Chapter 106: Wishing Upon the Stars

Lutz raised his axe with one hand. His target was the massive cursed jar, and he intended to throw it and destroy it.

“That’s just reckless!” Ricardo exclaimed, almost screaming.

There was no guarantee that it would hit.

Even if it did hit, they had no idea how strong the cursed jar was, unlike a normal jar.

Lutz and his companions were able to fight off the horde of undead due to the performance of their weapons. It was not sane to give up those weapons. If Lutz were to fall, the remaining two would be overwhelmed by sheer numbers.

However, Lutz didn’t stop. He grinned and shouted.

“We’re here to do the reckless thing!”

As an undead approached him, Gerhardt swung his beloved sword, “Ittetsu,” and severed its legs from the side.

“Go!” his determined eyes seemed to say.

“Die!” Lutz shouted, his axe flying through the air. With a vertical rotation and a menacing sound, the axe headed towards the cursed jar.

The heavy and sharp blade pierced the jar. There was a crack, but that was it.

…Is it useless?

Feeling crushed by despair, Lutz picked up a sword dropped by one of the undead. The option to give up was absolutely unacceptable.

At that moment, a figure leaped out.

It was Ricardo. He ran straight toward the jar and delivered a flying kick. The leather boot pressed against the edge of the axe.

Crack, crack. The crack grew bigger.

“What the hell…?!”

Rouge, who had been watching from a distance, widened her eyes in astonishment. It was a cursed jar; it shouldn’t be so easily broken.

Rouge didn’t know. That axe was Lutz’s masterpiece, a weapon made with all his skill, and it was meant to honor warriors. It was completely incompatible with curses that demeaned human life.

One of the undead, who had been Rouge’s bodyguard, attacked Ricardo, who was defenseless. At that moment, the jar shattered.

“Guaaaah!”

Not just that undead, but all the undead in the temple began to suffer. Blood poured from their hollow eye sockets as they groaned and writhed in agony.

“What are you doing?!”

Rouge approached the undead. The undead changed their target and swung their swords, beheading Rouge in a single stroke.

“Huh…?”

Blood splattered diagonally. Without realizing that her earrings had transformed, Rouge fell backward. The wound was deep, and the bleeding wouldn’t stop. It was a fatal injury.

The undead collapsed like marionettes with cut strings. In the eerie silence, the only thing that could be heard was the heavy breathing of the surviving men.

“Is it over…?”

Muttered Gerhardt, but neither Lutz nor Gerhardt could grasp the situation and provide an answer.

The scattered gems around them were enveloped in black smoke. The smoke quickly dissipated, revealing that the gems had turned into eyeballs.

Eyeballs were scattered haphazardly everywhere. Even the gems that had been laid around the jar had all transformed into eyeballs.

“What is this…?”

It was a creepy scene that didn’t seem of this world. Lutz and Gerhardt stood frozen, unable to move, while Ricardo, who had been near the jar, hastily returned.

“Ahaha, hahaha…”

The sound of a woman’s laughter. Rouge, who had been watching the scene with her head turned, laughed with a smile on her face, even as she spat blood.

“Ahaha, I did it, it came true. My wish came true! To think it would be granted like this, it’s truly the best. I did it, Mother…”

Rouge continued to laugh and cry with a twisted smile on her face, then she succumbed to her injuries and stopped breathing.

Carefully stepping so as not to crush the eyeballs, Lutz picked up his axe.

“At times like this, do we need to take the culprit’s head and bring it back?”

Lutz asked, and Gerhardt shook his tired face from side to side.

“No, it doesn’t matter. Go ahead.”

Lutz nodded and thrust his axe into Rouge’s corpse. Rouge continued to smile and cry. Her corpse burst into flames.

Next, Lutz swung his axe at the fallen undead, who were bleeding from their eye sockets, and set them on fire. It was difficult to burn nearly twenty bodies, but Lutz kept swinging his axe, knowing that it was the only thing he could do.

Illuminated by the burning bodies, the temple became as bright as daylight.

The men turned their backs to the flames and began to walk away.

The sound and vibrations of the temple collapsing reached their ears, but none of them turned back.

In a certain noble’s mansion, during a dance party, a woman’s scream echoed through the hall.

A forcefully torn necklace fell to the floor.

It was an eerie object that could hardly be called a necklace. It was made up of five eyeballs connected by chains. Just a while ago, it had certainly been a luxurious gem necklace. Suddenly, it was enveloped in black smoke, and the gems had transformed into human eyeballs.

As people rushed to aid the gasping and trembling woman, they noticed that eyeballs were hanging from her ears, unnoticed.

In another location, the ancient runes’ light that had been infused into a sword vanished, and instead, blood flowed from the blade.

Such disturbances were happening simultaneously throughout the country.

The search for the culprits began, and those who had sold the gems, processed them into accessories, or enchanted them were captured and interrogated.

They all maintained the stance that they were victims too, openly admitting who they had obtained the gems from. As a result, the investigation led to the Tubris Trading Company.

The Tubris mansion was ablaze. The mob broke in, looted the belongings, and set the mansion on fire. The mob felt no guilt. They believed that those people were bad, and they deserved to be robbed because they had gained their wealth through evil deeds.

The majority of the mob had no connection to gems. It was unclear what they were angry about, but they called this justice.

The servants had quickly gathered what they could and fled. They had anticipated that a day like this would come and had already picked out what to take. It was almost fortunate that no one had died.

Tubris, accompanied by trusted servants, walked through the woods, relying on the faint light of a lantern. The night forest was dangerous, but that meant the mob wouldn’t come near.

“Why did it come to this? Why? Damn it!”

Tubris repeatedly muttered the same words, his face filled with despair.

“Wouldn’t it be forgiven if we explained it to the Count? I’m just a victim who was deceived by that woman,” Tubris said, desperately clinging to any hope.

The elderly servant looked at Tubris with cold eyes.

“You should have known that those gems were made at the cost of human lives. Instead of calling yourself a victim, you should be called an accomplice,” the servant said with a tinge of contempt. There was no trace of respect left for Tubris.

“I didn’t know they would turn back into eyeballs? If I had known, I wouldn’t have touched them…” Tubris’s eyes filled with fear and realization.

The servant turned away from Tubris, as if hiding the face that held back tears.

“This is where we part ways, Lord Tubris.”

The servant walked away quickly, disappearing into the depths of the forest, ignoring Tubris’s plea to wait.

“Damn it! All of you, betraying me!” Tubris shouted and kicked a tree. Frustrated, he kicked it repeatedly. It only hurt his foot.

“Well, fine. I can start over anywhere as long as I have money. Money, as long as I have money…”

Muttering to himself with empty eyes, Tubris reached into the bag he had grabbed from the mansion. It felt slimy.

“Ah, ah…”

Tubris fell to his knees on the spot. He finally realized that he had truly lost everything.

He blamed his misfortunes on bad luck.

He vented his frustrations on women when things didn’t go well.

He touched the cursed gem, knowing it was a fraud.

Now, all the consequences of his life had caught up to him.

He sat on the damp ground in a daze. Soon, he saw light through the gaps in the trees. Had the servant come back?

He shook the lantern with dwindling oil, desperately trying to signal them.

“Hey, I’m here! I’m here!”

The light approached. However, it was much brighter than a lantern should be.

What appeared was not the servant who had left earlier but a towering man, like a giant tree. He held a torch in his left hand and an axe in his right.

The man, seeing his prey, wore a wicked grin as he raised his hand axe. If he could take this sinner’s head, he could sell it for gold.

Tubris looked at the man in fear and suddenly understood his mistake.

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