Chapter 197 …
Olli added with a wry smile, half-joking.
“Ah, except for the time you self-destructed. That was a truly terrible wrong answer… Wait, since we all ended up alive and reunited in the end, should we count that as the correct answer too?”
“Haha….”
At that moment, Lilieta let out a short laugh and then fell into a long silence.
Olivia alternated her gaze between her friend’s pale face and the northern sky—where another friend had disappeared—before speaking as if casually tossing the words out.
“And… besides Rita’s intuition, there’s actually another basis we could call a possibility—or hope.”
Rita’s head snapped up.
Her violet eyes trembled precariously as she stared at Olivia. The desperation in them made Olli pause briefly before choosing her words.
When she first heard that Gide, in his beast-transformed state, looked like a black dragon and that people had shouted that the Black Dragon had returned, something immediately came to mind.
It was a thought that only someone familiar with the Empire—unlike Lilieta, who had only recently returned—could make. And it connected naturally to a question Olivia had carried for a long time.
The stained glass of the Sanctuary Temple depicted a black dragon curled beneath the setting sun.
Olivia den Luna Blen had looked up at that stained glass and thought about the myth.
As with many things related to the imperial family of the Kairam Empire, this place was also entangled with the story of the Black Dragon from the founding myth.
About a thousand years ago, the Black Dragon was said to have helped the first emperor drive monsters from the land and establish the capital. Afterward, it created an incarnation in the form of a human woman.
That incarnation placed a laurel crown upon the first emperor and became the first empress, known as the “Coronator.”
In the empire’s history, Coronator was originally a sacred title referring to the Black Dragon’s incarnation. In the early days of the empire, people even believed that whoever was chosen as the Coronator was the reincarnation of the Black Dragon.
That authority had endured through the centuries, and even now the Coronator in the succession ceremony was regarded as the emperor’s sacred partner regardless of birth.
After creating the Coronator, the Black Dragon was said to have left behind only its massive body—its empty shell.
The place where the dragon’s corpse was supposedly buried was none other than the Sanctuary.
Of all myths, only Kairam’s founding myth describes dragons—imaginary creatures—in such concrete detail.
As if someone had actually seen one.
Moreover, the empire alone believed that the Black Dragon turned into a human and married the founding emperor, and that the imperial family were descendants of that dragon.
That day, Olivia told Rita the thought exactly as it had come to her.
“Only Kairam’s founding myth features dragons. No—more than that. This is the only country that records such detailed descriptions of a creature that doesn’t even exist, believes in it, and reveres the imperial family as descendants of the Black Dragon.”
“…Why are you suddenly talking about the founding myth?”
“Think about it, Rita. Maybe there was something back then that made people believe it. If the myth was actually based on real events… then what would it mean that the Black Dragon turned human and married the first emperor?”
“…!”
“Honestly, that Black Dragon in the myth might have been a case like Gide.”
Seeing the fading light return to her friend’s eyes, Olli continued without hesitation.
“Dragons officially don’t exist. No fossils have ever been found. They’re considered purely imaginary creatures. But despite that, Kairam’s myth preserves such a vivid image of the Black Dragon—and even says it later turned into a human. That means—”
“—That the Black Dragon was actually an ancient Oathbearer who transformed into a beast like Gide, and eventually managed to calm the rampage and return to being human?”
Rita finished urgently.
Olli shrugged and sighed.
“I’m just saying it’s possible.”
“That’s enough, Olli.”
Lilieta smiled faintly.
“As long as there’s even a possibility… that’s enough.”
After a brief silence, she added as if trying to convince herself:
“Even if… it can’t be reversed, I still have to find Gide. I have to stop Pascal from using his rampage somehow. That responsibility is mine for falling into his trap.”
After that, she left.
Clutching a threadlike possibility and a crumbling sense of duty, she headed north—the direction where Gide had disappeared.
Lucas, whose family territory lay at the far north, departed with her. He intended to check whether signs of a monster uprising were appearing and to act as Lilieta’s vanguard if Pascal truly appeared.
The rest of Beacon remained in the capital, Ramcard.
Dong—
The bell of the Sanctuary rang heavily and long.
The flower-offering ceremony had ended.
The crimson sunset filtered through stained glass, falling over the people in mourning clothes like an ominous net. The shadow of the black dragon carved into the glass covered the emperor’s coffin.
Dong—
The gloomy bell split the silence again.
Watching the emperor’s coffin being carried down into the underground tomb, Olivia thought:
The emperor was dead.
The crown prince was missing.
And monsters had begun stirring earlier than the foretold catastrophe.
Grand Duke Adicl, who had not fully secured control of the Imperial Guard or the capital’s defense forces, had filled the palace with his private troops.
Under the pretext of investigating the emperor’s cause of death and exterminating monsters hiding in the palace.
Under the argument that the Imperial Guard—devastated during the Crimson Founding Festival—needed reinforcement.
Just like the Crown Prince’s Tritoma Special Knight Order, he claimed these were forces he had raised to deal with monsters.
But there were many strange things about them for ordinary private soldiers.
All of them wore deep hoods and masks covering their entire faces, supposedly to avoid contamination by monsters.
No one knew where they had come from.
And except for a few leaders, none of the soldiers spoke a single word.
Ethan, who had secretly investigated them, discovered the horrifying truth the other day.
“I suspected it since the Vineyard Manor, but damn it… it really is that bastard Commander. Those soldiers—every single one is a monster under the Commander’s command. That monster is attached to the Grand Duke. What kind of deal did they make…?”
Monsters pretending to be humans now walked through the imperial palace.
Only the Empress Palace remained unconquered because the surviving Imperial Guards had gathered there to defend it.
Every other part of the palace was guarded by monsters.
The Grand Duke had seized control of the palace with them.
Yet the people knew none of this.
They believed the chaos was being resolved under the Grand Duke’s leadership and that order was returning.
But we can’t recklessly shatter that belief.
If the monster army reveals its true nature in the imperial palace at the heart of the capital… it would become a living hell.
An era that never existed in Pascal’s recorded history had begun.
An era like a rushing current beneath ice.
On the surface it looked merely cold but calm—but one wrong step could crack the ice of everyday life, sending everyone drowning into freezing water.
The entrance to the Sanctuary’s underground tomb gaped open like a monster’s throat.
Olivia rubbed her arms.
Even though it was summer, a strange chill seeped through the air.
Empress Ophelia followed the emperor’s coffin underground, her slender neck and waist held perfectly straight.
For four years she had gradually withdrawn from the stage, reducing her own influence.
Now she was preparing for battle once more.
From this moment on, she would use every means available to the empress to resist the Grand Duke, who sought to place Joseph on the throne before the crown prince returned.
Olivia and Ethan would protect the empress while searching for the Commander.
Seraphina would restrain the Grand Duke using the authority of the Church.
Isaiah would prepare for war against the Commander with the Tritoma Special Knight Order.
All while waiting for Lilieta’s return.
Believing that she would save Gideon and come back with him.
* * *
Even though it was midsummer, the air was cold.
They were nearing the northernmost edge of the empire—the last land where humans could live.
Beyond the vast plains of the Laskyle Territory, the largest in the northern empire, stretched the White Mountains, the most rugged mountain range on the continent.
Halfway up those mountains lay the highland territory of the Marquess of Winterfield.
Beyond Winterfield existed only the Black Forest, where no humans lived.
It was a land where monsters capable of enduring extreme cold had built their own ecosystem of survival of the fittest.
As a result, far more dangerous creatures lived there than in other regions.
Sometimes monsters driven out by competition or starvation burst out of the Black Forest and head south.
Winterfield was the empire’s northernmost shield against them.
And now, Lucas den Meyer Winterfield—the second son of that very house—awkwardly fed more wood into the campfire.
“I’m sorry we have to camp out in a place like this, Sister. The terrain around here is so rough that there aren’t any inns.”
