Chapter 12: The Witch’s Close Aide

Nifles was a land of bitter cold facing the border of the Isulam Empire. It was a barren place born across ice ages, where no living thing could endure.

Even without that, demonkin and witches had been exiled there from the Isulam Empire. Ark mages who had thrown the world into chaos also died within Nifles, and their vengeful spirits mingled and grew all the more vicious.

“Why do you think they sent us past that land where your d*ck freezes solid, into this forest that’s only big and annoying?”

“Routine reconnaissance.”

“This is the first time our side has taken on that routine reconnaissance. The kings of neighboring countries who want to look good to the emperor have been scouting the forest until now.”

He wasn’t wrong. For the past eight years, the ones scouting the forest were the kings within the empire. They took turns handling the reconnaissance to curry favor with the emperor.

“Those bastards are always wheedling, hoping to scrounge one more scrap, win one more trade route, pry open a sea lane. They handle it themselves. So why is it us this time?”

The brown-eyed man clicked his tongue in annoyance and gave the forest a half-hearted sweep of his gaze. His expression said it was creepily quiet and unpleasant no matter how you looked at it.

“Filthy. And worse, we found a human like this, so now we’ll have to report it to the higher-ups. Jerond, so what are you going to do with her?”

The brown eyes called the man on the black horse Jerond. The man with sharp, frightening black eyes answered at once.

“What do you mean, what am I going to do with her.”

“We found that human. I’m asking what you’re going to do with ‘this thing,’ who looks like a young girl, a female.”

The brown-eyed man called Luti ‘this,’ but Jerond neither corrected him nor answered. Sitting atop the black horse that rose like a mountain, he only silently alternated his gaze between her shining hair and her face.

After a moment, he spoke as if he had decided.

“I’m taking her out.”

Jerond’s decision was unexpected. The man burst out in complaint at him making such a choice when it would have been better to bury her and leave.

“Hah. Come on, let’s just pretend we never saw her. No need to destroy evidence, just kill her right here…”

“Only ghouls pretending to be enemies and humans finish things by killing humans. If you want to be held responsible for pointlessly killing a little girl, the first human discovered in the forest no less, go ahead. There are four eyes here that will write a full report to the higher-ups.”

At Jerond’s decisive words, he clicked his tongue. Then, as if to say do whatever you want, he shook off his hand. The dark-eyed man pulled on his horse’s reins and ordered.

“Before taking her out, we’ll search the area. Check the path we came by, search the warehouse. Take anything that might be a document, and dispose of the rest as trash.”

“Yes, yes. Understood. Of course we have to obey the search captain’s orders.”

Clom, the brown-eyed man, put his foot in the stirrup and mounted his horse. He grabbed the reins and rode quickly toward the cabin, and Jerond’s sharp gaze turned back to Luti.

Jerond approached Luti, who was trembling with her blond hair loose. Seen up close, the blond hair that shone even more was still strange.

“Pei. Put that wench in the carriage.”

As soon as the order fell, the man called Pei lifted Luti. He hoisted her small, thin body in one go, and Jerond, who had shifted his gaze to follow her, quickly continued.

“Search the area with Clom, and put these two troublesome raccoons in a net and bring them.”

At the man’s words, the two hybrids rubbing against the black horse’s hooves flipped over in surprise. Luti was just as shocked.

He noticed the hybrids that had death powder sprinkled on them?

“If they make noise, knocking them out is fine.”

The two hybrids toppled backward as if fainting. The man on the black horse took one last look at Luti’s hair and turned away.

Her mouth fell open in shock.

Jerond was the first human to notice the smell of death. Even demons were fooled by it; once this powder was sprinkled, it gave off the stench of a rotting corpse and became invisible. If he had noticed that anyway, he was no ordinary human. He could be a monster wearing human skin, or something like the mages she had only heard of.

“A witch’s close aide.”

The voice of the man who had silently watched only her for a long while fell right in front of her nose. Inside the carriage, where their knees almost touched, his voice was slow and relaxed, unlike his gaze.

“Is that so?”

Jerond kept Luti in his sight. He had been watching her hair since a while ago, or more precisely, since they first met. Unlike his stiff expression, his gaze was quite blatant, persistent, and even curious.

“Witches don’t have hair like this.”

“…”

“Because theirs is rougher than tree bark and the color is dirty.”

The man reached out as if to confirm. He touched a few strands of the hair that had caught his eye, then frowned at how astonishingly soft it was.

It was already a miracle that she had survived in the forest, and she had such fine hair. Her limbs were not broken, nor were her shoulders dislocated into some deformed shape. She even had enough survival skill to build a cabin, make a storehouse, and create a waterway.

He couldn’t understand how a woman with such a small, delicate body could do all that.

“How did you survive?”

But no answer came. She only hugged the hair Jerond had just touched and trembled.

“Too young to have been someone’s concubine.”

“…”

“But you must have lived as someone’s daughter.”

His guess was accurate. She was not someone’s daughter, but he had correctly guessed that she had been raised like a child by someone.

“So it’s true. You lived as someone’s daughter.”

One of the man’s thick eyebrows rose slowly. He was as quick-witted as he was skilled at deduction. He noticed the tiny change in Luti’s expression and became certain, and startled by that sharp gaze, she unconsciously missed her footing.

“…!”

One of her feet slipped down with a thud, and Luti’s hair, uncut for eight years, spilled over Jerond’s thigh. Startled, she hurriedly tried to gather the scattered hair, but the man’s eyes had already changed.

“What. You…”

Even though she had only missed her footing and her hair had touched him, the man’s reaction was sharp. Luti trembled and gave him a look begging for her life. When she sent him a look saying she was truly sorry that her dirty hair had spilled onto his thigh and begging him not to kill her, Jerond glared at her and said.

“I’m not going to kill you just because your hair touched me.”

“…”

“Unless this hair is coated with poison.”

He did not kill people over something as trivial as hair. If he had intended to kill her, he would have cut off her limbs and buried her in the ground the moment he found her. The reason he hadn’t was that the strange feeling he’d had when he first saw her sparked interest in Jerond.

Unlike the women he had seen until now, she did not wear a tight corset, did not paint her skin white like an invalid, and did not struggle to dress up. She had no curves at all, and no seductive charm. Far from seductive, when she shook herself off, animal bone fragments had fallen out in a clatter.

Her hands were covered in wounds, and her cheeks were rough from surviving the harsh winter.

Even so, his gaze kept going to her. He did not want to take his eyes off this subtly colored hair. Though she was clearly a woman he was seeing for the first time, she felt like someone he had seen somewhere before, so he had no attention to spare for her differently colored eyes.

Jerond reached out and touched the hair on his thigh. Even inside the dark carriage, the blond hair shone as if dusted with starlight. She could not speak, but it was enough to give the illusion that if she did, silver words would spill from her lips.

“So this is my type.”

Jerond let out a small scoff. It was surprising enough that this kind of woman was his type, but he was reluctant to let go of what he held in his hand. He wondered if he could really fall for mere hair, and just as he tried to grab Luti’s small chin with the hand still holding her hair, Luti, startled, shrank back and slapped his hand away.

At that defensive move, Jerond did not frown but made a low sound.

“Hmm.”

The first place his gaze landed was her hair, but the place it finally settled was not her chest, nor her differently colored eyes. It was Luti’s behavior, pressed flat against the wall and trembling.

He understood that she was frightened and shaking, but for that, her eyes were too alive. She could not make a sound, but she seemed to understand what was being said, and her emotions seemed as certain as the shifting colors of her eyes.

“Is it just fear? She seemed quick to catch on.”

He had not been mistaken. She had definitely noticed his presence. Pei, standing behind the pillar draped with worn water buffalo hides, had not noticed, but Jerond, beyond the cabin, had clearly noticed.

As soon as she noticed him, she quickly sprinkled powder on the two hybrids and hid herself. So he had thought she was quite nimble and bold, but up close she was so delicate and weak that even touching her felt cautious.

Jerond bent his upper body toward Luti, who was shivering on the opposite side of the carriage. Then he stared intently at Luti, who still had the face of a girl.

As if he would find something inside her, he looked at her with all his senses and experience, but he found no further peculiarity. No, the more he looked, the more he felt he had seen her somewhere, and all he felt was that he had seen this hair at some point.

This hair. Where had he seen this hair, whose fine texture could not be compared to silk? Could it have belonged to the angel who secretly came to him one night when he was suffering from a relentless headache and insomnia?

📚 Also on NHV Novels

Underdog Connection

ChaebolContemporaryObsessiveLove

Read Now →
Not interested