Episode 204
Chapter 66. Vanessa Olson (4)
An award.
She silently cheered to herself. She had expected it to some extent, but hearing it with her own ears felt different.
“First, go round up the horses we let loose. At your age, I don’t want you wandering the wilderness on foot for days.”
“Understood.”
Jin set off to find the horses. The ground was covered in hoofprints, so tracking them wasn’t difficult.
Fortunately, since the horses were domesticated, they hadn’t run far. Jin soon found them drinking from a drying-up puddle.
By the time she brought the horses back, night had fully fallen.
“Good work. Sit here.”
Crackle, crackle…
A well-tended campfire burned before Vanessa. Strips of jerky sizzled on wooden skewers, oil dripping down, and a few cleaned fish—caught from somewhere—lay nearby.
There were also more than three barrels of liquor. Vanessa poured from one into two iron cups, filling them to the brim.
So that’s what she was loading onto the wagon before we left—liquor. Even though she acted like I wouldn’t pass the test, she was prepared for moments like this.
Jin smiled and gave a respectful nod.
“Vanessa, you’ve worked hard. I didn’t expect you to prepare such a fine drinking setup.”
“You were treated well in Tikan, after all.”
Clink, splash. The iron cups met, and the liquor sloshed.
The liquor warriors drink is strong. Unlike ordinary people, their trained bodies don’t get drunk easily.
In that sense, the liquor Vanessa brought was terrifyingly potent. The moment it hit her throat, it reacted like a deadly poison—no ordinary warrior could handle it.
Even stronger than the jewel wine I drank before gaining the radiant heart.
It made Vanessa’s ability to gulp it down without any antidote all the more impressive.
She drank silently, finishing an entire barrel. Jin tried to keep pace but soon realized she had drifted into her own thoughts and quietly waited.
The firelight flickered over the wrinkles around her eyes, which seemed tinged with sadness.
“Do you remember when I said there were times in Tikan when I thought of the past?”
“Yes, I remember.”
“It was because I thought of my younger brother. I’ve grown old like this, but in my memories, he’s still a boy—like you—and sometimes I forget my age.”
Her voice was calm.
Vanessa’s sadness was only in Jin’s eyes. The death of her brother was long past, and what she felt now wasn’t sorrow but loneliness.
“You must be wondering why I’m telling you this all of a sudden.”
“Is it because I resemble your brother?”
“Not at all. He wasn’t as handsome as you, nor as strong. To me, he was special, but objectively, he was just an ordinary boy anyone could find. We were orphans, not nobles.”
Vanessa drained another cup and pulled out a cigarette. Lighting it, she burned it down in one breath. The thick smoke briefly veiled her face.
“On the other hand, I was born with incredible potential, like you Runkandels. I was preparing to become a knight of the Shucheron Kingdom, but at seventeen, I got into a petty fight at a tavern. I thought he was a thug and beat him up, but it turned out he was a knight from the capital.”
“That knight must have been shocked.”
“He was on leave, visiting his hometown tavern, and got beaten up. I didn’t even realize his status until the tavern owner told me later. The guy was a knight of Shucheron’s capital.”
“That must have surprised the young lady.”
“Very much so. I never thought a knight would pick a fight with a common girl drinking alone. I told him to leave if he wasn’t here to serve, so how could I have thought he was a knight?”
Vanessa lit another cigarette and burned it down again.
“The next day, the knight killed the tavern owner, not me. Then he started killing or capturing the few neighbors I knew. The lord even made up charges and sent troops. He wanted to curry favor with the capital’s knight.”
Back then, Vanessa wasn’t the transcendently strong woman she is now. She was just a seventeen-year-old girl with immense potential.
“So I tried to run away. Damn it, I was too late. My brother was captured by the lord’s soldiers, and I had no choice but to go to the lord’s castle—without a sword.”
Her brother was tied up in the castle’s courtyard, badly beaten.
The knight ordered Vanessa to strip and crawl to the castle’s front. Jin’s fists trembled at that, but Vanessa waved him off.
“Haha, luckily, I never had to comply with that humiliating demand. Just as I was about to undress, a piercing roar came from somewhere… and fireballs rained down. At that moment, a dragon attacked the castle—a fire dragon.”
The fire dragon destroyed the castle in an instant, killing the lord, his soldiers, and the knights.
Paradoxically, the last one standing to fight the dragon was Vanessa.
“It was unbelievable. Prisoners escaped, soldiers fled, the lord and the knight died as soon as the dragon appeared, but my brother, tied to a stake, miraculously survived the dragon’s breath. So I had to fight.”
That battle awakened Vanessa.
Her latent power blossomed beyond her own understanding, and an incredible strength poured out wildly.
“I used the dead knight’s sword to protect my brother—the very sword of the knight who took him. And apparently, the dragon found it amusing. Watching me desperately hold my brother and fend off its flames.”
Though awakened, she couldn’t fully handle the dragon’s power.
The dragon soon took her brother away and deliberately spared Vanessa’s life.
“It burned the village after leaving the castle and told me to come to the Ante Mountains if I wanted my brother back. So I went and found the dragon in a cave.”
Her brother was already dead.
“And the dragon didn’t fight me. It just flew away somewhere. It just wanted to see me despair. It realized that watching me suffer was far more entertaining than burning a rural village.”
“…So you stayed in the Ante Mountains ever since that day?”
“Yes. I couldn’t even think about going out to find it. I was exhausted.”
Jin was now quickly emptying his own cup, matching her pace.
Vanessa stayed there until she met Sir Shiron.
She killed dragons that came to her and killed people who came looking for her. Though she rarely killed people, some were warriors as skilled as she was.
They were all either seeking revenge against the fire dragon or challenging it.
“I was going mad. No, I was mad. I killed over a hundred dragons, but that fire dragon never showed up. More than fifteen years passed. Then your father, Sir Shiron, came.”
Shiron was the first human to defeat Vanessa.
“Your father subdued me, then the next day, he captured that fire dragon and all its offspring. It turned out the dragon was the guardian of Keliak Ziphl, a blood relative of Kadun. So Kadun came too, to protect his kin. Guess what happened?”
“I suppose your father killed them all. Kadun must have fled, wounded.”
“Sir Shiron only helped keep Kadun from interfering. The fight against the fire dragon and its offspring was entirely mine.”
The revenge was hers.
She eventually killed the fire dragon and asked it many times why it did what it did.
“As I said, it killed my brother for fun. It enjoyed my despair… Whether it feared Sir Shiron or just wanted to torment me until the end, it admitted it was all a game.”
“Hah.”
“I naturally became Sir Shiron’s knight. After donning the black helmet, the days were so hard that memories of the past faded away. Then I got used to it, and before I knew it, my words and actions had become those of a proper knight.”
Jin said nothing but refilled her cup.
“Even if you become stronger than your father, give your subordinates the chance to take revenge themselves. It’s a virtue every king of sword ghosts must have.”
“I will engrave that deeply in my heart.”
“Also, try not to give your heart to ordinary people like my brother. Unlike us, they die too easily and break unexpectedly just by being near us. If you ever fall into despair…”
Vanessa paused and met Jin’s gaze.
“It won’t be because you were struck down by a stronger sword, but because of the tragedies ordinary people around you endure. Both your father and I were hurt by such things and became monsters. Now, I don’t even feel sad that my brother will never return.”
The fire crackled as silence stretched between them. Eventually, Vanessa opened the last barrel of liquor.
“If you ever get the chance, hear your father’s story from him directly.”
“Yes.”
To become a transcendent being—was it a process of cutting away the natural emotions that make us human? The thought struck Jin, and his comrades from Tikan came to mind.
“I think that’s enough advice for now… Take this.”
Vanessa pulled a folded piece of paper from inside her coat.
It was a map. But unlike any ordinary map, it bore little resemblance to the general layout of the continent Jin knew.
Large portions were blank, indicating it was incomplete, and many areas were deliberately obscured, making it difficult to make out at a glance.
“This is a map of the Black Sea. Head to the regions marked in red. You can go with your companions if you want, but beyond those marked areas, without the antidote called Mandokju, you won’t be able to withstand the poison.”
“Is this the reward you mentioned?”
Jin was surprised to learn there was a map of the Black Sea.
The previous Black Knights had spent nearly their entire lives charting the Black Sea, and the work was still ongoing.
“Sir Siron entrusted me with this map as soon as it was made. He told me to give it to one of his children who seemed worthy in my eyes. So, this is both a reward I’m giving you and a new trial.”
“Am I right in guessing you won’t tell me what’s out there?”
Vanessa shook her head.
“No, why wouldn’t I tell you? There’s a demon beast in the red-marked area. Defeat it. It’s said to be the creature once raised by the witch Helluram.”
Jin’s pupils dilated in shock.