Damn Reincarnation

iot, that’s Molon,” Eugene defended himself.

“That’s right, you’re just an asshole!” Sienna agreed.
“You should have seen Witch Craft as well, right? Based on the qualities and feel of your mana, it seems that you’ve been able to attain a slight comprehension of my research in Witch Craft.
But even so, you actually believed that there would be a second half?!”

“…That’s… of course I didn’t believe it,” Eugene lied unconvincingly.

Sienna picked up on it immediately.
“Don’t lie to me.”

“Well, if you really look at it, isn’t it all your fault? Why did you come up with such a lie that ended up wasting so many people’s time? What? You want to call it a white lie? You want to return to Aroth and flip it upside down? Before you do that, you need to get on your knees and apologize to Mer.
Because of your lie, you caused Mer so much trouble,” Eugene turned the tables on Sienna.

“…Of course I’ll apologize to her,” Sienna admitted with a pout as she sat back down.
“…So anyways, Witch Craft, how was it?”

“…What kind of reaction are you expecting from me?” Eugene asked hesitantly.

“Your honest opinion only.
I’m eagerly waiting for your admiration and awe at the work of the greatest genius in the history of magic, the likes of whom never have been and never will be seen in the past, present, and future,” Sienna boasted.

“Oh, well your magic was quite nifty,” Eugene agreed.

“Is that it?”

“…Really nifty?”

“You really can’t be honest, can you?” At some point, Sienna had stopped pouting and was now smiling once again.
“Mm, I guess it is pretty nifty.
The core principle of Witch Craft is the Eternal Hole.
The Witch Craft that I left In Akron was just a textbook meant to guide those fools into understanding the Eternal Hole.”

“Alright.
I already know that you’re a genius, so stop changing the subject and answer my questions,” Eugene said, staring at Sienna without any traces of amusement.

Sienna also stopped smiling.

“Raizakia, that son of a viper, how am I supposed to find him?” Eugene asked once more.

“…I already said that it’s impossible for you as you are now,” Sienna muttered.

“Do you think that I’m asking because I don’t know that? Even in my past life, that bastard wasn’t someone that I’d be confident in taking out on my own.” Eugene informed her.

The Black Dragon Raizakia was a monster.
Even before his fall, he was one of the strongest among the younger dragons, but after he had killed his own Lord and devoured the chief dragon’s heart, he had become an even more intimidating monster.

“Sienna, are you worried about me right now?” Eugene asked her.

“…No,” Sienna lied unconvincingly.

“Of course not.
Who’d be that stupid? Wouldn’t it be funny if you, who almost died and has been sealed away, were actually worried for me, who’s alive and well?” Eugene noted sarcastically.

“…What if…,” Sienna muttered while avoiding his gaze.
“…For my sake, you do go looking for Raizakia, and when you finally find him… he kills you? In that case, what am I supposed to do?”

“What do you mean, what are you supposed to do?” Eugene scoffed.
“Why are so afraid of something that hasn’t even happened—”

“You don’t know,” Sienna spat out with a quiet laugh.
“You… you don’t know anything.
Hamel, there’s no way that you could know.
After you died… how do you think the rest of us felt? Do you know what emotions were going through me as I held your necklace? What-what sort of thoughts went through my head as I stood in your grave?”

“I do know,” Eugene said as he held Sienna by her shoulders.
“I know for a fact that you cried like a baby while you were there.
I also know just how you spent the decades while you were in Aroth.”

Taken aback, Sienna fell silent.

“But do you know how I feel? There’s no way that you could know that.
You, who has been trapped here by this seal, will definitely not know how I feel.
You might know the me from my previous life, but you have no idea about the current me,” Eugene argued.

“…That’s probably true,” Sienna weakly admitted.

“Then you just need to find out for yourself.
But if you remain trapped here, then you definitely won’t be able to learn anything about me,” Eugene stated with confidence.
“Sienna Merdein, stop pointlessly worrying about me and get rid of the delusion that I, as someone who’s been reincarnated once, will allow myself to be defeated once more.”

Sienna raised her head to look up at him.

Eugene continued, “You came to find me, and I also went looking for you.
I’m sorry, but I can’t just stay out of this.
I will free you from this place somehow.
I’ll make sure that you’re free to stand up on your own and walk out of here, so that you can travel together with me.
Even if you sit there whining that you don’t want to go with me, I’ll take you out of here even if it means I have to drag you with me.”

Sienna’s eyes wavered at these words.
Eugene’s hands tightened around Sienna’s shoulders as he looked straight into her trembling green eyes.

“You have no objections with that, right?”

“…Ahahaha.”

After he spat out this final question, Sienna burst into laughter.

“You say that I don’t know the current you? No, that’s not true at all.
I know you, Hamel.
Even though your reincarnation changed your body, replaced your face, and even gave you a new name… you’re still the same Hamel that I’ve always known.”

“If that’s the case, then you should also be aware of how serious I am when I say all this.”

“…Mhm,” Sienna agreed with a smile even as she let a few tears fall.
“You’re still the same as ever.
Not a single thing… has changed about you.”

“If you smile while crying, something will grow on your butt[3],” Eugene warned her.

Sienna snorted.
“The amount of bullshit you’re full of hasn’t changed either.”

“Anyway, hurry up and tell me how to find Raizakia,” Eugene insisted while shaking Sienna by the hold that he had kept on her shoulders.

“…Is my staff still kept in Akron?” Sienna eventually asked.

“Akasha? It’s still there,” Eugene confirmed.
“It’s been stored away safely along with Witch Craft.”

“Well, of course it would be,” Sienna said with some relief.
“As foolish as the wizards of Aroth might be, even they wouldn’t stoop to the level of trying to meddle with Akasha’s relief.”

Sienna was lost in thought for a few moments.
After considering whether he should do anything about this, Eugene gently shook Sienna by the shoulders once more.

“Just leave me alone for a minute, you son of a bitch.” In the end, Sienna was unable to bear it and she slapped Eugene on the cheek as she cursed him out.

Like the last time she had kicked him, her slap didn’t hurt all that much.

“…I’ll teach you the technique to release Akasha’s seal,” Sienna said once she had finished her contemplation.

“Does that mean I’ll be able to find Raizakia once I have Akash?” Eugene asked.

“…It won’t be easy,” Sienna advised him.
“The reason why Raizakia was caught in the dimensional rift was partly because of his own actions and partly because I made a mistake due to being seriously unwell.
Even so, Hamel, if you have Akasha with you and you’re nearby, you should be able to sense the opening to the dimensional rift where Raizakia has been trapped.”

Sienna couldn’t even be certain of that.
For now, all they could be sure of was that Raizakia had to be trapped somewhere within a dimensional rift.
If he had been banished to another dimension or had died, his curse wouldn’t have been able to last for hundreds of years as it had.

“So that means I’ll need to scour the whole continent,” Eugene sighed.

“…If you don’t want to, then don’t do it,” Sienna pouted.

“When did I say that I didn’t want to? It’ll be a piece of cake.
Besides, that’ll mean I get to use your fancy staff as well,” Eugene said smugly.

“…I’m saying this just in case, but if I do get better later, I’m definitely taking Akasha back from you.
Also, if you go overboard and shatter Akasha’s Dragon Heart….” Sienna trailed off warningly.

“I’m already well aware.” Eugene waved off her concerns.
“It’ll get the dragons to come looking for me, right? No, wouldn’t that actually be better? In the first place, aren’t the dragons even better at using magic than you?”

“Do you really think those overly proud lizards would just kindly grant your requests? They’ll probably just loose their Breaths at the bastard who deliberately broke the staff that their tribe helped create as a gift.
But if you want to test that theory, then have at it,” Sienna challenged him.

“Well, if nothing else works, then I can give it a try,” Eugene replied before becoming lost in thought for a few moments.

The Black Dragon Raizakia had come to fame during his previous life, but his presence was still making itself known even in the present day.
In fact, he was still known as one of Helmuth’s three Dukes.

It had been two hundred years ago since Sienna had banished Rizakia into a dimensional rift, but Raizakia somehow still retained an active presence in Helmuth.

“…If that truly is the case, that means the Raizakia in Helmuth has to be a fake,” Sienna said, her eyes narrowing in suspicion after Eugene had conveyed this information.
“It had to be Rizakia himself who invaded this domain.
If the attempt to banish him had failed completely, then he could have just repeated his intrusion once more.”

“But if that isn’t the real Raizakia, does that mean someone else is pretending to be Raizakia?” Eugene pointed out.

“There’s no way that those demonfolk bastards in Helmuth would continue to pay respect to Raizakia’s status if he wasn’t around.
Then it’s probably… either Raizakia’s clone or his hatchling.”

“…Hatchling?” Eugene repeated questioningly.

Eugene’s brow furrowed as he tried to recall his memories of Raizakia.
Did that Black Dragon really have a hatchling?

“I’m not too sure of that either.
How am I supposed to know if that son of a viper hatched an egg or not? However, whichever one it might be, that’s not necessarily a bad thing for you—,” Sienna abruptly stopped speaking in the middle of her sentence and covered her mouth.

Eugene grinned at this sight and lightly smacked Sienna’s leg.
“What’s with the sudden silence? You’re right, this isn’t such a bad thing for us.
Whether it’s Raizakia’s clone or his hatchling, either way it has to have some kind of connection to Raizakia.
If we can somehow manage to get our hands on them, we might be able to find the coordinates to where Raizakia is buried.”

“…Don’t do anything needless, Hamel,” Sienna warned him.

“I won’t.
Having already died once, even I would hate to repeat the experience,” Eugene said with a smile.
“…Ah, that’s right.”

While he was still smiling, something suddenly popped up in his head.
Eugene immediately erased the smile from his face and glared at Sienna.

“Hey, what’s with that thing?” Eugene demanded.

Sienna was surprised.
“What are you saying all of a sudden?”

“That fairy tale,” Eugene growled.

Sienna’s expression stiffened.

Through gritted teeth, Eugene hissed.
“Stupid Hamel.”

“…Umm…,” Sienna tried to come up with something to say.

Eugene interrogated her.
“Who wrote it?”

Sienna stammered, “I-I don’t know.
I just thought it was interesting.
When I first saw it I—Ah!—N-no, I’ve never actually read it, so….”

“Is this really the time and place for such nonsense? Even though you should know that you left the first edition of the fairy tale in Akron,” Eugene pressured her.

Sienna struggled to come up with an excuse, “That’s… I just… I bought that as a souvenir.”

“I already told you not to spout nonsense,” Eugene easily dismissed the claim.
“I heard from Mer that you read that fairy tale hundreds of times, didn’t you?”

“Why is she coming up with such ridiculous lies? Since her maintenance has been neglected for hundreds of years, could something have broken down…?” Sienna continued to act innocent.

“The contents of the first edition were quite something to see.
The beautiful, cute, darling, and cuddly Sienna,” Eugene said teasingly.

“Th-there wasn’t anything about me being darling or cuddly… probably?” Sienna argued hesitantly as she desperately tried to trace her memory.

“In any case, there were definitely a few times where you were called beautiful and cute.
Are you insane? How could you write something like that by your own hand?” Eugene questioned her.

“Wh-what are you talking about! Why would I write something like that? I-It wasn’t me,” Sienna denied unconvincingly.

“Then was it Anise?”

“Ah… ummm.”

“You really are clinging to such nonsense until the very end.
Don’t you think that you two were being a bit too much? You and Anice are cute, beautiful, darling, cuddly, and other such bullshit, huh? But why is Molon an idiot and I’m a son of a bitch?” Eugene cursed.

“I said that I didn’t write it!” Sienna screamed loudly as her face flushed red.

1.
Pretty obvious, but this is a Korean idiom used to describe when someone has gotten all the benefits and is now trying to weasel their way out of it.
A close equivalent might be that he’s already cashed the cheque. ☜

2.
Just to clarify, the Korean system for counting age is different from the Western system.
You’re already one year old when you’re born, so Korean ages are one year older than Western ages. ☜

3.
This is kind of a weird old wives’ tale.
Adults would tell children that hair would grow on their butts if they smiled while crying, mostly in order to get them to stop crying.
An English equivalent is the claim that if you pull faces and the wind changes your face will get stuck like that. ☜