Chapter 582.1: Farewell at Daybreak (1)
Roel Ascart was a veteran gourmet.
He had traveled all over the world and tried all kinds of delicacies, which made him particular about the ingredients used in his food. He understood how excellent ingredients could draw out the finest tastes in a dish.
But he had never thought that a day would come when he would be treated as an ingredient.
Faced with Nora’s blazing eyes, Roel bit his lips. For a moment, he wondered if this was how a wild rabbit felt when hunted by a tiger, but when he looked at the golden chain between them, he had a weird feeling that he might be domestic instead.
“Ahem! Nora, how does it taste?”
“How surprising. It’s actually decent.”
Nora stared in surprise at the pot of stew comprising boiled wild vegetables and air-dried demonic beast meat seasoned with a pinch of salt. She thought that it deserved a compliment considering the limited resources they had on hand.
“I am from a military house, after all. I am at least equipped with basic survival skills. Didn’t I make something similar for you before?”
“Is that so… Who else have you cooked for?”
“Ah? T-this…”
Isn’t this a death question? Roel exclaimed in his mind as his eyes swam around in guilt. After some thought, he decided to push his way through.
“I have only made food for you.”
“Really?”
“Of course. The only two times I have had to personally cook in the wilderness are the times I spent with you on this land.”
“…Two times, huh? It looks like we are pretty fated with this land.”
Nora looked at the starry sky above as she fell through the corridor of memories.
Two years ago, it was also on this very land that she lost control of her bloodline and was nearly devoured by the Angel Sovereign. It was a lone man who marched into this dangerous land and saved her. Neither of them could have imagined back then that they would return to this place.
“But the situation is now the opposite of what it was back then. The rescuer has now become the rescuee, and I’m in a far worse condition than before,” Roel remarked with a bitter smile as he poked the campfire while thinking about the past too.
Nora was silent for a long while before she said in an uncharacteristically gloomy voice, “Both are rescue operations, but I’m unable to accompany you to the very end. It’s all my fault. I’m sorry.”
“What are you saying? It’s the limitation of the spell! There’s no right or wrong!” Roel exclaimed.
Looking at the crestfallen golden-haired woman, he found himself regretting having mentioned the past. Before he could change the topic, Nora suddenly raised a surprising question.
“There’s one thing I have been wanting to ask you…”
“What is it?”
“That time when you came to Tark Prairie to look for me, Shrouding Fog was lurking in the vicinity, and there was the threat of the deviants too. Weren’t you afraid?”
“Well”—Roel prodded the campfire with a poker as he tried to recall his feelings back then—“I was terrified. I was only an Origin Level 4 transcendent then. I was hardly strong enough to go against those threats… It was probably an impulse that allowed me to act so decisively.”
“An impulse? Does that mean that you would have made a different decision if you were calm?”
“It wasn’t a decision I made on the spur of a moment… You can say that it was an impulse based on my feelings. The result would have been the same whether I was calm or not.”
“You’re saying that…”
“…It’s because I’m fond of you.”
“!”
Before the crackling campfire, Roel lowered his head as he felt a surge of heat overwhelming his mind, but that was also the reason he didn’t notice that Nora’s cheeks were much redder than his.
“E-even so, don’t you think that it’s much too reckless to act on that? You should have at least formulated a plan and gathered an army…”
“There was no time. You don’t understand how I felt. Just the thought that you might disappear for good rendered me incapable of sitting down for even a single second to plan. It took the limits of my self-control to even issue a request for reinforcement.”
Roel slowly opened his heart up and shared the feelings he had felt back then. Nora’s expression mellowed as she quietly listened to his words.
“You fool. It was still too risky. However, there’s one thing you got wrong. I understand how you felt. That’s exactly what I’m feeling right now.”
“…My apologies for worrying you.” Roel thought about their current plight and apologized out of guilt.
Nora shook her head in response.
“Rather than an apology, what I really want to hear is you repenting over your crime.”
“My crime? What crime?”
“The crime of abandoning your liege for an entire year, you traitorous subject. Don’t expect me to easily forgive you for that.”
Nora tightened her grip on the chain, but her expression looked more tender than domineering. Roel chuckled at that sight.
“That’s too heavy of a crime. I don’t have the guts to do that.”
“I couldn’t find any traces of you at all. You didn’t leave a note, either. I’m already being merciful by calling it ‘abandonment’. Others would have deemed it desertion.”
“Desertion? That’s too much of an exaggeration! Still… if we can break out of this encirclement, I’ll earnestly repent over that if you really want me to.”
“…”
Nora fell silent as she thought about the plan they had formulated.
They had known from the start that her protection wouldn’t last for long, so it was of utmost importance for them to move strategically before this ability ran out. After talking it through, they decided to take a risk and sneak out.
The more time they spent on this land, the greater were the chances of something going wrong. Ideally, Roel would want to recuperate to his peak before slowly pushing his way back to the human world, but they dared not to gamble on that, especially not when one of his enemies was an entity greater than his wildest imagination.
The momentary clash Roel had with the Deviant Sovereign was more than enough for him to realize just how terrifying the latter was. In a sense, his decision to sneak out was the result of his fear of the Deviant Sovereign.
On the bright side, there wasn’t a clear territory between humankind and the deviants.
The deviants were nowhere near organized enough to draw boundaries, so neither side bothered to dispatch their forces to remote locations with poor traveling conditions. Thus, it was possible to travel through such locations without impediment.
“Hawe Desert—that should be the name,” Nora said.
“The ‘Quicksand Hell’, right? It is marked on military maps as inaccessible. That’s also the place deviants exile their people. There should be very few enemies there,” Roel analyzed.
Hawe Desert spanned from Tark Prairie to the frontlines, which theoretically made it the ideal path for them to take if they wanted to travel discreetly. Yet, for some reason, Nora felt uneasy.
“What’s wrong? You look awfully grim.”
“It’s nothing much. I’m just a little worried about this…”
“I understand, but this is the safest route for us to take,” Roel replied with an understanding nod. He patted the short sword hanging from his waist and said, “You can sense my location as long as I carry this fellow on me, right? That was how I found you back then.”
“Indeed, but we’re currently too far away from the frontlines. Even if we move from both sides, it’ll at least be days before we reunite.”
“You’re right, but it’ll be even more dangerous to stop our footsteps.”
“…”
Nora thought about the armies of deviants after Roel’s life and fell silent. A few seconds later, she shook her head and walked up to him.
“Let’s not think about those now. It’s our last night together. I don’t want to waste our precious together-time.”
“You’re right… Is there anything you’d like to do?”
Roel continued to prod the campfire while lackadaisically sparing a glance to Nora, who had suddenly stood up to tidy her hair. Amused by his lack of awareness, a smile crept onto Nora’s lips as she placed her hands on his cheeks.
“It’s time for dessert.”
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