READ NOVEL ONLINE Chapter 123
Faced with the dangerous entrance, Mirania couldn’t hold it in this time and shouted furiously.
“What the hell!”There was an entrance.
Not the one that should have been filled with sulfurous fire, to be precise, but one that was ominously blocked by black rock.
Mirania approached the entrance, her head throbbing with the sickening sensation of sickness invading her body.
It was lore that one must pass through the entrance to reach the Dark Realm.
‘I’ll have to clear the rock.’
She placed her hand on the black rock.
Boom! Crunch—Quickly pulling her hand back, Mirania stared at the black stone through narrowed eyes.
“This is no ordinary rock.”The moment she touched the rock, an enormous aura of death threatened to pierce her palm and invade.
It was destructive and exhilarating.
Mirania’s eyes narrowed as she stared at the black stone, which for a brief moment seemed to have a life of its own.
‘This is so strange.’
It was clear that this was no ordinary phenomenon.
‘Someone has blocked the entrance to the Dark Realm, with obvious intent.’
Someone has done this with a grudge… I don’t know what came first. Should I give up now?
Mirania pondered. There must be a way out of this situation.
[The entrance here is technically the main entrance to a human mansion, but the attention it attracts is annoying, so I made an opening.]Mirania muttered to herself,
“There’s not just one entrance.”Deciding on her next destination, Mirania wasted no time in mounting her broom.
A moment later, she emerged from the ruins of the mansion and flew through Malandor’s domain and into the forest.
She moved swiftly through the trees, dodging branches as she went, lest she be seen.
Soon she arrived at an abandoned hunter’s lodge on a hill.
It had long been known simply as the Hunter’s House.
It’s been abandoned for hundreds of years, but it hasn’t changed from the way it was hundreds of years ago to the same way it looks today.
Nothing unusual, but it was strange. It meant it hadn’t gotten any older.
Mirania dismounted in front of the hunter’s house, long since uninhabited, with one wall crumbling and windows were broken here and there.
‘Malandor said…’
Searching her memory, she walked to the end wall of the hunter’s house.
There was a gaping hole at the bottom of the stacked wooden wall as if someone had made a drunken mistake.
Squeak, a squirrel, rolled out of the hole, spotted her, and puffed up the fur on its tail in alarm.
‘Must be used as a food stash by the smaller beasts.’
The squirrel flinched as if to scurry back inside, then suddenly poked its head toward Mirania.
“Squeak?”It hesitantly approached, sniffed the air, and pranced with a distinctly different air.
The squirrel rubbed its head against the top of Mirania’s foot.
Mirania patted the squirrel’s head, peering through the opening.
[That’s funny, you’re not good at raising animals, but they just like you, Mirania.]Suddenly, she remembered Chera, and her heart sank.
Gently petting it, the squirrel chirps like it’s laughing and disappears into the woods.
With her little woodland friend gone, Mirania bent down and peered through the opening. All she sees are broken legs and a statue.
‘This is where he said it was, but…’
Mirania’s expression was trembling. The entrance beneath Malandor’s mansion was closed at the time.
Dropping Mirania into a sea of unquenchable flames, Malandor had once chuckled and quipped that he was a master of amusement.
[If you want revenge, find an opening in the hunter’s house, I’ll be on the other side of it.]And then he gave a good-natured smile.
[It’s a hole you’re not allowed to use unless you’re dark ones, but I’m giving you special permission, Mirania.]Of course, I was annoyed, not grateful.
‘I didn’t take you seriously, thinking you said it to tease me, but it’s the only way I can think of.’
Try to be playful, Malandor.
‘If I stick my neck in and all I see inside the dusty hunter’s guts, I’m not sure how much more upset I would be if I didn’t,’
Mirania thought, and cautiously leaned down.
Unfortunately, the opening was stuck to the floor, and she had to crouch down for a long time.
Determined to overcome her reluctance, Mirania stuck her head inside the opening.
‘It’s a good thing no one can see me in this humiliating position,’
she thought.
The moment she opened her closed eyes, a blast of heat hit her face.
Feeling the aura of danger creeping over the area, she felt it fade.
Success!
When she opened her eyes, she was wedged between rocks.
“Heh, stinker.”Grumbling, she pulled herself free and looked back. The gap between the rocks was so black she couldn’t see the other side.
‘If Malandor is right, it is nothing but a dark chasm for the unauthorized.’
Mirania, who had checked the position of the rocks for the return trip, was a little nervous.
‘I know of the Dark World, but I have never entered it.’
If it weren’t for these circumstances, I would never have ventured in.
She was already feeling breathless.
‘I cannot stay long.’
She wondered if she could meet Malandor right away. Mirania turned her head, her mind racing, and stiffened at the sight before her.
“…Hmph.”Mirania’s gaze was locked on the dark figure in front of her.
It was only then that she realized that the dark figure had taken on the form of a man, or perhaps a monster.
Dense shadows cast over it, making it appear to be nothing but black.
There were hundreds of such black figures. But it wasn’t the number of bizarre beings that surprised Mirania.
“Hmph… ugh… argh…”Not a single black figure stood upright.
All of them were crawling across the blackened ground, making strange noises.
It was an eardrum-scraping sound. If you listened closely, it sounded like sobbing.
They looked so pitch black even though they were harmless.
Mirania could barely recognize them as dark ones.
‘Not that I know much about my people, but I’ve never heard of them looking like that.’
[The dark world is honestly not fun. The food’s not good, there’s nothing to see, but the kids that are born and raised there have fun. They fight amongst themselves. It’s kind of cute to watch.]Malandor said with affection in his eyes. It’s not a rich place to live, but it’s a nice place to live.
[Same thing. They live amongst the fey, but there are many strange hybrids here, too, and their appearance doesn’t deviate too far from that category. They are more normal, if not grotesque, than humans or the average elf.]‘But, Malandor, no one would recognize them as normal life.’
Mirania’s gaze fell on the dark ones, writhing on the ground like caterpillars.
Crawling on the ground, they struggle to grasp the black energy that leaks from the ground.
The black energy they wanted to trap in their hands failed to do so and scattered in vain.
“ Screaaaaak!”With a screaming cry, the giant creature trapped the energy in its arms. The black energy dispersed again, and the creature cried out once more.
Such strange behavior was repeated, and it was not the only one.
It was the same everywhere.
Madness was raging.
Goosebumps, chills, Mirania’s face went rigid.
Mirania gazed far away, past the black sky.
A spiky tower stood lonely, piercing the ominous black sky.
‘I will ask you to answer my question, Malandor.’
Leaving the sobbing, writhing dark ones behind, Mirania strode toward the tower.
Whistling—After passing through a section of dry wind that stung her skin, she entered the tower, revealing a tall staircase with no end in sight.
Weak as she was, Mirania couldn’t even begin to climb what seemed like thousands of steps.
Flying effortlessly on her broom, Mirania passed in front of the door to the upper level of the tower and turned back.
The door was twice as tall as most of the elders, as wide as three adults with their arms outstretched, and carved with grotesque designs like ivy vines.
Mirania muttered in a low voice.
“There you are.”With her sensitivity to Malandor’s aura, she could detect the ominous aura of death emanating from it.
Malandor’s aura pierced through the thick, syrupy atmosphere of the Dark Realm.
The door was halfway open. Mirania stepped inside without a sound, her hands stiffening in the powerful death aura.
The room was very large, but it didn’t take her long to find Malandor.
“…”He was lying on his side on the bed. His slightly hunched body exuded the dry, lonely odor of a wandering vagabond.
Mirania, remembering the vivacious Malandor, found him unfamiliar and stopped in her tracks to stare at the bed.
Malandor looked exhausted. Anyone could see that.
Not to Mirania, who knew him well enough to recognize his exhaustion.
‘He seems to make a whimpering sound when touched.’
Mirania hesitated, her gaze scanning his face. And was a little surprised.