From the moment Karon first regained his memory, he found himself living with an elderly couple who claimed to be his adoptive parents.
His biological parents were officers in the Border Defense Army, and they had left Karon with his grandparents while they were away. They only visited on weekends, and eventually, both his parents died because of a monster attack. When his grandparents passed away due to old age, a couple from the neighboring house took Karon in.
However, his adoptive parents weren’t particularly kind. They made him do hard chores from a young age, and would quickly resort to hitting him if he displeased them even a little.
Despite this, Karon didn’t seem to feel upset about it, not even in the slightest. It was as if he had no emotions at all—he simply accepted it all with indifference.
Then, one day, a man passing through the village recognized Karon as an Arkon and offered him a job.
“That man was the dark sorcerer.”
“...Ah.”
This matched with what Winter had said earlier.
The dark sorcerers used young Arkon children for their own purposes.
‘So, Karon’s past was just like that...’
I could easily imagine what Karon’s past had been like. He must have done all sorts of things under the dark sorcerer’s influence.
Preparing materials, dissecting monster bodies, and maybe even human corpses. No wonder the hammer was so familiar to him.
Thinking about it, Karon had shown some reluctance toward dark magic before.
For instance, before joining, Sanchez had mentioned how Karon was known to have some ties with a dark sorcerer and that it was troubling. Karon also didn’t seem keen on using dark magic artifacts.
At the time, I had thought it was just Karon’s sharp instincts making him uneasy about it, but now...
‘It was because he had bad memories related to dark magic.’
To think that Karon had been avoiding dark magic because of the trauma from what he went through under the dark sorcerer, even though he had forgotten his past... I felt guilty for not realizing it sooner.
"Wait, then why did you lose your memory? You followed the dark sorcerer, so why were you found in front of your original house, losing your memory?"
"Ah, well..."
Karon continued explaining.
"While I was organizing the dark sorcerer's documents, I accidentally saw something I wasn’t supposed to... because of that, when the dark sorcerer erased my memory, the magic didn’t work properly, and it wiped all of my memories."
It was strange to think that the memory loss was caused by an accident like that.
The memory loss seemed too severe to just be the result of a fire. There wasn’t any trauma from the fire itself. In fact, it seemed more like someone had deliberately tampered with Karon’s memories.
"Then what about the fire... the fire at your adoptive parents' house?"
"Since my memories were completely erased, and it couldn’t be fixed, the dark sorcerer set fire to my adoptive parents' house and made it look like I lost my memory from that accident. He probably left me in front of their house on purpose."
...It was an insane story.
He had been used by a dark sorcerer as a child, had his memory erased, and lost his adoptive parents in the process.
But what felt most bizarre was how Karon was telling the story with such a bright, unaffected demeanor.
‘If it were me, I’d be out there hunting down the dark sorcerer who used me!’
But Karon didn’t seem to care at all about his past.
"So what will you do now?"
"Huh?"
"Now that you’ve remembered, are you going to take revenge on the dark sorcerer...?"
"Huh? Why would I want to take revenge?"
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"He erased your memories and killed your adoptive parents."
"Even if my memories disappeared, nothing really changed in my life. And as for my adoptive parents, they weren’t really people I cared about... I’m fine with things as they are now."
"...Hmm, well, maybe now that you've remembered, you might decide to take that hammer and start hitting anyone you don't like..."
"Isn’t that something you said was wrong...?"
"Yeah? I sometimes feel like I want to hit people, though. Ah, no, wait, that’s not it..."
After hearing Karon’s story, I became even more frustrated than before.
No matter how I thought about it, it made no sense.
The original work had been a lighthearted, cheerful military romance, right? There was no mention of the male leads’ tragic pasts.
Their biggest hardship was probably just Salvia dying in the original. They certainly didn’t have any dark, tragic pasts hidden away...
‘This is just too out of place.’
I never imagined the author would hide a backstory like this for the fourth male lead in a lighthearted novel. Honestly, it just felt awkward.
If it had been a more obvious, dark past, I could’ve at least thought, ‘Ah, the author wanted to give the fourth male lead a charm point with a dark past!’ But this... I couldn’t understand it at all.
I found myself once again pondering whether Karon’s personality would change now that he had regained his memories.
He had acted like it was no big deal, but after all, he had once worked for a dark sorcerer, engaging in illegal activities without hesitation. Now that he had no qualms about such immoral acts, his behavior might change subtly.
In the extreme case, he might even start attacking his juniors if they annoyed him.
As I was thinking about Karon, I suddenly realized something strange.
"Wait a minute. How does that man from earlier, the one you bumped into, relate to the dark magic being broken? Is dark magic that easy to break?"
In response to my question, Karon once again shocked me with his words.
"Ah, the man I bumped into while pulling out Matty... that was the dark sorcerer who had been using me."
The man wearing the straw hat, who seemed like an ordinary villager?!
‘So that’s why he looked scared of Karon! It wasn’t just because he’s a hetero sapien... he was probably afraid Karon, now stronger, would recognize him!’
What on earth was going on with all these improbable events?
"Hey, hey...! Why is that guy here...!"
I raised my voice in frustration, but then, a realization struck me.
‘The man in the straw hat is the dark sorcerer who used Karon and erased his memories.’
And the dark sorcerer that Altair’s unit was hunting, the one who had been causing all that chaos.
There couldn’t be two dark sorcerers in one village.
It was clear now—the two had to be the same person!
"That bastard should have been caught by now..."
I jumped to my feet, but, of course, the man was already nowhere to be seen.
"You had no grudge against him at all?! Why didn’t you stop him?!"
I couldn’t hold back my anger and raised my voice to Karon, the absurdity of the situation overwhelming me.
"I did have some bad feelings toward that dark sorcerer."
"And yet?"
"Well, for now, you told me to stay calm."
"...What?"
It was only then that I recalled the words I had said to Karon earlier, and everything clicked into place. I closed my eyes tightly, realizing the full scope of the situation.
‘This is insane...’
I thought the man with the straw hat was just a regular villager, but because I was worried about complaints, I had told Karon to just stay calm.
Even though Karon had recognized him and had a grudge against him, he had swallowed his emotions and calmly apologized to him.
‘So that’s why...’
I understood now why Karon hadn’t cared much about his forgotten memories.
In the original, the question of whether Karon regained his memories was never really important. It didn’t affect the story’s progression in any significant way.
What had mattered in the original story was not Karon’s lost past, but his personality: "always cheerful, always following the heroine."
For Karon, what mattered wasn’t the past, but the present life he was living.
I had worried so much about him changing after getting his memories back. It was my mistake to even think he might change.
"Karon...!"
I pulled him into my arms, feeling tears welling up in my eyes.
‘How could I have been worried about someone like him...?’
Karon had never once ignored my words.
Even when we were writing love letters together, no matter what task I gave him, he was always on my side.
It was only because I had taken care of him at the beginning that he always faithfully followed me.
"My foolish, sweet junior..."
How could I have thought that Karon would suddenly change?
Just like the day we first became close, I decided I would continue to take care of Karon from now on.
And then, another resolve formed in my mind.
"I’ll kill him..."
That dark sorcerer who dared to use Karon.
Since Altair’s unit was already hunting him, it was a good thing.
‘I’ll make sure to destroy that bastard...’
***
I immediately went to Winter and reported the incident where Karon had come into contact with the dark sorcerer.
Since the dark sorcerer was being hunted by the Border Defense Army, this was a good opportunity to take revenge for Karon as well.
Winter reported the situation to the platoon leader, and soon after, Altair’s unit and ours joined forces for a joint search operation.
"The dark sorcerer is said to have brown hair, freckles on his face, and wears a straw hat."
Winter explained the description of the dark sorcerer to everyone.
"And remember, no matter how weak or harmless he might seem on the outside, he is a dark sorcerer with a notorious reputation in the northern Empire."
Then, true to Winter’s style, he gave a lecture on the dark sorcerer.
It was obvious, but the reason dark sorcerers were dangerous was that we couldn’t know what kind of dark magic they might use against us.
They could deceive our minds, throw us into terrifying fear, or even curse us to death.
"The most important thing is to act faster than the dark sorcerer."
However, dark magic was not the kind of simple magic I had originally thought it was.
If it involved preparing materials, casting incantations, and using artifacts, it would take longer.
So even if the dark sorcerer spotted us, he wouldn’t be able to instantly cast a death curse. The idea was to strike him while he was still preparing his dark magic.
‘If that’s the case, I’m confident.’