Chapter 115: Fairy Tales Are False, But Love Is Real
With the status of the Queen of the Underworld, it would take only a few minutes at full speed to traverse the distance from the inner city of the capital to its outskirts.
However, Helen had spent several hours walking this journey of less than ten li.
Their previous date had only lasted a single day, far too short to explore all that the royal city had to offer.
Thus—inns, orchards, hotels, bakeries, wineries... there were still far too many places in this city that could make her stop and linger.
The scorching sun above followed its eternal trajectory, gradually sliding westward from directly overhead.
The once blinding, oppressive midday sunlight became gentle and serene, turning into golden radiance that lit the path ahead of the two.
The scenery around them changed as well, no longer the bustling, crowded streets full of people… instead replaced by a tranquil pastoral landscape.
Towering steel buildings gave way to low brick houses, and in the boundless fields, a flock of sheep grazed peacefully; few people were in sight, with only a few shepherds wearing straw hats occasionally appearing.
A winding path cut through the overgrown wild grass, passing across the entire pasture and disappearing into the far end of the plains… there, a forest-covered mountain range loomed, and the faint sound of ocean tides echoed from its depths.
「We’re almost there.」
The girl beside him stopped walking, and icy-blue script appeared between Rast’s collar.
That mountain peak, veiled by the sea of trees, was the very place where she first developed the impulse to run away from home.
It was also the final chapter of Chronicles of the Silver Wing, the ending of the journey shared by its male and female leads.
“Mhm, we finally made it.”
Rast nodded, tilting his head to look at the girl beside him.
Helen was gazing at the distant mountains cloaked in trees, her violet eyes flickering with hesitation.
Even though they were finally nearing their destination, she had begun to falter... Rast could easily understand such feelings.
Over the past month, he had become nearly capable of profiling and fully simulating her thoughts.
For Helen, whether it was their last runaway date in the royal city or this current journey toward the mountaintop, both had been a kind of pilgrimage.
Just like fans who are passionately in love with a certain work might visit the film’s shooting locations for selfies, or draw cards at King Arthur’s grave...
In terms of fervor, there might be no one in the world who loved Chronicles of the Silver Wing more than Helen... in a sense, she had already treated this work as the emotional anchor of her heart.
The lonely Plague Witch who could bring ruin in the book was none other than herself.
The places she and Rast had visited—the circus, the detective agency, the fortune-telling club—were all locations that had appeared in that fairytale.
And precisely because of this, in Helen’s subconscious, the mountaintop of that mountain range was not only the ending of Chronicles of the Silver Wing, but also the conclusion of her own dreamlike, wondrous journey—a journey brimming with novelty and joy at every moment.
Every journey has an end.
But not every traveler can calmly accept the contrast between dream and reality.
To return peacefully from breathtaking landscapes and starlit rivers… to dull, unchanging daily life where no light can be seen.
Her violet eyes flickered with uncertainty, but in the end, longing triumphed over hesitation as she took her first step toward that distant summit.
…
The mountain path was far from smooth, merely a winding trail spiraling along the slope, somewhat muddy, with no paved stones or foundation beneath.
It had once been used by lumberjacks long ago to gather firewood—a path that, as the saying went, had not existed until many had walked it and turned it into one.
Yet as time passed, and with waves of refugees from the outside pouring into the capital, this path had gradually been abandoned… until, after many years of dust, it welcomed new visitors like Rast and Helen.
Helen, worried about falling, placed her hand obediently in Rast’s palm, letting him guide her forward.
Rast walked ahead, occasionally pushing aside overgrown branches blocking their way and clearing any stones that might trip the girl behind him.
Had he known it would turn out like this...
Perhaps he should’ve made more effort back then to acquire Rodri’s Nightblade, 「All Roads Lead」.
This was practically the perfect occasion to use that guy’s Nightblade.
Gazing at the nearly abandoned mountain road before him, Rast couldn’t help but have this thought.
…
The sun slowly dipped lower in the sky, and the golden light cast over the mountain began to take on a dusky red hue.
Through the dense leaves atop the path, fragmented shadows fell like scattered pieces of light.
Eventually, the mountain trail came to an end, giving way to a sloped hillside.
With Rast’s help, Helen climbed over the hill, panting slightly.
Though she was the Queen of the Underworld, the 「Death God」 sequence she bore was different from Shiltina’s 「Chariot」—it did not directly enhance her physical strength or sanctify her body.
Of course, normal transcendentals, even those with sequences not focused on physical attributes, would naturally strengthen their bodies through steady growth and training.
In that process, even mental or mystical-focused transcendentals would forge a robust physique to avoid glaring weaknesses in battle.
Rast himself was a good example—though his body couldn’t be enhanced due to the Deep Blue Port’s loops, and though his 「Tower」 sequence wasn’t physical-based...
He had pushed his physical capabilities to the limit through meticulous control and precision, combined with unmatched combat experience gained through three hundred years of repetition...
Even against a 「Chariot」 sequence of the same tier, Rast was confident he wouldn’t be outmatched in close combat.
Of course, Shiltina was an exception—wielding a cheat-level Nightblade like 「Infinite Blade」, she was pure wallhack-tier.
But Helen was different.
Her power hadn’t come from long-term training and development like other transcendentals… it was innately overwhelming.
She had been born bearing the authority of Death, standing at the pinnacle of transcendence without ever experiencing growth, hardship, or adversity… but missing the constant refining and strengthening process.
So unless she actively invoked her authorities and Wordcraft, wielding her power as Queen of the Underworld, her physical abilities were no different from an ordinary human’s.
Climbing an entire mountain in one go meant little to Rast—back in Deep Blue Port, every loop involved a life-or-death marathon with the Iron Cross troops, where being caught meant becoming their plaything...
But for Helen, this was not an easy task.
She was clearly exhausted, her fair cheeks flushed with an unnatural red.
Yet her violet eyes still gleamed, astonishingly bright.
“We’ve arrived.”
Rast stopped at the peak.
Helen, still holding his hand, climbed up the final slope.
In the next instant, her eyes widened, and her grip on Rast’s fingers suddenly tightened.
What greeted her sight was a dense forest of pine.
The evening breeze swept through Helen’s hair, bringing with it the scent of pinewood and the bitterness of seawater.
Countless trees swayed in the wind, stirring up layers of waves.
Each time the wind swept over the ridge, the entire forest would let out a bronze chime-like roar, the treetops flickering in the dusk.
At the edge of the forest was a steep cliff, and beyond the precipice stretched the endless sea.
The sky looked like an overturned crucible, molten twilight pouring down like bronze through cracks in the clouds, dyeing the calm ocean surface with a dusky hue.
Waves, soaked in the setting sun, crashed repeatedly against the cliffs, eroding the basalt foundations.
From the cliffside, they could see the entirety of Paradise’s royal city—its buildings lay quietly across the land… in the center, the grand palace stood still within the stagnant dusk, like a frozen photograph.
Rast gently released Helen’s hand as she walked step by step toward the cliff’s edge.
After a few breaths, Helen’s slender figure paused at the edge.
The wind lifted the hem of her long dress, flapping sharply in the high air.
In the twilight, Rast looked at the girl’s side profile, now edged in gold by the setting sun, and was suddenly reminded of the bronze sundials he had once seen in the museum—like the Queen of the Underworld before him, they too carried an unreal aura, as if not of this era.
「Finally, I see it. The ending scenery of that story.」
The icy-blue text danced with Rast’s collar in the sea breeze.
He stepped up beside her, gazing together at the sun-drenched forest.
“You came all this way with such effort. Aren’t you disappointed?”
“This world isn’t the same as the one in Chronicles of the Silver Wing…”
“In the wandering circus, there wasn’t a parrot transformed from a cursed high elf.”
…
“The detective agency’s cases weren’t about evil organizations plotting to overturn the world, either. They were mostly about catching cheaters, exposing affairs, and other trivial domestic drama.”
“There was no cozy cottage built by a witch and a knight boy, deep in the woods atop the mountains…”
Rast saw the girl before him shake her head slightly. Her hair caught the last glow of dusk in the sky.
「No, I’m not disappointed（＾＾）」
Helen stretched out a pale finger and traced an icy-blue streak in the amber sky.
In the end, she even added a smiley face.
「From the very beginning, I knew the story in Chronicles of the Silver Wing was all fake.」
「It was a made-up fairytale, intentionally fabricated—its worldview and plot logic existed purely for dramatic effect, something that could never happen in reality.」
「There are no such coincidences in the real world. The protagonists wouldn’t conveniently rescue a high elf cursed into a parrot, nor would they happen to pass by a detective agency just in time to stumble upon an evil organization’s plot to end the world.」
Since meeting Helen, this was the first time Rast had seen the Queen write so much in one go.
She had always been the cold and expressionless type, rarely revealing her emotions. She preferred to keep things to herself.
Even when talking with her maids, she only used a few words, never showing any emotional ripple.
But at this moment, within the scenery of the final chapter of Chronicles of the Silver Wing, at the mountaintop cliff where only she and Rast stood, she no longer held anything back.
Her slender fingertip danced across the sky at twilight, weaving silver-blue threads of writing—elegant at first, but growing more hurried and messy with emotion.
It didn’t seem like she was writing for Rast.
Rather, it felt like she was writing to herself… a silent monologue, an emotional outpouring.
「I understand that the world we live in isn’t a fairytale.」
「And I’m not really the protagonist of a story, blessed with something called a protagonist’s aura.」
「Including the moment I met you, Rast——」
The icy-blue writing paused briefly.
「That beautiful firework blooming in the sky, the people who suddenly gave up their place in line in front of the circus, those street vendors with oddly unskilled hands, and that fortune-teller who inexplicably bore a grudge against me...」
「None of those were coincidences either… only a fictional story would have that many coincidences.」
As Rast read the elegant blue script, something stirred in his heart.
Only now did he realize that whether it was the shadow servants or himself…
They might have all underestimated the Queen of the Underworld standing before them.
Due to her past experiences, Helen’s emotional and mental development had been stunted—her psychological age was relatively young… but that didn’t mean she was stupid, or lacked the ability to think for herself, or was blind to obvious anomalies around her.
Maybe she hadn’t cared at first, but as the coincidences kept piling up again and again, suspicion and doubt had inevitably crept into her heart.
And Helen was, after all, the ruler of the Underworld—the royal city, and even the entirety of Paradise, were her domain, her personal garden...
Once she truly resolved to get to the bottom of something, no matter how cautious the shadow servants were, they would inevitably leave behind traces.
She was, after all, a legendary-tier existence within her own domain...
Even if that level had been reached through external means, the skills of a legend couldn’t be guessed or measured by other transcendentals who had never witnessed such a realm firsthand.
Rast slowly adjusted his breathing.
According to the original contingency plan of “Lost Paradise,” if their true objective—shared by him and the Shorekeepers—was exposed before the Queen of the Underworld, he was supposed to immediately activate his escape artifact and execute a rapid emergency retreat.
But he didn’t move.
Even though the Queen before him had already sensed something was off.
Even though she had realized that their encounter, and everything that had followed, had all been scripted by someone else.
Yet those violet eyes held no trace of anger, hostility, or suspicion.
If anything, Rast even felt—perhaps it was just his imagination—that her gaze had become more affectionate.
It wasn’t the previous familiarity or trust…
It was affection.
Just like the witch’s affection for the knight in Chronicles of the Silver Wing.
「I know… that dreamy, fantastical date we had, must have been the result of many people working hard behind the scenes.」
「Everything we experienced—just like Chronicles of the Silver Wing—was a carefully arranged stage play full of manufactured coincidences...」
「But——」
Lines of icy-blue text emerged against the amber sky, then scattered again like mist.
Helen’s face as she wrote was bathed in dusk, porcelain-perfect, yet fragile like a bubble that could burst at any moment. Rast could see the setting sun reflected in her eyes.
「Fairy tales are false, but love is real.」
「Even if Chronicles of the Silver Wing is a fictional tale, the love between Knight Lyle and the Witch was never fake.」
「And I believe the same applies to reality.」
「Even if everything we experienced was just a performance, the feelings that bloomed within it... must be real.」
The girl turned back to look at him, her long hair flowing in the evening breeze.
Each icy-blue word was dyed red by the sunset, as if written in flame—ready to ignite at any moment.
「Rast.」
「I think... you are the male lead of my story.」