Chapter 73. Question 2
The Predestined One.
Judging solely by its superficial meaning, it referred to someone chosen or designated to fulfill a particular purpose or role.
Someone burdened with a destiny and mission regardless of their own will.
‘Avarus didn’t know anything beyond that.’
Avarus knew only that Seraphia was the Predestined One.
I wondered whether he was lying, so I struck him with Dragon Rage Explosion a couple more times, but his answer remained the same.
He merely repeated that it had been “an order from the Order”.
The Order he referred to was the Devotees of the Fallen Souls.
In other words, the Dark Merchant Company.
Avarus had merely manufactured the Elixir of Infinity under the Dark Merchant Company’s orders.
However, that was fine.
I already knew.
The role designated for Seraphia was—
‘The Monarch of Frost.’
What else could it possibly be?
The penalty for the sudden quest had indicated the same thing, so I could be certain.
In other words, the Dark Merchant Company had deliberately approached Seraphia to transform her into the Monarch of Frost.
If that was the case—
One question arose.
If the order to transform Seraphia into the Monarch of Frost had come from the Dark Merchant Company—
Had the order originated from the [Monarch of the Abyss]?
Or had it originated from the [Emperor]?
Of course, the god worshipped by the Dark Merchant Company was the Monarch of the Abyss.
However, the one served by the Monarch of the Abyss was none other than the Emperor.
In other words, the Emperor could issue orders to both the Monarch of the Abyss and the Dark Merchant Company.
And if the order had come from the Emperor—
‘Why didn’t the Emperor personally intervene?’
This concerned recruiting the Monarch of Frost, one of the Empire’s greatest military assets and one of the Coalition Forces’ greatest enemies.
Was it because Seraphia was a countess and therefore a high-ranking noble?
Was it because the intervention of the Vatenberg Royal Family would become troublesome?
That was possible, but—
‘Hmm.’
The likelihood was extremely low.
After all, the Emperor was the ruler of the Empire.
He was the foremost power on the continent and its absolute authority.
The Kingdom of Vatenberg should have been wary of the Emperor, not the other way around.
‘Or did the Emperor not fully understand Seraphia’s authority at this point?’
That would explain why the Emperor had not personally intervened.
I knew that Seraphia was the Monarch of Frost because I possessed information from the future, but the Emperor would not necessarily know that.
What if he considered Seraphia nothing more than a “useful pawn”?
That would sufficiently explain why the Emperor had not personally intervened, but—
‘Then what does the Predestined One mean?’
The fact that Seraphia had been called the “Predestined One” bothered me.
It was an expression suggesting that they knew everything about Seraphia.
The Predestined One.
‘It feels like there’s something else I don’t know.’
It seemed to signify something beyond Seraphia merely being the Monarch of Frost.
Now that I thought about it, information concerning the Monarch of Frost had been extremely limited even in my previous life.
The Empire—and the Emperor in particular—had thoroughly concealed everything related to the Monarch of Frost.
That made it even stranger that the Emperor had not personally intervened.
Taking that line of thought further—
‘Could it also be connected to Ian’s regret?’
Ian’s regret.
I wondered whether it might be connected to that as well.
‘Damn it, Ian. If you know something, you should just tell me clearly.’
Just wait until I meet him.
I had grown tremendously stronger, so I intended to give him a proper piece of my mind.
Still, it was unlikely that Ian had hidden it deliberately. He probably had not properly understood it himself.
It was highly likely that while fighting the Monarch of Frost, Ian had only vaguely sensed that something else was involved.
In any case, I needed to uncover the Predestined One’s true meaning.
‘....It looks like I’m not getting a separate quest.’
I had secretly been hoping for one.
Quests merely indicated the direction I should follow anyway.
In that sense, my current objectives were already decided.
Find traces of Ian’s movements.
Discover the true meaning of the Predestined One.
The next destination where I could resolve both matters had effectively already been decided.
* * *
After Adrian finished taking all the wealth by himself—
When they emerged from underground—
Sunlight filtered through the mansion’s collapsed ceiling and glimmered faintly amid the dust.
It appeared that dawn had broken in the meantime.
The faint yet brilliant sunlight revealed the ruined mansion more clearly.
Doors had been shattered, and furniture had been destroyed.
Smoke and scorch marks remained wherever Avarus’s lightning magic had passed.
Each time they walked through the mansion’s ruined corridors, fragments of destroyed magic circles crunched beneath their feet.
An eerie silence prevailed.
When they passed through the ruined corridor and stepped outside—
Countless blood-soaked guards lay sprawled across the ground, while the mansion’s thoroughly shattered front gate greeted them.
Adrian had destroyed the mansion’s front gate the instant their surprise attack began.
He had smashed it so completely that the cool early-morning breeze blew through the opening.
Just as they were about to leave the mansion and return to the County—
“Wait.”
Adrian suddenly called for Kai to stop.
Kai immediately froze at Adrian’s call.
When he turned around—
Adrian appeared to place his hand on one of the fallen guards.
Whoosh!
Just as the piles of gold coins had vanished, the guard’s corpse was sucked away and disappeared somewhere.
Kai knew that they were Homunculi rather than humans. Therefore, he was not particularly surprised, but he could not conceal his bewilderment.
The reason Adrian was collecting them—
At first glance, it appeared that Adrian was destroying evidence, but that was not the case.
The magical materials used to create the Homunculi could be dismantled and sold for a substantial amount of money.
Adrian meticulously collected everything that held even the slightest monetary value.
Kai was rendered speechless by his fanatical pragmatism.
Adrian collected all the guards’ corpses in an instant.
Then, as though he still had more work to do, Adrian started walking again.
The place Adrian led him to was none other than the village within Venenon Visounty.
“This is....”
All the residents stood frozen in place like puppets whose magical strings had been severed.
It seemed this was the reason Kai had sensed such an eerie silence after leaving the mansion.
“When Avarus died, the power source sustaining them was severed.”
“Do you mean...?”
“Like the guards at the mansion, none of these residents were human. Avarus transformed the entire population of the viscounty into Homunculi and controlled them according to his will.”
Proving Adrian’s words true, all signs of life had vanished from the residents’ eyes.
Their skin had lost its vitality and turned a pale gray.
Had they stopped moving while in the middle of their work?
Some stood frozen while still holding work tools in their hands. Other people had been conversing in the village streets.
However, they too had stopped exactly where they stood.
Children had frozen while eating fruit. Pieces of fruit lay shattered on the ground.
The innocent smiles remaining on the children’s faces had frozen, and no emotion could be sensed behind them.
All that remained here were empty shells rather than living creatures.
Adrian stored the inactive residents somewhere, one by one.
Men, women, children, and the elderly.
The process continued until sunset.
Adrian spent an entire day storing every resident of Venenon Viscounty.
Kai thought they would finally return to the County, but—
Rather than heading back, Adrian traveled beyond Venenon Viscounty and entered a desolate field.
There, he took out every resident he had painstakingly stored and laid them down in a line.
The residents’ bodies had turned a heavy shade of gray.
Although Kai knew they were no longer human, his heart still felt heavy.
That was why he could not understand Adrian’s actions.
After a considerable amount of time, Adrian finished laying every resident upon the ground.
Adrian slightly bent his knees and summoned the Dragon’s Inferno.
Roar!
The flames surged violently, melting the frozen tundra beneath them.
The residents were also swallowed by the blaze.
“Why are you doing this...?”
Confusion filled Kai’s eyes.
Why would Adrian take out and burn the people he had gone through so much trouble to store?
Perhaps Adrian had read Kai’s thoughts.
“Creating a Homunculus requires human genes.”
Adrian’s voice reached him.
Adrian’s left arm had burned away and turned to ash.
Yet Adrian did not regenerate it.
“That means every one of them was once human.”
It was almost as though he intended to share the residents’ pain and sorrow.
Only then did Kai understand why Adrian had collected the residents of Venenon Viscounty.
It had not been to dismantle them and harvest their magical materials.
It certainly had not been to sell them for money.
It was a funeral.
Adrian did not regard them as mere Homunculi.
He regarded each of them as a human being—an innocent person who had been sacrificed.
The inferno consumed all the residents in an instant.
With the fiercely burning flames behind him, Adrian asked—
“Kai, what do you think a soldier is?”
A soldier.
Someone authorized to use force.
Someone who devoted themselves and remained loyal to their nation.
Although soldiers received wages, they also needed to possess the convictions of devotion and loyalty.
Those without such devotion or loyalty were not called soldiers.
They were merely called mercenaries.
“To me, soldiers are the people who run in the opposite direction.”
However, Adrian’s definition of a soldier was somewhat different.
“Knights and soldiers who run toward the place everyone else is fleeing from.
A mother who rushes into a fire to save her child, and a father who leaves his comfortable home before dawn for the sake of his family.
An adventurer who abandons treasure to ensure a comrade’s survival, and a mercenary who walks onto a perilous battlefield to protect their way of life.
A king who steps down from his throne for his people, and a clown who swallows his tears for the sake of other people’s laughter.”
“.......”
“Anyone who has something they must protect or wish to protect, and who can cast aside their life and pride without hesitation. Every one of them is a soldier.”
“......”
“That is why a soldier’s pride does not come from winning wars. It comes from protecting others. At least, that is what I believe.”
And—
“As a soldier, these innocent people were what I wanted to protect.”
The innocent people of Venenon Viscounty—
The people who had been sacrificed by Avarus and were now burning within the inferno.
Adrian clenched his fist tightly.
The enemy commander, Avarus, had been annihilated.
The White Wolf County had suffered no damage.
They had also acquired an enormous fortune as spoils.
If this surprise attack could be called a war, there could hardly have been a more overwhelming victory.
However—
Clench!
Adrian was furious.
Although they had been the residents of Venenon Viscounty rather than his own County—
Although they were strangers whose faces he did not even know—
Although what had happened was in no way Adrian’s fault—
Adrian was furious.
He was not….shallow.
Adrian had always appeared merciless and indiscriminate. At times, he had even seemed somewhat frivolous.
However, neither his heart nor his convictions were shallow.
The funeral was small, quiet, and crude. Adrian, standing before it, was neither imposing nor majestic.
However—
Kai could feel his emotions toward Adrian changing.
He remembered Adrian charging toward the monster legion before anyone else when it attacked the County.
He remembered Adrian’s determination to throw himself into danger for the imperiled County.
He remembered the tenacity Adrian had displayed inside the Infinite Labyrinth.
His indomitable will to never surrender, regardless of what happened.
And now, Adrian had shown genuine sincerity and devotion toward the people who had been sacrificed.
Without realizing it, Kai’s perception of Adrian had begun to change.
An emotion known as trust, entirely different from hatred.
Yet hatred continued to linger like a fading echo.
The resulting torrent of emotions surged deep within his heart. Kai still could not understand the person known as Adrian. Perhaps he would never understand Adrian, even in the future.
However—
The Adrian standing before him now—
Transcending mere understanding, his figure inspired admiration and respect within Kai.
The raging inferno extinguished only after cremating all the residents.
All that remained was pure white bone ash, piled upon the ground like snow.
It was the only trace left to testify that they had ever existed.
The sun was already setting.
The wind sweeping across the tundra caught the accumulated bone ash and scattered it like a quiet farewell song.
Only then did Adrian slowly begin walking.
However, the direction in which he walked did not lead back to the White Wolf County.
“Where are you going?”
Adrian did not turn around at Kai’s question. He merely continued forward, one step at a time—
“We’re going to the Lawless City, Violess.”
Kai saw a calm depth in Adrian’s eyes unlike anything he had ever witnessed before.
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