Translator: Alpha0210
The dragon was flying above the highest clouds.
That’s why the sight of Residue crashing through the mansion and being flung outside appeared so dramatic. It would have been even more so under the moonlight. At least in terms of theatrics.
…The sky still looked dim.
The sinkhole torn into the heavens and the teor shower around it, the teor shower─
“……”
Had noticeably decreased.
That ant the numbers of Destruction had decreased.
Residue stared at the diminishing teors with lifeless eyes, silently counting them, lost in thought. Had the Half King truly succeeded? Had she really managed to hold them off all on her own?
It was as he had expected, but the bitter reality of it all left a sour taste.
As always, there was no role left for Residue to play.
Cutting through the clouds, he fell and continued to fall.
As Residue plumted from the highest of heights, a certain sensation crept into his mind. It felt as if the conceptual idea of "falling from grace" had been directly realized in physical form.
The descent seed endless, but eventually, the end drew near.
The ground ca into view. …From this height, the impact of the fall would be devastating. If he did nothing and simply loosened all the tension in his body, perhaps he could shatter into pieces and die cleanly.
However, just before he hit the ground, Residue’s fingers twitched.
BOOM!
He landed with a heavy thud. The impact still lingered, but his body suffered no damage. Right before the collision, he had wrapped his entire body in a cushion of wind.
It was a reaction even he couldn’t understand.
Why?
Hadn’t he wanted to see Lukas’s body torn into pieces and scattered?
Or… was he still clinging to life?
“…Hoo.”
He didn’t want to think about it any further.
“……!”
He felt soone approaching him hastily, their voice urgent but he couldn’t be bothered to care.
Wrapped in suffocating ennui, Residue closed his eyes.
*
[…Due to the current …ituation, the Destruction Counterasures Headquarters is not …iving asures …easing the expectations for their purpose…]
Bzzzzt. Bzzzt.
The static-filled voice grated on his ears, prompting Residue to open his eyes.
A cracked ceiling greeted his gaze.
“……”
Recently, he’d been waking up in this sort of manner often. He first tested his arms, giving them a little swing. They moved just fine. Then, he surveyed his surroundings.
It was a desolate room.
No, it was difficult to even call this a room. In this space, no larger than about 10 pyeong (33 square ters), old dust and rough sand were scattered haphazardly. The wallpaper was peeling off in patches.
There wasn’t anything one could call proper furniture either. A broken table, a chair, and a bed missing part of its fra… The place that looked like a balcony or rather, a veranda, was wide open without a door, exposing the dreary sky and the cityscape.
The front door was completely shattered. Judging by its condition, it had been broken and abandoned a long ti ago.
He wasn’t restrained or imprisoned.
But Residue had no mory of landing in a place like this. In other words, soone must have brought him here. …Was it the figure he had seen before closing his eyes?
[…Additionally, the headquarters… regarding counterasures for identifying ‘Hide’ is still …ing significant difficulties… declared that they would exert …tmost effort in addressing the situation… however, the citizens’… is…….]
The static-filled voice continued to flow from a radio on the broken table.
Its bent antenna was managing to catch the broadcast, surprisingly.
Residue got up and reached out toward the radio.
“Hmm. If I were you, I wouldn’t touch that.”
A voice rang out. He wasn’t even startled.
Residue had been aware of that presence ever since he’d opened his eyes.
A petite girl stood at the front door. She wore a baker’s cap pulled down low and held a massive bag that was almost the size of her upper body.
“That thing took two days to tune to the right frequency. If you ss with it even a little, it’ll turn back into a piece of junk. Just saying.”
“……”
Residue glanced at the girl, then turned his gaze back to the radio. Reaching out, he casually flicked the antenna with his finger.
"Ah, what are you..."
The girl exclaid in surprise, but in that brief mont, a faint spark of electricity flickered at his fingertips.
[─Furthermore, the Void Lords still seem to display a negative stance on cooperation. Even with the ergence of Destruction in the 216-15 region, they have yet to withdraw their support for the Half King─]
“Ohhh.”
The girl hurriedly ca over and examined the radio from various angles.
“It’s… way clearer now? How’d you do that? Are you, by any chance, so kind of chanic or sothing, hyung?"
Hyung, huh.
Looking closer, it seed the girl wished to be perceived as a boy.
In truth, she was still quite young. Her loose-fitting clothes and the hat pressed low over her head made it difficult for most people, unless they had particularly sharp eyes, to discern her true identity.
Without responding, Residue stood up and strode toward the girl. Startled, she flinched as he snatched the bag from her arms.
“H-Hey…”
While she was still caught off guard, Residue pulled a water canteen out of the bag and gulped it down. His thirst seed to subside a little.
“That… was valuable…”
The girl’s expression turned crestfallen, and she ekly expressed her grievance, but Residue ignored her completely.
He then returned to the torn-up bed he had been lying on earlier and sat down once again.
“Get lost.”
After saying that briefly, he closed his eyes again.
Sleeping wasn’t such a bad activity. At least it allowed him to stop thinking for a while.
His lingering fatigue hadn’t yet fully subsided. Wanting to rest until his mind cleared, Residue allowed his consciousness to drift into a loose, hazy state.
*
…About a month.
The dragon had been flying swiftly through the skies for nearly a month.
Initially, the location had been prepared simply as a place to take shelter from the rain, or perhaps as a temporary gathering spot for conversations. However, even after the original purpose had been fulfilled, Beniang did not stop the dragon’s flight.
Residue, pondering the aning behind such behavior, arrived at a thought.
Perhaps the Seven Fanged Dragon God was observing and trying to comprehend the fused worlds.
In truth, except for the final day, she hadn’t even shown her face. This was evidence that she had sothing else she was focusing on.
Then… what was the situation now?
The dragon and Beniang had fought against Pale to protect Residue. He wondered just how far their battle had escalated.
And what about Sedi? She was also soone who would likely disapprove of Residue’s escape.
Of course, that would make sense.
After all, she was the woman who had abandoned her own Territory just to care for Lukas’s body. Over ti, Lukas Trowman had grown to occupy either part, or perhaps all, of her life.
'You did sothing unnecessary, dragon.'
Residue was drowning in deep fatigue and lethargy.
He felt like a drifter aboard a rudderless ship, letting himself float aimlessly with no destination. He lacked even the motivation to throw himself into the sea, leaving everything to the currents as he drifted along.
If, sohow, Pale managed to find him again and ca to take his life…
That didn’t seem like such a bad ending, he thought.
*
When he opened his eyes, Residue felt a pang of disappointnt. Even while sleeping, his thoughts hadn’t stopped.
Damn it. Even dreaming? I’ve truly beco just another wretched mortal.
He sighed as he pushed himself up into a sitting position.
Then he realized that the last command he had given before falling asleep hadn’t been followed.
In other words, the girl was still in the room.
“……”
Having given up the bed to the “guest” Residue, she had curled up on a chair with no legs and fallen asleep.
The air was quite chilly, likely because the sun had disappeared from the sky. On a planet where the sun didn’t exist, it was hard to imagine fragile creatures like these being able to survive.
Residue sat on the edge of the bed for a mont before noticing a weight inside his robe. As he rummaged through its inner pocket, a few items erged.
One was the mask of the Beginning Wizard.
The other was
“……”
A necklace. He had seen it before.
It was the necklace Beniang had possessed, the one she had said could discern Destruction, crafted from the “God's Eye”.
'When did she put this in?'
Was it when she made contact to remove the chains? That must’ve been it.
But why would she give this to ?
Residue stared at the necklace with a complicated expression before sighing and roughly shoving it back into his robe.
He stood from the bed and walked toward the veranda.
The cityscape unfolded before him, and he realized that the room he was in was located on the mid-upper floors of a high-rise building.
Ruined buildings, houses with roofs peeled back as if bombed, smoke rising from every block, and broken-down vehicles strewn about the roads like crumpled cans. The movents of the people wandering the streets were damp and heavy with an oppressive air.
Amid the darkened city, remnants of what once seed to be an advanced civilization could faintly be seen.
Residue, however, quickly lost interest. His face reflected disinterest as he turned back toward the room.
That’s when his gaze t the girl’s.
The girl, who had been sitting on the chair, was staring at him with wide, alert eyes. Though he hadn’t made an effort to conceal his presence, he had moved fairly quietly.
She seed to have a rather sharp sensitivity.
“Are you feeling better?”
At the sa ti, she was annoyingly brazen.
“I brought so food. Want so?”
At her words, Residue suddenly beca aware of the hunger he had forgotten about.
Just one day without eating, and his stomach was already growling. This body was so inconvenient.
And hunger, it always reminded him of a certain unpleasant woman. Irritated by the thought, he reached for the bag on the table.
Before he could grab it, the girl quickly snatched it up first.
“Ahem. I’m happy to share, but let’s chat a bit, shall we?”
“……”
“…Seriously, hyung. Are you always this quiet?”
The girl asked again, now looking visibly exasperated.
‘Quiet,’ huh.
No one had ever described him like that before.
“I don’t have a habit of spewing unnecessary words.”
Residue gave a half-hearted response, too annoyed to bother explaining further.
Despite his curt reply, the girl let out a giggle, as if sothing about it amused her.
“Maybe it’s not unnecessary this ti? If you don’t talk to , no bread for you.”
Did this girl even realize it?
That soone without power could never truly hold the upper hand.
And that Residue could erase her very soul as easily and lightly as a flick of his finger.
…But then again, growling at a rabbit was just as undignified. So instead of reacting, Residue rely stared at the girl.
Perhaps she thought this ant he was finally ready to talk, as she smiled brightly.
“My na’s Luca! What about you, hyung?”
Luca.
Residue briefly shifted his gaze to the dark blonde strands of hair poking out from beneath her hat. It felt like an irritating coincidence.
“I don’t have one.”
“Huh? What don’t you have?”
“A na.”
He wasn’t in the mood to say his na 'Residue'.
Luca blinked a few tis, then nodded to herself. She seed to think, Well, I guess that’s possible. That’s the impression she gave off.
“I see. Then─”
“Why did you save ?”
Residue recalled the mont right before he had lost consciousness.
After falling from the sky, he had landed sowhere in a slightly better-off city than this ruin. The one who had found him in that state was this girl, Luca, and she had gone so far as to move him to this desolate room.
It was an excessive amount of kindness to show to a stranger, soone she had never t before.
However, in response to Residue’s question, Luca only looked confused.
“Does a person need a reason to save another person?”
A hypocrite, huh? At such a young age, no less. How pitiful.
Residue sighed and tore a piece off the bread he held, popping it into his mouth.
It tasted disgusting. He wasn’t sure, but it seed like it might even be moldy.
“Ah! My bread, when did you…?”
"Don't involve yourself with ."
Residue said briefly.
“Why not?”
“Because you don’t understand how dangerous I am.”
“How dangerous are you?”
She asked so directly that even Residue found himself montarily speechless, unable to co up with a response.
Chewing on the bread, he soon decided to change his approach.
“Alright then, kid. Who do you think is the worst villain you can imagine?”
“Uh… Thanos?”
“What did he do?”
“He killed half the living beings in the universe.”
“……”
That’s… a strong contender.
If he was such a prominent figure, Residue felt like he should have at least heard the na before, but it was completely new to him.
But.
“I’m more dangerous than he is.”
“You sound really confident. Have you killed people before?”
“Sothing like that.”
“How many?”
“So many I can’t count.”
At that, Luca gave him a big grin.
“Then, hyung, you’re just like .”
─We’re the sa.
For a brief mont, Beniang’s face overlapped with Luca’s in his mind.
The unpleasant experience made Residue frown deeply.
“Stop being a nuisance and get lost.”
After stuffing the rest of the bread into his mouth and swallowing it, he lay back down on the bed.
Yeah yeah, she replied lazily, her tone a bit flippant.
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