Chapter 203 – 203 – Danar and Baragand
Of course, you can’t mess with it carelessly.
This is because the bushy-bearded loyalist of Danar, Forest Keeper Skirnir, is also in this room.
As I approach the king with his fists clenched, he stops me with his hand on the hilt of his sword.
But Danar isn’t the only one with bodyguards. The dragons behind me widened their eyes.
The water dragon mother and daughter, Eostre and Scateda, who spent a night together in Hwanhangok.
“How dare you.”
“Try even a single hair on Tannhäuser Bantais. The master of the dragons will be very displeased.”
The two dragons alone are threatening enough, and they even speak of the Lord’s authority.
However, the forest guard only smiled vainly.
“I know. But I swore to protect the king and Evenna’s son at all costs.”
“In return, is it okay for Elan’s forest to be engulfed in flames?”
···The thousand-year forest became warm because of one porter. What on earth are personal connections?
“Of course, even as the forest keeper, I can’t allow something like that to happen. If you swing your sword at Lord Bantai, Elan will die, and if you persevere for Elan, your master will die. I can’t allow either of those things to happen because of me… ·.”
Skirnir drew his sword halfway and held it to his own throat. You make people bewildered.
“In order to resolve the contradiction, we have no choice but to commit suicide proudly.”
“Are you appealing to my personality?”
“That’s correct, Mr. Bantai. I can’t think of any other way than to beg with my life. For the sake of this old man who helped me with all my heart, couldn’t you please give me some consideration?”
You coolly admit that there is nothing you can do other than commit suicide. My conscience is throbbing.
If you think about it, this person pointed his sword at himself in front of Rod, asking him to save Danar.
But I am not a roadie. A high-ranking military official of a powerful nation is admitting his weakness against a porter who has nothing but his connections. That may be something that requires great courage.
Moreover, Skirnir was on our side until the end. He even lent us an army and gave us a room for my sister and I to use for the ceremony.
Thanks to him, he was able to save Thena, save the world, and meet his father. We cannot turn a blind eye to this kind of grace.
“···I have no intention of touching you in the first place. I promise, Forest Keeper. I will not cause any harm to your majesty.”
“Thank you.”
However, there are areas that I cannot compromise on.
“Of course, unless that person is my parents’ enemy.”
“It’s not me.”
When the forest guard looked back with an uncertain expression, Danar spoke in a weak voice.
“I didn’t harm your parents. So don’t trouble the innocent forest keeper anymore. He has nothing to do with the resentment between us.”
That’s right.
“···Eostre, Skate. You two, calm down and step aside for a moment. If what I say is true, nothing will happen. I didn’t come to end King Danar, I just want to hear what he has to say.”〈 Br〉
Sheathing his sword, Skirnir moved out of the way in front of Danar’s bed, but her mother and daughter were only a step away. The forest guard looked uncomfortable, but didn’t say anything.
I understand the concerns of the dragons who protect me. As expected, Elan these days was confusing.
The Elven Senate, the actual power group, was beheaded by the human knights of Little Elan in the early stages of the incident. Meanwhile, rumors abound that King Danar has been assassinated, and Nenya, the grassroots guardian, is recuperating from exhaustion.
Meanwhile, if a foreign human were to casually walk through the corridors of the royal palace, how would the racial purists who view humans as beasts view them?
At least if the human goes around with dragons, he won’t try to make eye contact. It won’t be easy for him to put his bad thoughts into practice.
I approached the patient’s bed again. Danar was chuckling and laughing.
“The powerful may break their promises unscrupulously when it suits their convenience.”
“What are you talking about?”
“It means I don’t believe you when you said you would spare me. You have no reason to keep your promise. You have the advantage both physically and politically.”
It sounds like I have a reason to kill you.
“I’m not an asshole like everyone else who lies every time he opens his mouth. And anyway, even if no one touches you, I don’t think you’ll get far.”
“Indeed, yes. There is not much time left.”
Danar frowned in exasperation because I was right, and spat out blood on the cloth held out by the forest guard.
“Elves wither from sadness, not from longevity. Do you know?”
“I don’t know.”
“The lucky ones among us leave for distant worlds, either through physical accidents or the sadness of heartbreak or loss, leaving us with a long life filled with precious things. But in my case.”
Dana lifted his arms slightly. It comes with a bunch of hanging tubes.
“Without having time to put anything into my life, I lay down sick and lost all my vitality. That is my tragedy. Now I feel like time is running out.”
“Since when has it been like this? Did your father put lightning magic in your body?”
“That can’t be right. I ended up like this right after I ascended the throne. It’s because the work that robbed me of the possibility of descendants went wrong.”
The elves feared that the half-blood Danar would give birth to a human heir. If Danar dies suddenly, the shameful thing that will happen is that the king of Elan will become human.
However, it seems that they did not consider the position of the victim in the process of making him infertile.
Somehow, I feel like I can understand everything without having to explain why his personality is distorted. The villains of this damned forest will be punished with heaven.
No, it may be that he has already been punished. Isn’t it true that almost all the elves in the Senate died in the plan to punish So Elan, who had been preparing for a long time?
“The elves of that time lacked an understanding of sepsis. Before Evenna and humans were bonded and children were born, there was no reason to castrate someone for the sake of racial purity, so it is natural.”
Danar pointed to the golem scattered in a corner of the room. A replica of him that symbolizes a fresh and healthy number that has not been treated unfairly.
“That’s why I created ‘Barragand.'”
“The golem is so realistic that it is difficult to distinguish it from the real thing…”
“I wanted to escape this prison-like forest that had been strangling me all my life and stand free in the world. I wanted to know what it meant to wander the earth with a complete body and live in relationships with other lives. So I created a body that was complete, unlike mine, and created my own. I tried to transfer the spirit into the body.”
“Failed?”
“To this day, that dream has not come true. Controlling it from afar through the mental access device connected to this bed is limited.”
“I guess the reason you sacrificed yourself for me was as a favor to me by moving the toy. Thanks to that, I was a little less embarrassed. I was wondering why you would suddenly sacrifice your life for me.”
I shrugged. Danar, who was observing my expression, tilted his head.
“You don’t seem very surprised. Did you guess, by any chance, that the person I appeared in front of you wasn’t real?”
“To some extent, I was thinking that at least I would be using a double or something.”
“How?”
I confessed frankly to Danar, who seemed surprised by my brilliance.
‘How can you take responsibility for holding a dagger to your boyfriend’s father’s testicles… (Omitted)… I can still feel that feeling in my hand!”
This is a statement from Eshen, who held Danar hostage. Looking back, it’s strange. That can’t be up to Danar, who was castrated.
So there must be some secret hidden there. The connection between evidence and inference has never been so clear and clean. But Danar looked at me as if I was dumbfounded.
I added quickly.
“When the Demon King invaded the Dragon’s Nest, he saw that the Demon King used a clone golem that looked exactly like him. So he thought it might be a golem.”
“···I see.”
“The fact that you are investing a lot in golems to replace porters is another clue.”
“···Don’t just add it because you don’t want to seem like it’s missing. I understand.”
My true feelings were revealed.
But of the two of us, the one with more shame would naturally be Danar. He let out a long sigh with an expression of exasperation.
“Did you hear about my secret from Wintemyr?”
···When I think about it, I heard it from Nenya too, but I don’t want sparks to fly for no reason.
“That’s right.”
“That damn bastard.”
Danar was fed up.
“Equipment to the golem was something that happened later. If I had known that your father, Wintemyr, was good at clairvoyance magic, I would have installed it on that old model a long time ago.”
···I’m being very honest. Since this is a story about one’s own personal shame, I think we can move on.
“I ended up installing it later when I changed the model, but I never got around to using it. I felt like I was an idiot. Anyway, the only senses that could be synchronized with the golem’s body were sight and touch. All I could feel through my skin was heat and heat. All I felt was cold and pain.”
… Actually, I didn’t want to know this much detail.
“Let’s get back to the point. So what happened? Did you have a grudge against my father because of the clairvoyance magic?
“That can’t be true. It’s the opposite. He actually sided with me. He fought with me against the assassins sent by the Lineage Management Office.”
What?
“Don’t get me wrong. If I could kill that bastard, Win Temeir, I would have killed him a hundred times over. Even now, sometimes it hurts me that he couldn’t do it.”
Danar smiled faintly.
“It drove me crazy to know that he had everything I couldn’t give Calais. But do you know what Wintemyr, whom I was so jealous of, did to me?”
“What did you do?”
“He arbitrarily paralyzed my golem Barragand, disassembled it, and reassembled it, then traced back the magic wave and detected my condition. I was unable to move from this bed. Through the golem’s body, I gained as much freedom as anyone else. The fact that you want to enjoy it.”
It must have been embarrassing for my father. Baragand’s true identity is not the Elf King, but a golem imitating the appearance of an Elf.
So it is natural to try to find out its identity. He probably had to do it to protect himself and his mother.
But…
“It was such a cruel thing to me. Imagine that I am you and your father is Adamantone. Would you be able to withstand having your enemy reveal such details?”
“···You definitely don’t want to get caught.”
Dana nodded his head.
“More than that, that guy did something I will never forgive for the rest of my life.”
What could be more infuriating than having Adamantone reveal my secrets?
I think I can now understand the miserable feelings Adamantone must have felt when I found out the secret behind his birth. Poor child.
He must have been sad that I felt sorry for him.
“Did he pity you?”
“Yes. When I connected my mind to Baragand and greeted him, pretending to have just woken up… He shed tears for me.”
The monster was revealed. Because he received sympathy, even his vain pride must have been crushed. Baragand was humiliated and tried to leave.
But surprisingly, his father caught him.
“He understood. Before I knew it, Danar’s life taking care of the country from his hospital bed was a worthless fake, and Baragand, the (porter) of the ‘Hope of Dawn’ party, had become my real life.”
As an enemy of Danar, one could have been wary of him. But his father did the exact opposite of Adamantone.
Baragand, the porter who was dissuaded by the wizard, eventually stayed with the party. The other party members felt sorry for disturbing the free-spirited elf’s trip, but Danar felt relieved and felt relieved.
“Sometimes I would pretend to fall asleep and disconnect, and I would look at the ceiling of this damn room and tremble with anger. I thought I would give Wintemyr a hundred million dollars if I could make him forget the truth.”
Danar said as he said, glaring at the ceiling.
“But on the other hand, I didn’t think it was that bad that someone felt sorry for my situation. Besides, he was very quiet. He didn’t even threaten to reveal my identity to Calais. Thanks to that, your mother endured my tragedy until the end. I didn’t know that, maybe that weird wizard came to think of me as a friend in the process.”
The strange nuance in his tone of voice gave rise to speculation that Danar might have thought the same thing. Of course, if you ask him if that’s the case, it’s obvious that he will deny it with burning hatred.
On the other hand, I have a thought. I seem to resemble my father a lot. Because it wasn’t easy to hate this person anymore.
“One day, even out of nowhere, he said he would fight the Senate for me. It was so absurd that I couldn’t even say anything…”
“Then, to whom did your father die?”
“Didn’t I tell you earlier? There were assassins sent by the Bloodline Management Office. Let’s make one thing clear. I won’t blame you if you break your promise. I didn’t end Wintemyr’s life, but I am definitely responsible.”
“I understand, so tell me.”
“The assassins were sent by the Senate and the Lineage Management Office. After discovering the existence of Baragand, they were worried that I would become attached to humans.”
I muttered a low curse. Danar bit his lip once and said.
“So the target was neither Golem Baragand nor Wintemyr. Their target was Calais.”
“These bastards…”
“Of course, none of them could even get close to Calais. Not one of them came back alive. Thanks to this, the Bloodline Authority never tried to touch Calais again. But Wintemyr died in the dark canyon where the battle took place. My golem stopped working, and I couldn’t retrieve the body.”
Even the faces of the forest keeper and Eostre’s mother and daughter stiffened. If he were in a position to leave us, he looks like he would have left right away.
Danar looked at their expressions and smiled.
“Wintemair left two requests. One was, ‘Please take good care of Calais and the children.’ The second was, ‘But don’t mess with me.’ If I were still alive, I would never have granted that request…” 〈 Br〉
Danar pointed to his body.
“Furthermore, seeing Calais sobbing at the news of his death, I couldn’t help but think that it was only a way to live a long life and that there was no use in trying.”
It took a long time for the new Baragand to be created. It was not unreasonable for his mother, who was the head of the party, to be suspicious of the porter who had not appeared in a long time after the party had crashed.
It is said that her mother often spoke secretly to Baragand, as if she had guessed on her own that there was King Danar beyond.
Of course, Danar was correct about Baragand’s identity. But the misunderstanding that followed broke Danar’s heart. If her father had left a will in advance and revealed the inside story, her mother probably would not have suspected that Danar was her husband’s enemy.
However, her mother’s suspicions were not far from the truth. If Danar had not longed for the outside world, Calais and Wintemyr would not have been in danger.
However, Barragand only loyally assisted his mother. As a porter.
“···Is it all true?”
“Why would you lie now? It’s the truth as it is.”
“At first, you talked like a bitch about me, calling me your son.”
“It’s because I regretted what I didn’t have. I wanted to enjoy what Wintemyr didn’t have.”
There are differences between the Danar of then and the Danar of today, when he was acting realistically as a father.
Danar, in his hospital bed, looks relieved, as if he has let go of everything. You can’t peel away the pretense from an expression like that.
However, I left some room.
“Let’s assume the whole story is true.”
“···He resembles Wintemyr. He seems like a thorough and meticulous person.”
“Noisy. Anyway, if what you said so far is true, you wouldn’t have harmed my mother. And on the other hand, if my mother died from something that had nothing to do with you, no one would know more about her death than you. .”
I took a deep breath and calmed my heavy heart. And then he moved his lips, which were difficult to move, and spoke.
“How did your mother die?”
“That’s the problem. I don’t know.”
I frowned at Danar’s somewhat serious tone.
And in the next moment, I was astonished.
“Calais may not be dead.”
