World of Masks

Chapter 18

Translator: Seven

Editor: Ana_Banana

One bandit rejoiced in the fact that he would survive while the other sobbed in despair at his inevitable death. These moments of joy and sorrow overlapped.

“Y-, you’ll let me go now, right? That’s what we agreed on.”

“Yeah. That’s how it should be. After all, I don’t wanna die either.”

Jin-suk, shrugged while looking at the gem in his hand. 

Just as the bandit’s hope for survival reached the peak.

Tuk.

Something landed in front of him. The bandit, who was still overcome with joy, unconsciously looked down to see what it was.

It was his dagger. 

The bandit took his eyes away from the dagger and turned to the direction it had been thrown from. His eyes landed on Jin-suk.

“Th-, this… What do you…”

Perhaps it was because he had a foreboding feeling, but the bandit’s voice shook slightly.

However, Jin-suk ignored that as he used his chin to point at something. 

It was the spot where his fellow bandit was laying on his face, crying. 

The thrown dagger. The chin pointing towards his teammate. No matter how he thought about it, it could only mean one thing.

“You, you want me to kill him?”

Jin-suk shrugged again.

“Do-, don’t mess around! Why would I…!!”

“You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to. But that guy who’s shivering over there could still give me useful information. Whether it’s the exact layout of the city or the location of a restaurant. There are a lot of things that I haven’t asked yet.”

It was a threat. It was a clear threat.

The bandit grit his teeth.

From the start this demon had only been playing with them.

But his threat was too effective. As if he couldn’t help it, the bandit grit the dagger tightly.

“Wa-, wait. Don’t do this, Frank.”

When he realised the turn the situation was taking, the sobbing bandit lifted his head and called out to his teammate, Frank. 

Frank, however, only pressed his lips tightly together as he looked at his former colleague with cold eyes.

“Sorry.”

That one short word was all he said.

Without hesitation, Frank stabbed the dagger into the other bandit.

“Ahhh!”

The bandit screamed. Although he desperately tried to fight back, the pain from the attack as well as the injuries he’d suffered from Jin-suk made it impossible.

With a mad gaze, Frank stabbed his teammate. Once, twice, thrice, four times. 

In the middle of the forest, another puddle of blood spread on the road.

The voice of the bandit, who had been screaming loudly in pain and fear slowly faded before disappearing completely. 

He’d long stopped moving, but Frank didn’t stop stabbing him. 

It was only after a long time that Frank’s movements finally stopped.

“Ha, haha, hahaha.”

Frank looked down at his hand. 

He’d been covered in a lot of blood before, but this blood was different, special. It was the blood of his teammate.

“H-, hoo.”

No matter how brutal the life of a bandit was, Frank couldn’t help but let out a small groan after the shocking experience. 

Then, he casually threw the dagger aside and stepped away from his teammate’s corpse.

“Hey. I killed him like I promised. Now it’s time for you to keep your promise.”

“Ha~am. Ah! Are you done?”

Seeing Jin-suk yawn as if he was bored, Frank grit his teeth. 

This guy had been toying with them from the start. 

Frank couldn’t help but stare at him with resentment. If looks could kill, Jin-suk would have already been torn into thousands of pieces.

“Good. Then I guess it’s time for me to fulfill my promise.”

Frank was relieved when he saw that Jin-suk intended to keep his promise. 

He held a grudge, but the first thing he wanted to do was get out of there. It was completely unreasonable to expect him to let go of his fear despite the fact that the contract was protecting him.

However, it was too early for Frank to be relieved.

Shuk.

Jin-suk pulled his sword out of the ground before walking towards Frank.

“W-, wait. What are you doing?”

“Huh? I’m naturally gonna kill you.”

Frank’s heart shook when Jin-suk said those words as though it was obvious.

“D-, don’t be ridiculous. Do you think you’d be fine if you do that?”

The agreement made with the Contract Jewel was still in effect. It should still be valid.

But Frank’s expression became pale when Jin-suk, who should have been suffering greatly due to attempting to breach the contract, walked over as though nothing was wrong.

“I don’t understand why you’re so surprised. I’m just fulfilling the contract.”

“S- stop messing around! The agreement was that you’d spare me!”

“No. I have to kill you.”

“Wh-, what the hell are you talking about?!”

He didn’t understand how he had to die. He hadn’t lost.

Seeing Frank struggling, Jin-suk smiled.

“You seem to have misunderstood something. Do you remember what I swore?”

“Of course. You said you’d spare the person who gave you the most information!”

“That’s not all.”

Jin-suk tried desperately to stop his laughter from bursting out.

This was just too much fun.

“I added two clauses to the contract. ‘I’d let only the person who gave me the most information go’ and ‘I’d spare only one person’.”

“R-, right! So hurry up and let me go. I gave you the most useful information.”

“Yeah. That’s why I’m gonna let you go.”

“What the hell are you talking about?!”

He couldn’t understand what Jin-suk was saying, but the Contract Jewel didn’t react. This caused Frank to feel like he couldn’t understand English.

“Hmm. It seems there has been some miscommunication between you and I.”

Jin-suk’s act of tapping against his mask as if he was embarrassed only appeared abominable to Frank.

“I said I would definitely let you go.”

“Right! So stop messing around and let me go!”

“Where?”

Frank became speechless for a moment. 

What the hell was he talking about? Where would he go?”

“N-, naturally I’d go home…. No, I just have to leave this place!”

“Huh. Is that how you understood it?”

Jin-suk spoke in an exaggerated tone as though he finally understood where the miscommunication stemmed from. Then he corrected Frank’s mistake in a pitiful tone.

“The place I was thinking of letting you go to is ‘hell’.”

“….what?!”

Frank’s face turned white. Letting him go to hell meant that he planned to kill him.

“When I said my clause, what I meant was ‘‘I will let only the person who gives me the most useful information go to hell’, and ‘I will spare only one person who has not provided me with useful information’. Did I ever say who the ‘one person’ was? Or where I would let you go?”

“Wh-, what are you talking about. In these situations, the person who gives the most useful information is spared!”

“Because I’m a bit of a weirdo. I wanted to make a different contract.”

Frank’s body began to shake. It was only at that point that he began to understand.

The Demon in front of him had worded the contract in such a way because he’d wanted to create a situation like this from the start.

“By the way, because of the contract, I intended to spare that person, but I didn’t expect that his own teammate would kill him.”

Jin-suk turned to look at the corpse of the bandit on the ground seemingly with remorse. Then 

he turned and asked Frank with an accusatory tone.

“Why did you kill him?”

“You… You told me to kill him. You bastard!”

“Me?!”

Frank felt like he was going to go crazy when Jin-suk raised his arms in the air as though he’d heard something shocking.

“Don’t pretend! You’re the one who gave me the dagger to kill him!”

“Ah! Is that how you took it? I was just thinking that since you would never see him again, you should trim his hair for him.”

“Don’t be ridiculous! You said that if I didn’t kill him, you would ask him a bunch of questions so that he could take the lead!”

“I never told you to kill him. It’s the same as with the dagger. When you asked whether you should kill him or not, I shrugged my shoulders because I didn’t know what you were talking about. I threatened to give him the chance to overtake you because I felt that you were not a good friend to him since you seemed unwilling to do a simple thing like trim his hair. Most importantly.”

Jin-suk desperately held in his laughter while he said one last thing to the frozen Frank.

“Did I ever tell you to kill him?”

Frank was devastated.

Now that he thought about it, he truly found that Jin-suk had never told him to kill his teammate. When he’d asked if he should kill him, he had only shrugged his shoulders which caused the situation to develop as it did, but it was true that Frank had never heard him say to kill his teammate.

“Ahh. What a tragedy that happened because of a small misunderstanding.”

As if acting on a stage, Jin-suk lowered his head while speaking in an exaggeratedly sad tone. However, his lips beneath the mask were curled into a large smile.

“Nevertheless, tragedy or no tragedy, the contract must be fulfilled.”

Jin-suk once again started walking to Frank, who was still frozen.

“W-, wait! Don’t do this! S-, spare me!”

“Ahh. I also wish that I could spare you, but I can’t do that because of the Contract Jewel. Can’t you see?”

When Jin-suk stopped and tried to turn around, the Contract Jewel in his hand lit up.

“This jewel really is powerful. The moment I think about not letting you go to hell, my body begins to ache. So what else can I do? Aren’t we bound by the contract?”

Jin-suk shook his head slowly like the protagonist in a tragic play. 

Frank clenched his teeth hard.

Even now, the desire to run away was strong, but the constant mental shocks sapped him of all his energy.

“P-, please!! Spare me!!!”

“Ahh. It’s truly unfortunate.”

Frank, who realised that he didn’t have a chance as Jin-suk continued to adopt a sad tone till the end, spoke venomously.

“You sick bastard! I hope you burn in hell!!”

Jin-suk chuckled.

“That’s why you should go prepare a place for me.”

Tuk.