Chapter 470: Centipede Eggs
Chapter 470: Centipede Eggs
"Hmm... where do I begin?" Ema thought, poking her chin with one finger. She pursed her lips in disappointment, then decided to just speak plainly.
"I grew up without parents, so I don’t have any family drama. I also don’t miss people I don’t know either. After my awakening, I decided to quit school and become a freelancer." She tilted her head and messed with her hair.
"I mean, it’s stupid for us to be in schools when there are pocket dimensions out there with different beasts, landscapes, and places without laws where anyone can be free. And besides..." she glanced at both of them.
"I doubt going to school did any remarkable thing in your lives. So... with Yoru by my side, I rose to prominence in open-world dungeons like Blue Gate dungeons because I’m the best tracker, not just in Japan but in Asia."
She chuckled.
"The authorities called me once. To track you down." She stared at Godfrey. "But I wasn’t interested in working with the government." She chuckled, then flipped her hair. "I love drinking and partying. I also want a man, but I’ll kill him before a month, so... here I am."
"Working for the authorities you said you do not want to work for," Godfrey responded with a skeptical tone.
Ken’s eyes also had questions. "It feels like you’re coping."
"I’m working for the authorities because I don’t want Japan to lose their spot in the Council of the Heads. I still want to preserve my bragging rights in bars. What’s wrong about that?"
Ken shrugged. Then both of them looked at Godfrey, who sighed.
"What do you want to know?"
"How did you bag Isolde Pendragon and Selyne Pendragon?!" Ema was so quick to ask that Ken was stunned. That was what she wanted to ask?!
Even Godfrey didn’t expect that question.
"I mean, I know you went to the same school with Isolde, but she was the daughter of the Pendragon Family Head. Do you know what that means? Let’s say I understand you somehow wove your way into her heart. How did you get Selyne?"
Ema leaned forward as if she wanted to see what Selyne saw. "Now, Selyne is something else when it comes to looks. That girl puts models to shame. Like, where in the world have you been all this while?! And there’s you, the youngest widower. How did you, a crumbled young man, get together with Selyne, a woman who was at the top of the world in literally every area?"
Godfrey blinked twice.
"I see now. You caught her attention with your strength. Reasonable. I heard you have a perfect knight body because of the number of knights you have." She blinked.
"You’re talking like a drunk person, and you haven’t even taken a drink yet," Ken scowled while Godfrey slowly shook his head.
"You need help."
Ema recoiled, hugging her knees and puffing her cheeks. "I know."
Ken turned to Godfrey. "She’s acting."
Ema’s eyes widened, and she dropped the innocent, cute-girl act. She flung her hair at Ken, then laid down.
"Goodnight."
After Ema stopped speaking, silence fell into the room. Both young men sat in the faint darkness, unable to say a word to each other.
"I had a brother..." Ken paused, his fists clenched. He felt embarrassed but still wanted to speak.
He took a deep breath. "He was a policeman. A High Tier. There was a time he was esteemed, but in three years, all of that fizzled away. New tiers were here, and he wasn’t up there anymore, but he was still patriotic. He made me love my nation."
Ken’s eyes swirled. "Don’t you know you’re a star, Ken? You’re special, and soon the world will know. He always told me that when I was depressed because I didn’t have a summon. A few times, I slammed the door in his face and blatantly yelled that he should stop feeding me lies, but deep within, those things I call lies are what kept me going."
He chuckled weakly. "I would feel so much rage, accuse him of giving me false hope, and even call him the cause of my never-ending pain. I can justify all that by saying I was just a teenager, but he was going through a lot. It was tough for him. He had people out there to handle and me at home. There was no rest for him. He always carried people’s burdens. Then one day, on my seventeenth birthday, the day the sky turned dark, I awakened."
Ken lifted up his head. Godfrey was staring at him while Ema, who was pretending to be asleep, was listening with her eyes swirling with soft light.
"While people ran for shelter, I went in search of my brother. The thrill I felt, I can still remember every bit of it. But when I found him, he was already wounded due to the rampant dungeon breaks that occurred because of the Mana Eclipse..."
"There were too many emergencies, and no doctor or healer could attend to him on time, so he died in my hands... soaked in his blood. His death changed me. I suddenly became more perceptive, calmer. More analytical. A change that I believe came after grief and the feeling of hopelessness."
Ken caressed the katana in his hands. "Then the authorities found me after I began hunting down monsters, clearing one dungeon break after another. In less than a month, my brother’s words came true. I was a star, one of the best, if not the best-known talent in Japan."
"You already know that I have a high Symbiotic percentage. It made me as strong as a Titled God, but in return, there’s this pain behind my right hip. It’s incurable, and once it flares up, my right leg weakens. It still doesn’t stop my dream to live as a star, as a being that will make his mark in the vast skies, and I shall shine brightest before I die... even for a brief moment..." he glanced at Godfrey.
"... I will be brighter than the sun."
Ema’s eyes went from Ken to Godfrey.
"There’s no need to try to be the sun. Set your sights on something personal, something better," Godfrey replied.
"What’s better than having literally ten powerful summons that just can’t stop growing stronger?" Ema raised an eyebrow.
"What if those ten summons come as a result of a doomed fate? What if you realise you were born for a sole purpose that doesn’t bother about your feelings, neither will your death stop its design to use you? What if the person you love the most turns out to become the one manipulating it all, and what you thought was your life was just a well-organized scene, one after the other, to groom you in a particular direction? What if the sun is exhausted but has to keep shining because of the people who live off its light?"
"What if it’s in pain? What if it wants rest, but what does that matter? We want to see the light every morning. We thrive in it. It’s an essential part of our life. No one cares any less."
Ema slowly sat up.
"Godfrey... who hurt you?"
Godfrey frowned. What could he say? The Mana Tree had the power to manipulate other foundational concepts of life to forge strange beings, to create dungeons, most of which were not done by demigods or gods.
Who really hurt him? The Mana Tree? Wasn’t that like being angry at the raging tide for drowning his ship and family members? Maybe for a moment it was acceptable, but keeping that hate for years would undoubtedly be foolish.
Maybe he was foolish. Maybe the Mana Tree shouldn’t have revealed itself in the first place. Maybe it shouldn’t have let him know that he was her child.
But of course it had to tell him. What other way was there to let him know there was no other route?
"Life. It’s hurt us all, but if it’s been using a dagger, it definitely used a longsword and thrust it right through my heart while staring right into my eyes."
Sometimes ignorance could be bliss.
Ema looked at Ken.
"You can’t be me, Ken. It’s not advisable," Godfrey added.
Right then, they heard footsteps, and then the shoji door slid open, revealing a woman with a lamp.
She came in with water and roasted pork. The steaming aroma of the succulent meat disturbed their stomachs.
"I’m Yuna. Master Kazuo asked me to deliver this," Yuna said as she went on her knees and placed the meal on two stools.
"I will wait outside."
"I’m famished. What I brought is nothing compared to this. My appetite has sprung up," Ema said as she reached out for the diced pork with chopsticks.
She dipped it in the sauce and was about to chew when Ken held the chopsticks with his own chopsticks.
"What are you doing?"
"I suggest we eat what we came with," Ken stated.
She frowned. "Then why agree for them to bring us food? Isn’t this a waste?!"
"It’s not," Godfrey replied softly as he placed a finger on his lips, then used the chopsticks to check the meal with keen eyes.
"I want to know if we can trust them or not."
He used mana on his eyes, sharpening his vision as he checked the sauce. Then he saw tiny, sticky, glossy white balls. They were extremely small but noticeable under mana-enhanced sight.
From what he could deduce, they were sprinkled and mixed right after the sauce was prepared.
"Centipede eggs." The moment Godfrey said that, Ema tossed the pork back onto the plate with the chopsticks.
"That—!" Her face twisted as she flashed to the door, opened it, grabbed Yuna, and dragged her into the room.
Yuna knew she was standing one moment. In the next, she was on the floor in the room with three individuals staring at her.
And their eyes were glowing! Godfrey’s eyes looked like the eyes of a demon, and it made her already pale face grow paler.
"Join us."