The Truth Beneath the Wailing Forest
After the meeting that revealed the truth behind the waves, Ian’s face held a long-absent spark of joy as he prepared to depart the next day.
“Heh heh.”
“Are you really that happy, my lord?”
“Of course I am. When we went east before, I really wanted to visit the Forest of Wailing, but we never got the chance.”
Because of the waves that ignored their normal cycle whenever intruders appeared, entry into the Forest of Wailing had been strictly forbidden. No matter how much of a benefactor Ian was for saving his child, even Cain refused to allow it.
“And it feels so good to finally get out of those stuffy Grand Duke-only clothes.”
“I actually found the maid uniform rather comfortable.”
The two of them prepared their old adventurer gear. Ian had minimized weight as much as possible, wearing only light armor, gauntlets, and greaves to protect his hands and feet. Ivelin, on the other hand, slipped into a form-fitting tunic beneath leather armor and a robe designed for stealth.
The equipment they hadn’t discarded when they quit adventuring had simply gathered dust over time; it didn’t feel worn out at all. If anything, the visible signs of use looked like medals, proof of just how harsh their past adventures had been.
“Ah!”
“What is it? If you need anything, just tell me.”
“It’s not that. This is the first time Ivelin and I are going on an adventure alone together.”
“Ah…”
Ian spoke with genuine wonder, but he didn’t think much of it. Ivelin, however, turned her back to him and couldn’t stop herself from clenching her fists tightly.
At the same time Ian was excitedly preparing for his first adventure in years, Clayven was enjoying wine with a beautiful maid on his arm when his younger brother Rion, fresh from the party, appeared.
“I shall take my leave now.”
“Sarina~! You have to stay by my side when I sleep or I can’t fall asleep, so make sure you come back!”
Debauchery and sloth. Soaked in alcohol with a woman clinging to him—this was hardly the image of a proper second prince.
This isn’t right. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be!
The second prince Mari knew from the original story wasn’t exactly a model human either, but he had been twisted by jealousy toward the first and third princes and crushed beneath the weight of his royal responsibilities. He wasn’t the type to flirt with maids; he was the kind who swung his fists at them, drowned himself in drink and drugs, and indulged in self-destructive pleasures.
“Brother… with a maid again…”
“Don’t worry. I’m just rubbing against her because I need the scent of a person. We haven’t done anything more.”
“That’s not the problem! You are of the imperial family—have you no dignity?”
“Once you travel the world, you realize that kind of dignity doesn’t matter at all. So, what does the star of the party want with me?”
“Mari wanted to meet you once, so I brought her along.”
“Oh?”
Clayven, who had paid Mari no attention whatsoever, finally shifted his gaze at his brother’s words. His clothes and hair were disheveled, and his cheeks were flushed red from drink—he looked every bit the drunkard. Yet the moment their eyes met, Mari instinctively lowered her gaze.
“M-Mari Marigold greets Your Highness, the Second Prince.”
“Right. You must be pleased, Lady Mari. You’re quite good at seducing men—bold enough for a mere baron’s daughter to meet a member of the imperial family without prior arrangement.”
“Brother!”
“Joke! It was a joke!”
He waved his hands theatrically and even laughed. It looked like nothing more than playful banter, yet Mari didn’t dare open her mouth carelessly.
“Well then, what are your impressions after seeing the greatest beauty among the imperial family?”
“Y-You are magnificent!”
“Kya, it’s been so long since I’ve heard that. Feels good. Now that you’ve seen me, you may leave. The wine is making me pleasantly sleepy.”
“Brother, instead of only drinking, you should train—”
The moment his brother’s tiresome nagging began, Clayven ripped open his top and proudly displayed his bare torso.
“Behold this body! Does it look like the body of a lazy man?”
“Haa…”
The physique hidden beneath his clothes was honed to perfection. While overall lean, the abnormally developed back and forearm muscles made it clear he had trained for something other than the sword.
“This body belongs to a marksman who never misses.”
“Stop practicing with a bow and train with the sword! What are you going to do with—”
“Yes, yes. This humble archer will simply keep shooting from the back with all his might. Now go. Maintaining this splendid figure requires proper sleep.”
He threw himself onto the bed and immediately issued an order for them to leave. Rion seemed to have nothing more to say; he turned and walked out. Mari hurriedly followed after him.
“Sorry, Mari. You had to see something unsightly.”
“N-Not at all. He seems like a very cheerful person.”
“Cheerful… Yes. It might sound strange, but compared to ten years ago, I prefer him now. Back then he really…”
Pressed from above in politics and from below in talent, the second prince had slowly lost his place in the world and eventually ran away from home. The prodigal son who returned after ten years had become an entirely different person.
“He was on the verge of collapse.”
Mari had already known that the second prince ran away. But according to the original story, it hadn’t been for ten years.
Three years. He was supposed to return after three years. So why ten years…?
The Grand Duke had a completely different personality, and the second prince possessed a different kind of debauchery.
It’s fine. Everything will be fine…
While the Grand Duke was important, there were still the other male leads who would appear later to fill any gaps. And if the third prince had no interest in the throne, there was no need to worry about the second prince either. This was an opportunity she had barely seized after death. Mari had no intention of wasting it.
The next morning, Ian and Ivelin, now dressed in their adventurer outfits, left the territory. Since it was best to keep their connection with Duke Adrahan as hidden as possible, they moved in secret—which only made Ian even more excited.
“Huuuum. The smell of the forest.”
“We haven’t gone that far from the territory, yet the difference is striking.”
“The Demon Realm is just a special place. This area north of the Forest of Wailing is what the true northern climate should be like.”
It was slightly cold but refreshingly cool—perfect weather if one had to move around a lot. It felt completely different from the Demon Realm, where every breath seemed to leave frost on one’s throat.
“Let’s go!”
If they were simply breaking through, they would have run. But this was more of an investigation. The people of Wintergard had survived by gathering food from the Forest of Wailing. Unlike the Adrahan territory, however, no waves had come here. If waves had appeared, Ian would have summoned every former party member the moment he became Grand Duke and cleared the forest first.
“It doesn’t seem all that different…”
“There are no unusual presences. Aside from the strangely hard trees, it’s just an ordinary forest.”
What they felt as they walked was peace. Small animals and plants, edible fruits—everything suggested a properly balanced environment.
“Should we pick up the pace?”
“No. Since we don’t know where the waves start reacting, it’s better to be cautious.”
The method Ian knew for clearing the Forest of Wailing came from legends about a dragon living deep within the woods.
“Do you think it really exists?”
Ivelin trusted Ian completely, but even she was skeptical that a dragon, which had completely vanished at some point, would be here.
“The first piece of evidence is that there are no demonic beasts, just like the testimonies from Adrahan residents who secretly entered the forest.”
“Evidence?”
“Dragons create lairs and fill the area around them with demonic beasts as guardians so that no one can approach. That’s why it ends up like this.”
Unless one entered the territory the dragon had claimed as its own, the demonic beasts would ignore everything except guarding the lair, aside from basic survival movements.
“And if one more condition is met here, it explains why the demonic beasts periodically cause waves.”
“What condition?”
“A hatchling.”
A hatchling—called the dragon’s offspring—was a being protected by the entire species, not just its parents.
“Then wouldn’t the parent dragon appear along with the demonic beasts?”
“That’s exactly why the waves come periodically, and why we’re moving like this. If there really is a dragon, we wouldn’t be crazy enough to come alone.”
Ivelin couldn’t quite say that he was the kind of person who would still go if the situation allowed it. Although she loved him, there were times she wanted to knock him out with a punch to the jaw and drag him away. In that sense, she had thanked the gods for the first time in her life when he became Grand Duke and settled down.
“Wait a moment. Then does that mean someone is attacking the place where the hatchling is?”
“Whatever their intention, they’ve been doing it for three hundred years, and they’re careful enough to make everyone perceive it as nothing more than a natural disaster that happens on the exact same cycle.”
“Ian, even elves with long lifespans wouldn’t spend three hundred years on such a thing.”
“It’s simple. It must be something that doesn’t care about lifespan. Still, it probably isn’t a dragon.”
Ivelin clenched and unclenched her fist for a moment in thought, but eventually relaxed her grip completely. The chance of succeeding with one strike was low, and an increasingly strange feeling had raised her wariness on its own.
“There really is something here.”
“It seems so.”
Ian must have felt it too; he checked his watch, which still pointed to a time before afternoon. Yet the sun had already set, and darkness was closing in.
“You can go a few days without sleep, right?”
“You plan to approach immediately?”
“This guy is trembling like crazy, and I don’t know if the opponent has noticed us yet.”
Ian’s left hand shook strangely before vanishing. Inside it was Rubedo, the demonic sword passed down through the Wintergard Grand Ducal family.
“If that cursed sword is trembling, doesn’t that mean there’s something related to demonic energy nearby? Then we should retreat even more.”
“We don’t have a priest, but we do have a demonic sword.”
A demonic sword that devoured demonic energy. The more it ate, the stronger it became—which was why past Grand Dukes had died young. Ian, however, didn’t care. Instead, he stretched out his left arm and moved, searching for where the trembling was strongest.
“Haa… Are you really sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine. Let’s think positively.”
Using his left hand like a compass, he took the lead. The darkness grew thicker. The watch clearly showed they had only just entered the afternoon, yet their vision was completely swallowed by night. Without lighting a torch, as if accustomed to it, Ian relied solely on eyes adapted to the dark to find their way.
“Huh.”
“Didn’t we take care of all of them before?”
At the edge of the darkness was a feast of blue flames. There were no proper living beings there. Only demonic beasts mutated by twisted mana and undead moving on half-rotted, crumbling bodies.
“It really is something that could obsessively move for hundreds of years.”
At the center stood a single skeleton wearing a tattered robe.
Soon! Soon I will finally obtain the Dragon Heart!
One of the highest-ranking intelligent undead, a fallen mage. The lich’s legion endlessly attacked the defensive barrier blocking their path. Though it was a dragon’s barrier, after hundreds of years of neglect without maintenance, it was proving even a mere lich could break through.
“So it was using its own legion to drive the demonic beasts and create the waves.”
“What will you do?”
In a world where the church was firmly established, a lich was a dangerous being one would only encounter in unexplored ruins. For an adventurer, it was an inevitable foe. Having killed quite a few liches by chance, Ian even felt a strange sense of familiarity.
Ivelin couldn’t even suggest retreat. Not only were those sparkling eyes of his a problem, but so were the lich’s words.
“Lich. Can you handle it?”
“If it had already taken the Dragon Heart, I wouldn’t be sure. But right now, it is possible.”
No further words were needed. Ivelin melted into the darkness, and Ian rose from his crouched position.
“Haha!”
The thought of finally using the demonic sword made him laugh involuntarily. The moment he reached out with his left hand and grasped the empty air, a dark-red longsword appeared. Its chipped blade looked as though it could cut nothing. Yet the instant the sword entered the world, the forgotten emotion of fear revived in the undead, demonic beasts, and even the lich itself, and all eyes turned toward Ian.