HRB 105

Augustine usually trusted his sturdy legs when traveling, unless it was a long distance.

Capital Irena was large, but in Augustine’s opinion, as long as he was within Irena, he didn’t really need a carriage. The carriage he personally owned had wheels that hadn’t turned in so long that he had to fumble through his memories to recall when it last moved.

But now, he had not only urgently borrowed a carriage from the Imperial Palace but was also urging the coachman on.

“Ugh.”

His head felt like it was splitting.

Augustine clutched his throbbing head and groaned.

“Damn it, what the hell?”

Strangely, some of his memories were cut off.

He clearly remembered being in the prison, listening to Arthur’s nonsense, encountering Boram, and waiting in front of the prison for Boram to come out, worried that the two might do something foolish.

But after that, he had no memory.

When he came to his senses, not only the soldiers guarding the prison but also he himself were collapsed on the floor, unconscious. He was shocked and went inside the prison, suspecting Boram, but Boram was gone, and Arthur was quietly locked up inside.

In that regard, it could be said to be fortunate, but if Boram had attacked, it was strange that she had subdued him and the other soldiers before he could even notice and disappeared.

It was true that Boram was powerful, but Augustine was no pushover either. He himself didn’t have the ability to use Sorcery, but he couldn’t just be defeated every time he faced a Magician, so he had maximized his resistance to Sorcery to almost the extreme.

Against a Magician as powerful as Boram, he couldn’t be completely relieved just by trusting his resistance to Sorcery, but he wouldn’t have been caught off guard to the point of not even having complete memories.

How much did I train with that guy to increase this resistance…

“…?”

Suddenly, Augustine’s thoughts stopped.

It was true that he had increased his resistance to Sorcery. Come to think of it, he seemed to have used a rather crude method to increase that resistance. Only a faint feeling of ‘I did’ remained, but he couldn’t remember anything specific.

What that method was, who he trained with, nothing.

“Ha.”

Again.

Now it was a fairly familiar blank in his memory.

At first, he didn’t notice.

The disappearance of his memories was so natural that he didn’t even realize they were gone.

But occasionally, when intense and brilliant memories of the past collided in his mind, he couldn’t help but feel a sense of doubt.

He knew that it was definitely an incredibly impressive memory, but why was there nothing left in his head?

There were also some memories that were packaged as if they were with Arthur, but no. It wasn’t a memory with Arthur.

It was someone else.

But he couldn’t figure out who it was.

And why it was naturally replaced with a memory with Arthur.

From the moment he realized that blank in his memory, Augustine began to see the world a little differently.

Everything in this world seemed like a lie.

Am I going crazy? Or is it the world that has gone crazy?

He had never revealed it to anyone, but he had to continue to wander through the chaos in his head and in his memories.

But only when he saw a certain guy he met by chance could he be freed from that pain.

And now, Augustine didn’t know why himself, but he had instructed the coachman to drive as fast as possible towards Eddie’s Inn where that guy was.

With the thought that he might find the missing Boram there.

If he were asked to give an exact reason, he had nothing to say. There was only a vague premonition that it would be so.

But when Augustine arrived at Eddie’s Inn, he realized that his thought was only half right.

Boram was there.

But Eddie’s Inn was gone.

To be exact, the place was right, but the building had disappeared.

Without leaving even a single pillar.

Among the buildings densely packed along the main street with the fountain in the central square in between, only Eddie’s Inn had disappeared as if the entire building had been plucked out.

“Good heavens.”

Even the coachman driving the carriage couldn’t close his gaping mouth.

The two-story building that had been sparkling as if it had just been built was completely collapsed, as if it had never existed.

Even most of the debris had flown away somewhere, leaving only the site where the inn had been, most of it cleanly swept away as if it had been hit by a disaster.

As if it had been blown away by a very perfect and overwhelming force.

If there were people inside, they would never have survived.

People gathered, buzzing and glancing at the remains of Eddie’s Inn, and at the person sitting slumped in front of it.

It was Boram.

Augustine jumped out of the carriage without hesitation and pushed through the crowd.

People around him recognized him and buzzed, but Augustine didn’t care.

“Boram!”

At that call, Boram, who had been sitting blankly, slowly raised her head. The longtime colleague who had always looked at the world with a cold and aloof face had a blank expression that he had never seen before.

“What the hell did you do?”

Anyone could see that Boram was the one who had done this to Eddie’s Inn.

Her powerful mana, which usually felt like it was ‘rippling’, couldn’t be felt at all. As if she had shaken everything off.

Then where did Boram use her mana?

Augustine’s gaze turned to Eddie’s Inn, which had only a handful of traces left.

No, should he say the place where the inn used to be?

Except for the site where the inn had been and the traces of broken furniture, there was really nothing left.

Augustine felt his stomach churning at the sight of the devastation, where even the corpses of people wouldn’t have been left behind.

He could see the faces of Ketron and Eddie, whom he thought he had become quite close to, but Augustine knew well that the thing he had to do right now was not to remember them.

Augustine’s expression turned cold.

“Did you kill them?”

Boram didn’t say anything.

“Did you kill them?”

Even before this time, Augustine had been disappointed in his old colleagues once.

But this was crossing the line of disappointment.

After a long silence, Boram opened her mouth.

“Yes. No one got out.”

With a face that seemed somehow hollow.

“Why did you do that?”

At that, Boram closed her mouth again. Frustrated, Augustine was about to shout loudly, but Boram mumbled in a small voice.

“From the beginning, what that guy wanted was revenge. Just like he said he would make them regret it.”

“What are you talking about?”

“He was trying to take revenge on the humans who killed him.”

Not just ending it by killing them painfully, but approaching them to plunge everything into hell.

He placed the most dishonorable yoke on Arthur, who had so desired glory, made Boram attack the Hero who was most annoying to her, and made her consume all the mana she had accumulated over the years.

He manipulated everything from behind without getting his hands dirty. The only thing that changed was that he became the one to take the blame, just like he always did.

Boram looked at her hands, which were trembling excessively from consuming too much mana.

No, it wasn’t because she was lacking mana, but just physically trembling.

He had been resurrected.

The Demon King, whom they had barely managed to defeat over several years, had been resurrected.

How was that possible? That existence was definitely erased, so how?

But right now, it was meaningless to argue about that. She muttered blankly.

“…He’s been resurrected.”

“What?”

“That guy, he’s been resurrected.”

That guy? Resurrected?

It was impossible for Augustine to understand. His expression, which had been frowning, wondering what it meant, gradually became dumbfounded.

Resurrection.

How many ‘that guys’ were there who could use that word?

There was only one existence.

Demon King.

“What is that.”

But that couldn’t be.

The Demon King, resurrected?

How was that possible? The annihilation of that existence was certain. At the same time as the Demon King’s annihilation, the Demon race shrank back. The magical energy that existed in this world decreased to almost extinction level, and the Demon race’s range of activity was drastically reduced.

It was the end of the war.

Although Augustine was not present at the moment of the Demon King’s annihilation, the Demon King’s annihilation was certain when looking at all the circumstances.

But how could that existence be resurrected?

Even Laila, the Saintess, even the Pope, cannot revive the dead no matter how much Divinity they pour in.

Of course, they wouldn’t even try to revive the Demon King, and Divinity is the opposite of magical energy, so pouring in Divinity wouldn’t revive the Demon King, but reviving someone who has already crossed the threshold of death is impossible for anyone.

At that moment, the world darkened. The clear sky became cloudy, and black clouds gathered and suddenly covered the sun. As if night had come, the brightness of the world decreased, as if the bright day had never happened.

The people who had gathered and surrounded the disappeared inn looked up at the sky with puzzled faces.

Suddenly, black rain poured down.

It was not ordinary rain, but black and sticky rain.

It was the black rain that used to fall every now and then when the Demon King ruled this world. It was the first time it had rained again since he disappeared.

“Aaaagh!”

“It’s black rain!”

“Black rain is falling!”

People screamed in panic at the sudden rain, especially the black rain that revived the terrible memories they had forgotten, and ran into nearby buildings.

Chiik.

The black rain was purified by Augustine’s Divinity and disappeared before it even touched his body.

Rain soaked in magical energy.

It was the rain soaked in magical energy that the Demon King used to pour down when he ruled the world to show off his presence.

The rain soaked in magical energy did not wet Augustine’s body, but it slowly peeled off the thick barrier of memory that had been placed in his head.

‘This rain makes me feel dirty every time I get hit by it.’

That rain often fell when they were traveling. It rained indiscriminately, sometimes when they were camping in the forest without any romance, or when they were lucky enough to meet a village and stay at an inn there.

Every time he saw that rain, he felt bad, and when he grumbled like that—

“You can at least purify it with Divinity, I don’t even have that.”

A familiar voice would always respond.

It was his close friend who was born with many talents like a blessing, but the only thing he wasn’t born with was Divinity.

“Use the Holy Sword as an umbrella.”

When he said that half seriously and half jokingly, the Holy Sword hanging on his friend’s back flashed.

“Albatross is going crazy?”

He couldn’t hear the Holy Sword’s voice, but it was obviously angry, so Augustine laughed loudly!

Yes.

That was then.

There was such a time.

It was a past that he had never remembered until now.

The memory that suddenly came to mind did not stop at just one. It was like something that had been deeply locked in a drawer called memory was slowly opening, and it was like a hole had been pierced somewhere in the solid bank.

“Hey kid, what’s your name? You seem to have quite impressive skills.”

The first memory that came back was not the most recent memory, but the oldest memory.

The day he first met that guy.

How enjoyable was it for warriors to realize that each other was a formidable opponent?

As if he felt the same pleasure, the guy, who was a little younger than the face he knew, replied with a small smile.

“Ketron.”

The bank that had been holding back the memories began to collapse.