Chapter 497 – 497. Guardian of the Ruins (1)
Staring at the spot where the traces of Ortas had completely disappeared by the nine-tailed fox, Queen Diane put on a dazed expression.
“Damian…”
She let out a small murmur of her own and then began repeating her words over and over again in a rage of great loss.
“Damian… Damian… My, my son…”
Soon, she filled the emptiness that had formed in her heart with her feelings of anger, and expressed it all to the person who had created the situation.
“My son… Where did you take it away!”
Raising her body, she grabbed Eunhyun by the collar and shouted.
The distorted facial expression of Queen Diane is not her face as a queen of a country, which is confident and proud, but her mother’s face, which reveals the sense of loss and desperation that her son has disappeared.
“Uh, uh…”
Erin was taken aback.
It was because she couldn’t stop Diane from holding on to Eun-hyeon’s collar and expressing her anger wildly as her mother.
If it was her usual, she would not allow herself or even Eleanor to allow Eun-hyeon to stab her.
From her point of view, she has played a trick on her son.
Eun-hyeon was excluded from this position by transferring Ortas with the nine-tailed fox, but for Queen Diane, the loss of her own son was so sudden that it was only natural for her to break down mentally and reveal her intense emotions.
Even Erin didn’t have a good impression of Queen Diane, but in this situation, she couldn’t stop her from grabbing Eunhyeon by the collar.
Erin is well aware of her despair at the loss of her bloodline.
Be that as it may, Erin sometimes went through all sorts of natal struggles, and although she had a cruel and unsettled side, she still had a soft side.
“I am still on this island.”
Eunhyeon calmly answered Queen Diane’s cry.
“It was just a transfer to somewhere on this island so that the two of us could be together. I am still on this island.”
What Eun-hyeon gave to the nine-tailed fox was Illyana and the artifact she created and imprinted with the magic of teleport.
The special point is that there is no designated place for transfer, and the moment it is activated, up to 2 people who have been in physical contact with the artifact are randomly transferred to a place within a radius of 2km.
It was only an artifact made to prepare a place where only the two of them could be, and no other special magic was imprinted on it.
“My son… What are you going to do with Damian!”
Queen Diane’s hand, which was holding Eun-hyeon’s collar, trembled.
“That… I don’t know. Everything depends on His will.”
Eun-hyeon gave this artifact to the nine-tailed fox, telling her to do as she pleases, but she did not give detailed instructions.
For more than two years, the best condition I could bet on her, who had believed in Eun-hyun’s promise and held back her feelings of vengeance, was ‘Don’t harm people you don’t have a relationship with.’
Her revenge could have prevented the flames from engulfing her royal family as well as the entire people of her kingdom, but Eun-hyeon could not force Eun-hyeon to deal with Ortas who had betrayed her instead.
Still, if we try to predict her actions, the nine-tailed fox will surely kill Ortas.
“Damian… Not the first king my son is my son please… Please… As for Damian…”
The queen’s voice, begging for help and salvation with her trembling voice, was even mournful.
Eun-hyeon put on a bitter expression on her face and told her truth to Queen Diane, who gripped her collar and trembled her hand.
“Queen. Already… Prince Damian’s soul and spirit do not exist in that body.”
“… !”
The moment she heard those words, both of Queen Diane’s hands, which had been shaking wildly, trembled and stiffened.
It was literally like a death sentence.
The body of the son is alive, but the one who occupies the body is not the son.
Her heart collapses in an instant.
“Perhaps even the queen, she must have noticed some discomfort from before.”
“…”
As if Eunhyeon’s words had hit the mark, Queen Diane’s body, which had been shedding tears and trembling, stiffened at once.
The reaction is that she also has a part of her guess.
In fact, at some point, something subtly changed in his son, Damian.
When she was young, she had an innocent and bright smile befitting her age, and had a variety of rich expressions, but she had a consistent expression like a person who was calm and lost her emotions.
That period coincided with quite some time ago, when the current king, Andrea Pernias, was bedridden with an illness and disappeared from everyone in the court, including her queen.
Her sense of incongruity, which she had tried to gloss over as her father’s illness overlapped and that she had changed as she grew older and went through puberty, now sprouted and stirred up Queen Diane’s heart.
If Ortas’ soul, which was already in Andrea Pernias’ body at that time, moved into Damian’s body.
Even the sudden change of Damian, all prey fit.
“I will… There is no way… !”
But despite the circumstances and facts that fit together like pieces of her puzzle, Queen Diane contorted her face and shook her head roughly.
Admitting this to her is like having to accept that she really has her own son, Damian, dead.
“Isn’t it? Is there a way? Please… Whatever you want, I brought you here! Please… ! Please bring my son back! Damian please!”
From a very long time ago, to Queen Diane, her son, Damian, was everything.
She’d done anything to make her son crown prince, allying with cliques of corrupt aristocrats who ran her rampage, turning a blind eye to the damage seen by many of her subjects.
The soul of the son who had been raised like that disappeared and someone else took over his body.
Queen Diane, who was full of her desperation, did not treat Eun-hyeon with her respect as before.
Eunhyun answered her plea.
“Impossible.”
She had already resurrected herself and came to this country, and when she met Illyana and was living in Pernin, Ortas had already taken over the body of Prince Damian.
It is impossible to restore Prince Damian, a victim of the incident that has already occurred, to his original state, unless it is to prevent the incident in advance.
“Queen. Do you really not know why Ortas chose Prince Damian, the queen’s son, as his target?”
“That is… What… ?”
Eunhyeon glanced at her and looked at Helena Houbi and Princess Yuria escorted by Artia knights from a distance.
And even the little prince, feeling scared at this inhospitable situation and holding on to the hem of Helena Hubie’s skirt, hid behind her.
“Actually, from Ortas’ point of view, it wouldn’t have had much to do with Prince Damian or Prince Evan as new bodies.”
“… !”
Hearing her Eun-hyeon’s words, Helena Hubei hardened her impression and even more protected her boy by holding her son’s hand tightly.
“But why did Ortas choose Prince Damian as his new vessel?”
“…”
“The reason is simple. Because there was a greater chance that Prince Damian would be installed as crown prince.”
The purpose of Ortas is to keep the spirit of his lineage, which continues to be inherited, to continue to preserve the king’s position, live an eternal life, and maintain the system of the kingdom of Pernias.
For Ortas, the internal political situation of Pernias Kingdom was not so bad.
The forces of the aristocratic faction, which did not hesitate to engage in corruption and corruption, held the power of the Kingdom of Pernias, and used the prestige of Queen Diane, who acted as proxy on behalf of the king, to create an even worse tyranny.
Since then, Prince Damian’s appointment as crown prince was almost confirmed, and the Duke of Armitas, who actively supported Helena Hubei, took all responsibility for the atrocities of the minor duke Ashton and resigned from the position of a court aristocrat.
As a result, the power to support Prince Evan, the son of Helena Hobby, naturally collapsed, and Prince Damian’s installation as crown prince was almost certain.
Now, it is said that the corrupt aristocrats who practiced corruption were thoroughly punished by Eunhyeon and the Knights of Artia, but at that time, along with the corrupt aristocrats, the power of the regime kept Helena Hubie’s faction in check and the Duke of Armitas’ family and suppressed them. The person who led the catalog is none other than Queen Diane.
“Me… It’s because… ?”
Queen Diane said that the reason why Ortas took her son as her next body vessel and her prey was because of herself who did nothing to make her son a king and ignored the screams of her people. I realized that it was because of atrocities.
Because of her own, her son’s soul was extinguished.
Realizing this fact, Queen Diane’s hands slowly lost strength and sat down on the floor.
“No… Damian… No way… It can’t be…”
As Queen Diane began to show signs of delirium, her two knights of Artia came close to her and supported her.
“…”
Staring at the queen as she gradually receded with the help of her knights, Eun-hyeon turned her head away.
“Alex.”
In the gloomy atmosphere, Yuria turned her head and called for Alex who was escorting her.
“Yes. Princess.”
“You are… Did you know about this?”
“… I knew.”
“Why… Didn’t you tell me beforehand?”
“Should I say I missed the timing? Sorry.”
Alex smiled bitterly and apologized.
It was the day before departure that he heard from Eun-hyeon the story of Ortas, the first king, and fragments of his plan.
Since then, she has been stuck with Helena Hubby and Prince Evan, and the situation has not come when she can secretly tell her this fact.
“Whoa…”
Yuria let out a small sigh as she accepted the fact that she couldn’t help it.
“Really, what should I do…”
There was deep worry in her voice as she expressed her complicated feelings.
Just imagining what kind of trouble this would be to the nobles of the kingdom and going outside made her head throb with pain.
‘Perhaps there was something like this in the development of the second half of the story.’
The intertwined story of the Fernias family and the nine-tailed fox was all too unfamiliar to Yuria, who had come into contact with the future fragments of this world through the medium of fiction in her previous life.
Why did the nine-tailed fox suddenly jump out and turn Fernine into a sea of fire in the early development of the novel he saw?
“I’ll be thrilled. Really…”
“Don’t worry too much.”
“… Alex, isn’t this a concern?”
“When I first heard the story, I had the same thoughts as the princess, but…”
Alex stopped talking for a moment and looked at the backs of Eunhyun, Eleanor, and Erin.
“He said that he deliberately did not provoke the first king and was aiming for the timing to come here.”
In other words, it means that Eun-hyeon has already prepared a plan to minimize the damage that will come to Fernias Kingdom by rectifying this truth.
“As Alex said, I don’t think that person just casually uncovered facts like this nuclear bomb…”
“What is a nuclear bomb?”
“There is. Something that could turn the entire kingdom into a sea of fire just by exploding.”
“Are you the same as Illyana-sama?”
“…”
When Yuria kept her mouth shut because she was too lazy to explain to Alex’s question, ‘Which is stronger, the nuclear bomb or Illyana’s magic?’
Ugh
A huge magical storm rises from the entrance of the Orbis Ruins, where the bodies of past royalty are buried, and begins to coagulate.
“What, what else…”
YuRia, whose expression conveyed her plea to please stop as if something else was about to come out, stared at the entrance of the ruins with her face distorted.
Not only Yuria, but all of Artia’s knights, who felt the pressure of scattering high-density mana, stared at the entrance with a posture of alert.
The blue mana, which began to coalesce like an endlessly thin thread, soon began to take shape into something with mass, and the size was enormous.
Equipped with a body four times the size of a normal human male, its appearance took on the form of a beast.
YuRia looked up at it with her dazed expression and murmured softly.
“… Fox?”
A huge nine-tailed fox with a gigantic body that blew the wind whenever its nine huge tails swayed, looked up at the sky and roared.
Aww!
