Chapter 13: The Traitor’s Return

– See? I told you! I told you that wasn’t something he should say! What the hell is wrong with this guy? Does he have absolutely no intention of taking responsibility and just goes around causing disasters first?!

“What do you mean, causing a disaster? What the hell are you talking about? Those people have a right to know what happened! Are you really going to let them misunderstand everything like this?!”

The first thing Taehyun saw was the Knight and the Angel bickering with each other.

The Knight was not in the form of the book Taehyun was familiar with, but in his original form, clad from head to toe in silver armor.

His face was hidden, but his irritation was unmistakable from his voice alone.

The Angel, too, was in his original form, appearing as a beautiful blonde wearing a spacesuit.

However, the certainty in the Angel’s eyes made Taehyun instinctively realize something.

That guy definitely did something huge.

The image of Q-Type overlapped with him at roughly forty percent opacity, the way Q-Type would stand there ramrod straight with his monitor in hand, insisting that he had done everything right despite having just caused an enormous disaster.

‘What the hell happened here? Weren’t these Curses supposed to be wandering through other worlds?’

Why had they returned to their world like this, and just what kind of disaster had the Angel caused?

As Taehyun turned his head amid his confusion, he caught sight of the other two figures and flinched in surprise.

One was the Prisoner, whose appearance was familiar to him.

The other, however, was someone Taehyun had never seen before.

‘Who is that?’

The man had gorgeous blond hair, much like the Angel’s, falling to his shoulders.

However, whereas the Angel gave off a delicate impression, this man was large and imposing.

The greatsword he held in both hands was almost as enormous as an average person.

With a body that large, he should have looked rough and brutish, yet there was instead something remarkably neat and orderly about him.

Perhaps it was because of his ash-gray eyes, which contained no discernible emotion.

Or perhaps it was because of the white armor he wore.

The full-body armor had a plaster-statue-like texture without even the slightest sheen, making Taehyun think of an angel statue displayed in a museum.

Perhaps because of that, the Prisoner standing opposite the man looked especially villainous.

Of course, the Prisoner had always possessed such a fierce appearance that he seemed destined to be misunderstood wherever he went, but standing beside someone who looked like a knight in pristine white armor made him genuinely look like a villain, or complete trash.

…No.

Taehyun shouldn’t judge the situation based on appearances.

It looked like the Prisoner was actually stopping that strange knight.

“Why are you stopping me? You said you weren’t on his side!”

[You’re not wrong, but I happen to be absolutely obsessed with getting in the way of whatever other people are doing. Even after stepping outside my role, I’ve given up on the possibility of ever correcting that habit, so this is simply unavoidable. Besides, if you kill that bastard, then the courage our Angel finally managed to muster will have been for nothing, won’t it?]

Kill?

Who?

And who the hell was ‘him’ supposed to be?

Taehyun couldn’t make sense of the situation at all, and all he could feel was confusion.

Thinking about it simply, the Angel must have caused some kind of disaster, fled to their world to escape the consequences, and somehow caused an even bigger incident.

But…

‘Is the Angel really that irresponsible?’

‘Surely he believed, in his own way, that he was doing the right thing.’

The Angel had clearly claimed that he had acted in order to clear up a misunderstanding.

If so, couldn’t his reason for coming here also be part of that attempt?

Taehyun decided that he needed to speak with them first.

If they caused a commotion here, the interest in the Curses, which had only just begun to die down, might explode once again.

He couldn’t allow them to keep fighting any longer.

However, just as Taehyun was about to stride forward…

Someone suddenly grabbed him by the shoulder and shoved him backward so hard it was almost like being thrown aside.

Rigor, the one who had pushed him away, immediately stepped forward.

“What’s wrong with you all of a sudden?!”

“Run, Taehyun.”

“…What?”

“Don’t stay around here.”

“Q-Type and Seohyun are at home, right?”

“Get them and move somewhere safe, quickly!”

Rigor’s face was as pale as a corpse as he glared at Taehyun.

What the hell was he talking about?

Why was he suddenly acting like this…?

Before Taehyun could ask, however, the conversation between the armored man and the Prisoner crashed into his ears.

“Courage? More like recklessness.”

“And if you truly respect that man’s courage, then help me meet that traitor.”

[Oh, please. You’re planning to mash him into a pulp the moment you see his face, aren’t you?]

[I’ve received some help from him myself, so I’d like to prevent that particular outcome.]

[How about taking a quick crash course from our Angel and that idiotic Knight over there and loosening up a little before you meet him?]

Traitor?

The moment Taehyun heard that word, all the scattered pieces of information in his mind suddenly came together.

No way.

Even so, this was far too much of a coincidence.

How could the timing possibly be this perfect…?

“I told you to go, Taehyun!”

Rigor raised his voice and shoved Taehyun again.

At that moment, the man facing the Prisoner immediately turned his gaze in their direction.

The man’s eyes, which had been utterly devoid of light like those of an inanimate object, suddenly began to burn.

“…So you were there? ****###!”

What?

Had that man just pronounced something that sounded like a name?

The instant Taehyun heard the word, dizziness washed over him as though he had been struck violently on the head.

It was a sound completely unlike anything governed by ordinary physical laws.

A voice that could not possibly exist in their world failed to penetrate his mind, instead colliding violently against it.

But Taehyun had to get a grip on himself.

That hadn’t even been an attempt to attack him.

It was merely proof that something between them and this world was fundamentally, seriously incompatible.

“…###**.”

Rigor muttered another incomprehensible word and immediately shot forward.

Black mist, once so familiar that Taehyun had grown sick of the sight of it, completely engulfed the man’s body.

It was the power of the Curse accumulated over an unimaginably long span of time, a power Rigor had not directly used even once since leaving the Source Dungeon.

“Mr. Rigor!”

Something collided within the mist that filled the sky.

Boom!

The impact was so powerful that it felt as though the entire space had been shaken, and Taehyun nearly collapsed to the ground.

Fortunately, someone caught him before he could.

It was the Angel.

“Are you okay?”

“You’re not hurt anywhere, are you?”

“I’m not the problem!”

“What the hell is going on right now?!”

“The Wraith happened to find out that your lover is considered a traitor in his own world.”

“They believe he assassinated the emperor and ruined the world’s chance to recover.”

“So he tried to clear up the misunderstanding, and somehow, one thing led to another, and he ended up opening a gate that allowed that guy to come into this world…”

The Angel kept avoiding Taehyun’s eyes as he spoke.

That made it fairly obvious that the parts he had glossed over with phrases like ‘happened to find out’ and ‘one thing led to another’ were probably where he had caused the actual disaster.

Still, Taehyun had heard the important parts, so that was enough.

So that was what this meant.

Everything Rigor had devoted himself to for all those years, everything he had sacrificed for and poured his entire existence into, was now being denied.

And it was happening in the very world he had spent so long trying to protect.

“Who is he?”

“Who exactly is that person?”

“I heard his name, but I can’t pronounce it.”

“That world has been isolated for far too long, so it isn’t very compatible with ours.”

“The concepts themselves clash on an instinctive level…”

“That’s not important!”

“What is he to Rigor?”

“I heard he was once Rigor’s most loyal adjutant!”

“But that’s exactly what isn’t important right now.”

“You need to get away from here first.”

“We’ll handle this somehow.”

“He still doesn’t know who you are, so as long as you leave now, he won’t attack you!”

That was absurd.

How was Taehyun supposed to simply leave at a time like this…?!

Still, he could understand why the Angel was saying it.

The mist covering the sky was swept aside by a violent gust, followed by a deafening roar like two enormous masses of metal colliding.

– You haven’t forgotten what I taught you.

– Good.

– You’re supposed to put everything you have into the first attack.

Fresh blood scattered like rain from the body of the shackled beast.

Rigor appeared to have taken a considerable blow, but it was equally clear that the impact had rebounded onto his opponent.

Despite there having been only a single clash, noticeable scratches had already appeared across the man’s armor and helmet.

“So the rumors were true after all.”

“I never imagined you had fallen into such an ugly state!”

– If this is all you can see as an ugly form, then you must not have felt a damn thing while you were frozen and asleep.

The man raised his sword again, preparing to attack.

Then, suddenly, he flinched and stared sharply into the empty air before throwing himself backward.

Taehyun had no idea what the man had seen.

But what was actually there was silver, glowing ink.

The Knight immediately leaped to Rigor’s side and shouted in disbelief.

– You idiot, you could just fight in your original form!

– Why the hell are you fighting in that form?

– I thought getting a lover had finally made you a little better, but you still haven’t kicked that self-destructive habit?

– He needs to know.

– He needs to know what kind of life I’ve lived all this time.

– From what you two have said, it sounds like he knows absolutely nothing because he was frozen and asleep.

Rigor casually shook the blood dripping from his body before glaring at the man once more.

The man was still looking over Rigor’s four-legged form with undisguised disgust.

Without knowing what Rigor had felt while wandering through countless worlds in that form.

Without knowing what had happened in those worlds.

The Prisoner joined Rigor’s side.

He let out a series of hollow, incredulous chuckles.

[Good grief.]

[So our Wraith isn’t actually trying to win.]

[His goal is to have his past acknowledged?]

[Are you really in any position to be putting on a show like this right now?]

[That man is much stronger than you think.]

– So it seems.

– That clash just now convinced me.

– What the hell happened in my world?

[It seems they executed some of the traitors, and the survivors absorbed their power.]

[We only started watching from the middle, though, so we don’t know the exact details.]

– This is driving me insane.

– How many people could possibly have been left in that world for them to be executing anyone?

– They should have been pooling their strength to rebuild the place, and even that wouldn’t have been enough.

The man’s expression twitched and distorted.

It seemed those words had struck a nerve.

Nevertheless, as though steeling himself, he raised his sword once again.

“Shouldn’t we concentrate our strength in one place if we are to seize the opportunity for another attempt?”

Like his armor, the white greatsword was dull and covered in scratches.

At first glance it looked imposing, yet somehow, there was something almost shabby about it.

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