Chapter 177 – Molang Fantasy (15)
Thanks to the senior moving around a lot, my body didn’t feel stiff or sore at all. There was only a slight languid feeling, but it was still within acceptable limits.
“Sniff sniff.”
Did someone spray high-end perfume? A nice scent was coming from my own body.
While I was busy fighting wraiths and monsters inside the virtual reality game <Molang Fantasy>, it seemed the senior had been enjoying a royal lifestyle in the Holy Roman Empire using my body.
“You’re back.”
Ranuvela 13th greeted me in a tone that clearly conveyed deep regret.
Clink.
Judging by the teapot and various snacks placed in front of her and me, it looked like the senior and she had been enjoying afternoon tea together.
“You didn’t go on your business trip.”
“Rejoice. For the next two years or so, I plan to rest here in the detached palace.”
“Hmm~”
What sudden change of heart made Her Imperial Highness, who had been diligently traveling abroad for the sake of patients’ peaceful deaths, decide to stay put?
For me, it was good news since I wouldn’t be disturbed, but her intentions were extremely suspicious. Who knew what kind of scheme she was cooking up this time.
“Did it go well?”
“…I don’t know.”
“That’s such a you-like vague answer.”
“Maybe so.”
I didn’t even have the energy to get annoyed.
“Oh my! I didn’t mean it in a bad way. That man doesn’t seem human… no, he isn’t human. I couldn’t relax around him, so getting close was difficult.”
“So in my case, it was easy.”
“Kang Moon-soo-ssi. A man whose inner thoughts are easy to read isn’t always a bad thing. Especially for someone as suspicious as me.”
“Ah, yes.”
It sounded very much like she was saying I was extremely easy to handle.
Clink.
Ranuvela 13th set down her teacup and said,
“Let’s get going soon. Since there’s been no word at all so far, it seems it was a success.”
***
I emphasize again because it’s absurd.
While I was going back and forth between hell and heaven inside the virtual reality game <Molang Fantasy>, the senior who had taken control of my body was spending luxurious days.
“Wow…”
A small palace built on a cliff overlooking a beautiful beach.
In the expertly maintained garden, deer and rabbits peacefully grazed on grass, and a rainbow arched over the fountain carved with mermaids…
If the villa of the young lady I saw in the romance fantasy <The Generous Young Lady Who Receives Everything> represented the peak of extravagance, this place felt like a healing retreat that soothed both body and mind.
“It’s the detached palace. The place where I’ll be spending the next two years or so.”
“Are you ill?”
“What? Were you actually worried about me?”
“Uh… well, since I’ve received a lot of help, my gratitude is genuinely huge. Sorry for pretending we’re close.”
“No, this is an unexpectedly new side of you. A very admirable attitude.”
“…”
It felt like the person had changed somehow? She was so different from the ‘witch’ I had seen until now that it was hard to adjust.
Vroom~
We got into the limousine prepared in front of the detached palace and started moving.
“The Ranuvela bloodline is divided into two branches. My great-great-grandmother, the 6th, miraculously gave birth to twins before passing away. She bore the 7th from the seed of a hero. And the 8th from the seed of a friend who was dying from a gunshot wound…”
For some reason, Ranuvela 13th suddenly began explaining the witch family tree out of nowhere.
I wasn’t curious at all, but since I was a slave to power, I decided to respond appropriately.
“Then which side are you…”
“I belong to the 7th’s bloodline. Privately, that would make her my great-grandmother.”
“Hmm~”
So that’s why they resembled each other.
“And the 11th, who died after falling down the stairs while playing around in the imperial palace, was my grandmother. The 12th, who passed away while trying to give birth to my younger sibling, was my mother.”
“…”
The mood suddenly became heavy.
“I don’t know much about the 8th, who was my great-great-grandmother’s half-sister, but it’s said she loved children very much. She decided to give birth early, saying the younger the womb, the better… and after having the 9th as her last, she bore five children in total before passing away.”
“Goodness.”
Even for an ordinary woman who wasn’t a witch, five children was no easy number.
“The 9th, who grew up monopolizing her siblings’ affection, was said to have a very impatient personality. Unlike her mother, she had no desire for more children and declared herself infertile right after giving birth to the 10th. She said she wanted to live a long, long time like the elder.”
“But if it’s the 9th…”
“Yes. She was the one who got hit by a truck at a crosswalk because she let her guard down thinking the light was green. The elder lamented that the 9th had used up all her luck giving birth.”
“…”
Life really doesn’t go as planned.
“And the 10th slipped out of the funeral hall during the shock everyone felt over the 9th’s futile death and disappeared without a trace.”
“But you managed to find her somehow.”
“No. Even after mobilizing the entire imperial intelligence network, we couldn’t find her. When a witch is truly determined to disappear, only another witch can spot her. The reason the 9th got hit by a truck at the crosswalk and died was largely because the driver couldn’t see her. And the 11th, who died after falling down the stairs while playing in the imperial palace… there were rumors that someone hurriedly coming down the stairs pushed her.”
“Ahha…”
If invisible people really existed, wouldn’t most of them die in ways like this?
Even hearing it again, it felt absurd.
“The 10th was coincidentally discovered by the 12th—my mother—who had gone on a business trip to your homeland, two years before she passed away while giving birth to my younger sibling.”
“I see.”
“The two Ranuvelas ran into each other at an amusement park. After a short chase, she lost the 10th, but with the cooperation of immigrants still living in the Holy Roman Empire in spirit, we managed to catch her in just fourteen minutes.”
“…”
My father once received a ridiculous phone call from my mother, who had gone to the bathroom at the amusement park and didn’t come back for over an hour.
She said she had to visit her family home…
My father was a little flustered by my mother’s sudden announcement, but as the devoted husband who would even imitate a monkey if she asked, he accepted it with an open heart.
And then she went missing.
The mother who vanished from the amusement park never came back to us.
“The 10th was thorough. She reassured the family so no missing person report would be filed, then discarded the phone with the call records in a place no one could find. That’s why we couldn’t find any leads. Not until the day Kang Moon-soo-ssi underwent P’s aptitude test.”
“What exactly are you trying to say?”
“It’ll be better to show you than to explain. The answer is right in front of you.”
Click.
The limousine door opened.
“Ah…”
“We’ll see each other at the airport later. Ranuvela has a rule that, barring special circumstances, no more than three of us may gather in one place. To prevent total annihilation… though now only three of us remain.”
Vroom~
The imperial princess who had dropped me off in front of the palace drove away in the limousine just like that.
“Uh… hi? Or hello? I don’t know how I should greet you.”
“…”
Standing right in front of me was the mother who had disappeared at the amusement park. The wide-brimmed lady’s hat was gone, but the blue mermaid dress she had been wearing back then was unmistakable.
Swish—
But her face was slightly blurry.
I focused my eyes and stared hard for about three seconds, and like magic, it changed.
“So it doesn’t work anymore.”
“10th…”
My mother’s plain face transformed into that of a seductive witch.
“Uh… well… I thought that to protect my beloved son and husband, I had to disappear. I believed the two of them would do just fine without me. But when I heard news of my son becoming an Olympic star—even reaching me in the game—I regretted it.”
“Hah!”
Even though her face had changed, the voice and intonation were unmistakably my mother’s.
“I really missed my son. But I was trapped and under surveillance. So I thought—if it can’t happen in reality, then we could meet in the virtual reality that everyone enjoys. But my son didn’t even create an account for the virtual reality game <Molang Fantasy>. It was a series of misjudgments.”
“Mother.”
“I feel terribly sorry toward my husband too. Because of me, everyone became unhappy, and I didn’t have the courage to meet my son again.”
“Mother.”
“I’ve never apologized to anyone before, so I don’t know if I’m doing this right, but… I’m truly sorry.”
“Haa…”
The mother I remembered had always felt very distant.
Despite her plain appearance, she had quite a severe case of princess syndrome, and my father treated her like a queen, always saying things like “My wife is the most beautiful woman in the world!”
‘Now it all makes sense!’
Only my father had seen my mother’s true appearance.
“I’m really sorry.”
“You don’t resemble her at all. Scarily so.”
Objectively speaking, aside from gender, there wasn’t a single point of resemblance to my father either. Maybe I really was picked up from under a bridge?
Ranuvela 10th said,
“If you accept my apology, I’ll tell you the part where we do resemble each other.”
“Haa…”
Honestly, I didn’t know how I was supposed to react.
Anger? Resentment? Joy?
My head was a complete mess.
“Kang Moon-soo, believer.”
“Ah! Yes.”
As if coming to my rescue, the cardinal standing beside Ranuvela 10th spoke up.
“There’s no need for you to accept this fool’s clumsy apology. You resemble your great-great-grandfather to an uncanny degree.”
“Elder! That’s cowardly…!”
“You shut your mouth. Before you went and put some unknown man’s seed in your belly.”
“Uwaaah.”
“I can’t tell you how many times I agonized watching you gallivant around and then play the part of the tragic heroine. So don’t provoke me any further. Understood?”
“Yes…”
With an eerie voice, the cardinal silenced Ranuvela 10th’s mouth.
Turning her gaze back to me, she spoke with the gentle smile of a benevolent cleric.
“As a reward for completing the commission, I’ll tell you honestly. The existence of Kang Moon-soo, believer, is hope for us.”
“Me?”
“You’ve understood by now that Ranuvela 10th is your biological mother, right?”
“…”
“You have to accept reality.”
“…Yes.”
It really was hard to accept!
“He would be your great-great-grandfather. He was the neighborhood doctor who took care of Ranuvela the Sixth after she gave birth to me and her body grew frail.”
“I heard he was the friend who took a bullet in his place and died.”
“Yes. If it weren’t for him, not only my mother but also I, who was just a newborn at the time, wouldn’t have survived. The name Ranuvela would have ended with the 6th generation.”
“But what does that have to do with anything?”
“Ranuvela 1st turned her back on a friend in crisis and was cursed because of it. That curse is the main culprit interfering with our conceptions.”
“A friend? Could it be…?”
I’d been active as a shaman for nearly two years, so something clicked.
“A friend. A friend willing to die in Ranuvela’s place. We thought the curse had been set so it could never be lifted, but there was a way to circumvent it after all.”
“That’s great!”
Congratulations to all the Ranuvelas!
“There’s a problem. The real aim of this curse lies here.”
“What is it?”
“The conditions are extremely strict. Only three of us remain, and excluding me who’s past childbearing age, there are just two. Moreover, the 13th is an imperial princess. We can’t deliberately put her in a life-threatening crisis just to test a man’s friendship. An artificial setup won’t work, and that man will inevitably die.”
“Ah…”
Now that she mentioned it, that made sense.
“But the fact that hope—a path—has appeared is encouraging.”
“He’s my son.”
“Last warning. Shut your mouth.”
“Yes.”
The cardinal, having shut up the immature Ranuvela 10th, pointed inward.
“Kang Moon-soo, believer. Follow me.”
“Is there still something left that’s going to shock me?”
Thump thump.
My heart was already racing out of control.
‘I almost killed her!’
I had nearly turned my own mother into a Sword Demon!
Thanks to the senior taking control of my body at the very last moment and pulling off whatever trick he did, it turned out okay—but it had been an incredibly close call.
“Mother. What happened to the senior?”
“The senior… you mean So Un-hyeon-ssi?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know.”
“If even Mother doesn’t know, who would?”
“It’s true. I’m so grateful and happy that you’re calling me ‘Mother’ again, but beyond the fact that he was surrounded by the swarm of sword Demons that rushed in to make me one of their comrades, I really don’t know anything else.”
“…I see.”
Surrounded.
Was he okay? To confirm the senior’s safety, I needed to quickly find another dream.
“Kang Moon-soo, believer?”
“Yes. I’m coming.”
I set aside the creeping worry for the moment and followed the cardinal.
_____________________________________________
TL Note:
This novel is fully completed.
You can either:
- Unlock this novel individually through shop or its Collection "Shaman: Breaker of Dreams" and access remaining 54 chapters for only $3
- Or join the Premium Tier ($7) for access to all 6 novels and ongoing updates
Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/cw/Vritratls
_____________________________________________