Chapter 228: Have I Really Moved On from the Pain?

“Waaaah…”

Red listened to the noisy sound in his ear, and for a moment, his head felt twice as large.

Although he knew perfectly well that Letia was faking it, that didn’t mean the people around them knew!

Facing the gazes of everyone looking at him like he was some kind of scumbag, Red could only say helplessly, “Fine, fine. I’ll hire you, just so you don’t end up without a place to stay.”

He was the one who was supposed to be sad and heartbroken, yet in the end, he became the one comforting others.

‘What is this?’

‘You owe me for my emotions!!’

“But what were you thinking? Why did you cancel your Adventurer Qualification after leaving the team?”

“That?”

Letia wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes.

Her piteous, weak, and helpless expression vanished instantly, replaced by the look of a salted fish with “I don’t care” written all over her face.

“Working is so tiring. Why can’t people just lie down and make money? Why, why, why…”

Facing this string of muttering, Red felt his headache growing worse.

“If you don’t want to work, why did you come to me?”

“I simply don’t want to work, but didn’t I see that your weapon shop doesn’t have many customers?”

Letia scratched her head, a grin appearing on her face.

“So, I figured it would be very relaxing.”

For some reason, Red felt like Letia was mocking him, whether intentionally or not, but he had no proof.

Still, he really wanted to give her a punch on the head.

“So, why are you still dazing off here?”

Letia stood up, patted the dust off her skirt, and looked back at Red.

“Let’s go back and eat!”

…Fine.

Although he felt like something was wrong somewhere, Red chose to take Letia back home again.

When the two of them arrived, Red pushed the door open and walked in.

It was strange to say, but Litt was already gone, yet not a single person had come to help pack her belongings over the past two days.

The White Church was preparing to hold a funeral for Litt, but Red wasn’t sure who they were going to invite.

Even though he and Litt had been very close, it didn’t mean the people of the White Church knew that.

So, even if he didn’t receive an invite, Red wouldn’t be too surprised.

It was just… he still felt an indescribable discomfort.

“Go sleep in my room tonight. I’ll just sleep in the living room. After the people from the White Church take Litt’s things, I plan to buy this house.”

“In full?”

“Definitely.”

Hearing Red’s arrogant words, Letia’s eyes widened.

Paying in full…

Wait?

Exactly how much money had Red made?

“Did you earn several hundred thousand from the copyright fees for the Blood-Hunting Spider?”

“It’s not just the Blood-Hunting Spider…”

Don’t be fooled by how Red’s weapon shop usually didn’t seem to have much business.

Every time it did open, it was basically for a large order.

Just supplying equipment to the Scarlet Legion was enough to keep him busy for quite a while.

Furthermore, for some reason, the Winter Wardens and Judgment Holy Night had also placed orders with him recently.

They were the type to pay upfront, too.

He couldn’t finish the work; there was simply no way to finish it all.

“The weapon shop has earned nearly 100,000, too. Adding the recent new orders, a conservative estimate would be nearly 200,000.”

Letia fell silent for a long time.

For someone whose savings had never exceeded 10,000 since she bought her own house, several hundred thousand was a concept she couldn’t even grasp.

She had only one thought now.

She reached out her hand and spoke to Red in an incredibly serious tone.

“Rich guy, please sponsor me. I can warm the bed.”

“Get lost!”

Red pushed Letia away with a dark expression as she tried to cling to him.

“I’ll go cook first. You go take a shower. Tomorrow, I’ll see if I can arrange a place for you to stay. If you keep sleeping here, the Police might come knocking on my door the next morning.”

***

Deep into the night, a thick darkness wrapped the living room in near-absolute silence.

Although Letia’s heartless, noisy voice had finally stopped as she drifted into a dream, this sudden, almost deafening silence became a deeper kind of torture for Red.

He curled up on the narrow sofa, but his body felt as if it were sinking into cold mud.

Fine beads of cold sweat constantly seeped from his forehead, and his expression looked extremely pained.

A nightmare.

A nightmare that repeated over and over again.

It was like a vortex, dragging him ruthlessly into the abyss.

Litt’s blood-stained smiling face constantly appeared in his dreams.

There was a large hole in the girl’s chest, appearing as a bizarre dark red color.

Immediately afterward, a frigid chill gradually enveloped the entire space.

Litt maintained that smiling face, but starting from the wound in her chest, ice crystals began to spread and freeze outward at a speed visible to the naked eye.

The ice crystals carried a cruel beauty, quickly reaching her neck.

The girl’s gradually emptying eyes, her pale cheeks, her slightly parted lips, her outstretched hands—

She seemed to want to say something, but because her throat was completely frozen, she couldn’t utter a single word.

Until finally, the ice crystals turned her entire person into an ice sculpture.

Crack…

Litt’s body was now like fragile glass.

It shattered completely—shattered—shattered.

Until… it melted into a pool of blood.

Red reached out in vain, trying to catch even a single crystal of ice.

He wanted to speak, but his throat could only produce a hoarse, extremely weak wail.

His heart felt as if it were being gripped, torn, and crushed by an invisible icy hand.

That was a pain that transcended physiology, a pain that felt as if it would strip his soul from his body.

On the sofa, the real Red’s body grew rigid, even twitching slightly.

As time passed, the pain caused his entire face to distort.

Sweat soaked his forehead and even dampened the fabric of the sofa…

Finally, he snapped his eyes open.

Like an electric shock, his entire body bolted upright from the sofa like a spring.

“Cough!! Cough, cough! Hah…”

Like a drowning man finally breaking the surface of the water, he began to gulp down the surrounding air.

He felt his consciousness gradually clear, as if he had finally escaped the shackles of the nightmare.

His lips were slightly parted, and his body shook uncontrollably.

He clearly wanted to scream, but he couldn’t say a word.

There was only the sound of his suppressed, terminal gasping.

This silent torture, this suffocating quagmire, felt as if it were going to drag his soul into eternal darkness.

Red’s expression was dazed as he slowly turned his gaze to look around.

There was no bone-chilling altar floor, and no foul, twisted dark red Magic.

What met his eyes was the familiar wooden ceiling and the hazy glimmer of light from outside the window, carrying the warmth of the mortal world.

This… was home.

“Ugh.”

Red closed his eyes in pain, pressing his cold, sweaty palm firmly against his burning forehead, as if trying to force the remaining fragments of the nightmare and the suffocating pain back into the depths of his mind.

A wooden board pierced by a nail would never return to its original state just because a layer of paint was smeared over it.

No matter how much glue was used to piece together a shattered stone, the result would be nothing more than a disfigured object.

‘Have I… really walked out of the pain?’

Not necessarily.