HLnovel Chapter 132 : Elf Village (4)
Chapter 132 : Elf Village (4)
Elf Village (4)
Mirianne.
There was no information in any book that she left behind any descendants.
If someone as renowned as the Great Mage had truly left a successor, it naturally would have been made known in some way.
"Elder sister Silia is the blood relative of the Great Mage?"
That was why it sounded strange to Louis' ears.
"That fact hasn't been revealed, though."
[Well, that's because she wasn't born from an official marriage.]
She had just said it a little while ago.
She and Frederick had once made a huge blunder together.
What that blunder was, Louis could picture it in his mind.
[Everyone hypes us up as legends and such, but in the end, we're human too. Controlling instincts and desires that yearn within us is impossible.]
"What was so special about that desire that you chose Frederick?"
[Heheheh... Are you seriously asking because you don't know?]
Louis decided not to ask any further.
The mood felt as if something irreversible would happen if the conversation kept going in this direction.
[Anyway, with the child that resulted from that blunder, we wondered what to do. It would have been easy if the two of us could raise the child ourselves... But unfortunately, that wasn't possible.]
At the time, both Mirianne and Frederick already had their fates sealed.
They were each set to become nourishment for the World Tree or to have only their thoughts remain, sealing the seed of a demon.
[Truthfully, even the reason I spent that night with that guy in the same bed was all because of that.]
Soon, they would no longer exist in this world.
Whether due to a survival instinct that emerged from that, or because of long dormant desires, their passions for each other flared up.
In the end, in order to resolve each other's final yearning, they spent their first and last passionate night together.
"So, even a great mage or hero can sometimes fail at contraception, huh?"
[.......]
Mirianne made an embarrassed face, not protesting the point.
She had the response of someone recalling a time when they'd gotten overly excited and now felt ashamed.
[Yes. It's definitely a dark spot in my past. In the end, the child born that way couldn't be raised by us, so we secretly entrusted the child to our disciples. Since nothing good would come from people finding out the child was ours, we insisted it be kept secret.]
They were both destined to disappear.
As soon as the ones once called heroes vanished, those seeking to fill the void would almost certainly emerge.
"With someone like you gone, Mirianne, the impact must have been huge."
[I've had to deal with people trying to claim my legacy for themselves all the time. In the end, those crazed with ambition will spill much blood to seize it.]
You couldn't say it was wrong to hide their child.
Otherwise, that child would have been thrown into the battlefield that ran with that blood.
[Of course, among that legacy is this elf village as well.]
"......."
The elves, who had once benefited from Mirianne's grace, became her successors, inheriting her knowledge.
Part of Mirianne becoming one with the World Tree was to protect those same elves.
[At least until then, I truly thought of them like my own children. But...]
The problem came afterward.
The elves went around proclaiming the World Tree—which now contained Mirianne—was divine.
As their power increased, they too became drunk with ambition.
As a result, the World Tree withered and a great war broke out across the continent.
[It may be late to say this now, but I regret treating the elves as my children until now. Frederick—that idiot—probably feels the same.]
They'd never imagined those they treated as children would become such trash.
To them, it was unfair—deeply so, and over and over.
[And there's one more thing I'm bitter about.]
Suddenly, Mirianne took something off Silia's arm.
A squishy, slime-like thing was dropped on the floor by her hand.
[Keurgh!]
[Hey, idiot. Don't you have anything to say?]
[What are you talking about?]
[I mean the time you went to bed with another woman right after having a child with me.]
Frederick, who'd been thrown to the floor, trembled at those words.
There was no better image of a slime about to be hunted down by the Great Mage.
[Mirianne. As you know, you were absorbed by the World Tree sooner than expected, and I was delayed handling the seal on the seed. That gap turned out longer than I thought, and I didn't know how to handle it.]
He still had time left.
Frederick still had those same urges from before.
[So... that's what happened.]
[Is that so?]
[Keeek!]
Frederick was stomped on by Mirianne.
Louis, who'd once lived in a country called "Korea," had no intention of objecting to Mirianne's behavior.
[St-still! After that night with you, Mirianne... I never made the same blunder again.]
[What blunder?]
[That is—...]
Frederick lifted his head and declared with pride:
[I succeeded at contraception!!]
[You want a medal, you bastard!!]
Frederick, who'd only enraged his wife further, ended up stomped on even more.
Only after Frederick looked like a squashed pancake did Louis step in to ask:
"So what do you two plan to do now?"
[First... I'll make sure to properly discipline those elf brats. As long as I'm around, they won't be able to get away with trashy deeds.]
Then Mirianne pointed at herself—at Silia—with her hand.
[And that child can control the elves too. I've set things up that way.]
Silia was her formal descendant, inheriting her blood.
It wasn't impossible for Mirianne to transfer her authority to Silia.
[I've heard, by the way, that the old man who was almost like this child's foster father was practically worked to death by the elves. They'll pay for that crime as well.]
Currently, Silia was the only living blood descendant.
She was practically her own child, and Mirianne wanted to do everything she could for her.
[So you be good to this child too. I'll be watching all the time.]
At that moment, Louis sensed Mirianne's consciousness fade.
At the same time, Silia's eyes regained their original owner's light.
"You're back with us?"
"Yes."
Regaining her body, Silia replied calmly.
Though she had been possessed until now, she wore an expression of relief.
"How do you feel after meeting your ancestor?"
"Hmm."
Silia fell into deep thought.
If she thought about it, she never actually had parents.
She had always been busy caring for her younger brother or surviving in the 7th Legion—there was never any time for contemplation.
"If nothing else, the fact that those people I'd only ever read about in books turned out to be my ancestors... was truly shocking."
Silia looked genuinely bewildered as she said that.
What if a descendant found out that their ancestor was a general who saved a nation?
Louis, too, would be shocked.
"I wonder how my younger brother would have reacted if he were here..."
She couldn't share this astonishing news with her brother.
Holding that faint regret, Silia gave a bitter smile.
"So, what are you going to do with the World Tree from now on?"
"For now, my ancestor said not to just leave it as is. She asked us to manage it ourselves to prevent it from being exploited by the elves again."
Even though the World Tree was dead, it still contained magic power.
If they brought it to Zodiac, research into the World Tree could accelerate.
Perhaps they could discover a way to control the Chaos Dragon's power.
"Actually, even this spell originated from that World Tree."
Silia looked back and forth between the torture spell drawn on her hand and the soaring World Tree.
"The blueprints for the relics used by the heroes were made from the World Tree, and this spell was derived from those relics."
Then she turned her gaze to Louis.
"What exactly was the relationship between the Chaos Dragon and the World Tree?"
Upon hearing that, Louis considered the setting of this world and thought aloud.
"There's a Demon King and a hero in this world, right? Mortal enemies, basically. Couldn't the Chaos Dragon and the World Tree be the same sort of thing?"
Water and fire, light and darkness—each is the other's weakness.
Louis thought of the World Tree and the Chaos Dragon in that way.
"But the World Tree is dead now, isn't it?"
"Yes."
"Yet the Chaos Dragon is still alive?"
"......"
Louis and Silia felt a sense of déjà vu at that situation.
They also recalled the squad members lost during the stampede at Paruzan Fortress.
"Young master! Squad leader!"
Then, from behind, Rio ran up in haste, wearing an expression as if something dangerous had just happened.
"What's wrong?"
"It's just..."
Rio, who had been out of her mind until just a moment ago, was the last among the party to come to her senses.
Considering Silia remembered when she ate the fruit, it stood to reason that Rio would as well.
"Is there any sort of magic that erases memories?"
"Why do you suddenly ask that?"
Louis and Silia looked puzzled by her request, though they had some guess as to Rio's motive.
"Please, let me erase it."
"Erase what?"
"What do you mean, what? The memory of me acting like a child just now!!"
Just as they'd thought.
Rio grabbed Louis by the collar and screamed her embarrassment in a twisted shout.
"I want to forget! I really want to forget!!"
Her feelings were perfectly understandable.
Considering her bizarre antics just moments before, it was remarkable that she'd managed to keep her composure at all.
At that moment, Silia narrowed her eyes and spoke.
"Older brother Louis~ Don't leave me~"
She mimicked Rio's moment of cracked behavior exactly.
"......!!"
At the sound of that, Rio's eyes trembled.
It was as if she'd been triggered, her body stiffening, and she slowly turned her head toward Silia.
"Oh, no... No one should know about that..."
It seemed a little creepy, but Silia only smiled, clearly finding it amusing.
Suddenly, Rio drew her sword.
"I'll have to silence you. So no one remembers."
"Rio, are you really thinking of killing your big sis?"
"Don't worry. I only plan to erase your memory."
"Since when did you know memory-erasing magic?"
Of course, Rio had never learned any magic.
It was obvious what her "method" for deleting memories would be.
"I hear if you beat someone up enough, their memory is erased. So I figure it's worth a try."
"That's basically killing me."
As Silia prepared to answer in kind by drawing her sword—
"Rio. Even if you silence us here, nothing will change."
"What are you talking about, young master?"
"There are tons of witnesses in this village who saw you like that. Isn't that right?"
"......"
At Louis' mediation, Rio finally put her sword away and pondered a moment.
"You're right. Now that I think about it, there are other witnesses, huh?"
Then, with a chilling smile, she said:
"Guess I'll have to eliminate all the witnesses."
Louis had to spend the whole day holding onto Rio to stop her from going after others.
He sighed deeply, thinking she seemed even crazier than before.
****
"Tyrone, the High Priest. We have received a reply from the elf village."
The pope's temple in the capital city of the Holy Nation.
There, Bellain, who was chosen as the Hero of the Holy Nation, knelt before Tyrone and reported.
"They say there will be no change to the schedule."
"What day is it today?"
"It's August 4th."
"I see."
The day to visit the elf village was approaching.
The papal side had much to prepare for that day.
"How is the production of the sacred stone progressing?"
"Recently, we succeeded in producing a highly pure sacred stone. Unfortunately, as a side effect, two saint candidates died."
Bellain spoke while showing rings on his hand.
Each of the rings, in violet and blue, were sacred stones.
"Why rings?"
[Heheheh. In order to tempt her—since she likes shiny things, I figured this design was best.]
Unlike the other saint candidates, the true, prophesied saint was now in this Holy Nation.
With her power, she could produce far more sacred stones than any other candidate.
"Then please manage the Saint Pram well."
"What if she resists?"
"There is no need to worry then."
Tyrone smiled slyly.
"We've already obtained her weakness. You can use it when the time comes. Not just her, but it's a weak point for the Imperial Court's special task force as well."
"I understand. By the way, visitors have arrived."
Two people walked up behind Bellain.
They were both key contributors to the development of the sacred stone production machine.
"I am Brute Weissman. It's been a while, High Priest Tyrone."
"And I am Alua Weissman as well."
The brother and sister of the once-noble Weissman family of the Imperial Court knelt before Tyrone.
"You're here. Do you know why I've called you?"
"We have heard the news."
Soon, they too were to head for the elf village.
"You have no objections, I trust?"
"None. In fact, we wish to see how that person is doing over there."
There was someone in the elf village who had once been abandoned by the Weissman family.
"But above all... I'm curious about the state of the World Tree in which the great Mirianne dwells."
They spoke the Great Mage's name with genuine reverence.