novelAlta Chapter 201: You must listen to what people say until the end.
Chapter 201: You must listen to what people say until the end.
“Did you know, Lord Zakar, that the God of Darkness was the evil god?”At the end of the cold silence, Laius was the first to speak.
“I just found out about it recently. I’ll tell you more about it later.”
Zakar’s voice, answering slowly, became more stable.
Zakar, who had been choosing his words for a moment, opened his mouth again.
“When I lived outside, my father was a merchant who dealt in rare goods. He also had a hobby of collecting items from various races. Those who brought the items of the God of Darkness were dwarven merchants. It seemed that they came to sell them to my father.”
“And Elder Polaris bought them?”
Zakar nodded in response to Arendt’s question.
“Perhaps. And Father… No, Elder Polaris soon pushed for migration to the Second Kingdom.”
Zakar didn’t know what the object was or what happened to it after it entered the kingdom.
Shortly after his arrival, his father became an elder.
No one knew why Polaris, who came from outside, was appointed as an elder so quickly.
Although some had doubts, they soon disappeared as he became more successful in handling trade-related matters.
Arendt tilted his head after hearing the explanation up to that point.
“Hmm… since you said he was a merchant, it’s only natural that he would be in charge of trade. And?”
“…”
But Zakar did not answer right away and just looked at Arendt for a while.
Then Arendt raised one eyebrow and blurted out shamelessly:
“What? Is this your first time seeing such a handsome person?”
“Hah…”
It was Arthur who let out a sigh.
Next to him, Richt also muttered in a trembling tone.
“How dare you say something like that to an elf.”
“…But it’s not exactly wrong, so I’m a little annoyed.”
Upon hearing those words, Llewellyn muttered with a very displeased expression on his face.
As a matter of fact, his unnecessarily handsome and delicate face was in no way inferior even among the elves.
He had become so accustomed to Arendt’s face that he had not even noticed it.
Zakar, who had been unable to respond to the absurd words and just blinked, soon answered in a displeased manner.
“…I was surprised that he listened so earnestly.”
“Do you think of me as a mad dog that bites people for no reason?”
Zakar responded to Arendt’s absurd response with a very new tone.
“Wasn’t it?”
“Wasn’t it?”
“That’s right.”
The voices that followed were Llewellyn and Arthur.
Laius and Richt also seemed to be holding back what they wanted to say at any moment.
“…”
Arendt fell silent for a moment.
Normally he would deny it, but if he thought about it, he’d done too much.
As an awkward silence passed, Laius hastily intervened.
“If I were to guess now, it seems possible that he was given the position of elder in recognition of his service in bringing that object.”
“…I think so too. It’s just a guess right now, though. I had forgotten about it until recently, but it just came to mind.”
Zakar, who had been looking at Arendt with a troubled look for a moment, obediently brought the topic back to the original one.
“A traitor within the elves stole the spirit stones and fled. Immediately after, the Elder ordered a blockade of the port. Then, after Captain Sylvian was dispatched to pursue the traitor, another secret order was given.”
“What was it?”
Llewellyn showed his curiosity, but Zakar did not answer for a while.
Even though he had confessed everything up to this point, he wasn’t sure if it was okay to talk any more.
But Zakar soon made up his mind.
“The command was to seal all literature mentioning a specific god in an underground vault.”
“…”
That god must have been referring to the God of Darkness.
An awkward silence spread again in the reception room.
Zakar continued speaking slowly.
“Only Elder Polaris and I were given the order. We were also given strict orders not to reveal it to anyone else. At that time, I remembered what had happened outside the kingdom.”
It was strange that such an order was given to two people who were not even priests.
Zakar guessed that it was definitely influenced by Elder Polaris’ past possession of the God of Darkness’ item.
The moment the order was given, there was already a possibility that the evil god might have been behind the traitor’s escape.
After the situation got to that point, an order was issued to quickly hide the literature regarding the ‘God of Darkness’.
Zakar could naturally guess that the ‘God of Darkness’ was another name for the evil god.
It was only natural that he became suspicious of the Elder and Elder Polaris.
At the end of his story, Arendt fell silent and became lost in thought.
The existence of the evil god was also known to the other elders.
Perhaps, as the story of the hero Khan was handed down in the Caerleon Empire, he was recognized as a public enemy.
However, this meant that Elder Polaris has known for at least 80 years that the God of Darkness was the evil god.
‘Did the Great Elder know that from long ago…? Or maybe Elder Polaris told him.’
Zakar learned this naturally as he watched his father closely.
First of all, it became clear that Elder Polaris held a very big clue.
And…
This gave him confidence.
The original elves, at least the Elder, Elder Polaris, and Zakar, were aware that their enemy was the evil god.
However, he did not tell anything to Laius, the hero chosen by the Holy Sword.
Even though Zakar had a friendship with Laius, he never said a word to him.
In the novel, Zakar occasionally appeared with a guilty expression.
Laius thought that the expression on his face was a sign of pain from not being able to protect his comrades.
But maybe he, the leader of the Fog Forest, Zakar, was feeling sorry for Laius.
At this point, he could kind of imagine the scenario that wasn’t revealed in the original.
Sylvian knew nothing other than that the enemy was an evil cult.
She had no idea how large the enemy was or what kind of magic they were using.
While pursuing Jin with that information, she eventually lost her life, and Zakar, who felt guilty about her death, took on the position of captain in her stead.
The Elder dispatched Zakar, who knew the situation best, to the Caerleon Empire and ordered him to secretly search for the whereabouts of Jin and the spirit stones and check the front lines.
The original Zakar would have had the same concerns as he was having now.
But he chose to follow the elder’s orders and remain silent.
After that, Zakar, who intervened in the battle of the Caerleon Empire, began to feel something like admiration for Laius, who fought bravely against the enemy.
Maybe it was pity.
After becoming close to Laius, he must have felt guilty about deceiving him.
That’s why Zakar acted as Laius’ trusted comrade.
“Instructor.”
“What is it?”
“I’m not really sorry, but can I hit you once?”
Zakar was left speechless by the sudden remark.
Zakar stuttered without realizing it, sensing the ominous aura on the young knight’s handsome face.
“Ah, why all of a sudden?”
“I thought about it, and it makes me angry. You were digging around alone, and you took your anger out on us. The ones you suspected were not us, but the Elder and Elder Polaris, but you kept saying things like how humans couldn’t be trusted. You did a great job.”
That wasn’t the only reason Arendt was really upset, but from the perspective of an apprentice knight, he could only say that.
However, that alone left no room for Zakar to make any excuses.
“…”
The instructor just remained silent because he had nothing to say even if he had ten mouths.
This time, neither Llewellyn nor the knights rebuked Arendt.
“…I have no face.”
“If you have no face, repay with your actions.”
Arendt responded harshly and shook his head again.
If his guess was correct, Sylvian was killed before the war began in earnest.
This time, luckily, thanks to the intervention of Laius and the knights, they returned together to the elven kingdom, and as a result, she avoided death.
In other words, she was one of those people who had no chance of falling into the evil cult.
Then she too would be a trustworthy person.
Arendt, having finished thinking, opened his mouth.
“Putting everything else aside, are you saying there is material that mentions the God of Darkness?”
“…But he was only occasionally mentioned in the anecdotes of other gods.”
“Were there scriptures of the God of Darkness, or any literature that described the God himself?”
“There was no such thing. Perhaps the previous generation disposed of it.”
Arendt simply nodded in agreement with Zakar’s answer.
“Okay. Let’s make that our ultimate goal. We also need to check the item that Elder Polaris bought. In order to do that, we need to solve other problems first.”
“But to an outsider…”
“What? Are you dissatisfied? If you don’t like it, you can go to the elder and turn things around. Have you heard how Captain Sylvian was threatened?”
Zakar, who had been trying to speak stiffly out of reflex, was immediately struck speechless by the harsh reply.
Llewellyn was horrified.
“You, again?”
“Count Stadler has made such a good thing for us, so we should use it while we can.”
Arendt took out the record stone he had kept in his pocket and showed it to them.
The cube embedded with a high-grade magic stone was shining brightly.
Arthur made a weary voice.
“That thorough guy…”
“…”
Zakar, with his mouth dropped open, looked quite shocked.
It wasn’t that strange.
There is no way that someone as skilled as Zakar could fail to sense the magical power of the Record Storage Stone.
However, there were many people around them who had accumulated magical power through long training, and in addition, Arendt, Arthur, and Richt’s swords had magic stones embedded in them.
Because they were in a space overflowing with magical power, he didn’t notice the record storage stone working.
“I’m just rolling the cube in my hand,” Arendt said wryly.
“You know what this is. I’ll take it to the Elder if necessary, so just know that. Unless you want to be executed for leaking confidential information alongside Captain Sylvian, you’d better follow along obediently. I won’t do anything bad.”
“Please, I beg you, don’t talk to him like a villain. It makes me doubt whether we’re on the same side.”
Although Richt spoke with great regret, Arendt was accustomed to ignoring him.
Zakar, who had been standing there blankly, suddenly came to his senses and rebelled one last time.
“…Didn’t you call me in to propose cooperation because you had some level of trust in me?”
“There is no such thing. If the world revolved only around faith, why would there be fighting and war? All I need is your labor. What do I care about God?”
But that didn’t work.
Arendt, who had silenced Zakar, looked at Laius.
“Captain.”
“…What.”
Laius answered with a very displeased expression on his face.
Arendt blurted out a sentence in a blunt manner.
“It’s time for the captain’s unnecessarily serious and old-fashioned side to shine.”
“What?”
Laius asked in bewilderment at the unknown words.
Then Arendt’s expressionless face broke into a playful smile.
“Let’s do a fun play.”
The first target was the elder who was the most troubled right now.