Would revealing the proper history truly be for the sake of the Empire’s people?
What they desired was to sleep with full bellies today and wake up somewhere warm tomorrow. The past from before they were born, or future events they would never experience, weren’t particularly important.
Then wouldn’t leaving his father alone without touching him be for their happiness? Wouldn’t not making things bigger and letting his father do as he pleased be for a peaceful and safe Empire? If the Empire’s ruler, the nobles who assisted him, and the commoners below them all didn’t want this future, but he alone wished for it…
Wouldn’t that be selfish?
What am I doing this for…
“…Puha!”
Jake exhaled roughly as if he’d sunk into a deep sleep and barely managed to swim back up.
“Huk, heok…”
He was certain he’d been flailing in water, yet the only wet spot was the tip of his chin where sweat droplets had formed.
Jake wiped away the sweat droplets and got up from where he was. Perhaps having come to his senses a bit from the shock just now, his attitude was more dynamic than when he’d been drooping like a corpse manipulated by a necromancer.
‘Where is this place?’
According to Klad’s explanation, this place should be the past, the Duke’s house from his childhood. However, the scenery reflected in Jake’s eyes wasn’t the appearance of Duke’s castle he remembered.
It was clearly the corridor of some space decorated lavishly as if it belonged to some noble… but it was a place that didn’t exist in Jake’s memory.
Was it the Imperial Palace? Or perhaps another noble’s castle he’d visited for social purposes? He didn’t know.
Instead of pondering more deeply, Jake leaned his back against one wall of the corridor. Before he knew it, his face had returned to the lethargic expression from before.
Where could Klad be? If he was in this place, would he come to get him? He’d promised to be together, but perhaps he’d just said that and, having grown tired of caring for him, had abandoned him in some strange world.
The more Jake continued his thoughts, the darker his expression grew. As if he’d be dragged into an abyss at this rate, gradually, continuously…
“Ellen-nim!”
“…!”
From far away, someone ran toward Jake who was lost in thought. Judging by the attire, he was undoubtedly a servant working in this castle.
Jake straightened his body thinking to learn information about this place through him, but soon leaned back against the wall again.
What would he do with information? No one would be pleased even if he stepped forward.
The moment he thought that, the person who’d run over grabbed Jake’s arm firmly.
“So you were here. What are you doing here? The Duke is waiting for you!”
Ellen? Duke? This person was clearly greatly mistaken about something.
Jake frowned and tried to pull his arm away, but the other person moved first.
“Where did you get these clothes? I haven’t seen them before… When did you cut your hair? Ah, ah! Now’s not the time for this. Hurry up. If we’re late, the Duke will be angry.”
Before he could gather the information that had poured out in a pile, Jake was dragged along. Jake, who had neither the strength nor the motivation to chase the other person away, followed behind in a daze.
If there had been even the slightest intent to harm Jake in this person’s touch, the protection magic would have activated, but since not a single one of the numerous spells had activated, it couldn’t be something dangerous.
“You’ve come, Ellen. You’re quite late. What were you doing and where again… Tsk.”
At the place he was half-dragged to, there stood a middle-aged man he’d never seen before. He looked Jake up and down with a face full of dissatisfaction and clicked his tongue.
‘Is this person the Duke?’
There was only one ducal house in the Empire—the House of Duke West. If this place was inside his childhood memories as he’d been told, the person called ‘Duke’ should be his father. However, the man before his eyes wasn’t his father as he remembered him. He was also considerably aged to be called his father from the past.
Nor did it make sense to consider him his grandfather. He had died before Jake was born, and if this was Duke’s castle from his own past, there was no way a deceased person would be here.
Perhaps this place was his father’s past… no, even in his father’s past, there shouldn’t be anyone called ‘Ellen.’
Then what in the world was this place…
“Let’s go in.”
Before he could organize his tangled thoughts, Jake had to semi-forcibly follow after the person called Duke. Jake hunched his shoulders in fear at being dropped alone in a place without a single piece of proper information.
“Tsk.”
As if that sight greatly displeased him, the person called Duke clicked his tongue loudly once more.
Following the stairs descending underground, the place they arrived at had a massive, thick iron door waiting. An iron door far too enormous for humans. It was so large that Jake opened his mouth and looked up at the door, doubting whether it could be opened by human strength.
“Now, this is it. I hope you’ll come to your senses after seeing ‘this,’ Ellen.”
Creeeeak—
At the Duke’s signal, the thick door opened. Very slowly, bit by bit.
Jake looked at the underground space gradually revealing itself through the gap in the door. And beyond it, his eyes met with enormous pupils.
“…!”
Kuwooooooo—!
A sharp howl that seemed to tear through the air slammed down from beyond the iron door.
Just hearing that sound made his body tremble and his legs stiffen. He wanted to run away, but his body wouldn’t obey.
Creeeeak—
The iron door opened completely, and the owner of the pupils revealed itself.
It was an enormously gigantic Dragon.
***
Power dwells in a Dragon’s words. Even when not using Dragon Speech, weight equal to the amount of mana the Dragon exhales is carried in each and every word. Since even a long exhaled sigh contains enough mana for an ordinary human to use in a lifetime, Dragons had to be careful even with trivial conversations.
Of course, it wasn’t as if everything they said and chatted about casually became reality. If the Dragon didn’t imbue it with ‘will,’ jokes or humorous remarks wouldn’t affect the world, just like with other races.
Except when using mana.
‘Damn it!’
Right after the magic activated, Klad fell into the middle of some forest. The presence of Jake, who had been stuck close by his side until just moments ago, couldn’t be felt anywhere.
Boom—!
When Klad, furious at his own stupidity, struck the ground, the entire forest shook as if there’d been an earthquake. The surrounding trees shook violently and dropped leaves above Klad.
‘To make such a mistake at a time like this.’
A Dragon using magic emits dozens of times more mana than usual. What would happen if a Dragon, who pours out mana just by breathing, opened their mouth while using magic? Whether they wanted to or not, the probability of ‘will’ being imbued in those words became high. In other words, it meant having the same effect as using Dragon Speech.
The moment the magic circle activated, Klad had answered Ainel’s mischievous joke irritably as usual. Forgetting that the mana he’d just released had filled the space.
It didn’t matter whether the words he’d uttered were sincere or not. Regardless of the person’s intentions, from that point on, those words became something that absolutely had to be fulfilled, transporting Klad to ‘a place where he couldn’t see Jake’s childhood.’
A stupid mistake. To make a mistake he wouldn’t normally make, and at such an important time no less. It was a serious mistake, too serious to just describe as stupid and be done with it.
Kwaaang—!
Unable to contain his anger, Klad struck the ground once more. Only after leaving two deeply sunken traces on the ground did he get up from where he was.
This wasn’t the time for this.
‘A place where he couldn’t see Jake’s childhood’ meant this wasn’t Jake’s past. He needed to figure out where this place was.
Above all… he needed to find Jake.
‘Where did he fall to?’
Perhaps Jake had been transported to his own past as originally intended? If so, that was an even bigger problem. If they’d fallen into different worlds, he wouldn’t be able to help Jake in an emergency.
Klad ran in the direction where mana fluctuations were occurring most diversely, struggling to pick out what was presumed to be Jake’s mana among them. Whether it was because Jake didn’t have much mana left, or because Jake didn’t exist in the same space, he couldn’t sense anything.
He might be able to confirm more clearly if he searched for his own mana felt from Jake’s protection magic, but it would be terrible if he accidentally detected himself from this world. If the Klad of this world noticed that a life form detecting his mana existed and came to fight, this place would become a wasteland. Then finding Jake would become even harder.
‘Where are you, Jake…’
Following where the most diverse types of mana could be felt—in other words, where the most life forms had gathered—he emerged from the forest and arrived before a massive castle gate.
This place was the Empire’s capital.
However, it was a landscape quite different from the capital where he and Jake had been running around together until recently.
A landscape of the past as if it were hundreds of years ago rather than just a dozen or so years from now. Jake would have never seen it, but to him it was a familiar appearance of the capital, and Klad was speechless.
This place was inside his own past.
