VIP Chapter 300: Shuna’s Anger
“What nonsense are you talking about? And why do you sound like you have a lisp, like you’ve lost a tooth?”
She raised the flame in her hand and bent down to observe Will’s expression.
Then, she saw…
Will’s eyes, which had no highlights even when illuminated by the fire just centimeters away, and his ashen lips devoid of color.
If Shuna had previously felt that Will was like a scalding hot stone, radiating emotions hotly towards everyone, yet no one could break through his defenses.
Then the Will now…
Was like cold, shattered bedrock.
He couldn’t respond to everything with such “passion,” but within his cracks, his fragments, his hard shell, one could see the “true heart” that had been hidden away.
Although he looked somewhat pathetic, Shuna felt something incredibly unexpected from him… a sense of struggling to survive in this world.
Shuna understood.
Those three people, with their relentless blows, by negating his will and stealing his hope, had shattered this stone. Perhaps the next step would be a frenzied war of division.
“No, I’m serious.”
“When Iaar returns, she’ll probably start preparing surgery to cut off my little finger. Without a little finger, I’ll lose half my grip…”
“I won’t be able to hold a staff or a sword properly anymore.”
“After that, maybe my whole palm? Cutting off my tongue? My ears? Limbs?”
“See, I can calmly say these things she might do to me now, and it doesn’t matter anymore.”
“…”
Shuna bit her lip.
She didn’t quite like the Will before her now, an indescribable strangeness, a despondency completely different from before.
“Because…”
“Because I discovered that whether it’s fate that can be changed or cannot be changed, I’ve always been toyed with. In the end, I can’t even subdue the ones I raised with my current strength. I’ve accomplished nothing here…”
“No… it’s not that I’ve accomplished nothing here, before this I also…”
“…”
Shuna wanted to speak but stopped. She just watched him, his voice calm and low, but very clear, analyzing the situation perfectly, not speaking utter nonsense.
Alright, even at this moment, Will still carried the aura of the “Will” she was familiar with.
“However, their love… perhaps it makes me feel a little better. I’m thinking, I really did leave myself this one gift.”
“The heroines who love me.”
“So, it’s… fine for me to be locked up here like this and continue the rest of my life, right?”
“…”
Shuna still didn’t speak.
She heard that word—heroine. On Will’s “Quest System,” she saw the last page, written with the most frantic expression and gaze he had.
“Anyway, I’m sorry.”
“You’ve indeed saved me many times… you always reappear here…”
“But this time… I’ve truly given up. This is for the best.”
“The days I promised you, I don’t think I can fulfill them in my current state…”
“Leave. As the ‘protagonist,’ there are even more exciting stories ahead.”
The firelight cast deep shadows on the hair across his forehead, so deep they seemed to pierce his eyes.
Indeed, this appearance was unlike him.
He was more like himself when he thought everything through, could withstand pressure, and rallied his spirits in the face of any difficulty.
But there was nothing strange about it.
In fact, Will now was more like a living person.
Ultimately succumbing to despair in countless difficult situations, choosing to sink in the deep water where he was rescued only to be drowned again, choosing the easier path of lying down and letting himself be slaughtered.
Shuna sighed and extinguished the flame in her hand.
Then, Will raised his head again, looking into the complete darkness. He had been listening for Shuna’s footsteps, as if expecting to hear the sound of her departure.
Speaking of which, she always persevered through difficulties to appear before him, she always showed him “unwavering loyalty.”
Was it… because he had done what the “bro” in the original work had done?
Will couldn’t recall what his “bro,” who Shuna recalled with such fondness, had said or done in the original work—after all, Xiu’s background was complex, and his secrets would likely remain until the end.
But no matter what that person had done, Xiu’s entire persona upon appearing in the original work, his excessively paranoid isolation and caution even after being kicked out of the party, all stemmed from his deceased bro.
But…
Will had actually been resisting meeting and interacting with this “protagonist” all along—even after countless repetitions, even after Shuna had hinted at it many times before him, even after she had saved him so many times.
Perhaps he wasn’t rejecting “Xiu” or “Shuna” the person—there was no doubt that both were likable to him with their excellent decision-making and cautious, precise judgment and exploration in dungeons.
What he rejected was…
The emphasis on the existence of a “protagonist” in this world…
*Crackle.*
But he didn’t hear the sound of Shuna’s boots stepping on the mossy ground as she walked away into the darkness.
Instead, he heard a sound beside him, as if the flame magic had been placed on the lamp that he thought was purely decorative.
And his vision regained light.
“Alright, I’ve adjusted.”
Shuna took two steps and sat directly on the armrest of his chair.
“Even if she comes, I can escape. For this remaining time… I want to hear you tell me with my own ears, what role do I play in the ‘future’ you see? Why do you reject me so much?”
“…Hm?”
He had considered various reasons for Shuna to leave, but Will had never expected her to be more than…
“That’s right, it’s this question. If I don’t understand, and if I die someday, I’ll put this question on my tombstone. If you’re still alive then, my ghost will haunt you and press your head onto my grave until you answer me.”
“Shuna… are you perhaps angry…”
“Yes, I’m very angry. But you know what kind of person I am—rather than you apologizing to me as if to placate my emotions, I’d rather know the reason behind you doing something.”
“Because… because you and I in the past… in a sense, were opposites…”
“Hm?”
“I… No, Will Systom, will be the one… the culprit who forced you out of Shining Star, the one who made you leave the team you loved and that was most important to you…”
“Then you are now.”
“Hm?”
Shuna showed him that the Shining Star emblem, which she had always worn on her chest with pride, was now empty.
“If I hadn’t already left, when you left Treya, no one would have been able to hold her back in Zero Demon City.”
“…”
Will’s lusterless eyes seemed to widen at this reflection of the original work, something he himself hadn’t considered.
“Then… you… you will defeat me… my former teammates, Liya… Treya… Iaar… Finally, alone, I… will be crushed to death by a slime in some dungeon…”
This plot now…
It seems…
It seems to be coming true in a strange way…
What was that dungeon called? He wouldn’t forget it, as soon as he thought about it…
“Oh, so it’s like that. Then it truly is a difficult relationship. It sounds like in that ‘future,’ we were truly like fire and water.”
Will could indeed hear Shuna’s displeasure, as if her anger meter was full and about to explode.
He seemed to hear Shuna, beside him, placing two daggers into her palms, the sound of metal clashing softly.
“Sigh, alright, I understand this part. Then let’s talk about ‘the team I loved and that was most important to me’.”
“…What?”
After a sigh, Shuna’s tone became calmer than before. She seemed to be truly speaking in a storytelling manner, no longer as angry as she was.
Will seemed to realize something.
He had never “blackened and cultivated” Shuna, and from the first moment he saw her in front of the tavern, she had always been…
Like this, cheerful, optimistic, mentally stable, and even when angry, she rationally sought the reasons.
Even when their relationship had cooled to freezing point, and when she was at her boiling point, she was opening up and communicating with him, treating him with the simplest and most important form of interpersonal interaction.
She seemed completely unrelated to the word “blackening.”
Her psychological state was completely insulated from the word “pathological.”
But…
Perhaps…
Her ability to maintain this state was not a sign of “health” after all…
“There was a young girl, born in a dungeon. She had no memories of her first thirteen years of life. The first thing she did after being born was discover that she had killed the Emperor of the dungeon before her.”
In the windless basement, the flame burned steadily, not even the shadows cast on the wall wavering.
Shuna spoke with her mature voice.
Will knew the part up to this point.
In that book, every time this memory was recalled, Xiu’s description was full of riddles and rhetorical flourishes, all hinting that this memory was filled with foreshadowing.
“Her first memory was of her hands covered in blood. And hands that she couldn’t even control, swinging downwards.”
“From the moment she was born into this world, she had killed something.”
“For her, who was like a blank piece of paper, it was like an imprint, deeply carving the creation of death—especially death in dungeons— into her soul.”
“Then, she pointed the blade in her hand at her own throat.”
“The death she needed to create was never anything else, but her own being, also born in a dungeon.”
“Oh, but whether it was luck or misfortune…”
“The young girl, like a blank piece of paper covered in the word ‘death,’ ultimately did not step into her own demise.”
“As if cursed to chase after the death of dungeons, she survived in the human world.”
But…
Will had never heard the scene he had seen countless times, described with “nightmare,” “abyss,” recounted with such emotion—
A story told from her perspective, narrated calmly by a young girl.
Rather than the fear of gore, strangeness, and displacement, it was more like a memory recalled with a sense of release.
The scene she described seemed like an old photograph with a faint yellow nostalgic filter.
This scene and experience were not happy, but she had accepted it as a part of her life.
Why?
Author’s Note: Celebrating the 300th chapter! I’ve uploaded Shuna’s character card. I drew it so many, many times, and I feel like the aura of this one fits perfectly. Although her eyes are slightly reddish, it can be attributed to environmental color.
