novelraw Chapter 20
Chapter 20
Ch.20 This moment is heartbreaking
‘I can’t believe it. I just can’t believe it.’
Quietly watching her collapse to the ground, clutching her head, Giovanni felt fear.
No matter how much she liked him, officially, the two were not lovers.
Yet, seeing Scarlet, who looked like a madwoman, collapse onto the ground, pulling her hair and shedding tears, he began to vaguely understand why Hans had tried to run away.
‘At first… I thought Brother was just a winner in life.’
Thus, he watched Scarlet’s state for a long time.
After quite a while, she rose from her seat and spoke.
“Sss… Where… where is my patron buried?”
He had hoped she would calm down a bit…
But hearing her voice filled with sobs, Giovanni felt pangs of conscience.
With great difficulty, he opened his mouth.
“This… this way. I will guide you.”
Thus, Giovanni led her past the gravestones in the cemetery toward the pre-purchased gravestone.
Standing before that gravestone, Scarlet’s crimson eyes trembled violently again.
Seeing the gravestone inscribed with Hans’s name and birth date, Scarlet felt emotions unlike anything she had felt until now.
-Thud.
She collapsed limply onto the ground.
Seeing the peerless beauty sitting helplessly on the ground, gazing with a desolate expression, Giovanni felt guilty.
Her expression looked so sorrowful and heartbroken.
Enough to make one forget her earlier violent behavior.
“Huu… You promised, didn’t you? After… after the Demon King died and peace came… huu… we would travel together…”
Long ago, Hans had secretly visited the front lines to see Scarlet.
Of course, he hadn’t gone just to see her; he had met all members of the Hero party at different times…
Nevertheless, the two had spent a very brief time together.
At that time, Scarlet didn’t know how to repay him and felt sorry.
Hans had smiled gently and said,
-Miss Scarlet, I have no one around me, so I feel lonely. Perhaps because everyone around me is only business-related? After you defeat the Demon King, won’t you show me the world?
Hearing those words, Scarlet couldn’t sleep that night.
In a way, his words had felt like a proposal to her.
Although she wasn’t sure if he loved her, she believed he wouldn’t suggest traveling together if he felt nothing, and she had been happy.
But…
The man who made that promise was already dead, lying cold beneath the earth, a fact that plunged her into despair.
The day she first became a Hero.
When she was deemed incompetent as a Hero for failing the Mage Tower’s trial.
He had appeared like the wind and advised her.
-No matter what others say, I believe in you, Miss Scarlet. I believe—no, I know—you will become the savior of this world.
When her hometown was nearly reduced to ashes by the Demon King’s army.
He had predicted the Demon King’s army’s attack route, unknown to anyone else, and protected her hometown.
When she was about to collapse under the Demon King’s forces, his artifacts had enabled her to turn the tide; whenever she faced danger or hardship, he had been the first to step forward and help her…
He was dead.
Now, when she could finally repay his immense support.
For her, who had been curious about him for a long time and had grown to love him, accepting this fact was not easy.
“Huu… huk…”
Thus, she cried, staring blankly at his gravestone.
How much time had passed?
Watching the sun slowly set, Giovanni gradually felt uneasy.
‘Shouldn’t… shouldn’t we leave soon?’
Though Scarlet was sad, Giovanni, thinking Hans was comfortably spending his vast fortune on the New Continent, naturally wanted to go home.
But having already guided her to the cemetery, it felt awkward to now say Hans was living well, so he watched from a distance.
‘She’s really… truly beautiful.’
If he didn’t have a lover back home, he might have fallen deeply for her—Scarlet crying was fatally alluring.
Her snow-white skin, lush long grey hair, and tears flowing from her crimson eyes, which looked empty yet exuded decadent beauty.
She was an extraordinary beauty.
But Hans, living comfortably on the New Continent, pretending to mourn beside her, who believed he was dead, was merely a bothersome task.
Honestly, he wished she would quickly meet a wonderful man and forget about Hans.
Thus, he cautiously opened his mouth.
“Certainly… my patron would be grateful.”
But even Giovanni’s consolation received no response from Scarlet.
So he waited much longer.
Only when darkness fell and stars became visible did Scarlet finally speak.
“Was his… final moment painful?”
At Scarlet’s sudden question, Giovanni thought,
‘He didn’t even die—how could it be painful?’
He imagined Hans was probably peacefully living in some expensive mansion somewhere on the New Continent and gave a vague answer.
“He was at peace. And it gets cold at night. Please…”
At Scarlet’s actions, Giovanni couldn’t continue speaking.
“It’s because of me… If I had defeated the Demon King faster… because I was useless and incompetent…”
Scarlet trembled, clutching her arms.
Seeing her nails dig into her skin, drawing red blood, Giovanni cried out in alarm.
“What… what are you doing?”
Bewilderment.
To harm herself because Hans had died.
At Scarlet’s unexpected behavior, Giovanni momentarily stammered, but quickly pulled himself together.
“Doing this… won’t bring my patron back! Please pull yourself together!”
“If I had been more useful, he wouldn’t have had to suffer and travel around… It’s because of me…”
‘It’s not because of you! That man is eating and living well right now!’
He wanted to reveal that he was alive, but if he did, he didn’t know what punishment he might receive for daring to deceive the Hero.
But seeing Scarlet, who had lost focus, Giovanni could only move his lips in frustration.
Hadn’t Hans’s midnight escape turned a perfectly sane woman into a madwoman?
Motivated by humanitarianism to save this pitiful woman, Giovanni frantically racked his brain.
“Don’t think like that. Do you know how proud my patron was of you, Miss Scarlet? If you look like this, my patron would be disappointed.”
In his urgency, he said something plausible…
But if Hans saw Scarlet like this now, he truly would be disappointed.
If Scarlet’s negative emotions accumulated, she could become the King of the Dead.
Therefore, when Hans learned she was destined to become a Hero, he had paid special, careful attention to her.
The reason Hans saved her village was to preserve a mental sanctuary for her to return to when she collapsed.
It was a precaution to prevent her, even remotely, from becoming the King of the Dead.
Anyway, Scarlet reacted to Giovanni’s words.
“If I’m like this… will my patron… huu… be disappointed?”
At her words, Giovanni nodded.
“Yes. How much did my patron cherish you, Miss Scarlet?”
Hearing Giovanni’s blatant lie, delivered without even licking his lips, Scarlet stared blankly at the gravestone.
‘But… is my patron’s name really Hans?’
When she first saw the gravestone, her heart had been torn, so she hadn’t noticed, but as she stared blankly at the gravestone, a doubt arose.
The deceased’s name inscribed on the gravestone: Hans.
Certainly, Leah’s beloved master’s name was Hans, and Cecilia’s lover’s name was also Hans.
But if the name of the man she loved was also Hans, could this really be a coincidence?
Scarlet, regaining some rationality, scrutinized the gravestone carefully.
Upon closer inspection, many things seemed odd.
She had once casually asked her patron about his birthday.
Realizing the birth date she remembered hearing then differed from the one inscribed on the gravestone, she spoke.
“Is my patron’s… name really Hans?”
At that moment, Giovanni instinctively sensed something was wrong.
How to describe it? Scarlet now resembled a lion crouching before a hunt.
Suppressing his fear as much as possible, he spoke in as natural a voice as he could.
“Yes. It is Hans. Miss Scarlet, your wound is deep. Please wait a moment. I’ll bring something to stop the bleeding.”
Giovanni slowly rose from his seat, glancing around, ready to flee at any moment.
But the Hero who had slain the Demon King would never be easily fooled.
As Giovanni subtly moved away from her, Scarlet called out in a low voice.
“Wait a moment.”
But Giovanni was not one to stop just because she said so.
‘If I stop now, I’ll die! I absolutely must not stop!’
The moment Scarlet opened her mouth, Giovanni sprinted away, and Scarlet hastily chased after him.
“Stop right there!”
‘Would you stop if you were me?’
Giovanni used a gravestone as a stepping stone and leaped over the wall in one bound.
Anyone else seeing this would have shaken their head, calling it an outrageous act.
Giovanni thought Scarlet was utterly insane, but Scarlet felt Giovanni was the truly insane one.
‘Is… is he insane?! How can he step on a gravestone?’
Having thought that far, Scarlet also leaped over the wall in one bound.
“Where… did he go?”
Only passersby were visible at the three-way intersection; Giovanni had completely vanished.
She searched the surroundings a bit more but couldn’t even find Giovanni’s shadow.
Finally, Scarlet sank down with a dazed expression, desperately sobbing as she thought of the vanished Hans.
But she could not have anticipated that Giovanni had conducted prior investigations and prepared an escape route in case he was caught…
That he was now hiding in the alley across the street, watching her.
She would never dream of it.
‘Damn… damn Brother Hans!’
While Giovanni cursed Hans from his hiding spot,
Hans, who had made the beautiful Hero Scarlet cry, was comfortably lounging under a canopy on the carriage driven by Leah.
“Leah, it’s hot, so hot. Can’t you drive any faster?”
On such a hot day, making his disciple drive the carriage under the blazing sun, he was diligently exploiting her.
At Hans’s words, Leah turned her head, looked at Hans comfortably lounging in the cargo carriage, and shouted,
“Ah, seriously! You’re comfortably lying in the corner, and you dare say that?”
At her angry voice, the native siblings flinched, and Leah gave an awkward smile and said,
“Sunak, Wail. That wasn’t meant for you, so no need to be so scared.”
Sunak was the older brother, and Wail was the younger sister.
Seeing Leah flustered, Hans teased,
“Why? I don’t know how to drive a carriage. And I’m doing this to make you comfortable…”
Hans extended his right hand and cast holy magic on the horse.
“Aren’t I even casting holy magic on the horse?”
“Ugh! Seriously, if you can’t even handle a horse, at least don’t be annoying!”
Turning her head to look ahead, only Leah and the baby Phoenix atop her head tilted their heads in puzzlement.
Thus, they drove for quite a while toward the native village.
Although time was tight to intervene in the original story, I finally thought of one clever solution.
“Master, if you have divine power, why not cast holy magic on the horse?”
In the game, there is no system to cast holy magic or buffs on ordinary mounts like horses.
Therefore, upon hearing Leah’s words, I immediately cast holy magic on the horse, and the result was a great success.
Thanks to this, we could travel faster than expected, and we decided to take Sunak and Wail to the native village.
“Hey, mister, do you really know our village?”
When Hans said he knew the hidden native village, Sunak, worried, asked.
Well, understandable. The two races had bad relations.
One side tried to enslave natives with magic, while the other fought off invaders—it was natural for them to be wary of Leah and me.
Anyway, Hans positively answered Sunak’s question.
“Yeah. Go west until you reach the mountain range; it’s halfway up that mountain range.”
It was slightly highland, good for defense, and the village farmed using water from the perennial snow melting atop the mountains.
‘The scenery was absolutely stunning.’
“How do you know? That there’s a village there?”
For a moment, Hans was speechless.
What excuse could he make?
Had he been lying so much lately that he was getting confused?
Hans began to forget what lies he had told.
First, he tried to pretend he was from here.
“Well…”
Leah, who had stopped the carriage, turned around and spoke instead of Hans.
“Master is from the New Continent, so of course he knows. And Master…”
Leah’s expression as she spoke was extremely strange.
How to describe it? Her mouth smiled, but her eyes were sharply open, making it obvious to anyone that she was angry.
Seeing Leah tremble with shoulders shaking and fists clenched, Hans instinctively shrank back.
Like a cornered mouse curling up.
“I’ll teach you how to drive the carriage. Come here. Hurry up.”
Her hair flowed with magic, dancing gently.
‘If I don’t go now, I’ll die.’
Having assessed the situation, Hans smiled brightly and nodded vigorously.
“Yeah! Knowing how to drive a carriage will definitely be helpful. I’ve become eager to learn how to drive a carriage properly.”
Thus, he sat beside her and learned how to drive the carriage.
‘Sigh… such is my fate.’
A master trembling for fear of being hit by his disciple.
Hans finds this moment heartbreaking.
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