# Chapter 25
Ion looked down at his two hands.
They were full of fine black powder. It was impossible to imagine that until just a moment ago, this had formed the shape of a person.
It felt like a terrible dream.
Like the nightmare he once had where his mother and he were brutally murdered, he thought that this moment might also be a similarly horrible dream with little difference.
It didn’t feel real.
Even as he felt the texture of the fine powder with his hands and grabbed the clothes Levi had worn, it still felt like a dream. He wished that the pain from his broken leg and the stinging in his side were just dream mechanisms designed to make this situation seem real.
With a vacant expression, Ion stared blankly at the black powder. Just then, a strong wind came blowing through the forest. Seeing the black powder being carried away by the wind, Ion reached out with both arms, screaming Levi’s name.
“Aaah—! No! No! Levi!”
As if he couldn’t lose even a single grain, he swept the powder together with both arms, hugging it close. Yet when the powder still flew away in the wind, he screamed as if having a seizure and desperately tried to catch it. He frequently fell forward due to his legs that wouldn’t move properly, but he kept gathering and gathering the powder that had mixed with the soil.
As he held the powder that had been Levi to his chest, he felt something hard. When he took it out, it was a black marble about the size of a finger joint.
On the shiny surface of the glossy marble, which looked like a black diamond, there was a mark where something sharp had passed, and from that point, thin cracks had spread throughout the entire marble.
Upon facing Levi’s core, Ion finally couldn’t hold back any longer and burst into loud tears. He lay down on the black powder that had constituted Levi’s body and wept profusely. His falling tears soaked into the powder bit by bit.
Ion, holding Levi like that, could do nothing but cry.
❖ ❖ ❖
Three days after Levi’s death.
Ion still hadn’t moved an inch from that spot.
Lying on his side, he held what little remained of the black powder and clothes in his arms, and firmly gripped the black marble in one hand. Blinking slowly with dry eyes that could no longer shed any moisture from crying so much, Ion looked like a ruined person to anyone who might see him.
Shrk— Shrkk—
The sound of the last corpse being entangled and dragged by black thorny roots rising from the ground could be heard. The thorny trees spread throughout the area pulled the corpses one by one into the ground to become their useful nutrients. While cloth and leather were fine, it seemed they couldn’t eat blades, as they deliberately set aside weapons and metal items.
Despite this, the thorny trees didn’t touch Ion. Though he was human and would surely be good nutrition for them, they moved around him carefully as if they knew who the black powder he held was.
The smell of decaying corpses still lingered in the area, but Ion was unaware of it. His unfocused eyes reflected nothing, and his pale complexion and faint breathing made one worry that he might have died with his eyes open.
If he had been an ordinary human, he might have been in life-threatening danger from hypothermia due to the damp forest. Moreover, his legs had been crushed to the point of breaking, and his side had been cut enough for blood to flow continuously. Whether from shock due to pain or excessive bleeding, it wasn’t something a thirteen-year-old child could endure alone.
But due to his superior self-healing ability, Ion was already in a perfectly fine state. His broken legs had slowly found their proper positions and correctly reattached, and the wound on his side that had bled had already healed without a trace. If he wanted to, he could get up and run at full speed without any problem.
But whether he knew this or not, Ion lay on the cold soil without moving.
Chirp—
A faint bird sound was heard from somewhere. Ion’s pupils, which had been unresponsive to anything as he had lost his will to live, trembled slightly.
“Bird…”
A cracked voice leaked out between his lips. Just then, another bird sound came as if responding to Ion.
Ion’s body moved. He raised his body, which creaked from the cold that had seeped in. With his right arm holding Levi’s clothes and his left hand gripping the core he had left behind, he put strength into his legs.
Even though the powder he was holding was falling in clumps, Ion tried to stand upright. After stumbling a few times, unable to find his balance, he soon staggered toward where the sound had come from. The powder remaining in his arms left a trace, carving a thin path where he had passed.
Walking as if enchanted, Ion soon reached a pond where vibrant flowers were in full bloom. Near the pond, which was dazzling with light particles, two birds were crying as if conversing with each other.
The small, cute birds that Ion had wanted. The kind of birds he believed Levi would like with interested eyes if he showed them to him.
“Why did you come now…”
He blamed the innocent birds.
“Why did you come only now!”
When Ion shouted loudly in his cracked voice, the startled birds flew high and fled. Once the birds had fled completely out of sight, Ion collapsed to the ground.
Tears that he thought had dried up completely flowed down again.
“See…”
Ion trembled his lips and shed tears. Looking down at the black marble in his left hand, he spoke with a voice full of resentment.
“I told you… I told you I would cry if you died…”
How could Levi make him cry so well when he said he didn’t want to make him cry?
He cried miserably toward Levi, whom he could no longer see or touch.
It still felt like Levi might come to this pond and take the blooming flowers into his mouth. It seemed like they might enter the pond together to wash themselves, and Levi might bite Ion’s left hand like a child playing, or endlessly stare at the flower seeds flying in the sky.
But he knew that all of that was now like a dream.
Three days had been enough time for Ion to clearly understand the boundary between reality and dreams.
Returning to the tent house with trudging steps, Ion couldn’t bring himself to enter it. Even though his mind knew, confirming with his eyes that Levi wasn’t there was too difficult a task.
After just staring at the tent house, Ion turned his body and headed to the back of it.
“If you go about ten steps behind the tent house and dig, you’ll find a small box.”
“Inside, there’s a pass for the Delos Empire and a small wooden stick with a pattern engraved on it.”
Honestly, whether it was a pass or a wooden stick, none of that was necessary.
He had no intention of leaving this place anyway. Whether slave traders pursued him or not, that wasn’t his concern.
Ion planned to stay here and protect Levi’s traces forever. That was the last remaining will to live.
And when those traces were all worn away and gone, he even thought about following his mother and Levi. That’s how severe the shock of Levi’s absence was to Ion.
But Levi, as if seeing through all of his thoughts, had left his short message in the small box.
<Go to Hest.>
Ion bit his lip firmly as he looked at the small note in the box. It was neat handwriting he had never seen before, but he could immediately recognize whose writing it was.
The box contained enough money to serve as travel expenses, a pass for the Delos Empire, the small wooden stick Levi had mentioned, and a left-hand glove made of white Etlun leather. Without trying it on, Ion could tell that the glove would fit his hand perfectly.
Ion’s eyes trembled violently as he looked at the items and the note inside.
No matter when Levi had prepared this box, he hadn’t said a word about it even when he asked Ion to stab his core. That means these were items Levi had intended to give him in preparation for his death.
Ion couldn’t possibly ignore the message in the box.
Because it was like Levi’s last will.
Seeing it didn’t change Ion’s mind. He still intended to stay in the tent where he had lived with Levi for a long time, and he would be satisfied if he closed his eyes while doing so.
‘Because it’s Levi’s request.’
But because it was Levi’s last request and will, he decided to follow his words. The pass and wooden stick in this box would probably be items that would allow him to meet Hest.
I have to meet Hest.
I have to tell him that Levi died, that he died and left me behind.
After delivering that message… I must return.
Ion placed the black marble in the box Levi had left, held it close to his chest, and left the Black Forest.
