Chapter 12

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Translated by Sylph

Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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A wave of hot heat swept over her face.

Unlike Tie, who had frozen stiff, Grandpa Nordix moved quickly.

He grabbed the bag and his cane, then shouted,

“Run!”

Then she shoved hard at Tie’s back.

Her mind had gone blank, but Tie started running.

Because she had seen the monster appear behind the grandfather.

The ground was slippery from wet earth, fallen leaves, and exposed tree roots, but hugging the bag, Tie ran with all her might.

‘Mister Basto was really right.’

Her heart pounded.

The monster chasing behind her really did resemble a tyrannosaurus.

“Keep running! Faster! I will lure it away!”

Over the fortune-teller grandfather’s voice came Daddy’s words.

‘Letting your guard down is forbidden.’

Only now did she think she understood what that meant.

It had been a forest so quiet you could not even hear birds.

The fortune-teller grandfather had been dozing, and just a moment ago the stars had been sparkling in the sky.

Who would have thought that a fireball would suddenly come crashing into the tent and a dinosaur-like monster would start chasing Tie!

She felt so scared that her whole body was stiffening up.

Tie ran without even thinking of looking back, and only after she realized the monster’s footsteps had vanished did she press herself behind a big tree.

Then she quickly hid in a nearby bush.

Far away, she could see the elm tree where they had pitched the tent blazing fiercely.

Bizarre cries could be heard here and there, and she could not find the grandfather.

With a terrified face, Tie looked the other way.

It seemed he had unconsciously run toward the cave, because not far away he could see the entrance to the cave Basto and Veil had gone into.

Tie let her lips part slightly as she watched that place.

The surroundings were bright from the forest fire.

Someone was escaping from the cave.

It was none other than Basto, clutching one shoulder that was pouring blood.

Then one more person came running out of the cave.

‘Oppa Veil?’

As he came out of the cave, Veil was fighting off something chasing behind him.

They were several monsters smaller than the one that had chased Tie earlier, but likewise shaped like dinosaurs.

Her mouth went dry.

‘No, no……’

The situation was bad.

Basto was injured.

Veil too, who was locked in a desperate fight with the monsters, kept getting pushed back.

Tie’s face soon turned even paler.

“Ugh-!”

Because a scream burst from Veil’s mouth after he was attacked by a monster.

When Veil’s thigh, slashed by a monster’s claws, was dyed red, Tie ran out of the bush without realizing it.

Green eyes seized by fear trembled faintly.

At this moment, everything looked slow.

The scene of Basto, who had been running, collapsing to the ground.

The monsters rushing toward him as if they had been waiting for it.

They looked like nothing Tie had ever seen before in her life.

Maybe they were a hundred times scarier than the dinosaurs in books.

The bright eyes reflecting the flames.

The sharp teeth inside their wide-open mouths.

Even the long, gleaming claws.

‘……Mister Basto is going to die.’

She swallowed dryly.

Maybe Oppa Veil and the vanished fortune-teller grandfather might die too.

The box of belongings from Daddy that she had received in Jongno District flashed before her eyes.

Death separates everything.

It makes it so that you can never see the people you loved ever again, and stains even joyful and happy memories entirely with sorrow.

And inside that,

‘I can never do anything, never anything……’

Without realizing it, tears dripped down her cheeks.

Tie squeezed both eyes tightly shut.

‘Please, please, I’m begging you.’

If there is a god, please hear Tie’s prayer.

I don’t want to part with anyone anymore.

Tie only wanted, even if just once, to meet Daddy again…….

At that moment.

Wooooong-

A cold current stirred from around her chest.

When she opened her eyes, she saw a pure white light completely surrounding everything nearby.

“Wh-what is this……?”

The light was coming from none other than Tie’s body and both her hands.

* * *

Feeling the pain piercing his thigh, Veil gritted his teeth.

Behind him, he could see Basto, fallen down and fighting the monsters.

“You damned bastards-!”

Basto was holding out by thrusting his hammer into a monster’s jaws, but it did not look like he had a chance of winning.

The same went for Veil.

“Kuh!”

In that brief gap, another attack rained down on Veil.

The breath it took to fend off the attacks rose to the tip of his chin.

The monsters showed no sign of tiring.

If he blocked one side, from the other side they aimed for Veil’s vital point.

‘I’m at my limit.’

His legs trembled.

Until just the day before yesterday, Tenebraum Cave had contained only small magic stones.

So who could have known that overnight a medium magic stone would rise there as well.

And that it would happen to be right behind the magic stone Veil and Basto were trying to conquer.

As he swung his sword, Veil searched inside his collar with his other hand.

He felt a small bottle.

It was a deadly poison that stopped the heart the instant one drank it.

He was about to choose a clean death over being torn apart alive, when.

Clatter-

Together with an unfamiliar sound, the sky suddenly darkened.

At the same time, the monsters lunging at Veil faltered.

For some reason, their gaze was directed behind Veil’s back.

He had only a moment to frown at the incomprehensible situation.

“……!”

Something whipped right past above his forehead.

“Kiaaaak-!!!”

Then a shriek burst out right in front of him.

Veil froze on the spot at the sight before his eyes.

Some pale thing that had entangled the monster.

It was, unmistakably, bone.

* * *

The skeleton bound the monster’s neck.

A sharp scream came from the mouth of the small monster, a Velios.

“Kieeek-!!”

The thing shook its body, trying to throw off the skeleton, but it was useless.

Veil stumbled backward and dropped to the ground.

“Kyaak-!”

The other Velios rushed at the white bones to save their companion,

“Kiek- Kieek!”

but other white bones rising from the earth wound themselves even around the rest of the monsters’ ankles.

Bones caked with dirt.

Contradictory beings that were dead and alive at the same time.

That was unmistakably……

“Veil.”

At that moment, a low whisper came from behind him.

Basto had already come right up behind him.

“You……”

“Get up, now!”

Basto roughly hauled Veil up.

Then he led him away from the skeletons and hardened his expression.

“You, were you a mage?”

Not understanding those words, Veil stayed frozen.

But soon he answered as if the very idea was absurd.

“What nonsense are you talking? A mage?”

As if spellbound, the two of them stared side by side at the scene before them.

The fallen Velioses.

And even one giant Rikelops that had fled toward the forest, only to end up dead somehow at the boundary.

The sight of dozens of bones clinging to the monsters’ skin was eerie enough to make one’s spine tingle.

“I, I actually thought you……”

Veil, who had been stammering, closed his mouth.

Because he realized.

That neither he nor Basto was the one who had summoned the skeletons.

His gaze dropped downward.

He saw his thigh soaked in blood.

The spot where a Velios’s claws had grazed him still throbbed with burning pain.

‘If it had been ten seconds later……’

By now, he would surely have become a lump of meat without a soul.

“But how?”

The words slipped out like a mutter.

Skeletons had, until now, existed in name only.

There was no choice but for that to be so in the first place.

Because the magic that moved the dead had no actual substance.

Dark-attribute magic, necromancy, had until now been passed down only in legend.

“Then who in the world……”

The bones that had risen from the ground.

The skeletons that left humans untouched and dragged only the monsters, accurately targeted, into a swamp of death.

He scanned the surroundings with trembling eyes.

The one who had controlled the creatures of darkness had to be nearby.

Because the screams of the monsters crying out from underground were proving that presence.

And there was a high chance that bastard was no ordinary one.

Probably a terrifying creature unlike anything before, one who wielded dark-attribute magic for the first time in history.

So he had to find it.

Where on earth……

“Mister Basto! Oppa Veil-!”

At that moment, the sound of someone’s footsteps rapidly drew near.

Veil and Basto turned their heads and froze stiff on the spot.

“Y-you were okay! Waaah……!”

Astie stopped in front of them with her face covered in tears.

The child was holding something precious in both hands.

“Tie thought you were both going to die, waaaah-!”

It was…… a skull.

“I’m so glad, really so glad!”

When the child wiped her tears, something attached to the skull made a clatter and fell to the ground.

What rolled across the ground and stopped at Veil’s feet was a jaw.

A human jawbone, reduced to bare bone.