Chapter 274 : Chapter 274
Chapter 274 : Pink Cloud Assembly #2
-4- Ghost Demon, Elzerus
At the moment he reached the stage of the Ultimate Path of the Transcendent Demon, Bihen Benkou's subconscious world was perfectly split in two.
It was—
Like day and night, black and white, light and dark—a realm of extremes that repelled each other yet could never be separated.
Yin and Yang moving forward while maintaining an exquisite balance without leaning to either side.
To transform the subconscious world into the Taiji itself, so that one became the Dao: Bihen Benkou had realized that this was the inevitable providence for gazing upon the next horizon......
This meant that the entity known as Bihen Benkou was reborn as a single microcosm.
The harmony of the Taiji was not a static stillness. It was a continuous cycle where countless agonies exploded like sparks, enlightenment piercing through that pain created a new star, and the act of letting go of attachment once again destroyed that star, returning it to nothingness.
To never stop that grand rhythm where agony became enlightenment, and enlightenment transformed into emptiness once more.
Only maintaining composure without wavering at the center of that wave could be called the true ultimate state.
Once he could truly accept and understand the endlessly repeating chain of creation and destruction.......
He could finally meet it.
Somewhere at the exquisite boundary where Yin and Yang touched.
"……Ghost Demon."
Bihen stared at the entity in front of him while sitting cross-legged.
The entity's outline merely wavered like a shadow.
[I said you'd know when the time came, but that time's much faster than I thought.]
Even though it had no facial features, it felt as if a smirking face came to mind.
Bihen consciously calmed his emotions.
"You've been inside me for a long time. To be exact, ever since I regressed."
The shadow stirred. It seemed to be laughing.
[Yes. Giving you another life—well, um, it required a big decision on my part, but……]
The shadow shrugged its shoulders. Even though it clearly lacked facial features, it felt as if it were wearing a relieved smile.
[It was fully worth it. No, it was more than anything! Watching you was enjoyable and thrilling at every moment. In the eons of time that were beyond boring and downright disgusting, you were the only amusement that broke my boredom.]
The shadow, the Ghost Demon, clumsily imitated the motion of making a polite bow.
[Thank you.]
"……."
[But as you know, I've done my duty as your shadow. You admit it, right? The moments you felt you were lucky were all, without you knowing—]
"……Why."
[……?]
"It was me, wasn't it?"
[Why was it you?]
"Why did you give me the miraculous chance of regression?"
The Ghost Demon scratched its temple.
[That's a pretty long story. And it's not very interesting either.]
"Nothing is more important than that to me."
[……Fine. To put it shortly, it's a connection from a past generation. If you trace back the origins of our existences, there's a deeply entangled connection.]
The Ghost Demon continued speaking.
[If you think about it, the Benkou family should revere me as a benefactor and perform ancestral rites for generations. If it weren't for me, your family would've turned to dust and disappeared from history long ago.]
"……."
[Well~ just like everything in the world, this too is a connection of cause and effect.]
Bihen closed his eyelids for a moment.
What kind of answer did he want to hear? A sort of atonement?
He let out a hollow laugh, finding himself absurd.
In any case.......
The culprit who brought the curse upon his family was right in front of his eyes.
At that moment, the microcosm completed inside Bihen fluctuated violently. The peaceful boundary of the Taiji wavered, and the realm of light tried to swallow the realm of darkness where the Ghost Demon stood.
After a momentary shift—
The fluctuating Taiji regained its stillness once more.
The Ghost Demon's Adam's apple bobbed heavily.
[…….]
The Ghost Demon's approach seemed similar to a specter's 'assimilation,' but it was fundamentally entirely different.
Rather than encroaching to take over the soul, it was closer to parasitizing Bihen's subconscious world.
But the situation had changed. Now, the Ghost Demon was helplessly trapped inside Bihen's territory.
It was because light unceasingly flooded into the ronin's subconscious world, which had once been complete darkness and a void.
"Now, get out of me."
Bihen spoke quietly. Then, he closed his eyes again.
[Ah, don't you still have a lot of things you're curious about?]
The Ghost Demon, who was stealthily taking a step forward, flinched as it was blocked by the boundary of the Taiji. It was a line that it dared not covet.
[Aren't you really curious about how many worlds in the distant universe met a futile end because of what you did? I'm talking about how the peace and permanence you stubbornly held onto in this world arrived as a terrible disaster on the other side!]
Bihen recalled the fragment he had briefly glimpsed in the Book of Eternity before.
He shook his head at once.
"Not at all."
[……!]
"I don't care about that crap. I'm just protecting my people."
[Haa…….]
"That's all."
The Ghost Demon stood blankly as if frozen, then soon took a step back. It seemed resigned.
[……Seriously, you're a dreadful fiend.]
As expected of the Heavenly Demon.
Bihen stood up from his spot instead of answering and turned around without regret.
The Ghost Demon cried out urgently.
[I-Is this really the end? You must still have more things you're curious about! The secrets I've hidden are a mountain!]
Stopping in his tracks, Bihen only turned his head to reply.
"I'm not curious about anything anymore."
The Ghost Demon stared blankly at Bihen's receding back.
[……You don't know anything, Bihen Benkou.]
***
-5- The Stars Here Are
"Iscarion Zimarof Haskinderun...... So this person was the beginning of the Benkou family."
Adeline carefully peered into the wooden ancestral tablets linked in a row. Her eyes shone with an innocent curiosity, like a child who had discovered a strange treasure.
"You read the Imperial language quite well."
The elderly woman sitting opposite her, Paula Benkou, said with a benevolent smile.
"I studied on my own. It is merely a level where I can barely read easy characters."
Paula smiled faintly and bowed her head. She caressed the teacup held with both hands.
"Shamefully, there were many harsh hardships in the family."
Paula calmly continued speaking.
"What kind of lives the people written there lived, what kind of great feats they left behind...... Those records already scattered and disappeared into the warfare and destructive fires long ago. Now, all that remains to us are their names, and nothing more."
Paula's gaze lingered on the wooden slip held in Adeline's hand. The smile she wore held a faint regret.
"It is merely a shabby wooden board stripped of both achievements and glory. Someone might laugh at it, but to our Benkou family, it is everything, something we would not trade even for our lives."
Adeline carefully set down the wooden slip she was holding, slightly lifting her hips from the chair as she leaned toward Paula.
She overlapped her hand on top of Paula's wrinkled hand.
"The lineage of Benkou will never be severed."
From the progenitor of Benkou to Bihen, and even the child to be born in the future.
Adeline felt as if a massive river of cause and effect was fluctuating inside her.
Her gaze soon reached Sena, who sat side by side next to Paula.
"……."
Deep-set black eyes on both sides of a neatly extended bridge of the nose shone faintly like obsidian.
She had heard from Bihen that she was quite a handful.
Adeline was certain that the static atmosphere she exuded now was not because she behaved modestly out of a feeling that it was not her place to intervene, but because it was shaped by the tragedies she had suffered in the meantime.
Her own past self was reflected in Sena.
"The afterimage of the hometown you left behind will weigh on your heart the entire time, but do not try hard to shake it off. As time passes, that pain will also be buried in the soil of this place."
Adeline added in a gentle but confident voice, meeting her eyes with Paula's and Sena's.
"This Kingdom is a country rebuilt with the blood and devotion of Benkou. Therefore, please do not consider it a foreign land."
The languid afternoon sunlight filtering inside warmly wrapped the three women in a single halo of light.
Paula took advantage of a lull in the conversation to look out the window.
The sunset spreading from beyond the horizon soaked the edges of the clouds, coloring the entire sky in a soft pink.
"The stars here must be very lovely."
Above the pink sky, the face of her grandson shimmered instead of stars.
***
-6- Second Son Mercenary Band
Among the numerous mercenary bands hired by Duke Bolton, the status of the 'Second Son Mercenary Band' was absolutely unrivaled.
Although small in scale, its skills were second to none anywhere, making it a truly substantial, elite few.
Indeed, while everyone was betting on how long the Bolton family would last against the Queen's wrath, there were even those who confidently asserted that the fight would never end easily just because of the existence of the Second Son Mercenary Band.
They did not even stop there, going so far as to unhesitatingly make the cheeky remark that the next generation to succeed the 'Sword Fiend' would definitely appear from among the members of the Second Son Mercenary Band.
"There's no end to it with just this. We have to take the head of the leader."
Schlak!
A mercenary spoke as he retrieved the sword plunged into a fallen soldier's neck.
The area was a complete mess.
"Gather around."
At the command of Roch, the leader of the Second Son Mercenary Band, the mercenaries gathered.
Corpses rolled around at their feet, but not a single person cared.
"We have to make a choice. Whether to pull our feet out at this point, or make up our minds and dip them in deep."
At Roch's sudden words, the executives looked at each other in bewilderment.
"What do you mean all of a sudden, Captain?"
"Duke Bolton attempted to seek asylum in the Empire."
The executives let out a gasp all at once. Roch added as he wiped his blood-stained blade on a corpse's clothing.
"But it fell through. They say the Empire is incredibly chaotic right now. Apparently, the Emperor was assassinated."
The eyes of the listeners widened in shock. Roch continued speaking calmly, as if watching a fire across the river.
"The vassals who swore absolute obedience to the Imperial Family began to suspect one another one by one, pointing swords until a civil war finally broke out. Well, where would those bastards' savage nature go? They managed to endure for a long time and are finally showing their true colors. They say it's a complete mess, without any distinction between your side or my side."
Roch shrugged his shoulders.
"Well, that's their business. At any rate, what kind of asylum is possible when the entire Empire has turned into a massive slaughterhouse?"
"Wait, then…… that means Duke Bolton wasn't even thinking of winning this fight from the beginning."
Roch snapped his fingers.
"Exactly. It just means Duke Bolton only needed to buy time until he could tuck his tail and run."
One executive spat out phlegm.
"Forget it, fuck. I don't want to die acting as a meat shield."
"Damn it, I don't know if we can even get the pay for rolling around until now properly settled."
"We can't lose our innocent lives under an idiotic employer."
The executives burst into complaints one after another. Roch looked at them while nodding his head. Everything was valid and reasonable.
At that time, someone squatting in the corner raised a hand.
"Does dipping our feet in deep mean that we should wage a bigger fight?"
Gazes gathered on the mercenary who said such words. It threw cold water on the atmosphere.
At that, the mercenary who spoke shrugged his shoulders.......
Roch laughed heartily.
"Yeah, exactly. If we deliver a report of victory, won't Duke Bolton be enticed? We give him a solid torture of hope to raise the stakes, and then find a suitable opportunity to pull out."
Only then did the executives swallow hard and begin to nod their heads.
One executive raised a hand.
"Considering Duke Bolton's will and various factors, a long-term war is disadvantageous. Do you have any sharp plan?"
"I do. A way to overturn this landscape in one blow."
Roch made a motion of slitting his own neck with the edge of his hand.
"It's taking the head of the enemy commander."
At Roch's declaration, the executives' brows furrowed slightly. Although they were proud of their skills, they were also quick to read the room to save their own lives.
"Noser? No matter how strong you are, Captain, he'll be hard to handle."
"We'll have to measure to know who's longer or shorter. And rumors are rampant that Noser was deeply ill, rested for a long time, and barely returned. The chances of winning are sufficient."
Roch added, twisting the corner of his mouth.
"And I'm not the one facing Noser."
At those words, the executives' eyes widened in circles. Their gazes gradually gathered in one place.
It was the very mercenary who had thrown cold water on the atmosphere with a sudden question.
Roch looked at him and spoke.
"Lucian. You can do it, right?"