In the fairy forest draped in night,
Amid the ominous cries of animals and the buzzing of insects—
My clear refusal echoed through the air.
Aransel silently stared at me without responding.
Then, she slowly parted her lips.
“…Alright. I understand.”
Without pressing the matter further, she turned away.
She intended to go into the forest alone.
Of course, I had no intention of just letting her do that.
She was walking to her death. How could I let her go?
More than anything, I couldn’t be the only one to walk away from this.
If I did that, I had no idea how So-woon or Raphael would see me.
If we were going back, we should go back together.
When I grabbed her wrist, Aransel turned to look at me.
For someone on their way to die, her eyes were remarkably calm.
“Cosmic Zak is wandering that forest. We barely survived last time, but next time, we’ll really die.”
Cosmic Zak might be slothful, but he’s a cautious bastard.
There’s no way he’d overlook us after seeing us come back to life.
“I know.”
Know what?
“Are you out of your mind?”
“There’s a chance the search party coming here could be brutally killed by Cosmic Zak.”
“You’re going to risk your life to save people you’ve never even met?”
“You did the same, Haru.”
I paused at her next words.
“You saved the people on the airship first.”
What the hell was she talking about now?
“You idiot. I told you at the end. I only helped because I had an escape route from the beginning.”
“Even if that’s true, you still saved them. And—”
Aransel looked straight into my eyes.
“You saved me too.”
Her eyes shone with clarity.
I don’t know why, but
Her eyes seemed to shine even more brightly than before.
“When I was about to be killed by Cosmic Zak, you ran in barehanded and saved me.”
My lips moved slightly.
But no.
I’m not the kind of person she thinks I am.
I only saved her because I had the safety net of resurrection magic.
If I didn’t have that, there’s no way I would’ve done something like that.
So I didn’t deserve any praise.
I wasn’t someone like Aransel, who could face death without fear.
“If you’re feeling guilty about letting me go alone, don’t.”
She lifted the corners of her mouth slightly.
“We both know it. You and I…we were never going to get along.”
Aransel hates Transporters.
And I despise people from this world.
It was something both of us knew deep down.
“Even so, you saved me.”
Aransel slowly pulled her wrist free from my grasp.
Then, she clenched and unclenched her left hand.
“Because of all this, I realized. I never really had the desire to live.”
I didn’t know her past.
I was never curious enough to ask.
But one thing I did know was that she never seemed truly alive.
I’d often seen that faintly hollow look in her eyes.
“And yet, even someone like me… deep down, I still had the will to live.”
A life cut off from the ordinary.
Even within that kind of life, Aransel had today come face-to-face with the faint desire to go on living.
The will to live.
The most basic drive behind life.
Today, Aransel finally became aware of that simple force.
“And I think it’s the same for others, too.”
Aransel looked at me again.
“Haru, I think it’s the same for you.”
To live.
Just as she said, I had no intention of dying either.
Sure, I might’ve jumped in recklessly, relying on the safety net of resurrection magic—
But at the core of it all was the simple fact that I didn’t want to die.
Ultimately, every living being acts to survive just a little longer. That’s the rule.
“My parents were killed by a Transporter.”
Aransel finally spoke of her past.
“I’ve lived my whole life solely for revenge. And even now, that revenge hasn’t been fulfilled.
That’s why I can’t see Transporters in a good light.”
It was only natural.
If your family was killed by a Transporter, how could you possibly see them favorably?
For the first time, she smiled in front of me.
That smile shone like the moon in the night sky.
“Even now, Haru, the one who saved my life….I still feel uneasy around you. That’s the kind of person I am.”
That smile also carried a hint of self-mockery.
“That’s why…I don’t want others to go through the same thing I did.”
Her eyes shone with clarity.
The family of someone killed by Cosmic Zak—
Their resentment, their thirst for revenge.
Aransel hoped that such vengeance wouldn’t repeat itself again.
“I want people to live without hating someone, without burning with revenge.”
Maybe it was a kind of psychological defense.
Just as she wished her past self hadn’t gone through such things,
She didn’t want others to go through them either.
Her attempt to save the people on the airship—
Perhaps that was an unconscious reflection of this feeling.
And today, by facing death head-on, Aransel finally came to understand who she really was.
Sometimes, people change after brushing up against death.
For example, someone who’d been obsessed with money all their life suddenly donates everything.
Or someone who’d always neglected their family decides to seek them out and embrace them.
They recall all the things they failed to achieve before dying and try to make them happen.
Ultimately, it’s because they come face-to-face with their deepest self.
Aransel faced her inner self.
And that’s why she wished for a world that didn’t breed revenge.
She no longer wanted to live in a world like that. Not for herself, and not for anyone else.
Not a life driven by endless revenge,
But one based on a purpose she chose herself.
It was the first goal she had ever set for her own life.
A conclusion she’d reached after returning to life and reflecting while resting.
“I’m going.”
With those words, Aransel let go of my hand and began to walk.
She disappeared into the night forest.
She didn’t ask me to come with her.
Because this was her own chosen mission—
She had no intention of forcing it onto someone else.
I didn’t move from where I stood.
Like I said before, I’m not some noble saint.
My sense of morality only goes so far as not wanting to see an acquaintance die in front of me.
That’s the level of morality you’d expect from a Transporter.
Even that, I wouldn’t act on it if it put me in danger.
I have no interest in getting hurt while trying to help others.
I clenched my fist so tightly it could’ve broken.
If I ran into Cosmic Zak again, I’d really die.
Resurrection wouldn’t save me anymore.
The smart decision would be to turn around and leave the forest.
Yeah, that’s what I was going to do.
“Damn it.”
Before I knew it, I had caught up with Aransel.
She looked back at me with her eyes wide with surprise.
“Aransel, I hate people from this world. They disgust me.”
Uncivilized otherworlders.
The hatred I felt toward them always followed close behind me.
“When I first transported here, I landed right in the middle of a cult.”
Those bastards didn’t hesitate to tear off my limbs just because I was a Transporter.
I didn’t bother mentioning that they even ripped off my neck.
Resurrection magic is my hidden card, my secret.
There’s nothing to gain from letting that slip.
“That’s why I find otherworlders disgusting. That’s why I can’t stand the idea of people like them being morally superior to me.”
Like I said before, I’m no saint. Far from it.
But just this once,
There was one reason I couldn’t just watch Aransel walk away.
Aransel was one of those uncivilized otherworlders.
And the idea that someone like that might be more morally upright than me?
That’s something I simply cannot accept.
The moral standards of these uncivilized otherworlders were on par with medieval human trash!
The thought of losing the moral high ground to one of them, it was unbearable!
Aransel stared at me blankly.
Then, as if it were ridiculous, she laughed.
That smug little thing….don’t laugh.
I won’t fall for the cunning tricks of a devious otherworlder.
“What kind of nonsense reason is that?”
“It’s a reason filled with my honest feelings.”
A perfectly reasonable explanation, really.
There was a strange sense of relief in Aransel’s laughter.
“I guess we could never be friends.”
Like she said, we were polar opposites. The absolute worst match.
Being friends with a racist? Absolutely impossible.
“And yet, we’re heading in the same direction. Isn’t that kind of funny?”
“I don’t really see what’s funny about it.”
“Just that… even two people who hate each other like this are still, in the end, both human.”
There was a strange lightness in Aransel’s expression.
“For the record, this is the first time I’ve ever told someone outright that I hate Transporters.”
In a world where Transporter-hate is the norm, that was a surprisingly decent attitude.
“Sorry, but I already said that once. Back in some shitty party a while ago.”
Of course, I’d been yelling it at the corpses of people who got themselves wiped out because they only cared about their own opinions.
“It was my first time. And you stole it, then you say that?”
When I heard her next words, I turned to her, dumbfounded.
Naturally, there was a mischievous glint in her eyes.
She’d kept a blank face and spoken curtly the entire time we talked.
But was she always someone who could joke around like this?
When I didn’t react at all, she turned her head away with her ears slightly red. Maybe she was embarrassed by her own words.
“It was a joke.”
“Well, one thing’s for sure. I can see exactly how you acted all foxy in front of our master.”
“I never acted foxy.”
Maybe this is what Aransel’s real personality was like.
The Aransel I knew hated Transporters. She was uneasy around them. A full-on racist.
But the Aransel standing here now didn’t quite feel like one.
She smiled at me.
And for some reason, that smile gave me a strange, fuzzy feeling I couldn’t place.
But neither of us realized it yet.
We were both incredibly unlucky.
Rustle—
The sound of leaves being stepped on echoed through the forest.
Both Aransel and I slowly turned toward the sound.
And then we froze in place.
Standing where the sound had come from… was a man with a flower for a head.
The Great Sinner of Sloth, Cosmic Zak.
When he appeared, he slowly turned to look in our direction.
“Huh?”
A stunned sound escaped his lips.
It was the look of someone thinking, “How are you two still alive?”
Like he was seeing a ghost.
Both our faces drained of color.
All the resolve we’d built up moments ago became meaningless—
Death had come right back to greet us.
They say life is just one stroke of bad luck after another…
But this—
This was the gods crossing the line.
For a brief second, Cosmic Zak froze, still not fully grasping the situation.
And in that instant, Aransel and I turned to run.
We didn’t know whether we could actually escape from him or not.
All we knew was this,
If we didn’t run now, we’d die.
Cosmic Zak stomped the ground.
He might not have known whether we were ghosts or something else.
But his intent to eliminate us was clear.
There would be no next time.
At that moment, the alarm of death rang loud in my head.
“Cosmic Zak.”
A voice rang out.
Our eyes turned toward the source.
Standing there was a woman no taller than a forearm.
She had four wings and wore strange, fluffy tufts of fur flowing down from her vanilla-colored hair.
“Liliran!”
With her appearance, the killing intent radiating from Cosmic Zak flooded the entire forest.
Birds scattered into the sky in alarm.
As if what he’d shown us so far had been just a glimpse of his true nature.
His bloodlust was enough to make even me who’d always scoffed at death shiver.
Cosmic Zak launched forward in a burst.
The same leap that had closed the distance between us in an instant before.
But just as he leapt, Liliran brought her hands together.
“Stalker bastard, quit following me around already.”
And with that, our surroundings shifted in a flash.
A wave of nausea hit me, and before I knew it, I had landed flat on my but.
“Ugh.”
As I rubbed my backside, I looked over to see Aransel landing gracefully.
So even here, the difference in athleticism shows.
Soon, the new surroundings slowly came into view.
Inside the hollow of a vast tree—
Small, dollhouse-like homes were scattered throughout.
I knew immediately where we were.
We were inside the Breathing Tree. The homeland of the fairies.
And I also realized who had transported Aransel and me here.
I looked up, and there she was, giving us a brief smile.
“Welcome to Aerialde, land of the Fairies.”
The master of spatial magic.
Liliran Aerialde.
She was the one who brought us inside the Breathing Tree.
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