Chapter 9
Chapter 9
A few minutes before the scream rang out.
Isabella, having entrusted the rear guard to Baal, rushed straight to the collapsed girl and urgently checked her carotid artery.
Thump-thump.
A steady pulse, unmistakably strong, beat beneath her fingers as if confirming that the girl was still alive.
“Phew, thank goodness.”
But relief was fleeting. As Isabella examined the girl’s condition more closely, a sense of unease crept in.
‘Why is this girl… completely unharmed?’
She didn’t have to look far. Corpses torn apart and mangled by undead littered the area. Yet aside from a few scrapes from falling, the girl appeared almost entirely unscathed. Even stranger, faint black particles like threads of soot floated weightlessly in the air around her.
“No way… is she the host?”
Isabella’s expression stiffened as she sensed an overwhelming concentration of foul dark energy, so thick it made her nauseous, gathered around the girl.
If the Tear of Infernus had taken root within her, Isabella would have no choice but to kill her.
Suppressing the grim thought, Isabella gently turned the prone girl onto her back, silently hoping her suspicion was wrong.
“Just in case… I need to check… huh?”
Thud!
At that moment, a ragged cloth doll tumbled out of the girl’s arms.
Compelled by instinct, Isabella picked it up. She had expected it to be soft, filled with cotton, but the doll was oddly rigid. Especially the stomach. As if something solid had been stuffed inside.
“No way!”
A terrible hunch forming, Isabella stared at the doll, then quickly tore open the side seam stitched with thread.
Rip. Thud.
Despite her haste, the worn doll came apart easily. From within, a lustrous purple gemstone the size of a baby’s fist fell to the ground.
“…!”
Two conflicting emotions flashed through her at once.
First, relief and joy. She had found part of the Tear of Infernus. But that joy was quickly overshadowed by concern. What lay before her was only a fragment of the Tear.
“Of course… it was too much to hope for.”
The Tear of Infernus had been split into five stones. The chances of finding them all together were close to zero.
Isabella let out a bitter chuckle. She had expected as much.
‘No… maybe it’s for the best that they’re not all in one place.’
Historically known as a cursed relic, each shard of the Tear possessed a different curse. Had all five gathered unchecked, not just the Empire, but humanity itself would have faced a new catastrophe.
“In any case, recovering even one is a blessing. Hmm… judging by the situation, this must be a cursed object imbued with a physical curse through magical creatures?”
Trying to think positively amid grim circumstances, Isabella reached for the fallen gemstone. But the moment her fingers touched it…
“Urgh!”
She felt a massive surge of mana being pulled from her fingertips into the stone. And then…
Tzzzt! SKRAAAAKK-KIII!
With a shriek like metal being shredded, black smoke burst from the gemstone, rapidly forming into a swollen mass veiled in a dark membrane like an inflating balloon. Within that membrane, monstrous beasts, already corpses, now reanimated, gaped their maws wide, as if ready to devour her whole.
Were monsters always this terrifying?
They were nothing like the familiars her family kept, who had always shown her affection. A murderous aura so intense it made her shoulders tremble radiated from them.
And then… Her vision went black. A large hand had suddenly covered her eyes. A voice followed.
“Do not be afraid.”
The deep baritone, almost magical in its calm, instantly stilled her trembling. Then came the voice again.
“It’s time for you to do what only you can.”
“What… only I can do.”
Isabella echoed the words softly, then firmly grasped the purple gemstone in both hands. At once, the monsters wreathed in black screeched in agony.
“Khhhaaaa!”
With courage that made it seem she’d never known fear, Isabella answered, “Yes. I’ll do it.”
The hand fell away from her eyes. And then, a strangely sacred black light began to radiate around her.
The light connected into lines, lines into tangled strokes, forming ancient runes. Soon, the runes etched a complex pattern into the ground – an enormous magic circle.
As the circle glowed with a golden-black hue like a starlit night sky, the membrane trapping the monsters began to convulse violently.
“KRRRRAAAAGH!”
“K… kill the humans!”
The more the monsters resisted, the more Isabella’s tightly clenched lips turned pale. Then a monster with red scales on its face and three horns charged forward, ready to break through the membrane.
It halted inches from her, its blood-red eyes burning with hatred. A chilling voice rang in her mind.
{Descendant of Nezar… I curse your blood. My heart shall burrow into your soul and drag you into unending hell.}
And just like that, the creature disappeared into the swarm.
Moments later, the monsters writhed and howled as if crushed under Isabella’s magical pressure. The black mass collapsed in on itself, drawn back into the gemstone. As if drained of all power, the gemstone lost its hue… and became nothing more than a clear crystal.
‘Did… I succeed in sealing it?’
The magic circle vanished. The once-dark relic now radiated no foul energy.
It was her first time using the ancient sealing magic she had learned in case the Tear of Infernus was ever stolen. The success left her somewhat stunned. She turned her head absentmindedly.
“Huh? It’s… gone.”
The sour stench that had clung to the air was gone. The horde of undead also vanished without a trace. Just then, Baal ran over to her.
“To think our young lady could do something so incredible! I’m bursting with pride, meeeeh!”
Baal dabbed at his eyes with a handkerchief, overcome with tears. Seeing him like that filled her chest with an odd sense of satisfaction.
Beaming, she held up the now-clear relic.
“Look! I really did it… huh?”
Before she could finish her sentence, the world tilted. Everything doubled and spun. The dizziness overtook her, and her body began to tip over.
Thud.
Her head hit something solid, and then someone caught her by the shoulders. She lifted her head weakly to see who had supported her.
Two blinding white lights in her blurred vision overlapped until the stern face of Cedric came into focus.
“Ah…”
He’d look so nice if only he didn’t scowl like that…
As their eyes met, the fog in her head seemed to clear. Almost without realizing, she reached toward his furrowed brow. But her hand didn’t even make it past his shoulder.
CRACK!
As if struck in the head, her vision reeled. A sharp sensation tugged at her very soul, like chains wrapped around her heart were being yanked tight.
Snap!
CLINK-CLATTER!
With the sound of heavy chains breaking, something long locked away burst open inside her mind.
And then she knew something’s wrong…
‘My hand… it’s disappearing? This can’t be right.’
The hand she had reached toward Cedric… was fading.
“Darkness, cloak my lady, meeeeh!”
Just as she tried to close and open her hand in panic, Baal’s voice rang out. A dome of darkness enveloped them. But by then, her hand and her entire body had already gone transparent.
“Haa… The timing couldn’t be worse, meeeeh.”
Baal sighed deeply as he approached her.
“What do you mean, ‘the timing couldn’t be worse’? And this… Dad sealed this ability, so why…?”
Shocked by her body’s sudden change, she asked in disbelief. Baal, eyeing Cedric warily within the dome, answered with a displeased frown.
“During the sealing of the Tear of Infernus, the power accidentally absorbed into you seems to have clashed with Lord Edwin’s magic lingering in your body. That collision likely triggered the release.”
“Really?”
“Meeeeh. There’s no other explanation I can think of.”
At Baal’s firm answer, Isabella glanced down at herself. Not just her hands and feet, even her clothes were invisible.
This was Ghost Form, the unique ability she had been born with. A power akin to that of a spirit, it had once been the key to Count Nezar defeating the King of Monsters. But since Nezar’s death, the ability had not been passed down, fading into legend.
When it finally awakened in Isabella, House Hellen rejoiced at the birth of a new legacy.
All except one person – Edwin. Because the power came with a fatal flaw.
It consumed her lifespan. And the vast mana within her frail body made it wildly unstable, preventing her from using it properly.
Even if she turned invisible like a ghost, she was still affected by physical force. She couldn’t pass through a wall or even a small table. Her floating ability? Barely three centimeters off the ground.
So Isabella gave it a different name: The power of an ‘invisible girl.’ Nothing more.
A power that consumed her life for little benefit, it was sealed away by Edwin, who feared its danger.
Now, she summoned her mana and let it envelop her. Slowly, her transparent form began to return.
“It’s been a long time since I felt this…”
Smiling faintly at the strangely nostalgic sensation, she turned to Baal. But Baal was glaring fiercely at someone behind her.
‘Oh… right!’
Only then did she realize she was still leaning against Cedric. Flustered, she turned her head then froze.
Gasp!
His brow was furrowed so hard it looked painful just to see it. She quickly stepped back and apologized.
“S-sorry. Because of me…”
But she couldn’t finish.
The sharp air he exuded completely silenced her. Then, Cedric’s tightly shut lips parted. What he said next caught her entirely off guard.
“That power… if you value your life, never use it in front of others.”
……
T/N: Now I want to know the backstory between Cedric and Isabella 🤔
