Chapter 58
Chapter: 58
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>Translator: penny
>Chapter: 058
>Chapter Title: Sowing (2)
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>Prince Leonard of Rohan was once again wandering the capital's taverns that night.
His handsome features looked utterly gloomy today. Drinking and carousing was fine for a day or two, but just how long was he supposed to waste time like this, pointlessly?
Shoving away a woman who clung to him as he stepped out of the tavern, Leonard shook his half-empty bottle loosely and headed toward his rendezvous point with Romain.
"Damn that Holy Emperor..."
The man was the reason Leonard was frittering away his days like this. Getting an audience with him was impossibly difficult; no matter how desperately Leonard submitted requests, he showed no sign of granting one.
What the hell was the problem?
As a fallback, he'd told Romain to at least arrange a meeting with the Delcross princess, but Romain had ignored him and busied himself with pointless nonsense.
That was why he was out here seducing drunks on the street like this.
"...Romain?"
In the darkened street, Leonard spotted a familiar cascade of long silver hair drawing in a staggering, drunken lout. He was dumbfounded. What the hell was he doing?
The drunk looked like a total mess, far from well-off. Romain had his arm hooked firmly in hers—no, his—and was whispering something nonstop into the man's ear.
Soon, the two vanished side by side into a deep alley.
Leonard stood there stupidly for a moment, took a swig from his bottle, then followed them into the alley.
He hadn't taken more than a few steps when he spotted them again: the drunk slumped blankly on the ground, and Romain plunging a sharp metal rod into his chest.
A thin spurt of blood sprayed up.
Soon, Leonard could hear Romain's low whisper directed at the drunk.
[There, forget everything that just happened. Rest at home for a few days, and everything will get better.]
It was a husky, slender voice, unmistakably male. Yet the strange resonance flowing through it made it sound like a young woman's.
Sure enough, the drunk gazed at Romain with rapt adoration, as if beholding the world's most beautiful woman—despite his front being soaked in blood.
[Now go home.]
The drunk nodded and staggered past Leonard, out of the alley.
Leonard watched the pitiful man's retreating back for a moment before turning to Romain.
"You've been up to this lately. What's the point?"
"All results begin with diligently planting the seeds first."
Romain replied as he wiped the bloodied long needle with a cloth.
For some time now, whenever he had a chance, he had been stabbing people in the chest with that needle and implanting some unknown monstrosity. As if he were a real farmer tending his fields.
"You're talking like you're actually a priest of the [Sowing] Church."
Leonard was prodding at Romain's occasional habit of impersonating remnants of the Sowing Church. Romain shrugged.
"At least I'm planting something meaningful, unlike them."
"And how long do you plan to keep planting one by one before you see results?"
"I've recruited some helpers lately. They'll do their part."
As if a few more guys running around stabbing people with iron rods would change anything. Leonard let out a hollow laugh.
"So, will that ever end it? Might as well summon a demon while you're at it."
Romain stared straight at Leonard as he spoke in self-mockery. Though only his lower face was visible beneath the half-mask, his firmly pressed lips looked utterly serious.
"You know full well it's impossible to move demonkin in Delcross's capital as long as the current Holy Emperor is around. Anything with demonic energy can't last a moment. Even demons can't set foot here in Delcross unless they borrow a human body or make a direct contract with one."
"Yeah, you've said that."
Leonard snorted and gripped his bottle tighter.
He had heard the same story from Romain many times.
The monstrous figure who had suddenly appeared in Delcross's capital—on the verge of falling to demonkin—swept them away in an instant and ascended to the throne as the 17th Holy Emperor.
After taking power, he had quietly crushed the seeds of the four factions known as the Dark Churches, unifying the Church.
The fact that remnants of churches like [Sowing] or [Penance] had survived and fled to the continent's corners was practically a good outcome. The [Rest] Church had been utterly annihilated, not a single corpse or bone fragment left.
What could they possibly do against such a terrifying foe?
Leonard sometimes felt like they were throwing eggs at a cliff face, gripped by utter despair.
"Still, Delcross's current guardian is only human, after all."
Romain gazed at the distant sky as he spoke.
"It's a wonder how he's maintained the balance this long, but it must be an incredibly precarious tightrope walk."
Leonard couldn't fully grasp his words. Romain always dodged specifics when it came to that "balance."
But every time they discussed it, Romain's voice brimmed with conviction.
"Such a balance crumbles from the tiniest crack."
Leonard followed Romain's gaze.
Toward Delcross's imperial palace in the distance—the direction where the Holy Emperor surely was.
"The limit will come someday. Inevitably."
* * *
That night.
Seongjin had ended his meditation earlier than usual, unable to focus. Instead of lying down, he walked out to the balcony and flung the window wide open. The Holy Emperor's words from earlier kept surfacing, leaving a nagging tightness in his chest.
'...Live like a kid and do whatever you want?'
The more he thought about it, the more absurd it seemed.
Mores was a full fifteen years old. In this world, that was an age where one could join a knight order or debut as a squire—treated, however awkwardly, like an adult.
The Pearl Palace resident knights at that age had apparently roamed in packs to tavern crawls or prowled red-light districts. So why was that old man still treating him like a child?
'And he's already doing whatever he wants, isn't he? Eating and sleeping comfortably, training to his heart's content...'
As he grumbled inwardly while breathing in the cool night air, the Demon King slyly spoke up.
[What's got you thinking so much? That's not like you.]
'What do you mean, not like me?'
Hey, if you knew me, you'd know how philosophical I am.
But the Demon King's next words stated a fact even Seongjin couldn't deny.
[Whenever something gives you a headache, you drop everything and just train.]
'...Have I?'
Come to think of it, maybe he had. Lately, he'd been so focused on training that he'd put off various unresolved issues piling up around Mores.
Empress Lisbeth, hiding something from him.
The mysterious organizations Mores had sponsored.
And Jonathan McAlpin, whom he'd finally met to extract some info from, only for him to get tangled in a monster incident and thrown into the tribunal's custody.
'If I really buckled down, there's nothing I couldn't dig into...'
But what was the point?
After all, Seongjin wasn't Mores.
He had a near-death experience recently that made it crystal clear: he was just crudely possessing Mores's body, not truly living as him.
The Holy Emperor had said it—souls retain their lifetime form because they remain influenced by the flesh even at the moment of death.
Yet when he'd been swept into Gehenna by the aura storm, or drawn to the Void's boundary by the Demon King's call, Seongjin's soul had remained unchanged from his hunter days.
'In the end, this body doesn't interact with my soul at all.'
Sure, he could breathe and move in Mores's body somewhat, but it was a precarious settling where body and soul failed to harmonize properly. The slightest trigger could fling him far away, never to return.
Could you even call that being alive?
He was just enjoying sword training enough to muddle through.
So he'd been half-assing his training, figuring he'd lend a hand if a dimensional invasion hit.
The Holy Emperor had probably seen right through that.
- You have so many blood relatives around you.
- Even outside Delcross, there are plenty of places worth a look.
The more he mulled it over time, the clearer the message became.
The Holy Emperor wanted Lee Seongjin to truly live as Mores going forward—forming bonds with his siblings, attaching himself to this world.
'...Yeah, come to think of it, the biggest unresolved issue is the Holy Emperor himself.'
What the hell did that guy want?
The one person who knew Seongjin's awkward state better than anyone. The man who traversed the fathomless dimensional boundaries to find a single soul.
Why wasn't he searching for his real son and instead treating some random guy like Seongjin as his own child?
"Hmm..."
After pondering briefly, Seongjin shook his head and slammed the window shut.
Either way, the answer was one: no solution would come from brooding alone.
Wasting energy on useless things was not his style.
'Sleep won't come—maybe another round of meditation.'
[...There you go. As if you'd ever brood longer than usual. Haven't you grown at all?]
Ignoring the Demon King's exasperated tone, Seongjin meditated until he grew drowsy, then fell asleep.
Thus, daily life seemed to flow on unchanged.
But that conversation with the Holy Emperor had undeniably left its mark on Seongjin. During meditation or swinging his wooden sword, those words—"You don't seem to have any leisure"—would suddenly pop into his head.
That was why, when Madam Justine sent word about sending a tailor for the fitting of his ordered clothes, Seongjin replied that he'd visit Salon de Mercier himself.
"Wow, I can't even remember the last time we left the Pearl Palace!"
As Seongjin boarded the carriage, Lady Claudia exclaimed with excitement. He really had been cooped up too much lately.
Accompanying him today as escorts were upper knight Lady Maria and lower knight Lady Claudia.
Haben, who would have been the most thrilled for an outing, was off duty that day, unfortunately.
"That guy's been on leave these past few days. Probably drowning in booze the whole time. He's not even that strong a drinker, but once he starts, he goes all out like he's lost his mind."
Lady Maria said it with disdain, but everyone knew she was the heaviest drinker among the resident knights.
"Won't that rack up a huge bar tab? Don't aura users rarely get blackout drunk?"
Perhaps the actively circulating aura in their bodies sped up alcohol breakdown. Aura users sobered up incredibly fast, apparently.
The rumor that most Pearl Palace knights came for the dispatch pay to fund their drinking wasn't far off.
Lady Maria shrugged at Seongjin's question.
"That's the funny part about him. Loves booze but can't afford it, so he seals his aura in his dantian and pounds it down. Got jumped by local thugs who didn't know he was an aura user more times than I can count."
"...That bad?"
"Yeah. He's only decent at aura because he trains even while drinking."
Who knew—drinking had an unexpected upside.
Destte Street, visited after quite a while, was even more crowded than before.
With the Holy Emperor's birthday approaching, everyone in the capital flocked to the street lined with tailors. Grand and small banquets ran nonstop during the festival, so one or two new party outfits wouldn't cut it.
[Hmph! Humans sure love wasting energy on pointless crap. What's the big deal about some event to cause this fuss already?]
'......'
The Demon King huffed primly, but Seongjin could feel his inner excitement bubbling over.
Come to think of it, wasn't this the Demon King's first time out in a bustling district? Maybe he really had been under unwanted confinement. Felt kinda bad for him.
[...What? My mood just tanked out of nowhere.]
Sharp instincts, as always.
The carriage crawled through the crowds, starting and stopping, until they finally reached Salon de Mercier. Staff lined up in welcome, having been notified in advance.
"May the glory of the Lord shine upon the noble Holy Imperial family! We greet the wise Prince Mores!"
What a garish pink spectacle.
Madam Justine, draped in the most vibrant pink, fanned herself dramatically with a fluttering fan.
"Oh my, Your Highness! Eek! You've gotten even more dashing! Whatever shall we dooo!"
"......"
Same as ever. If Masain were here, he'd have barked at her recklessness.
Lady Maria and Lady Claudia, seeing her for the first time, gaped wide-eyed.
Well, she was pretty outlandish for the capital's top designer.
Surprisingly, the Demon King showed keen interest in her.
[Hmm. Most unusual. Most unusual indeed. Where did this one crawl out from?]
'She's a bit flashy, yeah.'
[No, it's not the looks. Truly fascinating human. How does someone like this even exist?]
'......?'
As he wondered, the madam approached with light steps belying her imposing build, circled Seongjin appraisingly, and curved her red lips upward.
"Oh my oh my! Your measurements have changed quite a bit! Sleeker and more toned! Even a bit taller. Goodness! What if we'd done the fitting as is! Come come, shall we head to the VIP room?"
A bad feeling stirred.
"No way..."
Seeing Seongjin's crestfallen face, Madam Justine's eyes curved into sly crescents.
"Yes indeed. Just as you feared, we'll have to take your measurements from scratch! Ohohohohoho!"
Damn it all.