The Hero’s Disciple Has Returned

If you ask Sera what kind of woman Madam Rain is, she would answer that she’s a poisonous flower. You’re drawn to its sweet scent, led by that fragrance, and when you finally touch the flower and pluck it, you die from the poison. And the flower dies too.

A woman who willingly throws away even her own life to achieve her goal, literally heading towards destruction

There were times when she wanted to stop her.

There were times when she wanted to change her.

But

The hero only served to stimulate her, the hero couldn’t change her.

It can’t help but be a funny story.

Isn’t the hero supposed to save the world, and doesn’t that mean a hero should be able to accomplish everything? Isn’t that what makes a hero? But it can’t be done. She can’t change her, can’t save her.

Sera had to accept this fact after repeated failures.

That’s why she distanced herself. She had to distance herself because she was precious. She looked for ways to save her while keeping her distance.
Even then, she could only fail.

She knows the reason.

Because there can’t be a way in this world to save someone who doesn’t want salvation.

That’s right.

For her, this world is hell.

Even if the Demon King disappears and the Demon King’s army disappears

The fact that this world is hell for her doesn’t change.

That’s why she doesn’t mind being destroyed to achieve her goal, and she doesn’t mind being destroyed even after achieving it. That’s why whether she achieves her goal or not, she ultimately reaches the conclusion of destruction.

Just as it’s the natural fate for flowers to wither in winter

Just as it’s her natural fate to meet the destiny of destruction

Her ending doesn’t change.

♧♧♧

“Are you really going to go?”
“Isn’t it worth checking out?”

Madam Rain was not wearing her usual elaborate dress and veil, but tight-fitting clothes that revealed her body lines and were good for movement. As she was the top expert of 【Dark Moon】, she would sometimes take action herself when necessary.

Her closest aide and old butler, Alfredo, looked at his master worriedly.

“It’s the hero’s master. He’s not an ordinary person.”
“Oh my. Are you worried about me? You know my skills, don’t you?”
“But I’m uneasy.”
“Hmm. Alfredo’s intuition is accurate. But that’s why I feel I need to go even more.”

Even though he says he’s uneasy

Even though it might be dangerous

But for Rain, this wasn’t a problem to avoid.

Rather, it only made her feel more desire.

Alfredo also knew.

That his master’s desire for destruction was as great as her desire to achieve her goals. That’s why she could live as if burning her entire soul to ashes, and reach her current position. But even after gaining power and obtaining many things, she was still heading towards destruction.

The old butler Alfredo wanted to change that. He hoped that his master could experience passionate love befitting her age, get married, have children, and live feeling ordinary happiness. Although he had realized sufficiently while staying by her side that this was a vain hope, Alfredo still wished for it to appear.

He prayed earnestly and repeatedly for the appearance of a miraculous connection that could change his master’s life.

♧♧♧

Rain wasn’t unaware that the hero was an extremely dangerous person.

It was clear that if she found out about activities to gather information about her master, she would immediately attack. Yet Rain was taking the risk. Because in this industry, taking risks for high-value information is all too natural.

Above all

Not selling information.

This act is by no means light.

For an information guild to not sell certain information was no different from turning their clients into enemies. If they set an extremely high price and people couldn’t buy the information because it was too expensive, that would be one thing, but to declare that they won’t sell the information at all without even going through such a process would offend the clients. And the clients of 【Dark Moon】 were all individuals with considerable power in the empire. Turning such individuals from clients into enemies was inevitably burdensome.

Of course, it’s not that there’s no way. Rain had various means to smoothly resolve the situation. It was a problem that could be solved, but to do so, she would have to use cards she had been saving. Even for her, it wasn’t comfortable to have to use, even partially, what she had prepared to use at very important moments.

In other words, she needed to confirm whether this was worth using what she had been saving.

For this reason, she headed towards Jade’s secluded place.

Since she already knew the approximate location information, although not specific, it wasn’t difficult to find the mountain where Jade was living.

The problem was….

‘…I’ve consumed more time than I thought.’

She had to struggle with all sorts of interference. To the extent that if she wasn’t at the ‘realm of transcendence’, she would have had to give up and return midway. No, even if she was at the ‘realm of transcendence’, if she lacked this kind of experience, she would have had to give up.

‘This isn’t just the skill of an A-rank mercenary….’

Even an S-rank mercenary couldn’t perform such techniques.

This is because only veterans who have specifically learned and accumulated experience can use such skills.

There wouldn’t be even five people in this world who could display this level of skill. And Rain was one of them.

‘If I had a disciple with genius talent, wouldn’t they have been able to do this much?’

It would be meaningless to worry about such things, though. Because she ‘doesn’t have anything like a disciple.’

It was when she was thinking this.

Whoosh!

She heard the sound of wind passing.

Rain could easily recognize that it was soon to be an arrow.

She responded calmly.

It didn’t seem that threatening in terms of speed or destructive power, as if it wasn’t an arrow imbued with aura. Therefore, she judged it better to resolve it with an artifact rather than revealing her skills unnecessarily.

So she tried to defend using the shield magic effect of the artifact bracelet.

But

Crackle!!

“……!”

She soon had to witness an unbelievable phenomenon.

Because an arrow that clearly wasn’t imbued with aura

Caused an amazing phenomenon that even an aura-imbued arrow couldn’t achieve.

‘An arrow without aura not only penetrates the shield magic but also tries to break through?!’

Even for her, who had lived a life where she had to experience all sorts of things, this was something she was seeing for the first time.

Ting!

In the end, she had no choice but to draw her dagger, imbue it with aura, and deflect it.

‘This arrow was shot to barely miss me.’

She had responded thinking it was an attack because it flew towards her, but

Experiencing it directly, she could tell it wasn’t an arrow aimed directly at her.

It seemed to be an arrow shot purely as a threat.

It was even more shocking because it meant that an arrow shot as a threat had penetrated the shield magic.

An unknown enemy shooting arrows imbued with an unknown power

Even for a transcendent being, she couldn’t help but be tense, so she had to take a stance and keep her guard up. Because if she moved carelessly, that arrow imbued with unknown power could directly target her.

It was at that moment.

Whoosh!

That arrow flew again from a completely different direction.

Ting!

Rain responded quickly.

‘This arrow wasn’t shot to hit me either.’

This time she thought it was meant to hit her for sure.

‘The elf I’ve only heard about?’

Even for her, the master of the top information guild 【Dark Moon】 boasting diverse experiences and connections, she had never directly met an elf. As much as information about elves was valuable, she wanted to break through the World Tree’s barrier and confirm the elves directly if she could… But that was literally impossible, so even for her, information about elves was merely hearsay. And that information matched perfectly with the current situation.

They say that arrows shot by elves contain an unknown power that neutralizes human magic power or aura. Of course, it wasn’t certain information. Elves didn’t come out of the World Tree’s barrier, and there were many cases where reckless kids tried to approach the elven forest to make elves slaves and earn a lot of money, only to disappear forever from this world. Therefore, no one believed such information to be true. They couldn’t believe it.

But at this moment, Rain couldn’t help but think she needed to seriously verify that information.

It was then.

“Don’t move.”
“……”

Wasn’t it said that elven movements are so swift that they can’t be followed by the eyes?

Rain couldn’t help but think that was true.

To so accurately target the brief gap created while she was focusing on the arrow after it was shot.

It was to the extent that she couldn’t believe it was reality even though she was experiencing it directly.

“What’s your identity?”

To this, Rain first spoke the words she had prepared.

“I’m a companion of the hero candidate Sera-nim.”

It was a lie.

Perhaps because the opponent was a transcendent being, there was a chance they had a special ability to distinguish truth from lies, but even if any crisis situation occurred, Rain was confident she could resolve everything. Although she was caught from behind, she was also clearly at the realm of transcendence. She didn’t respond because the opponent seemed to be Sera’s master. For her, the current situation couldn’t be seen as a crisis at all.

“Sera’s comp-”

Thud!

“……?”

Rain turned around with a ‘??????’ expression.

A white-haired human male had collapsed.

It was a moment that could only paralyze the reason of even Rain, who had seen and experienced all sorts of bizarre sights.