novelraw Chapter 217 : Epilogue: No One Knew How Much Time Had Passed
Chapter 217 : Epilogue: No One Knew How Much Time Had Passed
Chapter 217: Epilogue: No One Knew How Much Time Had Passed
At the southeastern edge of the Phalon Continent lay the Peculia Territory of the Dolkin Kingdom.
Before night had even fully fallen, the tavern called “White Sun,” a regular haunt for mercenaries and adventurers, was already as noisy and lively as ever.
“This is something else! Have you heard that rumor?”
“What rumor are you talking about?”
They were two big men who could be considered veterans among adventurers.
Dike and Servan.
Among them, Dike continued speaking with his beak-like mouth that jutted out like a fat woodpecker’s.
“Don’t tell me you haven’t even heard that the Secury Forest was conquered?”
“Is that true? That Secury Forest was really conquered? Wasn’t that a place known for no one ever coming out alive if they went in, even if it wasn’t quite as bad as Sellios Island?”
“That’s right! Because of that, even the Royal Capital of Dolkin was in an uproar. They’re trying to find out who conquered it!”
Even though neither of them had anything to do with it, both men wore oddly proud expressions.
Servan, who had only been responding so far, now looked envious.
“If the Royal Capital finds them, they’ll probably grant them a title, right?”
“Only a title? They might even make up a princess out of thin air and seat her in the Royal Palace!”
The Secury Forest of Dolkin was a region once called a forest of death, similar to Sellios Island, which had bordered the Kanas Territory of the old Canel Kingdom long ago.
A forest where no one ever returned alive.
Brave young adventurers or mercenaries would hear the ominous rumors, rush in, and then disappear into the forest.
And yet, someone had supposedly conquered that place not long ago.
“But didn’t anyone say what came out of there?”
“They did!”
“What was it?”
“They say a Titan Ogre, something that only appeared in ancient tomes, came out! Once a path was opened all the way to the center of the forest where that monster’s corpse lay, people found out!”
“A Titan Ogre?”
A massive creature at least twice the size of a normal ogre, with strength said to exceed it by more than five times.
It was an ancient monster rumored to have gone extinct after its territorial conflicts with dragons grew so fierce.
And now, a fresh corpse of such a Titan Ogre had been discovered for the first time in hundreds of years.
“You don’t think it was just one, do you?”
“Wasn’t it?”
A single Titan Ogre alone could wipe out an entire ogre tribe.
Naturally, Servan’s expression stiffened as he listened, waiting for what came next.
“There were twenty of them. According to another rumor I heard, the Secury Forest itself was a Titan Ogre settlement.”
“So that’s why people who went in there never came back alive?”
“Probably!”
“Good grief…… This isn’t some lie, is it?”
No matter how he thought about it, Dike’s words were hard to believe.
Not just any monster, but Titan Ogres that were said to have fought dragons. And not one, but a tribe of twenty.
That alone could be a lie, but the idea that someone had defeated them was even more astounding.
“Surely it wasn’t the Royal Capital or the Mercenary Guild that stepped in, was it?”
Given the scale of it, that was at least a plausible guess.
In response, Dike shook his head vigorously.
“Hey now! Have you lived your life being fooled? When have you ever seen me lie? Have you!”
“Didn’t you scam someone just yesterday by selling Blue Troll blood and bones for 110 gold and then claiming it was only 80 gold? Where did you skim the rest…….”
“Ah, didn’t I say that was just a misunderstanding on my part!”
“You expect me to believe that?”
At Servan’s retort, a sigh slipped out of Dike.
“Honestly…… How did the conversation even go that way? Anyway, this time it’s real. That’s why the Royal Capital is trying to find the ones who conquered the Secury Forest.”
“If it had been the Mercenary Guild, they would’ve come forward openly.”
“That’s exactly why it’s strange. You’d think they’d be boasting about it, but instead they’re hiding it completely.”
“Could it have been Dragonia’s doing?”
“Dragonia under the Empire? The one said to wander the entire continent taking care of only S-rank or higher monsters?”
About fifty years had passed since the Demon Race disappeared from the continent.
After that, monstrous creatures and chimera-type monsters that had never existed before began appearing in areas that had been invaded by the land of the Demon Realm.
To deal with this, the newly founded Canel Empire was said to have created a mercenary knight order called Dragonia and sent them out to handle such threats.
However, that had already been decades ago. Their traces had long since vanished, and hardly anyone even remembered them anymore.
“Honestly, if it wasn’t them, who else could do it?”
Titan Ogres were also classified as S-rank or higher monsters.
But if the mercenary knight order Dragonia, which had disappeared decades ago, had truly resurfaced, the Royal Capital of Dolkin would already be in complete chaos.
“Wasn’t the last place they were rumored to have been seen the Triste Desert of the Edina Kingdom, when they hunted a swarm of Triple Scorpions? And that was already thirty years ago. They wouldn’t exactly be young anymore.”
“True. If Sir Jade Raizen, who was said to be their commander back then, were still alive, he’d be well over eighty by now, wouldn’t he?”
No matter how strong someone was, time spared no one.
As if they both understood, they nodded at the same time.
Then, as if something suddenly came to mind, Dike quickly spoke up.
“Oh, right! Come to think of it, didn’t the Canel Empire just have a new Emperor ascend the throne?”
“Was this the fourth one already?”
“Indeed! It was truly remarkable. To inherit the throne without the previous Emperor passing away—unheard of. Other kingdoms make a fuss about clinging to the throne until death, after all.”
“Didn’t it all begin when the First Emperor ascended the throne upon founding the nation and then, just ten years later, handed it over to his illegitimate younger brother?”
“That was truly shocking. To pass it on to an illegitimate child…… Still, perhaps because he had grown up as a commoner, he became famous as a benevolent ruler. Even the Holy Kingdom treated him with respect as an honorary priest.”
The two of them spoke as if they were boasting about themselves, so pleased were they with the topic.
“Anyway, the Second Emperor stepped down after twenty years, and the Third Emperor did well too. This Emperor should do well as well, right?”
“Of course!”
“Still, I regret that the First Emperor stepped down after just ten years. Wasn’t it said that he possessed the greatest martial might on the continent while also being Emperor? They say he vanished after relinquishing the throne…….”
It had already been forty years since that happened.
Since no one knew what had happened afterward, Servan and Dike, who had been using rumors as their drinking snacks, found their moods sinking.
Clink. Clink.
At that moment, the door of the “White Sun” tavern opened and someone entered.
The bell chime, which normally should have been drowned out by noisy chatter, rang clearly for everyone to hear, for reasons unknown.
Naturally, a momentary silence fell.
Step. Step.
The one who entered was a man—specifically, a middle-aged man with disheveled ash-gray hair and eyebrows, and red eyes.
His appearance was not particularly striking, but his presence was anything but light.
As the bell rang again, men poured in through the door.
In the now-crowded entrance, the shoulders of the incoming men collided with the shoulders of the ash-haired middle-aged man who had entered first.
Thud—!
Anyone could see it was an intentional shove, done out of sheer annoyance.
Thump……
“Uh, huh?”
But the one who fell was not the middle-aged man—it was a young man who looked like a mercenary.
He had fallen flat on his backside so absurdly that he could not even speak.
“You bastard! Who do you think you’re messing with!”
One of the young man’s companions grabbed the middle-aged man by the collar.
In an instant, the atmosphere turned hostile.
At that moment, Servan, who had been sitting at a table to the side, recognized them first.
“Hey, aren’t those the Red Kudara bastards?”
Kudara were large, cat-like monsters that lived only in remote places.
Among them, the red-furred Kudara were strong enough to be classified as A-rank monsters.
They were a mercenary group named after those very Red Kudara.
“Looks like it. What are those guys doing here? Didn’t they usually stick to the southern side of the fortress?”
“More importantly, some innocent person’s going to get hurt.”
The Red Kudara Mercenary Group was infamous as much for its reputation as for its skill.
Because of that, even when trouble broke out, there were many cases where the lord’s castle could not properly intervene.
Meanwhile, the man gripping the middle-aged man’s collar continued shouting.
“Can’t you talk? Why aren’t you answering!”
“…….”
“You little—!”
Whoosh—!
The man’s fist sliced through the air, and then his balance collapsed as he toppled sideways.
It was a situation that was both baffling and hard to understand.
“Why did he fall?”
“Did that guy even say anything?”
The murmuring voices of the onlookers made the faces of the Red Kudara mercenaries flush red.
“What are you doing! He messed with our comrade—are you just going to stand there!”
He had not touched him at all.
Even so, at the open declaration of attack, his nearby comrades moved.
In the blink of an eye, they surrounded the middle-aged man.
Watching the situation, the middle-aged man finally spoke for the first time.
“Is this how you treat an old man who just came to have a meal?”
“What? Old man? What kind of bullshit is that!”
The men clenched their fists and charged. As befitted a fairly famous mercenary group, they were quite fast.
An ordinary person would have been unable to block them and would have been beaten senseless.
But their fists struck nothing but empty air.
Whoom! Whoosh—! Whoom!
“W-what?”
“Where did he go?”
The middle-aged man had vanished without a trace.
“Please bring me a drink and a plate of spicy stir-fried pork.”
The middle-aged man had somehow appeared in front of a tavern employee who had been standing far away and calmly placed his order.
No one inside the tavern had seen when he moved there.
“Get him! Beat him until he begs!”
The Red Kudara mercenaries charged again.
The fists that flew swiftly forward struck nothing once more.
With a calm expression, the middle-aged man merely shifted his head and body slightly, then reached an empty table and sat down.
“Are you going to keep making a racket in a tavern? I’d like to eat in peace.”
“You dare humiliate us like this and expect it to end quietly! What are you all doing!”
The man barked orders at his subordinates.
This time, those surrounding the table prepared to rush in all at once.
Those watching felt half worry, half confusion.
Then, the tavern’s entrance burst open with a thunderous sound.
Crash—!
It was so loud it sounded as if the door itself might shatter.
Startled, everyone in the tavern turned their heads that way.
At the same time, men wearing outfits emblazoned with a strange red snake on their chests and cloaks entered.
A heavy atmosphere spread around them.
“Who the hell are you!”
At the shout of the Red Kudara mercenary who had been yelling earlier, the brown-haired middle-aged man who had entered last turned his head.
He did not answer. He simply looked around quietly, then spotted the ash-gray-haired middle-aged man sitting at the table from earlier.
The brown-haired middle-aged man walked over and suddenly knelt on one knee.
“L-Lord Jade Raizen. I greet His Majesty, the First Retired Emperor of the Canel Empire!”
At his words, the people around them froze, gasping in shock.
Who was Jade Raizen?
A hero among heroes, known as the commander of the Dragonia Mercenary Knight Order and a Swordmaster who was said to have never been defeated—a living legend.
And there was only one existence before whom Jade Raizen had ever bowed his head…… the First Emperor who had founded the Canel Empire, Raion Canel.
“This is…… I only wanted to have a meal, and I’ve been caught.”
“How could you avoid us so thoroughly! If it hadn’t been for the Titan Ogres of the Secury Forest this time, we would never have found you.”
“Why look for someone who has already stepped down? I’m nothing more than a has-been…….”
Who would dare call the founding Emperor a has-been?
Only he himself could speak of himself that way.
“Even so, you could have traveled with us.”
Beside Jade, Calsios, Negis, Cayman, and the others were also kneeling on one knee.
Seeing that, Raion let out a sigh.
“My friend, how could I, when you go around accompanied by the Empire’s knight commanders and even the archer commander? And I left because I didn’t want to become a tyrant. What would I even do if I stayed there? No one could utter a single word in front of me.”
That was exactly how things had been when Raion ascended as the First Emperor and convened the first noble council.
It was like goblins standing before a dragon.
In truth, Raion was a man who had defeated the Demon King and climbed to the highest position through sword and magic.
“Still, that was too much.”
“Didn’t you have Sophia and children, Jade? How could I take someone like that with me? The same goes for everyone else.”
As time passed, they had all formed families.
Only Raion remained alone. After ascending the throne, he had been told tens, hundreds, thousands of times that he needed to take an Empress.
But Raion was exhausted. And so he sought out the illegitimate child whom his father, Laskan Canel, had never revealed to the world, taught him what he could, and handed over the imperial throne.
“Everyone lives well on their own now. We’re all fine.”
“Hah…… Are you trying to make my final years anything but quiet?”
“You still go around dealing with the remaining Demon Realm behemoths, don’t you? That doesn’t exactly count as living quietly.”
“I really am old now, old.”
Raion was now over eighty years old.
Yet, having reached the pinnacle as both Swordmaster and mage, his aging progressed more slowly than that of ordinary people.
The same was true for Jade and the others. They had already been older than Raion in the past, so they should have been at least over ninety by now, yet they looked no more than middle-aged.
“If Your Majesty the Retired Emperor is old, then we should all be dead.”
“Hahaha, is that so? More importantly, ‘Retired Emperor’? Do you not know how much I dislike that title?”
At Raion’s question, smiles spread across the faces of Jade and the others.
The people inside the tavern grew even more astonished as they listened to the conversation.
Then, with firm conviction, their mouths opened.
“We will serve our master.”
The moment Raion heard those words, his ash-gray hair transformed as if blazing like a red sun.
Golden killing intent flashed within his red eyes, and he smiled with power.
< Return of the Max-Level Lord > Complete