I Kidnapped the Hero Party – Chapter 18

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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: FusionX
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“…Saten, I understand. You want me to send the letter to the Sicilia family, right?”

“Yes, please make sure they don’t find out that I’m here.”

Nod.

It was a letter threatening Lennon Sicilia, her own father.

I answered Saten that I understood, then sent her back to her room.

Then, I put the letter in my pocket, immediately prepared to go out, and rushed out the front door.

Pitter-patter-

‘Saten, what exactly are you…?’

She was human but had no emotions.

Her soul seemed alive, but in reality, it was empty inside.

Moreover, her common sense wasn’t common sense at all.

She seemed to have all her screws loose somewhere.

“Minerva-!!”

“Hoot-! Hoot-!!”

Bang-!

I forcefully opened the library door.

Minerva’s owl hooted angrily, but I lightly ignored it.

The one I needed to see wasn’t the owl.

“Zzz…hmnya…”

“Minerva-!! Wake up-!!”

“Uh, uwaah..! I’m falling… Oh, it’s not. What is it, Jun-woo.. So early in the morning. Even goddesses have privacy, you know.”

Minerva, who had been sleeping wearing a sleeping cap, rubbed her eyes and stretched.

Then, in a half-asleep state, she said.

“Jun-woo.. Why are you bothering a goddess so early in the morning, do you want to die?”

“No, I’m sorry about that. But first, listen to what I have to say.”

“…I’ll listen and then judge.”

I told Minerva all the information I had gathered about Saten without hiding anything.

The somewhat strange mage of the Hero’s party.

That I had succeeded in kidnapping her, but I couldn’t understand her at all.

“Hmm, I see…”

Minerva pondered for a moment, then nodded and answered.

“So, Jun-woo! You want to see Saten’s past now, right?”

“Yes, I think that’s the only way for me to understand Saten.”

And it was the only way to save her from hanging herself alone.

I felt that I needed to fully understand her to decorate Saten’s story with happiness.

I couldn’t bear to see the mage’s end, dying alone and lonely, again.

“I think I need to see her past to understand her if I’m going to live with the child I kidnapped.”

“Sigh… Jun-woo, are you a pushover? Why do you care so much about someone else’s business? You just met her anyway. There’s nothing good about seeing someone else’s past. Just leave it be.”

“…But she’s pitiful.”

“Pitiful? Jun-woo, are you pitying her now? Do you know how bad that is for the other person?”

“I know.”

Pity.

Compassion.

Yes, I was pitying Saten.

Born with a fate that couldn’t enjoy even small happiness, having lost her emotions.

I felt sorry for her.

“Minerva, show me. That child Saten’s past.”

“…Alright, but don’t regret it, Jun-woo. This time it’ll be quite painful.”

I was prepared for that much.

I was used to pain.

Minerva sighed heavily while looking at me.

Then, she brought a black book from far away.

It looked similar to a Grimoire, but the cover of the book was titled ‘Saten Sicilia’s Past’.

“Born as it’s created, written as it’s lived, recorded as it dies. Using my library, which has such a great meaning, to peek into someone else’s past, you’re probably the only one, Jun-woo.”

Minerva’s library recorded everyone’s ‘life’.

The anecdotes that occured while living were written in the book.

In the case of heroes who had made their mark on the world, the volume was so large that it sometimes used two bookshelves.

The completion of a book meant death, and deeper in this library, there were mountains of such completed series piled up.

“Well, read it or not, do as you like. Hmph, I’m going back to sleep. You do what you want!”

“…Thank you, Minerva.”

“Don’t thank me! I don’t like it, idiot!”

Minerva huffed and went back to bed.

Despite her words, she was worried about me.

Just reading someone else’s past had side effects.

She didn’t want to see me in pain.

“Well, shall I read it now…”

Saten Sicilia’s past.

I stroked the cover with that title once, and with a firm resolve, opened the book.

It was a world of endless darkness.

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Genius mage Saten Sicilia.

For most people, their lives started to go wrong after becoming adults.

But her life started to go wrong from the moment she was born.

“This child’s mana is strange…!! Ah, all of the mistress’s mana is flowing towards the child…!!”

“What…?”

Lennon, the head of the Sicilia family.

People said he had no emotions, but when he was with his wife, he was a man with richer emotions than at any other time.

He was happy living with his wife and wanted this happiness to never break.

However, the happiness he wished would never break was mercilessly torn apart with Saten’s birth.

“The child was born but… the mistress has passed away, Lord.”

“…”

As the cry of the child from his wife’s womb rang out, Lennon held his wife who had breathed her last in his arms.

Tightly-

Holding his cold wife in his arms, he glared at the child with hateful eyes.

That child.

That demon-like child had taken his wife’s life.

The hatred with nowhere to go from losing his wife naturally turned towards Saten.

“It’s noisy. I want to shove a sword in its mouth. Make it shut up immediately.”

“L-Lord… The child’s name…”

“Call her Saten. And never let this child appear before my eyes.”

“Saten is similar to Satan! The name of that Demon Lord…!!”

“…To me, she’s no different from a Demon Lord. Born with the fate of a demon. It’s a fitting name.”

Satan And Saten.

Saten, born with a cursed name, was not treated well in the family.

She stayed in the family’s main house for 3 years, but her crying reached Lennon’s ears, and eventually, she was confined to a small cabin in the family’s forest.

Food was not given, and Saten sustained her life by eating the grass growing around her.

Happiness makes one dream, but pain makes one face reality.

At the age of 7 she was living a hellish life.

In the midst of a desperate situation, Saten realized.

“…Why am I alive?”

People in books lived with various meanings.

Some for adventure.

Some for love.

Some for knowledge.

However, Saten couldn’t empathize with such meanings.

Her world was a terrible colorlessness without any color.

From birth, pain was all there was to her life.

‘Still, like the people in the books, someday light will come to me too. A bright light like daybreak, not darkness…’

Nevertheless, Saten lived with hope.

She shivered in the cold, wet from the rain flowing through the cabin.

She came close to death’s door after eating poisonous mushrooms.

With the meaning called hope.

However, after 3 years.

In the year she turned 10.

Saten even let go of hope.

“I’ll just… let go of everything… I want to die…”

The hope that had kept her alive was actually torture.

The pain deepened, and the light called hope was not visible at all, always leaving her surroundings dark.

Saten finally put a handful of poisonous mushrooms, which she had experienced near death with once before, into her mouth reluctantly.

Gulp- Gulp-

The poison turned her insides upside down, and hallucinations dominated her vision.

It was a strange experience.

The faces of her parents which she didn’t even remember floated in the air.

“Mother… Father…”

Saten reached out her hand.

Her mother turned away from her, but her father tried to take her hand.

“Mother ignores even my death…”

As the poison spread throughout her body, Saten felt her body becoming increasingly numb.

Soon, even her airway would be blocked and she wouldn’t be able to breathe.

However, just as she was about to cross that threshold of death, suddenly the ‘awakening of mana’ began.

It was a process that normally occured around the age of 15.

But because Saten had her mother’s mana from birth, her awakening started earlier than others.

The mana began to push out the poison, starting to detoxify Saten’s body.

“…Wh-Why. Am I supposed to live…?”

I was trying to die…?

Why…?

However, Saten didn’t expect that the awakening of mana would be more painful than the poison.

After finishing the detoxification process, the mana scattered throughout her body dug into her heart.

“Ah, aaah..!! It hurts… Ki-Kill me…!”

If the amount of mana was too much, one experienced pain that could break the mind.

That was why, originally, the awakening took place beside a master well-versed in magic, which was the proper way.

The master would move the mana gently, minimizing the pain as much as possible.

However, because Saten was always alone, she didn’t even have such a master, and had to endure that pain alone.

By herself.

“Ki-Kill… me..”

It hurts so much…

Just kill me instead…

All her nerves focused on the pain.

How could she escape this pain?

Saten’s body, unable to endure any longer, automatically judged that the cause of the pain was because she had emotions.

Because she felt pain, she was sad.

Because she felt pain, she was afraid.

Because she felt pain, she was angry.

‘Emotions are the cause of all pain.’

Saten’s body judged that on its own and turned off all her emotion switches.

So that she wouldn’t feel any more pain.

It was a kind of self-defense mechanism.

Saten blocked all pain like that and lost all her emotions.

The world turned completely black.

It was the best way for her to overcome the pain.

“…So you were the cause of the mana wave.”

“…”

Afterwards, Lennon, who felt the mana wave, approached her and shouted at the servants.

“Move this child to the main building. And call a teacher to teach her magic. She has talent, so she’ll be ‘useful’.”

He had eyes that looked at her thoroughly as a ‘tool’.

Those eyes were definitely not a father’s eyes.

After that day, Saten digested an amount of study similar to abuse.

When there was a mistake, she slapped her own cheek, and always studied magic alone in a dark attic.

She tried to die, but she couldn’t even die as she pleased.

And so, the dark days continued…

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It seemed like the dark days would continue, but currently, I was looking at the ceiling of the library.

Above that, I heard Minerva’s voice.

“Jun-woo!! Wake up!!”

“…What is it, Minerva?”

Surely, I was looking at Saten’s past…?

When I opened my eyes again, I was lying on the floor.

There was a faint pain tingling in my heart.

And above me, Minerva was grabbing my collar and shaking me.

I felt like I was about to vomit.

“Mi-Minerva, stop…”

“What do you mean stop…! Jun-woo, do you know what just happened..?! Your heart just stopped..!!”

Sniff-

Minerva wiped away her tears and explained.

More than that, my heart stopped for a moment…?

While my consciousness was in the book, did my heart stop as a reaction?

Because there was no pain left, it felt unreal as I couldn’t really feel it.

“The reaction was that severe… Probably, it seems to be due to the reaction when Saten was awakening her mana.”

My mind was a bit depressed now too.

A sense of lethargy enveloped my body, and if given the chance, I had an urge to end my life.

This was the rebound from reading someone else’s unhappy past.

The remnants of the past affected my mind and body.

Minerva patted my chest and shouted.

“Th-This is why I didn’t want to show you…!! Like that time, you almost died…!! What am I supposed to do without you, Jun-woo..!!”

“…Well, you can live with Mieng-ie.”

“I told you not to use nicknames! Even if I have the owl, I’ll be bored without you..!! Next time, I’m definitely not lending you any books!”

Minerva said this and buried her face in my chest, wiping her tears.

To think this was a goddess’s behavior.

Well, her believers would be disappointed.

I stroked Minerva’s head and said.

“It’s okay. I won’t die. Unless I die of old age. If you’re watching my future, there’s no way I’ll die.”

“…No. There are no absolutes, Jun-woo.”

I hugged and comforted Minerva, who was shedding tears and I agreed in my heart with Minerva’s words that there were no absolutes.

‘…There really are no absolutes.’

There was no such thing as a future that absolutely wouldn’t change.

However, having seen Saten’s past, I discovered a light of hope.

Rehabilitation.

If I restored her emotions and showed her happiness, Saten wouldn’t choose death herself.

That fact was clear.

‘I’ll change Saten’s future.’

So that she won’t die alone by hanging herself.

Recalling Saten’s emotions and memories remaining in me.

I made a firm resolution.

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