Free Web NovelCale was satisfied that they had caught the Wanderer siblings, Cho and Ryeon.
“Why is he acting like this?”
But he was also flustered.
Cho, the younger of the siblings, came up in front of Cale and promptly plopped down on the spot.
“Hey!”
Then he grabbed Cale’s pant leg.
“Show me that thing from earlier again!”
And started throwing a tantrum.
Cale was dumbfounded.
“Hey, let go, will you?”
He tried to pry Cho off his pant leg, but—
“Ah, seriously!”
Cho was strong, and Cale was weak.
“.......”
And the Wanderer Ryeon simply watched the scene with an extremely complicated look on her face. But her expression was also strangely dazed, as if she would not be able to answer properly no matter what anyone asked.
“What is wrong with him?”
In the end, Cale asked Eruhaben.
“Haa.”
The ancient dragon sighed and shook Eruhaben’s head.
“When we said we would take him to you, he followed along obediently.”
The Wanderers Cho and Ryeon. Each possessed a Transparent-grade individuality, and when the two joined forces, they reached Five-Colored-grade.
Even if Cale did not know every detail, he knew those siblings were extremely strong.
To be honest, he had thought Choi Han, who had not fully blossomed all his individuality, Eruhaben, who could not use magic, young Raon, and Clopeh, who was simply Clopeh, would not be able to defeat them.
Though I planned to bring in the Demon King’s castle’s powerhouses too while they kept these siblings from escaping and catch them that way.
If they could stop these two siblings before sunset, that alone would eliminate a major variable.
The sun would soon set.
“Mm.”
Eruhaben spoke with a somewhat uncomfortable look.
“It seems he wants to see his mother.”
Huh? His mother?
Cale looked down in confusion.
Cho was a large man whose appearance, clinging to Cale’s pant leg and throwing a tantrum, was quite unpleasant to look at.
—Mm. Human, mm. Never mind!
He had been wondering why Raon, oddly enough, was not telling him to smash Cho apart.
“Did you see your mother or something earlier?”
At Cale’s question, Cho flinched and looked up at Cale.
By now, he was sprawled out entirely, throwing a tantrum.
“...Show me.”
And he said it with a serious face.
What filled his face was an unbearably desperate and deep hope.
Cale stared at him quietly, then answered that wish.
“No.”
“.......”
“You’re Wanderers.”
Cho could not say anything.
It was true that he was a Wanderer.
“If I show you one more time, will you betray the Five Colored Blood family? You won’t, will you?”
What Cale had said was not something that could be decided easily. To put it more honestly, betraying one’s family over one illusion was absurd.
“.......”
Cho said nothing.
But the hand gripping Cale’s pant leg tightened even more.
So much that it trembled.
“.......”
Ryeon stared blankly at her younger brother’s hand.
Her younger brother had probably heard the same voice and seen the same scenery as she had.
That very brief happy moment before a life filled only with misfortune began.
“Cale Henituse.”
She knew that no matter how immaturely her younger brother acted, no matter how much of a tantrum he threw, in the end, he would follow her will.
Her younger brother could not defy her.
That was why the higher-ups of the family gave orders to her.
Ryeon understood all of that as she opened her mouth.
“In this matter, I will follow your will. So show it to him one more time.”
“!”
Cho looked at his older sister Ryeon in shock.
Cale looked at her with an impassive expression and asked.
“And what is my will?”
“...Your will must be to purify the corruption left behind by the Order of the God of Chaos. Without any interference.”
Ryeon’s eyes slowly moved from her younger brother Cho to Cale.
“I will not contact the third Emperor in any way. And from now on, I will not tell anyone that you possess the power of the God of Chaos.”
They had lost everything when they were young.
Cho and Ryeon had spent their entire lives running until they reached adulthood, and then they died.
Then they became Wanderers.
Even in the divine realm, the two of them had nothing but each other.
To survive, they had to grow strong.
Thanks to that, life became easier and more comfortable.
But they were still only the two of them, and they had not become happy.
Because they had lost the way to be happy when they were too young.
Ryeon stepped forward and held out both hands.
“...If you really cannot trust me, you may bind me.”
Her gaze turned to her younger brother.
There was one thing the Five Colored Blood family misunderstood.
Cho listened well to her?
Then that meant she could do anything for her younger brother’s sake.
Truly, anything.
Her life, her existence. She could offer it all.
In the gray mist, Ryeon had seen the voices and faces of her mother, her father, and her younger brother laughing happily and innocently.
If only she could regain that again.
You may kill me.
So—
“So please, show it to him just one more time.”
To Cho.
To my younger brother.
To Cho, the child {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} who had held her in his arms and died first.
Let that child feel happiness again.
To Cho and Ryeon, that brief joy they had seen within Cale’s purification was the only memory like it in their entire lives.
“.......”
Cale quietly looked at the two of them, then opened his mouth.
“Choi Han, tie them up.”
He pointed at the two Wanderers, Cho and Ryeon.
“Bind them so they can’t move an inch. And Clopeh, you watch these two.”
“Yes, Cale-nim.”
Choi Han moved, and Clopeh gave a low smile.
“Cale-nim, with my strength, I cannot defeat these people.”
At his words, Cale manipulated the wheelchair and turned away. His indifferent voice came back to them.
“Until tomorrow morning. No, for as long as I am in the Demon World, I will keep performing purification. And if they want to see that sight, they’ll have to keep following me around.”
Cho and Ryeon looked at Cale’s back.
“You only need to watch whether they contact anyone else or not. And if they run away, contact me immediately.”
Cale added one more thing.
“Ah. And right now, I’m the only one who can perform the purification ritual for the Order of the God of Chaos. If you leave me, you won’t be able to see it.”
“......!”
Cho’s pupils shook, and Ryeon, watching him, let out a sigh.
“Hurry up and bind me. Whether it is ability-restraining restraints or whatever else, I will wear them.”
She wished to put shackles on herself with her own feet.
Of course, this was because—
Once this matter is over, we’ll run.
Naturally, she could easily get free if she set her mind to it.
While watching Cale move away as he approached General Mol, Ryeon met Clopeh’s eyes as he bound her while Choi Han tied up Cho.
“!”
And she froze.
This bastard’s eyes were strange.
“Can you swear to the God of Death that the words you just said to Cale-nim are true?”
There was a reason Cale had entrusted these two to Clopeh.
He handled cleanup very neatly, and he was not the sort of bastard swayed by affection or tragic stories.
If anything, he would use that affection and those tragic stories.
“But you see.”
Clopeh asked in a gentle tone.
“What is good about staying beside the first Emperor?”
“......?”
“It does not seem as though he can even let you make happy memories.”
“......!”
One who was skilled at betrayal and scheming began pouring out words calmly. The scene had quite a different atmosphere from the time in the past when, during Clopeh’s days as a guardian knight, the necromancer Mary had spoken of Cale’s greatness while Clopeh was imprisoned.
“Do not speak nonsense.”
Ryeon’s expression hardened, but Clopeh smiled.
She was a smart and sharp woman. She would not fall for such an obvious trick from Clopeh.
But if I speak without pause—
And.
If she sees, she will understand.
Cale-nim’s greatness.
What meaning the legend he was creating held.
Those beside Cale-nim often suffered and were injured. They were anxious, and there were times when they were not happy.
But at the very least, they did not think of themselves as unfortunate.
Unlike the siblings before his eyes.
“Hehe.”
Clopeh was someone who felt that more clearly than anyone else.
“.......”
“.......”
When Cho and Ryeon looked at Clopeh with uneasy faces, Eruhaben asked them a question.
“Has the third Emperor planted any other strings here?”
Ryeon shook her head.
“As far as I know, it is only the two of us. And the third Emperor wants to know what is happening on the Demon King’s side.”
Speaking honestly, without hiding anything, she also took out the carrier pigeon note from inside her clothes and handed it over.
If she had decided to cooperate, it was better to do it properly.
There were many sinister and intelligent people in this group.
“Hmm.”
Eruhaben accepted Ryeon’s words as the truth.
However—
We should search further just in case.
Eruhaben, and Choi Han as well, decided to continue the search.
Because Cale had not told them to stop searching.
Cale, too, was not yet reassured about everything.
*****
“Oh.”
A smile formed on the third Emperor’s lips.
Like an immortal sage, he lightly lifted the sleeve of his wide robe.
Ten water-drop-shaped marks.
One of those marks was vibrating faintly.
“Mm.”
He closed his eyes.
And he seemed to savor it like food.
“Ah.”
An exclamation slipped out.
Mika.
The seawater he had left underground as he departed that place.
The seawater that had been absorbing the liquids seeping underground.
That water had met a certain kind of water.
Water similar to ordinary water, yet subtly different.
It had a peculiar form.
That droplet was gray.
“Ha, haha—”
Laughter flowed from the third Emperor’s mouth.
He was often told that he was smarter than he looked.
The corruption of chaos discovered at the ancient site.
A vicious calamity worthy of being called one of the Three Calamities.
And the Demon King’s subtle attitude, together with the third Emperor’s expulsion.
Finally, the gray droplet.
The third Emperor was not ignorant of what that gray droplet meant.
He had lived a long time and had been close to the Order of the God of Chaos, and so he already possessed knowledge about the special power of that order.
From the liquids the seawater he had left behind had absorbed, from those fragments, he inferred a few things.
“The Demon King has embraced the Order of the God of Chaos.”
“Pardon?”
The fact that the corruption of chaos had been purified must mean that the Pope of the Order of the God of Chaos had moved.
The saint was dead.
In that situation, it meant the missing Pope had fallen into the Demon King’s hands.
Of course, it would not be a cooperative relationship.
The Order tried to stab the Demon World in the back, after all.
And yet the Pope had performed purification?
What that meant was simple.
The Demon King swallowed the Order.
He did not know the method.
But the Demon King must have firmly collared the Order and placed them beneath his feet.
That must be why the Order was performing purification rituals again like this.
“And he hid that from me, from our family.”
They had said they would not betray each other.
“This is amusing.”
He had thought the Demon World, those Demon King bastards, had quietly withdrawn from their ambitions.
“So they were scheming to expand their power from behind the scenes?”
Mm.
The third Emperor fell into thought.
What should he do with this?
“...I do not think those stupid siblings will be enough.”
The Wanderers Cho and Ryeon.
Those foolish things who believed they had nowhere to lean except on each other.
They were easy enough to handle, but—
It would be difficult for those two to accomplish anything.
Tap. Tap.
He casually tapped the water-drop mark on his arm, then lowered his sleeve again.
“Let us go.”
He turned back and began heading toward Mika.
“Third Emperor-nim, are we going back?”
“Yes.”
He answered his subordinate that way and began moving toward Mika at quite a fast pace.
And someone watching this from a great distance pushed away from the tree he had been leaning against and stood.
Pat. Pat.
The Demon King brushed the leaves that had fallen onto his shoulder and looked up at the sky.
The sunset glow was slowly blooming at the far edge of the heavens.
Soon the sky would turn red.
Swish.
He lightly kicked the ground, and with an extremely faint sound, his body disappeared into the shadow of a tree.
However, the direction his body headed was the same as the third Emperor’s.
“!”
The third Emperor stopped walking.
“.......”
His subordinates, startled, also stopped behind him. They were about to open their mouths in confusion, but they could say nothing when they saw the third Emperor’s expression.
At the moment silence fell—
“Come out.”
The third Emperor said that.
“!”
“!!”
The third Emperor’s subordinates saw the shadow of a roadside tree move strangely.
The shadow moved against the direction of the sun.
That shadow stretched and swelled enormously—
Sssss—
And someone rose up from within it.
It was the Demon King.
“!”
The subordinates were so shocked they could not even open their mouths.
“Ha!”
The third Emperor laughed in disbelief.
“You followed me.”
The fact that he had not noticed made the third Emperor angry at himself.
At the same time, he could vividly feel the Demon King’s strength.
“Do you intend to stop me?”
The Demon King said nothing and blocked the third Emperor’s path.
At that, the third Emperor’s face began to twist.
Sssss—
The leaves fluttered, but no one moved or opened their mouth.
Extreme tension began to rise.
However, the Demon King only stood there with an ennui-filled expression.
Unlike the third Emperor’s crumpled face.
“.......”
However, unlike the third Emperor’s face, a subtle light was flowing through his eyes.
Tap. Tap.
The third Emperor tapped over his sleeve.
It was the same spot where he had tapped the droplet earlier.
The third Emperor, who was often told that he was smarter than expected.
Deep beneath Mika city barracks, the droplet of seawater resting there began to move according to its owner’s command.
Its form changed into a tiny thread snake.
Sssss—
The snake headed in one direction.
The ancient site of the demon god.
The Gray Tree clan near it.
The tiny snake moved toward the treatment center located within that clan’s village.
The third Emperor, whose back had been caught by the Demon King, had no intention of simply being handled like this.
He was someone who knew and could use methods to throw his enemies into confusion with a faint power and an extremely light move.
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“We will begin purification at Gray Tree village immediately.”
Once the confusion at Mika city barracks had been more or less settled, Cale came to Gray Tree village and immediately stated the plan going forward.
“From then on, I will continue purifying without rest.”
Whether Mika, Midi, or the ancient site.
Before anything happened anywhere, he would go around and purify it all.
“It is not particularly difficult.”
Cale, who said that, was still sitting in his wheelchair.
Instead of Ron, Cale picked up the teacup Clopeh poured for him.
Soon, the second purification would unfold here.
Along with sunset, it would be the final purification ritual before night came.
He took a sip of lemon tea.
“!”
Then he froze.
—Not this water! Different water!
The gluttonous priestess whined.
But something about it was strange for it to be simple whining.
—I’m really stuffed up. Something cool!
There was desperation in the gluttonous priestess’s voice.
—This is exactly like when I was thirsty after eating too much soil!
Huh?
Cale felt as if his heart dropped.
She died after eating soil, didn’t she?
She had died after eating soil stained with dead mana.
And this was exactly like when she had been thirsty then?
Did that not simply mean this was the same as right before she died?
—Something cool!
—Only then do I think I can digest properly and grow!
—I feel like leaves are going to sprout!
Cale could not understand everything the gluttonous priestess was saying.
However—
—Chaos—!
More clearly than before, she stated what she wanted.
—Cool water with power similar to chaos! And something clean! Not dead mana or chaos, but the power of nature!
Ah.
Just as Cale guessed something, the Ancient Tree spoke quietly.
—Cale. It seems to mean that if the glutton is to fully digest the chaos she is holding, she needs something equal to it. Something on par with it. And it must be the power of nature.
Mm. And that means water?
Suddenly, truly suddenly, someone came to Cale’s mind.
“...Uh, mm. Where is the third Emperor right now?”
His individuality was the sea. Though it was a little salty, was that not pure natural power on par with a god?
“Pardon?”
When everyone looked puzzled at Cale’s sudden words—
Knock, knock, knock.
A warrior of the Gray Tree clan entered.
Since the priest had not awakened, this was the person acting in her stead.
“It is ready.”
Creak.
Clopeh pushed the wheelchair, and Cale headed toward the Gray Tree clan’s treatment center.
The broad clearing before the treatment center.
There were people there waiting for Cale’s purification, for the gray miracle.
