chapter 205

Chapter 205

“What kind of dream is everyone having?”

“A happy dream.”

“Happy...?”

“So they won’t try to get out.”

Eunha sat down on the marble steps where golden ripples were reflected, his face tired. Cha Isol followed him and sat beside Eunha. It was just a few steps below where Gio was sitting.

He looked at the holy-body humans sinking inside the pope’s room filled with seawater.

“The longer time passes, the wounds only increase.”

The world was not as beautiful as a dream.

“Humans’ habits, you know. When they end up at a disadvantage, they flail around to solve it somehow. My older sister and teacher called that ‘growth.’ It’s an extremely vague word to a mermaid, but...”

“Mermaids don’t grow?”

“By dimension, the types are probably different, but on my planet, mermaids aren’t born from a living creature’s belly—they’re born from the sea. At some point, seawater gathers and an existence called a mermaid is made.”

“Uhuhuh...”

Cha Isol poked Eunha’s bare arm, exposed.

“...It’s there?!”

“Well, it is there.”

But mermaids are beings of circulation.

“We’re born from the sea, take on a form similar to humans, and as time passes we gradually assimilate more and more with the sea and enjoy its authority, then in the end we melt away and disappear. That’s a mermaid’s cycle.”

It was also the sea’s providence.

“Strictly speaking, I couldn’t assimilate with the sea as much as my sister did.”

“Why? That noona looked super smart—she didn’t help you?”

“Because I lacked the aptitude...”

Iser was neither a pure mermaid nor a pure human. Each mermaid’s appearance differs a little, but Iser in particular was an existence born from a branch far from the sea. Even his tail was separated like a beast’s.

“I wasn’t a child suited to contain that gigantic sea.”

So all the seas they had passed through were eaten by Aria, and the sun whose divinity had shattered, trapped in that sea, was eaten by Iser.

“That’s one of the reasons I can still imitate a priest of the sun.”

“How do you eat it? It’s the sun. Wasn’t it hot?”

“It’s hot.”

Eunha laughed emptily.

“That’s why even now my body is endlessly weak.”

Aria had tried her best to make him strong, but it was nowhere near enough. In the end, he grew into something like a key to contain countless divinities and authorities of the sun.

“So if I fight directly, I’ll definitely lose. That’s why I usually stayed in this safe dungeon, using the weapons and traps my sister made, or borrowing that authority.”

“What about the sun?”

“As you can see, it isn’t me holding the sun’s divinity itself—it’s this golden staff. To use the corrupted authorities of those divinities even once, I had to make them bloom into a form that could bear that power, and to do that, I had to make it into the form of this huge tree...”

“Frustrating?”

“It was troublesome.”

Cough, cough.

Eunha coughed hoarsely.

“...And it gets overtaxing like this, too.”

Iser was a paltry mermaid.

“If my sister hadn’t taken me in at first, I would’ve died on my own from being so weak.”

“Sounds like your noona’s really strong. My noona’s like that too. She protects me.”

“Our older sister was like that once, too...”

“Doesn’t she protect you now?”

“I committed a sin.”

“What sin? You did something wrong?”

“I ate teacher.”

“...”

Cha Isol asked with trembling eyes.

“...Are you going to eat me too...? D-don’t tell me you left me alive all this time because...”

“Would I do that now?”

“T-that’s right, huh? I got scared for a second.”

“Of course, I wasn’t in my right mind when I ate him.”

In the first place, mermaids are born with a flesh body that cannot digest humans. Their mouth structure isn’t even one that can easily eat meat. For an Iser like that to tear into and eat a living person, what would have been needed?

He had to be mad for it to be possible.

“After that day, my relationship with my sister became strange.”

They still cherished and loved each other. The form and weight of that feeling remained the same, but after teacher’s death, a feeling called ‘hatred’ naturally seeped in between them. It couldn’t be helped.

“At times like this, teacher used to make us reconcile, but after that, it got a bit difficult.”

“You don’t know how to reconcile...?”

“It’s just that we didn’t bring up the topic.”

“No, why?”

“Mm...”

Iser raised his hand and stroked Cha Isol’s small belly.

“Say you ate something wrong and a thorn got stuck inside you, somewhere that won’t digest.”

“In my belly...?”

“Deeper than that—below your throat, below your solar plexus, here inside your belly.”

“I hate it.”

“You would, right?”

“Can’t you take it out?”

“To do that, you need a big surgery.”

He withdrew his hand.

“The thorn is tangled up too messily to take out easily, and it isn’t food that will naturally digest if you wait. And to do that surgery, you’d have to hurt a lot, and they’d have to open your belly, and even when they pull the thorn out you’d get injured, and...”

“...”

“Well, it’d cost a lot too, maybe.”

“I don’t have money...”

“I know. That’s why it was an analogy.”

But.

“Instead, you can also just leave it as it is.”

“The thorn? It’s inside my belly?”

“Only when you move around actively at times, just then you notice the thorn exists. Even if you leave it like this, it doesn’t hurt much. Sometimes it pricks, but not to the point it bothers you all day. There’s no abnormality in your health.”

“Uh...”

“Even so, will you do the surgery? Endure that pain, spend the time, pour out the money?”

“...I- I need to think.”

“That’s what we did.”

We needed time to think about what to do with the thorn called teacher.

“It’s not something we needed to remove in a hurry.”

We had far too much time.

“Let’s use another analogy here. Actually, that wasn’t a thorn—it was something you cherished, um... a resonance stone.”

“...The one Ruda gave me?”

“That’s right. But if you leave it as it is, the resonance stone won’t break and it’ll stay there, but if you do surgery to take it out, it gets damaged and shatters, and you’ll never be able to see it or hold it again.”

“It’d be a waste.”

“You understood well.”

It was the same for mermaids.

“I was scared I’d erase teacher like that.”

“Teacher?”

“He was my thorn, and my jewel.”

“...But you still have to reconcile.”

Cha Isol said.

“You’re all that’s left, family.”

“What you say is right, but I’m a coward.”

I always avoided the right path. Before, it felt sad that I’d only walked the straight path and, when I came to my senses, my hands and feet were all scraped up—so I just did that.

“If I’d been born stronger, it might have been okay.”

Whether it was the body, the authority, or the mind.

“If I’d been outstanding in something, like my sister...”

I would have led my sister, crazed with revenge, back to the right path.

I wouldn’t have eaten teacher under the influence of medicine. I wouldn’t have been caught by priests and put through a demonic trial, and I might have been able to help humans better so they wouldn’t fear me.

And.

“Teacher.”

That person, that day—maybe I could have helped so he wouldn’t be caught like that.

“...I might not have held onto teacher.”

From the start, I wouldn’t have reached out my hand longing for the sun.

“When I think it was all because of my greed from the beginning, it made my stomach turn.”

“Why is wanting to be friends with a good person greed...?”

“I knew you’d say that.”

A kind human.

“In the end, even now, I use these petty tricks to vent my hatred toward humans.”

Iser looked at the humans asleep in ‘good dreams.’

“Oh.”

“...Huh!”

Then, one man woke up.

“...”

It was Priest Kang Seodam of the sun.

“...Right now, why are you sitting there...”

“Would you like to talk a bit?”

“If it were you, would you do that...?”

At the sight of him glaring like a ghost while grinding his teeth, Iser smiled faintly. With a smile that resembled ‘Mr. Seo Gio’ somewhere, Kang Seodam furrowed his brow, and the mermaid pointed at the empty seat beside him with his hand.

“That seat is also closer to Hunter Seo Gio.”

“...”

Kang Seodam once again resented the world and, gritting it out, sat there.

“Did you have a good dream?”

“...Thanks to you, I saw my old partner’s face for the first time in a while.”

“That was sarcasm, wasn’t it?”

“No, just...”

He let out a deep sigh.

“...It really is thanks to you.”

Kang Seodam had nearly forgotten his old partner’s face.

“What is it, exactly, that you’re sitting so peacefully and chatting like this?”

“I waited until you woke up.”

“So why. For what reason.”

“Because there’s something Priest Kang Seodam has to help with.”

“Do you think I’m going to help you? In a state where I feel this terrible?”

“It won’t be a bad story.”

Iser pointed at himself.

“Kill me.”

“...”

“And wake teacher.”

Kang Seodam narrowed his eyes.

“What’s the reason.”

“Teacher has already decided.”

“Decided what?”

“To remain on Earth.”

“Then why isn’t he waking up?”

“This is only him being considerate of us.”

Since humans will win anyway, and the mermaids will leave forever.

Iser stood up and leaned against his teacher’s knee again.

“It’s nothing more than him spending time with us, even if only for a brief moment.”

“...Are you saying Mr. Seo Gio has lingering attachment to his life as a human. Are you sincerely saying that right now? About this enormous mystery?”

“This person is an ordinary person who can have lingering attachment in an ordinary way.”

“Right now you’re calling the sun’s divinity a mere human—”

“He’s a person.”

He listened.

“...”

He could hear the sound of tears falling.

“...He even knows how to cry.”

It might have been the sound of dream droplets falling.

“Once again, this won’t be such a bad proposal for you humans. With my death and my sister’s death, the existence of the ‘Black Cloak’ will become certain in this world, and you’ll be glad you won’t have to spill more blood than necessary, and we... we can take responsibility of our own.”

“Was this the goal from the start?”

Kang Seodam stared at the mermaid.

“For your ‘teacher’?”

“That’s not entirely untrue.”

But it wasn’t solely a stage for his teacher.

“No matter the method or process, we also have to have an ending...”

“To speak of an ending—what sophistry. How many humans have died by your hands until now?”

At last, Kang Seodam showed his anger.

“Don’t you find it disgusting? Even now, you speak of a heavy word called responsibility, and commit sins as you please out of greed again. How are the things you’ve been doing any different from the priests of the sun you hated so much?”

“My regret isn’t toward our sins—it’s for my greed. That’s why we’re monsters.”

“So in the end, even if you wag your tongue well, you’re still a monster. With that intelligence, the only thing you can do is repeat the same sins over and over—how truly regrettable.”

“If whatever we do will be deception, wouldn’t it be cleaner to choose the path that suits us? That’s why we can, arrogantly, put ‘responsibility’ in our mouths.”

Only then could he obtain even a sliver of a ‘chance’ to be accepted by his teacher.

‘Probably, a chance named... hell.’

Iser blinked while leaning against the thigh of his teacher, seated on the pope’s chair like a corpse, then straightened his body.

“...Soon, they’ll all wake from sleep. You have to kill me when there are no eyes on us, so you can avoid a pointless battle. I’ve done my role, and I’ve excluded unnecessary emotions.”

“...”

“But killing me won’t be so easy. My sister made me into a pouch of a thousand suns, out of the suns we’ve eaten until now. But as I said earlier, compared to my sister, this body is far weaker and more pitiful, so...”

“If you stuff in an excessive amount of the sun’s power, it’ll burst?”

“It seems you understood well.”

He looked at Cha Isol.

“...”

“...Hey.”

Giovanni’s first apostle asked.

“Is it cold here?”

“Yeah. It’s cold.”

Even though he was a mermaid, he was cold in the deep sea.

“So show your sun.”

Eunha begged.

To return to providence, he needed the sun.

* * *

Kwachijijijik—!!!!

“—Hk!!”

With a tremendous roar, heat exploded.

“W-what is happening...!!”

“Where is this right now...?”

“Everyone, come to your senses, we’re inside the dungeon!!”

A raucous sound like a gigantic bolt of lightning being crushed through a narrow crack. The hunters who woke from sleep at the huge shock only secured their vision after the dreadful flash passed.

“Cough, keh...!!”

“What the hell, where did all the monsters go.”

“Ah, my eyes...”

Only then did silence arrive.

“...”

“...Ah...”

The golden tree that had been hurting their eyes returned to thin branches.

“...Hunter Seo Gio?”

The apostle of god who had been bound to the throne woke up.

“E-excuse me, are you alright right now—!”

“Be quiet.”

“No, why—!”

“Something’s wrong with his state.”

One of the hunters stopped the comrade who was about to step up.

“...He’s crying.”

In the temple ruined by the sun, Gio was crying while holding a golden branch.

(To be continued in the next episode)