[Vol. 8] Chapter 323: Arrival
“……”
The golden-haired girl, beautiful beyond compare, did not reply. She only walked quietly to stand very close beside him. In her blazing golden eyes, like flames burning inside, there was no place for the mortal emperor’s figure. She simply stood there, calmly looking up at the sky with him.
In this strange atmosphere, Leonis kept speaking to himself, his face expressionless.
“I know very well. Whether gods or high races, none of you have ever truly cared about the kingdoms of mortals. In the eyes of ordinary people, the emperor is the highest position. But in your eyes, it’s nothing more than a slightly more special… what you call an ‘ant,’ isn’t it?”
The girl known as Xiao Guang, or perhaps better called the Dragon God, finally turned her head to glance at the emperor. Her face showed no emotion, and her voice was cold.
“You think you are very clever?”
“…What do you mean?”
The dragon girl only shook her head, as if the question wasn’t worth answering.
“Nothing special. Just that your tone, your attitude, acting as if you are unique, as if there is nothing in the world you can’t do, and if you fail it must be because you lacked the conditions from the start. I’ve seen not one thousand but at least eight hundred people like that.”
“Those who say things like, ‘You only rely on talent and race, what’s so great about that?’ Or complain, ‘If I had the same starting point, I would never lose to you!’ I’ve heard too many of these whining losers blaming the world. You… you give off the same feeling as them.”
“……”
The corner of Leonis’s cold, sharp eyes twitched slightly. The words he had almost spoken stuck in his throat, swallowed back forcefully.
As emperor, Leonis could tell she wasn’t mocking him on purpose. She hadn’t even denied the “contempt” he had spoken of earlier. It was more like she was a detached observer, calmly making comments about a chess piece on the board.
And this kind of attitude, looking down from above, was exactly what Leonis hated the most, the thing that touched his bottom line.
Thinking of this, his voice carried a hint of sharpness, though no longer as stiff and rigid as before.
“If I’m a loser, then are you any better? I already heard from [White] about your situation. If you came here alone, it means you betrayed that goddess, betrayed your master and your contracted partner. We both made unimaginable sacrifices for our ideals. So who is higher, who is lower?”
“Tch…”
The dragon girl curled her lip in disdain. She did not get angry at his words, nor did she care to continue arguing. Instead, she raised her hand and with a light wave, something wrapped in golden light floated through the air toward him.
“This is what that person told me to give you. Keep it safe. If something goes wrong and you fail later, you won’t have time to kill another son or daughter as a replacement.”
Leonis raised his hand to catch the glowing object. Looking down, he saw within it a blood-red heart, as if freshly taken whole from a body. Or to be more exact, it was the heart of one of his own daughters, a princess of the Austre Empire.
In the end, with the Dragon God’s strength, how could she possibly fail to deal with just a single [Graeme], even letting it blow itself up? And why, at that moment, did Princess Cheng at the Swift Wind Sect suddenly leave the lecture hall, giving the assassin such a perfect chance to strike?
This plan had always been far more complicated and deep than it looked on the surface, and Xiao Guang was no longer the simple-minded foolish dragon she once was.
Seeing Leonis silently put away one of the key materials needed for the ritual, Xiao Guang glanced him up and down again. She didn’t bother wasting words or judging his cold-hearted actions. She went straight to the point.
“As agreed, I will help you fill every gap in the ritual, everything that is missing, in every sense. But whether you succeed in the end, and how far you can go, depends only on your own ability. Let’s begin.”
“Wait a moment.”
“?”
Hearing this, the Dragon God’s raised hand in midair paused slightly. She frowned, but still stopped with a hint of impatience.
“What else do you want?”
Leonis turned to meet her gaze. As if recalling something from the past, a rare trace of curiosity appeared on his otherwise stern face.
“Your master, that goddess, her name is Violet, right?”
“…Yes. So what about it?”
Noticing the young dragon’s cautious response, the emperor paused for a moment, then shook his head thoughtfully.
“No. Both the Council and [White], who represents the World Sustainers, have told me more than once that a god’s true name carries a direct link to them. Knowing it, and speaking it aloud to the heavens, should automatically draw the god’s attention. Yet even when I performed proper rituals to call upon her, nothing ever happened.”
“In theory, even if the god chose not to respond, as long as that cause-and-effect connection was real, I should have felt some mysterious pull. Through special rituals, I could have confirmed her existence indirectly. But since that never happened, there are only two explanations.”
“Either your master is not a god, not in the sense of what I know as a god, or… her true name is not Violet at all.”
“You are probably one of the closest beings to her. Can you clear this up for me?”
“God?”
Hearing the topic shift to that priestess, Xiao Guang, who normally didn’t bother with him, actually seemed a little interested. After thinking for a moment, she quickly nodded.
“What’s so strange about it? My master was never a god. She is just herself. As the most noble existence in this world, how could she be measured by something as small as the word god?”
“It’s just that your vision is too low. The highest thing you know about is only at that level.”
“…?”
The answer sounded like a response, but in truth gave no useful information, just flattery and mockery. Leonis was speechless for a moment. Soon, though, he put aside the lingering curiosity in his heart and nodded slightly.
“Maybe you are right. After all, I am only a mortal. No matter how much I have seen or how many secrets I have touched, the limits of my kind will always be a mountain I cannot climb over.”
“What cannot be spoken, what cannot be said, the true mysteries, even if shown openly, cannot be understood or endured by the human mind. So… one must take that step forward, to see a new world.”
Saying this, Leonis spoke again, almost casually.
“In your view, can [White] stop this Violet?”