Chapter 185 - North Korean rabbit

Episode 185

“Please abduct me.”

Yes, he had definitely heard those words before.

While doubting his ears, while wondering if the woman standing before him was insane… it was a moment when he could not tear his eyes away for a single second.

It was from the very first time he and she had met.

As the memory revived in his mind and struck his head with a single, distinct *tap*, a shudder ran from the crown of his head to the tips of his toes.

It was a shock as if every single cell in his body was being reborn anew.

Her name became clear in his mind.

“Hilia.”

He shaped the sound with his tongue and lips and released it into the air.

Then, the monochrome world was dyed entirely in spring.

Countless bashful pink petals bloomed from the barren branches, pouring down like snow.

It was wondrous that the letters and words that formed a person’s name could be so beautiful and marvelous.

No, it wasn’t just the name.

Her very existence was like that.

Arpad realized that during the past few days when he had forgotten her existence, he had been like a fish thrown out of water.

Why it had been so painful, so regrettable, so sad… and above all, so empty.

It was only natural, for he had been walking around with his heart ripped out.

The brilliant memories, dyed in the colors of spring, poured over the crown of his head. It was a baptism that made Arpad be born again.

“Are you insane?!”

“Why aren’t you angry?”

“Who do you think you’re doing this for?!”

“I think I like you.”

Just from a fragment of Hilia’s memory returning, he was finally able to breathe.

It was no wonder he hadn’t been able to eat or sleep properly all this time.

Arpad desperately clung to the handful of Hilia’s memory he had regained.

Because he did not want to lose the precious treasure that had been stolen and recovered ever again.

Like a beast parched with thirst, he scraped together memories of Hilia.

One by one, he gathered the fragments of the stolen jewels and polished them with care.

As he hastily gathered the memories, Arpad noticed a sense of dissonance.

“!”

He had, without realizing it, sunk deep into the recesses of his consciousness.

It was a natural process to recover the memories of Hilia that had been stolen by a mysterious power.

Only now, having regained his memories of Hilia, could he realize it.

That within the deepest darkness of the unconscious, there existed a massive door.

Arpad reached out and touched the door.

*Thump, thump, thump…*

A vibration, reminiscent of a heartbeat, tickled his palm.

Arpad knew. Inside this door, ‘memories’ were pooled.

They were all his, but memories he could not possess now.

An immense amount of memories were trapped behind that door.

It seemed as if someone had imprisoned and sealed away his memories.

Among the sealed memories, there would naturally be memories with Hilia as well. He knew it instinctively.

Arpad stretched out his hand eagerly and seized the door.

And as he tried to tear it open…

A tremendous reverberation shook Arpad’s mind.

-*Stop.*

Long platinum hair and red eyes with long, reptilian vertical pupils.

Even to Arpad, the man looked very much like himself.

An unfamiliar face and voice. Yet, it did not feel strange.

There was a connection. Hilia had said that right after the explosion on the Artanus plains, she had met Artanus.

Arpad asked bluntly. It was an attitude that had cast aside any respect or awe for an ancestor and guardian of the family.

“Are you that damned lizard?”

-*…You haven’t changed.*

It was a puzzling statement to Arpad, but one thing was clear.

Right now, Artanus was blocking the path to his memories. He was clearly interfering with the recovery of his memories.

“Was it you who laid hands on my memories?”

-*If you speak of the memories of your bride in this life, you are mistaken. But if you speak of those before, it would not be incorrect to say so.*

“Memories before?”

It was a strange expression, but Arpad could understand what it meant.

Because Hilia had already told him.

“You mean the memories before the regression?”

-*Yes.*

The accumulated lives from the past three cycles due to the regression.

His own life, repeated countless times without meeting Hilia.

And even that memory of finally meeting ‘Hilia’ for the first time after infinite regressions.

This ignited a fire in Arpad’s chest.

“Then I must recover them even more. Get out of the way. Now.”

-*I advise you once more, it would be better to stop here.*

“Don’t make me laugh. They’re my memories. Why should someone like you interfere or give advice?”

-*Because I do not wish for the dragon who must succeed me and uphold the world to go mad.*

Arpad paid no mind to the part about being called a successor.

What was irritating was something else.

Artanus was asserting that if he recovered the sealed memories, he would go mad.

“Why? Have I gone mad before or something?”

-*Not incorrect.*

It wasn’t very surprising that he had been mad before.

‘After all, until I met Hilia, I lived half-mad anyway.’

Moreover, he already knew as a fact that he had undergone countless regressions.

Even if Artanus was presumptuously blocking the way, what is sealed inside there are his own memories.

Why should the owner, trying to reclaim what is his, be hindered by some lizard?

Inside there would be memories with Hilia too.

The memories she had summarized and explained to him.

How frustrating it had been to only hear her tell of them.

The fact that he could only share that experience through her words.

He wanted to grasp them directly with his own hands.

Arpad had just had his memories concerning Hilia stolen by the power of the <Book of Fate> and barely recovered them.

The current Arpad desired and desired Hilia with an unbearable intensity.

Naturally, the sealed memories of Hilia inside that door were maddeningly tempting.

But that wasn’t the most important thing.

‘The most earnest and important thing is her.’

He wanted to see Hilia, to hold her.

Forever.

A mad smile played at the corner of Arpad’s mouth.

“Then all the more reason I must recover them.”

-*I cannot understand. Have you not lived your entire life most afraid and wary of being swept away by madness?*

It was true. Thanks to the blood passed down by that damned lizard, Arpad had lived his life as if walking a tightrope, always on the verge.

So, it was strange that he was stubbornly trying to open something that the dragon guaranteed would drive him mad if touched.

Arpad was not afraid in the least, nor was he worried at all.

“I don’t know the reason why Hilia left my side.”

-*That is…*

“Don’t say it. I’ll kill you if you do. It’s not something to be heard from your mouth.”

The only one who could and should answer why she left him was Hilia herself.

“But this one thing is clear. It’s that she was able to leave my side because my madness was completely resolved. Seeing that she left only after confirming it, even timing it with the Crimson Moon, makes it even clearer.”

One of the things Hilia had said when she came to the catacombs to request the marriage of abduction came to mind.

“Then you will soon go mad. No, you must go mad.”

What had he thought upon hearing her voice then?

‘I thought it sounded like a prophecy.’

That premonition had come true, it seemed.

Arpad said with a bright smile.

“If I go mad, Hilia will never be able to leave me.”

-*…!*

For a moment, it seemed even the dragon was at a loss for words at this mad conviction.

Arpad stretched out his hand and flung open the door in the deepest part of his unconscious.

Like a torrential flood unleashed when a dam’s sluice gate is suddenly opened, an immense amount of memories began to pour into Arpad’s mind.

An overwhelming pressure that would crush a human ego without a trace.

Arpad did not possess an ordinary ego.

But even that could not prevent his soul from being swept away by madness.

* * *

Hilia, who had been slumped on a dock in the port city of Veneta at the eastern edge of the continent, gasping for breath, suddenly lifted her head.

Her pale face had turned completely ashen.

‘Arpad?’

Romance, Fantasy,