How to Be a Dark Hero’s Daughter

* * *

“The summoning is over.”

Jade was looking at the summoning circle. But nothing happened.

“What, did it fail?”

Jade mumbled.

‘Surely, something came out of the magic circle.’

A warm and vague feeling. It felt strange.

‘It must be Popo’s spirit,’ he thought.

Soon that sensation disappeared.

‘Besides, there were no side effects from the magic.’

How could that be?

Jade recalculated the coordinates several times.

‘Oh.’

Upon recalculating, he found an error in the coordinates he had worked on for three months.

‘Was it too much to pinpoint the coordinates to the afterlife in the first place?’

He wasn’t even sure if the afterlife existed. He did everything according to the book.

‘But it seems like something was summoned.’

Then it happened.

“Cough…”

Blood came out of her mouth. Jade convulsed like a shrimp, choking.

“Young master!”

By the time Zion called out, Jade was writhing on the floor, spitting out blood and saliva.

The book lay crumpled in a corner of the room.

In one corner of the room, a soul that had been watching Jade flew out of the window.

It was the soul of a girl named Han Yuna.

She became the wind, flying over the capital. Flowing continuously.

‘What happens to me?’

Something seemed wrong. The hair color, words, and actions of the people are all different. This wasn’t the world she lived in. She instinctively realized.

‘Isn’t this the world I dreamt of?’

Could it be that what she saw was the afterlife?

‘But it’s strange for an afterlife. It seems I’m a ghost? No one can see me!’

She felt lost.

‘Take me somewhere.’

She roamed the capital’s skies, truly like a ghost.

* * *

“Why not die? What’s the point of living?”

Upon hearing Marianne’s words, Collen responded with drunken eyes.

“Do as you wish.”

“Wow, look at you, not stopping me until the end.”

Marianne giggled.

Drunk, they sought out an even shabbier, hidden tavern.

Then, a woman’s cry echoed from an alley.

“Why are you crying?”

The woman replied with tearful eyes.

“This child is my daughter. Her name is Lee. She just stopped breathing due to a fever, but her heart is still beating. She was such a good child, but…”

The woman recognized Marianne.

“Are you… the Saintess?”

“You…”

Marianne recognized the woman.

She was from the temple orphanage.

‘How did she end up so impoverished?’

The woman was out of her mind, clinging desperately to Marianne.

“Please save my daughter!”

“Save her?”

Marianne blankly looked down at the body of the strawberry blonde-haired girl.

“How can I? She just died.”

Collen was leaning against a wall.

“Yeah. I don’t eat kids.”

“Collen, what are you talking about?”

“No matter how hungry I am, I won’t.”

Collen turned away with a frown.

Marianne knelt, ignoring Collen.

“I’ll try to heal her.”

“Really?”

The desperate woman looked at Marianne with wide eyes.

“I don’t know what will happen… But having someone mourn her, it’s probably more meaningful for me saving her.”

Marianne poured all her divine power into the girl’s body. Using this much might kill her.

But she didn’t care.

‘Damn this world. Who asked me to be a Saintess?’

It was a childish thought. But, becoming increasingly sorrowful, she used her divine power with tears.

“Marianne?”

By the time Collen grabbed Marianne, it was already too late to stop the flow of her divine power.

“Cough, gasp…”

When she came to her senses, she was on the ground, bleeding from her nose.