Chapter 466: Prologue (1)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 466: Prologue (1)
A man hurried forward.
His appearance was utterly wretched. His wildly disheveled hair and dirt-stained attire stood in stark, jarring contrast to the grand and splendid corridor. Yet, not a single guard stopped him. The formidable-looking sentries quickly cleared the way, bowing in deep respect the moment they spotted him.
Before long, he reached his destination.
Facing the massive doors blocking his path, the man glared fiercely at the guard.
"Open it."
"Understood, sir."
Creak.
This meeting had been arranged beforehand. It was an iron fortress that normally required the master's explicit permission to open.
As the massive doors swung wide, a group of people already gathered inside came into view.
"Sir Kevin is entering."
The man, Kevin, scanned the room.
When his gaze locked onto one particular woman among them, he bared his teeth like a feral beast, showing no restraint.
"Lady Isabelle. The reason you gathered us here like this had better be related to our Lord."
*
One month ago, a state of emergency was declared across the Dmitry Empire.
Roman Dmitry had gone missing.
At first, many argued that he had simply stepped away for a short while, but as the days passed, anxiety inevitably took root. Furthermore, Hans, his closest aide, added weight to their growing dread.
"...Something has undoubtedly gone wrong. Just before his disappearance, His Majesty the Emperor acted differently than usual. He expressed his gratitude to me as if bidding farewell, though at the time, I didn't realize it was a goodbye. I dare say to you all, this is something we must never overlook. If His Majesty himself was aware of his departure, there must have been a reason he had no choice but to leave."
His face was etched with misery.
Hans wanted to deny the reality of Roman Dmitry's disappearance, but he knew that blind complacency would solve nothing. Thus, he stepped forward. Though he had always remained in the background to stay faithful to his role as a servant, he willingly raised his voice now, driven by the terrifying thought that Roman Dmitry might be in danger.
He was not the only one.
Others stepped forward, one after another. They, too, had experienced the exact same thing as Hans.
As the consensus increasingly leaned toward the worst-case scenario, Kevin voiced a different opinion.
"I cannot accept that something has happened to my Lord. Who is His Majesty the Emperor? He is the one who brought down the two great powers of the continent back when Kronos and Valhalla stood strong. He is the one who defeated the demons of the Demon Realm—creatures once deemed absolute calamities that humanity could never hope to oppose. Who on earth could possibly force him to leave?"
"He's right."
"I agree. Just as Sir Kevin said, we shouldn't treat this as a disappearance. It might just be a simple outing. Has His Majesty not always acted in ways we could never predict?"
They were denying reality.
To them, Roman Dmitry was a god.
They simply could not accept that a being whom even the Demon King of the Demon Realm could not match had encountered a problem he couldn't solve.
The same experiences, yet entirely different conclusions.
For the time being, the meeting drew to a close.
While they were undeniably worried, Roman Dmitry was not someone who would fail to resolve his own problems, just as Kevin had argued. That had to be the case. If a problem had arisen that even Roman Dmitry could not handle, they knew that no mere human power could ever hope to solve it anyway.
It was pure denial.
They suppressed their emotions and shoved their anxiety aside.
Because he was Roman Dmitry, they believed he would resolve everything and reappear, just as he always had.
Days passed.
As time went on, their unwavering faith began to crack.
They waited for news of Roman Dmitry every single day, but the passing days were as terrifyingly quiet as if his very existence had been erased from the world.
Anxiety began to loom large, casting a dark shadow over the empire.
This wasn't right.
Truly.
Something was terribly wrong.
*
And now, in the present.
Isabelle calmly met the heavy gazes fixed upon her.
Kevin and the others—every single one of them was an extraordinary figure in their own right.
Romero Dmitry, Chris, Marquis Valentino, Count Fabius, Felix, Edwin Hector—the core figures currently leading the continent had rushed over in an instant upon hearing she had news regarding Roman Dmitry.
To all of them, Roman Dmitry meant that much.
Even knowing this, Isabelle had kept the truth hidden while the continent was thrown into a frantic uproar.
'I promised him. I promised I wouldn't tell the world the truth I know. That I would never let anyone know why the man who unified the continent and subjugated the Demon Realm had to disappear.'
The past month had been incredibly agonizing.
At first, she thought keeping the secret wouldn't be difficult, but even in a space cut off from the rest of the world, the desperate whispers of the people still reached her ears. Rumors of Roman Dmitry's disappearance. The frantic, exhaustive efforts of those trying to find him. Once she started listening, she could no longer turn a blind eye to reality.
'Romero Dmitry.'
Her gaze fell upon the man.
The man once renowned as the Giant of Dmitry was now staring at her, his face gaunt and hollowed out.
Since the disappearance, Romero Dmitry had mobilized every resource at his disposal.
He dispatched massive search parties to trace Roman Dmitry's steps, and when no clues turned up, he joined the search himself. He paid no mind to his own deteriorating health in the process. His once-jovial face was heavily stained with grief, and he had even fallen physically ill from the sheer sorrow of losing his son. He was haunted by their final meeting. He should have expressed his feelings as a father more openly, but assuming there would always be another opportunity, he had simply sent his son off with a brief farewell.
That moment remained a festering regret in his heart.
Had he known it would be their last meeting, he never would have let him go so lightly.
Turning her gaze, she saw a handsome, golden-haired man.
'Chris.'
The future of Dmitry.
He had recently taken an indefinite leave of absence.
His sole reason was to spearhead the search for Roman Dmitry, and the grueling toll it had taken on him was evident in how his once-brilliant golden hair had turned dry and brittle.
One by one, the others caught her eye. They were all the same. Every single one of them had thrown themselves into the effort.
Marquis Valentino had offered his priceless personal collection to anyone who could provide decisive information on Roman Dmitry's whereabouts. Count Fabius, who had been spending his days happily building his harem, completely abandoned his leisure to join the search. He had even flushed red in front of everyone, passionately declaring that His Majesty the Emperor's safety was far more important than any beautiful woman.
This devotion was not limited to Dmitry alone.
King Edwin Hector had joined the search on a national level. During a recent International Conference, he had openly described Roman Dmitry's disappearance as a global catastrophe. Indeed, the sages who prophesied the continent's future shared a similar grim sentiment. They asserted that the only reason this chaotic world had been able to unite was because of Roman Dmitry's absolute strength; thus, his disappearance would inevitably plunge them right back into chaos.
Cairo was also in an uproar.
In the kingdom that revered Roman Dmitry as a supreme hero, King Daniel Cairo himself was passionately spearheading the search.
Consequently, the International Conference issued a joint statement declaring that all nations would participate in the continent-wide search.
The entire world was in a frenzy.
Whenever people gathered, they spoke of Roman Dmitry, and regardless of nationality, everyone prayed for his safe return. An absolute ruler who had unified the continent yet governed the world with reason and common sense—Roman Dmitry was someone everyone desperately needed. Whether they knew him personally or not, everyone agreed that a future without Roman Dmitry was utterly bleak.
Finally, her eyes landed on Kevin.
He had been hunting for traces of his Lord with a near-maniacal obsession.
Hearing reports of him interrogating people about Roman Dmitry while in such a wretched state, Isabelle could not suppress her aching pity. One day, Kevin had come to find her. At the time, she had shaken her head and claimed she didn't know the truth, but the sight of his completely worn-out shoes had lingered in her mind for days.
She was torn.
Was it right to keep her promise to Roman Dmitry?
Or was it right to tell these desperate people the truth?
She lost sleep over it every single night.
Her once-firm resolve crumbled bit by bit whenever she heard news of people like Kevin destroying themselves to find him.
In the end, she made her decision. She would tell them the truth.
She gathered them all together.
Facing their eyes, which burned with a desperate, starving thirst for answers, Isabelle finally spoke the words she had struggled so hard to suppress.
"From this moment on, I will tell you the truth."
*
It was a vastly complex matter.
To properly explain Roman Dmitry's disappearance, she had to speak of realms far beyond human comprehension.
Isabelle took a deep breath and spoke.
"In the world you live in, there are Dimensional Laws. They are divine rules established to prevent countless dimensions—such as the Earthly World and the Demon Realm—from interfering with one another. It is because these laws exist that we have been kept safe from unknown, otherworldly dangers. But then, you must all be wondering: If the Dimensional Laws are absolute, how was the Demon Realm able to attack the Earthly World all this time? To understand that, you must first know exactly what kind of existence Alexander was."
Alexander.
He was the starting point of all this.
In truth, had it not been for him, none of these catastrophic problems would have ever begun.
"Emperor Alexander was an existence that caused dimensional rifts. Because of him, cracks formed in the Boundary of Dimensions, allowing the demons of the Demon Realm to invade the Earthly World. That was where all our problems began. Because Emperor Alexander existed in this world for so long, the Boundary of Dimensions began to collapse. By the time we became aware of the Demon Realm's existence, we were already facing an irreversible crisis. That was why His Majesty Emperor Roman Dmitry made a decision. If a full-scale invasion from the Demon Realm was an inevitable future, he would strike first to eradicate the threat at its source."
The war against the Demon Realm.
This was the hidden truth behind it all.
The people of the continent had only been wary of the Demon Realm's existence; they knew absolutely nothing of the complex, underlying issues surrounding Alexander.
"In truth, even up until the moment we defeated the Demon King, I didn't fully understand what it truly meant to cross over into the Demon Realm. The reason Alexander caused dimensional rifts was because he was a foreign existence that had crossed the Boundary of Dimensions. His mere presence in this world was a violation of the laws. And... that exact same premise applied to His Majesty Emperor Roman Dmitry as well. I do not know how or why he became an existence like Alexander, but God told me that crossing over into the Demon Realm was a path His Majesty chose for himself."
Isabelle knew the truth.
She knew that Roman Dmitry was an otherworldly being, just like Alexander.
Even putting God's explanation aside, she could easily guess the hidden truth just from the way Roman had instantly recognized Alexander's true identity. However, that was a secret she could never reveal. Although she had arranged this gathering out of her own desperate longing for Roman Dmitry, Isabelle never intended to disclose the entire truth from the start.
She would only reveal enough to shock them, but keep it within the bounds of what they could actually accept.
While traveling to Dmitry, Isabelle had already carefully organized exactly what she would say.
"His Majesty Emperor Roman Dmitry's situation cannot be viewed as a mere disappearance. It is a reality he accepted of his own free will from the moment he crossed over into the Demon Realm—"
"Wait."
Suddenly, someone cut her off.
It was Kevin.
His face was flushed bright red.
Having quietly listened to her incomprehensible words up until now, he could no longer control his surging emotions the moment she mentioned that Roman had chosen this path himself. It was a truth far more despairing than the agonizing days of the past month, when they could at least cling to a sliver of hope. If Isabelle's words were true, the meaning behind Roman Dmitry's actions became painfully clear.
He tightly suppressed his trembling emotions.
His bloodshot eyes locked onto Isabelle.
"...Are you trying to tell us right now that His Majesty Emperor Roman Dmitry sacrificed himself for humanity?"
Sacrifice.
That was, truly, a kind of truth they could never accept.