The Levitation Charm had been Ian's doing, meaning Ian was the master of the very space they occupied.
Pandero's agility was legendary. He darted, twisted, and leapt like a genetically enhanced monkey on adrenaline. However, no matter how cleverly he dodged, it didn't matter. He could not escape Ian's gaze.
Ian's awareness was faster than Pandero's movements. No matter how far the king ran, Ian simply manipulated the ground beneath him, shifting the invisible "foundation stone" of the space so that his prey always ended up closer rather than farther away.
"Bloody hell!"
Realizing that the harder he ran, the nearer Ian got, and that Ian's hand would already be clutching his collar the moment he stopped running, Pandero could only let out a helpless, deeply human curse.
"Stop running already! I want a reasonable explanation!"
Ian didn't wait for an answer. He slammed the king hard against an empty ox cart, empty of livestock but not force. The impact left Pandero dazed, with a spray of phantom stars bursting before his eyes. Before he could regain his breath, he felt the cold, spiked head of a mace pressed against his most vulnerable spot.
Instantly, sweat poured down his back.
That particular "vulnerability" might have long since lost its function in this world, yet he still vividly recalled the humiliating "Monkey Steals the Peach" incident from before. The memory alone sent a phantom ache through him. Staring at the cold, gleaming iron spikes, he didn't dare imagine the pain Ian would inflict if he swung.
"I, I can explain!" Pandero's Adam's apple bobbed as the light glinted off the steel. "I swear, I wasn't lying!" In his panic, his speech slipped into archaic English.
"At first, I truly remembered nothing. I only started piecing things together later on. Look, even the name I used is just a broken, incomplete form of my real one. That alone should prove that I was suffering from amnesia!"
A damp lock of golden hair clung to his forehead, and his wide-eyed, desperate, and utterly earnest expression was almost convincing.
"Hm? You didn't remember anything at first?"
Ian's eyes narrowed with suspicion. He knew that souls in the Twilight Zone tended to lose their memories over time, their identities softening like old photographs. But King Arthur, the legendary hero, shouldn't be just an ordinary lost soul.
Seeing Ian's doubt, Pandero could only manage a bitter smile. His handsome face twitched slightly from the tension of the mace pressed against him.
"There's a reason for that," he said at last, his voice weary and stripped of its usual bravado.
"Oh? And what kind of reason makes a legendary hero's soul forget everything like some wandering ghost?" Ian pressed, the spiked weapon still a cold, gleaming threat.
Pandero fell silent for a long moment. Then he sighed, the weight of some old, unimaginable sorrow clouding his eyes.
"I honestly don't know what I did," he murmured, the words seeming to hurt him as they left his throat. "One moment I was myself; the next, I was drifting, lost and empty. It wasn't until I stayed by your side for a while that I began to remember parts of my past. Otherwise, I think I would have lost all my memories."
There was sincerity in his tone, a fragile, almost heartbreaking kind of truth.
But Ian still frowned. "You could have said that earlier, couldn't you?"
To be honest, Ian wasn't sure whether to believe him. Pandero's acting skills were wildly inconsistent, brilliant one moment and pitiful the next. It was impossible to tell whether he was performing like an Oscar winner or flubbing his lines like a background extra.
"You never asked," Arthur said, blinking those clear, innocent eyes, eyes so pure they almost begged Ian to relieve his stress by using the mace.
The words had barely left his mouth before Ian raised his weapon again.
"Still arguing, are we?!"
In Ian's mind, the man wasn't just a liar, he was a professional contrarian. When dealing with a professional contrarian, showing mercy was an immense disrespect to the integrity of iron.
With that thought, Ian infused the barbed spikes with a shimmer of sickly green venom. The sight alone made Pandero's eyes widen in horror; his body was slick with sudden cold sweat.
"Wait, wait! I shouldn't have joked! It was a mistake!"
King Arthur of Britain, once so regal and noble, now had his hands crossed in front of his face, his complexion as pale as parchment.
Fortunately, the mace stopped just inches from his forehead.
Ian's eyes narrowed thoughtfully. "Why is it," he asked quietly, the edge of his anger giving way to curiosity, "that you only start remembering when you're near me?"
He replayed Pandero's earlier words in his mind. There was something important in them, something that didn't sit quite right.
The question caused a subtle, strained shift in Pandero's expression. He hesitated, his eyes flicking uncertainly to Ian's waist, where his wand hung, gleaming faintly with power, and then back to Ian's gaze.
Yet he said nothing.
"Because I gave you your name?" Ian frowned and suddenly interrupted his own tense wait. The logic behind Ian's question struck Pandero sharply enough to make his eyes widen and his mouth form a perfect "O" of shock.
"What? What did you just say?" Pandero's shock looked genuine, so genuine that he seemed to forget the spiked mace pressing against his throat. He looked like a man hearing something about himself for the first time.
"You... gave me my name?"
The legendary king's face was a masterpiece of astonishment, every muscle alive with disbelief and confusion.
Ian studied that handsome face closely, wavering between doubt and belief. The same thought ran through his head again: This guy's acting is impossible to read. A moment ago, he'd looked like a second-rate theater actor forcing his lines. Now, even the subtle tremor in his pupils felt so real that it was impossible to tell whether it was truth or performance.
Still, it made sense, didn't it?
There was no such thing as a truly naïve king. For Pandero, Arthur Pendragon, the name immortalized in history as the undying monarch of ancient Britain, his acting, mind, and cunning were all of the highest order.
Whether in the east or west, past, present, or far future, it was always the same: all leaders must have hearts deeper than the abyss. That wasn't an opinion. It was the law of the universe.
Ian wasn't sure whether to trust Pandero's words or actions.
"Other than that," he said quietly, easing the pressure of the mace slightly, "is there any other reason?"
He didn't explain the complicated process of naming a soul. He only fixed his gaze on Pandero, who he suspected already knew more than he was admitting.
Pandero licked his dry lips. His eyes grew darker and heavier as if he were finally ready to reveal a truth he'd kept buried for centuries.
This concluding section delivers the big reveal. Here is the revised, humanized version, which focuses on the intimate tension and dramatic climax of the chapter.
"You've already found the truth, haven't you?"
Pandero whispered conspiratorially, his voice low and laced with ancient dread. It was as if he feared some unseen entity, or perhaps the Twilight Zone itself, might overhear.
"The living entering the world of the dead...that alone defies all laws. Even Merlin himself could not do such a thing. It's a miracle beyond the reach of gods."
He stared directly into Ian's eyes. The handsome facade of the trickster king finally cracked, revealing something profound and serious.
"You could do it as a child, before you even learned magic. Of course, that means you are...different."
Pandero had clearly known about Ian's terrifying and impossible uniqueness for a long time.
"Tell me something I don't already know," Ian said dryly, lifting one eyebrow in challenge. The mace in his hand was now forgotten; he pointed it lazily toward the floating clouds.
Pandero hesitated for a heartbeat. Then, he simply nodded.
"Fine.
"Among your three bodies, one of them is the Lord of the Dead Nation, a being that naturally possesses the power to mend shattered souls. Even your unconscious influence is enough to repair what was broken within me."
The weight of his words was immense, dense with horrifying implications stretching back to the foundations of the magical world.
But Ian, blinking in mild confusion, found that only one part of the explanation had truly registered, blocking out the rest of the cosmic horror.
Three bodies?
He sucked in a sharp, sudden breath.
The phrase felt strangely and dangerously familiar, like a word he'd almost heard in a dream or something buried deep in his own magical nature.
"What kind of insane stew have I gotten myself into this time...?" Ian whispered, staring at the king, who was no longer running or joking but gazing at him with the solemnity of a devoted subject.
(End of chapter.)
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