The World of This Fantasy Novel is in Crisis – Chapter 43

Over the past four years, while Satin had been reveling in a pastoral life, Cain hadn’t allowed himself a single day of rest from thinking about what he needed to do.

‘I was going to kill them all.’

It wasn’t bravado—it was the truth.

Cain had never placed any expectations on others. Things like hope, trust, or consideration simply didn’t exist in his life from the beginning. If he wanted something, he had to get it himself. Hardships and adversity were his own problems to deal with.

And yet, Cain had waited for the Temple Knights. He couldn’t even understand himself—why he’d believed that such a vague plan would ever work.

‘Maybe I was just out of it because I wasn’t hungry for once.’

Perhaps he’d been influenced by Satin’s nonsense—about how adults should help children, how someone would surely come to save them in their darkest hour.

When the people from the Bureau of Order and the Temple arrived at the school, rescuing Cain and the others wasn’t their goal. Their mission was to strike first and eliminate the evil Black Magician before he could reveal himself. No one worried that a few vagrant kids or a country bumpkin cook might die in the process.

By the time Cain regained consciousness in the midst of the fire, quite some time had already passed. The priest who treated him said he was lucky. If they hadn’t seen his body just beyond the collapsed doorway, they wouldn’t have bothered pulling him out.

Whether the blindness was temporary or not, Cain could see the priest’s face. He could also see his surroundings. Inside the unfamiliar military tent, it was just him and the priest.

“Where is everyone else…?”

“They’re all being questioned. Are you worried about your friends?”

“Friends?”

Cain had never once considered anyone a friend. But at that moment, he remembered Satin—calling his name in the darkness, handing over his own wet clothes without hesitation, throwing Cain over his shoulder without a second thought. What kind of expression had that boy worn?

“Oh, my dear child…”

Cain pushed the elderly priest aside and stood up. He burst out of the tent in a panic—and was left speechless. The school had already burned down completely, reduced to charred ruins. Officers in Bureau of Order uniforms were combing through the ashes, searching for something.

The priest who had followed him out pointed in one direction.

“Your friends are in that tent over there.”

Cain dashed toward the spot the priest had indicated. But Satin wasn’t there.

Only eight children stood in line, their faces smudged with soot.

One of the officers watching them barked at Cain in a commanding tone.

“If you’re awake, get in line too. You’re under investigation.”

Thirteen children had lived at the school up until the day before. Now, even including Cain, there were only nine. Four were missing. Cain immediately knew who they were.

Robin. The hairy one. The old man. And Satin.

“Where are the others?”

Cain’s question made the officer frown.

“What others?”

“There are still people trapped inside—people we need to save!”

He didn’t care about the old man or the hairy one. But Satin—Satin had to be here. He was the one who’d first suggested reaching out for help. Satin had truly believed someone would come and rescue him.

Looking at the officer’s annoyed expression, Cain felt a surge of heat rise to his chest.

“There are still people in there!”

“And who do you think you are, grabbing me like that? Look at the state you’re in.”

There was no need to ask anything else. If they weren’t here, they were dead. That was the decision these people had made.

Among the children, Cain spotted Rogers. When their eyes met, Rogers had a complicated expression.

Once the investigation ended, the children were scattered across the streets of Cloverland. Whether they had anywhere to go wasn’t the Bureau of Order’s concern.

A few days later, an article appeared in the newspaper about the Bureau’s accomplishment.

Beneath the headline boasting that they had eliminated a Black Magician—the first to appear in decades—was a column packed with exaggerations and outright lies.

It claimed that all the children, who had been in the clutches of a vicious Black Magician, had been safely rescued, and that the Magician had been killed on the spot. The story was laughable.

Not all the children had been rescued. Only those who had run out on their own in a panic survived. The Bureau never intended to rescue them in the first place.

As for Satin, they dismissed him as the Black Magician’s apprentice. The hairy one and Robin weren’t even acknowledged—they were treated as though they had never existed.

Though the school had become a pile of blackened ash, a fierce, burning fire ignited in Cain’s chest.

‘This city is filled with nothing but trash.’

Cain had never possessed anything like love for humanity or hometown pride to begin with, but after that incident, his hatred toward Cloverland and its people only deepened.

He felt like he wouldn’t be satisfied until he saw the city burning, everyone in it reduced to ash.

The Bureau of Order, which didn’t care if children died as long as they could notch another success. The Temple, which did nothing but pass off responsibility and watch from the sidelines. The lazy citizens who had once revered the old man as a philanthropist, now blindly accepted that he was a Black Magician without question.

Cain sent a warning to the Bureau of Order. That this city of depraved men would pay the price for its sins in full.

‘Incompetent bastards.’

Cain moved in and out of Cloverland freely. He walked the streets openly, without hiding his face.

The Bureau had increased patrols and random checks, saying they were hunting down whoever had sent the threatening letters, but they still hadn’t managed to catch him. Their efforts were nothing but for show.

Everyone in the city lived without a thought, chasing only immediate gain, content with the smallest scraps. No worries. No regrets. No remorse.

Now, it was time they paid the price for living that way.

He had already killed the magician who burned the school. Next, he would kill the rest, those who had sided with that magician, one by one. They would die without even knowing what was happening, in agony.

That had been Cain’s resolve.

Until yesterday.

“…Wait, so you’re saying we were… friends?”

And then Satin—who he thought was long dead—showed up, and all of Cain’s hardened resolve came crashing down.

“…You don’t recognize me?”

“Uh, well… I mean, we… were friends…?”

Looking at Satin’s expression—like he was meeting a stranger for the first time—Cain’s heart crumbled again.

***

Since it was already late at night, they decided to head back to Cloverland for now.

There was a stupid argument that needed settling, so Satin and Edward split up, each taking one person: Satin with Cain, Edward with Rita.

Satin glanced at Cain walking silently beside him and let out a soundless sigh.

‘What even is this?’

The two of them walking like a pair—it felt like the awkward end of some club outing. If there were a convenience store or something nearby, he would’ve said, “I’ve got something to take care of. You go on ahead,” and backed away with forced politeness.

But it was dark and quiet all around.

Satin tried to come up with something to say.

“Back there… were you really about to use some kind of bad magic?”

From Satin’s point of view, this was technically their first meeting, and speaking informally to the protagonist Cain felt incredibly awkward.

But Cain had snapped at him for speaking so stiffly, calling it annoying—so Satin had no choice but to drop the honorifics.

“What do you mean by ‘bad magic’?”

“…Black Magic. We thought you might be a Black Magician.”

“We?”

Cain frowned, displeased by something.

If only the moon were fully hidden by clouds so Satin couldn’t see his expression…

When Satin didn’t know how to respond and just darted his eyes around, Cain clicked his tongue and asked:

“Do you even know what Black Magic is?”

“I heard from Rita earlier today.”

“Rita?”

Cain’s expression turned even darker. It clearly wasn’t because he didn’t recognize the name—they had all introduced themselves back at the crematorium.

Satin’s eyes started darting again, but this time Cain locked eyes with him.

Satin froze in place along with his gaze.

“You really don’t remember anything?”

“…I told you I don’t.”

Was Cain asking again because he didn’t believe him?

‘Should I have just said I remembered?’

There was no way he could recall a time they’d spent together—Satin had only just met Cain today.

But could he say he didn’t know Cain? Not really.

Satin didn’t know this person, but he did know the character named Cain.

‘Though now, he wasn’t even sure if he could say that anymore.’

If it were the original Satin, he definitely would’ve known Cain.

But even so, they wouldn’t have been happy to see each other like this.

‘This really doesn’t feel like my fault.’

Up to now, Satin had wondered if the story had gone off-track due to his own unintended interference.

But judging by Cain’s reaction, it felt like something had already gone wrong even before Satin arrived in this world.

The time period when Cain claimed they were friends was before Satin had even shown up.

In the Dark Age setting, there’s no way those two would have ever been friends.

‘I really don’t know what the hell happened.’

If he had to guess, maybe it was this: once a fixed-fate novel was made real, countless variables were introduced.

The more he thought about it, the more complicated it felt.

He had entered this world thinking it was his sister’s novel—but once inside, it no longer felt like her story at all.

‘My sister’s masterpiece has just become a story about people living their lives.’

It’s not that he hated heartfelt human drama.

It was just that the shift in genre had been so jarring.

Dark Age was supposed to be about grand adventures—defeating Demon Kings, vanquishing Dark Gods… epic quests.

‘If my sister knew what her novel had turned into, what would she even say? Shouldn’t I be the one to put things back in order?’

He remembered a time when it was trendy for villains to be the ones who cleaned up the story in the end.

But then again, it had already been four years since he fell into this world—maybe the trends had changed.

Author: Levia