We Meet Again?
Demon Realm.
Thanks to Olivia, Veratel had been revived with what amounted to a terminal lease on life—and with it, he finally reunited with his son Pector.
Pector had been ready to fight his father all over again, but Veratel wanted only to talk. More than fifteen hundred years had to pass before the misunderstandings between them finally unraveled.
Everything had been a trap Seto had carefully dug.
"A father trying to kill his own child. A child killing his father. And turning him into a demon, into one of the Four Heavenly Kings… All of it was a scheme that bastard Seto cooked up."
Pector felt hollow. He had always known the man was capable of something vile, but never quite like this. And all this time, Seto had still had the gall to come around asking for help.
Was there even any reason left to remain one of the Four Heavenly Kings under the Demon King's army?
Bernoa was already gone. The strength of the Four Heavenly Kings had been cut in half.
From what he had heard, Clanis had also been thoroughly beaten by Olivia in the Holy Kingdom.
The answer was already clear. The grand design Seto had so ambitiously painted had been overturned in an instant the moment Olivia kicked the water bucket over.
"I am sorry."
"Only now does the memory come back clear."
At his father's apology, Pector recalled his days as a human.
More than a thousand years had passed. Forgetting was only natural, perhaps.
"If you wish it, you may put me to rest with your own hands."
Veratel had come only to see his child one last time. He no longer clung to life. He tried to hand his sword over to Pector, but—
"No need. I cannot kill my father a second time."
Instead, Pector planted demonic energy into his father's body, lengthening what little life remained.
Veratel asked nothing further, demanded no explanations.
He simply accepted his son's choice.
"By the way… so Kart fell and the Empire rose in its place. How curious. Still, better the present unity than the age of endless fragmentation. That is how they managed to hold the Demon King's army at bay, after all."
Veratel gave a bitter smile.
It pained him that his own nation had fallen, yet in the end it was precisely because the lands had become one that they had endured against the demon forces.
"I suppose so. By the time the Empire was founded, our country was already gone."
"The years that have passed cannot be helped. So in all that long span, you never took a single woman to your side?"
The conversation drifted naturally toward women.
More than a thousand years had gone by. Perhaps the question was only natural.
Pector shook his head lightly.
"Why are we suddenly talking about women?"
"I mean it is strange you never left even a single child. I never imagined the line would end with you."
Leaving a child had never been possible.
From the moment he became one of the Four Heavenly Kings—from the moment he became a demon—continuing the family line had grown all but impossible.
Olivia was different; her mana remained fused, and she could become a demon only when she chose. For her, children were no issue. But Pector himself had been a demon down to the marrow for a very long time.
"I never particularly wanted one. A branch family must have taken over. As one of the Four Heavenly Kings I had no leisure to care about such things. Through all those long years I slept and woke, slept and woke again. You grow indifferent to matters like that."
"What of the girl called Olivia?"
"Olivia?"
Why bring her up all of a sudden?
"Her ancestors seem to have been nomads who lived alongside half-bloods. However mixed the blood, her looks are fine enough, are they not? From the look of her, she has already drifted far from humanity herself."
"I wouldn't know. With Olivia I have only ever fought. I never thought of anything else."
Of course he did feel something strangely special toward her.
Whether that feeling was romantic attraction, however, he could not say with certainty.
"Are the two of you not the most ideal match?"
"No. There is a problem with that."
Olivia had once been a man, after all.
Even setting that aside and looking only at who she was now… well. After all those fistfights, a certain camaraderie had grown between them, and that bond had simply continued even after Noah became Olivia.
He was not constantly at her side. There was no chance it would develop into love.
"Is it love you are fretting over? More often than not, affection grows after the marriage. You and that child seem close enough, at least."
"I have no particular thoughts on the matter right now. Still, I have been thinking I should go and thank her properly."
After all, she had brought his dead father back.
If they had remained pure enemies it might have been different, but now that his father had laid every truth bare, it seemed fine.
"Because she revived me? Thinking on it, that too can be called a kind of fate."
"That, and more. War is about to break out in the Empire. I thought I might as well lift some of the weight from her mind."
Olivia was still wary of the Four Heavenly Kings.
Because he himself had once said, with deliberate ambiguity, that he would not touch the "Empire" for the time being, she was surely fretting over whether the Ash Army might appear on the battlefield.
Even reduced to half strength, if it was Olivia, she would keep watching him until the very end.
In any case, when it came to commanding armies, he had been foremost among the Four Heavenly Kings.
On any battlefield without the Hero Party or the Seven Stars, neither kingdom nor imperial army had ever been able to defeat him.
There is no longer any reason for that.
He no longer had any reason to remain one of the Four Heavenly Kings.
On the road back to the Empire, my ears started to itch.
Hmm. This usually happens when someone is bad-mouthing me.
I dug a finger lightly into my ear and muttered,
"For a second I thought I heard a loser's voice ringing in my ear."
"Perhaps the New World Group is cursing Lady Olivia? You have been ruining their plans at every turn, after all."
Those bastards? Ruining their plans, my ass. They were the ones sabotaging the Empire. What a joke.
Libelt and the Great Forest… Where next?
Given that they had already managed to wreck even the Great Forest, I doubted they would dare cause more trouble, but still.
"A pack of petty thieves can talk all they like."
"What if they try to take revenge?"
"They'll have already turned tail and run for their lives. That's just how their type is. In the end all they ever do is lurk in the shadows, brainwashing people—dark, greasy little things. The only skill they truly possess is running away."
Just like those bastards in the Ruined Land who had scrambled so desperately to get away from me.
—Damn you, Noah, just you wait—gah!
—You said 'just wait,' didn't you? You don't even have the ability to run.
Those ones had never managed to flee at all. They simply died.
"Hmm. Can we trust Tarhana?"
"There are still plenty of nobles who want to protect their own rice bowls. Even in wartime, the New World Group won't be able to rise up from inside to bring the Empire down."
If the war started tipping toward the White King, some of them would no doubt surrender in exchange for keeping their stakes. But before the war even began, they could still be rounded up just to safeguard those same rice bowls.
"They might flee to the Eltia Kingdom."
"Which is why I already sent word ahead to the princess."
"Yes."
"Whether she handles it well is the question. Still, knowing that princess, I am not particularly worried."
Among the women I knew, the princess was at least the sharpest of the lot.
Honestly, she had the makings of a king. In Eltia, where royal authority ran strong, she would leave her name as an outstanding monarch.
"We have almost returned to the Empire. Hm?"
"Ash is scattering everywhere… This is Pector's Authority."
The ash drifting through the air was unmistakably Pector's power.
It pressed against me with quiet insistence, so I answered in kind with the Authority he himself had once given me.
Ash collided with ash and both erupted.
BOOM.
And there, in the midst of the ash spreading through the air, two men appeared.
One was the Conqueror King. The other was Pector. Father and son seemed to have reunited faster than I expected.
But what on earth were those two doing here?
"It has been a while, Olivia."
"You seem to be showing up an awful lot lately."
I was seeing a face I would rather not see far too often.
This time he had even taken the helmet completely off. Without it, he was actually rather handsome by male standards.
The father had his helmet off as well.
They really were father and son—they looked exactly alike.
"Wow, Lady Olivia. That one's face is actually decent."
"I think this is the first time I have seen it since Clanis."
"And that old man is still alive."
At least they had not drawn swords on each other. Judging by the volume of demonic energy, Pector had probably injected it himself.
Anyway, it did not seem like a bad outcome.
The whole thing was so needlessly heartwarming it almost felt boring, but what could I do? That was their business, not mine. Even if the two of them had started hacking at each other, it was not as if I would have been able to sit and watch from the sidelines.
"Thanks to you, young lady, I was able to reconcile with my son."
Veratel stepped in front of me and bowed his head deeply.
I did not particularly mind—it had not been that difficult. What still felt strange was that a dead body had been able to rise again like some undead right there on the spot.
"If you are grateful, then oppose Seto."
"That much I can do."
"Huh? Really?"
At Pector's words I tilted my head.
What scheme was this bastard hatching by offering to turn against Seto? Even if they operated separately, they were still supposed to be allies, were they not?
No—he had always been an inscrutable one. If I tried to measure him by my own standards, there would be no end to it.
"Yes. I no longer have any reason to remain one of the Four Heavenly Kings. With the Demon King dead, I have no further interest."
"Well, then I am grateful."
"Rather, we intend to go after Seto ourselves. To our family he is a blood enemy."
Ah. Right. That needed to be made clear as well. In the end, the two men had danced on that bastard's palm.
"Do you know where he is?"
"If we turn the Demon Realm upside down, we will find him eventually."
True enough. Searching that way, it would be stranger not to find him.
They knew the Demon Realm's affairs far better than I did.
"It will not be easy."
"Easy or not, it is something someone must do. That bastard has meddled in the continent's history for ages and slaughtered countless humans."
That was also true.
"From a human standpoint, yes."
"Keh-keh-keh. Half demon after all, are you? Taking the demons' side as well."
Did that old man want to die?
"No. I am not particularly taking the demons' side. I simply meant what I said. Humans have launched plenty of preemptive wars themselves. But Seto has committed far too many crimes, and right now I am entirely on humanity's side."
I shrugged my shoulders.
Race did not matter. I simply helped those I considered my allies.
My words must have surprised them; father and son both stared at me with open interest.
Then Pector carefully opened his mouth.
"As I said before, war will break out in the Empire. That is simply how the board is set."
"I know."
The war that was bound to come would come. I had already heard as much.
"I will handle Seto. As for you—"
"I know. Capture Clanis. This generation, we have to finish off the Four Heavenly Kings for good so the Demon Realm cannot invade humanity again."
Anything more would become a hassle. The ones who kept causing trouble needed to be ended by my own hand if I wanted any peace of mind.
Whether the Empire rotted away for the rest of eternity was none of my business.
With that, our business with each other was finished. It seemed best to part ways here.
If someone from the Empire happened to spot us, I might end up branded a traitor holding secret trysts with the Four Heavenly Kings.
"So the two of you are simply going to part like this?"
And yet this old man was still spouting unnecessary nonsense.