The dining continued. With Marilyn’s friendly personality and Zich’s unusually warm response to her, Marilyn quickly adapted to the group. Light chit-chat and soft laughter passed over the dining table a couple of times.
“Then, are you traveling alone, Ms. Marilyn?” Hans began to call Marilyn by her name.
“Yes. If I travel around and increase my knowledge about the world, I believe that I can also raise my skill level.”
“You said you were a mage, right?” Elena asked.
“Yes, but I am far from the fancy-type of mage people usually think of. I specialize in curses.”
“Ah!”
Curses or in other words, dark magic, was a special type of magic. Although it was still in the same category of magic, it was fundamentally different from traditional types of magic and was the opposite of holy magic that priests used. Like how a traditional mage couldn’t use holy magic, it was also impossible for them to use dark magic; this rule applied to even Lyla although her knowledge pretty much surpassed all mages in the world. Due to this unique characteristic, it was a type of magic that didn’t have a good image amongst the general populace. As a result, curse casters were often gloomy and anti-social. Yet, as if she was directly going against these stereotypes, Marilyn was an extremely cheerful person.
“Fufufu, do you get it now? If you make me mad, I might cast a scary curse on you all so be careful.” Like a beast flashing its claws, Marilyn clenched her fingers and shot her arm up in the air. Yet, she didn’t give off any inkling of danger.
Elena burst into laughter and said, “I’ll be careful.”
“Huh? Why are you laughing? I am going to cast a really scary curse.”
“Could you tell us specifically what this curse would be?”
“Yes, thank you for asking!” Marilyn coughed and said, “Well, first, I am going to turn everyone who doesn’t listen to me into frogs!! Then, I am going to put them in a large pot filled with all kinds of poisonous herbs…!”
“How outdated is that image!” Elena couldn’t hold in it any longer and burst out into laughter. Mariyln was describing the fearful and misunderstood image that people used to have about curse casters in the past.
“I am telling you, that’s really what I am going to do!” Marilyn thumped the desk a couple of times while looking frustrated. This only made Elena laugh louder and made the rest of the group smile. Even Zich and Lyla smirked.
Koo? Nowem took his head out of Snoc’s bowl of soup and looked around in puzzlement.
Marilyn glared at the people laughing exaggeratedly for a moment and said, “Well, I will forgive all of you since you are Sir Zich’s companions.” Laughter burst out again from her remark. Marlyn’s jokes made even Lyla laugh and helped her recover some of her mood. Yet, Snoc’s next question shot it down again.
“Now that I think about it, you address Zich so politely, Ms. Marilyn.”
“I could do the same for you, Snoc.”
Snoc waved his hands and responded, “There’s no need for that at all. I just thought you admired Sir Zich very much.”
“Of course!” Marilyn shouted. “After hearing all those stories about this city’s heroes, I began to admire everyone who saved the city. However, I thought Sir Zich was the most special one. I became more certain of it when I saw him in person.” She looked towards Zich—her eyes were filled with love and admiration. Normally, Zich would have blabbered on to his companions to boast about his popularity, but knowing Marilyn, he responded differently.
‘The love she used to have for me was too heavy.’ He recalled memories from before the regression. Whenever a woman wandered around or clung to him even for reasons other than love, a murderous face would swoop down and wave a staff around with an intent to kill. It was also the reason why she had clashed with Evelyn quite many times.
‘Of course, she was a good subordinate and companion if I disregard that part of her.’
Furthermore, it had always been enjoyable to talk to her like now. To Zich, she was an existence that was similar but also different from Tim. Her natural personality and tendencies matched his, and if Tim matched Zich regarding his violent inclinations, Marilyn matched him in everything else like personal tastes. Although his feelings for her weren’t as much as the feelings Marilyn had for him, he had always enjoyed the time they spent together.
Clack! In front of him, he heard utensils colliding. When he looked toward the origin of the noise, he saw Lyla pick up the spoon she had dropped.
“Get a new one.”
“It’s fine. I finished all my soup anyway.”
Lyla left her spoon in the corner and began to slowly pincher her bread apart. Marilyn asked hesitantly, “You don’t appear to be in a good mood. Is it perhaps because of me?”
“No, it’s not that.” Lyla shook her hands and denied it. “My condition is just not that great today.”
“Really?” Zich searched all over her face. “Hm, your complexion doesn’t look too good. You kept dropping and spilling things too. Should we end our meal now? I think we’ve already had our fill.” Zich got up from the chair.
“Let’s go. I will take you to your room.”
“No, I’m really all right! Actually, I felt better while I was eating!” She strongly denied it. It didn’t seem like she was lying.
“Well, I suppose talking together in a group like this could be better for your mood than anything else.”
“Exactly!”
“Still, if your mood suddenly worsens, don’t hesitate to tell me.”
“Yeah, thank you.” When she saw Zich take his seat again, Lyla let out a sigh of relief. This meal was an opportunity for Zich to meet his ex-subordinate, Marilyn; she thought it was a very meaningful and enjoyable time for him.
‘So, I can’t get in the way of that.’ As someone whom Zich had helped in many ways, she wanted to protect a small event like this for him. No matter how down her mood was, she couldn’t ruin this gathering’s atmosphere.
‘Huh?’ Lyla suddenly felt something strange. ‘My mood became better?’ The pangs that had been pressing at one side of her heart stopped. It was a phenomenon that even Lyla was surprised about.
‘For what reason?’ Lyla had no idea. The only thing that happened just now was that Zich was worried about her.
‘I don’t know what happened, but I became fine.’ Lyla could think about the reason later. She just decided to be happy about not ruining the atmosphere for now. However, that was only for a short while. Her mood worsened as she saw Zich and Marilyn happily converse. Elena sat next to her and kept stealing furtive glances at her.
“May I ask why all of you came back here to Violuwin?”
At Marilyn’s question, Zich made up another story. “There’s only one reason why we’d come to a tourist city.”
“Is it to sightsee?”
“Yes. When we came to Violuwin last time, we couldn’t properly sightsee because of the monsters. During the second time, the people of Violuwin recognized us, so it ended up as a failure as well.”
Zich shrugged his shoulders. “It’s to an extent that I thought destiny might be hindering us from sightseeing Violuwin. At this point, I became stubborn. No matter what obstacles blocked our path, I was going to complete sightseeing in Violuwin.”
“That’s a very interesting thought.”
“If we have only one life, we should try to have an interesting life.”
“I agree!” Marilyn smiled and continued, “I thought that all of you might have come because there were signs of monsters in Violuwin again.”
“Well, at least from the information we have, there are no signs of monsters for now.”
“That’s really fortunate. Ah, but I’m slightly regretful about something. If there really were monsters, I would have joined your group and fought together. It would have been a good memory.” Marilyn made a face as if she was almost dreaming.
Then, she seemed to have thought of something as she stared at Zich. “Would you be able to tell me the main goal of your travels?”
“There are many reasons, but our biggest goal is doing kind acts throughout our travels.”
“That’s a splendid goal! As expected, it really fits with everyone here as heroes.” Marilyn suddenly turned around and stared straight at Zich. After cleaning up her appearance and making sure there were no wrinkles or messy areas, she made a pretty smile at Zich.
“Don’t you perhaps need one more companion in your group? I’m a curse caster. I’m an amazing talent for torturing my opponents.”
Lyla saw it for a moment—Zich was about to immediately accept her offer, but he tried his best to suppress it.
‘Really, that guy…’
Zich didn’t want to immediately recruit Marilyn to join because he took a liking to her; it was probably because he was attracted to what she said about how she could inflict all kinds of torture on her opponent.
‘There’s probably nothing that could impress Zich more.’
If Zich had any thoughts about increasing the number of his companions, Marilyn probably now increased her probability by at least 50%. However, as expected, this was not enough. This was probably also the reason why Zich quickly suppressed his offer. The most important thing was her skill.
‘In regards to trusting her, she was famous for being fanatically loyal to Zich Moore before his regression.’ Even though her loyalty towards him as the Witch was gone now, Zich probably knew how to make her loyal to him again since he did it before. ‘She’s already showing small signs of that past loyalty.’
Of course, since Zich was not the Demon Lord of Strength Zich Moore anymore—he didn’t need Marilyn to swear loyalty to him either. It was enough to just trust her. ‘Then, as expected, the problem must be with her skills.’
As the Witch, Marilyn Frill’s skills were self-explanatory. She was one of the four subordinates of the Demon Lord of Strength after all. As a curse caster, she would be weak in direct confrontations, but she would be able to push her opponents to the brink of hell with all kinds of curses and support.
‘Of course, it’s up to Zich to finally push them off to hell.’ In this way, Marilyn was definitely a coveted talent for Zich. Moreover, if he added Marilyn to his group, he might receive a small amount of comfort for killing Tim Platt with his own hands. ‘I can see that it’s still bothering him.’ Lyla’s thoughts directly hit the mark.
“Our travels are extremely difficult. Ms. Marilyn, you won’t be able to survive if you don’t have a certain amount of skill.”
“It’s embarrassing to say this about myself, but I’m very confident in my skills.” Marilyn puffed out her chest.
“If you say so, I think it’s a good idea to test your skills.”
“A test! I’m confident in any test! Just give me an opportunity!”
“Your confidence is a great sight to see.” Zich turned his head towards Lyla and said, “Lyla.”
“Yeah?”
“Can you test Ms. Marilyn’s skills?”
Lyla pointed at herself with her thumb. “Me?”