I Planned a Su*cide Mission and Got Kicked Out of the Party

---

As soon as the Dragon Lord saw the Grand Mage leaping into action, he hurriedly panicked and took off running. Jeongjae was not in a situation to worry about the old man flying away from the tower. He wasn’t even in the right mindset to take in the sight of dragons quickly completing their mission and retreating.

His focus was solely on Jenis, a girl who lay trembling on the ground like a person struck with paralysis, covered in blood. Jeongjae rushed over to Jenis, knelt before her, and placed her head on his thigh.

The girl, groaning in pain, blinked for a moment as if she couldn’t believe the scene before her, and asked, “Professor? Is that really you?”

“Yeah, Jenis. Your wounds are severe, so don’t talk. I’ll heal you right away.”

Without a word, Jenis nodded. Jeongjae urgently unleashed a powerful healing spell upon her wounds, but he was taken aback to see that his magic was having no effect at all.

“What the… is this?”

“That’s the curse I had.”

Margaret murmured while stroking her arm that had been pierced by Etrias’s fangs.

“Dragon poison, the dragon’s curse. It doesn’t matter what you call it. But since it was cast by the Dragon Lord himself, it’s a very powerful curse. There’s no hope for this child unless we lift it. The key is the holy power. This girl poured her holy power into my wounds, treating me, and saving my life.”

“H-holy power, holy power, right.”

Jeongjae hurriedly drew the Holy Sword from his waist and even took off his cross necklace. Just as the Grand Mage was about to extract holy power from his sword and inject it into her wound, Jenis raised her hand and grabbed his arm.

“Look… closely.”

“What?”

“My wound. Look more closely. The curse there… isn’t just the dragon’s curse.”

Confused by her words, Jeongjae took out Harriet’s glasses from his pocket and put them on his face. Only then did the true nature of the wound on her chest become visible. Jeongjae, with a look of disbelief, pulled out two black iron chains from her wound.

“What the hell… is this?”

“That’s my oath.”

Jenis spoke slowly with a gaze that was gradually losing its vitality.

“I swear to survive and take revenge on those who have done this to me, my own kind of oath. It’s the manifestation of the dark blood that flows within me, the dark mana that has bound my soul, and at the same time, it’s a part of my soul.”

“That’s… no way. We can remove it. If we just utilize mana technique a bit more properly…”

“No, it’s a part of my soul.”

Jenis shook her head weakly. Jeongjae realized why Jenis was blocking his hand. If he poured holy power into this wound, he could remove the dragon’s curse. However, navigating around the dark mana to extract only the dragon’s curse would be virtually impossible in terms of mana theory. It wasn’t just difficult; it was nearly impossible.

In the end, if such a treatment were to be attempted, it would destroy Jenis’s soul. That meant she would die on the spot.

“Now… do you understand? That my treatment is impossible.”

“No, just wait a moment. There has to be a way to keep you alive. Once I find that, I’ll seek out experts and magic on this side…”

“No human has ever researched healing magic based on the premise of a half-dragon afflicted by the dark curse in their heart being subjected to the dragon’s curse. I’m sorry, Baron. But time is short, and I’ve already proven that I can’t survive here. Are you going to spend my last moments quarreling over whether you can save me? Or will you listen to my last wish and let me go?”

Jeongjae turned his gaze to Margaret’s face. Margaret, looking at the pitifully mangled Jenis, wore an expression that suggested she was almost in tears. The Elf Lord, whose eyes met with Jeongjae’s, shook her head.

She too acknowledged that in this moment, there was nothing that could be done to save Jenis. Jenis spoke with a peaceful expression.

“I have two notes. One is for you, Professor, and the other is for His Majesty the Emperor. Please convey my regards. I’m sorry for my rudeness during this time.”

“Jenis…”

Receiving the two pieces of paper from the Great Sage, Jeongjae began to weep uncontrollably. What on earth was happening? Why did she have to suffer like this?

Though she was born extraordinary and was the offspring of demonkind, she had never walked the path of evil. While she might have been a bit overly ambitious, the cosmic order had taken her mother away when she was very young, and later her father as well.

She was surrounded by unbelievable humans, and even trustworthy people inevitably opposed her. Despite such struggles and fights, she never lost her sense of justice. In the end, she believed herself to be human and fought for humanity based on that belief.

But why was she dying like this? If there were something like righteousness in the world, if there were transcendent beings who upheld fairness, they should have spared her. It was unjust to take her life and not even allow her a taste of the victories she had pursued while throwing everything away.

Jeongjae wept for her as he felt the frustration that must have settled in her heart. The strength in his hand, which grasped hers, tightened, and the painful reality that he could not save her constricted around him.

Though he was not a proper professor, she was his dearest student. That meaning was profound. In a school provided by the hero while he struggled to adapt to the battlefield, she was a rare understanding of the lecture content Jeongjae taught.

Although he never loved her as a woman, though he guarded against her straying off course and distrusted it more than anyone else, she was still essential to this world. To Jeongjae, she was a person of immense importance.

With her fading sight, Jenis looked up at Jeongjae and reached out her hand to his face.

“I… love you…”

“Jenis…”

“Don’t feel pressured to answer me. The woman you love is by your side. I am about to die, and she will live for hundreds of years longer, so you should not harm her feelings just to appease me. That’s what you call wisdom in life.”

Jenis let out a slight, strained laugh at her own joke. Jeongjae was too busy crying to manage a smile at her humor.

“I… overindulged. Even watching my belly burst, I overindulged. No, let’s not talk about that. I don’t want to talk politics while I’m dying. I don’t want to talk about war either. I already wrote that down while I still had my wits about me. Stop crying. If you’re weeping because you’re worried about me, then I’m really… not in pain at all. My body has already… stopped feeling pain.”

Jenis’s words were true. The paralysis starting from her toes had already been killing every corner of her body, causing her to stiffen. Jeongjae tried to extend her life as much as he could, pouring life magic into her body, but the tissues that had necrosed due to the curse did not conveniently return to life from such magic.

Jenis urged him.

“Don’t waste mana on foolishness with the enemy nearby. Just… Ah. You’re still not stopping your tears. I see. A dying woman watching the man she loves weep for her, how fortunate am I? It’s how successful my life has been that the one I love mourns my death. If you grant me one last wish, it would be a successful death as well. Right?”

“Anything. Just tell me anything.”

“When I close my eyes, Professor. If I truly close my eyes and never open them again…”

Jenis gradually began to gasp for breath. Death was engulfing her lungs and throat.

“Just kiss my lips… once. Who knows? That touch might bring my life back like a fairy tale. Even if it doesn’t, seeing Princess’s jealousy at you taking my lips might cause my body to quake back to life! Who knows! Even being dead, I might still feel the sensation of a kiss. Even after life has faded, I might still feel that. So please. As a sign that I was important to you, fulfill my wish…”

Jenis’s pupils dilated. A flicker of last injustice regarding her death crossed her eyes as she tried to leave the world with as calm a mind as she could.

The Great Sage stretched her hand towards the heavens, squeezing out her final strength as she cried.

“I was almost there! I felt I could grasp it!”

Just before she closed her eyes one last time, she murmured in a voice almost inaudible, gazing at Jeongjae.

“Please… complete my… revenge…”

And her mouth began to stiffen from the poison. Her eyelids closed, and her heart stopped beating. Jeongjae wiped his tears with the sleeve of his robe and responded.

“I will. No matter what, I will complete your revenge.”

And with that, Jeongjae bent to leave a final kiss on his cold, lifeless student’s body. The first kiss from a man who had never kissed any woman apart from his mother until the age of thirty was offered in tribute to the last wish of the girl who loved him.

The sensation of her lips was unrealistically cold and chilling. Jeongjae turned his head slightly to look at Margaret. There was no hint of jealousy in her expression. Rather, the Elf Lord was looking down at the body with a face full of deep sorrow and regret for a life that had bloomed too quickly, only to wilt before it had truly bloomed.

Jenis Harker would never awaken like a fairy tale. There was no miracle that the magic of the last kiss could breathe final life into her. She was dead, and that was the reality. The dead disappear from this world, just as Abraham Van Helsing had died, just as Walter Hellhound had died.

Jenis Harker was dead.

“I will kill them.”

Jeongjae murmured.

“Now, I will slay all the dragons that exist in this world. Just like I killed two of them on my way here. Before going after the Demon King, I will first storm the land of the dragons and exterminate them. If needed, even alone.”