Chapter 248
The Prince’s Virtue (4)
Even when the sun had not yet set outside, the woman’s face was highly evident, as if the pale moonlight was shining directly onto her. Near-absolute darkness surrounded her body. Her sudden appearance was grotesque in a way, and I frowned.
“You could have greeted me in the normal manner,” I complained as I pointed my sword at Ophelia, and she replied as if it didn’t matter.
“I was being inconsiderate in my own way. Were you surprised?”
I laughed at her, knowing she made herself appear alive exactly not to surprise people. “At least you admit it.”
I would’ve been better had she been in her true form.
Confronting a pale-faced woman suddenly popping out at you from the darkness was far less beneficial for the heart than facing a living skeleton.
“How long have you been waiting here for me?”
“Since I heard you were coming to the count’s castle,” Ophelia answered in an almost nagging tone as if wondering why I had come so late.
“You have really surprised me.”
I had been looking at the world outside the window, worrying, and then turned to suddenly confront Ophelia’s non-skeletal form.
“My heart almost stopped.”
“You say this is better?” She asked, as if engaging in casual conversation, and this made me frown. Afterward, I saw Ophelia’s hand and stiffened in shock.
“You…”
In the past, Ophelia had sacrificed two of her fingers in exchange for a glimpse of the truth that was barred from me.
But now, her hand missed another finger. It was a clean cut, only leaving the knucklebone.
“I once more paid for a truth beyond my reach, but it’s not such a large price. So, you don’t have to look so sad.”
As I listened to Ophelia, it was almost as if she didn’t know how important fingers were to a mage.
I was not ignorant of the mage’s art. Complex and profound magic circles are difficult to complete using even all ten fingers — Ophelia now had to form them using seven. I wasn’t sure, but I guessed that her magic would never be the same. It was as if Ophelia had looked into my heart when she said, “Unlike before when I had lost much, the loss was worth the reward.”
Even though I knew how vague her words were, I hoped that they would prove true this time.
I wondered if Ophelia having to leave the northern dungeon and travel all the way here to the far central region had anything to do with her missing finger.
I waited patiently for her to lay the facts before me.
“The boundaries between the past and the present are broken,” Ophelia whispered before long. “The past has lost constancy. It has lost all stability.”
As I listened to Ophelia’s resoundingly gloomy words, the muscles in my neck tightened.
“…that has distorted the future and created a myriad of possibilities.”
Her chin continued to rattle as she spoke of the changes taking place in the world.
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“Some will be beneficial to humans, but some will harm them. Auspicious and evil things both will occur everywhere.”
I believed it, for I recalled the return of the fire dragon and the Plague Lord and its tribe. The reason I came here was to remedy the terror that had gripped Brandenburg County.
Ophelia was saying that something like this would happen all over the world.
I shared her concern, though I knew all the results of this changed world would not be disastrous. The present situation was a fine example of this: while tracking corrupt beings butchering villages, we instead met a mythical tribe that could become a good cavalry force.
Of course, I certainly didn’t know Europe and the centaurs’ opinion on this. Even as I thought for a time, Ophelia continued talking.
She mostly spoke of the confusion that would arise with the appearance of beings from the past. Ophelia said that despite some beneficial things that might occur, the entire event was still a disaster.
“The boundary between the past and present is sundered. The shackles that have held the old beings are broken.”
Ophelia’s dire warning had now been given. There are many catastrophes that can occur, and the current one was the most terrible. In the past, when the Great War ended, many kinds of kings and nobles inscribed their names upon the declaration to end it. Some went into the forest, others underground; some, into the deep darkness.
And so the victors of the war exiled them to all corners of the world.
Was it that all of these things could now be unleashed upon the world at once? I thought of Sigrun and the other evil, cunning elves. I was not sure how many Elder High Elves still existed — perhaps Sigrun was the only one.
That in itself was a disaster enough.
Fortunately, not all of the shackles holding the faeries have been broken. It rare for anyone in this world to know how the Great War ended. Many passed on the stories of how all non-human races were exiled in the proclamation, though some did not. One of those who remembered is me. I was a direct observer of the declaration and a signer of the pledge.
The promises of that day will never be completely forgotten, and the proclamation will never cease to function completely while I am alive. Or at least, as long as I remember the declaration and the oaths undergone
I was there as an observer that day, and I wondered how many fellow notaries and observers still lived and remembered. Probably not many; perhaps I was the only one.
Whatever the case, it was clear that the declaration’s coercive power would not be what it used to be. It was a pity, but there wasn’t much I could do in the current situation.
All I could truly do was send the aberrations back and see to the oath’s enactment with my own eyes. Even that would not work long in this changed world.
I clenched my teeth. I knew I had to develop more strength for when the day I await comes. If the king and the others knew, they would surely jump in front of me. Still, now was not the time for me to be back in the royal palace killing time.
I then quickly devised a plan in my head.
I had to find a way for me and my knights to be permitted more in order to soothe the chaos in the kingdom. While I was immersed in my thoughts, my face relaxed.
“Once again, not everything will work against humans,” said Ophelia in a tone more wistful than before. “One thing that will benefit humans has already arrived in the world. It has blossomed without anyone knowing, and now we are sowing its seeds into the world.”
Ophelia said this as if it should be comforting, and she gazed into my eyes.
“It is as if dawn rises while everyone is asleep and not realizing it.”
Ophelia acted as if I had made some sort of funny joke. Rather than having fun, I was sick of it. I knew how attractive Ophelia had been in the past, but to me, she was now just a bloody skeleton rattling its jawbones.
She didn’t look well.
“Hmm.”
I became very curious about something Ophelia had told me, but I didn’t ask.
If she could have told me, she would have done so. If she hadn’t told me, it meant telling me the truth would cost her a lot. I was locked in my thoughts and suddenly came up with something she could confirm for me.
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“Ophelia.”
She smiled as she looked at me.
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“Was I a human before I was a sword?”
She looked at me with regretful eyes; her mouth stretched in a rictus of pity. Perhaps, she had already looked into my past with the power of [Shinan].
I believed that Ophelia had the answer I was looking for.
“If only beings of blood and flesh can be considered as persons, then you were a human in the past.”
This was as I had already guessed; there was no big shock. Still, it only amplified my curiosity. If what I had seen in the memory was my past life, why was I alone on a snowfield, dying a lonely death? What kind of existence did I have that I had to take my own life?
What kind of being I was when I was human?
As I started pouring out questions, Ophelia stared at me in silence.
“Does anything really change?” she soon asked me in a soft tone. “Although your body might always have been of cold iron, with not a drop of blood coursing through it… I at least know you have always been human.”
My eyes stretched wide as I heard Ophelia’s unexpected words. The High Lich didn’t avoid my gaze, and while it looked only cold, it felt so very warm.
Her eyes spoke to me: ‘Your body is just a shell. You are more human than anyone else.’
“If it was Arwen that told me to live like a human, as that is her habit, I would never have agreed with words,” I replied jokingly, somehow feeling embarrassed.
“I don’t think she would have said it in that sense,” Ophelia replied as her chin rattled.
“Even so, if you ask me about your past, there is only one thing I can tell you.” Ophelia unwaveringly stared at me.
“You were a knight greater and nobler than any in your age.”
Ophelia still looked at me, and the memories I had of her became interposed over her skeletal form as if I was looking at her with closed eyes.
The woman looking at me had eyes filled with compassion and sympathy, with a sorrowful face, as if there was some inner weakness she could not bear.
Ophelia was no longer a damned skeleton to me.
“Right,” I said, turning my head away from the same face that Ophelia had worn when she was alive. It was awkward and uncomfortable.
“Is your purpose in coming here only to warn me?” I changed the topic, and Ophelia began laughing again. This time, her smile was mean, as if she was looking at a naughty boy.
“I came to inform you of another matter.”
“What is it?”
“I have also been freed from the shackles of my past.”
Ophelia continued to speak in a refreshing tone of voice. The High Lich had escaped death and gained an eternal existence, but she then became a prisoner chained under the foot of a vast mountain range. She has now regained complete freedom.
“Was there ever any restrictions on you?”
I was really surprised by that.
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“I thought you were stuck in the dungeon just conducting magical research,” I hastily explained as Ophelia looked at me with a somewhat dull face. Ophelia had been concerned with nothing but magic in her human lifetime, so I had assumed that the same counted after she had become High Lich.
Ophelia told me that she had been forced against her will to participate in an expedition four hundred years ago. There, she faced dark terrors. Since then, she hadn’t clung so much to her favorite fields of magical research, and she was content with her existence. Ophelia believed that sacrifice and dedication had been done enough in her past life.
A small smile spread over Ophelia’s lips as she looked at me with a curious face.
“You are so consistent. In the past, and even now.”
I did not understand what she was saying.
“That’s why I cannot let you go. I always try to be harsh and strong by myself. I cannot be weak inside.”
“That’s the first time I’ve heard anyone say that.” I laughed. It would have been worth it to see the facial expressions of Montpellier and viperous-eyed gnomes like him if they had heard Ophelia’s words.
But, unfortunately, they weren’t here right now. Only Ophelia was with me, and she was about to leave.
“I will see you again soon.”
Ophelia started to melt into the dark, her figure becoming hazy. It was only then that I realized the complexity of our illusory conversation. The feeling of sitting atop the far-off White Night Tower had felt so clear to me.
“At least she won.”
I paid moderate homage to Ophelia’s achievements over the past four hundred years.
* * *
Deep in the dark dungeon, the High Lich opened her eyes.
“The Knight of Dawn who drove out the abyssal night.”
“A great hero who was betrayed and abandoned.”
“The last remaining witness who remembers the oath.”
“The scales facing chaos will soon rise.”
Fragmented phrases began flowing from the lich’s slender chin.
“The poor and pitiful soul left on the border between past and present.”
Her shattered words soon became deep sighs.
“May all the grandest of glories you have accomplished in your past life return to you.”
“Let life no longer seem a sad and painful dream to you.”
The deep sighs became longing sighs.
“Poor Gruhorn, who forgot himself.”
“The first knight.”
And when Ophelia’s earnest desire finally reached the ancient, long-forgotten name-
‘Kur-r-r-r!’
At that moment, the world trembled.