The Youngest Hides a Lot - Chapter 250

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 250
What I saw was a dark cave.
A pitch-black shadow cast by the pale moonlight.
The shadow resembled the emblem of the Mage Kingdom.
Which meant.
It was the shadow of an enormous dragon.
He had been waiting for something for an eternity.
“Wistal.”
That woman who had betrayed him and fled—the one he despised with every fiber of his being.
“Humans possess a beautiful power.”
The Goddess loved humans. He could not comprehend it.
A life where death before a hundred years was inevitable.
Time too fleeting to speak of beauty—nothing but emptiness remained.
‘I don’t understand.’
I truly don’t understand.
Yet he willingly surrendered to the Goddess.
‘The only beautiful world to me is you.’
If the world you admire is beautiful, then surely there exists a beauty I have yet to discover somewhere.
Before long, he had come to love the Goddess with all his heart.
“Wistal, I have lost. As you said, I will share my power with humans so they may stand against the monsters.”
“Do you mean it?”
“I will create Arcadia with you. So please, in the human world, you and I….”
“Yes.”
“….”
“Let us live together eternally in the paradise we create.”
But why.
Why did the Goddess betray him?
The voice in his memory grew distant, and a sharp voice overlapped it.
“Fool. Wistal loves a human man!”
“…What?”
“She used your power to help the human man she admired achieve peace, and to bind herself to him across the Continent!”
A lie.
Yet there was no evidence to prove otherwise.
‘Now that I think about it, there was a human man she often watched over….’
I was willing to abandon everything for you.
His rage consumed him. The rage became a curse, and the Goddess fled to the Continent to escape his curse.
Consumed by a crimson possessiveness, he searched the entire human realm to capture the Goddess.
‘How dare she don a human shell and flee so easily!’
But human life is merely a fleeting moment.
It was not long before he found her. Yet what he encountered was.
All that remained in the Northern Continent was the trace of her disappearance.
“How futile.”
All fighting spirit drained from his face as he gazed upon the Goddess—now nothing but an empty husk.
You fled through death itself.
Beyond even my reach to pursue.
He wished to fade away then and there. But he could not.
The human man whom the Goddess had loved, still clinging to Wistal’s hollow shell….
Because that cursed bastard had spoken.
“…We will meet again someday. We promised each other.”
A promise to return.
Though made not to him, those words bound him nonetheless.
The man returned to Arcadia as if enchanted and completed the kingdom’s founding.
“Thank you, our King!”
He divided his power among humanity, sharing his essence, and spread the emblem of the Mage Kingdom he had created with the Goddess.
In truth, he had wished to annihilate the human world—it was vengeance against the Goddess.
But if Wistal ever returned, she would grieve at the sight of a ruined world, so he could not.
Within him existed both hatred and love simultaneously.
He lived always caught between them, a heart perpetually engaged in tug-of-war.
But how long could he endure?
He constantly suppressed the destructive urges that surged unbidden. Unaware of his struggle, humans praised me as a founding deity.
Humans grew stronger.
They drove back the monsters and established kingdoms across the Continent.
The last rumor he heard was of a man in the Northern Region of the Babylon Empire who shattered a Monster Habitat and planted humanity’s flag there.
Then one day.
“There’s something I couldn’t bring myself to say back then. Wistal actually asked me to secretly give you this.”
The man who had revealed the Goddess’s betrayal came to him and handed over a single box.
Inside lay a pair of cold shackles.
Sealed with binding magic meant to contain him.
‘Ah, so you truly believed I would become evil in this world.’
You never trusted me from the beginning.
He was consumed by endless despair.
Yet there was comfort in knowing the Goddess had left something behind for him.
So he willingly.
Thrust his body into those shackles.
‘I despise you.’
When we meet again, I will wound you as deeply as the wounds I have borne.
‘The despair I have tasted, I will surely inflict upon you….’
So however long it takes.
I will wait for you here eternally.
Shhhhk.
Inside the pitch-black cave, the eyes that had surfaced in the darkness closed once more.
It was a brief memory the Dragon God had shown me.
* * *
“But as time passed, my power grew steadily weaker. The reason? Perhaps… humans no longer needed a god.”
Someone gently stroked my back.
“I had to find a way.”
I clenched my teeth in the darkness, listening to his voice. I needed time to accept the memories he had shown me.
“So… you used Kalid’s body as a vessel? To remain here and wait for the Goddess, uncertain when she would return?”
My voice cracked as the words tumbled out.
A low chuckle echoed back.
“Have you never wondered why this creature possessed such abundant magical power?”
“That’s…”
Because Kalid is the protagonist of this fictional world.
But somehow, I couldn’t bring myself to say those words aloud.
“He is the last descendant of the human to whom I first granted my power.”
“…”
“In other words, he was born as my descendant, carrying fragments of my own magic. A vessel more than sufficient to fulfill my ancient desire.”
I felt warm breath from nearby. Even without lifting my head, I could sense him gazing down at me intently.
“Terrible… ancestral dragon… So you kidnapped your descendant and… locked him in this cave instead?”
He laughed again.
“It was what he wanted.”
“What do you mean.”
“He was the one who begged me first to save his life. I poured all my remaining power into reviving him as he was dying, and in exchange, he became bound in chains in my stead.”
“Dying… Kalid…”
What in the world were you.
“You seem to know nothing of this creature’s past.”
“Kalid was… running errands for the Mercenary Company…”
Back when I had pulled Kalid out of the cave.
He remembered nothing.
As children, we huddled together and speculated.
“Well, judging by how familiar the Mercenary Company insignia seemed, he must have wandered around such places. Then he probably fell into some poorly-laid trap.”
“So… your mother fled here while pregnant and gave birth to you?”
“Perhaps. Or maybe the man was a Mage.”
I paused thoughtfully before adding.
“Hmm. Times have changed, but there aren’t many Mages who can freely come and go from Babylon now, so that’s probably not it…”
“I see. Either way, it seems they abandoned an inconvenient bloodline.”
“…”
“Why do you have that expression, master?”
“Because you speak of your own pain so casually, as if it means nothing!”
Kalid added with his characteristic indifferent expression.
“I’m really fine.”
“….”
“The day you pulled me out was the best day of my entire life.”
“….”
“So if I hadn’t been abandoned, that day wouldn’t have existed either.”
What kind of sophistry was this?
Even as I thought that, I gripped Kalid’s empty hand tightly.
“Ah, indeed.”
He spoke with a hint of laughter in his voice after hearing my explanation.
“It seems roughly correct. It appears to be engraved in my subconscious.”
His large hand gently caressed my cheek. Though the familiar warmth was comforting, something about the sensation felt strangely foreign, and I squeezed my eyes shut.
“Well. It’s understandable that I couldn’t remember properly… Since that was the price for the ‘time I’ve hidden away,’ there’s nothing more to say.”
Hidden away, time?
I couldn’t understand a single thing he was saying.
As if perceiving my confusion, his quiet voice probed me.
“Why did you come to this Royal Palace?”
“…To kill the Mage King.”
“And?”
“To find out the reason why I, who died in a carriage accident, came back to life again….”
But that was something the Mage King—the root cause and primary culprit of all this—should answer for me, not my ancestor Grandfather.
“What are you?”
He traced the tip of my chin with his long fingers.
“Did this man sacrifice everything for you?”
“What do you mean….”
“Just to save one person like you.”
Now, what?
“Well, thanks to that, I grew up spending quite an enjoyable childhood with you who returned. So the wish has been granted.”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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