Chapter 9: Permission

***
“What? I have to leave tomorrow?”

“Yes!”

“You can’t tell me that at this hour. How am I supposed to prepare all the supplies in the middle of the night?”

“How can it not be done?”

“That’s what everyone would say, but if it’s me, the target pickerhead, it’s possible.”

Having successfully purchased a week’s worth of supplies for the man and woman who would leave tomorrow, I returned to the inn with a big smile.

I wanted to let everyone know that I had accomplished this difficult task.

“Seolhyang, the items I asked for…”

As I entered the inn, I stopped, seeing the unlocked door, the empty room, and the shattered window frame.

“…Seolhyang?”

She was gone.

***

“P-please, not the children………….”

Thud~! A woman, now a corpse, falls heavily to the ground.

Emotionlessly, Seolhyang pulls the dagger from her neck and reflects on the tragedy she has created.

She mercilessly murdered an innocent servant and their family. If others saw this, they would condemn her as a brutal murderer.

“…I feel nothing.”

In fact, Seolhyang shook off the blood and wandered around the mansion looking for Cyrus, whom she had not yet found.

After searching for a long time without success, Cyrus was found not inside the mansion but outside, on the terrace of the garden where they had first met.

“I thought you’d come.”

“……Cyrus.”

Seolhyang turned her head toward the voice coming from the garden.

There was something there. Invisible and unfelt, but surely there.

Her nemesis, Cyrus.

“Right. Where did you say you lived?”

“Does the name matter? The time for revenge has come. Cyrus.”

“Everyone who comes looking for me says that. And the endings are always the same. They end up like their families.”

At Cyrus’s words, Seolhyang bit her lip.

The vivid memories of ten years ago flooded back.

As the beloved daughter of the head of the family, Seolhyang was cherished by everyone.

The heavenly days came to an end one day when a man with a sword suddenly asked the head of the family for a duel.

That day, Seolhyang remembered everything she had seen and heard, even more than ten years later.

“I will end the family’s vengeance here.”

“Ah— hearing that voice reminds me vaguely. It was definitely a guy with an empty head, right?”

Cyrus chuckled after recalling Seolhyang’s family and pointed out what she had not mentioned.

“You were too young to realize back then, but I was sending signals that I would definitely lose, you know? If you didn’t notice those signals, then that guy has no right to call himself a knight. If you did notice but couldn’t dodge, then he lacked skill. Either way, he deserved to die.”

“…The head of the family did react. It’s just that he lost his life due to the sorcery you used.”

Seolhyang’s father, the head of the Seol family, had reacted without being greatly flustered by the sudden ambush and managed to block Cyrus’s sword strike.

Yes, that’s how it should have been.

But for some unknown reason, Cyrus’s sword passed through her father’s blade, and thus the head of the family fell, and the fight began.

The warriors of the family, having lost their focal point, could not fend off the attacker Cyrus, and everyone in the family lost their lives.

Everyone except for Seolhyang, who was the only one to survive.

Even she did not escape unscathed.

Cyrus took her eyesight instead of her life.

“You’ve killed my parents, siblings, all my servants, and everyone in my family. — So now, it’s your turn. How does it feel?”

“Cough, cough, heh heh.”

“What’s so funny?”

“Ha ha ha! Do you really think that way? That they would be my family? So now that they’re dead, I would be really sad?”

Cyrus grinned as he revealed the truth about his family.

“Of course not.”

“What do you mean…?”

“Do you think it’s only happened once or twice? No. They’ve already come several times, more than ten. And each time, they killed my servants. And then they thought they were avenging something. But that’s not how it works.”

Seolhyang’s hands began to tremble. An instinctive realization that she shouldn’t hear the next words engulfed her.

Submitting to that realization, Seolhyang quickly lunged forward, but Cyrus casually deflected her dagger and spoke.

“What you killed were decoys. Those kids were orphans picked up from an orphanage, and the girl was a single mother wandering the back alleys. You thought they were my family, but you just killed random people with no connection.”

“Th-that’s a lie. It’s a lie!”

Something felt off. The security of Cyrus’s house was too lax. It was as if it invited anyone to come in and attack him at any time.

“Does it seem like a lie? Why not ask that kid who came with you this morning? He has eyes, so he probably caught on to it.”

And the fact that Seolhyang, who has no sight, had not realized.

“Do you really think those are my children?”

The fact that the children’s faces bore no resemblance to Cyrus at all. The hair color, the position of the eyes, nose, and mouth—everything made it impossible to believe they were his offspring.

Upon hearing those words, Seolhyang confronted the truth: she had killed unrelated people, realizing that she had become no different from the man standing before her.

Clenching her teeth, Seolhyang glared at Cyrus with her white pupils.

A bluish aura flickered in her eyes.

“Even so, it doesn’t matter.”

She would repent for her entire life.

However, that would not take precedence over her revenge.

Seolhyang put down her dagger and immediately drew the long sword strapped to her waist.

The snowflake sword, passed down through the Seol family, swirled through the air, scattering snowflakes.

Cyrus exclaimed in admiration as he watched.

“That’s a good sword; I want it.”

“Ugh!”

“Ah, one more thing. Why do you think I’ve been raising these orphan brats?”

“Shut up!”

“Because it allows me to legally kill people like you when you show up.”

The moment those words ended, Seolhyang felt a pain as if her wrist was being severed.

It was impossible. This was because Cyrus’s sword and her own were in a binding state, stuck together.

Unless she was a ghost, she couldn’t ignore her own sword and sever her wrist, yet the stranger thing was that despite the intense pain, her wrist remained perfectly intact.

“Gghh…!?”

“Oh, impressive. You didn’t scream even after I cut your wrist tendons?”

“What, what is this…?”

“Did you really come here not knowing who I am?”

A beam of disappointment flickered in Cyrus’s eyes.

Seolhyang couldn’t see his face, but she could feel the disappointment in his voice.

And for over ten years, Seolhyang had chased after Cyrus, knowing very well what he was and what he was called.

“Sword Demon…”

She had thought it was just a rumor.

The reason the head of the family or the warriors lost was that he had cowardly ambushed them and, at the same time, used some unknown illusion magic.

She had calculated that she, being the only survivor of the Seol family and possessing exceptional talent, could defeat him.

Reality, however, was different.

“So you came at me knowing that— with such pathetic skills?”

“Gggh!”

Cyrus’s blade once again sliced through her limbs.

This time, there was no bleeding or injury.

However, Seolhyang realized that her limb tendons had been severed and that her limbs would no longer move.

“It’s been a while since I’ve had a guest. Make it a little more enjoyable.”

Cyrus said this as he swung his sword down toward her, lying on the floor.

Unable to move her limbs, Seolhyang rolled on the ground to evade the sword.

As her white skin and jewel-like hair became stained with dirt and dust, Cyrus laughed heartily at the sight of her crawling like a bug to survive.

But soon, her limit approached.

Unable to dodge the sword, Seolhyang felt it pierce her heart.

Her severed heart began to slowly stop.

‘Oh no. Not like this…’

She had to kill that man.

She had to complete her revenge…

‘Should I have brought him…?’

Evan popped into Seolhyang’s mind.

The boy whose abilities were unknown.

She thought he wouldn’t help her in her quest to kill someone, so she left him behind… Should she have brought him no matter what?

But it was already too late.

She was already dying, and Evan was off on a difficult errand, searching for her all night long without success.

As Seolhyang painfully faced death, Cyrus sighed in regret.

“Why didn’t you come back a little stronger?”

Cyrus said this as he slowly approached her, like a farmer harvesting crops in the season.

With each step he took, the sound of death grew louder.

The body, no longer supplying oxygen due to the heart not beating, began to shut down.

Her hands and feet became numb, and her breath stopped.

Her head grew foggy, and the cold silence of death approached.

“Farewell.”

Cyrus’s sword swung down, and at the same moment, a sharp clang rang loudly in Seolhyang’s ears.

“—Seolhyang, are you okay?”

A slightly younger boy’s voice.

Evan’s voice, which she had thought wouldn’t come, tickled Seolhyang’s ears.

At the sound of his voice, Seolhyang reflexively opened her mouth.

“E-Evan? How did you…”

“Seolhyang, I just want to ask you one thing.”

Determined not to make the same mistake as last time, Evan asked hesitantly.

“Can that guy be cut?”

The moment Seolhyang nodded, Evan drew his sword and swung it.