Chapter 329: The Future He Wrote

—

Novis Town.

Even knowing she had to leave at five, Eir lay in her room, clutching the chapter Will had written for her from the Quest System.

“It’s impossible to sleep…”

Lighting a candle and placing it by her bedside, Eir took a deep breath and opened her section of the Quest System.

“Young Master… what kind of quests did he write for Eir?”

On the first page, she saw his early handwriting. It wasn’t about specific “quests,” but more of a summary and an overall goal.

[Eir, the timid and weak wolf-girl maid. Reason for failure: Lacks self-confidence, doesn’t know how to take the initiative, and won’t express herself, always missing the best opportunities.]

“Is this… an evaluation?”

“But it doesn’t sound like… the Eir of today?”

[General Storyline: Adopted by the Hysterm family and raised as Will’s (my) personal maid…]

“The description sounds like what Eir experienced, but… with so many different details.”

Eir read slowly. Things that the other two understood immediately after reading the Quest System came to her more slowly. But through her years of close observation of Young Master, she sensed that when he wrote this Quest System, he already had a “future” in mind.

“Like… our ending?”

She didn’t know how to read well, so she traced each line with her finger, reading word by word to avoid skipping lines. As she moved to the next line, she saw it—

[Ending: Defeated by a Fire Dragon, kneels on the ground and cries her eyes out.]

“What, so the fairy tale Young Master told me was actually going to happen.”

[Yandere Goal: Take the initiative, never give up easily, a super maid who can seize opportunities on instinct!
Defeat Target: Using Rimefrost Phalanx, defeat the Fire Dragon Al, the BOSS of the “Galaxy Summit” dungeon’s 50th floor.]

“Young Master… th-this isn’t Eir at all, is it?”

But seeing these crazily yet “orderly” set goals, with their wildly exaggerated descriptions, Eir once again saw Will’s figure.

“Every sentence sounds like something you would say yourself.”

“But, why didn’t you tell even me about these things?”

Eir curled her legs on the bed and turned the page.

[Quest: High-temperature training: First, get her used to the lowest temperature steam. Let’s trick her by saying it’s a new bathing system I designed, one that can wash her tail fur perfectly clean.]

“Did he really lie about that? I have no memory of it…”

[Quest: Physical fitness training: To counter the Fire Dragon, she needs a bit of agility. (Crossed out) First, let’s make her run with me. No, let’s just make her run by herself.]

“…That’s something Young Master would write. He was just being lazy himself.”

[Quest: High-temperature training: Train Eir to withstand a 500-degree Celsius sauna for ten minutes with her ice armor.]
[Reward: a new item for Eir x1]

As Eir read, a smile unknowingly appeared on her face. Her finger no longer traced each word; she could now easily read the content.

…

[Quest 38: Block one hit, intimidate the witch, find an opportunity to negotiate, use threats and bribes to gain her trust, and enter the Witch Leah Chapter.]
[Reward: Get a good night’s sleep.]

“That was… the incident with Leah. Speaking of which… that really did change a lot…”

…

[Quest 158: Have Eir master the initial activation chant for Rimefrost Phalanx.]
[Reward: A lap pillow from Eir. (Note: Tell Eir to stop the daily endurance runs; her muscles are getting a bit too firm for a lap pillow.)]

“No wonder Young Master always asked for a lap pillow at strange times… was it because of this?”

…

[Quest 169: Check Eir’s recitation of the 300 Questions for Going Dark.]
[Completion Status: She can now respond to a number with the answer immediately (I can’t even remember most of them myself). She doesn’t seem to get it, but hopefully she really has it all memorized.]
[Reward: A new collar for Eir!]

…

[Quest 171: Have Eir suddenly use the primary magic of Rimefrost Phalanx on a monster. I can pretend to be ambushed by a monster first.]
[Reward: Eat her freshly baked cake tonight!]

Page by page, Eir went from sitting up to lying on her stomach, wagging her tail, completely absorbed in her reading.

…

[Quest 230: Test the advanced magic of Rimefrost Phalanx. This time, the goal is to withstand a continuous output of about 30,000 Hs for five seconds.]
[Reward: Bought Eir a new tail brush, so I can brush her fur more often.]

…

She had never imagined that this thick, unbound volume of the Quest System would contain such content. With each quest, some written long ago, others revised just in the last three years, it was like replaying every moment she and Will had shared over the past three years.

“But… doing all this… it was really to… make Eir stronger, more confident… and to have a strange kind of control?”

[Quest 300: Give Eir a “Snowsong Aegis”.]

“So that’s what it’s called…”

Eir glanced at the shield she had carefully placed by her bedside. She suddenly realized that the next page was about “things that haven’t happened yet.” At the time this was written, Will had already left the team, and he had never returned to open this notebook again.

So what would the next page be… Was it the future Will had written for them?

Eir gently wet her fingertip and turned the page.

[Note: From here on, for the following quests, I will likely be dead. I won’t be able to stay by Eir’s side as her Young Master anymore, so what I’ve written is perhaps ‘the future I hope to see.’]

After a few quests, he had drawn a line, and below it, this note was written. Eir’s smile vanished. Though she was mentally prepared, having already seen the quest where Will wrote about his own death, seeing it written so starkly, and so close to the present, caught her completely off guard…

With trembling hands, Eir’s finger once again traced each line, reading the content word by word—

[Quest 400: Eir can withstand blazing magma for over five minutes with Rimefrost Phalanx.]
[Quest 401: Eir can skillfully switch between offense and defense with the “Snowsong Aegis”.]
[Quest 402: Eir can calmly express the content of the 300 Questions for Going Dark without thinking.]

…

[Quest 433: Eir defeats the Fire Dragon Al, earning the achievement “Revenge of the Loser Heroine”!]
[Quest 434: Eir can hold the one she loves in her arms.]

After reading the last line, Eir closed the booklet. The candle had burned down, slowly extinguishing itself, but the night, too, seemed to be ending, not so dark anymore.

“…This is… what Young Master would do…”

Eir said, realizing her pillow was soaked with tears.

—

Leah closed her door, but didn’t go to bed. Instead, she walked to her desk, picked up the long-neglected coal lamp, and lit it naturally with her fire magic. She leaned against the window, the moon visible from the side—she felt it helped her tell the time. The clock on the wall opposite, which Will had used to regulate her experiment times and prevent her from overworking, had long since stopped.

“What rest?! Who could sleep after getting something like this?!”

Leah stood, reading the first page of Quest System – Witch Leah Chapter by the light of the lamp and the faint moonlight.

“So you knew I was a witch from the beginning, and everything after that was… was an act!”

Undoubtedly, Will’s habit of writing a project overview and general goals on the first page of his proposals started with this Quest System.

[Leah, the tsundere, evasive, and insincere old hag witch. Reason for failure: Says one thing and means another, can’t even be straightforward. Just give up when you meet a blockhead.]

“Will—! This guy, is… is this how you see me?!”

“Fine, fine. You’re right. But… I’ve… I’ve changed now, okay!”

[General Storyline: A long-lived witch clan, pursuing the ultimate ancient fire magic, the “Primordial Candle”…]

“He knows me so well. This is what he foresaw, or… the fate he saw before? Just how old is his soul?”

For some reason, after discovering that the young Will might have a more mature soul, older than his apparent age, Leah felt a sense of balance, as if their ages were closer.

“But, if he really knew his own and our ‘fates’ through some means… would that include my future, or… my ending?”

Her eyes slid down, and she saw the two words—

[Ending: Blocked by an ice demon’s ice wall, can’t do anything, sits on the ground and wails.]

Snap.

She angrily closed the loosely bound Quest System excerpt, almost throwing it to the ground. But she opened it again.

[Yandere Goal: The super, super, super loving, dazzling witch who only has eyes for you!
Defeat Target: With the fire magic of the Primordial Candle, defeat the Snow Woman, the BOSS of the “Galaxy Summit” dungeon’s 70th floor.]

“…I have to say, your goal, boy, is still so high.”

But Leah knew very well that Will wasn’t one to aim for the impossible. If he wrote it down, he would probably try to achieve it.

“Do you think… I really am… a dazzling existence in your eyes?”

The moonlight behind her shifted her shadow slightly, making it dance on the page. She turned to the next page.

[Quest 39: Let the witch Leah experience the benefits of Bloodmint, and finally make her obey you!]
[Reward: Perhaps… an obedient witch?]

“This guy, he was definitely doing it on purpose from the beginning. Something like… like Bloodmint Essence, how could he… how could he use it so casually?”

Leah smiled, a hint of her old blame in her tone. But just a few lines brought back memories. When Will appeared at school, when he cornered her and asked for information about the client… he truly came for her, focusing only on her.

…

[Quest 40: Help Leah with her stalled ancient magic research. Note: Important item, Bloodmint Essence.]
[Quest 41: Help Leah win the research competition and get Rimefrost Phalanx from the vice dean!]

[Reward: Phase Reward: Desserts from Belor House in the capital (remember to invite Eir).]
[Reward: Phase Reward: Reserve a turkey dinner at a luxury restaurant.]

“S-Saying you want to be my student so you can help me, so… this was your plan… and even eating together, don’t forget I’m the teacher!”

She went from standing straight, her body almost pressed against the wall, to a more relaxed posture, her legs in over-the-knee socks naturally crossing in front of her.

…

[Quest 185: Piece together ancient texts with Leah to get the overall design concept of the Primordial Candle.]
[Reward: Have Leah stare at you for ten minutes and draw her pupils. (Note: She only let me look for three minutes before covering her face and running away, what a shame.)]

“Idiot Will, making drawing pupils a reward is… what’s with that!”

Leah paced back and forth by the window as she read. Her small brown leather shoes tapped on the floor. She glanced sideways, seeing the hearts in her red pupils reflected in the glass—if Will asked her to stare at him and draw her pupils now, he would surely be surprised.

…

[Quest 187: Get Teacher Leah to participate in the school singing contest! Let her know that being direct and dazzling is very attractive!]
[Reward: Secretly bring a newly made fire stick from the lab and cheer for her from the audience!]

Leah’s footsteps stopped abruptly when she read this. Her eyes wandered, and she twirled a strand of her ponytail.

…

[Quest 253: Conduct primary research on the wick.]
[Reward: Give Teacher Leah an invitation to the school festival. She’ll definitely be fooled by my masquerade ball costume.]

…

[Quest 301: Give Leah a “Staff of Ancient Flame”.]

Leah, tired of walking, slowly sat on the floor, her knees together, reading the book on her lap. As an academy teacher, she understood why Will wrote this—based on their calculations, her old staff could no longer support her magic.

“Because you made it yourself, you even drew a witch’s symbol on it. I love the metal staff.”

She seemed to have been mistaken. Up to this line, Will hadn’t been taken by that damn woman, Shuna. So, he had been watching her grow, and…

She turned the page, and the line with the horizontal rule stung her eyes—

[Note: From here on, for the following quests, I will likely be dead. I can’t continue to be Teacher Leah’s student and help her with research, so what I’ve written is perhaps ‘the future I hope to see.’]

—Like this, he was looking forward to her future.

[Quest 501: Teacher Leah successfully finds the materials for the wick according to the plan.]
[Quest 502: Teacher Leah successfully masters the method of forging the wick materials from ancient magic.]
[Quest 503: Teacher Leah successfully creates the wick for the Primordial Candle.]

…

[Quest 542: Teacher Leah defeats the Snow Woman, earning the achievement “Look at Me Properly”!]
[Quest 543: Teacher Leah can shine brightly in the eyes of the one she loves.]

Leah closed the thin booklet—ridiculously thin for a teacher with a “mentor” qualification—and threw it away angrily. The moon outside the window had completed its arc across the square window, disappearing from view.

“Idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, you… you don’t understand at all, what… what are you thinking…”

She buried her head in her knees, tears soaking her shirt jacket.

“A future… without you looking at me… how… how could I possibly accept that?”

—

Treya sat at her desk, pulling out a notebook from its neatly organized surface, and a pen from the front pocket of her uniform—she knew the pens here would have dried up long ago. She lit the lamp, sat up straight, and began to read her section of the Quest System as if it were a “serious” “holy scripture,” with her own notebook on the side.

“If he wrote it, I must read it carefully—this was my purpose for suggesting a ‘rest.’ A well-trained person doesn’t need sleep for one day… these few hours can be fully used for reading.”

She turned the first page.

“Only by knowing what you truly think can I understand what to do next.”

[Treya, the naive, quirky, and ice-cold princess. Reason for failure: Doesn’t even know her own feelings, how can she win?]

Treya’s expression didn’t change. Like a top student, she wrote in her notebook: Quirky? Need to think carefully about its meaning.

[General Storyline: The overlooked ninth princess of the royal family, who, ironically, escapes the family’s downfall because of it, and then begins her ‘princess’s revenge’ path…]

“It’s long, but to summarize…”

Treya abbreviated the long paragraph, writing in her notebook, “A short life slightly inconsistent with my current one.” Then, she tapped her pen on the paper.

[Ending: Defeated by a ghost swordsman, doesn’t even know why she’s crying when she’s kneeling in third place.]

“Yes… why would I cry?”

Treya tilted her head, tucking a stray silver hair behind her ear. After reading this, she wrote “Ending” in her notebook and added three question marks.

[Yandere Goal: Ruthless enough, with clear goals, a cold-hearted princess who gets what she wants! No, an empress!
Defeat Target: With the demonic power of the Entark royal family, defeat the Ghost Swordsman, the BOSS of the “Galaxy Summit” dungeon’s 40th floor.]

She wrote down the BOSS’s name and looked at it carefully. She wasn’t entirely unfamiliar with “this type” of BOSS; after all, “ghosts” and “demons” had some things in common. However, the Galaxy Summit dungeon didn’t seem to exist now.

“In the development he saw, I seem… unchanged from before. But… when you saw my change, were you happy, or surprised, or even… sad?”

Treya was surprised at herself for saying this. She had only read a few pages, but for some reason, she was deeply empathizing with “Teacher Will”… especially, not just focusing on what he thought, but also on his emotions.

[Series Quest to 90, Reward: Treya’s exclusive sword style – Demon’s Black Blade]
[Quest Hint: The trigger point for the important engagement-breaking plot is about two weeks after entering the cold storage. Do not miss. Will not refresh.]

Treya’s note-taking pen paused, then she wrote, “He actually valued the engagement banquet very much.”

…

[Quest 86: Make Treya doubt her sister, her father, and even her past self, and change her perspective.]
[Reward: Eugenie’s failed resentment x1]

A rare smile touched her usually “serious” and “stern” face—she wasn’t even sure if it was because Will’s quest rewards were so amusing.

“Yes… he’s right. From that moment on, my perspective was completely changed by him.”

…

[Quest 88: Have Treya master the method to gain the demon’s favor at the coronation ceremony.]
[Reward: Have a birthday for the first time, and it has to be a happy one.]

This reminded Treya of the afternoon in the palace, celebrating her birthday with Will. Her upright posture relaxed a little, and she rested her head on her hand.

…

[Quest 89: If possible… have Treya understand her “desire” before the coronation ceremony.]
[Quest 90: Treya successfully passes the coronation ceremony and gains the demon’s recognition.]
[Reward: Order Treya to let me smell her worn black stockings.]

“I haven’t taken off my black stockings since then… it seems.”

…

[Quest 199: Practice the demon sword style with Treya on nearby monsters.]
[Reward: Monster barbecue set. (Though it was cut too finely and ended up as minced meat, the taste was still good.)]

“For someone from the royal family, it was a very novel experience. I still remember it now.”

…

[Quest 201: Made models of the royal family members for Treya to slash at to reduce her psychological burden.]
[Reward: Taste the royal family’s new dessert with Treya!]

Treya didn’t even notice she had put down her pen. She was no longer reading Will’s Quest System as a “study,” but enjoying it as a light read. Because in this book, it seemed to hold “colored” memories that would emerge just by seeing the words.

…

[Quest 205: Check on Treya’s swordsmanship. Sneak out with her at night to fight monsters.]
[Reward: Take over her maid’s work and wash her stockings for her!]

…

[Quest 302: Give Treya a “Shadowmare Blade”.]

“A good name.”

Treya nodded in approval. She hesitated slightly before turning the next page, because she understood… if Will’s “fate” was accurate enough, the closer to the present “time,” the closer to his “death.”

[Note: From here on, for the following quests, I will likely be dead. I can’t continue to be Treya’s strategist and help her think about the next steps, so what I’ve written is perhaps ‘the future I hope to see.’]

As she expected, she saw this statement. Treya wasn’t “unprepared,” but even so, when she saw this line, her light smile vanished. Simple, innocent, yet more lethal than a direct declaration of “death.” After this line, all that was written were “quests,” with no more “quest rewards”—

[Quest 601: Treya can completely eradicate Eugenie’s influence from the royal family.]
[Quest 602: Treya can fully inherit the demon’s legacy and become the supreme master of Entark Swordsmanship.]
[Quest 603: Treya can win the royal family’s struggle, or at least protect herself with minimal losses if she can’t win.]

…

[Quest 651: Treya defeats the Ghost Swordsman, earning the achievement “This is My Love”!]
[Quest 652: Treya can make the one she loves understand her love.]

Treya read the last line in silence. She picked up the pen she had just put down, wanting to write something in her fragmented notebook, but the tip paused millimeters from the paper, unable to write anything but meaningless dots and lines.

“Teacher Will…”

After reading, she called out the name she had used for Will the most, from the bottom of her heart. Now, she seemed to understand what the big, wet teardrops falling on the messy dots and lines in her notebook meant.

—

Five o’clock.

Almost in sync, the three opened their room doors at the same time and faced each other in the narrow hallway. And they saw each other’s red-rimmed eyes, and the bloodshot eyes that clearly hadn’t rested well.

“Good morning, you two? Looks like… you didn’t sleep well?” Eir raised her hand in greeting.

“Yes. I didn’t sleep well, but that happens often. No need to ask.” Treya replied to Eir in a very cold voice, walking past her and straight down the stairs.

“Yeah. Of course… of course I didn’t sleep well! Who could sleep well after reading that kind of thing?!” Leah gritted her teeth and followed Treya down the stairs.

Though they all knew what had happened, in the first floor of the “Morning Star Cottage,” which was now a mess due to their “battle,” none of them explained or asked. Instead, they looked outside, at the royal carriage already waiting.

And so, clutching the pages of Will’s Quest System, the three silently boarded the carriage.

Heading to “Dustbone Corridor”—the dungeon where fate dictated Will would die.

—