Chapter 198: Karina Dragonia (3)
[Join the pantheon, Dragonia, we are willing to accept you into our community of destiny.]
“”—————“”
For a long time, no one responded to the goddess’s voice.
Neither King Lionheart, who had long served the gods, nor Dragonia, the dragon king who had been their arch-enemy and ultimately defeated.
“This can’t be happening!”
Leon was the first to react, recognizing the implications of the offer to join the pantheon.
Dragonia will join the Alliance. It meant one thing.
It meant to recognize Dragonia as one of the faithful, to give him sanctity.
[Gahahahahahahahahahaha—!]
The dragon spirit, now a thought, laughs maniacally, and rightly so.
The enemies it had fought for so long, the ones that had finally defeated him, had now come to him with a humiliating offer.
And it’s all because of a single human.
They have come to the unthinkable conclusion that the gods will surrender their divinity to save a mere mortal.
[Laughs]
They would give up their divinity for a mere mortal? Is a mere mortal worth that much?
[This is not a mere mortal. This is my knight, the honored daughter of the Lionheart King, the Grail Guardian, the representative of divinity.]
[I know what the Lionheart King means to you. Have you ever offered such convenience to any of his predecessors, not even the first Lionheart King?]
Of course not.
The gods are the guardians of providence. They must adhere to principles, and while they favored and blessed their agents, they never departed from reason.
This was even more unconventional than raising the dead in paradise.
“Impossible! Impossible!”
Leon dropped to both knees, sheathing the sword he had pointed at Dragonia, as if ecstatic to even hear the gods’ proposal.
“To surrender the seat of exalted divinity for the convenience of a mere mortal, and a vile lizard at that!”
[This guy?]
Dragonia bristled at the insult, which was the last thing he wanted to hear, but Arianna persuaded Leon to listen.
[Leon, my knight, you are not a mere mortal. The gods, the world, all the souls that have accumulated since the beginning of history owe you a debt, and the gods owe you repayment.]
“But—!”
[Say no more, my knight, for the gods’ love for you is more than you can imagine. You deserve it.]
[Ha——.]
The dragon king was dumbfounded that a human could be so favored by the gods.
It was not merely unreasonable, but a surrender of the gods’ absolute authority, their divinity, to an enemy they had long sought to destroy.
‘Did I mention that he single-handedly destroyed the demons?’
There were not only feeder demons, but also Lords.
The transcendent power of Demon Lords is something the Dragon King knows well. Although they tend to be regarded as being just above the level of an archduke, they are not ‘archdukes’.
They were older than the Dragon King himself, and even the gods of the Ten Thousand Gods could not surpass the power of the Demon Lords.
A being that could defeat such demon lords and save even their afterlife, which should have been destroyed, would be——
‘The only hope.’
No wonder the gods were so desperate.
The gods, their temples and their paradise, are sustained by the existence of a single man, Leon.
[But, arrogant gods, do you think that I, the Dragon King of Drakkara, will sit on the same cushion as you? I am a myth. You are but a second-class citizen.]
“How dare you, you lizard, if you receive the offer you kneel down and take it!”
[Say one thing for or against——.]
Dragonia said something in disbelief, but Leon returned it with a barrage of colorful insults and accusations.
[Consider our proposal, Dragon King, it is not a bad one, even for you.]
After the dragon king rejected the humiliating proposal, the goddess calmly began to persuade him.
[Our world has already been destroyed by evil, and we have found a new home, where it is not a far stretch to restore our faith.]
In other words, with a spoon, Dragonia could become one of the gods.
Dragonia retorted.
[I have already established absolute power here. This world is mine.]
The Dragonia Empire. The world’s only hegemonic power. Karina is the living absolute of that empire.
I am already in a godlike position, so why should I have to live in a palace beyond my power?
[You’re not a god here, just a parasite attached to the Emperor.]
[What?]
[You should know. Why have you spent thousands of years inhabiting the hearts of past archdukes and never been resurrected. It is because you are a being dependent on flesh.]
Goddess Arianna spoke of the benefits to Dragonia of attaining divinity.
[If you attain divinity, you will become an object of faith. And the body that will be constructed from the faith gained from worship will be an incarnate one, not a fleshly one that will imprison your soul.]
In other words, true immortality. And for this, Arianna emphasizes, Dragonia must be the object of faith, not worship.
[And most of all──]
Arianna delivered the final blow.
[The resurrection of your race is also possible.]
[——]
The most primal power of the gods is the power of creation.
Light, darkness, sun, moon, sky, sea, flame, life, death, iron, all those primal powers nurture the world and make living things flourish.
[We will work together. I, Arianna’s light, will illuminate the shells of the dragons to be born, and Demera’s life will sprout them. The sky, the sea, and the flames will bless them, and the sun and moon will guard their days and nights.]
And they shall be fruitful and multiply, as all living things do.
[——]
It reminded him of the responsibilities of a dragon king.
He, too, was the king of his race. As long as he claimed to be king, even of the myths themselves, he had responsibilities.
The dragon king’s anguish did not last long.
* * * * *
The Black Gate in Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States of America, has kept the entire country on edge.
A red gate in the center of the capital is enough to cause chaos, but the appearance of a black gate, the scourge of human history, immediately paralyzes all administrative work in the United States and causes hundreds of thousands of evacuees.
Considering that each of the previous Black Gates has either destroyed a nation or brought it to the brink of destruction, these measures are not insufficient.
“When the hell are they coming out?”
U.S. President Anthony Hopson waited day after day for the Hunters to return from the Black Gate, which had taken over a section of Washington, D.C., and was now in the middle of the city.
It’s been more than 20 days without anyone coming out of the gate, and it’s driving him crazy and jumping up and down, wondering if the raid has failed and the survivors are coming back.
“They must have won, right?”
“That’s because——”
“No, our country’s powerful hunters have gone, and the Temple of the Ten Thousand Gods has come in full force, so there’s no way we can’t clear it!”
Then why did you ask— The aides were dumbfounded by President Hobson’s tirade, but they understood his feelings.
The social and economic repercussions of a Black Gate dungeon break in the capital could only be described as horrific.
On top of that, the Hunters mobilized at this gate represented the best of America’s elite forces. Losing them could do more damage than blowing up Washington.
“Mr. President, a call from President Ahn of South Korea.”
The hotline set up for this event rings busy. He’s probably asking about the status of the Gate, or how the Hunters are doing.
It’s not just the U.S. that’s sending their best hunters and getting shit on.
“Fuck, they sent reporters and know everything, what else does he want to know?
Hobson realized that the leaders of these countries had less patience than he thought.
Right now, even longtime ally Britain was scrambling to figure out how to take responsibility for the loss of its S-class hunters.
For President Hobson, who had used the best hunters of his allies to ensure the success of the assault, the failure of this mission would be the end of his political life.
Of course, the allied administrations that decided to send their best hunters to the United States would also go down with him.
In any case, if the raid fails, it won’t be over with the deaths of one or two people.
“God, watch over America——”
As the president prayed to God, several of his aides prayed to the gods of the TTG Temple.
To their relief, there hasn’t been much movement at the mainland South Korean shrine.
If the Lion King had died inside the gate, the feedback would have immediately triggered something in the temple’s home country of South Korea.
Not to mention the fact that South Korean President Ahn Dong-gil has been summoning TTG Temple officials to his office on a daily basis.
With the world’s eyes on them, it was the 23rd day of the attack on the Black Gate. With a snowy white Christmas predicted, not everyone was in the festive mood.
“Mr. President, Mr. President, Mr. President!”
Aides rushed to the bleary-eyed President Hobson, who had spent the night without sleeping in the temporary presidential office away from Washington.
“At the gate—! At the gate, the hunters are returning!”
“All right, let’s go!”
President Hobson straightened his tie and hurried to the military airfield. He wanted to get a handle on the situation as soon as possible.
* * * * *
“There really are beasts of iron running around.”
On a busy street in Washington, D.C. Karina strolls down the street with Leon, marveling.
The streets are deserted, filled with tall buildings and shops. Karina wondered how such a busy street could be so deserted.
“When the gates appeared, people took refuge in case the monsters inside came out. This gate was the highest ranked of them all, so there shouldn’t be anyone around here.”
“Indeed——.”
Nodding in agreement, Karina looked around at the empty storefronts.
“Is your body all right?”
“The body of a Holy Knight can’t be bad.”
“Okay— then.”
Leon walked awkwardly ahead down the street. A walk together after hundreds of years was both welcome and awkward.
“And yet, do you resent this king?”
The words implied so much but Karina shook her head.
“As I told you two hundred years ago, it was a choice Your Majesty had to make.”
“Not as King Lionheart, not as Archduke of Dragonia, but as Leon—Karina, your father.”
“——”
Karina stopped in her tracks at Leon’s question. Her footsteps stopped in the snowy street. Even as the snow piled up around her feet, she couldn’t answer easily.
Leon’s actions and his judgment were absolutely correct as a king but as her father, as Leon, as Castile’s husband?
It was wrong–she had to say so. Leon the husband, Leon the father, Leon the king, no matter what logical or grandiose reasons he might give, should not have done it.
The clear answer did not fall easily from Karina’s lips.
It’s hard for her to say the words, not just as Karina, but as Karina Dragonia.
“I think you’re wrong. Or, more accurately, I wish you hadn’t.”
For the sake of 30,000 Northern troops, for the sake of their souls— Leon, the father, doesn’t want her to sacrifice. He says it’s wrong.
“—— Me too.”
Because Leon said it first, Karina could speak her mind.
The words she’s been holding onto for so long, the words she wanted to say but couldn’t. For the first time, Karina vented the resentment she thought she shouldn’t even think about.
“My father, my mother’s husband, shouldn’t have done that. He should have saved her.”
There’s no blame in her voice, just mutual empathy.
For the first time in two hundred years, they’re honest with each other. The initial resentment between the father and daughter, who knew each other’s responsibilities and couldn’t blame the other, actually made them laugh.
For two people who don’t laugh much, it was a faint, faint laugh, but it would grow.
-Kii-ii-ii-gain—!
A large SUV screeches to a halt in front of the two on Washington Street deserted by evacuees.
“Your Majesty Leon!”
It’s President Anthony Hopson, bursting out of the car door.
He’s been traveling nonstop in military transport planes and bulletproof vehicles for two hours since the pair crossed the gate.
“You’re safe!”
“Who is it?”
“The king of this country or something.”
“???”
If it’s a king, it’s a king, but what is a king or something like that?
Apart from that, President Hobson, who had been waiting anxiously for Leon’s safe return, expressed his delight and noticed Karina at Leon’s side.
“And her?”
As President Hobson expressed his curiosity, Karina introduced herself.
“I am Karina Dragonia, the rightful heir to King Leon Dragonia Lionheart and the ‘Grand Duke’ of the realm of Dragonia.”
