Unedited
75 Eldest Brother"s Plot
[Ever since that day that the world was dyed gray, I was living a life of regret.]
Aleph falteringly spoke.
[Unable to keep any of the promises I made with my mother, older brother, and Honored Uncle, I lived while keeping on running away from the reality I should have faced.]
Putting strength into his arms as if clinging on, he pushes his face on my chest as if to hide it from me.
[That, you… Because you were there, I was able to move forward again. If you weren"t there, I probably won"t be able to reunite with Honored Uncle and return to the castle like this.
With a strained voice, Aleph spoke to me in a grateful tone.
[Thank you.]
The whisper that"s full of thoughtful feelings crawled into the deepest part of my heart and lit up a heat.
[Rei, you are my light. I am weak, but I will become strong when I"m with you. Please let me stay by your side and protect you.]
I gently stroked the back of the injured former prince who seems to be asking to be healed.
[Aleph, although you said that you were able to do a lot of things because I was there, I"m sure I will also be put in a lot of troubles if you weren"t there. I was alone and had no common knowledge, I think I would have gotten cought by some evil people.]
Ciel blamed the me from back then for being too defenseless.
[Thanks every time, Aleph. Just as Aleph wants to protect me, I also want to protect Aleph"s heart.]
As if saying that my feelings were conveyed, he strongly hugs me. For a short while, we were hugging each other like that.
Suddenly, I was tugged from behind my collar and was pulled apart from Aleph. When I looked over to see what"s going on, Dy was there.
[I already waited ten minutes. The Lizard doesn"t seem like he"s coming, either, so quickly lead me there. ]
[Dy, you, don"t just pull me so suddenly. You gave me a shock.]
Without paying attention to my complaint, Dy is intently looking at Aleph and is emitting cold air. Oh my, he"s quite reeled.
[Demon King, don"t force your circ.u.mstances onto others. Rei, were you hurt?]
[Just this much is fine.]
Really, I was just shocked, it"s not as if I got choked.
Seeing that Aleph isn"t willing to take him over until Ragna arrives, Dy grabs my hand and is about to leave the room.
[Enough. Rei, the two of us are going to meet the king. I will not let my guard down next time and if I sense any suspicious presence, I will immediately kill it with magic.]
[Wait, don"t do anything rash.]
Aleph holds my other hand and stops us. Dy doesn"t seem like he"s going to listen even if we stop him, what to do?
[Ooh, so you were here.]
The door opened with a clack and Ragna came in with Ciel.
[You weren"t in the designated room so we looked for you. I heard voices so I opened it. Now then, I kept you waiting, let"s go.]
Ragna completely changed the atmosphere in the room with his cheerful speaking, he wrapped his arm around Dy"s shoulder and urged him first.
Dy smoothly slipped out from that arm and flew in front. We also walked after him.
[What a bad temper.]
Ragna lightly whispered in my ear as he points at Dy. When I shook my head indicating that nothing can be done about it, the Dragonian shrugged his robust shoulders.
Well, we will probably see some development in the situation once we meet with the king.
We descend deeper down the castle"s complicated structure through Aleph"s guidance to arrive at the bas.e.m.e.nt.
The smell of cold soil lightly touch my nose.
When we went down the stairs made of stones, we saw prisoners being tied inside the prison.
They"re probably the king"s followers that Aleph told us about. Everybody"s face is uniformly hidden, staring at the wall with empty eyes like while making a face of despair.
As we move forward while trying to make as less eye contact as possible, inside the jail cell that looked st.u.r.dier than the other cells, one man was sitting and being chained on a chair.
With a stunning deep blue hair, that man whose physique looks the same as Aleph would make one believe that he will become a good-looking man once he"s cleaned up, but currently, his hair is loose and disheveled and is falling all over his face, his gloomy eyes bringing about an obscurely eerie look.
[… You… Alfred… Did you come to take revenge on me.]
The man having recognized Aleph, even though he seemed like he was a ambitionless messenger of the dead, said as such with a voice filled with intensity.
[Egrald-aniue…]
So he is Aleph"s eldest brother? The man who caused Aleph to leave the castle glared at us with eyes that seemed to have the society"s collected resentment in them.
[So you have come to laugh at me who was deprived of power and everything else. Kukuku… If you want to laugh then laugh, if you want to insult me then do so! Whatever you say now will not stop its collapse.]
[What are you saying will collapse? Can you tell me more about it?]
Dy stands before Egrald and looks down with one hand on his waist.
Egrald simply pastes a dry smile on his face and won"t answer anything.
[Aniue, Westin-aniue is holding the entire army and the kingdom"s right to command is in his hands. Any resistance at this point is already futile, so please do not add any more to your sins.]
[This is by no means a sin. All I"m doing is correcting the distorted event.]
Egrald quietly made his deeply meaningful murmur resound in jail.
[By ‘distorted event", you mean?]
Towards Egrald"s conviction-filled look, Aleph covered me behind his back as if to hide me from the king and pressed him to continue.
[There was a magic race in the once prosperous ancient country called Daebledoir*, now called the Demon Race.]
Dy"s gaze sharpens.
[They modified the world"s logic and made a warped, irresponsible, and unnatural phenomenon. They steal people"s magic power and manipulate monsters.]
Demons manipulate monsters? But I"ve never heard of such a thing until now.
[There"s a certain secret hidden in the former metropolis in the Zohana Lake. It"s the secret about the key to the power of producing monsters.]
As if struggling, Dy leaked out his inner thoughts in a faint voice.
[It can"t be… There"s no way that that thing can be found.]
The king who gave the trembling demon a glance narrowed his eyes as if he noticed something.
[There"s an ice pillar in the bottom of Zohana Lake, you see, and it"s still attracting and controlling the monsters in the lake and border.]
Egrald showed a grin towards the demon whose face was stiff from shock.
[The monsters on the border will disappear as long as we destroy that.]
A loud noise was made and the wall behind Egrald cracked, a strand of the king"s blue hair fell.
[Dy, you can"t!]
The demon whose expression collapsed accepted my words and stopped the countless rocks mid-air. He spoke in an emotionless voice.
[You"re saying that you used that incomplete spell?]
[We call it a ruining curse art. It disturbs the magic power, influences the source of existence and destroys the cursed target. Although it took a long time, the seal will soon break. Matters will soon be corrected to be as they should.]
[I won"t let you do that.]
[It"s too late.]
Another stone flew away, and this time, it cut the king"s cheek and made it bleed.
[Dy!]
[It should be fine as long as I don"t kill him, right?]
No, I"m telling you you will still be punished for lynching even if you don"t kill him so it"s a bad idea!
Egrald hid his face and, ‘kukuku", started laughing creepily. He kept a watchful eye and defiantly told the demon.
[There was a single demon being sealed. You"re like two peas in a pod.]
With Egrald"s words, our eyes concentrated on Dy.
As Dy"s white skin turned pale, he clearly spoke with monotonous tone.
[That"s probably right, the demon sleeping inside the is my… younger twin brother after all.]
TN:
Daebledoir- I remember it being mentioned in one of the chapters but I forgot which one and got too lazy to search. Sorry of the inconsistency but I will change the previous one once I find it.