114. Opening the memories
It is a precious place.
It is a place filled with many memories.
Even though it was a place that ended in tragedy, it was this place where irreplaceable memories were melted.
Sometimes, when they won a battle, they hunted a lot of animals and toasted with the soldiers. Even when things were difficult, they spent difficult times comforting each other with their comrades.
We moved forward, trusting and relying on each other.
After winter, spring came.
When spring comes, warm sunlight shines on the earth.
Although it is difficult and difficult now, I promised myself that someday I will secure the future with my own hands.
“What are you thinking?”
Alfred’s head on the table asked.
Arsel closed his eyes and spoke as he leaned against the collapsing wall.
“This place is like the memories I had with them. “I regret coming here now.”
Of course, my desire to come was like a chimney.
However, with the pursuers constantly chasing after him and the area now being filled with dangerous monsters, the previous Arcel was not easy to find.
“When we elves look at a tree, we can see the memories of the tree. It looks like it was a happy time.”
Shion stroked the trees in the forest with her cane.
Now it was time to do what had to be done.
“The child must have found the hidden truth here, and even though he knew the truth, he went alone without telling his child. “He obviously didn’t want to know.”
Arcel nodded his head.
For Stella, that was enough.
He was reminded of the tragedy he had experienced and the nightmare Arcel had experienced, and he did not want to make her remember that pain again, so he must have been deliberately being considerate.
He must have tried to carry all the burden by himself.
“Perhaps the reason my grandchild is keeping quiet is because he is being considerate of that, so I will ask him before I tell him the truth. “Is this really okay?”
“Are you asking what is okay?”
“Maybe your baby will end up regretting the life he has lived. He is denying himself. “It would definitely be more terrible than death.”
Shion said with a bitter expression.
But Arcel answered with a smile, without any hesitation.
“It’s okay. Even if that truth completely denies my life itself. “I will continue to move forward.”
“…Even if you dedicate your whole life to moving forward, there is no guarantee that you will reach the end. Is that really okay?”
Alfred said with a wry smile.
But the laughter did not last long.
“If I had been afraid of not being able to reach the end, I would not have drawn the Holy Sword in the first place.”
This was because Arcel hugged Alfred’s head and kissed his forehead.
Alfred closed his eyes expressionlessly for a moment, then opened his mouth with a deep sigh.
“To be honest, you are the world’s biggest idiot.”
“If you’re stupid, you should at least be sincere.”
“Okay, who’s going to stop you…”
†††
“Do you remember what happened that day?”
Sion sat down in her old chair and asked Arcel slowly, as if interrogating her.
“The last thing that comes to mind is when I defeated the Demon King and raised a toast. Since then, my consciousness has been cut off. After that, everything was over.”
A sea of blood surrounds us.
All the knights who were with him were dead, and even though they were Arcel’s colleagues, they were no different.
After seeing that, Arcel was in vain with his mind and time frozen for several days, and the investigators sentenced him to death, saying it was all Arcel’s fault.
“Yes, the investigators worked diligently. To be honest, you did all the misery here yourself.”
“…”
Arcel clenched his fists.
Actually, I already knew that.
How could he not know that he did it in the first place? He just couldn’t accept the reality and denied it.
“But every result has a cause. I guess I’ll have to brush up on your memory for a bit. Forgetting all your guilt and all your information. “It is a pure reflection of only what you saw at that time.”
At the same time, Sion knocked on Alfred’s head.
“Ah, I understand. “Just wait a moment.”
Soon, Alfred stared into the sky with his eyes for a moment, and at the end of his vision, a red gem appeared and headed towards Sion’s hand.
“Baby, you’ve probably seen this before, right?”
Arsel already knew the identity of the jewel.
It was a special magic stone that reflected past events into the present and gave shape to memories.
I don’t know the principles or the ingredients, but it is certain that it only reveals facts that clearly existed.
“Now, I will project your memories onto this magic stone. “You may lose consciousness for a moment, so grit your teeth and hold on.”
Arsel closed his eyes after hearing those words.
Zion slowly placed the magic stone on Arcel’s forehead, and soon the red gem began to glow and contain memories.
The human brain is selfish.
In order for the mind of the owner of the brain to endure, it always manipulates information and makes it recall the reality that it actually experienced, rather than remembering it as it is.
Of course, it was just a form of self-defense, and even if the memory was different from the facts, it was not a standard for judging an individual’s morality.
Anyway, you never know when memories will be forgotten.
“Ugh…”
Arsel clenched his teeth.
I felt as if something was falling out of my head.
“Okay, it’s done. It was created by forcefully projecting only the pure memories of the baby. “It’s brave that you didn’t lose your mind.”
Fortunately, before she lost consciousness, Shion removed her jewelry.
The gem that was shining red suddenly changed to blue.
It seems that the color changes depending on the memory contained within the gem.
Gulp.
Arcel swallowed her saliva.
Now, with that, we can know the truth.
Then she would know exactly what happened and what made her do what she did.
But will he be able to withstand the truth?
They said it was okay, but it was inevitable that they would tremble when it came right in front of them.
“Then this will now show your baby’s memories. Grandson, let’s go out for a while. “Future decisions must contain only Baby’s will and values.”
“Please move me. “Even two bodies were not enough, so I had no choice but to separate her head and body.”
“Wouldn’t it have been better to just make a new head and body?”
“Do you know how difficult it is to control two bodies at the same time? “If you do something wrong, you will be yelled at and your panties removed.”
“…What on earth do you mean by that?”
Shion went out while holding Alfred’s head.
Not long after, fragments of memories began to be projected onto the place where only Arcel remained.
†††
“Ugh…!”
“Everyone retreat!”
The knights protecting the kingdom were all seriously injured and began to retreat.
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It was because she felt that she could not stop her.
“Oh, why are you doing this! “Aren’t you definitely the hero who overthrew the Demon King with us…!”
One of the knights stepped forward and asked.
But the answer that came back was extremely cold.
“Shut up, the reason I’m not killing all of you humans is because I’m thinking of old times.”
“Such…! “aaah!”
A cold voice as if the forest were frozen.
The owner of that voice was none other than Stella.
A few hours after Arcel left the Kingdom of Hermod, Stella attacked the Kingdom of Hermod head on and headed straight for the royal castle.
Of course, the soldiers blocked Stella, who was not only an elf, but even attacked preemptively, but in the end, they were all helplessly broken through, leaving only one gateway to the castle.
“If you don’t want to die, it’s better to turn everything off. I’m barely able to control it now. “If she sees that damn queen, you never know when she’ll lose her mind.”
Furthermore, Stella is currently not using her specialty, the bow.
Just by moving forward, roots grew from the ground and knocked away all the soldiers who tried to stop them.
The forest was rejecting them.
“You are probably already hearing my voice, so listen carefully! Can’t you jump out right now?! “Why on earth did you do something like that? We were just trying to save the world, so why did you do such a terrible thing?”
Stella looked at the royal castle and shouted.
But there seemed to be no answer.
Only her knights trembled in fear as the elf raged before her eyes, and she, the culprit of it all, did not show up.
To be exact, it didn’t seem to be revealed.
Great!
“No, Your Majesty! “If you go out now!”
“You don’t have to worry. “Anyway… even if you hide underground, it’s only a matter of time before you get caught.”
The tightly closed gate opened and the queen appeared.
Of course, the maids were trying to stop the Queen, but she insisted that it was okay and forced herself to come outside.
“You…!”
Stella glared fiercely at her queen.
In an instant, the roots of the tree grew and began to bind the queen’s body and tighten her body.
The queen gasped for air as her throat was strangled, but Stella took a deep breath and loosened the roots that were strangling her.
“…If you have a will, tell me. “I will listen to that much.”
“I don’t know why a hero like Stella acts like that. Were the rumors true? “In the land of the elves, a disease that causes people to lose their reason and turn them into monsters has spread.”
“Can’t you shut up?!”
Stella shouted in anger.
“Rumors? Rumors? The face is really thick. “It’s not enough that you made me hurt that kid myself… How dare you try to deceive me and our elves again?”
How dare she say something like that in front of herself, it was truly shameless.
Even though she could crush her delicate body at any time if she wanted, the queen always looked at her Stella with a gentle smile.
“It was strange from the beginning, something like that has never happened in our elven land… If you think about it, it was really easy to find the culprit.”
“So, have you found the culprit now?”
However, due to the circumstances, she could not and did not find the culprit.
“There’s no need to look for it, because you’re the only one who could do something like that.”
Stella said, glaring at her queen.
“We, the land of the elves, began to exchange little by little with your Kingdom of Hermod after the declaration of cooperation by the warriors. They provided us with supplies necessary for the war, and in return we accepted little by little the culture created by you humans. “
It was definitely not a bad choice.
Until now, elves had been nothing more than frogs in a well.
They always believed that they were the strongest race and that they were the closest to God, and they just reigned as kings within the fence they created for themselves.
“But how dare you pull a prank like that…?”
“What kind of prank were you playing?”
Hearing those words, a look of disgust appeared in his eyes.
If you think about it carefully, the place where the tragedy began in the land of the elves was where interactions with humans mainly took place.
To be exact, it was a land where envoys from the Kingdom of Hermod used to come and go, transporting various external goods.
“You poisoned our land, especially by mixing food and drink with the same poison you fed me.”
Stella also received brief hospitality in the Kingdom of Hermod.
And the wine contained a very small amount of the toxic substance that caused the tragedy.
It was like a parasite that entered the host’s body and slowly increased its rate of encroachment, something that could not be easily identified even if one looked closely.
If it weren’t for the help of Alfred and Arcel, he would have crossed the river without any way to turn back.
A river flowing only with red and thick blood.
“Poison? “I just wanted to relieve Stella a little of the sadness of having to deal with a former warrior and colleague.”
“Really? “Is it because you thought of me?”
“Yes, no matter how terrible he may have committed such a terrible act, a hero is a hero. “He must have been an invaluable friend.”
“…Then who made you commit that terrible act?”
The queen tilted her head as if asking what he was talking about.
It was absolutely disgusting that he could smile like that even though his life was on the line.
Just looking at it, it seemed like it resembled that demon, but this queen was even worse than that demon.
“Who is it that poisoned my friends and made them all die in the end…!!!”
Stella looked at the remains of the past and ended up seeing something she shouldn’t have seen.
When I first saw it, I was really shocked.
A terrible nightmare I have seen for the past 5 years.
A very terrible poison that caused near-destruction damage to the elves and caused them to kill each other.
The poison remained vivid even after five years.
All of the contents had already evaporated and disappeared, but the glasses that Stella’s colleagues drank that day were still full of that black, ominous substance.
“I heard from Karkal that you, the queen, prepared the food and drink yourself. “That’s what you did after all!”
“Maybe other people mixed it without my knowledge? “Aren’t you just guessing too much?”
“It’s okay, I guess it’s okay. But as for you-“
Quad!
“I can never leave you alive.”
The queen’s neck broke as the roots tightened.
The queen vomited blood and died just as she was smiling.
An extremely gruesome end.
Stella spat and turned her head.
“…He is disgusting until the very end.”
I didn’t want to talk anymore.
Arsel hoped to achieve peace through dialogue whenever possible, but depending on the person, there were times when dialogue was meaningless.
“So, what do you plan to do?”
So this was the last conversation.
Stella asked the person who appeared behind her.
I thought the goal was achieved anyway.
Finally, judgment has been passed on the traitor.
“Well, I don’t know. The person who knows you best is Stella. Wasn’t it?”
“…?!”
He thought it was all over without the girl having to get his hands dirty.
…It was definitely like that.
†††
Arcel had already made up his mind about what he had done, and he resolved to never be surprised and accept no matter what terrible truth was revealed.
But in the end, he could only cover his mouth and be surprised.
“What on earth is this…?”
It is said that the truth is more cruel than expected, but this is because it was beyond imagination.
-I’m sorry, hero… Please just live, hero.-
With those words, the saint’s head was beheaded by the knights.
Arcel, who was unable to move his body properly due to injuries sustained from the battle with the Demon King, had no choice but to just watch then as now.
And no matter how you look at those knights, they were insane.
It was the same for his colleagues.
Except for the saint and Arcel, who had just died, everyone in this place was being consumed by black spots.