Chapter 114
“Ugh, ughhh!”
Artson stomped her feet and screamed, throwing her head back.
Her cute twin tails looked completely out of place given how furious she was.
“Aaah! This is so infuriating! Aaaaah!”
After throwing a long tantrum like that, Artson whipped her head around and glared at Yan, who stood with his hands behind his back.
“You!”
Artson huffed angrily and opened her mouth again.
“You really don’t know where Lani is? For real?”
Artson had come all this way to find Lani.
Living in the desert, she absolutely hated the cold, but for the sake of confronting Lani she could endure it.
Yet even after coming this far, she couldn’t find the slightest trace of Lani.
Hot breath hissed through the furious Artson’s gritted teeth.
“Tell me honestly. Does it make sense that you don’t know? Aren’t you hiding something right now?!”
“……Lani has never told us about his whereabouts to begin with.”
“Aaaaah!”
Artson stomped her feet again and shouted.
“So annoying, so annoying! I got this hurt because of someone and he just disappears without a word? That crazy bastard!”
Yan observed Artson’s condition.
The wounds were still vivid.
It looked like she had suffered quite a serious injury.
“Did the warrior do this to you?”
“Don’t ask! It’s pissing me off!”
Artson clenched her fists and trembled violently.
“Damn human dared to…… me!”
Yan slowly blinked.
He didn’t know the exact details, but at the very least he could tell that Artson had been treated like a discarded card by Lani.
And that she was furious after getting thoroughly beaten by the warrior.
‘She could be useful.’
A twisted smile curled beneath the bandages covering Yan’s lips.
“The warrior has a daughter.”
“What?”
“From what I’ve observed, the warrior seems to have grown quite fond of that daughter lately.”
“Ha, so what? You want me to kill the daughter instead for revenge? Do I look that cowardly to you? If the warrior did this to me, I have to kill the warrior! No way!”
“Lani.”
Despite Artson’s refusal, Yan continued speaking.
The disaster wants Daphne Akion dead.
However, since Lani had ordered that he would personally deal with the warrior and his daughter, they cannot act freely.
But that doesn’t mean they can just sit idly by.
To regain their power, shouldn’t they do whatever it takes?
A glint flashed in Yan’s golden pupils.
“He wanted that daughter dead.”
At those words, Artson’s tantrum abruptly stopped.
Her sky-blue eyes began rolling around.
As she slowly thought it over, a wicked future flickered across her expression.
“If I snatch her first, will Lani get pissed?”
Seeing Yan nod, Artson’s fists trembled again — this time not from anger, but from exhilaration.
“Hee, heehee! Hehehe! Yes! I’ll do it! I’ll do it! Where is she? Huh?”
Artson cackled and started jumping up and down.
“I’ll kill her! I’ll kill them all! The warrior, his daughter, Lani too!”
***
Woof! Woof!
The sound of barking rang out energetically.
Daphne slowly blinked and looked up at Shio.
But Shio’s expression remained the same.
His face was still grinning brightly, eyes curved mischievously.
If other people saw Shio making this face, they probably wouldn’t be able to easily call out whatever nonsense he said.
His smiling face was so beautiful that it could block all insults.
But Daphne was different.
“Have you lost your mind?”
Daphne ignored Shio’s pretty face and threw insults first.
“You’re not in your right mind, you’re not in your right mind. How else could you say such bullshit?”
“Huh? Ah, that’s not what I——”
“Whaaaat? Who do you like? Me? MeeEEE?”
Daphne, apparently getting heated as she thought about it, unleashed a gradient of escalating anger.
“You liked me? If that was the case you should’ve treated me well from the beginning! From the very first time you appeared you kept flip-flopping, spouting weird things, and then left! How is that liking me?!”
Daphne recalled all the annoying ways Shio had acted toward her until now.
Weren’t they attitudes so irritating that even a hundred forehead flicks wouldn’t be enough?
But compared to the excited Daphne, Shio remained calm.
“Daphne.”
Shio spoke with a somewhat serious expression.
“Isn’t it human nature to want to tease the person you like?”
“You’re a dragon!”
“Then it’s dragon nature.”
“Hey!”
“No, you know what I mean. Back then, because of causality, I couldn’t tell you everything. That’s why I revealed things little by little. I had no choice. Ah! Don’t look at me like that! Your eyes are scary!”
Shio covered Daphne’s sharpened eyes with his palm and shuddered.
“No…… I don’t believe it…… I can’t believe it……. If you really liked me, you couldn’t have done that to me. You were total trash.”
Daphne shook her head and muttered, while Shio looked sheepish.
“What exactly did I do so much of…….”
“Want to die?”
“No thank you.”
Shio chuckled and wrinkled his nose at Daphne.
“Well, I don’t mean I want to do anything with lafy Daphne right now or anything like that.”
“Of course not. No matter what my true identity is, this body is a five-year-old kid.”
“Right. No need to become a criminal.”
Shio immediately agreed as if he understood reality perfectly.
“I just want you not to misunderstand my intentions from now on. I really like lady Daphne. I won’t do anything that harms lady Daphne.”
“…….”
Daphne narrowed her eyes.
She stared straight up at Shio.
“I don’t understand.”
“What don’t you understand?”
“That you came to like me just because I saved you? That’s absurd. Ridiculous. It’s hard to accept easily.”
“That’s understandable.”
Shio replied lightly as if he had expected it.
But the words that followed were anything but light.
“As lady Daphne knows…….”
He continued in a slightly more serious tone.
“We live for a very long time.”
“Yeah.”
“At some point, I lost count of how old I was — how much time had passed since the moment I first opened my eyes. Things that felt like just yesterday to me became decades ago in the human world, and things that didn’t even remain in my memory became part of human history…… and I realized. Time is passing me by.”
“…….”
“That’s when I started to get scared. The foundation of the mind is built by stacking and stacking memories — so with so many memories yet forgetting most of them while living, am I really in my right mind? Maybe I’ve even forgotten myself.”
“…….”
“What proves that I exist, who I am, what I am — how can I be certain of that?”
What maintains the ‘self’ is the memories accumulated while living as ‘myself.’
But those memories are not immortal.
They fade, they disappear.
Faded memories eventually blur the ‘self’ itself.
That’s why it’s frightening.
It feels like I’m disappearing.
It feels like I’m gradually ceasing to exist……
“I couldn’t find an answer, so I went into long hibernation. I thought if I slept and emptied my mind, maybe the forgotten memories would come back.”
It was practically escapism.
He felt that if he kept living like that, he would forget everything.
“Then I was attacked by black mages, and that’s how I met lady Daphne. And in that moment I realized.”
“…….”
“This encounter is something I will never be able to forget. No matter how many decades, centuries, millennia pass — I will never forget it.”
Shio spoke while recalling Daphne — more precisely, Celus as he had seen her that day.
“Such an intense memory is what tells me I existed in that moment, at that place. It tells me that I am here.”
He dispelled the bitter smile he had worn and smiled brightly once more.
“lady Daphne is the one who proved my existence. That’s why I came to like you. I like you.”
“…….”
It was a confession that could be called romantic, if one were to call it romantic.
Moreover, Daphne could somewhat relate to Shio’s words.
Especially as Celus, who had been rejected by people, hated by everyone, and spent every day alone.
If she hadn’t met Bertio, she too would have lost many things.
Memories, and herself.
“So.”
Shio gathered Daphne’s disheveled hair and tucked it behind her ear as he spoke.
“I will give everything to kady Daphne.”
Because you are the one who proved my existence.
A gentle breeze passed between them, and Daphne could only stare blankly up at Shio.
‘Wow.’
She marveled inwardly.
‘Free slave acquisition — jackpot.’
