Weapon-Eating Bastard [EN]: Chapter 77

Weapon-Devouring Bastard 77

“Three. We each ask a question and answer one at a time. How about it?”

I said, looking at Valerie with a meaningful smile.

She was a woman with a stronger decadent image than a bright one.

True to her Caucasian heritage, she had a small face and large eyes, accentuated by thick eyeliner.

In many ways, she was beautiful, but her eyes hinted at an intense desire that felt almost dangerous.

‘Just as I heard.’

I took a sip of my tea, recalling the eccentric stories I had heard about her in my previous life.

The Three Questions.

It was one of the hallmarks of the magician Valerie de Bell.

She was the type of person who couldn’t stand not knowing something she was curious about.

Even in my past life, she was famous for proposing a simple game of exchanging three questions with someone when she couldn’t satisfy her curiosity.

And she even applied those Three Questions to her magic, developing it into her unique magic, the ‘Three Questions Festival’.

“And just exchanging questions isn’t fun. I have a magic, so let’s play a game with it.”

Looking into her eyes, which felt somewhat intimidating, I calmly said,

“No, thank you.”

“…Huh? Why?”

“I just met you today. What could I possibly be curious about?”

Valerie’s eyes widened like saucers.

“Aren’t you curious about my eyes?”

“You told me even though I didn’t ask, so I’m not that curious.”

“Huh…”

Valerie blinked her big eyes as if she hadn’t thought of that.

“But I’m a little interested in the game.”

I took a sip of tea to moisten my lips.

“Let’s make it so that the winner of the game gets to make a request of the loser. Then I’ll do it.”

“A request?”

Valerie’s eyes narrowed.

“You said you weren’t curious about anything. What kind of request are you going to make?”

“I’ll have to think about that. Opportunities to ask something of a magician with a workshop aren’t common.”

She stared at me intently, then chuckled and nodded.

“Something feels off… Fine. Let’s do it that way.”

Valerie had a confident expression.

“Yes, then please explain the game.”

Valerie nodded and flicked the water pipe [a type of smoking device] she was holding in the air.

“The rules are simple. From now on, we ask each other three questions and give three answers.”

With those words, her hazy magical power began to rise.

It was the beginning of the Three Questions Festival.

Right now, the magic is not enough to fill a place like this cafe, but in the distant future, she sealed a great demon with this unique magic without much effort.

“The questions can be anything, and the answers can be lies or truths. But you have to guess whether the answer is a lie or the truth. The person who guesses more correctly wins. And the loser has to answer all three questions in detail.”

I already knew the content, but I listened calmly.

The Three Questions Festival had a rather complex structure for just exchanging three questions.

Valerie took a sip of the espresso, where the sugar cubes had melted and thickened, and continued.

“Additionally, you can’t ask questions that are too obvious, like asking about gender or name. It’s too easy to decide, right?”

This was also a rule I already knew.

Even though Valerie at this time had not yet developed the Three Questions Festival to the level of unique magic, the framework was already in place.

I asked one question for confirmation.

“How can you tell if something is a lie or the truth?”

“This magic is mental magic. Even if you’ve trained to hide your thoughts, it reads the mental waves coming from your subconscious. If the person who lost the game tries not to tell the truth, the mental magic will naturally make them speak. And…”

Saying that, Valerie placed her hand on her chest and then slowly removed it.

At her fingertips, particles of hazy magic were clustered.

“I swear in the name of the magician Valerie de Bell. I will faithfully fulfill what I have said, I will not cheat, and I promise to play a fair game according to the rules.”

The hazy particles of magic burst like a balloon and scattered in all directions.

It was a magician’s oath.

It was a type of extreme incantation that would cause one to lose all of their magic if the oath was broken.

“You can believe that I won’t play any tricks with this, right? Are there any more questions?”

“No, I’m fine.”

“Then let’s start.”

Valerie’s red lips twisted meaningfully.

* * *

The fog of magic that had been hovering in the air gathered above my head and Valerie’s, forming three red spheres.

“You go first.”

At my words, Valerie nodded.

“Then shall we start lightly? Your Mana Eyes, what abilities do they have?”

She says she’s going to go lightly, but from the first question, she’s asking what she wants to know most.

“It has a similar kind of power to yours.”

Whoong!

The magic sphere floating above my head scattered and disappeared.

“…No, what does that mean?”

Valerie frowned.

“Should I take that as a second question?”

“…You’re smart for a kid.”

Valerie grumbled and puffed on her cigarette.

“Okay. Now it’s your turn to ask.”

“Why are you so curious about Mana Eyes?”

Valerie frowned.

After a moment of thought, she calmly replied.

“Because of my thirst for knowledge. I’m just curious as a magician.”

Whoong!

Her first answer was over.

It was an ambiguous answer, as if she was just returning my answer, but it didn’t matter.

‘After all, the answers that come and go during the game in the Three Questions Festival are not very important.’

The important thing is what questions you ask and whether you can guess the truth and lies.

In the end, the person who wins this game can get a satisfactory answer from the loser, not an ambiguous answer like now.

So, what’s important in this game is to ask the questions you want to know in advance and to discern the truth of the other person’s answers.

‘And I don’t need to bother selecting the questions.’

What I’m aiming for is victory in the Three Questions Festival, or rather, the ‘request’ I can make to her afterward.

“I’ll ask my second question. Why did you come to this area?”

I answered without panicking.

“I came to see you.”

“What?”

Whoong!

The magic sphere above Lee Cheol’s head disappeared.

Valerie, flustered, widened her eyes.

“Then it’s my turn.”

Valerie looked at Lee Cheol.

The purple energy in her eyes wriggled.

‘That answer just now, was it true?’

Her eyes interpret all things.

It’s not a mind-reading type of Mana Eye, so it can’t read what’s in your heart, but it can figure out whether the other person is lying or not by interpreting muscle movements or pupil movements.

From her point of view, Lee Cheol’s answer was definitely true.

‘But how? Does he know who I am? No, even if he knows, how does he know I’m here?’

She didn’t go outside the workshop if she could help it. Even if she did, she would cast transformation magic and walk around the streets.

The Magic Tower knows she’s here, but they haven’t announced it externally, so outsiders don’t know.

No matter how great Soong Mooi is, he shouldn’t be able to know her exact location.

She had been thoroughly erasing traces so that her identity would never be revealed.

“I’ll ask my second question.”

“…Okay.”

“Have you decided what kind of first unique magic you will use?”

At those words, Valerie’s eyes widened as if they were about to tear.

If warriors hone their magic to reach the realm of Aura, then magicians have something called unique magic.

An absolute magic system that can control everything under the rules you set.

Magicians can twist the rules of the world through this unique magic.

‘How the hell, no, what does he know?’

The reason she came to Korea was actually because of the design of this unique magic.

She was trying to create her own unique magic by studying sorcery, which had developed into a different system from magic, and incorporating it into magic.

But that was information that only a few people, including her teacher at the Magic Tower, knew.

‘Is he just probing?’

She looked closely at Lee Cheol’s expression.

Lee Cheol still had a strange expression, and it was not easy to read his expression.

“Why? Aren’t you going to answer?”

Valerie’s eyes flashed as she looked at Lee Cheol, who was smiling.

“…It’s a magic of the magic particle dynamics series. It’s not a combat magic.”

Above Valerie’s head, the second sphere disappeared.

“Now it’s my last question.”

The purple light overflowed in Valerie’s pupils.

“You already know about me. How much do you know?”

A question containing a wide range of content.

If she wins, it’s also a question that can solve all the questions that arose during the Three Questions.

I looked at Valerie’s eyes for a moment.

In front of those confident Mana Eyes, it seemed like both lying and telling the truth would be revealed.

“Since I was born, I have never seen or heard anything about you.”

Valerie’s lips twisted knowingly.

‘I won.’

Valerie was sure.

What she just said was a lie.

For some reason, she failed to read Lee Cheol’s Mana Eyes with her Mana Eyes, but she wasn’t even able to interpret Lee Cheol’s facial muscles or movements.

And she didn’t miss the very slight shaking of Lee Cheol’s facial muscles.

Despite his young age, he maintained a good poker face, but there’s no way he could hide everything in front of Mana Eyes.

‘I’ll be able to hear how he knows about me now.’

I don’t know what he was thinking when he asked the first two questions, but in the end, she won.

“It’s my last question.”

“Go ahead.”

Lee Cheol smiled strangely.

Valerie felt an unknown confidence in that smile.

“Do you think I would have won? Or do you think I would have lost?”

Valerie laughed in vain.

It’s not even a question.

She put out the cigarette in the water pipe in the ashtray on the table and said,

“Hehe, it’s your last question, are you sure you want to ask something like that?”

“Just answer.”

“Okay, well, fine. You lost. I won.”

Like that.

The last magic sphere burst.

“Shall we now reveal the lies and truths?”

Valerie smiled with a very seductive expression, as if she were a card shark revealing her cards.

“The answer to my third question. That’s a lie. You knew about me.”

With those words, the magic that had been spreading around began to move.

I read the flow of magic that was circling around me.

And the next moment.

Whoosh!

The color of the magic turned black.

That meant Valerie was wrong.

“No, why! Damn it, definitely…!”

Valerie’s expression was full of confusion.

‘I definitely know about Valerie.’

But I said, ‘Since I was born until now’.

There was a trap in that expression.

Ordinary people would think of their entire life, but in my case, it only referred to my life after regression [reincarnation].

In my previous life, I knew a lot about the magician named Valerie de Bell.

But at the same time, after the regression, I had never heard or seen anything about Valerie.

In other words, my answer was both a lie and the truth.

In the end, it was a matter that would change depending on my mindset.

“Then now it’s my turn to guess. Let’s start with the first answer.”

I smiled.

First question.

Why are you so curious about Mana Eyes?

Her answer was a thirst for knowledge.

“It’s true.”

The magic surrounding Valerie turned white.

That meant my answer was correct.

It was a bit of an obvious answer.

Perhaps she thought she would give this question as a handicap and just get the remaining questions right.

“Since it’s come to this, shall we guess the rest as well?”

Second question.

The type of unique magic you will create for the first time.

I’m sorry, but I already know this because I’ve lived in the future.

This magic that she is using now and that I have entered is her first unique magic and her representative magic.

“You lied about this.”

The Three Questions Festival is a mental magic series. It’s not a series like particle physics.

“…!”

Once again, the magic in the air turned white.

And the last question.

Did I win this Three Questions Festival?

Valerie said I lost.

“This has also become a lie. Because I won.”

Valerie’s expression twisted comically.

I looked at Valerie with a smile on my face.