“...Hm,” Sienna’s smile suddenly shook slightly.
Her green eyes widened into circles as she piercingly stared at Eugene. After examining him like this for a few moments, she tilted her head from side to side a few times.
“...Hm?” Sienna hummed consideringly.
After she was done tilting her head, Sienna abruptly thrust her face closer to Eugene. Uncomfortable with her sudden approach, Eugene immediately raised his hands to block Sienna’s face from getting any closer.
“What are you doing? Are you crazy?” Eugene spat out.
“Get your hands out of the way,” Sienna merely demanded.
Having said that, Sienna didn’t wait for Eugene to remove his hands. She grabbed his hands on her own accord and pushed them out of her way.
“...It seems a big difference, but… no… isn’t it the same?” Sienna muttered to herself.
“What are you even saying?” Eugene asked in annoyance.
“Hamel, you… it seems that you’ve learnt some magic?” A wide smile spread across Sienna’s face. Still holding onto Eugene’s hands, she childishly swung them around as she giggled to herself. “It’s not just any type of magic, either! You learned the magic that I created. Isn’t that right?”
“...Yeah,” Eugene reluctantly admitted.
Sienna let out a few prideful sniffs, “Hm, hmhm, hmhmhm. Well, of course you did. Even if hundreds of years have passed since I disappeared, there’s no way that a wizard as exceptional as I am could be born during that time. In that case, that must mean that most wizards nowadays have learned the circle magic system that I created.”
“...Well, something like that,” Eugene acknowledged.
“However! Hamel, you didn’t just learn my circle magic system. Looking at your mana… you must have grafted my research in Witch Craft onto Vermouth’s White Flame Formula, isn’t that right?” Sienna confidently accused him.
Eugene wasn’t sure what was causing Sienna so much amusement, as she continued to smile at him. It didn’t just stop with her cheerful expression, she was still sniffing proudly as she giggled. Eugene felt that her attitude was a bit annoying.
But the fact of the matter was that he had learned the circle magic system, as well as her research in Witch Craft.
Since that was the case, that meant Eugene was practically Sienna’s disciple. Although Eugene had claimed to be Sienna’s disciple at several points before today, he had no desire to be recognized as a student by Sienna herself. Doing something like that would create an inevitable conflict with his own self-esteem….
Eugene awkwardly replied, “...I might have learned those, but—”
“From now on you should worship me as your teacher,” Sienna abruptly demanded.
“Did you really think I learned those because I wanted to?” Eugene argued. “After hearing about your death—”
“I didn’t die,” Sienna interrupted.
Eugene continued. “...After hearing about your disappearance… uh, well… you could call it an act of mourning an old comrade and friend….”
“So what are you saying? Are you trying to claim that you didn’t really learn the circle magic system? I guess that you haven’t learned anything from Witch Craft either, right?” Sienna sarcastically refuted his denials. “I’m the teacher, you’re the disciple. Got that?”
“Are you looking for another beating,” Eugene threatened her. “Then I just don’t need to use magic for the rest of my life, now do I? That way I don’t have to call you teacher.”
“Don’t say something so ridiculous, Hamel. You’ve already drunk all the sweet water[1] and learnt everything you can, so why are you arguing at this point? How can a person be so shameless?”
“What the hell do you mean by that?”
“Well, even in your past life, you were always a shameless son of a bitch.” Surprisingly, Sienna quickly accepted his refusal to call her his master.
By now, she had stopped swinging Eugene’s hands around and let go of them, but she still hadn’t stopped smiling and giggling to herself.
With the way they were sitting, the distance between them had gotten pretty close. Sienna seemed to suddenly realize this. Letting out a low cough, she tapped one of Eugene’s knees and said, “...You’re too close. You should back up a bit.”
“You’re the one who crawled up to me in the first place, so why are you complaining to me?” Eugene protested.
“...When did I crawl up to you?” Sienna denied in embarrassment.
“Could you really have aged so much that you now have dementia?” Eugene eyed her consideringly. “Have you forgotten the way you grabbed my face and molested it earlier?”
“Hamel, you… just try and call me old one more time and see what that gets you,” Sienna darkly promised him as flames seemed to burst forth in her eyes. “If you hadn’t been defeated on the way to the castle of the Demon King of Incarceration, you would have been the same age as me. Therefore, if we’re calculating your actual age, we should count all the years since your previous life as well.”
“If you’re going to spout such bullshit, you should at least make it sound a bit more reasonable. Do you really think that makes any sense? Why would you include the years since my past life into my age? Age is calculated by how old the body is. Since I’ve been reincarnated, my body is fresh and young. As for you…,” Eugene trailed off suggestively.
“Why don’t you just go ahead and say another word?” Sienna challenged him. “Because I really will kill you.”
“...Well, I’m just saying,” Eugene backed down after some thought.
“The physical body is mere vanity,” Sienna sniffed. “Besides that, my body has been sealed for hundreds of years, and I physically reconstructed it several times before that. If I’m released from this seal, I’ll reconstruct my body once more, and then my body will return to being just one year old[2].”
“Uhuh, yeah. Go ahead and call yourself one year old. Would you like me to gift you a pacifier as well? I’ll carry you on my back and even rock you to sleep with a lullaby,” Eugene offered.
Sienna’s fists clenched and started to tremble at his provocative remarks. She glared at Eugene, then sighed heavily and shook her head.
“...It’s not worth it.” Changing the subject, Sienna asked, “More importantly, what happened to change your mind? Even though I offered to teach you magic several times during your past life, you never once took me up on it.”
“That was just in my past life,” Eugene quickly spat out an excuse as he awkwardly shifted his gaze sideways. “...After all, three hundred years have passed. I was alone after I reincarnated and I didn’t even know if you all were alive or dead. Since there were still two Demon Kings remaining… well, I just thought that I didn’t have a choice but to learn magic.”
It would be impossible for Eugene to accomplish his goal with just the ability he had inherited from his previous life as Hamel. It wasn’t just slightly beyond the realm of possibility, but immeasurably so. Thankfully, the body that he had been reincarnated into was so vastly superior to Hamel’s body that the two couldn’t even be compared. Moreover, even after reincarnation, he still retained all his previous life’s talent.
Vermouth was missing. So were Anise, Sienna, and Molon. Since all of them weren’t there, this meant that Hamel would need to learn all the knowledge and handle all the responsibilities they used to have when they were together as a party.
Or at least that was what Eugene had told himself.
Even though he was unable to accept the Lionheart clan’s tradition of the Bloodline Continuation ceremony, he still hadn’t risked disgrace by going against it.
Without showing any unneeded stubbornness or pride, Eugene had managed to be adopted into the main family.
There, he had learned Vermouth’s White Flame Formula, which he had always secretly envied.
Having obtained Wynnyd, he had still harbored a desire to obtain even one more of the many weapons that Vermouth had used.
In order to learn magic, which he hadn’t even spared a glance at in his previous life, he had left to study abroad in Aroth.
For several years, he had locked himself up in Akron and absorbed himself in learning Sienna’s magic.
Everything Eugene did was for the sake of becoming stronger than Hamel had been. Even though he was aware that his hard work might not bear fruit right away, he had still sown the seeds for the future. In order to someday — yes, someday successfully surpass his former ‘self’ and slay the two remaining Demon Kings.
With that as his focus, he had given up all of his unnecessary hang-ups from his previous life. However, Eugene didn’t want to reveal to Sienna the desperation to which his heart had been driven by the absence of his comrades. It was something far too embarrassing.
Sienna also didn’t ask for further details. She wasn’t stupid. She could see the reason why Hamel, or Eugene, that idiot, asshole, scumbag, stubborn, and rude bastard… might have abandoned the inhibitions from his past life that had kept him from accepting her offer despite the amount of effort she had put into persuading him.
Sienna was all too familiar with Hamel.
“Sorry.”
That was why Sienna was the first to bow her head and apologize.
“What are you apologizing for?” Eugene asked.
“...I just — I feel like we might have left you feeling very lonely,” Sienna said regretfully.
“As if.” Eugene snorted.
With her head bowed like this, all Eugene could see was the crown of Sienna’s head and her wavy, purple hair. This sight reminded him of Mer back In Akron and Eugene unconsciously reached out and patted Sienna on the crown of her head.
“...What are you doing?” Sienna asked in shock.
“You just reminded me of your familiar,” Eugene explained.
Sienna sighed. “...Ah… Mer. So you’ve met with that kid as well.”
“She’s doing pretty well,” Eugene tried to assure her.
“Like hell she is,” Sienna cursed with a scowl as she pushed Eugene’s hand away from her. “There’s no way that those old wizards would have left Mer in peace. She must have been through a lot after I disappeared.”
“...Well that’s true,” Eugene admitted. “It’s all because you took the latter parts of Witch Craft with you.”
“Ah, that?” Sienna blinked her eyes in surprise for a few moments before bursting into laughter. “That was just a lie.”
“...What did you say?”
“There are no latter parts to Witch Craft. Well, if it really came down to it, you could say that something like that is inside my head, but it’s more like a truth of magic that’s impossible to really pin down into a grimoire.”
“...But I was told that the royal family of Aroth has a copy of the latter volumes of Witch Craft?”
“That’s… ummm… that was just my own way of providing some support to the royal family. As the royal family of the kingdom of magic, shouldn’t they at least possess a grimoire that can act as a symbol of their worthiness for the position? It’s a compilation of some of the high-level spells that I’ve created.”
Eugene’s lips parted soundlessly as he couldn’t think of what to say to this.
After finally breathing out a faint huff of surprise, he barely managed to get out the words, “A-are you saying that you conned them?”
“Hey now, that’s going a bit too far. I didn’t really scam them, it’s more like a white lie. In any case, it is a fact that I gifted them a grimoire filled with powerful and unique spells. I made all the spells myself, and even compiled them into a grimoire, so isn’t it up to me to call it by whatever title I like?” Sienna smiled with a guilty expression and tried to act like her hands were clean.”Well… this misunderstanding is all because I didn’t know that I would end up going into seclusion like this. I was thinking of going into retreat shortly before everything that happened, but technically speaking, this was more of a mistake than a deliberate deception.”
“...But I’ve heard that Aroth’s wizards actually disassembled Mer in order to try and find out the truth about the latter half of Witch Craft and your hidden refuge,” Eugene reported.
“They did what?! Those ungrateful sons of bitches! Even though I contributed so much to the history of magic, just because I went into seclusion, they dare to torment my familiar?!” Sienna’s eyebrows shot up in outrage. She leapt up from her seat and kicked Eugene.
It didn’t really hurt that much. However, Eugene just couldn’t understand why she had suddenly kicked him. Why had she hit him when he hadn’t even done anything?”
“Why did you just hit me?” Eugene immediately demanded.
Sienna gave her reason, “Because there’s no else here apart from me and you!”
“What does that have to do with you hitting me—?” Eugene asked before he was cut off.
“Don’t be so fussy! If I’m able to return to Aroth in the future, I’m not just going to stop at kicking them, I’m going to turn the whole place upside down! Those idiotic royals. Those douchebag wizards! Even though it’s been two hundred years since I disappeared, they’re still caught up in the illusion that there is another part to Witch Craft!” Unable to contain her rage, Sienna stomped her feet as she shouted.
Eugene also felt the same sense of betrayal. Even though he had given so much thought to joining the Court Wizards, just because he was promised access to the latter parts of Witch Craft… only to be told that the other parts didn’t exist in the first place?
Sienna turned to Eugene. “You’re also an idiot, Hamel!”
“I’m not the idiot, that’s Molon,” Eugene defended himself.
“That’s right, you’re just an asshole!” Sienna agreed. “You should have seen Witch Craft as well, right? Based on the qualities and feel of your mana, it seems that you’ve been able to attain a slight comprehension of my research in Witch Craft. But even so, you actually believed that there would be a second half?!”
“...That’s… of course I didn’t believe it,” Eugene lied unconvincingly.
Sienna picked up on it immediately. “Don’t lie to me.”
“Well, if you really look at it, isn’t it all your fault? Why did you come up with such a lie that ended up wasting so many people’s time? What? You want to call it a white lie? You want to return to Aroth and flip it upside down? Before you do that, you need to get on your knees and apologize to Mer. Because of your lie, you caused Mer so much trouble,” Eugene turned the tables on Sienna.
“...Of course I’ll apologize to her,” Sienna admitted with a pout as she sat back down. “...So anyways, Witch Craft, how was it?”
“...What kind of reaction are you expecting from me?” Eugene asked hesitantly.
“Your honest opinion only. I’m eagerly waiting for your admiration and awe at the work of the greatest genius in the history of magic, the likes of whom never have been and never will be seen in the past, present, and future,” Sienna boasted.
“Oh, well your magic was quite nifty,” Eugene agreed.
“Is that it?”
“...Really nifty?”
“You really can’t be honest, can you?” At some point, Sienna had stopped pouting and was now smiling once again. “Mm, I guess it is pretty nifty. The core principle of Witch Craft is the Eternal Hole. The Witch Craft that I left In Akron was just a textbook meant to guide those fools into understanding the Eternal Hole.”
“Alright. I already know that you’re a genius, so stop changing the subject and answer my questions,” Eugene said, staring at Sienna without any traces of amusement.
Sienna also stopped smiling.
“Raizakia, that son of a viper, how am I supposed to find him?” Eugene asked once more.
“...I already said that it’s impossible for you as you are now,” Sienna muttered.
“Do you think that I’m asking because I don’t know that? Even in my past life, that bastard wasn’t someone that I’d be confident in taking out on my own.” Eugene informed her.
The Black Dragon Raizakia was a monster. Even before his fall, he was one of the strongest among the younger dragons, but after he had killed his own Lord and devoured the chief dragon’s heart, he had become an even more intimidating monster.
“Sienna, are you worried about me right now?” Eugene asked her.
“...No,” Sienna lied unconvincingly.
“Of course not. Who’d be that stupid? Wouldn’t it be funny if you, who almost died and has been sealed away, were actually worried for me, who’s alive and well?” Eugene noted sarcastically.
“...What if…,” Sienna muttered while avoiding his gaze. “...For my sake, you do go looking for Raizakia, and when you finally find him… he kills you? In that case, what am I supposed to do?”
“What do you mean, what are you supposed to do?” Eugene scoffed. “Why are so afraid of something that hasn’t even happened—”
“You don’t know,” Sienna spat out with a quiet laugh. “You… you don’t know anything. Hamel, there’s no way that you could know. After you died… how do you think the rest of us felt? Do you know what emotions were going through me as I held your necklace? What-what sort of thoughts went through my head as I stood in your grave?”
“I do know,” Eugene said as he held Sienna by her shoulders. “I know for a fact that you cried like a baby while you were there. I also know just how you spent the decades while you were in Aroth.”
Taken aback, Sienna fell silent.
“But do you know how I feel? There’s no way that you could know that. You, who has been trapped here by this seal, will definitely not know how I feel. You might know the me from my previous life, but you have no idea about the current me,” Eugene argued.
“...That’s probably true,” Sienna weakly admitted.
“Then you just need to find out for yourself. But if you remain trapped here, then you definitely won’t be able to learn anything about me,” Eugene stated with confidence. “Sienna Merdein, stop pointlessly worrying about me and get rid of the delusion that I, as someone who’s been reincarnated once, will allow myself to be defeated once more.”
Sienna raised her head to look up at him.
Eugene continued, “You came to find me, and I also went looking for you. I’m sorry, but I can’t just stay out of this. I will free you from this place somehow. I’ll make sure that you’re free to stand up on your own and walk out of here, so that you can travel together with me. Even if you sit there whining that you don’t want to go with me, I’ll take you out of here even if it means I have to drag you with me.”
Sienna’s eyes wavered at these words. Eugene’s hands tightened around Sienna’s shoulders as he looked straight into her trembling green eyes.
“You have no objections with that, right?”
“...Ahahaha.”
After he spat out this final question, Sienna burst into laughter.
“You say that I don’t know the current you? No, that’s not true at all. I know you, Hamel. Even though your reincarnation changed your body, replaced your face, and even gave you a new name… you’re still the same Hamel that I’ve always known.”
“If that’s the case, then you should also be aware of how serious I am when I say all this.”
“...Mhm,” Sienna agreed with a smile even as she let a few tears fall. “You’re still the same as ever. Not a single thing… has changed about you.”
“If you smile while crying, something will grow on your butt[3],” Eugene warned her.
Sienna snorted. “The amount of bullshit you’re full of hasn’t changed either.”
“Anyway, hurry up and tell me how to find Raizakia,” Eugene insisted while shaking Sienna by the hold that he had kept on her shoulders.
“...Is my staff still kept in Akron?” Sienna eventually asked.
“Akasha? It’s still there,” Eugene confirmed. “It’s been stored away safely along with Witch Craft.”
“Well, of course it would be,” Sienna said with some relief. “As foolish as the wizards of Aroth might be, even they wouldn’t stoop to the level of trying to meddle with Akasha’s relief.”
Sienna was lost in thought for a few moments. After considering whether he should do anything about this, Eugene gently shook Sienna by the shoulders once more.
“Just leave me alone for a minute, you son of a bitch.” In the end, Sienna was unable to bear it and she slapped Eugene on the cheek as she cursed him out.
Like the last time she had kicked him, her slap didn’t hurt all that much.
“...I’ll teach you the technique to release Akasha’s seal,” Sienna said once she had finished her contemplation.
“Does that mean I’ll be able to find Raizakia once I have Akash?” Eugene asked.
“...It won’t be easy,” Sienna advised him. “The reason why Raizakia was caught in the dimensional rift was partly because of his own actions and partly because I made a mistake due to being seriously unwell. Even so, Hamel, if you have Akasha with you and you’re nearby, you should be able to sense the opening to the dimensional rift where Raizakia has been trapped.”
Sienna couldn’t even be certain of that. For now, all they could be sure of was that Raizakia had to be trapped somewhere within a dimensional rift. If he had been banished to another dimension or had died, his curse wouldn’t have been able to last for hundreds of years as it had.
“So that means I’ll need to scour the whole continent,” Eugene sighed.
“...If you don’t want to, then don’t do it,” Sienna pouted.
“When did I say that I didn’t want to? It’ll be a piece of cake. Besides, that’ll mean I get to use your fancy staff as well,” Eugene said smugly.
“...I’m saying this just in case, but if I do get better later, I’m definitely taking Akasha back from you. Also, if you go overboard and shatter Akasha’s Dragon Heart….” Sienna trailed off warningly.
“I’m already well aware.” Eugene waved off her concerns. “It’ll get the dragons to come looking for me, right? No, wouldn’t that actually be better? In the first place, aren’t the dragons even better at using magic than you?”
“Do you really think those overly proud lizards would just kindly grant your requests? They’ll probably just loose their Breaths at the bastard who deliberately broke the staff that their tribe helped create as a gift. But if you want to test that theory, then have at it,” Sienna challenged him.
“Well, if nothing else works, then I can give it a try,” Eugene replied before becoming lost in thought for a few moments.
The Black Dragon Raizakia had come to fame during his previous life, but his presence was still making itself known even in the present day. In fact, he was still known as one of Helmuth’s three Dukes.
It had been two hundred years ago since Sienna had banished Rizakia into a dimensional rift, but Raizakia somehow still retained an active presence in Helmuth.
“...If that truly is the case, that means the Raizakia in Helmuth has to be a fake,” Sienna said, her eyes narrowing in suspicion after Eugene had conveyed this information. “It had to be Rizakia himself who invaded this domain. If the attempt to banish him had failed completely, then he could have just repeated his intrusion once more.”
“But if that isn’t the real Raizakia, does that mean someone else is pretending to be Raizakia?” Eugene pointed out.
“There’s no way that those demonfolk bastards in Helmuth would continue to pay respect to Raizakia’s status if he wasn’t around. Then it’s probably… either Raizakia’s clone or his hatchling.”
“...Hatchling?” Eugene repeated questioningly.
Eugene’s brow furrowed as he tried to recall his memories of Raizakia. Did that Black Dragon really have a hatchling?
“I’m not too sure of that either. How am I supposed to know if that son of a viper hatched an egg or not? However, whichever one it might be, that’s not necessarily a bad thing for you—,” Sienna abruptly stopped speaking in the middle of her sentence and covered her mouth.
Eugene grinned at this sight and lightly smacked Sienna’s leg. “What’s with the sudden silence? You’re right, this isn’t such a bad thing for us. Whether it’s Raizakia’s clone or his hatchling, either way it has to have some kind of connection to Raizakia. If we can somehow manage to get our hands on them, we might be able to find the coordinates to where Raizakia is buried.”
“...Don’t do anything needless, Hamel,” Sienna warned him.
“I won’t. Having already died once, even I would hate to repeat the experience,” Eugene said with a smile. “...Ah, that’s right.”
While he was still smiling, something suddenly popped up in his head. Eugene immediately erased the smile from his face and glared at Sienna.
“Hey, what’s with that thing?” Eugene demanded.
Sienna was surprised. “What are you saying all of a sudden?”
“That fairy tale,” Eugene growled.
Sienna’s expression stiffened.
Through gritted teeth, Eugene hissed. “Stupid Hamel.”
“...Umm…,” Sienna tried to come up with something to say.
Eugene interrogated her. “Who wrote it?”
Sienna stammered, “I-I don’t know. I just thought it was interesting. When I first saw it I—Ah!—N-no, I’ve never actually read it, so….”
“Is this really the time and place for such nonsense? Even though you should know that you left the first edition of the fairy tale in Akron,” Eugene pressured her.
Sienna struggled to come up with an excuse, “That’s… I just… I bought that as a souvenir.”
“I already told you not to spout nonsense,” Eugene easily dismissed the claim. “I heard from Mer that you read that fairy tale hundreds of times, didn’t you?”
“Why is she coming up with such ridiculous lies? Since her maintenance has been neglected for hundreds of years, could something have broken down…?” Sienna continued to act innocent.
“The contents of the first edition were quite something to see. The beautiful, cute, darling, and cuddly Sienna,” Eugene said teasingly.
“Th-there wasn’t anything about me being darling or cuddly… probably?” Sienna argued hesitantly as she desperately tried to trace her memory.
“In any case, there were definitely a few times where you were called beautiful and cute. Are you insane? How could you write something like that by your own hand?” Eugene questioned her.
“Wh-what are you talking about! Why would I write something like that? I-It wasn’t me,” Sienna denied unconvincingly.
“Then was it Anise?”
“Ah… ummm.”
“You really are clinging to such nonsense until the very end. Don’t you think that you two were being a bit too much? You and Anice are cute, beautiful, darling, cuddly, and other such bullshit, huh? But why is Molon an idiot and I’m a son of a bitch?” Eugene cursed.
“I said that I didn’t write it!” Sienna screamed loudly as her face flushed red.
1. Pretty obvious, but this is a Korean idiom used to describe when someone has gotten all the benefits and is now trying to weasel their way out of it. A close equivalent might be that he’s already cashed the cheque. ☜
2. Just to clarify, the Korean system for counting age is different from the Western system. You’re already one year old when you’re born, so Korean ages are one year older than Western ages. ☜
3. This is kind of a weird old wives’ tale. Adults would tell children that hair would grow on their butts if they smiled while crying, mostly in order to get them to stop crying. An English equivalent is the claim that if you pull faces and the wind changes your face will get stuck like that. ☜
