Chapter 65

***

That was when I made eye contact with Oslin.

I frantically turned my gaze to him, asking for help. Despite the fact that I didn’t explain anything, Oslin was real quick witted.

“You don’t have to stop him, Sir Dominic, because I am sending this person as a request from His Majesty.”

“Oh. I see.”

Oslin interrupted to explain, and the knight quickly dismissed his suspicions. I took a breath and left the group with Marianne.

Kwanach had said he was going to inspect the area, so he should be looking around the barracks and the performance hall.

I walked quickly to the alleyway with a few seeds in my fist, just in case.

“We have to make sure that His Majesty is safe.”

Marianne asked in surprise as she followed me with a wide stride.

“Is His Majesty in danger now?”

“It’s possible. Marianne, you know Roman, don’t you?”

“Yes. Isn’t he the master of Gullier? During the course of the investigation, he snuck out of the imperial palace and a wanted order was issued for the entire empire. Everyone is suspecting that Roman is the real culprit who tried to harm the Empress. But why is that person…….”

“Roman is here.”

“What? But he’s wanted. How can he…”

“He disguised himself like us. However, it’s much more elaborate and impressive than we are. He may be with His Majesty. It’s dangerous. We must go and inform him as soon as possible.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

Marianne seemed to be curious about what was going on, but she didn’t ask any more questions. I didn’t have time to explain in detail either.

I just had to run faster towards the barracks first.

* * * *

In the meantime, Roman was looking around in frustration. He could clearly see Kwanach standing far away in the distance. Kwanach was looking around with a dignified manner and was saying something to the captain of the guard.

‘You’re unlucky.’

Every time he looked at Kwanach, he felt a surge of malice deep inside.

‘I should be my seat…’ (*he meant the throne, the position of the emperor should he his)

Roman was the chosen one. He had never doubted his own belief that his unusually strong power was proof of that.

‘It was originally mine.’

It was the Pernen royal family that had ruled the southern part of the human continent for many years. The Pernen family was famous for its founder being blessed like the Catatel family.

It was a bloodline that came with the blessing of the Goddess.

The royals were all beautiful, wise, and born with magical powers. They were all born with silver hair and purple eyes.

This color, which did not often appear in nature, proved that they were the chosen bloodline.

The royal family devoted themselves to further strengthening this sacred bloodline. They repeatedly married incestuously, under the compulsion that they must not contain any impurities. They believed that this would make them more powerful.

But the side effects of incestuous marriage were severe.

With each generation, the insanity was inherited more severely, and one by one, the kings went mad. Madness led to more madness, and the kingdom gradually fell into decline.

It was natural for a kingdom to decline when the person who wore the crown became so crazy that he couldn’t bear the weight of the crown.

But the kings became more and more immersed in illusion. They dreamed of perfect holiness, perfect beauty, and craved for the throne of God.

Since they were closer to the Goddess than anyone else in their bloodline, they could be just like her if they refined well. The Pernen royal family repeatedly experimented with various kinds of magic, dreaming of immortality.

Their first focus was on forbidden necromancy, the magic of bringing corpses back to life. They repeatedly experimented with killing innocent people and trying to revive them.

There was some success. The corpses came to life, breathed, and moved. However, they were puppet-like beings with no intelligence at all.

The last of the Fernen kings. He was a complete madman who used people who had come back to life through necromancy and conducted horrific experiments. He sowed his seeds into the corpses and made them have his children.

The king hoped that the children born from the bodies that defied death and came back would be superior to humans.

These children would succeed him and rule the kingdom, and together they would ascend to the throne of God.

The children born in this way were twins.

By the time the twins were born, the king’s madness had become even worse. He was in a state of complete mental disarray, and had already forgotten the fact that he had twins with a revived corpse.

They were no better than b*stards, children born of horrible thoughts.

They were both boys, but the older brother had silver hair and purple eyes that could not deny his Pernen royal bloodline. The younger brother, on the other hand, had gray hair and eyes that are somewhere between purple and violet.

The older brother was kept secretly in the royal household, but never let his presence be known to the outside world. The children were locked up in the darkest basement and had to undergo many experiments to see if they were really human and what kind of beings they were.

Fortunately or unfortunately, the younger brother was kicked out of the Imperial Palace. He was a child who didn’t have the royal appearance.

And so the child who had to part with his brother became a slave soldier. He remained completely ignorant of his birth until he came of age.

His twin brother, who grew up as a secret in the royal palace, became an amazingly powerful wizard.

This wizard’s name was Roman. Stories circulated that the Goddess’s blessings had left the Pernen royal family, and as if to prove it, the magic platforms had long since ceased to exist.

But the child born from the corpse was different. Roman was more powerful than any other royalty in history. However, no one dared to take Roman out of the basement and give him the official status of a Prince. It was an instinctive rejection.

Anyone who knew Roman’s birth had no choice but to alienate him and avoid him.

Roman was left like that for a while, and at around the age 16, he escaped from the dungeon by himself. Unbeknownst to everyone, Roman escaped from the royal palace, transformed himself into different people, and began to stand alone.

Roman could be anyone he wanted to be. As if to prove that he was a child born from an empty shell. To him, the body was just a shell that could be replaced at any time.

He did not look up to the imperial family, because he didn’t consider the people who lived there as his bloodline. However, he learned that he had a younger brother, so he wanted to find him.

His brother’s name was Jaxor.

Who was more unhappy in life: Roman, locked in the basement and treated as an experiment, or Jaxor, growing up outside in the sunshine, but a slave?

Roman had to see his brother. Because he was the only one like him in the world.

In the meantime, the world changed drastically. A revolution took place.

The Pernen Kingdom, which was already showing signs of collapse, was completely destroyed. The one who stepped into the gap and ushered in a new era was none other than the slave.

Kwanach.

And the slave’s faithful best friend, Jaxor.

Roman watched them from a distance. Jaxor was smiling brightly with a look of faithfulness beside Kwanach.

‘Oh, it’s clear now. Who is the most unfortunate…’

‘Brother, you must have been so happy not knowing your roots. You just think you are as ordinary as others.’

Unlike Roman, Jaxor was not born with magic and was abandoned, but because of that, he lived a more human life than Roman.

When Roman heard the news that Jaxor was a slave, Roman was inwardly relieved to know that he would have been treated like trash just like him. However, Jaxor was no longer a slave. And his life didn’t seem to be unhappy.

Roman felt like everything had been taken away from him.

‘What should I do in a situation like this?’

He asked himself. The answer came quickly.

Take it back. Yes, he wanted to have it back. Everything that should have been his.

His only brother, and this huge empire.

How hard he had worked for this. Roman gazed gloomily at the high walls built over the border.

‘Now I just need to get out of here. Then I can end it all.’

The plan went a little wrong because Usphere did not die. If she had died from poison, he was going to immediately create an excuse to start a war in the north and form an alliance.

But for now, there was no centripetal point to hold the huge Northern coalition together.

If the attack had started from the outside, it would have been easy to escape. Now that the entire empire was focused on catching him, even Roman, who was a genius at escaping, was having difficulties.

‘Well,it’s okay. It wouldn’t be much fun if there weren’t any outbursts.’

This much could be said to be a preparatory step to add to the atmosphere. It was alright.

As it turned out, he met his brother, Jaxor, and the experiment he did on the sclerotic corpse was almost complete. He just needed to supplement the experiment a bit.

The only thing left to do was to turn the continent upside down and get the empire that was originally his.

Roman glanced at Jaxor. Jaxor’s gaze by Kwanach’s side turned to Roman for a moment and then dropped.

It took Roman a lot of effort to get Jaxor on his side.

It was about two years ago that he came into contact with Jaxor. At first, Jaxor refused to believe his identity and denied any relationship. Eventually, however, Jaxor accepted his roots.

The day Roman escaped from the dungeon, he stole the records of the human experiments he had undergone and fled. There was also a short record of his twin brother there.

After reading all that had been done to his brother, Jaxor was confused.

Roman whispered to his brother.

“Blood is thicker than water. We came out of the same belly. We were conceived of the same death.”

Jaxor was disgusted but sympathized with his brother.

“No matter how much time you spend with Kwanach, your real brother is me. The one you give your faith to is me, not Kwanach.”

Slaves were not allowed to have families. This was the greatest pain of the slaves. Because they did not belong anywhere, they were pushed from place to place and had to die alone.

For Jaxor, a slave, the appearance of a true brother was a sweet and bitter temptation.

Roman slowly and forcefully convinced his brother. Jaxor was surprisingly steadfast, despite appearances. It was as if he had been dyed while spending time with Kwanach.

So Roman hid the dirty things like the sclerosis and the body experiments from Jaxor.

“I’m just trying to get back what we were originally meant to have,” he said, constantly creating doubts in Jaxor’s mind.