Chapter 58
Part 57
"Thank you."
Yugeon gave a short bow.
The light illuminating the tomb slowly faded away.
Tap.
After climbing out of the hole, Yugeon brushed the dirt from his clothes.
The thick fog remained.
The air was damp.
He could even hear Ghouls growling somewhere in the distance.
"...?"
Then Yugeon blinked.
A corner of the graveyard that had been nothing but gray just moments ago...
Was now dyed in an entirely different color.
"What in the..."
His gaze shifted beside the grave.
The tree he had assumed was a completely rotted willow.
But now that he looked at it more closely, it wasn't a willow at all.
The shriveled branches and thick fog had simply fooled him.
"It was a silk tree."
And now...
The silk tree was in full bloom.
Pink flowers covered every branch.
It looked nothing like the dead tree it had appeared to be just moments earlier.
Rustle...
When the wind blew, slender petals slowly drifted through the air.
And the branches bent deeply toward the grave.
Almost as though they were trying to cast shade over it.
"..."
Yugeon silently watched the scene.
A passage from the letter came back to him.
[His Majesty truly hated sunlight and heat.]
[Whenever they rested, Her Majesty would personally put up a tent to make shade for him.]
"So it was the queen."
Yugeon murmured quietly.
From above the earth, the queen was still making shade for the husband who had always hated sunlight and heat.
The silk tree.
He suddenly remembered the meaning associated with its flowers.
Harmony between husband and wife.
It suited them perfectly.
The kingdom's name had disappeared.
The king and queen's names had disappeared.
Even every trace that their people had once lived there had vanished.
Yet the feelings the two had shared still remained here after all this time.
I never saw anything like this before my regression.
Back then, the tree had been completely dead.
Naturally, the item had already been gone.
There hadn't been any jewels left on the coffin either.
Even the king's remains had disappeared.
But this time was different.
Yugeon stepped beneath the silk tree and closed his eyes.
He wasn't someone who prayed often.
He didn't believe in any god.
If anything, he hated gods so much that merely thinking about them made him grind his teeth.
But just for this moment...
It wasn't a prayer offered to any god.
It was simply a brief moment of silence for two people.
If you've really met again...
Then he hoped they could finally be happy without any worries.
No war.
No kingdom.
Nothing else they needed to care about.
He simply hoped the two of them could remain together for a long, long time.
"Please rest in peace."
Rustle...
As though responding to him, the flowers of the silk tree swayed strongly in the wind.
Yugeon smiled ever so slightly and turned away.
Step. Step.
As he disappeared into the dense fog...
The pink silk tree gently covered the grave behind him.
As though even now...
A wife was quietly making shade for the husband who hated sunlight and heat.
"Hyung, did you hear?"
"Hear what?"
After returning to the base and taking a shower, Yugeon found Mincheol approaching him.
"They say flowers bloomed on Floor 41."
"Yeah. They said they were some kind of pink flowers... Cherry blossoms, maybe?"
Hwarin tilted her head.
She remembered hearing that they were some kind of pink flowers, but she had forgotten the name.
She wasn't particularly interested in flowers in the first place.
"They say the flowers are covering a grave... People are saying they're flowers that devour graves, or that it's some witch's curse."
"Ugh... That's scary!"
Woojin shuddered at Mincheol's words.
He had hated ghosts and anything supernatural ever since he was young.
And of all places, Sector 5 had to be called the Exile of the Dead!
"Silk tree flowers."
"Pardon?"
"Those pink flowers grow on silk trees."
Yugeon calmly told them the name.
"Oh! Wait, Hyung, you knew what they were?"
"I didn't know you were knowledgeable about flowers, Yugeon."
"My mother liked flowers."
Yugeon reached into his Subspace Bag and held out an item toward Hwarin.
"What is this?"
"Something I received from the owner of that grave. No... from the owner of that silk tree."
"Pardon...?"
Yugeon told them everything.
About the tomb.
The flowers.
And the item.
The others didn't necessarily need to know.
But Hwarin, at least, deserved to understand what kind of meaning the item carried.
That was the least amount of respect he could show the king and queen.
"Ah..."
"..."
After hearing the story of the Nameless King and Queen, all three fell silent.
Mincheol felt guilty and mentally erased the comments and articles he had read earlier.
Woojin felt sorry for the couple.
And Hwarin hugged the item tightly against her chest, silently praying for them.
"Thank you, Yugeon."
"I didn't really do anything."
"But people are saying there wasn't a body inside the coffin. So when you went there, the king's remains were still there, right, Hyung?"
"They probably disappeared. He must have reunited with the queen."
The message had said that the king's lingering regret and sorrow had been resolved.
Thinking about that, it made sense for his remains to disappear as well.
Yugeon simply hadn't reopened the coffin after receiving the message.
Pop!
"It smells really nice."
The moment Hwarin removed the cap, a sweet and refreshing fragrance spread throughout the room.
She carefully raised the bottle.
Gulp.
Hwarin drank the liquid inside.
Strangely, not a single drop remained in the bottle.
Every bit of it flowed directly into her mouth.
At that moment...
WHOOOOOSH!
FLAP!
An enormous surge of energy erupted from Hwarin.
The curtains whipped violently, and nearby objects began flying through the air.
Her mana is even deeper than I expected.
A moment later...
HUMMMMM...
The wildly surging energy gradually settled into the center of her body.
Hwarin slowly opened her eyes.
"Noona, how do you feel?"
Mincheol immediately asked.
"My mana... The quality of my mana has changed."
And her head felt incredibly clear.
It was almost as though she had slept soundly for twelve hours, taken a refreshing shower, and stepped outside beneath a perfectly cloudless sky.
A freshness and clarity she couldn't properly describe filled her entire body.
"Thank you, Yugeon."
Hwarin thanked him again.
Lately, she had been pushing her mana to the limit while controlling hundreds of undead at once.
Every battle left her thoroughly exhausted.
She had also been suffering frequent nosebleeds.
Her body hadn't reached the point of breaking down yet, and there hadn't been any serious abnormalities.
But if things continued that way, it was obvious she would eventually put herself in danger.
Now, she had finally escaped that problem.
"Wow! That's a relief, Noona."
"Thank you, Mincheol."
Hwarin gave him a gentle smile.
She was grateful to Yugeon, of course.
But the person she felt especially thankful toward was Mincheol.
Every time she suffered from headaches and exhaustion after training, he brought her medicine.
He had even started bringing food and items that were supposedly good for replenishing blood.
"Hmm... Ah, Hyung! Can I talk to you for a moment?"
"Hmm? Sure."
Noticing the strange atmosphere between the two, Woojin quickly dragged Yugeon upstairs.
Something soft and pink seemed to be floating between Mincheol and Hwarin.
I'll pretend I didn't notice.
Woojin glanced at Yugeon.
But it didn't look like Yugeon was pretending not to notice.
He genuinely hadn't noticed at all.
"This is about the spatial distortion items, right?"
"You're really perceptive about things like this."
"Hmm?"
"Nothing. It's nothing."
Hummm.
Woojin smiled and opened his Subspace Storage.
Clatter!
A huge pile of necklaces spilled out.
"Whoa. You've already made this many?"
"Hehe. Of course!"
Woojin puffed out his chest proudly as Yugeon stared at the hundreds of necklaces.
Every single necklace was an item.
More specifically, each one was an outward-release type item imbued with spatial distortion.
"Like I promised, you'll receive ninety percent of the profits from these items."
"But Hyung, can't we just split it twenty-five percent each? It feels weird for me to take ninety percent..."
"I understand how you feel, but ninety percent should go to you."
Yugeon smiled and rubbed Woojin's head.
Once diplomacy with other races began, these necklaces would be sold around the world.
No.
More precisely, they wouldn't only be sold to humans.
They would also be sold to other races.
If they want to travel back and forth, Elves and Dwarves will need to wear them too.
That meant they would need far more than the few hundred Woojin had already produced.
And Woojin alone would have to do all the work required to make them.
Yet he wanted to split the profits evenly at twenty-five percent each?
Absolutely not.
Yugeon, Mincheol, and Hwarin hadn't helped with their production at all.
At most, we brought him the necklaces and the mana stones attached to them.
Each necklace had a processed mana stone attached to its end.
Its purpose was to release the stored energy into the surroundings.
"I've already told you, once demand increases, you'll have a lot more work to do."
"But making these wasn't difficult at all! You gave me this, remember?"
Woojin pulled out the item hanging around his neck.
The World Axis Ore that Yugeon had given him earlier.
Woojin had also turned it into a necklace and equipped it.
"Hmm... If you insist, then eighty percent."
"But..."
"If you keep arguing, I'll make you take one hundred percent."
"..."
"You take eighty percent of the profits. The other twenty percent goes into the shared account for our base. Got it?"
"Urgh... I still want to give at least some of my share directly to you, Hyung. It's my profit, so I can do whatever I want with it, right? I'll put part of it into your personal account!"
"I keep telling you, I have plenty of money. I'm rich."
"Don't lie."
"In terms of actual cash alone, I'm probably the richest person in Korea."
"Hahaha! I saw you carrying only one hundred thousand won in your wallet the other day."
Woojin burst out laughing.
He had personally seen the one hundred thousand won in Yugeon's wallet.
And now Yugeon was claiming to be rich?
Besides, Woojin was the son of a chaebol family.
Did Yugeon really think he'd believe something like that?
"Five trillion won."
"Pardon?"
"I have five trillion won in cash."
Of course, Yugeon hadn't actually withdrawn all five trillion yet.
"Hahahaha! That was actually a good one. Even my father doesn't have a trillion won sitting around entirely in cash, and you're saying you..."
"..."
Yugeon merely smiled faintly without saying anything.
Woojin's expression instantly froze.
After spending so much time together, he had learned how to read Yugeon's expressions.
And right now...
Yugeon wasn't joking.
"Uh... Seriously?"
"That's why I'm saying I don't need your profits."
"..."
"All right, go get some sleep. You're going back into the Tower tomorrow too."
"W-Wait, Hyung! Hold on. Five trillion?! You really have five trillion won?! In cash?! How?!"
"Come on, time for bed."
"Hyung! Tell me!!"
