitive to the flow of energy—the only tangible sensation a spirit can feel. In places like this where magical power is compressed and twisted, many spirits deliberately seek to be swept up in it. You could say they’re simply following instinct. In other words, spirits naturally congregate in such locations.”
Joshua asked with a skeptical expression.
“How many?”
“That depends on how old this barrier is. The older it is, the greater the danger you’ll face.”
Maximian spoke.
“Wait—you can touch objects and people, can’t you? I recall you turning pages and writing before.”
“That’s true. However, when I attempt contact with a living person, they seem to sense something, but I feel nothing on my end. Just as they cannot normally touch my body. I only know the results of my actions by observing their reactions. Grasping objects is manageable, but writing is particularly difficult. I must regulate the pressure of the pen and the force applied to paper through memory rather than sensation. If that’s hard to understand, imagine a blind man relying on memory to walk a familiar path with perfect accuracy.”
As dawn broke, hearing the spirit’s voice grew increasingly strange. Yet Maximian found himself thinking that to Joshua, the spirit appeared no different from an ordinary person—and suddenly, he grasped something unsettling. The fraudulent mediums he’d seen before would close their eyes and murmur, “Ah, I see them. Faintly, dressed in white…” But if a spirit appeared as an ordinary person to Joshua, then what exactly was Joshua?
“So a medium is someone spirits readily cling to, right? Or someone who summons spirits easily?”
“Both.”
Joshua then spoke.
“It’s all new to me. Regardless of what a medium is, I can only see you, Kelce. The others are merely voices—I’ve never witnessed their actual forms.”
“No. You’re wrong. Think carefully. The day we first met.”
The memory surfaced immediately.
“That shadow?”
“Yes. That shadow I told you not to look at. And those I instructed you to ignore going forward.”
“Well, to be honest… I couldn’t completely ignore them. Sometimes they were so persistent in speaking that I had to respond. But they were only voices.”
Kelsniti’s cheek twitched as he smiled.
“Of course I knew that. If you hadn’t, those voices wouldn’t have followed you all this time.”
Maximian asked.
“If you respond, spirits will follow you?”
“Not all, but most spirits driven by instinct are as disconnected from physical sensation as they are mentally isolated from the world. They cannot communicate with each other, nor do they sense each other’s existence. So they fall into the delusion that their sensationless bodies itch unbearably, and they desperately crave the relationships with others that were mundane in life. They thirst for the reactions of living humans—the only other beings in their memories. So Joshua.”
Their eyes met.
“Your ‘boundary’ is incomparably thin compared to ordinary mediums. You hear sounds that living people should never hear. And in this place, spirits desperate to contact someone like you swarm about. So no matter how many circle around you here, you must not respond to them.”
“What if I do respond?”
Maximian stared at Joshua’s question with an expression that said he didn’t understand—as if asking whether he’d lost his mind. If he was told not to do something, wouldn’t he simply not do it?
Kelsniti answered.
“If you give them even the slightest opening, they will cling to you and never let go. Meeting someone like you is extraordinarily rare. They may follow you until the day you die.”
Unseen by Joshua and Maximian, a vagrant wandered across the meadow they overlooked. He hadn’t always been a vagrant, but he had certainly slept rough last night.
To be precise, he’d slept rough not just last night but the night before, and the night before that. The only difference was that last night he’d been alone. Yet the vagrant Caesar Montplayne appeared serene and carefree, seeming less to search for his companions than to leisurely enjoy a morning stroll. He dragged along a horse that kept stopping, insisting on its share of breakfast.
A natural hunger disturbed Caesar’s peaceful state of mind. As he walked slowly, he wondered what there was to eat in such a meadow. No matter how hard he thought, nothing came to mind except the bag his daughter had been carrying before she vanished yesterday.
“Still, worrying about a missing bag more than my daughter’s whereabouts seems rather wrong.”
Though there was no one to hear, Caesar muttered his self-reflection as he walked, when something strange caught his eye. It was distant and indistinct, but it appeared to be a pale, whitish mass spread out like a blanket or cloth. His first thought was of a tablecloth, and he changed direction toward it, murmuring.
“If it’s a blanket, tonight might be more comfortable.”
He seemed to have decided that he need only endure in this meadow, with no thought of finding his daughter or returning home. No one had assigned him such a task, and he entertained no complex plans beyond that.
But moments later, Caesar’s eyes widened as he discovered not a tablecloth, blanket, or wrapping cloth, but a skirt spread wide across the ground. Of course, someone was wearing that skirt.
“Ah… hello there?”
Through the absurd process of finding clothes and then realizing a person occupied them, I recognized the figure before me, yet my expression still betrayed disbelief in what my own eyes were showing me.
“If you don’t mind my asking… might I inquire why you’re sitting in such a place?”
“…”
The Woman simply sat there without answering, her expression as unchanging as a blind person unable to see. I ceased speaking and studied her demeanor carefully.
She appeared to be around twenty years old. With her delicate frame, elegant attire, golden hair carefully arranged and cascading down, and a complexion pale as if raised beneath a parasol, she was unmistakably not of common birth. Were there any noble estates nearby? Even if there were, I couldn’t fathom why such a young lady would be sitting alone in this desolate meadow without any companions. I wasn’t so famished as to be seeing illusions, was I?
I scratched my head and muttered softly to myself.
“If I were hungry, I should see a table laden with food, not a woman. She looks like I’m supposed to set the table for her.”
At those words, The Woman’s face finally moved. She lifted her chin slightly and gazed directly at me. Flustered, an automatic response tumbled out.
“Good day to you, miss. I am Caesar Montplayne. It is an honor to make your acquaintance…”
I stopped there. The Woman had opened her mouth.
“Hello?”
And she smiled brightly.
“…”
My words caught in my throat—hardly surprising. With a single smile, a doll transformed into a living person. Rosy blossoms bloomed across her cheeks, and her previously faint features sharpened into clarity. Only then did I notice her dress was not white, but pink.
I blinked, thinking something was strange. Moments before, I hadn’t felt this way, but now, looking at her, it seemed as though she had been translucent just moments ago. Simultaneously, she seemed familiar. Not someone I knew, of course. Yet there was something unmistakably recognizable about her.
“Why are you in such a place?”
“I came to play.”
With that simple answer, The Woman rose to her feet. She then looked around with the fascination of someone seeing this landscape for the first time. I considered asking her name, but thought it would be improper for a commoner to ask the name of a noblewoman. Instead, I said this.
“If you’ve lost your way, might I escort you home? Where do you reside?”
The Woman looked at me again and spoke deliberately.
“I didn’t lose my way.”
Then the sound of hoofbeats reached my ears. Turning around, I saw five or six men on horseback approaching from a distance. From their attire, I assumed they had come to escort this young lady. Fearing misunderstanding if we remained together, I stepped forward to meet the mounted men.
The men halted their horses and looked down at me. One of them asked.
“Who are you?”
“I am merely a humble farmer passing by, and I happened to encounter this lady…”
They whispered among themselves and, without even letting me finish, suddenly drew their swords. Startled, I hastily retreated.
“Eek! Why are you doing this?”
“We are searching for someone. If you don’t speak truthfully about what you’ve seen, know that we will strike you down.”
“I understand you’re searching, but I’ve done nothing to this lady…”
“You understand? How could you possibly know?”
The men exchanged glances and seemed to be making some deduction, their eyes gleaming with suspicion. Their wary gaze quickly turned vicious. I sensed something was going terribly wrong, though I couldn’t grasp the situation. Yet I was utterly baffled. The young lady they were searching for was right there, so why demand I speak truthfully? And how was my knowing they were searching for someone a problem at all?
“Surround him!”
Children of the Rune – Winterer
Author: Jeon Min-hee
Publisher: 14 Months Publishing
The copyright to this book belongs to the author and 14 Months Publishing.
To reuse all or part of this book’s contents, written consent from both parties is required.

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