49 . Witch (3)
Weekend.
Hong Biyeon returned to Tehalan, the capital of Adolevit, and went straight to the Frost Palace’s special intelligence facility.
Even within the royal palace, it was a place only those of the direct bloodline could enter, and according to information security regulations, even a royal could be sentenced to life imprisonment if they leaked what was inside, so it had to be treated with utmost caution.
“…I greet Your Highness.”
The special intelligence facility was managed by barrier mages in hooded robes.
Their combat ability was pathetic, but they could handle barriers of extremely high rank, to the point that even an 8th Class mage who truly set their mind to it would find it impossible to break through and intrude with ease.
Of course, if a 9th Class mage came, there would be nothing to be done—but in the first place, no one calculated security based on the assumption of a monster like that.
“Please sign the confidentiality agreement.”
It was an agreement promising to preserve the secrecy of information and materials within the palace. It was not something she saw often, but she had seen it a few times before, so she gave it a cursory glance and signed.
Creeeak—
Without a word, the barrier mages stepped back to either side and struck their staffs against the floor with a thud. The steel door opened, revealing a space filled with darkness.
Clack.
The sound of her shoes rang sharply as she stepped inside.
Whoosh!
She scattered flames into the air, and at once the braziers caught fire, the entire interior brightening in an instant.
This storage room was vast, and held all manner of documents, boxes, grimoires, and objects, but none of that interested Hong Biyeon.
She walked deep into the storage room and stopped in front of a small chamber labeled [Top Secret].
This place too was wrapped in a special barrier…
But that meant little to Hong Biyeon. Without hesitation, she threw the door open and stepped inside.
There did not appear to be many documents stacked here, but every single one of them was a confidential document that could become fatal to Adolevit if exposed to the outside world.
She wandered around for a long time, sorting through papers in search of what she wanted.
Her hands moved fast, yet carefully, like a farmer harvesting fruit, and at last Hong Biyeon found what she had been looking for.
[Morfran Mountain, the dark magic corruption of Grand Duke Isaac Morf, and…]
An utterly careless opening, beginning immediately with content without even a proper title.
At a glance, it was obviously a report written by Hong Si-hwa Adolevit. She was famous for writing reports as if they were personal diaries, and the Queen had approved of that style, so she wrote all her reports that way.
Hong Biyeon had not realized that had already been the case ten years ago.
Rustle.
As she turned the pages, the diary-like report written by Hong Si-hwa lay bare before her.
Hong Biyeon frowned as she read slowly through it. There was far too much content unrelated to the subject of the report.
‘Does that woman really think a report is a diary…?’
What she had eaten that day, who she had given orders to, who she had spoken with.
It was stuffed with that sort of thing.
No wonder the document had seemed so thick.
Then suddenly, Hong Biyeon’s gaze stopped on one sentence.
[I merely wanted to live.]
[Anyone would feel the same. If one is of the direct bloodline born with the curse of Adolevit, then fighting to survive is only natural fate…]
[I will kill my siblings in order to survive.]
[And perhaps, even my children.]
[Yes. I will.]
It was full of traces of needless sentimentality. Princess Hong Si-hwa at that time must have been suffering from depression.
No, even that felt a little strange.
The Hong Si-hwa whom Hong Biyeon knew was a sociopath, someone who would strike down anyone without hesitation if it benefited her.
And that kind of woman had been swayed by emotion?
Something was wrong from the very beginning.
But Hong Biyeon silently turned the pages.
And turned them.
[I threatened Grand Duke Isaac Morf.]
[It could not be helped. There may be an answer within the White Fox Flame Spirit for extinguishing the inextinguishable fire burning in our chests.]
[The probability is… 0.01%.]
[It is worth attempting.]
The report recorded exactly what had happened at the time.
Even the things that seemed like they did not need to be hidden, Hong Si-hwa had still written down in full without omission.
‘The White Fox Flame Spirit?’
She had definitely heard that before.
Was it not a legendary magical beast said to have been sealed long ago by one of the Twelve Mages, Morf? And in the present, was that seal not managed by the Morf family…?
‘…No. It can’t be.’
Impossible.
Hong Biyeon shook her head sharply, but Hong Si-hwa’s diary-report only confirmed that her imagination was correct.
[My ancestor once said this.]
[That the flames of Adolevit are more intense than any other fire, and can burn all things to ashes.]
[Even the flame of the White Fox Flame Spirit…]
She turned the pages.
Turned them again.
And again.
She no longer wanted to read any more of that pointless rambling, and yet why did Hong Si-hwa’s diary keep drawing her eye?
The pages were full of ornate phrases soaked in depression, and the writing reeked so heavily of corruption that it would not have been strange if the author had died that very moment.
‘This can’t be.’
The past had been manipulated.
Hong Si-hwa had not gone there to subdue a dark-magic-corrupted Grand Duke Isaac Morf at all. She had gone there to forcibly release the seal of the White Fox Flame Spirit and bring it down.
And she had done so while pressuring Grand Duke Isaac Morf into it.
Why had she needed to go that far?
Questions like that were pointless.
If it were something of even the slightest value to herself, Hong Si-hwa would have gambled even against a god.
[It hurts.]
[It is agony, as though my chest is burning…]
[At last, tomorrow, we march.]
[I will survive.]
The report ended there, though many pages still remained.
‘What? What happened?’
Hong Biyeon hurriedly turned the pages.
And turned them.
And kept turning them for a long time—
until finally she reached the very last page.
[…I failed.]
Crooked, stained, crumbling letters waited there for her.
Only then did Hong Biyeon finally get to savor, with her own eyes, the disgrace of Princess Hong Si-hwa from ten years ago.
[The White Fox Flame Spirit awakened, but we could not face it, and the allied forces were annihilated.]
“What…”
They failed to subdue it?
If the allied forces had been annihilated, then a catastrophe should have broken out in that entire region. What in the world had happened after that?
[Grand Duke Isaac Morf accepted the power of dark magic.]
[In order to face the White Fox Flame Spirit.]
[I… could not stop it.]
Because if he had not, then everyone truly would have been in danger.
The disaster had begun because of Hong Si-hwa herself, yet she could do nothing, and the burden of that responsibility had been shouldered wholly by someone else.
“Ha.”
What a laughable story.
Hong Biyeon turned the page.
And there, at last, was the final page.
[…After that, I remember nothing.]
[When I awoke again, both the White Fox Flame Spirit and the rampaging Grand Duke Isaac Morf had already fallen.]
[And before them stood an unidentified man.]
[He was a strange and mysterious man.]
[He wore a mask, and held a silver wand in his hand.]
“What is this…”
So in the end, neither Hong Si-hwa nor Isaac had resolved the incident, but an “unidentified man”? Was that not an absurd ending?
[My memory of that time is vague. It seems that a beautiful and enormous wheel was turning through the empty air, and light was pouring down from the sky. That man closed the eyes of Grand Duke Isaac Morf, and then vanished like an illusion.]
That was where the writing ended.
The report concluded with incomprehensible nonsense about wheels, and in the end there was no way to know the man’s identity.
A mage capable of suppressing both the White Fox Flame Spirit and Grand Duke Isaac Morf at once.
How many such beings could there possibly be in this world? At the very least, it would have to be a 9th Class mage… or something even beyond that.
‘A silver wand…’
There were far too many wands like that in the world for it to serve as any clue at all.
If anything, the “mysterious wheel” was more of a clue than the wand.
There were mages who fought by summoning special constructs, after all.
‘A 9th Class mage who wielded a wheel…’
A person like that could not possibly be common in this world, yet such a being would not reveal themselves easily either.
Hong Biyeon returned Hong Si-hwa’s diary-report to its original place and let out a slow breath.
‘…I think I understand why Eizel was looking into this.’
However she had done it, it was highly possible that Eizel too had already uncovered part of the truth behind what had happened on Morfran Mountain.
Even so, it was impossible to share all of this information with her outright.
If she exposed a Level 1 classified document to the outside world, she would not escape punishment.
But…
At the same time, Hong Biyeon had no intention of hiding this secret from Eizel forever.
On the contrary, she deeply wanted to let Eizel know.
For Eizel’s sake?
Absolutely not.
Hong Biyeon did not consider herself that warm-hearted a person.
It was simply…
for Hong Si-hwa’s ruin.
That was all.
Weekend Arcanium was full of students.
The summer sun blazed down, but the boys and girls in their teens roamed the streets as if the heat did not bother them at all, and among them were some who were supposedly searching for Witch Restaurant.
“We should be doing club activities too.”
On a day when the sunlight was not warm at all—rather, so hot it was enough to drive a person mad—
Baek Yuseol spoke with dying eyes, and Ma Yuseong grinned as he pulled out several flyers and showed them off.
“I found some popular restaurants.”
“…What the hell is that.”
“How about this? There’s a place famous for a dish called ‘Special Revolver Fire Shot.’”
“What kind of shitty food is that?”
Was it even food in the first place?
“They say it’s insanely spicy. It’s trendy.”
“Pass.”
“Then what about ‘Let’s Monkey Dance’? They say it tastes like monkeys dancing on top of your head.”
“Wow. Sounds delicious.”
“Should we go there?”
“Pass.”
Watching quietly from the side, Eizel made a look of disbelief.
Neither Ma Yuseong, who kept choosing menu items that looked suspicious from every possible angle, nor Baek Yuseol, who listened seriously to him, could be called normal.
“Haa… I think it would be better to go to an ordinary restaurant. How about one I found instead?”
When Eizel pulled out several flyers of her own, both Baek Yuseol and Ma Yuseong turned to look.
Unlike the others, she had brought places that served mostly normal food, though most of them had one notable trait: almost every dish was loaded with cheese.
“You’re really serious about cheese, huh.”
“Wh-what are you talking about? It’s just… they say it’s good… and famous…”
“The pizza spaghetti looks good.”
At Ma Yuseong’s words, Eizel almost nodded in hurried agreement, but forcibly held it in and replied instead,
“I-I’ve heard that one’s especially tasty. It doesn’t seem like it would be a bad idea to try it. I kind of have that kind of feeling…”
Pfft.
Baek Yuseol burst out laughing, then swiftly snatched her flyer.
“Then let’s go here. I like pizza spaghetti too.”
“Mhm. Me too.”
With Ma Yuseong and Baek Yuseol saying it in unison, Eizel felt oddly soothed, and her ears burned red.
‘This isn’t what I meant…’
In the end, the destination shifted to the restaurant Eizel wanted, and with Baek Yuseol and Ma Yuseong taking the lead, Eizel followed after them, watching their mood. Somehow, things had turned into the two boys accommodating what she wanted to eat.
“It’s this alley.”
The alleys of Arcanium were famous for being complicated, yet Baek Yuseol never once got lost, as if he had a navigation system built into his head.
Since he naturally had a great memory and was smart, it was easy enough to accept, but the more she watched him, the more amazing it seemed.
And then, while following after Baek Yuseol, something suddenly caught Eizel’s eye.
[Witch Restaurant]
The sign flashed in orange light.
It was undoubtedly Witch Restaurant.
“…Huh?”
Why is that here?
The last time she had seen it, it had been in the academic district on the complete opposite side.
‘Does this restaurant really move around?’
If so, then was she just lucky?
Other students wandered around forever and could hardly find it even once, yet she had already found it twice.
It did seem like it might make quite a good club activity report if she submitted something on Witch Restaurant…
but the whole experience there left such an unpleasant feeling that she tore her gaze away.
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s nothing. Let’s hurry.”
Fortunately, Baek Yuseol and Ma Yuseong did not seem to have noticed yet, so as long as they passed by quickly, that was all that mattered.
Eizel hurried her steps.
Hoping that she would never run into Witch Restaurant again.
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