Taming The Villainesses

Chapter 433: The One Who Halts (8)

Elga’s blue eyes were swallowed by flames. Watching her figure blaze up in the midst of a massive explosion made all the blood in my body seem to freeze and sink.

“Elga!”

I shouted with all my strength. But no answer came back.

I hastily moved my feet and rushed toward the roaring flames. The tongues of fire, flickering like the tongues of devils, licked at my cheeks and skin, searingly hot, but this was no time to care about things like that.

━Grrrrrrr!!!

At that moment, a great roar rang out. Turning my head, I saw the wyvern that had crushed Narmee’s golem stretching out its claws toward me.

Was this its scheme all along?

To attack Elga to provoke me, then strike at the opening it created? I was briefly astonished that a wyvern could possess such intelligence.

“Asura’s Sword.”

Srrng.

A massive sword fell from the sky and cleaved the dragon’s torso cleanly in two. Turning my head, I saw Ayra, gasping for breath.

━Grrrrr...

The wyvern had been killed by Ayra’s magic. But by now, whether the creature lived or died was irrelevant. What mattered to me was Elga.

I scrambled forward, searching through the blazing fire for Elga. But I could not find her figure anywhere.

Had she already burned away to nothing?

All I could see through my panicked eyes were rainbow-colored bubbles. Watching them sizzle and pop as they melted in the dragon’s flames made fury well up inside me.

“Ah—!”

Unable to hold back my emotions, I let out a scream. If only I had hesitated a little less. If only I had fought with my full strength from the very beginning to bring down the wyvern.

No, if only I had never come to this city—

Regrets flooded my mind one after another.

And then, ringing faintly in my ears, came the voice of a man.

━Do not rely on magic. Power gained too easily will betray you just as easily.

Had it come true, his words? Had my magic ultimately failed to fulfill its role when it mattered most? What was certain was that I could no longer see those blue eyes, nor the flowing golden hair.

I would never again feel that warmth.

Elga, who seemed rough around the edges but inside was gentler than anyone.

━Hey, Teo.

The thought that I would never again hear that voice calling me so lightly left me unable to come to my senses.

Was this my punishment? For reaching greedily toward things I had not been given, even after already possessing happiness?

If I had known it would come to this...

I collapsed among the flames, curling up as small as I could, trying desperately to feel whatever warmth of Elga might still remain here.

But there was nothing to be felt.

She was gone, truly gone.

An unbearable sadness consumed me.

It was the first time I realized that when humans experience overwhelming sorrow, they cannot even speak, cannot even cry; they simply stop breathing.

Ssk.

It was then that someone grabbed my shoulder. Lifting my head, I saw Mirna, gazing at me with an expression of deep anguish.

“Sir Teo, look over there. Right now—something strange is happening...”

Mirna pointed at something. She seemed to be saying more, but I couldn’t clearly hear it in my current state. However, I could vaguely sense what she meant.

Ssk, sssk.

In this city of Gargarta, which we had thought abandoned and fallen, one by one, strange shadows were beginning to waver into view. They looked almost like mirages, or perhaps like thin mist.

━The dragon has fallen.

━The third one. It’s the third dragon to fall.

They even spoke.

Seeing this, Mirna turned to me and said,

“They seem like spiritual bodies. Perhaps they are the spirits that dwell within Gargarta.”

“Spirits...”

But so what?

Even if bizarre shadows appeared and spoke, the dead Elga would not return.

“Hey, Teo.”

At that moment, a voice that sounded oddly familiar reached my ears.

Whipping my head around, I saw the blurred figure of Elga, shimmering faintly by a distant building. Those blue eyes, that fluttering golden hair — it was unmistakably Elga.

It was Mirna who cried out first.

“Lady Leones has already appeared as a spirit!”

At that, Elga wrinkled her brow sharply.

“What are you talking about? Saying that to someone who's perfectly alive. Anyway, what about the dragon—”

Pop—!

I sprinted toward Elga with all my might and threw my arms around her waist. She looked bewildered at being so suddenly embraced, muttering, “What the—what's going on?” but—

Before long, she gently patted my head, saying, “Why are you so worked up.” From her came the familiar scent of apples, a warm, stirring fragrance.

And from that warmth came a sense of vibrant life. How could a being radiating such life be nothing but a spirit? Tears nearly welled up in my eyes.

At that moment, Elga spoke.

“You all look like you’ve seen a ghost. What, you thought I got hit by that fireball and died?”

Ssk.

At the sound of her voice, I lifted my face from where I had buried it against her chest and asked,

“Then—you’re alive?”

“As if I’d die just from getting grazed by a wyvern’s breath.”

Wobble.

As she spoke, a thin coating over Elga’s face melted away, making her blurred figure become sharper and more solid.

Could that have been my fairy bubble coating?

Elga scratched her cheek awkwardly.

“I don’t really know what happened either. When I came to, I was inside that building. Everything around me had changed all of a sudden. Teo, wasn’t it you?”

Elga said that when the fireball came flying, she had felt her body suddenly lift off the ground, and when she regained her senses, she was lying near some building.

So she hadn’t been hit by the fire at all. Listening to her, it sounded almost like she had teleported, and I couldn't help but feel suspicious.

“I didn’t do it. Maybe Lady Ayra?”

When I asked, Ayra also shook her head.

“Instantaneous space transfer? I can't do anything like that.”

Apparently not. If neither I nor Ayra did it, then was there someone else among us with the power to instantly move Elga's body?

At that moment, Narmee raised her hand energetically.

“Actually, I did it!”

“Oh?”

“Actually, just kidding!”

Of course.

Ssk.

Elga lightly touched her own belly.

“Then maybe it was Leonoi? Magic is supposed to be determined by blood, right? Maybe Leonoi’s already an incredible magician who saved me.”

Her theory sounded strangely plausible. The child inside her was already a living being, with its own will to live. Surely it would have the instinct to protect its mother.

One way or another—

The fact that Elga was alive drained all the strength from my body. As the relief settled in, my legs gave out and I collapsed to the ground.

But that was fine.

As long as she was alive, that was all that mattered.

***

Only after confirming that Elga was safe could we finally assess the situation properly. The wyvern’s corpse, which had been felled by Ayra’s magic—

It decomposed at an unbelievable speed, until there was nothing left of it. Even Narmee, who had some experience with corpses and living things, seemed shocked.

“I’ve never seen anything rot that fast. Not even a single scale left.”

The only trace remaining of the wyvern was the ruined houses, scattered debris, and the heavy, charred stench lingering in the air. It almost made us wonder if we had really fought anything at all.

Maybe we had experienced some kind of collective hallucination.

Collective hallucination.

The moment that phrase crossed my mind, even the surrounding scenery felt suspicious. Around us, countless shimmering mirages and mists fluttered, so thick and teeming that it sent a chill down my spine.

━The dragon has fallen.

━It’s the third one.

The mirages kept repeating the same phrases. I couldn’t help but wonder if this entire situation was just one mass illusion.

Sssk.

Narmee reached out her hand into the air.

The misty forms she touched scattered like clouds, but as soon as she withdrew her hand, the mist clumped back together, once again taking on vague human shapes.

“This is fun. Ghosts, maybe? Are they the spirits of the city?”

Mirna had called them spiritual bodies earlier.

Narmee seemed to agree. Just like they said, these shadows might have once been the residents of this city.

The astonishing thing was that after they appeared, lights began to flicker to life in the gloomy city. Somewhere, bubbling sounds could be heard, and even delicious smells drifted through the air.

The dead city was beginning to stir back to life.

And the force animating it was these strange spirits. Like living people, they murmured to each other and went about repairing broken houses.

Watching them, Mirna said,

“Spirits often reenact their lives from when they were alive. It seems the residents of this city, suppressed under the wyvern’s overwhelming aura, have resurfaced after its death.”

Though she added at the end that it was only a guess—there was no explanation that made more sense than hers right now.

Narmee looked absolutely thrilled.

“A city of ghosts! This is amazing! So this is the real face of this city! Look, there’s even food on the market stalls!”

Where Narmee pointed, faint ➤ NоvеⅠight ➤ (Read more on our source) mirages of food were displayed. When she reached out to touch them, they vanished back into mist.

“Guess we can’t actually eat them.”

“Eek—!”

At that moment, Elga shuddered violently. Her hair stood on end. A shadow had passed right through her body and disappeared into the corner.

Smoothing down her bristling hair with both hands, Elga said,

“I hate it here! It’s bad enough that this city was weird before, and now it’s even worse! Dragons, ghosts—what next!”

She seemed genuinely frightened by the spirits. Yet I could sense it faintly — these ghosts harbored no malice toward us. They were simply here.

Like dandelions trembling in the breeze, with neither will nor hostility, simply existing.

They were just here.

It was then that Stella asked,

“So, where’s this arrow you were talking about?”

Glancing around at her question—

The guiding marker that had led me toward the wyvern’s nest was nowhere to be seen now that the dragon was defeated.

What...?

Just as I was puzzling over it—

━You must be the heroes who defeated the dragon.

A voice spoke behind us, making us all jump and whirl around.

There stood a shadow, barely half the size of my torso, wearing a smiling mask like a traditional Korean mask, looking up at me.

━I am the city’s guide. I will lead you to where you need to go. Please, follow me.

With those words, the shadow spun around and floated off into the distance. Startled, we exchanged glances and whispered to each other.

“Sis, what was that?”

“I’m not sure... What should we do?”

To Mirna’s question, I could only reply,

“For now, let’s follow it.”

Maybe the arrow’s meaning was exactly this: defeat the dragon, then follow the guide who appears afterward.

Thus, we began walking after the small shadow. And then, curiosity overtaking me, I called out to its back.

“What is this place? And what are these ghosts?”

━The Last City. And they are its residents. When the sky shattered and the city was twisted, they were sacrificed, unable to ever leave this place.

“Sacrificed...?”

━The dragon was our guardian. Cursed with undeath, it will revive before long. And we must once again fade away.

So the dragon we fought so hard to slay would eventually rise again. Now I understood what the spirits meant when they murmured about it being the “third time.”

The dragon had been defeated before.

Realizing that, a spark went off in my mind. A question burst from my lips before I could stop it.

“Were there others who slew the dragon before us?”

━There were. A splendid young man. And a beautiful fairy. Whether it was days ago or years ago, we cannot tell—but to us, it feels as vivid as yesterday.

Ssk.

The ghost that called itself the guide pointed with a blurry hand toward a distant crack.

━They all entered through that place. None ever returned. We do not know what lies beyond.

I had truly found the right path.

Unable to restrain my thirst for answers, I asked,

“Do you know why they went there?”