50. Noble Soul (16)
The garden of the spirit Iphanel had always been filled with silence, until only the sound of her breathing remained to fill the space.
A forbidden zone where no living thing was permitted to enter.
She had spent an incredibly long time here all alone.
Her own world.
A place where no one came, and no one could come.
Rather than cozy… it was cold and desolate.
Iphanel remembered the moment immediately after she was born.
That was one of the special things that set her apart from other lifeforms.
‘Well done, little tree.’
Right after she was born, when she first opened her eyes and met the world,
there had been one person there to greet her.
He was…
a mage dressed in a pure white robe.
When Iphanel was still very small and young, before she had even awakened as a divine beast—
back when she had been nothing more than a single tree imbued with sacred energy—
that mage from a distant ancient age had called to her in a gentle voice.
And yet, no matter how hard she tried to recall the memory, shadows lay across his face, and she could not see it properly.
‘…Who are you?’
The present Iphanel tried with all her might to ask, but trying to speak with a memory made no sense in the first place.
Even so, strangely enough,
he answered her.
‘I am… a wandering adventurer. Lately, they call me a mage. It is a most unfamiliar title.’
Iphanel’s heart sank.
The mage in white robes looked up at the sky, then twisted the corner of his mouth.
‘It seems it is time for me to go. I hope you dream sweet dreams beneath the warm sunlight, little tree.’
After saying that, the mage turned and disappeared, and the memory ended there.
But the stream of memory did not stop.
It fast-forwarded rapidly through Iphanel’s years of growth.
A memory from long ago, and yet perhaps also one that could be called recent, surfaced.
The story of the very day Iphanel became a spirit.
By rotten luck…
right as she awakened as a spirit, the barrier had weakened, and through that opening forced her way in a single woman.
I remember her.
‘My, my, what good luck~’
If Iphanel had been in perfect condition, she could have subdued such a minor opponent with the power of a divine beast alone.
But the problem was that she encountered her in the middle of completely shedding her physical body and purifying her soul in order to awaken as a spirit.
Iphanel could do nothing.
Without offering the slightest resistance, she had her heart stolen from her.
That—
that sense of loss—
no one could ever understand it.
Because she had originally been a plant by nature, Iphanel could not move even a single step out of this garden, and the only joy in her life had been listening to the stories of Ha Taeryeong and Kkotseorin whenever they occasionally visited.
She dreamed.
That one day, she would move by her own legs and go outside into the world.
That she would roam this vast and beautiful world and become free.
Whenever Ha Taeryeong, weary from his adventures, stopped by this place, he would tell her tales of his grand exploits.
‘Hey, wasn’t I amazing?’
Kkotseorin, who was just as much of a loner as Iphanel, would organize the events and stories of the outside world into books and read them to her like fairy tales.
‘Once upon a time, there lived a little princess. And that princess…’
Whenever they came, Iphanel was happy.
The feeling of that empty place in her chest being filled was unbearably precious.
But it was not enough.
Not nearly enough.
This was…
a yearning for freedom.
She did not want to be satisfied with merely hearing stories.
She wanted to walk out into the world on her own two feet and face the sky for herself.
And in order for that to happen…
there had been only one way.
To awaken as a spirit with a noble soul.
For dozens, even hundreds of years, she had lived for that single purpose.
She meditated and trained again and again, looking only toward the goal of becoming a spirit.
In that process, her body grew younger and younger, and in order to keep her collapsing mind from breaking apart, her mental age had fallen to that of a child—but she did not care.
If only she could fly freely beneath the moonlit sky pouring down its light, then she would be willing to lose everything.
At the time, she had not known.
Not really.
That she would truly lose everything.
‘I’ll make good use of this~’
Hundreds more years passed after her heart was stolen.
Nothing flowed through her chest anymore. It remained a hollow void, and as an empty shell she could do nothing.
And yet…
she could still think.
With the mind of a child, Iphanel had lived hundreds of lonely years and continued to yearn endlessly.
A savior? A hero? A heart? A soul?
She did not wish for so many things.
She had only needed…
someone to talk to, someone to soothe the loneliness.
‘Poor child.’
An incredibly long time passed.
And when self-awareness finally returned to Iphanel once more, she was able to see Kkotseorin standing before her.
She wore a sorrowful expression.
Perhaps she had been despairing in the helplessness of being able to do nothing.
Iphanel cried out.
Don’t go.
I’m here.
But Kkotseorin could not hear Iphanel’s voice.
‘I’ll save you someday…’
Leaving only that sad expression behind, Kkotseorin departed, and her visits became rare.
The last time Iphanel had seen her, she had felt Kkotseorin’s “blessing” deepening…
perhaps that was why.
The young Iphanel did not understand.
And then dozens more years passed.
By the time even the sensation of loneliness had dulled,
someone came.
‘This is the perfect place to work out.’
It was Baek Yuseol.
At that moment, after such a terribly long time, Iphanel opened her eyes and cried out desperately to him, but…
‘One million twenty-one! One million twenty-two!’
As expected, he could not hear her.
More than that, he had only done twenty-one push-ups, so she had no idea why he was shouting one million twenty-one.
He threw himself into training, leaving her behind, and the longer that time went on, the more he gradually assimilated into this space.
The traces of her energy that had long since scattered through the place through centuries of Iphanel’s breathing.
Those traces began to seep into Baek Yuseol.
If he had been an ordinary mage, such a thing would never have been possible.
It was an extremely bad sign—
but to Iphanel, it was a stroke of luck.
‘What are you doing here right now? Can’t you hear my voice? Can you hear it? Can’t you? You can hear it and you’re ignoring me?’
‘Aaaah, what the hell, what was that?! You scared me!’
He heard my voice.
At that moment, even though she had already lost her heart, Iphanel felt as if her heart were trembling—
no, as if it were bursting.
Her chest swelled, and from her whole body surged a tingling…
some unnamable emotion that words could never describe.
She felt a happiness even greater than the moment she had awakened as a spirit.
Instinctively, Iphanel knew it.
The boy before her was good.
He carried the strong scent of a soul very similar to her own.
‘How much are you paying?’
‘Hm?’
‘Kidding.’
…Of course, for someone like that, he also had a remarkably mischievous side.
Even so, he granted her request.
A heart.
He brought her a heart.
It was absurdly weak compared to the heart she had originally possessed, and its vessel was tiny…
but—
‘Ah.’
Because of that, she could breathe again.
She could open her eyes again.
She could speak again.
And once more, she could begin to hope.
Tiny and fragile though it was, now that she had a vessel again, she had been given a chance to one day awaken once more as a spirit.
‘…Thank you.’
Iphanel had so little experience with interpersonal relationships that she was clumsy at expressing emotion,
yet that single word of thanks was packed full of a kind of overwhelming feeling that the pitiful language system of human beings could never hope to express.
That was right.
So this is what hope feels like, Iphanel thought for the very first time that day.
‘My, my, it’s been a while, hasn’t it? Nice to see you again, hm?’
…Until that woman appeared once more.
Iphanel knew it immediately.
The woman intended to use the same method on her again, the one she had used hundreds of years ago.
Now, weakened after losing all her power, Iphanel could not resist her.
She tried desperately to call for Baek Yuseol, but a thick mental barrier had formed between them, making even that impossible.
Still, Iphanel was not soft enough to fall victim to the exact same trick twice.
Even though she had lost all her power and could do nothing, she was still a wise spirit who had lived for hundreds of years.
‘M-my, my?’
Iphanel chose to corrupt herself.
The process of staining her noble soul with her own hands was unimaginably painful, but she thought that if it meant being robbed of everything by that woman all over again, then this was better.
As expected, there was nothing the woman could do against an Iphanel who had corrupted herself. Gnashing her teeth, she could only vent her fury.
But in the end, there was nothing that woman could do.
Because the fallen Iphanel had been born with dark mana of a rank even higher than hers.
‘Just watch. I’ll come back, and when I do, I’ll definitely swallow you whole.’
Those words had sounded frightening enough,
but by around then, Iphanel had already realized something.
The woman’s energy—the one that had interfered with her heart—
had grown so faint it was almost impossible to recognize.
Someone had clearly defeated her.
Slowly, Iphanel opened her eyes.
A single tear, like a drop of dew, rolled from those eyes.
She had never meant for this to happen.
She had never imagined that her own turbid energy would pollute the World Tree and make it suffer…
not even once.
And now the World Tree was still screaming in pain because of her, and Iphanel’s chest only grew heavier.
‘I have to go back…’
At this rate, she would never be able to face that boy again.
She could not go on making the World Tree suffer.
She had to return
to the place where she originally belonged.
That powerful will engraved in Iphanel’s chest slowly began to shine.
Saaaaah…!!
The violet mist that had filled the entire garden slowly began to fade, changing to green.
Its speed was very slow, but it was unmistakably a process of purification.
If Baek Yuseol had seen it, he would have said, “This is basically a human air purifier.”
If Eizel had seen it, she would have said, “It’s the visual decomposition phenomenon of a magical crystallized particulate haze. A very beautiful phenomenon.”
Iphanel did not know such technical terminology, so she had no idea how extraordinary what she was doing truly was.
A divine beast purifying dark mana of its own accord and exchanging it for sacred energy…
Perhaps this was the most mysterious sight in all the history of the magic world.
“…So this is what they call a noble soul?
To think I would get to witness such a sight with my own eyes. I really am fortunate.”
Flinch!
At that voice, Iphanel jolted and opened her eyes wide.
At some point…
someone had entered the garden.
No, to be precise—
a dark mage.
His hair stuck up in messy clumps, and his clothes were torn all over, making him look no different from a beggar, but an incredibly dense black mana radiated from him.
“Whoa, no need to be on guard. I don’t have a taste for tormenting divine beasts. If anything, I tend to take care of them. Though they all run away the moment they feel my energy.”
Cheolribeon, looking utterly exhausted, frowned and let whatever he had been carrying over his shoulder drop to the ground with a thud.
“Guh…”
It was that woman.
The one who had stolen my heart.
Whoever had done it to her, her whole body was ripped to shreds, utterly ruined, and she couldn’t even stand properly as she trembled all over.
Cheolribeon kicked her hard and sent her rolling, then thrust his hand straight into her chest.
Puuuk!
“Kgh, hak…!”
He clamped a hand over her mouth as she vomited blood, and with a violently irritated look on his face, he pulled something out from her chest.
It was…
a pearl so large and beautiful that one could never imagine it had been sitting inside the chest of a dark mage.
A pearl the size of a palm, shining with rainbow aurora from every angle it caught the sunlight.
“The heart of a spirit… This is my first time seeing one in person too.”
Iphanel looked at Cheolribeon with quiet eyes.
“It’s your heart. …And yet, seeing this, you still don’t become excited. I suppose a spirit really is a spirit.”
Cheolribeon carefully approached Iphanel and gently placed the pearl at her feet.
“It’s been steeped in turbid energy already. Well, with how much time has passed, I suppose that couldn’t be helped. Regrettable. But a spirit of your level should be able to purify it quickly and make it yours again.”
After saying that much, Cheolribeon turned and hoisted the woman back up again.
“…Why?”
When Iphanel asked in a puzzled voice, Cheolribeon paused for a moment, then turned back to meet her eyes.
“Originally, I hadn’t planned on returning it at all, but…”
His eyes were sharp enough to feel as though they pierced through the soul.
And yet, even facing them directly, Iphanel did not blink once.
“I could feel that boy’s energy strongly from you. Baek Yuseol, was it?”
The moment his name was spoken, Iphanel’s expression changed for the first time.
“…It seems I was mistaken about something. It was a pointless fight. I nearly came to regret it greatly.”
He had believed Baek Yuseol was the one behind the manipulation of Soya.
But only after directly clashing with him in battle, with their mana mixed together, had he understood.
The pure and good passion he could feel from him.
That was not the soul an evil man could ever possess.
“Baek Yuseol…
fought desperately for your sake. Even knowing he could die.”
But he did not die.
Because at that moment, I respected his life.
That was likely one of the very few “right choices” Cheolribeon had made in the hundreds of years he had lived.
“This heart is Baek Yuseol’s share.”
Withdrawing the sharpness from his gaze toward Iphanel, Cheolribeon spoke with only a light smile.
“You have been blessed with a very good bond. Enough to make one jealous.”
After saying that much, Cheolribeon disappeared.
Iphanel lowered her head and looked at her own heart, shining like a rainbow.
‘Baek Yuseol’s share…’
The pearl floated gently upward, then flew before Iphanel and settled into both her hands.
She hugged it tightly and shut her eyes.
It felt as though the warmth of someone impossible to feel was being conveyed all the way here.
‘And also…
my share…’
Softly curving pink lips.
A smile in full bloom.
The wind blew.
It was a fierce typhoon.
A quiet vortex rose within Iphanel’s chest, and a dizzying sensation strong enough to blow even her mind away wrapped itself around her soul.
Holding her heart like that, she savored the emotion.
For a very long time,
until the day itself faded.
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