Farewell to the hero! chapter 54

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There was a good chance that the “old man” Ruen mentioned wasn’t the same person I was thinking of.

But they had one thing in common: they both seemed to know something about Morhan.

The person who’d given me what little I knew about Morhan was that same person.

If it really was him, then was it not just a boast when he said he’d fought Morhan and lived to tell the tale?

It was an unexpected realization.

Back in Luther Village, that old man was constantly drunk, so much so that whenever he came to the inn, he was always inebriated.

People joked that every rum bottle in the village must’ve come from him.

Although the patrons at Alice’s Inn rarely stayed sober, few worried about their liver as much as with that old man.

“Why’s such a smart kid like you wasting away in this backwater? Want to come with me?”

As I recalled my last encounter with the old man, I glanced at Ruen.

He was chewing on a long blade of grass he’d found somewhere, apparently bored after finishing his meal early.

“Did this old man you mentioned wear an eye patch over his left eye?”

“…He did.”

Ruen frowned as if wondering why I’d ask such a thing.

When I described the old man’s appearance exactly, his eyes narrowed suspiciously.

His gaze seemed to question how I knew that the eye patch was on his left eye, even though he had only just mentioned the old man for the first time today.

Ignoring her sharp stare, I tried to remember more.

“And he had cross-shaped scars on both ankles?”

“Yeah.”

His unusual appearance was memorable, so it didn’t take long to recall those details.

I’d glimpsed those scars on his ankles when I’d bent down to clean up the spilled drinks from the floor.

They looked like they’d been made intentionally, rather than by accident.

When I mentioned the ankle scars, Ruen’s eyes changed.

The suspicion was replaced by trust, and his curiosity shone through.

“How do you know him?”

“I think I saw him at the inn when he was a guest.”

“Damn.”

As soon as I gave my honest answer, he let out a surprised exclamation.

Ruen spat out the blade of grass he’d been biting and ran his hand over his mouth repeatedly, trying to mask his astonishment.

“You know the old man?”

“A little.”

I nodded at his question.

I wouldn’t say we were close, just the kind of acquaintances you’d be with someone you meet regularly in a work setting.

Still, the old man was so friendly that he shared bits of his personal life, even asking about my birthday.

He’d ask, get drunk, and then completely forget the next day, only to ask again.

But he was the only patron who’d remembered and celebrated my birthday, which left an impression.

Although he could be a pain, especially when he stubbornly offered me rum, he was a good person.

Now that I thought about it, he and Ruen were quite similar.

Comparing them side by side, I couldn’t help but smile.

As I was putting my smile back in check, Ruen clapped his hands and laughed heartily.

“Wow, so you’re the ‘sharp kid’ the old man talked about?”

“‘Sharp kid’…?”

The nickname was unexpected, and I felt a bit awkward.

The tone felt strange, and I couldn’t help feeling uneasy, despite never hearing him say anything negative about me.

Ruen, too sleepy to resist, reclined against a large rock and shook his head.

“No, it’s just, he came back from the Gayat Mountains half-dead and told everyone he’d met this really sharp kid at an inn somewhere.”

So “sharp kid” was just his way of saying I was smart.

I felt relieved.

And at the same time, I was strangely moved that the old man still remembered me.

If Ruen had remembered the nickname, then he must have brought me up more than once.

No one would dislike being remembered by someone, so knowing he still thought of me fondly even back in his hometown was something I cherished.

“Wow, the old man seemed really fond of you. If we survive taking down the Great Calamity, let’s go to Winita together.”

Winita?

I was unfamiliar with the name, so I hesitated.

Judging by his invitation, it seemed to be a place both he and the old man knew, but beyond that, I had no clue.

Noticing my confused expression, Ruen smirked.

“It’s my hometown. All sailors come from Winita. It’s a village on the western side of the kingdom.”

Finally, I understood and sighed.

So she meant we should visit her hometown if we survived defeating the Great Calamity.

Winita, a village on the western side of the kingdom.

I savored the name, rolling it on my tongue silently.

Since Ruen was a sailor, his village was probably near the sea.

Reflecting on his brief description, I vaguely remembered hearing that sailors traditionally came from the kingdom’s western shore along the Quaron Sea.

The old man mentioned that his staple food was fish, so Winita being near the sea seemed likely.

In a mountain-bound village like Luther, surrounded by forests, seafood was a rare sight.

Only occasionally, when magic traders came, did we see it, and even then, it was expensive.

I pictured the octopus I’d seen at the village market once or twice.

It had eight legs and looked grotesque, yet there was something mystical about it.

The bluish fish came to mind next.

So in Ruen’s coastal village, those octopuses and fish must be common.

I’d only seen them maybe once a year if I was lucky, and I’d never even tasted them.

I replayed Ruen’s invitation to go to Winita together.

My heart started to race.

Just as Daniel’s elf-filled hometown was fascinating, so was Ruen’s home, which was so different from Luther Village.

An inexplicable excitement reached all the way to my toes.

To calm my restless feet, I gently pressed down on my shoes.

“Amazing.”

“A beautiful sea…”

I was murmuring to myself when Ruen, with a proud expression, began listing the advantages of Winita.

Kaindel, who had been listening expressionlessly as if he’d never argued with me, suddenly stood up.

He picked up some burnable objects nearby and tossed them into the campfire.

Then he narrowed his gaze slightly, displeased that the flow of conversation had been interrupted, and looked at Ruen.

As the flames intensified again, Kaindel gave a slight smirk and spoke.

“Stop getting off-topic. Spill the information you have on Morhan.”

“Tsk.”

At his remark, Ruen stared into the fire, looking deflated.

A gust of wind swept through, messing up her hair.

His brown eyes grew deeper, as if lost in thought about where to begin, before they absorbed the heat of the fire.

“They say if you get scratched by Morhan’s claws, you’ll turn into a young monster.”

“A human becomes a monster?”

“Yeah, hard to believe, but my old man saw it himself.”

Owen questioned her, evidently skeptical of the information.

The reason he found her words hard to believe was obvious.

While creatures born from other dimensions could possibly transform humans into monsters, it was unheard of for a being that was once human to become one.

I shared Owen’s doubts about Ruen’s information, so I didn’t stop him from interrogating her further.

Humans and monsters had no commonalities aside from the fact that they would eventually die—so how could a human turn into a monster?

Of course, there were beings like elves, who took on human-like appearances to get closer to humans, for the sake of coexistence.

But even they were fundamentally different.

They had a core instead of a heart and preferred solitude over forming bonds.

But now, there was supposedly a monster capable of turning humans into monsters.

It seemed impossible.

Owen, seemingly lost in similar thoughts, slowly adjusted his glasses.

Ruen responded with a dismissive “I don’t know; that’s just what the old man told me.”

“And I heard its tails can lengthen and shorten at will.”

“So Morhan mainly fights using its tails?”

“One of them apparently stays still. That’s probably where the core is.”

“Sounds likely.”

When Ruen speculated about the core, Owen’s blue eyes turned cold, as if he was stating the obvious.

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