"…………."
I couldn't say a single word.
I instinctively glanced behind me. Barbatos was there too. Barbatos with her usual expressionless, icy face. When I looked back toward the door, Barbatos furrowed her brow and looked up at me.
"What's with you, why'd you look behind you? Were you getting it on? Couldn't hold out and made yourself another lover already, you horny bastard. You want me to come find you again later?"
It was different.
There was one crucial difference.
The illusion of Barbatos had horns sprouting from her head. Proof of a Demon Lord. The greater and more powerful the Demon Lord, the larger those horns grew — a mark of pride. But the Barbatos standing at the door had none.
To be precise, they had been cleanly severed off.
"……Oh. This?"
Noticing my gaze, Barbatos fiddled with the cross-section of her horns. She smiled sheepishly, almost bashfully. A sound I'd dreamed of hearing. The sound of Barbatos laughing.
"Well, you know. Under most circumstances, freedom isn't exactly granted to us."
"……."
"That's just how it turned out."
That was how it turned out.
A single short phrase.
What meaning could possibly be contained in that one sentence — a sentence that could barely even be called a summary? How much Barbatos must have had to sacrifice to escape her death sentence, I couldn't even begin to imagine.
"Hm?"
Barbatos tilted her head.
Without even realizing it, I was already cupping Barbatos's face in both hands. I could feel it. The softness of bare skin transmitted its warmth through my palms. That sensation struck something deep inside my chest. Something fragile and threadlike, delicate as a wisp — it snapped clean in half.
"Barbatos."
I gently stroked her cheek.
"Barba... tos......"
"......"
Barbatos stared at me blankly.
I kept murmuring her name. I felt like a broken music box that could only produce a single note. Every time I tried to summon another thought, to raise another question, they were all swept away by some violent current and sank to the bottom.
"Barbatos......"
A slow smile spread across her face.
"Mm."
"......Barbatos......"
"Mm, Dantalion."
Barbatos wrapped both her hands around my right hand.
She pressed her cheek softly against my right hand. As if letting me feel for myself what her skin was like. Slowly, gently, she nuzzled against it.
"I'm right here."
"......"
The thread inside my chest finally snapped.
My knees buckled. The cloak draped over my whole body slid away, swept off by the winter wind. The cold air hit my skin — ravaged with sword marks — and the pain was staggering. An endless, biting chill. And yet something wrapped gently around my head.
"You fool."
Barbatos pressed my head against her body with both arms.
"What did you go and do to end up in tatters like this again? I'm the one who's been through hell — I turned the entire continent upside down just to find you, so why do you look worse than I do......?"
Unless I was mistaken, Barbatos's body was trembling too.
"Why did you have to hide so well again? Thanks to that, I went through all this trouble for nothing. Do you have any idea how much I wandered around? No matter how hard I looked, I couldn't find you. Yeah. No matter how far I roamed, you never turned up. Really... really..."
I barely managed to lift my head. Barbatos was still wearing a faint smile. But tears were streaming down her face. She was laughing and crying at the same time.
"...Really... I'm so glad you're alive."
That's what she said.
That she was thankful I was alive.
That's what Barbatos said.
"You held on with everything you had, Dantalion."
"..."
And I had no choice but to break down crying.
Like a newborn child.
Dantalion had died.
After hearing Ivar's outburst, Barbatos lost her words for a time. It wasn't just her words — she lost her expression too.
Ivar, still huffing with breath, looked down at Barbatos with a face that seemed oddly refreshed. You were no different from Laura de Farnese. When His Excellency Dantalion fell, you contributed just as much as the Farnese Military Secretary — or perhaps even more.
They deserved the wound.
It was only natural to curse oneself.
'Though execution was their fate regardless.'
That alone wasn't enough.
The Farnese Military Secretary would continue to suffer for as long as she lived. Because Ivar Lodbrok himself would whisper cunning words into her ear. No matter how hard the Military Secretary tried, no matter how brilliant her achievements, Ivar Lodbrok never intended to fully praise her.
Just so, he would inflict suffering upon the Demon Lord Barbatos as well.
"The death of His Majesty Dantalion is the fact that would hurt you the most!"
As if to prove that Ivar's thinking was correct, Barbatos's face was dyed in utter despair. She eventually hung her head and her shoulders trembled. Ten minutes passed. Twenty minutes passed. Yet Ivar did not grow weary at all watching the Demon Lord with her head bowed.
"…It's not true."
Barbatos suddenly muttered.
Ivar narrowed his brow.
"What did you say?"
"There's no way Dantalion is dead."
A sadistic sneer had risen to the corners of Ivar's mouth. Denying reality. It was a reaction that frequently appeared when one was struck by sudden shock. In the end, even Barbatos, who prided herself on being a proud Demon Lord, could do nothing but wilt like an ordinary woman before the death of her lover.
"No. His Majesty Dantalion is dead. And none other than a wretch like yourself killed him."
Even if he were alive, it would not be a living existence.
His Majesty Dantalion would henceforth live eternally engulfed in suffering. With no escape, and no hope to speak of. Disappearing quietly from the world while remaining in the very center of purgatory — that had been His Majesty's will.
Ivar could not bear it.
Never being able to meet His Majesty Dantalion again. That was agonizing. It was undeniably agonizing. But ever since he had assented to Dantalion's plan, Ivar had tasted an even greater bitterness brought on by yet another fact.
Why should His Majesty Dantalion alone have to suffer?
It was unreasonable.
It was absurd.
It was unfair.
His Majesty Dantalion had declared that everything was his own responsibility. But that was wrong. A single person bearing the weight of everything was strange no matter how you looked at it. Was that not merely rhetoric — a turn of phrase deployed to express a single will?
"Regret to your heart's content. Despair, if you please. Realize what you have done… what your petty scheme has driven someone to their grave. You would be better off grasping even a fraction of that."
Ivar Lodbrok hurled those words with the weight of a curse.
Pain for those who deserve to suffer.
A purgatory fair to all.
Ivar Lodbrok explained in detail how Dantalion had died, why Dantalion had committed suicide alongside Daisy, and what had driven him to ruin. The first sinner was Laura de Farnese. But the second sinner was none other than you—this was the point Ivar made sure not to leave unemphasized.
To every single one who, despite having countless other paths available, had chosen this one out of ignorance or prejudice, Ivar Lodbrok was more than willing to rain down his curse.
"Barbatos. You are a hideous being."
"……."
Silence.
Barbatos's shoulders no longer trembled. Ivar did not entertain the hope that she had stopped shaking because she had come to terms with reality. That would be far too generous an interpretation. Quite the opposite—her movement had ceased because she had utterly refused to accept reality.
"No."
But when Barbatos raised her head and looked at him—
Ivar Lodbrok saw that her golden eyes were fixed squarely on him.
"Dantalion couldn't have died."
"……."
What was she talking about?
Ivar Lodbrok couldn't understand. Had she rejected reality so completely that she had simply lost her mind? Was she really that fragile a woman? Ivar spoke coldly.
"No matter what you deny, His Majesty is already gone. Have the decency to acknowledge your sins. It is a yoke you must carry until the day of your execution."
"Don't you dare look down on me, puppeteer."
Barbatos stared directly into Ivar's eyes.
"Suicide with his adopted daughter? Abandoning Laura, tossing me aside, and choosing to 'die' first on his own whims? Ha. If you're going to lie, at least lie properly. You've made a critical mistake."
"……Already justifying yourself, I see. A fool beyond all help. Very well. Go on living the rest of your life deceiving yourself like that. Perhaps that is, in truth, the end you deserve."
It was just as Ivar turned to leave the tent.
"Dantalion would never, ever commit suicide."
Ivar's steps halted.
"He misunderstood his adopted daughter and drove her to death. Tragic, isn't it? There's nothing that cuts deeper for someone like him than a misunderstanding born of ignorance. Men cursed with too much intelligence can never endure the weight of mistakes rooted in false perception."
Barbatos sneered.
"But that's only half the story when it comes to Dantalion."
"……."
"He killed his adopted daughter? Then the bastard called Dantalion would only blame himself all the more viciously for it. Let me say it one more time, lady-in-waiting. Dantalion would never—*never*—choose suicide."
Ivar stared at Barbatos with an expressionless face.
"On what grounds are you justifying your delusions?"
Barbatos's lips twisted into a grimace.
"Because if he were going to kill himself, he'd have done it long ago. He had more than enough reasons."
Barbatos knew. He alone had seen through Dantalion's peculiarity.
The fact that Dantalion was being tormented by endless hallucinations.
When Barbatos had begged through his tears for Dantalion to run away with him, Dantalion had refused without hesitation. He'd declared it was nothing but fleeing from responsibility. To hell with peace. Barbatos remembered every single word Dantalion had spoken that day, clear and without omission.
That was precisely why Barbatos could also declare with certainty:
"Death itself is a luxury of peace for him. And dying together with his beloved adopted daughter? There's no way he'd allow himself such an extravagant ending."
"I have no intention of entertaining your baseless—"
"You're alive, Dantalion."
Barbatos spoke with unwavering conviction.
A single tear traced its way quietly down her eye.
"You're still alive."
"……."
Barbatos bowed his head and pressed his lips to the top of Ivar's foot.
"I am begging you."
Abandoning all his pride, he kissed Ivar's foot devotedly with each sentence he spoke. Barbatos—who had never once used honorifics to anyone in his life, not even to Bael—now spoke with deference.
"You don't have to tell me where he is. Knowing he's alive is already enough. If you want me to become a dog, I'll become a dog. If you want me to become a slave, I'll become a slave. If you curse my Demon Lord's horns so they never grow again, that's fine too."
"……."
"If you destroy my heart—destroy it about sixteen times—my mana will diminish to practically nothing. If you destroy the source of my mana, I'll accept it gladly. I don't even need proof of my existence as a mage. It doesn't matter what it is. You can take anything. So…."
Barbatos said.
His voice thick with tears, he pleaded desperately.
"So please… just allow me to find that man."
============================ Author's Afterword ============================
[Reader Comments]
NineBreaker// Yes, he has descended.
Nstarcity// I never thought I'd actually write up to chapter 500. I never imagined it would take over a year. Life is truly... truly unpredictable... I probably won't write any side stories.
xusaku// This is how it turned out.
mightnmagic// Yap yap.
asdMage// The one who dragged Dantalion into the world of M was Barbatos, though. <-
Oderi// That's right.
Sucheoncheonsa// Venus Pants: Thanks to me, he got to bed with beauties of kingdom-toppling beauty and rose to the pinnacle of power, yet he repays kindness with enmity!(...)
Omicron// What does it mean to be alive... ;ㅅ;
Hobak Hobak// Yes, it's okay to wish for that sometimes.
Sutlang// I'm still working on my next project. But since it's being serialized on a different site rather than Joara, I feel a bit bad mentioning it here. ;ㅅ;