## Chapter 96 – 검은 뿌리 (2)
The man was kneeling before me, gazing ahead and wailing.
I looked at him, then turned my head to survey the surroundings.
A wide, blue field, splattered with red blood and chunks of what used to be people.
The scene was quite different from the room I had been in just moments ago, but I wasn’t particularly flustered.
I’d had similar experiences before, so I just wondered, where am I this time?
I looked around, thinking that…
“…It’s my fault.”
“…”
The man kept repeating the same words, and all around us were corpses.
The only other thing was the blue sky watching over everything.
Let’s not waste time watching this meaningless, cruel scene.
I turned back to the man kneeling with his back to me and approached him.
“…Excuse me?”
“…It’s all my fault, I’m sorry… I’m sorry… all of it…”
“…I don’t know what you’re sorry for, but can you hear me? Are you the king of the Root…”
As I cautiously approached the man, who was sobbing with a voice full of tears,
he suddenly stood up, holding someone lying on the ground, and turned around.
Finally, the man’s face was revealed, tears streaming down his eyes,
and in his arms, the woman with closed eyes had a large spear piercing her chest.
Seeing the woman’s face, my heart ached.
What is this? What is this feeling? My heart felt cold.
Who is this woman? I’ve definitely seen her somewhere…
“…I’m sorry.”
A man appeared next to the man holding the woman, accompanied by a familiar blue light.
It was Virgilago, as Raphus had introduced him, the owner of the blue light I possessed.
Virgilago placed his hand on his shoulder and offered a small comfort, but it seemed to be in vain.
“…I killed her.”
“…I don’t know how this will sound to you right now, but no, friend.”
The two of them continued to talk, with me standing right in front of them.
Can’t they see me? If that’s the case…
“…”
I started walking. I passed through the rustling grass, making dry sounds,
and through the splattering puddles of blood, getting closer to the woman he was holding.
Seeing that they didn’t notice me even this close, it seemed they couldn’t see me.
I finally held out my hand to block their view. As expected, they couldn’t see me.
This place felt a little different from the beach where Virgilago had summoned me before.
It wasn’t real, just like before, but it was a more elaborate space.
“…Why did you suddenly put me in a space like this?”
“I thought it would be better to see it directly than to explain it.”
As if answering my voice, a woman in the form of Iran appeared.
Raphus had created a space much larger and more realistic than the beach where Virgilago had summoned me.
Perhaps this was her power. But for now, I had something else I was curious about.
“…Is he the king of the Root?”
“Yes.”
“Then who is this woman he’s holding?”
“She is Iria, the king’s consort. The first flower to gain a human body.”
At her words, I looked back at the woman, Iria, who was pierced by a large spear and had her eyes closed.
With her beautiful face, she quietly closed her eyes, not looking like she was dead.
Her skin was full of life, as if she would open her eyes and get up at any moment.
No, I could feel an enormous energy from her.
Drawn by that power, I couldn’t take my eyes off her, off Iria.
“…This is…”
While looking at Iria, something sparkling on her hand caught my eye.
I slowly reached out and touched it, and then I noticed even more.
A pure white dress made of fine cloth that boasted a soft texture, not fitting for this era.
Even the headdress decorated with all kinds of flowers.
…Iria was wearing a bride’s dress, as if she were at a wedding.
“Was today the wedding?”
“…Yes, that day was Iria and his wedding.
And it was also the day some of his dissatisfied colleagues first started the war.”
Raphus said calmly, but I wasn’t particularly surprised. I just continued to feel sad.
I placed my hand over Iria’s hand, which I couldn’t touch or feel. It was cold.
But the tears of the king of the Root falling on her hand were warm.
“He blamed himself for everything that happened today. For creating the flower,
and for not understanding the resentment of his friends because he was learning the emotion of love from Iria.
He thought everything had happened because of him.”
“…Isn’t he half right?”
“…What?”
“Why did he create that flower in the first place? Virgilago told me, but
I still don’t understand. He created a monster that eats human brains for the sake of humans?
Doesn’t that seem contradictory?”
Thanks to the power of the green fruit, contradictions I found in the information in my head came to mind.
The flower created by beings who loved humans, Chaeyoon, Seohee, and Suah, who could be said to be born from that flower,
showed a severe aversion to humans?
A being who felt no hesitation in harming humans was born?
Such monsters from the hands of beings who loved humans?
“…What are you hiding?”
“…You really are special. A human who accepts 100% of the power of the fruit, and two of them.”
“You better tell me straight.”
As I put strength into my hand, a blue light and another power swirled within me.
Seeing this, Raphus raised both hands to show that she had no intention of harming me.
“…I’m not stupid enough to pick a fight with a human who has two of our powers.
I’ll tell you everything, so calm down and listen, okay?”
“…”
Seeing that the danger detection wasn’t reacting, it seemed she really had no intention of resisting.
“…Okay, then let’s move the time forward a little more.”
With those words, Raphus shook the surrounding space with her power.
In the blink of an eye, the surrounding space changed from a wide field to a dark stone chamber.
“…Are you really going to do it?”
“…If I have to in order to fix everything.”
“So, you’re going to give all humans a chance? Abandoning us? Hypocrite.”
“…You’re right, friend.”
There were more people gathered in the large stone chamber than before.
But some of them were hanging from the trunk of a large tree growing in the center of the chamber.
The king of the Root, Virgilago, and Raphus, who looked different from now,
and another person were looking at the six people hanging from the Root.
“…You might not find it for a long time. Then you’ll be alone forever, eternally.”
The Raphus of that era approached the king of the Root and warned him with a worried face.
He turned to Raphus and gave her a kind smile.
“Then that will be the punishment given to me. Bill, I ask you.”
He turned to Virgilago and gave him a signal,
and Virgilago nodded and began to concentrate his power.
“…I, I’ll miss you.”
“Me too, friend.”
A gloomy woman who seemed to be another person with the same intentions as them greeted the king of the Root.
The king of the Root then moved towards the stairs leading out of the stone chamber.
And thick vines crawled over their bodies, wrapping around them.
“…”
The king of the Root looked back at them one last time.
Raphus’s gaze towards him gradually blurred.
“Do you think you’ll find someone with the same thoughts as you at the end of that journey?!
Hahaha!! Even if you do find them, I hope that person makes the same choice as you!”
A man with a fierce expression, spewing an unknown curse towards the departing king.
The king turned back to him and gave him a kind smile, answering.
“…Even if the person I find makes a different choice, I have no right to say anything.
Only the answer he finds, and the path he takes, is the right answer.
If he makes the same choice as me, I’ll be a little sad, but I have to hope he doesn’t.”
“…”
With that voice as the last, Raphus’s vision completely disappeared into the vines.
This seemed to be her last memory from ancient times.
Now, nothing could be seen around me.
Silent darkness, and in the middle of it, me and the modern Raphus in the form of Iran.
“…So?”
I shrugged my shoulders and turned to look at her, breaking the silence.
I didn’t need to say a long explanation of the meaning of showing me this, I just threw out one word.
“…We were 10 people. Very few, only 10 beings like us in the world.
Do you know that the prosperity of a race is the instinct of all living things?
Whether it’s a human, a dog, or a flower petal, it’s the same instinct.
We could have prospered our descendants if we wanted to… but there was a problem.
Our appearance is the same as humans, but our genetic structure was such that we could not reproduce with humans.
We could have reproduced among ourselves in other ways, but we didn’t agree.
…Do you remember that gloomy-looking woman from before?”
“…”
I nodded.
“…Her name is Perres, she was timid and the weakest among us.
Some of the colleagues who were dissatisfied with her attacked her.
They thought, ‘If you’re not doing anything, at least be helpful like this.’
Of course, that was discovered by the strongest king of the Root, and it failed.
Seeing small discords appearing among the colleagues due to this problem, he came up with one thing.
He said, ‘What if we give humans the same power as us?'”
“…Are you trying to say that’s the flower petal? It’s no different from what I said before…”
Raphus put her index finger to her lips and made a ‘shh’ sound, continuing the story.
“…Yes, as you said, that was the flower petal, the key to turning humans into beings like us.
But what you need to know here is that it wasn’t a monster like that from the beginning.
At first, it was just a flower that gave humans our power and knowledge. That was all.
But in the process, the guys who had been defeated by the king of the Root before feared it.
Humans having the same power as us, they who were used to living being worshiped like gods, there was nothing more frightening than that for them.”
“…If everyone becomes special, they become ordinary.”
“That’s right, after we created the first flower and sent it on the wind,
not long after ‘Iria,’ who gained power for the first time, came to us.
Taking advantage of that time, those guys touched the flower petal. They made it so that it could only parasitize human women,
and instilled an instinct to absolutely obey men who had our genes.”
“…The deal with the ancient men was…”
“That’s what those guys did. They provided sex slaves to the ancient men,
made them their believers, and used them as power.”
Finally, the puzzle pieces fell into place, a quiet sense of crisis. It wasn’t a lie.
“…How do you know all that?”
“…Are you finally going to trust me?”
I trust her. I don’t know why, but she doesn’t seem dangerous.
Her eyes, looking at me with a sad look, bothered me.
“…I’ll ask you one more time. Who am I?”
Her eyes were becoming increasingly sad as she spoke.
As if she was starting to figure out who I was.
I asked her again, her eyes changing as she told the story.
“…We decided to bear our sins. For scattering such flowers among humans, even if it wasn’t intentional,
and for the responsibility for inflicting indelible wounds.
So we sealed everyone in a tree made by combining our powers,
and the king of the Root set out on a journey to give humans the right to use our power.
A journey that may never end, a journey that may continue forever.”
“…”
I looked at her.
“…That’s right, it seems the end of that journey was you.
After handing over everything to you, …it seems he went to meet Iria.”
