Returnee's S-Rank Management Guide

Chapter 139 : The One Who Summons Winter (3)

The One Who Summons Winter (3)

At the summit of a tower made of ice.

Ardan Bello sat on a throne of white ice with his eyes closed, recalling what had happened two days ago.

"So, you're back here—seems like you didn't achieve anything, Ardan."

If the core in the Magic Realm hadn't been his daughter's heart, then the highest probability was that it was with Damian.

For that reason, Ardan had no choice but to face the person he least wanted to meet.

"I never imagined that you, rotting away in the north for so long, would come all the way to another world."

His tone was calm, but there was an edge to his words.

Ardan realized that he despised him.

"Where is Yuria's heart?"

Yuria, Ardan's daughter. The Grand Duchess of the north, and a demon born with incredible talent.

She was someone Damian knew well too.

Had she not been killed by humans 300 years ago, she would have been a great asset now.

"Ardan Bello, do you not hate humans?"

"......"

"Or perhaps, are you angry at us for stealing your daughter's heart from her remains?"

Ardan did not answer.

Neither was right, and neither was wrong.

"If I can retrieve my daughter's heart, that is enough for me."

"... Is that so."

Damian nodded as he looked at Ardan Bello.

"Fight Park Jung-woo. Force him to use the Demon King's Heart."

To make this world just a little closer to the Demon Realm.

"If you do, I'll tell you the whereabouts of your daughter's heart."

"You don't actually have the heart?"

"That I cannot say. However, I know where your daughter's heart is. Swear to me."

With Damian bringing up an oath, Ardan let out a deep sigh.

"I've sworn an oath with him. I cannot kill a human."

"That was when you were just an ordinary demon."

Damian opened up a black space and pulled out a pure white sword, holding it out to Ardan.

"Declare the Domain of Winter and temporarily freeze your oath."

"......"

"You can do it, can't you, One Who Summons Winter?"

Oaths exerted absolute power over demons, but Ardan had a method to temporarily neutralize it.

"Take the sword, Ardan. I'll help you get what you want."

It sounded just like a devil's whisper.

'No, this is exactly a devil's whisper.'

He never even promised to give him his daughter's heart.

He merely said he would tell him where it was.

That was all, yet Ardan could not defy Damian's words.

Finding his daughter's heart.

That was Ardan's sole purpose for living.

"Vice-Guildmaster, there are no monsters, absolutely nothing. This place really is nothing but a tower made of ice."

"We've come up quite far. It must be the top soon..."

Sitting on the throne, Ardan slowly opened his eyes at the voices reaching his ears.

In his sight, about twenty humans were just stepping into the enormous icy hall where he sat.

"Stop."

Nam Ho-seung raised a hand, instructing his guild members who were following him.

"Something's here."

Ardan looked at Nam Ho-seung, who was leading the guild members closer, with a gaze almost devoid of emotion.

Nam Ho-seung was a top-tier A-rank hunter, and the elite of Mirae Guild, gathered from B-rank and above awakeners.

'Why isn't he reacting at all?'

Nam Ho-seung frowned as he watched the man sitting on the throne made of ice, simply staring back at him.

'Is he really human? Or maybe, he's a monster in the form of a human.'

He felt an eerie presence, too strange to belong to a human.

He didn't know that it was 'demonic energy', but Nam Ho-seung's sharp senses warned him that this was a power no human should possess.

"When I give the signal, rush him and subdue him."

"Yes, sir."

At Nam Ho-seung's words, Mirae Guild's hunters all readied their weapons.

But Ardan didn't spare a single glance for the hunters radiating murderous intent.

As if they posed absolutely no threat to him.

'I need to approach this as cautiously as possible.'

He didn't know how strong that monster was, but considering he had built such an ice tower alone, he must not be underestimated.

Step by step.

Very cautiously, Nam Ho-seung and his team drew close to Ardan.

"... You've come."

Ardan opened his mouth.

'Where is he looking?'

He seemed to be staring too far away to be talking to them.

It was at that instant, as one of them was about to ask, that Ardan reached for his waist.

He wore two swords at his side.

Two pure-white swords.

When Ardan drew one of them, the thin blade began to freeze over.

And atop the frozen blade, something pure white spun round and round.

'Something's wrong.'

A chill ran down Nam Ho-seung's back.

The monster before his eyes was absolutely not something they could handle.

"Everyone, get out of this hall right no—!!!"

As he shouted to his guildmates to flee—

A tempest of cold erupted.

***

"Uwaaahhh!!"

As soon as a man in a white hood entered the ice tower, a storm of white frost swirled around the tower.

Thanks to that, the hunters guarding the entrance had to scramble away from the tower.

A few of them were blown away and hurled outside by the wind.

"W-what's going on?!"

"L-look at this."

The rookie hunter pointed at the ground to the senior standing there, both of them staring at the storm of frost encircling the tower.

The grass where he'd just stood was entirely frozen.

'... If I had tried to endure and keep standing inside there—'

He wouldn't have just been blown away by the wind, but would have frozen solid, just like the grass.

"Are you alright?"

"Ah! H-Hunter Lee Soo-ah?!"

Just then, Lee Soo-ah, who had disappeared earlier with Manager Park Jung-woo, approached.

Perhaps it was thanks to the blue flames flowing around her body.

Somehow, the raging frost around them seemed to abate a little.

"What about Manager Park Jung-woo?"

"... He's waiting in the car. I came because of the strange phenomenon at the tower."

At Soo-ah's words, the hunters finally seemed to relax and nodded.

Until a little while ago, it was just a chilly breeze, but now the cold was so severe even they, as awakeners, found it hard to bear.

With Jung-woo, a regular person, around here, something dangerous might have happened.

'Again.'

Unlike the other hunters, Soo-ah gazed up at the frost-shrouded tower with a complicated look.

'He's gone off to handle it alone again.'

This made twice now.

After Shim Chun-hoo, now Ardan Bello.

Both were enemies Soo-ah herself should have faced.

But Jung-woo never allowed it.

'Shim Chun-hoo had to die, and it was his fate to do so.'

He didn't want Soo-ah to take that role herself.

'Yet he let Hwang Yeon-ji accompany him.'

Was it because of the leash?

No. It was just because she wasn't reliable.

Not because of rank, but because Yeon-ji had more experience and was more mature, that's why she was chosen.

'It's the same this time.'

Jung-woo did trust Soo-ah.

That's not something she could deny.

But just as much as he valued her, he didn't like putting her in danger.

The only recent exception was at Relic Fiesta, where she briefly confronted Ardan.

'Even then, he rushed over in the end.'

He probably would have defeated him himself, had she tried to take him on at that time too.

She knew.

Compared to other S-ranks, she was still lacking.

Because she couldn't use 'Conceptualization Technique', facing a top-rank demon was still beyond her.

"... Hunter Lee Soo-ah?"

Someone called her name.

But Soo-ah slowly stretched her hand into the frost storm.

She felt a chill so cold it might freeze her whole body, but she did not freeze.

The flames wrapping her body resisted the cold.

'The flames I saw back then.'

The blue flames had always guided Soo-ah.

Even then.

When rage turned her thoughts red, and she gripped Kang Gi-hun's neck.

A blue spark flared on his chest.

"'Soo-ah-ssi, you rely too much on Manager Park.'"

When she'd asked Baek Hojun for guidance about the Conceptualization Technique, that's what he had said.

"'That's not necessarily a bad thing. Thanks to Manager, you've come a long way.'"

A blue spark jumped from her fingertips, a little flame flickered in the midst of the frost storm.

"'But now it's not about what you can do. Now, you must know what you want to do with your power.'"

It wasn't just about answering Jung-woo's faith.

Not just about what she could do, but what she wanted to do with her power.

'No.'

She thought just answering his trust was enough.

If that alone was enough, she didn't need to be greedy for more.

Simply being by his side felt like more than she deserved.

'Not enough.'

Her thoughts changed not long ago, at Relic Fiesta.

When Kang Gi-hun jeered, saying Park Jung-woo was dead.

She felt something snap in her head.

She was afraid.

'If Manager had really been seriously hurt that time...'

If he'd lost his life—what would have happened?

Just imagining it was terrifying.

'What do you want to do?'

Baek Hojun had asked her that.

She thought she finally knew the answer.

She never wanted to feel the fear she'd felt back then, ever again.

She didn't want to lose the only person who had ever accepted her.

So, she needed strength.

Strength to kill any enemy who threatened his life.

She needed flames that would burn all threats to ashes.

"'Relying too much on others is not good.'"

It's not reliance.

Wanting to be close to what you desire is human instinct.

She'd always given up the things she liked, always avoided and ran away from them.

That was her life.

But now—she didn't want to give up on what she wanted anymore.

'Never.'

Just then, through the white storm of frost, a path of blue flames began to reveal itself.

***

The higher I climbed the tower, the stronger the surrounding cold became.

It was a power distinctly different from before.

'He wasn't hiding his strength before...'

It seemed he had found a catalyst to amplify his strength.

For example, the magic sword he used at his peak.

Step.

"Still, he seems to have kept his oath."

At the top of the tower, a vast hall appeared.

In its center stood Ardan, gripping a white sword.

Its form was different than the one I'd seen before.

'It's Tyrfing, after all.'

It was the sword he had wielded when I first faced him, 300 years ago.

"No point in killing lives that don't matter."

At his words, I gave a hollow laugh and looked around.

All around the hall stood frozen statues, turning away as if trying to flee.

Most likely Nam Ho-seung and the Mirae Guild hunters who had climbed the tower earlier.

"Since they're frozen by Tyrfing's power, as long as you break the spell in time, there shouldn't be any major problem. Just a mild case of frostbite, perhaps."

That's simple enough.

Meaning I just have to take down Ardan as quickly as possible.

"Did you get what you wanted?"

"If I had, I wouldn't still be here."

What Ardan wanted was his daughter's heart.

The fact that he'd come back to me meant he hadn't found it, despite searching all through the Magic Realm.

'He must have gone to Damian afterward.'

Damian would have used this to manipulate Ardan.

I could roughly guess how it went.

If he claimed to have the heart, Ardan would have wanted to see it, so he only said he knew its whereabouts.

'Sealing it with the demon's oath.'

Coincidentally, I too had a guess as to the heart's location.

'But—'

I was simply reluctant to guide him there.

Ardan Bello.

His daughter was killed by humans 300 years ago.

Even if he was calm now, I couldn't trust that entirely.

There was no way he didn't hate humans, and no guarantee he wasn't our enemy.

"Then why did you not include yourself among the humans you cannot kill?"

With the white sword pointed at me, Ardan asked.

I'd sworn many oaths with Ardan, but none that prevented him from killing me.

"I can't die."

I answered nonchalantly to Ardan, who stared at me with a hardened face.

"And you couldn't kill me anyway."

"... Arrogant."

The moment he finished speaking, Ardan sprang forward, slashing the white sword at me.

The cold air emanating from its tip was so intense, it felt like my skin was freezing just from its proximity.

Boom!!

"!!"

I blocked the blade with my fist.

With a weighty impact like iron striking iron, Ardan's figure skidded back, cracking the floor beneath him.

"I have every right to be arrogant."

I briefly glanced at my fist, now dyed black by demonic blood, then gave Ardan, who was regaining his stance, a crooked grin.

"Did you forget who it was that killed your king?"

At those words, Ardan clamped his mouth shut.

-------------= Clacky's Corner -------------=

Damn, that's a cold thing to say.

【ദ്ദി(⩌ᴗ⩌)】