Chapter 96
Chapter 96
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 96
Chapter Title: My Name is Anne
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"My name is Anne. I am the being that the Kingdom Alliance made the subject of research for 15 years... and later, the one who brought down the Kingdom Alliance."
Her vacant pupils filled with golden light.
Along with it, vitality bloomed across the girl's face, which had seemed so expressionless and lifeless before.
"Anne...?"
Jeon trailed off as he gazed at the girl with her golden hair and golden eyes.
He had never heard her name before.
But looking at her radiant golden hair and those brilliant golden eyes, one person naturally came to mind.
Lucian.
Lucian von Eldraon, the current Fifth Prince of the Empire.
Unlike Lucius, whose eyes seemed somewhat hazy and clouded, Lucian's golden eyes—said to manifest the blood of the founding emperor most purely—gave off a similar vibe.
No, hers are far deeper and more intense.
But even Lucian's golden eyes paled in comparison to hers.
And gazing into Anne's made him feel like he was being drawn in, while simultaneously having his very soul laid bare.
Just meeting those golden eyes drained his mental energy.
"Hold on a sec. Can I ask something I'm curious about?"
"What is it?"
With her golden eyes awakened, even her previously monotone voice now carried emotion.
Watching her expression and tone full of curiosity about what he might ask, she exuded a fresh innocence that perfectly matched her appearance—golden eyes aside.
"Do you know of a place called the Eldraon Empire?"
"Eldraon? Empire? What's that?"
Despite her appearance screaming imperial royalty of the Eldraon Empire,
she had no idea what the Eldraon Empire even was.
As I thought.
Jeon had already suspected as much.
She had introduced herself like a commoner, with just her first name and no surname.
She was likely from before the Empire was founded.
But there has to be some connection somehow.
Of course, there was no point pressing her further on something she knew nothing about.
So Jeon changed the direction of his questions.
"Then what is the Kingdom Alliance?"
"Huh? You don't know about the Kingdom Alliance?"
Unlike her previous clueless reaction, this time Anne looked at him like he was asking something obvious.
"It's the alliance formed when the six kingdoms warring over the continent couldn't settle things among themselves, so they banded together to dominate the other kingdoms."
"Oh... I see."
They must have been the rulers of the continent before the Empire was established.
Unlike the Empire, which unified the continent under one nation, this was six kingdoms joining hands—which was a bit intriguing.
"The remote mountain village where I lived belonged to one of the weaker kingdoms. It was those Kingdom Alliance bastards who kidnapped me and locked me underground here."
"They must have really oppressed the kingdoms outside the alliance."
"Of course. They didn't even treat people from other kingdoms as human. The outer kingdoms had to pay fixed tributes, and on top of that, they suffered constant invasions."
For some reason, the alliance seemed even worse than the Empire.
The Empire maintained alliances with other kingdoms, taking only tariffs on imports and exports plus moderate tribute, fostering mutual benefit.
But the Kingdom Alliance appeared to simply plunder the kingdoms outside it.
Or maybe that's exactly because it was an alliance.
With so many mouths to feed, and internal conflicts inevitable,
they probably squeezed the outer kingdoms to get even a little more than the other alliance members, and when internal strife arose, they redirected it outward through invasions.
"And I was the one who contributed the most to destroying that Kingdom Alliance."
She seemed quite proud of that fact, puffing out her chest with a triumphant expression.
Leading the charge to topple the dominant force on the continent was indeed an incredible feat.
I should have studied history more.
But since Jeon didn't know the details of the background, he couldn't quite grasp just how monumental it was.
"That's impressive."
Jeon nodded vaguely in affirmation.
"Right? It is impressive!"
Even with his half-hearted response, she nodded in satisfaction.
That was enough backstory. Jeon moved on to the next question.
"But if you destroyed the alliance, why are you slumbering underground in this mountain?"
"...I'm not slumbering here."
He had phrased it delicately, but sure enough,
Anne didn't seem to be here of her own free will.
"Then what happened?"
"I was betrayed."
Whoosh.
With her words, the surrounding scenery shifted once more.
A wide clearing was packed with people.
In the center stood a large wooden pillar, with a woman bound to it.
"That person... is you?"
"Yeah."
Unlike Anne in her girl form,
the one tied to the pillar was a fully grown woman.
And the faces of the people surrounding the bound Anne were filled with anger and disgust.
Even in this frozen, photograph-like scene, their raw emotions were palpable; they made no effort to hide them.
"The peace I staked my life for turned into anger and hatred directed at me. Back then, I didn't realize it, but now it's obvious—it was just a propaganda war."
"Propaganda war?"
"A smear campaign by those uncomfortable with a living war hero. Something like, 'The reason she defeated the alliance was to become their sole dictator and repeat the same atrocities...'"
"Who the hell...?"
"The weaker kingdoms that fought alongside me against the Kingdom Alliance. After defeating it, they just wanted to form their own new alliance."
In the end, Anne had been discarded like a pawn.
But that raised a question.
"If you were tied up and burned at the stake like that, how are you here?"
"Right. I didn't get burned. Shocked by the betrayal, I did climb onto the pyre intending to die... but looking at those people surrounding me with those eyes, I suddenly felt it would be too unjust to die like that."
Whoosh.
With her words, the scenery changed again.
This time, it showed Anne shattering the pyre, emerging, and unleashing golden waves in all directions.
Those touched by the golden waves exploded, spraying blood and flesh everywhere.
Definitely not magic.
Though frozen like a photograph, the power Anne wielded was clearly neither conventional magic nor aura.
Not just the unique golden glow, but a force that obliterated everything it touched was nearly impossible to replicate with mana or aura.
"From then on, I killed every betrayer I could find."
Swish, swish, swish, swish.
This time, scenes flashed by like a slideshow.
There were various ones, but they were mostly similar.
Anne killing one person after another.
And with each kill, she herself grew increasingly haggard.
"Before I knew it, I had become the continent's public enemy. No one spread the reason why I was killing them. I was just branded the continent's worst murderer, carrying out merciless slaughters."
In the meantime, the girl-like Anne before his eyes rapidly aged, her form deteriorating.
Her voice grew weaker, starting to crack.
It felt like multiple people speaking one sentence in sequence.
"And in the end, I was surrounded by the continent's subjugation force come to kill me, meeting my final moments."
Over a hundred people encircled her.
More than half were grand mages or master-level experts and above.
The rest were no slouches either.
"But even they couldn't kill me. All they managed was to seal my soul and body using a dragon heart as the medium."
Even in that battle with the subjugation force, Anne never lost her life.
Knowing this, the continent's elites—assembled to kill her—focused on sealing rather than killing, sacrificing a precious dragon heart to do so.
...How monstrously strong is she exactly?
Hearing her tale, Jeon couldn't gauge Anne's level of power.
She had essentially turned the entire continent against her, yet terrified it all, and even at the end, they could only seal her when killing proved impossible.
And moreover.
"Wait... Dragon hearts actually exist?"
Jeon lived in this world, but
with his past life's longer experience, this place was pure 'fantasy' to him.
From orcs and goblins to beastkin like foxkin, it was that kind of world.
At one point, Jeon had looked into whether dragons existed here.
The result?
Records say they existed, but none have been sighted in modern times.
In other words, dragons were legendary, mythical creatures here too.
Yet they used a dragon heart to seal Anne.
"Yeah, I thought it was a joke at first too... But since I still can't escape it even now, it must be real."
She made a wry face as she said it.
"By the way... how much time has passed outside?"
"Hmm... I'm not sure exactly, but at least a few hundred years, I think."
Jeon paused before giving his conservative estimate.
She was definitely sealed before the Empire existed, so longer than the Empire's history—he gave a generous buffer.
"That much... time has passed?"
Anne looked genuinely shocked by his answer.
Her sense of time must have broken from being trapped here; she hadn't thought it had been that long.
"I see... So I'm too late after all..."
Drip, drip.
"Huh? Wha—why are you crying?"
He had only given a rough guess when asked,
but Anne suddenly burst into tears upon hearing it.
The abrupt emotional shift left Jeon flustered beside her.
"There was someone I desperately wanted to see outside."
"Someone you wanted to see?"
"I have a son."
She had a son.
In her life of abduction, battling the Kingdom Alliance, and fighting a hostile continent swayed by propaganda,
there had been a brief moment of happiness.
"My only family... the child I left behind before he was even weaned, when I turned against the continent. I struggled to escape this place to see him again... but now it's too late."
Her voice thick with longing, she tilted her head back and traced her son's image in the air.
Jeon could only watch silently, at a loss for words.
After staring into the void with tears for a long while, Anne finally calmed, wiped her eyes, and turned back to Jeon.
"Hey, Jeon."
"...Yeah?"
"This might be too shameless, but... could I ask you a favor?"
"A favor?"
"Yeah. If you get out of here, could you look into what happened to my son, Evan?"
A request to look into her son.
All the info was that he was Anne's son and the name she just gave.
And with centuries passed, records might not even exist.
Still, Jeon nodded.
"That much... sure, no problem."
Truth be told, Jeon was curious about her son too.
There was a high chance he was connected to the Empire—maybe even the founding emperor.
Looking into it was no issue.
"I'll come back and let you know what I find outside."
"No need for that."
"Huh?"
"I mean, you don't need to come back. I'm going with you."
Going with him?
Jeon's face showed his surprise at the unexpected words.
"Weren't you sealed in the dragon heart and unable to move?"
"I was. Until you arrived."
With those words, the scenery of her final moments began dyeing everything gold.
"Do you know why I guided you here?"
"Uh... no idea?"
"I felt a sense of kinship with you."
"Kinship?"
"You suddenly gained an innate mysterious power at some point, right?"
An innate mysterious power gained suddenly.
It had to refer to the Korean Patch ability Jeon had possessed since coming to this world.
"H-How did you...?"
"Hehe, I told you. I felt a sense of kinship."
By now, the surrounding scenery was fully bathed in radiant golden light.
Within it, Anne gazed at Jeon with a warm smile.
"Anyway, because of that, you can carry me out of this heart."
"Carry you? What do you—"
"Don't worry, I won't take your will or anything. I'll just reside very faintly in your unconscious."
"No, that sounds even more—"
Residing in his unconscious.
Jeon recoiled warily at the creepy notion, but Anne continued as if sensing it.
"It's not much of a price... but as I settle into your unconscious, my power will settle there too. So no need to be so guarded."
The power of the woman who turned the continent against her yet made it tremble in fear would dwell within him.
Jeon, who had flinched momentarily, let go of his wariness.
Besides her power,
above all, it was clear she had no intent to threaten him, so he decided not to reject it.
"Well then, looking forward to our time together."
Noticing his guard drop, she gave one last bright smile before blending into the radiant golden scenery.
Soon, her entire being merged completely with the surroundings.
Whoosh!
The scenery surged toward Jeon like a tidal wave.
But it brought no pressure or burden—only warmth and comfort.
"Ah..."
The sensation was so warm and soothing that,
when the wave finally subsided, a sigh of reluctance escaped Jeon's lips.
After savoring the lingering feeling briefly, he looked around to see how the scenery had changed.
It was exactly as it had been before he entered the heart.
Meaning he was back where he started.
"...Jeon, are you okay?"
And confirming it was Mirna, looking at him with eyes full of surprise and worry.
"Ah, yes. I'm fine."
As he turned toward Mirna,
thud.
Something caught under his toe.
"Hm?"
Glancing down curiously, there lay a small, dark red stone-like object.
About half the size of his fist?
Thinking it was just a pebble, he started to look away, but then realized it wasn't ordinary.
"This... a heart?"
The stone was shaped just like a heart.