132 – Children of the Grave
Children of the Grave
“I’m going to kill someone.”
She said in a calm voice without containing any emotion from Rai.
She didn’t expect romantic words, but Philia’s expression hardened coldly, as she didn’t expect her murder notice either.
Her expression is serious, but the jerky in her mouth doesn’t suit her, so Rai says she laughs inside her.
“……The person you want to kill… No, why do you want to kill him? Are you a criminal?”
It’s her serious atmosphere that can’t be fooled, but Rai shrugs her shoulders and makes a natural expression.
“No, he’s a simple mercenary captain. I’m not sure if he did anything bad or not. Since he’s a mercenary, wouldn’t there be at least one or two?”
“Then why do you want to kill me?”
“If you want to peel it from above, you should.”
“Did Instructor Layla give you an order?”
As far as Philia knew, no one seemed to supervise Rai other than Layla.
But Rai shakes her head.
“He’s not even in his seat right now. He must be busy taking care of the power of the person he serves. And he’s stuck and won’t ask or order anything from me. If I use it privately, I’ll live comfortably.”
At Rai’s answer, Philia glanced at her ceiling and lowered her gaze again.
“I don’t know exactly, but that’s not it either. Old raccoon has a lot of good tools, so there’s no need to use me.”
“…… Being inspired by a raccoon… Maybe…”
Seeing Rai laughing and pointing her finger at the ceiling, Philia frowns at her.
Both of them were expressing the imperial emperor.
Although the expression that she is a raccoon inspiration is jarring, Philia, who knows that he and the emperor have met countless times on the battlefield, decides to pretend she doesn’t know.
It is not known in the records that the demons of all nations address the emperor, but the words the emperor calls him are recorded in detail.
Indeed, he was called a man without wisdom, a library, a matchstick, red eyes, and a dead man.
Perhaps the emperor was an enemy at the time, so Rai was also called by a similar nickname. One of them is a raccoon inspiration.
After thinking about Rai in silence for a moment, Philia raised her head and met her eyes with him.
“Are you the principal?”
She initially thought of Bright as her deputy academy president, but when she remembered him chasing after her Rai, she immediately shook her head and mentioned Selenas.
Except for Layla, there are only a handful of candidates, so it’s an obvious guess.
Philia takes a deep breath as Rai nods her head.
I expected it, but I don’t think it’s realistic that the prestigious Selena gave the order to kill.
Filia’s expression wrinkles as she recalls her always smiling face.
“Contrary to appearances, you are a scary person.”
“Of course, a position as delectable as the head of the academy is not something you can get for free. It’s a position that can only be obtained by competing with many wildcats and shaking your butt against those with great power.”
Philia, who was rather angry at Rai’s explicit words, had nothing to say.
“Why do you want to kill the mercenary commander?”
“I didn’t directly ask why… But it’s just a political fight. The mercenaries are someone’s money line, so they’re trying to cut it off.”
Growing up in a family that lived on politics, she was not surprised by Rai’s words.
However, her respect for the head of the Legandia Academy hit the floor.
Although she is in a position where she has to remain neutral more than anyone else for the sake of the academy students, Philia becomes quiet when she realizes that even Selena is an unavoidable slave to power.
Breaking a long silence, Philia casually looks at Rai who is eating jerky.
“Why are you telling me the truth? I might reveal or sabotage this.”
“Well, I don’t know either. I guess I was frustrated because it was the same as before and I wanted to tell someone.”
Rai speaks as if he were talking to someone else, then smiles and looks at Philia with her provocative eyes.
“So? Now that you know the truth, are you going to stop it?”
“……”
Filia can’t answer when asked if she’s going to stop it.
After a moment of hesitation, she struggles to open her mouth.
“No. Not yet.”
“That means it might interfere at some point.”
“I want to make up my mind then. But if I say this, you’ll send me back.”
“No, stay by my side. I’m bored. If you want to disturb me, do it. If you want to inform others, do so.”
Philia, who was smiling bitterly at her, was surprised by his words to let her do as she pleases, so she looked up and then avoided her gaze.
Her uncomfortable stillness again grips her room and Philia fiddles with her jerky in her hand without speaking.
“Why did you follow me?”
Rai asks as she shovels her jerky into her mouth. Just by looking at her actions, she looks like she’s chatting in a bar.
Philia raises her head and stares at him.
“I want to get to know you better.”
“Me? The Devil of the World? Or the Academy Instructor?”
“Both.”
Filia used the word “You” Instead of “Instructor”, But Rai didn’t notice.
After receiving her question, Rai raised her head and pondered for a moment, then she laughed.
“I am the Rai you can see. Nothing has changed between then and now except for my job and name. Becoming a lecturer did not make me cultured and calm, and being a commander did not make me more cool-headed or war-mad.”
Philia looks at him still as if to add to her words.
“Ray or Elliot, both are the same. The Rai you see is Elliot, and the Rai is Rai. And I will be Rai Redford until the day I die. Except for those two things, the academy instructor and the commander who slaughtered the empire are the same. Same.”
“It wasn’t a massacre. It was just a rivalry. And the Empire won.”
“Yes, yes, you are. I am a loser.”
Seeing Philia acting with imperial pride, Rai laughs and shakes her head.
“But you are quite interested in me.”
She tries to make fun of her, but Philia doesn’t panic at all, unlike before.
On the contrary, his calm eyes reflected the smiling Rai, who was deeper than before.
“Yes, you said you wanted to know more. I’m interested in you.”
She probably didn’t say that she was interested in a male-female relationship, but Rai’s mouth fell shut when Philia seriously uttered her embarrassing lines.
“How was the time of the devil of the world? So… I only know you from the books of the empire. You went through a lot of things that other people can’t even go through, such as your childhood or the war and the war of nerves with the central nobility. Ku I even defeated the speedy Retana in Henran Kingdom, and defeated the giant tree of the abyss in Velukashiko.”
Rai scratches his cheek in embarrassment at the words of Philia, who knows more than she thinks.
“If it weren’t for the enemies of the Empire, it’s disrespectful to say, but if the winners and the losers were swapped, you would have accumulated countless achievements that would go down in heroic stories. I’m curious about your stories from your mouth.”
Facing Philia’s unwavering eyes, Rai stares at her for a moment, then avoids her gaze.
She needs time to think. She looks at the tips of her toes on her bed, but her eyes seem to be looking into the distance.
But she soon laughs at her and then goes back to her mischievous expression and lays down beside her as Rai looks at her Philia.
“You lie down too.”
“I have no plans to sleep yet.”
“Young children always say that. It’s a good night bedtime story. Grandpa will read you a fairy tale so you have to sleep.”
Even at Rai’s joke, Philia tilts her head and gives a look that she doesn’t understand.
“Didn’t your parents read you fairy tales before you went to bed when you were little?”
“I’ve never done that before.”
“Isn’t the culture different? No. It’s common to all continents. Any normal family would do it.”
Because it wasn’t a normal family. Swallowing the word, Philia recalls the story she heard from her friends around her age when she was young, and she lies down facing Lai.
Philia lifted her light blanket up to her shoulders, supported her head with her arms, and met her gaze with Rai, who was staring at her.
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“What, you say you don’t know, but you’re good at it. Your eyes are full of expectations?”
“Because that’s what I wanted to hear.”
Philia responds calmly, moving her head to find a comfortable position.
“Uh… So you need to know one thing before we start talking.”
“I think I know most of them because I did a lot of research.”
“No, you won’t know. Few people in the Empire, including old raccoons and Edelian, know this. In the Kingdom, only the royal family and a few of my lieutenants know.”
Hearing that she knows few people, Philia’s eyes light up and she waits for his next words.
“Do you know the term knowledge of the tomb?”
“…… No. It’s the first time I’ve heard of it.”
She thinks for a moment, but Philia shakes her head.
“The knowledge of the tomb was originally a magic created by a necromancer to live forever.”
Like telling an old story, Rye starts from the distant past.
She doesn’t know what it has to do with his past, but Philia listens to him quietly.
The distant past, which must go down in units of a thousand years.
A necromancer lamented the finite length of human life and began research to live eternal life.
There existed a lich, but the necromancer, who dismissed it as a rotten corpse stuck on the threshold of death, came up with the idea of storing his memories in someone else’s body through repeated research.
His reprehensible idea of injecting his memories into someone else and swapping bodies soon ends in failure.
Because it was an act of forcibly harming the freedom of others, not only the religious community but also other magicians criticized his research.
And the research didn’t come out good either.
The Necromancer is still alive, and another person who inherits the memory of the Necromancer is born.
Someone who received his own memories exists, but he himself must die in the end.
Before the necromancer was frustrated, he was chased to death by many people and his research was abandoned.
Then, after discovering the research that was thought to have disappeared, the Kingdom of Kaylan collaborates with Blue Dragon Cryer to create a project called Knowledge of the Tomb.
“Dragon involved?”
“Yes, Cryer originally signed a contract with Wilgort, the first king who founded the kingdom. However, the contract ended with Wilgort and did not extend to his lineage.”
The last time a dragon was seen was 400 years ago.
Now it is treated as a legend, but the founding story usually contains many legends like this, so Philia skips over it without much thought.
“Cryer didn’t want the country founded by Vilgourt to disappear. So he voluntarily started researching knowledge of the tomb.”
“What is Grave Knowledge?”
“The Hateful Curse.”
Rai’s eyes, which say it’s a curse, shine.
Seeing her murderous eyes, Philia shuts her mouth and examines his complexion.
Excited red eyes flare up, but soon calm down, and Rai resumes his conversation with a calm expression.
Knowledge of the Grave.
This is the name of the project that uses the magic created by the necromancer to create people who will protect the kingdom.
As can be seen from the expression, “Creation, not training”, It is forcibly injecting someone’s accumulated experience and knowledge into others and continuing to pass it on.
It is limited to 10 people per generation, and when all of them die, it goes on to the next generation.
The ten members of the household are designated by the king with the seal.
“……”
Pilia learned the reason why there are so many great people who deserve to be called heroes in the Kaylan kingdom.
Every time the kingdom was in danger, an unsalted hero came out and saved the kingdom.
Since it is located in the middle of the continent, it would not be strange to dismiss it as a coincidence, and it has maintained the country for nearly a thousand years.
It borders with most countries and could become rich only through tolls on supplies through the kingdom, but it was a small country and the management of the country was not good.
However, for a long millennium, there have always been outstanding commanders, and they have defeated all enemies that threaten the kingdom.
It wasn’t for nothing that I had the pride of being an ‘Unconquered Caylen’. The capital never fell until the empire took over, and if you thought you were on the defensive for a while, the excellent commanders solved everything.
“Then…”
A great commander who is stronger than anyone else in the kingdom of Kaylan. Seeing the Devil of the World, Philia blurs her words.
“That’s right. I am the knowledge of the tomb. I am one of the children of the tomb. No, I should say I am the only one now.”
It was a shocking fact, but Rai smiled.