# Chapter 109
“Do you realize what you’re saying?!”
Despite Ion’s raised voice, Levi nodded nonchalantly.
“Yes.”
“How can you be so casual about…!”
Ion, unable to contain his anger and raising his voice even louder, covered his mouth with one hand and bowed his head.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry… I didn’t mean to get angry at Levi. It’s just… Haah… I’m really sorry.”
Overwhelmed with undeniable self-reproach for getting angry at Levi, Ion couldn’t bring himself to say anything else. No matter how heated he had become, to lash out at none other than Levi.
Levi thought he vaguely understood the emotions Ion was feeling.
Although he hadn’t recovered his memories of Ion as a child, he still remembered the sound of Ion apologizing to him like this.
“I’m sorry. I spoke too harshly… I’m truly sorry.”
How could he be exactly the same even as a grown man?
Feeling a renewed desire to recover all of his memories with Ion, Levi stroked Ion’s cheek as if to comfort him.
“I know you’re worried. But I have to go.”
“For what reason? Surely you don’t want to be used like a puppet by Raziel again?”
Levi began to tell Ion one by one about the memories he had recovered, to ease Ion’s worry and help him understand his thoughts.
The story was quite long.
Naturally so, as the memories Levi recovered through the “third fragment” were not a brief life that could be easily summarized. Moreover, Levi also shared the memories from the “first fragment,” which he had obtained earliest.
Even until the bright day tilted into a red sunset, Levi’s story did not stop.
Throughout the entire story, Ion held Levi’s black hand tightly. Perhaps because Levi had already said he would go to Raziel, Ion looked as though he was worried that if he let go even for a moment, Levi might really leave.
Ion listened intently to every word Levi said, occasionally showing frightening reactions. However, he didn’t shout or interrupt in the middle of the story. Instead, there were tender responses, such as a sudden alarming killing intent emanating from the otherwise calm Ion, or looking at Levi with pity. Levi couldn’t help but notice.
Among these, Ion reacted most strongly to two parts.
The first was when Levi faced death after his core was damaged while protecting Hest.
Unable to do anything in the form of a small bead, Levi was able to open his eyes again after a year thanks to Claudia’s care, without losing any fragments. Ion, still holding Levi’s hand, recalled the tragedy in the Black Forest that Levi remembered, and because of this, he covered his eyes with one hand and held his breath.
Since the “fourth fragment” held memories of Ion beyond his infancy, Levi could only vaguely guess what day Ion was recalling.
The second was when Levi spoke about the day he first met Ion as a newborn baby. Levi spoke smoothly without hesitation about things that would be difficult for ordinary people to say due to embarrassment. It was enough to make Ion, who was listening beside him, blush, wondering if this was a love confession.
Afterward, Levi told him that Claudia headed to a commoner’s house with Ion to hide from the emperor’s eyes, and settled there. Around that time, Levi was calling Claudia by the name “Iellin,” which he had personally chosen, derived from “Ion.”
By then, Ion’s mood had changed somewhat.
Constantly caressing Levi’s black hand, Ion was thinking deeply with a calm expression. He wasn’t ignoring Levi’s story, but rather seemed to be finding plausible answers by combining Levi’s words with parts of his own memory.
Levi interrupted his story to ask one thing.
“You’re not surprised?”
“I’m sufficiently surprised.”
Ion stopped his thoughts and smiled kindly at Levi. Levi pointed out exactly one part to Ion, who claimed to be surprised only in words.
“You weren’t surprised when I said I saw you as a baby before telling you this story.”
Not only that, but Ion had even shown disappointment, as if wishing Levi was talking about another meeting.
As if he already knew that Levi had met him as a newborn baby.
“That’s because…”
Ion paused while looking into Levi’s deep eyes. Then he answered honestly.
“I occasionally heard stories about Levi from my mother. She never told me in detail, but she said you had met me when I was a baby.”
Though he hadn’t realized it was at the Marquis Wesslon’s mansion where Hest was.
Ion lowered Levi’s hand that had touched his cheek and held it firmly with both hands. His face gradually became serious.
“My mother secretly left a memoir in the palace. It was written when she was still a princess before I was born, and according to what Levi says, it was probably around the time she was frequenting the Marquis Wesslon’s mansion.”
In a small notebook, Claudia had briefly noted how to forcibly immortalize a human and make them obey, and beneath that, she had written an encrypted message that only her future son could read.
[To my child who is reading this.]
[There is something you need to do.]
[It’s for Levi, whom we love.]
Claudia knew that her child would also come to love Levi. As if it were inevitable, something natural.
As Ion listened to Levi’s story, he became convinced that Claudia’s prediction was accurate.
Honestly, mythical stories like those of the Great Sage or the Gray Dragon, or how the golden bead—the primordial form of his ability—was originally one with Levi’s black core, weren’t particularly shocking to Ion.
In fact, Ion already knew most of these stories.
Just like Claudia, Ion had thoroughly combed through all the historical records as soon as he set foot in the imperial palace.
Through historical records, he had rejoiced at discovering the connection with Levi that had been passed down to him along with the power of life. Having an inseparable bond with the person he loved felt much better than he had expected.
That emotion made him believe even unbelievable myths. After all, the powers that he and Levi possessed were already mythical in themselves.
The phrase “Levi, whom we love” that caught Ion’s eye gave him overwhelming emotions. Thinking back now, what he felt then was both empathy for his mother’s emotions and a conviction that his own feelings were not immature impulses.
[I want to make Levi human, as he wishes. That’s what you would want too.]
[To do that, we need to return all the fragments Levi has lost.]
[No matter what form they take.]
Now Ion clearly understood what Claudia meant by those words.
From what Levi said, it seemed that Claudia, at the time she left that memoir, didn’t know “what form” the lost fragments, or black pieces, had taken. That’s why she would have been so confused in the foreign country where she went to find the black fragments.
‘And then she just went and had me.’
No, was it really impulsive?
After all her confusion, to unite with a black fragment that had become an independent personality and to bear a child who would inherit her power—was that really impulsive?
Ion knew his mother’s personality well.
With a bright smile that reflected her cheerful nature, his mother who sometimes appeared a bit oblivious, was at times extremely calculating and cold. Although she tried not to show that side to Ion, her perceptive son didn’t miss it.
Someone like her wouldn’t have impulsively created a child. The reason of wanting to avoid passing on the curse contained in her power wasn’t enough to explain why she had abandoned Levi for years. After all, Claudia, who was the only one Levi could depend on, could have seduced him and united with him at any time.
Ion, recalling each detail of the memoir his mother left behind and the behavior of “commoner Iellin” rather than “Princess Claudia,” continued speaking.
“Now I understand why my mother left such cryptic words.”
A bitter smile formed on Ion’s lips.
‘How foolish…’
Ion couldn’t bring himself to blame his mother, who had fallen in true love with Levi’s fragment in a foreign country. Thanks to that, he was able to meet Levi, and unlike his mother, he became a “necromancer who had lost the curse,” so blaming her would truly be unconscionable.
But that didn’t mean he was going to sympathize with “another fragment of Levi” and leave things as they were. Now that his hypothesis, which had shocked Hest when he heard it, had been perfectly confirmed, he needed to be even more cold-hearted.
That’s why Ion had to swallow the endless dissatisfied words rising within him.
Instead, he asked Levi for one promise.
One week later.
Count Levi Aden returned alone to the imperial palace of the Caron Empire and was able to meet with Emperor Raziel.
