A Reunion and a Revelation

It was a day no different from any other.

“Where are you from? Could you tell me your name and tribe?”

‘If I tell you, will you know? Huh?!’

As usual, I was having an argument disguised as a background check with a beast-kin at the checkpoint, when an anxious murmur arose from the entrance of Midvalen.

• It’s an outcast…!

• A Varg, we must kick it out immediately.

• It’s hated by the gods!

I stopped breathing at the word I hadn’t heard in a truly long time.

“I’m sorry! Just a moment, just a moment….”

When I came to my senses, I was running towards the entrance like crazy.
With strength I didn’t know I had, I pushed through the muscular bodies of various races and checked the face of the one called a ‘Varg’.

And, I had to take another deep breath.

“I thought they were extinct, to think there’s still a survivor….”

Among the whispering crowd was a completely unexpected face.
His pitch-black fur and hair were matted with blood, turning a purplish hue.

“…….”

The three red marks near his eye were covered in blood and hard to see, but the moment I saw the eyepatch he was gripping so tightly his knuckles turned white, I was sure.
Because I was the one who made it.

“A Varg. Where did you find it?”

I could faintly hear the Empire knights scrambling to report.

“We brought it in from a cliff near Midvalen.”

…How on earth is he alive?

I clearly saw his neck snap and his breath stop with my own eyes, so how?

The bewildering question was soon answered by itself.

‘I am cursed. If a Destroyer is nearby, I will be resurrected forever.’

And I was in front of the dying man.
Me, who was barely clinging to life thanks to Karvan’s imprint treatment.

‘The Grim Reapers are after his corpse. Throw it somewhere far away from Bahalgras.’
‘Good idea. The Black Manes will also run out to recover their chief’s corpse.’

According to what I overheard, his corpse was supposed to be thrown far away outside Midvalen to lure the Observers and the Black Manes, but it seemed he had managed to survive.

‘Radugan!’

When I called out in a whisper using the beast-kin language, the man, who was exhaling ragged breaths through scabbed lips, opened one eye.

‘…Cough, look who we have here.’

He was wearing a wide-brimmed hat to block the sunlight, but he seemed to recognize me instantly.

‘We meet here. Valtael.’
‘Don’t call me that, what if someone hears…!’
‘It’s amazing enough that you understand the Varg language.’

…Was it the Varg language?
I was understanding it so naturally that I hadn’t realized.
While I was hesitating, Radugan was grabbed by the Empire knights and dragged away somewhere.

“W-wait a minute!”

Flustered and forgetting that I was in the middle of work, I hurriedly followed them.

“It’s dangerous to approach a prisoner, Awakener. What is your business?”

“Th-this person is a beast-kin, isn’t he? I want to interrogate him!”

“Is this your first time seeing a Varg? They are the kind who would choose death over spitting out information or doing hard labor.”

The Empire knight, who was putting pure silver handcuffs on Radugan, replied nonchalantly.

“He’s not even worth interrogating. Straight to death by starvation.”

‘Then are they really going to starve him to death like that? No, I have a mountain of questions to ask!’
Terrified, I immediately went to find the person in charge.

“Loktis!”

I often forget because he always looks bored to death and I mostly see him as an alarm clock, but he was the Knight Commander of the Empire.
That meant the prisoners were also under his jurisdiction.

“You want to interrogate the Varg? They won’t open their mouths anyway.”

Loktis glanced at the bloody figure beyond the iron bars and looked at me with dubious eyes.
His expression clearly said, ‘Do you really need to pour water into a bottomless pot to know the result?’

“Just once, please?”

“Hmm….”

“It’s not a race you can see every day! Pleeease! I just want to exchange a few words!”

“Well, you did talk about Vargs in your sleep, so you must be interested. It’s definitely not a common opportunity, but….”

Even though I was rubbing my hands together and pleading desperately, he still looked unconvinced.
He was a man who always said, ‘Yes, yes, do as you please,’ except when it came to oversleeping, but this time, he rubbed the back of his neck and spoke as if troubled.

“They are a bit different from normal beast-kin. Their intelligence level is high, and there are even legends that they killed a god….”

“I’m an Awakener too. I won’t go down easily!”

【This is a special area where weapons cannot be summoned. Please move to another field and try again.】

Ugh, right. I keep forgetting. This is a neutral zone.
I tried to pull out my weapon coolly but failed, waving my awkward hands instead.

“A-anyway! I can win even without a weapon! Loktis, you know that from sparring with me, right?”

“…Yes, well, if you insist, understood. Well, I did put pure silver handcuffs on him anyway.”

Did my pathetic show look somewhat commendable?
Loktis, who had been rubbing his chin dubiously, reluctantly gave permission.

“Still, be careful not to get hurt. If something happens to you, Shinbi-nim, there’s no one to handle the Cat God.”

With that worry that wasn’t really a worry, Loktis tossed me the key staff and coolly left.
Along with the advice that if push came to shove, it wouldn’t matter if I snapped his neck and reported it afterward.

Thud.

With the sound of the door closing, heavy footsteps faded away down the corridor.

“…To be so friendly with those disgusting vampires who look down on all races. What a fascinating ability.”

A cough mixed with the familiar sarcasm.
He seemed to have been sleeping with his eyes closed the whole time, but he must have heard everything.

Without replying, I inserted the key staff, opened the cell door, and went in.

“Open your mouth. Tilt your head back a little.”

He watched me like a spectator as I kept glancing outside and thrust a recovery potion at him, then he scoffed.

“The Valtael is quite merciful. Still.”

“Not Valtael. Shinbi.”

“Ah. To be granted permission to use your name, cough, cough, it’s an honor.”

‘…Should I hit him just once more before healing him?’
I seriously considered it as I slowly trickled the potion into the corner of his dry mouth.
Radugan’s gaze seemed to ask why I was giving this to him, but he must have been quite thirsty as he obediently swallowed it down.

‘What will you do if I kill you again after you heal me?’

“Just shut up and drink.”

I spoke bluntly and thrust the second potion at him. He must have taken the hint, as he drank it down without saying anything this time.

“Did you hate me that much?”

After making sure his ragged breathing had settled down, I asked the question I had been holding back.
At my huffing, Radugan opened his closed eye and looked at me.
His expression said my question was unexpected.

“Even so, killing me out of the blue was too much. You said we were in the same boat, kindred spirits, and then…. Were you planning to trick me from the beginning? I wanted to trust you, how could you!”

“I studied the resurrection patterns of your kind for a long time.”

The man, who had been staring blankly at me as I questioned him full of a sense of betrayal, opened his mouth.

“When Awakeners die, they resurrect in a nearby ‘safe’ town. A peaceful place with no conflict. So I thought you would too.”

As if it was difficult to speak at length, he coughed a few times before continuing.

“I told you before. I die and resurrect endlessly if a Destroyer is nearby.”

I listened dubiously, wondering what kind of excuse he was going to make, but then my eyes widened.

“…Wait a minute. Then don’t tell me, you didn’t run away immediately on purpose? To die at the hands of the Suras?”

“Thankfully, they threw my corpse far away. Thanks to that, I woke up immediately and waited at the place where you would resurrect. Thanks to the Valta’s declaration of dominance, the safest place nearby other than Bahalgras was the Fox Tribe’s village.”

Then was that the reason the Black Manes caused a ruckus in Bahalgras?
To make Bahalgras unsafe and induce me to resurrect in another town?

‘The Black Manes are causing a ruckus. They seem to have lost their minds because their chief was killed.’

I thought that was a follow-up measure to ensure my death, to prevent me from resurrecting in Bahalgras.
I felt like I had been hit in the back of the head with a large gong.

“…Th-then! Was destroying Bahalgras your doing too?”

“Destroy? I never ordered such a grand thing. My boys just raided the food storage a bit and pulled out as soon as they heard you were dead.”

If it wasn’t the Black Manes either, then why was Bahalgras destroyed? What on earth happened?
Swallowing the questions that kept popping up, I looked at Radugan with complex eyes.
He was also looking at me with the exact same gaze.

“…Anyway. After all that commotion, you weren’t there.”

The words that followed after a long pause were faint, as if he were being strangled.

“You weren’t in the expected Fox Tribe’s village, nor in any of the surrounding towns I searched. I thought you had died.”

Radugan, who spat out the words as if murmuring to himself, held his forehead and laughed hollowly.

“I thought I had… really killed you. With my own hands.”

‘You did really kill me.’
I was about to catch the end of his words awkwardly but closed my mouth.
Because I had seen the face mixed with terrible fear, self-loathing, and regret, just like when he had confessed his past to me.

‘Let’s leave together. Don’t be held by him and suffer.’

I thought it was just a ploy to make me let my guard down.

“Still, I’m glad you seem to be doing well. You look better than when you were in Bahalgras.”

“I haven’t been doing well! Because of you…!”

“I know. I admit I acted arbitrarily. I didn’t know it would turn out like this either.”

I had thought his relieved expression as he was dying was undoubtedly the face of someone who had completed his revenge against a Destroyer.
But, it seems that wasn’t the case.

“…If you want to be angry, be angry. If you want to kill me, kill me. I’ll die by your hands as many times as you want.”

Radugan’s voice, which had been vacantly murmuring as if he had a loose screw, suddenly gained strength.

“But, just know one thing.”

I don’t know where that strength came from, but Radugan sharply raised his head and looked straight at me.

“I really only wanted to save you, and even now, I do not regret killing you.”