Chapter 117: White Crown
“…It’s hot.”
A drop of sweat ran down the boy’s cheek and fell off his chin.
The endless sands spread over the boy’s eyes seemed to sway as if they were dancing.
Sand begins to rise above the horizon. It implied that a strong wind would blow again.
The desert wind was hot and accompanied by sand dust, which was very painful if it touched the skin.
If the wind gets stronger, it will soon turn into a sandstorm.
The boy’s eyes wrinkled involuntarily, and he tucked his body into the tent behind him to avoid the sand wind.
The inside of the tent was relatively cool and safe from the wind.
Although it was hard to withstand the sandstorm, it was not impossible to prepare in advance. It has been so far.
“Grandma, the wind is blowing again.”
The boy put down the bucket full of water he was holding in his hand in one corner of the tent.
“Be careful…”
The old woman’s body, shaking her hands, was very weak. She seemed too weak to endure the rough tent life.
Originally, they had a proper house, not this tent. A sturdy house that was designed to withstand sandstorms without having to go far to fetch water.
But the old woman made a fuss about setting up a tent here, and the boy, who had lost his parents early and lived with her, also lived in a tent.
The boy didn’t have many complaints about this.
His grandmother, who hadn’t uttered a word for years, suddenly started talking.
Her first words were to set up a tent.
The old woman, who was sitting in a crooked posture, was said to be one of the ‘astrologers’ on the continent a long time ago.
It was before the boy was born, so he didn’t have any more information, but he was grateful that he could communicate with his grandmother who took care of him.
“A guest is coming…”
The boy dropped the bucket of water in his hand in one corner of the tent.
The boy ran at once and found the tools needed for astrology in one corner of the tent.
The old woman’s wrinkled face smiled as she looked at him.
“Kukkuk… It’s okay today, I just want to talk…”
The boy scratched his head. That’s also for a moment. The sound of a carriage outside the tent soon reaches the boy’s ears.
A guest arrived as a carriage stopped in front of the tent, and soon someone stepped into the tent.
The unidentified person who stepped in wore expensive robes at first glance.
The woman lowered her robe and veil over her head and revealed her face.
She had blue hair that hung straight down and smiled as she looked at the old woman.
She approached the old woman and knelt down and sat across from her then opened her mouth.
“Cassandra, how have you been? I heard from you and came to see you.”
“Ah, Cecily… The gentle breeze… You finally came…”
The old woman’s answer made the boy widen his eyes in astonishment.
Delgrad is a city based on an oasis in this desert and the only city.
As far as he knew, ‘Cecily’ was the name of the lord who ruled Delgrad.
Cecily Windless, Lord of Delgrad. The boy bowed his head naturally as he realized this.
“Is that your child in the carriage…?”
Cassandra, the old woman, did not use honorifics to Cecily. She had known Cecily’s father since she was young.
“Yes, she is my second daughter Rikua.”
Cecily turned her head slightly toward where the carriage would be outside the tent and answered calmly.
How did Cassandra know that Cecily’s daughter was in a carriage that she couldn’t even see? The boy wondered how amazing that was.
She just read the stars in the sky and saw what people couldn’t see.
“She looks like you and has a good temperament. She will rule Delgrad well… Kukkuk…”
Cecily smiled, thinking of Rikua in the carriage, at Cassandra’s compliment.
“…Thank you. But I’m glad to hear your voice again, Cassandra.”
“Kukkuk…I was lucky that my life was spared.”
Cassandra had been punished for revealing the prophecy that there would be a war with the demons.
The punishment she received was silence and God took her voice away but for some reason, her voice started to come back a few days ago.
Was it God’s whim? Was it that she paid for her sin? Only God would know the answer.
“What did you ‘observe’ this time?”
Cassandra’s mouth opened with a squeak at Cecily’s careful question.
“Cecily, in the past few years, the ‘path of the stars’ has been twisted several times… And it’s gotten worse lately… The stars, the sky are shaking…”
The boy didn’t know what the ‘path of the stars’ that Cassandra mentioned was, but Cecily nodded her head slightly as if she knew what it was.
Cassandra’s expression seemed to be at least not a good thing, and the boy inferred that.
Soon Cassandra shook her body back and forth and her mumbling became worse. She was trembling with anxiety.
“It’s coming… ‘It’ is coming…”
“If you mean ‘it’… do you mean… ‘calamity’?”
Cecily asked calmly. Apparently, ‘it’ was a word that was hard to say out loud.
That didn’t mean she could avoid prophecy leakage, but she could at least summarize and organize some information.
She uttered the word ‘calamity’ from her mouth and the boy remembered his parents’ faces that he couldn’t see anymore.
The giant ‘otherworldly species’ called ‘calamity’ took the lives of many warriors of Delgrad. Among them were the boy’s parents.
It was a common thing for the people of Delgrad to deal with the otherworldly species that poured out of the gate of the otherworld, but the ‘calamity’ that day was different.
Cecily, the lord of Delgrad, also participated in the battle and cleared the ‘calamity’, but even considering that, there were a lot of casualties.
It was a terrible nightmare that should never be repeated.
Cassandra nodded her head vigorously at Cecily’s question.
“It would have been better if they were those scrap metal…”
“”…“”
The boy and Cecily were shocked by the words that the ‘calamity’ that took away the life of the boy’s father and Cassandra’s son but before their shock subsided, Cassandra opened her mouth again.
“‘It’ that came from a faraway place and wore a ‘crown’. A white crown… Whether the slaughter of the soldiers who lost their king will stop by his coming, or the invasion that will lead everything to ruin will begin… I can’t tell… There are too many… Too many branches of paths intertwined…”
It was a vague and hard to understand story.
Cecily asked if it was about the resurrection of the Demon King, but Cassandra shook her head and said that it was not the king of the demons.
After that, Cecily asked a few more questions, but Cassandra closed her mouth with the words that ‘it’ was already heading here.
There was no need to make Cassandra leak a prophecy again, so Cecily had to get on the carriage without much gain.
Rikua, who was waiting for Cecily in the carriage, looked at her for a long time.
Rikua’s face showed a faint glimpse of Cecily’s eldest daughter, Lucia.
Cecily was worried. It coincided with the time when the students from the academy came to visit.
‘I hope nothing happens…’
She wanted to think that Cassandra was just old and spouting nonsense, but she had seen with her own eyes that her father had received help from Cassandra’s prophecy-like astrology since he was a lord, so she couldn’t easily ignore it.
‘A king…’
As far as Cecily remembered, there was no country with a white crown.
The crown of the elves, which was said to be made by weaving branches of the world tree. That was the closest thing to a white crown.
However Cassandra said that it wasn’t an otherworldly species and that ‘it’ looked like it was wearing a human mask but there was an unknown darkness inside it.
What is ‘it’ that is neither human nor demon trying to do in this Delgrad?
It was too late to postpone the academy’s visit schedule now.
Cecily’s worry grew like a mountain as she thought of Lucia’s bright smile coming to Delgrad.
Zetto, who had a white bandage around his eyes, sat leaning against the carriage as he was on his way from Innocence Academy to the desert.
Unlike the shabby carriage he always rode, this was a luxurious carriage with a comfortable cushioned chair.
Zetto thought it would be a comfortable journey as soon as he saw the carriage.….and it was.
On both sides of Zetto were red hair braided neatly and platinum hair shining brightly in the moonlight.
Yuri and Aizel fell asleep on Zetto’s shoulders while in his head, Sierra’s voice grumbled,
[The disciple’s shoulder was this lady’s place…]
Sierra, who was pushed away by Yuri and Aizel, wrapped Zetto’s head in her arms.
Zetto, who couldn’t move his body at all, counted sheep while staring blankly.
Not being able to move his body was very painful, so he wanted to sleep somehow.
But maybe because he got used to going out at night every night from the game, he wasn’t that sleepy.
Soon Zetto thought he could finally fall asleep while counting sheep.
-Clang!
If only the carriage hadn’t stopped suddenly.
Zetto twitched his mouth and wanted to get angry at Edward, whose voice came from outside the carriage.
“Everyone~! It seems we’ve been attacked by bandits~! There are quite a lot of them?!”
Edward’s cheerful voice passed through Zetto’s carriage and woke up the others inside.
“Ouch…”
Yuri hit her head and made a painful sound.
“…”
Aizel bit her teeth hard as if she was annoyed from being disturbed.
“…We met bandits. They said there are many of them and asked students to help.”
Zetto finally regained his freedom, got up from his seat and opened the door.
The students who had just woken up from sleep didn’t know what was going on, but they followed Zetto soon.
Lucia, who was in one corner of the carriage, was still not awake, and Amon said that she wouldn’t be of any help anyway, and everyone nodded their heads and agreed so no one woke Lucia up.
When Zetto and his party got off the carriage, they saw students getting off from other carriages. It was a very busy atmosphere, but no one was nervous.
They thought it wouldn’t be a problem because there were instructors and the bandits couldn’t dare touch them.
Various thoughts passed through the students’ heads at that time.
“Kill the women and spare the men’s livesㅡ!!!”
A rough scream from the bandits came from far away in front of the road where the carriage was heading.
Judging by the sound of the scream, it seemed to be a bandit group composed entirely of women.
Zetto scratched his head with his arms crossed.
He had noticed that they were approaching through his senses and this was an event he had experienced in the game.
This was an event that only happened when Edward was an instructor. Of course, no student was injured.
The other instructors were hiding in the forest for safety and watching over the students. They would respond like arrows when the students seemed to be in danger.
Yuri found Edward, who was the main cause of the situation and asked him a question.
“Instructor Edward, do we have to kill the bandits or capture them?”
Edward, who was jumping around with excitement, answered Yuri’s question.
“Student Yuri, don’t you think it’s too early to kill? You have all learned how to deal with your opponents without killing them, so think of this as part of the lesson!”
Yuri, who heard Edward’s crazy answer, glanced at Aizel and wondered if she would kill the bandits without any problem.
Soon Aizel, who had a stiff face from having her ‘sweet time’ with Zetto, interrupted and asked Edward a rather fierce question.
“Instructor, what if a ‘misfortune’ happens and the bandits die while dealing with them? For example, if you shoot magic wrong… or if your eyes are uncomfortable and you swing your sword wrong… that kind of ‘mistake’.”
“…I’m curious about that too.”
Zetto, who was next to Aizel, joined in.
Edward’s suspicious eyes narrowed even more as he pondered their questions.
Soon he opened his mouth with his index finger raised.
“Then…there’s nothing I can do! This is a life-threatening situation!”