The Boss Wants to Die - Chapter 7

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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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The boss wants to die.
Episode 7
My eyes went wide.
[Aktu Hebgenias has requested a trade. Do you accept?]
“This can’t be right.”
I had no idea what was happening, so I checked the System Window.
“How’d you pull this off?”
“I just requested a trade.”
“Have you ever seen a player trade with a monster? It’s impossible.”
“I guess you’re not a monster then.”
Silence fell between us.
Aktu spoke.
“You’re not going to accept?”
“Oh—no, wait! I accept!”
[You have accepted Aktu Hebgenias’s requested trade.]
[You have obtained the item: Contract Seal.]
I opened my Inventory and examined the item.
[Contract Seal.
With this seal alone, you can enter into trustworthy contracts anytime, anywhere with ease!
But beware! Once a trade is made, it cannot be undone!
— Party A: Evil God Rowen
— Party B: Aktu Hebgenias
※ This is a contract with a principal-agent relationship. It becomes void if Party A cancels it.
※ Any player who trades the Contract Seal must fulfill the contract terms or risk complete deletion of their play data.
※ Once deleted, a player cannot be revived.
※ This is a bound item that cannot be destroyed.]
“Completely deleted?”
If Aktu got deleted, he could just create a new character, but the problem was the Legendary items he was carrying.
Players drop their items when they die.
So making this trade didn’t feel like I’d lose out.
But something about it sat wrong with me.
“You’re serious?”
“Yeah.”
Aktu was unfazed.
I looked up at him suspiciously.
Given what he’d done to me before, trust didn’t come easy.
“The item description doesn’t list the contract terms. How am I supposed to know if you’ve fulfilled them or not?”
“The Contract Seal has recording and playback functions.”
Back in his true form now, Aktu explained in a gentle, measured tone.
“It monitors on its own, so if you don’t fulfill the contract, it activates immediately. You don’t need to worry—it’s a pretty expensive item.”
“How expensive?”
“Something only a guild master or mercenary captain could afford to carry around.”
But how are you carrying it around at level 10?
“I’ve been wondering since we first met—where do items like these even come from?”
The Legendary equipment was the biggest mystery.
Aktu glanced down at me coolly and answered without hesitation.
“I have a lot of money.”
I couldn’t believe that.
Seeing the look in my eyes, Aktu tilted his head and asked back.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Don’t tell me you’re in debt?”
“I’m not.”
“The Legendary items?”
“I farmed them myself.”
At level 10?
My suspicion only deepened.
“I’m just asking to be sure, but that bar tab from yesterday—”
“I paid it. What exactly do you think I am?”
I narrowed my eyes irritably.
“Think about what you did to me. You’re rotten, so no wonder my words come out sharp too.”
“You hate the collar that much?”
“Of course.”
Aktu Hebgenias looked down at the tattoo etched across my neck with a bitter expression.
“But if I hadn’t done this, you wouldn’t have listened to a word I said.”
……
“That’s why I saved you. I had no choice. ……I’m sorry.”
Aktu Hebgenias apologized again.
By now, his apologies had grown so thick in my ears I could barely hear anything else.
I waved my hand dismissively.
“Never mind.”
“Thank you.”
Aktu Hebgenias smiled with genuine pleasure.
Then he extended his hand and spoke.
“Now that we’ve made a formal contract, let me introduce myself properly. I’m Aktu Hebgenias. And you?”
I grasped his hand with obvious reluctance.
“Helord.”
His hand was enormous.
Being completely engulfed in his grip felt strange.
I tried to pull away, but Aktu Hebgenias tightened his hold, squeezing my hand firmly.
“That’s your epithet. Tell me your real name.”
“……What?”
“Your real name. The actual one. Tell me.”
It took me a long moment to understand what he was asking.
I opened my mouth, bewildered.
“My real name?”
I had to search my memory for what my name even was.
I had never existed in this game world as anything but Helord the Evil God.
For six years it had gone uncalled, crumpled away in the depths of my memory, and now I dragged it out, shaking off the dust.
I rolled the ancient, precious thing across my tongue and pronounced it carefully.
“Rowen. My name is Rowen.”
It felt like an eternity since those syllables had left my lips.
My voice sounded like it belonged to someone else as I spoke the name.
Foreign. Strange.
“Which is your family name and which is your given name? For me, Hebgenias is my family name and Aktu is my given name. Just call me Aktu.”
“I……”
For some reason, my throat constricted painfully.
I tensed against the burning sensation in my eyes and answered.
“Ro is my family name, and Wen is my given name.”
“So I should call you Wen?”
……
“Wen.”
Wen.
The voices of countless people who had called my name echoed through me.
They blurred together into something neither male nor female, yet the affection woven through those voices came through clear as day.
Yes, there had been a time when I was loved, called by that name.
But now I couldn’t even remember their names.
Not even their faces.
“Wen, is it alright if I call you that?”
“Yes.”
Something churned inside my chest.
Feeling tears about to spill over, I shoved hard against his chest and jerked my head toward the door.
“Go. We’re done here.”
‘Am I really alive? Do I even exist in the real world?’
My breathing grew shallow and rapid.
‘The name Wen, the voices that called me—they’re all so hazy now.’
I couldn’t remember their faces, their names, anything concrete.
My vision blurred.
My limbs turned to ice and cold sweat beaded on my forehead.
Aktu Hebgenias reached out, concern written across his face.
“Are you alright?”
“Get out! Now!”
Aktu Hebgenias didn’t even blink at my frantic shout.
I gasped for air, not knowing what to do with myself.
My body wouldn’t obey me.
Aktu Hebgenias brushed back my sweat-soaked hair and met my eyes.
The moment I saw his calm face, an odd sense of peace washed over me.
“You’re hyperventilating. Breathe slowly. You’re all right.”
“Ugh, h-huh…….”
“That’s it. Just like that.”
The moment my breathing steadied, tears came pouring down. Aktu Hebgenias offered me a handkerchief.
Not crocodile tears.
He puts a collar on me so I can’t die, and now he’s offering a handkerchief.
I slapped his handkerchief away.
The white cloth fluttered and tumbled across the floor.
A grief and anger beyond words churned in my belly.
‘What am I even doing here.’
Aktu Hebgenias checked my breathing several times to make sure it had settled, then left the room.
I could tell it was consideration.
Because the moment he was gone, the sobs came pouring out.
***
After leaving Rowen’s room, Aktu Hebgenias didn’t return to his own. Instead, he leaned his back against the corridor wall.
Faint sobbing drifted through the door.
“Hah…….”
He pressed his hand to his forehead, his eyes creasing in anguish.
He had always worked to keep Rowen from crying, but in the moment of true naming, he couldn’t hold it back.
She always wept.
Every time Aktu Hebgenias spoke her name aloud for the first time.
A tender heart so full of wounds couldn’t help but break.
Knowing this, Aktu Hebgenias found these moments unbearable each time.
‘Does it get easier the more I do this.’
Still, this time she hadn’t lost consciousness.
Rowen had remained standing, resolute, until he left.
It ached that he couldn’t hold her while she wept and soothe her, but he chose to see even this small thing as progress.
He gave a bitter smile and swept the white hair that had fallen across his face toward the back of his head.
The stubborn set of his jaw transformed his expression entirely.
He wore the look of a dissolute libertine as he rifled through his chest.
Then he recalled that in this life, he had never smoked a cigarette, and he clicked his tongue.
‘Right. I can’t smoke around Rowen.’
Because I have to meet her.
Then at least my body has to be clean.
He seemed to have died with that resolve.
His previous life had been far too crude, after all…….
He bit his lower lip instead of reaching for a cigarette and wiped his face.
The old wooden ceiling came into view.
Lower than that unreachable sky where Rowen was, the ceiling seemed as if he could touch it if he merely reached out his hand.
“Don’t cry, Rowen.”
He muttered to himself like a man in a trance.
“Don’t cry.”
But the sobs from inside the room continued until daybreak.
Aktu Hebgenias kept vigil in the empty corridor.
If only to be by her side, even like this.
***
“A party? With me?”
Late the next afternoon.
I stared at this mad novice priest who wanted to form a party with a monster, hardly believing my ears.
Unfortunately, I’d heard correctly.
“Yeah. Let’s form a party.”
“Is this collar some kind of cure-all? It pulled an evil god out of Demon Castle, now it’s requesting deals, and now you want to form a party with it? Isn’t that a bit much, even for a Legendary item?”
It seemed fundamentally unfair.
Aktu Hebgenias shrugged.
“The Hall of Evil Gods is in quite a stir since the boss monster vanished. Everyone’s scrambling to find it—apparently they’ve caught traces of a Legendary item being used, and they’re desperate to track it down.”
Fair enough.
I let out a thin laugh.
“Boss, Legendary item—you’d think you’d hit the jackpot in one stroke.”
“So let’s form a Party.”
Aktu Hebgenias made the proposal, his expression practically trembling with anticipation.
“If we form a Party, we’ll be that much safer.”
“What difference does it make?”

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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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