Although a Villain, My Wish is World Peace

What I saw when I opened the door and entered was a staircase leading underground. The stairs were made of brown bricks, and the path leading underground was so dark that it was barely visible.

But what surprised me wasn’t that there was a secret space leading underground in the office.

Brown bricks?

“It’s not ice?”

—It seems that door was blocking the ice. If you don’t want everything to freeze, it would be better to close the door quickly!

As Ray said, ice was slowly spreading inwards along the door I had opened. I quickly closed the door. As the light flowing in from outside the door disappeared, darkness immediately enveloped me.

I hurriedly raised a light. Fortunately, the brown bricks visible in front of me remained as they were.

As Ray said, this door seems to have played a role in blocking the ‘ice’.

“The things inside here aren’t frozen.”

I couldn’t see at all what was at the end of the stairs leading down. From the musty smell unique to basements to the darkness where I couldn’t see an inch in front of me. Even for me, who’s not particularly fearful, it was a place I hesitated to step into. But it doesn’t make sense to turn back after coming this far.

I swallowed hard.

“I’m going down.”

Just in case, I wrapped two strokes of Shield around my body. One stroke of Light, two strokes of Shield. It was anxious that there was no room for mana circuits I could use immediately, but I felt reassured since I had Shield wrapped around me.

As I went down, the damp and musty smell unique to basements brushed my nose.

The stairs led to a huge basement underground. There, I could find old torches hanging on the walls. After extinguishing my light and lighting a torch, I looked around the basement holding the torch.

The place was so packed there was no room to step, filled with bookshelves with books inserted, desks full of piles of paper, and drawers storing various things that looked like magic materials.

It wasn’t a shelter, but seemed like a space where something illegal, that is, something that shouldn’t be seen by people, was being researched separately.

“Jackpot.”

This was exactly the kind of information I was looking for.

I slowly moved my body while leaving the torch stuck in the wall. The things here had escaped from the ice curse that swept through the castle. It means I could read the books fully stuffed in the bookshelves.

The problem is that I have to lower my Shield to read the books…

“Well, monsters won’t suddenly jump out, right?”

I immediately activated Translation.

I plan to skim through all the titles before skimming through the contents first.

[Understanding of Magic Power]

[Curse of the Ancient Mein]

[Introduction to Mein Volume 1]

[On the Mein, That Terrible Existence]

.

.

.

[Research Journal]

My gaze lingered on the last book. I immediately pulled out the [Research Journal] and held it in my hand. The book, full of someone’s hand marks, was something someone had written down letter by letter directly with a quill pen.

I twitched my eyebrows seeing the name written on the first page.

“Rodi Hermann.”

It was the name of the person who is, or was, the owner of this castle.

—Didn’t you say Count Hermann ruled this castle?

“Yes. It must be either himself who was processing documents up there, or his ancestor.”

We should be able to find out exactly what happened in this castle by looking at this diary.

* * *

Yoo Seon-je came outside, avoiding the rough-looking man glaring at him. Although he might have asked where he was going, the man called a ‘mute’ kept completely silent.

After coming outside, Yoo Seon-je immediately joined Team Leader Lee Hye-won’s team who were searching the village.

“Did you find anything?”

“No. Everything’s frozen so there’s not much we can touch.”

Lee Jae-eun with the exploration talent also shook her head at Yoo Seon-je’s gaze. With no living beings present now, Lee Jae-eun’s talent was completely useless.

Yoo Seon-je asked Lee Hye-won:

“Are you really going to trust that suspicious person?”

Agents John and Smith. Those men who gave such halfhearted aliases. Lee Hye-won also agreed that they couldn’t trust them. But…

“We can’t drive them away right now.”

That was the problem. That they were in a situation where they had no choice but to join forces even with such sloppy-looking men for now.

“With you here, Seon-je, it shouldn’t be difficult to subdue them. If we pressure and interrogate them, we might hear their real hidden intentions. But even so…”

Lee Hye-won trailed off. The rest wasn’t difficult to guess. Yoo Seon-je continued her words:

“You think we won’t be able to escape from here anyway.”

“…The situation is difficult.”

Lee Hye-won didn’t flatly say it was impossible, but her already depressed expression was as good as an answer.

She had always held her head high proudly, but since that incident, she had completely lost her light. She was just enduring with the thought that if she collapsed, this conquest team would collapse.

Certainly, it was impossible not to feel pressure. It was crazy to try to conquer a raid-type Gate with this number of people now.

Their lives were already over. They were just meaninglessly extending their lives.

“Do you think that man can find out something?”

“He was strangely confident.”

“That’s because he’s stupid.”

“Hmm.”

Lee Hye-won thought Agent Smith was far from stupid, but she didn’t want to go against Yoo Seon-je’s words. At that ambiguous answer, Yoo Seon-je seemed to think Lee Hye-won had made the same judgment as him and continued speaking:

“Rather than being with untrustworthy people, it’s better to exclude them.”

“Still, every single hunter is precious in this situation now.”

“If they were proper hunters, that is.”

Yoo Seon-je snorted. Certainly, those people who introduced themselves as John and Smith had quite good skills. But Yoo Seon-je couldn’t trust them at all.

“I’ll somehow try to defeat Serena, so when they come here, first strike from behind…”

It was when Yoo Seon-je was saying that.

“Oh! So you were all here.”

At the sudden voice, Yoo Seon-je’s head turned sharply. It was Smith, who had said he was going to look for clues in the ice palace.

“When did you come here?”

He hadn’t felt even a bit of presence. Just as Yoo Seon-je was thinking he was indeed untrustworthy, Smith smiled brightly and said:

“I think I found a clue.”

The one most surprised by Smith’s words was Yoo Seon-je, who had been about to say they should exclude him until just now.

“You found a clue? What kind of clue?”

“I think it would be better to gather everyone together and talk. Let’s go call the people at the main camp.”

And so all 7 remaining members of the conquest team headed to the basement Smith said he had discovered.

A secret space that wasn’t frozen, unlike other places.

Seeing that he had found such a thing in that short time, Lee Hye-won thought to herself that he indeed had the skills to talk about ‘conquest’ as he did.

Smith even translated the language of another world and told them.

The [Research Journal] (as Smith claimed it was) had quite detailed accounts of what happened in this castle.

“The person who ruled this castle was a man called Count Hermann.”

Smith slowly began to unfold the truth of this castle written in that journal.

‘Rodi Hermann’, who was the heir to succeed the count at the time, leaves after receiving orders to subdue a demon beast, that is, a monster that appeared in the surrounding forest. After successfully subduing the monster, he meets a very mysterious girl in the forest.

A girl with white hair and white eyes, an inhumanly beautiful girl.

Rodi Hermann falls in love with her at first sight.

But she wasn’t human. She was, to use the expression here, a ‘Mein’.

“That Mein wouldn’t be the ‘Mein’ I know, right?” (tl/note: ‘Demon’ in Chinese)

At Yoo Seon-je’s question, everyone’s gaze turned to Smith.

‘Demons’ and such hadn’t appeared in the current world, but in the world beyond Gates, demon tribes or devils often appeared as high-ranking monsters. Of course, there were also ‘Mein’ who had made contracts with them and gained new powers.

“To be precise, it’s not that they became Mein because of demons, but that they were called Mein because they could use magic.”

Smith, who said that, continued:

“There was no evidence that they were related to demons. I looked at all the books here, but the claims of people making such assertions lacked argumentation. They were just groundless superstitions close to nonsense.”

“You’re saying you read all the books here in that short time?”

“I’m a bit of a fast reader.”

At Smith’s words, a small commotion arose. The books here seemed to be at least several thousand volumes. It seemed physically impossible to have read all the books here in just a few hours.

Unless he had a talent like speed reading…

‘But Smith already said his talent was handling natural attributes. Actually, that’s impossible too.’

Lee Hye-won deliberately put away the thoughts in her head. That wasn’t what was important right now.

“Anyway, Count Hermann, who met that Mein, fell in love with her. At least at that time, Count Hermann seems to have believed she was human. Or he was deliberately ignoring it because he was in love. Anyway, with the count’s love, she succeeded in becoming the countess, which was unusual for someone of common birth. It’s written that she was beautiful and wise, so she received tremendous love despite her unclear origins.”

Up to here, it could have been a beautiful love story.

However, the problem began when the countess became pregnant with Count Hermann’s child.

The conception of life is certainly a blessing, but unfortunately, her pregnancy was far from a blessing.

“It seems that hybrids between Mein and humans are extremely unstable. Unlike Mein who can control their power, they can’t easily control their own power.”

Lee Jae-eun, who caught on to Smith’s words, opened her mouth:

“Don’t tell me that hybrid is…”

“The woman sleeping in that spire.”

“Oh my. So did this happen because that friend couldn’t control her power?”

“It might have been better if that had happened.”

Smith slowly opened his mouth again:

“The child started causing problems from when it was in the mother’s womb. Because she was carrying such an unstable child, even the countess’s transformation magic began to falter. Eventually, Count Hermann hides her somewhere else, making excuses that she’s sick, to protect his wife.”

But even escape was useless. The unstable magic power of the child in the countess’s womb kept stimulating her.

Even though it was a fetus in the womb, the child was too powerful, and as the child grew, the Mein was dying.

And at the moment of birth. The countess couldn’t withstand the child and passed away.

“So Count Hermann begins to hate the child. And he tells the world. That an evil Mein in this world, jealous of him and his wife, planted the seed of evil in the child. So let’s kill this seed of evil, he says.”

Smith, holding up the old book, said:

“This book is a murder journal written by Count Rodi Hermann to find a way to kill his daughter.”