76 . Revealing the past (8)
After sitting down, Leon immediately stopped talking.
“I am not such a leisurely person. Time is running out, so I can tell you one or the other. The reason I abandoned you that day, the identity of that child. The choice is yours.”
After his words, Leon looked at the elves’ eyes and tapped his table with his fingers as if urging them on.
The man I had been with for longer than anyone else knew me better than anyone else.
I got annoyed with the way I looked at him as if he already knew what choice I was going to make, and I got sick of myself knowing that I had no choice but to make the same choice.
I bit my lip and spat out the words I had been holding in my mouth.
“… The latter.”
“Yeah, I knew that.”
I heard a gasping sound behind me, and I turned to look at the children.
They, the source of the sound, held their breath and, like me, were staring straight into my eyes.
At first glance, it seemed like a peaceful face, but I wasn’t the one who couldn’t read the confusion behind that expression.
Although the meaning has faded a bit now, I am their father.
“I….”
Leon, who had been looking this way for a long time, opened his lips the moment the children were about to say something.
“Now you have to focus on me. If you miss even one word, it’s your hand.”
“Let’s talk later. Got it?”
At Leon’s words, I tried to suppress my uncomfortable feelings and restrained the children, then turned my back and looked at Leon.
After remaining silent for a while, Leon broke the silence with a deep sigh and carefully began to speak.
“Let’s get straight to the point. First of all, that kid is exactly what you think is the demon king. Of course, when you look at it from the public eye.”
Being a demon king didn’t have to be a muscular macho.
Didn’t even my children hide their unimaginable identities behind their delicate appearance?
I cast my gaze at the girl behind Leon and asked in a rather cynical tone.
“If that kid is the Demon King, shouldn’t he be fooled by his appearance?”
It was unacceptable to be deceived by appearances and act against the will of mankind. If Leon’s words are true, isn’t he the root cause of the war and the greatest enemy of mankind?
If Leon is deceived by that child’s appearance and intends to become an enemy of mankind, I will throw away even the slightest good memory I feel for him.
Seeing my expression, Leon opened his mouth again, laughing as if he had read my thoughts.
“There is no such thing as you think. You said it was the truth of this world. You’re barely noticing that it doesn’t end like this, right? Unless you’re an idiot, anyone can guess.”
Rihanna, who was standing in the back and listening quietly, flinched, but she chose to ignore it for now. Everyone knew she wasn’t very smart.
I looked straight into Leon’s face again and urged him to answer.
“So? What’s next?”
“Are you asking because you really don’t know? If this child really is what people call the Demon King, I would have put a knife through his heart that day without hesitation and announce the victory of mankind.”
But the reality was not like that.
The news that Leon was defeated by the demon king and disappeared was quickly reported all over the continent, and he was being forgotten or cursed in people’s memories.
Is there a reason to give up all the enormous honor and wealth that would be gained by catching the Demon King? Just because the demon king is in the form of a child? He was not a man who would abandon his cause for personal feelings.
Leon continued his story while sipping liquid from a small pink cup he didn’t know where it came from.
“But what if that child was created by the demon king? Also by humans? Do I still have to raise my sword for the sake of humans?”
“… What?”
Unknowingly, my reaction to the unrealistic story was delayed. Leon, not paying attention to my reaction, glanced at the girl and said,
“What I saw in this place that day was not the demon king, but a hero who was prepared to die.”
After speaking, Leon got up from his seat and approached the girl to check her condition again.
“A single hero… what is that?”
Leon cut off my words with a single knife and spoke in a firm tone.
“Ain, can you imagine? The moment when the kid who should be playing with his friends is looking at me with an expression that has already accepted death… What would my feelings be like at that moment?”
“Now, wait a minute.”
Too much information goes into my head and I can’t organize it properly.
My head is pounding, and my vision is blurred. I took a deep breath, organized my thoughts in my head, and then vomited out what I felt to Leon.
“So you mean this kid is not the demon king, he is a scarecrow made by someone else… do you want to say that? And are you saying that we humans made this child the demon king?”
Hearing my words, Leon nodded his head in affirmation.
“Yes, it’s convenient because I understand it at once. The beggar behind me still doesn’t seem to understand what he’s talking about.”
Rihanna’s expression crumpled for a moment, but she must have known it herself. Now she knows she can’t get into this conversation.
Leon sat down again and rested his chin on his chin.
“Ahin, have you seen me together when you were young? What expressions were on the faces of the warriors who came back after winning the battle against the demon king? At the time, I thought that was an expression of exhaustion from a long trip, right? But that wasn’t it. Those guys are chosen. It means that they harbored hatred for their decision to kill the children who became demon lords due to human greed with their own hands.”
The small cup Leon was holding on to was shattered in an instant, as if he couldn’t hold back his anger rising as he spoke. Leon’s hand was bleeding from the shrapnel, but he didn’t care and spoke in a voice still full of rage.
“If I kill this child, I will be able to stop the current war. At least a few more years of peaceful world. But i realized Even if you kill the current demon king, the second and third victims will continue to appear. I can’t just stand by and watch that. I don’t mind if the world hates me I just follow my convictions.”
“And on that day, after a few conversations with me, that child agreed to everything. Rather than continuing to increase the number of victims who will succeed him, to bear and bear all the pain himself. So, after removing some of my mana, I suppress the heart of this child who has turned into a demon. If I do this, I can control the demons around here right now.”
Terrible. In other words, these children, at the age of being loved by their parents, were forcibly turned into devils by someone and continued to commit such evil deeds.
But who the hell? For what purpose do you do this inefficient work? Besides, why the hell are these kids obediently following these things?
One word that contained all my doubts flowed naturally from my mouth.
“What the hell….”
“This is important. Who do you think are the ones who turn children into demon lords and continue the war by force?”
If I knew that, I wouldn’t have such a headache.
However, Leon’s eyes seemed to know the answer. Leon nodded his head once, and he naturally started talking.
“Most people long for hope in despair. The moment they know it’s never out of reach, people get frustrated. In other words, a war that never ends is like a nightmare for ordinary people. Who do you think will benefit the most from the process of ruling over the panicked humans? Country? Hero? Devil? No, it is faith and religion.”
After he finished speaking, Leon looked at him and bit his mouth shut. It’s like he’s being watched by someone.
“This is all I can say. Faith and Religion… Who just can’t remember? Right next to us….”
It feels like I’ve hit his head with a hammer.
Cassandra’s words that Maria is the problem flashes through her mind again.
“You seem to have come to a realization now. The truth I can tell you is this. After that, jump on your own feet and check.”
After all the talking, Leon got up from his seat and came to me.
“Oh, take Cassandra. To be honest, I alone have enough energy, but this guy’s body is fine when he’s bored at night.”
Leon instantly erased the serious expression he had just been talking about from his face, and then, with the smirk he usually wears when spitting out jokes and dirty jokes, he naturally approached the children and held out his hand.
Olivia, who had Cassandra with her, didn’t particularly want it, but when I nodded her head, she handed Cassandra over to Leon as if it couldn’t be helped.
Even though Cassandra was treated like that, when she was next to Leon, she blushed with a womanly expression she had never shown before when she was with us.
“The next time we meet again, I will give you all the answers you want. Do you still have one left?”
Leon passed me by and opened the door to the castle and said one last thing.
“Until then, don’t die. You better not trust the crazy bitches next to you too much.”
After those words, Leon’s body faded and he disappeared in an instant, as if he had just dreamed.