CH 38

Hierian couldn’t speak and tightly sealed his lips. Suddenly, his fist clenched with full force. He glared at Adandito with intense eyes and asked, 

“Who are you to say that?”

“…”

“Who are you to meddle in my business?”

Hierian gritted his teeth. A sound echoed as he bit into a candy. As a result, Adandito’s gaze grew even colder. The room grew dim, and a chilly air seeped in. Just when it felt like they were about to attack each other, they heard a knocking sound at the door.

“Adandito! Do you have a moment?”

It was Siara.

As soon as they heard her voice, both of their expressions softened.

* * *

When I woke up, Hierian wasn’t there. But there was a more important issue at hand. The problem was with the “Blessing of Eora,” the ring I was wearing.

I had received the ring from Adandito, but I had never used it even once. Yet when I woke up, the gem on the ring had turned opaque, as if it had reached the end of its lifespan.

‘Could it be that I accidentally used it when healing Hierian?’

Sometimes, when I exerted power beyond my capacity, it automatically utilized the power of the ring as well. Hierian was undoubtedly a formidable administrator and the strongest magician in the world, so it was true that healing him required a considerable amount of power.

However, I had never depleted the ring’s power so quickly, not even during the expedition. Moreover, this ring was special.

‘It’s the ring that awakens the fairy inside the gem!’

Under normal circumstances, I would have discarded the ring and obtained a new one. But the fairy inside the ring was alive and moving. It was regrettable to waste such a precious ring like this.

However, I couldn’t leave it as it was. I had to restore the ring immediately.

There was only one way to restore the ring: to receive a blessing from a powerful divine official. Normally, it was more cost-effective to acquire a new ring rather than pay the cost of receiving a blessing. However…

‘Since Adandito is in the mansion, I should seek his assistance.’

If I received his blessing as a divine official, I could restore the ring. As the day was drawing to a close, the mansion was quiet. I quickly changed my clothes and headed straight to Adandito’s room.

“Adandito! Do you have a moment?”

Fortunately, he was in his room and promptly opened the door for me. I entered his room and saw Hierian inside. 

“Oh, were you in the middle of a conversation? Did I interrupt?”

Hierian urgently raised his head, and Adandito also made room for me and said, 

“Not at all. Would you like a cup of tea?”

Perhaps they intended to have a tea time together. There was a teapot emitting steam on the table. I didn’t want to immediately bring up the main topic, so I simply nodded. Adandito poured tea into a cup for me.

While observing his calm gestures, I opened my mouth as soon as he took a seat.

“Adandito, I have a favor to ask.”

“Please go ahead.”

“Could you restore this ring for me?”

I presented the ring with the faded gem in front of him. Adandito examined the ring and smiled gently.

“So, this is the ring I gave you. It seems like you’ve used it quite a bit.”

“No, I’ve never used it once. But it seems like I used it all up when I healed Hierian earlier.”

“…You used up the ring’s power with just one healing? It’s made from the most blessed gem in the temple, surprisingly.”

“I know, right? I can’t believe it myself. Hierian, were you in a lot of pain earlier?”

I didn’t know if he had fallen seriously ill, as he suddenly screamed and collapsed. But Hierian raised his head.

“I wasn’t in pain at all…”

He hesitated and then continued.

“I just had a dream.”

“A dream?”

“Yeah, someone came out and……. Was her name Piasse?”

Piasse was the name of the female protagonist in “Withered Flowers Don’t Cry.” But did Hierian really dream about her?

“How did that happen?”

Adandito, who had been listening to the whole time, asked Hierian.

“Can you tell us what the dream was about?”

“Well, this girl named Piasse asked me for help. She said she had nowhere to run and asked me to open a portal to another dimension… And then I woke up.”

I knew that scene. It was from the later part of “Withered Flowers Don’t Cry.” Piasse, the original female lead, and savior, had managed to suppress the madness of the male leads, but their mutual hatred only grew stronger. It was because the male leads fought each other to possess her.

As a result, the temple, the tower, and the empire had been trapped in an endless cycle of war, and meaningless deaths multiplied. The resentment of the deceased was directed toward Piasse.

‘If only that woman wasn’t there—!’

Piasse herself was well aware of that fact. When she became sad, the male leads told her to choose one of them. If she chose one, the other two would accept their demise. The male leads were obsessed with her.

However, the power of the male leads was interconnected. If one of them disappeared, no one knew what kind of rift would occur in the world. But with both of them gone, Piasse didn’t want to choose an obvious destruction.

‘Perhaps it would be better if I disappeared instead.’

In the end, Piasse persuaded Hierian to send her to another dimension. After a long persuasion, Hierian decided to open a portal for her. 

Piasse disappeared beyond the dimensional door, and Hierian, enraged by Dianel, had his limbs torn apart and was bound to the tower. And Adandito used Hierian’s limbs to summon Piasse back to the current dimension.

Looking back, it was a truly tragic novel.

‘But how did Hierian dream about that?’

It could be something like a premonition dream.

‘Well, it’s not relevant to me since I’m already dead.’

Moreover, since I had taken their curse upon myself, they had no reason to go mad. Perhaps they would die at a similar time as me. So it was just a dream, nothing of great significance.

Adandito and Hierian didn’t seem to pay much attention to it either. While lost in thought, Adandito began to bestow blessings upon the ring.

Considering the number of blessings contained within the gem, it would be best to leave the ring in Adandito’s hands for a while.

As I watched him pray while holding the ring, I turned to Hierian and asked, out of concern, 

“Hierian, what would you do if someone asked for help like in your dream?”

“…Well, opening a portal is not an easy task.”

“What if it’s someone important enough for you to help?”

In response, Hierian stared at me with wide eyes and asked, 

“Like Siara?”

“Why are you talking about me?”

“Well, I won’t help unless it’s Siara.”

Then he chuckled. It seemed like he would gladly help anyone who asked for his assistance, especially someone he barely knew.

Sighing, I spoke to him in a stern voice, like scolding a stubborn child, 

“If something like that happens, never help them, understand?”

“Why?”

“…Well, because your position could become precarious.”

“Why?”

“Opening a portal is not an easy task, you said.”

“Yeah, but I opened a portal when I sealed the Demon King.”

At that moment, he seemed surprised and asked, 

“Oh, so that’s why my body became weak.”

That couldn’t be the reason because there was no description in the original story of Hierian’s body weakening after sealing the Demon King. But to emphasize the need for caution, I nodded deliberately.

“Yes, the side effects are tremendous.”

“…I see.”

He wore a gloomy expression. Then Adandito, who had been silent all along, spoke up.

“From the beginning, there’s no reason to escape beyond dimensions. Who knows what’s on the other side of the dimension?”

“Yeah, you can just hide somewhere else. You can go to another continent or something, right? Maybe it was just a dream.”

I looked at them with cloudy eyes.

‘You shouldn’t say those things with your mouths.’

Would the heroine have stayed quiet? In the early part of the novel, the heroine, who couldn’t accept her fate, ran away dozens of times. Eventually, she even fled to another continent.

But when the fleeing heroine arrived at her hiding place after many hardships and let out a sigh of relief, extraordinary figures would appear, saying spine-chilling lines like, “Did you enjoy your journey, Piasse?” 

The reason for letting her run away was simply because “she seemed to want to see the outside world.”

Anyway, those terrifying beings were nonchalantly sipping tea in front of me.

‘Well, is it okay to just go on like this?’

Somehow, I felt the urge to go back to my room. As I slowly distanced myself from the two, Adandito spoke to me.

“By the way, Lady Siara, have you had dinner yet?”

“Huh? No, not yet.”

“In that case, I will bring you your meal.”

He smiled kindly. At that moment, my restless buttocks firmly stuck to the chair.

“Great! Bring something delicious!”

The mansion was still in a festive mood, and all the servants were busy. Plus, I’d rather stay in my room and have a meal than move around and receive a scolding from Therid. 

‘Yeah, it’s something that hasn’t happened yet.’

Besides, since I’ve received all the curses from the main characters, I had even less reason to worry. Forgetting the thoughts I had a while ago, I waited for Adandito to bring the meal.