Queen’s Garden (2)

‘Hey, that’s great!’

The Light’s Truth was an ordinary skill given to a warrior who fought while surrounded on all sides. It was a magic that symbolized indomitable courage, a talent given to those who fought without surrender, even in desperate situations.

‘Well, there’s no need to explain anything. Even if his ether level is insufficient, he finished them off easily.’

Arthur, sheathing his sword, quickly approached Kleio. He had fought all alone, but there appeared to be no injuries other than a torn collar.

“Just right when I was covered by the beasts, I pulled my sword down, and a message popped up!”

“Well, did you acquire a common skill?”

“Ah! Yes, that’s right!”

“In the future, you’ll even have a way out from the assassins your brothers send. That’s good.”

Arthur looked like he wanted to be praised, but he was too tired to accept his joy.

“We’ve already broken the first gate, so there’s no need to hurry. Let’s take a break.”

“Yes, you really need to rest.”

With the joy of his personal achievements aside, Arthur soon considered Kleio’s condition. He didn’t seem like a seventeen-year-old boy at all, given his calm demeanor.

‘Initially, concentration and kindness come from physical strength.’

It was nasty, but it was a fact that he couldn’t change that his body was garbage. Now that they had defeated the beast, they would be safe there. Arthur, who crumpled next to Kleio, rolled around as he checked out the mana stone he had obtained.

[Shrub pumpkin: a mana stone of preservation. It can preserve anything in the world.]

“Wow! Wonderful, the name is floating in the air. Shrub pumpkin? What is that? How is it different from other mana stones…?”

“Look.”

Kleio looked at the pumpkin the size of a small fist in Arthur’s hand. He remembered reading from the Mana Stone list at home.

‘Memory is a useful ability, as always.’

“You can use the [Imprint] magic formula to preserve anything inside. When you take it out, you use the [Restore] formula.”

“How do you know all that?”

Admiration was understandable on Arthur’s face.

“Have you forgotten I’m the son of Albion’s best merchant?”

“Hey, I have a really great person as a comrade.”

“If you know, take it seriously.”

After quarreling for a while, they quieted down. It was natural after staying up all night, getting soaked, and having fought. The difference between night and day couldn’t be felt in the dungeon. Above the enormous garden floating in the void was a figure like a sun covered by the moon, but perhaps it wasn’t a real star.

‘This is just an artificial space that united the world that once existed.’

As he thought about the time they had left, golden letters appeared in his mind once again. They still had plenty left.

[―Remaining time/time limit:

22:02:51 / 24:00:00]

‘If you came in without any information and searched this large garden for the master clock, it wouldn’t be enough time. Why did it go down like this?’

It was the first dungeon, as well. It should be designed so that the protagonist could get used to this space. In the previous manuscript, the nineteen-year-old Arthur and Isiel were forced to search the whole garden with plenty of time doing so.

‘The manuscript is different. There isn’t enough time to find the master clock without knowing the strategy.’

The clock remained in front of him as he couldn’t stop himself from being conscious of the time. It was rather odd. The notification messages of the dungeon had the same format and function as Promise’s messages.

‘It seems that only I can see this outside the door, but when you come in, everyone can see these letters. Is this happening because outside the door is also a different world for me?’

Kleio rubbed the smooth surface of Promise on his index finger. Then Arthur, gazing up into the sky, muttered, and Kleio reflexively looked up toward the sky.

“The moon doesn’t move, and there are no constellations. Now I can really feel that I have moved to another world.”

Other than the moon blocking the sun, glowing orange at the edges, there were no other stars in the circular sky. Kleio nodded along, unable to say that he was already in a new world. Instead, he stretched out and yawned.

“Would you like to rest your eyes?”

“I should. What about you?”

“I don’t need to sleep for three days.”

“You’re only level 5 now. If you become a sword master, you won’t need to sleep for a month. Then, I’ll sleep for two hours, so please keep on the lookout.”

“Okay. Look, this is what you’re serious about.”

“Ah, a little.”

Kleio lay down, using his luggage as a pillow. As he tried to fall asleep, Arthur began to mutter something.

“Lei, you said you would tell me what you told Aslan.”

“Okay… Would you like to hear it?”

“Well. Not much more than I thought?”

“Right? Later, when you become king, I will call you Your Majesty. Until then, I won’t bother with honorific titles.”

Arthur chuckled.

“It feels strangely familiar here. There is even an eclipse like the coronation would last forever.”

“You’ve never seen a coronation.”

“I will in a few years. My father is already waning.”

Indeed, King Philippe would die soon, in a very different way than the death that everyone imagined.

‘Should I tell him? But even if he believes it… what will it change?’

To put it coldly, his father’s death would work in his favor. As he hesitated, he missed his chance to speak. Without paying any mind to him, Arthur continued.

“I made a decision with the others while you were speaking with Aslan, but I’ll give you all the mana stones I get this time. It’s useless for me to have them. There must be a greater use for them with a wizard.”

“I liked that most out of all you’ve said today.”

Kleio reacted slowly as his eyelids felt heavy.

“You’re with me even though there’s no reason to risk your life, so I have to reward you like this.”

‘Because I risk my life…’

Isiel and the twins supported Arthur for their family and Cel for political influence, but Kleio didn’t have that type of motive.

‘The author’s coercion instead.’

Perhaps it was a reason that Arthur would never know; his duty to lead the story in the right direction. In order to do that, there was something to figure out first.

“Your mother’s prophecy, what else do you remember?”

“…This world is spinning for me. I thought it was a bit weird, but if you think about it now, would it be your prophecy too?”

“Well.”

“My mother said similar things over and over again. ‘You will know that all this suffering is for glory, and the world will move for you.’”

Kleio felt an illusion of a tattered manuscript being torn as his stomach throbbed.

“Honestly, I didn’t believe it. It was a good reason for a child who lost his mother early to take comfort in. I’m special; my pain will have meaning. But it can’t be.”

Kleio didn’t know if he should praise Arthur’s cold self-awareness or lament that the world wasn’t established under such objective laws.

“Mother, if I want to be king, it would be as likely as another arch-wizard being born.”

“Did you believe that?”

“I didn’t. Since Professor Zebedee, there has been no such wizard…until you appeared.”

“…Your mother was a great person.”

‘Melchior alone is a headache, but what about his mother?’

“Because she was so great, she didn’t live long. Queen Juleika must’ve killed her. And all her prophecies were considered false as a result.”

“Then…”

A long silence passed between the two. Kleio felt his head grow heavy as it struggled to process all that sudden information. Meanwhile, drowsiness continued to consume him. Still vigilant, Arthur looked down at Kleio as he tried to rest. Because of this classmate, Arthur Riognan had found the answer to the questions that entangled his life.

“But it was proved by your words. Mother was right.”

As the surroundings grew quiet, he could hear Arthur’s soft voice. Even though his eyes were closed, he could sense the prince’s strong sense of confidence in him.

‘I can never back down now…’

The prince began to talk about his past beside Kleio, who didn’t return his answer. Arthur’s mother, Theophila, was an orphan from a quiet country, from a time when trains and telegrams just began to cross the country. The number of religious worshippers serving the goddess of time had declined sharply, and the powers of prophecy and the divine were starting to vanish. It was common for the divine powers to disappear when one left the church, but Theophila didn’t wholly lose hers even after giving birth to Arthur through an undesired union with King Philippe. His mother had told him what would happen as if it already had a hand in the vague language of prophecy.

[‘It’s not wrong this time. My son, my king, the one who makes the world move.

The youngest and most powerful wizard is coming to you. He also knows what was said before. Get the wizard. Then you will gain the throne.’]

After several years in the summer palace, his mother was murdered by Aslan’s mother, Juleika. Arthur was left alone there in the Kision estate, far from the castle. The only thing that happened to him was his training, which seemed like the superior luck in his life. After that, he held a sword from dawn to dusk until his hands bled, and his eyes closed from exhaustion. And the year he turned eleven, he was able to confront his brothers after demonstrating his skills at the youth swordsmanship contest. The second prince was paranoid and tried to hurt him, but the first prince was elegant and cold. Even if they had the same father, they were all enemies.

The years passed, and he made a [Covenant] with Isiel, then began to hold his breath to gather power. Arthur remembered all the words left behind by his mother. However, he couldn’t fully believe them as his generation had no powerful wizard. There was one student who had been making his name known for a while, but he soon broke the expectations around him. Around that time, it didn’t matter if his mother had been right or wrong, as the prophecies were becoming real.

Returning to the capital, Arthur made up his mind. He would return the truth to those who killed his mother and declared her a madwoman, by any means. Therefore, he had to become king.

“Maybe it is me who believed the least in her.”

Arthur’s voice was low. It wasn’t that Kleio had already fallen asleep, but that he had no answers. The visions that made Arthur an ominous child wasn’t only the prophecy about the future. He, too, had his curses to bear after going through the manuscript so many times. Arthur wasn’t surprised even at the moment of [Covenant] when Isiel knelt before him. The moment he looked down at the back of her neck, her red hair cut short, he knew that it had already happened.

Arthur had memories that weren’t his own, but that had to be his. The events that took place multiple times drove little Arthur almost crazy. Among the most memorable so far, the only incidents that were utterly new to him were the ones his mother spoke as prophecies. While holding Arthur tightly, the words his mother whispered didn’t overlap, but sounded like a single voice. However, after she died, that shelter disappeared. He had been forced to adapt to this unconfirmed world. People who knew him said that he was a calm boy to grow up in such a situation. In fact, his calmness came from going through the same thing multiple times.

But that wizard was different. For Arthur, Kleio was always the first time, never the second.