Chapter 221

Chapter 221
## Chapter: 221
Chapter Title: The Brats

The Awakener community’s Player Talk forum.

It was as if a massive cyclone had just torn through the boards.

* The Hero Society kids are absolutely screwed, aren’t they?
* Why? What happened?
* Don’t you know Serengeti, the White Knight? She was one of the elite guardians who stayed by Wilhelm’s side during that massive expedition.
* Obviously. She’s legendary. The one NPC who is famous for never turning her back on her lord.
* Exactly. Remember that story about the guy who literally offered up two entire cities just to recruit her?
* Oh, you mean that old guy from the Aslan Merchant Association?
* Are you talking about the bidding war from back when they were trying to put Serengeti on their payroll?
* Wait, I thought all of Wilhelm’s loyalists were wiped out?

The White Knight Serengeti!

She was already a household name among the player base.

As the sole daughter of the prestigious Wyzer Marquis family, she possessed an untouchable social pedigree combined with a terrifyingly high ceiling for growth as a warrior.

She was stunning, uncorruptible, and the local rumors made her sound like a literal saint. Consequently, when Serengeti reached adulthood, a localized conflict—almost a full-scale war—erupted over her.

Every faction wanted to either hire her or marry into her family.

The tale of the leader of the Aslan Merchant Association—one of the three titans of continental trade—proposing a deal worth two metropolitan centers just to secure her services was already a part of player lore.

Yet, Serengeti had picked Knight King Wilhelm.

She didn’t hesitate for a second before pledging her sword to him.

From that moment on, her devotion never flickered, not even once.

* Right now in the Valan Kingdom, Serengeti is airing out all the dirty laundry from the great expedition. She’s publicly accusing the Hero Society scumbags and the sages of the Tower of Magic of total betrayal lololol.
* Holy crap. She’s actually alive?
* Alive? She’s currently running circles around everyone. The elite knights trained by King Friedrick are being dismantled like amateurs.
* The knights of King Friedrick? Those total fanatics?
* If this turns out to be legit, the butterfly effect is going to be world-changing…
* No kidding. And since the info is coming straight from Serengeti herself…
* I’ve got my popcorn ready lololol.
* Grab me a soda too!
* I can’t wait to see the mental gymnastics the Tower sages and those Six Hero Society losers use to spin this one lololol.
* Spin? They’re past that. They should just prepare to have their skulls cracked lolololololol.
* Is that all? What were the specific details Serengeti gave?
* The rest of it is pretty confusing. She claimed that Wilhelm actually succeeded in slaying the Demon King?
* What? I thought the official story was that they were all ambushed and slaughtered by the Demon King?

Wilhelm was confirmed dead.

There was no doubt about it.

Every player had witnessed his personal gear being broken down and sold off in the Golden Rule Shop.

But if he had truly defeated the Demon King, then Wilhelm ought to be drawing breath.

However, the only survivor from Wilhelm’s inner circle to make a reappearance was Serengeti.

And she was only showing up now, an eternity after the expedition had been declared a failure.

It was a tangled web of logical gaps.

The community had no choice but to be utterly baffled.

* Wait, what? Hang on, I’m logging back in for a second. Who is that guy?
* What’s the matter? What’s happening?
* …Hey, where did the guy who was leaking the info go?
* Isn’t that the royal palace of the Valan Kingdom?
* Who is currently occupying the castle?
* Dammit, the suspense is killing me!

…What a peculiar void.

The moment my foot touched the ground, a system alert informed me that the master of this abyss, the “God’s Flesh Hybrid,” had taken an interest in my presence. Yet, there was no immediate hostility.

Usually, when a trespasser breaks in, the owner moves to eliminate them.

‘I don’t see anything at all.’

There wasn’t so much as an insect moving in the distance.

This was supposed to be hybrid territory—it should have been swarming with those monsters.

Is it waiting for me to do something specific?

That wasn’t the only anomaly.

‘There’s no trace of abyss miasma…’

Normally, the abyss begins to rot a visitor the second they enter.

Linger too long, and your mind fractures, your flesh twists into a hybrid form, or your heart simply stops.

But this realm I had entered felt disturbingly serene.

It was just a vast, infinite horizon, reminiscent of a calm, shoreless sea.

“How did you end up traveling with the Palga Knights?”

I eventually broke the silence as we walked.

Isabella provided the answer.

“The young lady of the Dersian family came looking for me.”

“I was aware of that much. I knew you two departed for the Dersian estate together after that.”

The Dersian noblewoman I had encountered at the imperial auction house.

The girl who had stepped into the role of the family heir in Isabella’s place, all because of the divine affliction.

She had sought out Isabella solely because of my influence.

In reality, she was supposed to track me down, but she stumbled upon Isabella first.

“Correct. She admitted she was nothing more than my stand-in. She even went into great detail explaining the nature of the ‘divine affliction’.”

“‘Divine affliction’…”

“It’s a ‘malady of the heavens’ that impacts a tiny fraction of the people in Pangeniar. Much like a trance, your physical form is piloted by an external force against your own intent. It happened to me, to Isaac, and to Balte.”

She had managed to connect all the dots.

To be more accurate, it’s the players who are doing the piloting.

Isabella went on.

“Furthermore, within the empire, they designate body doubles for anyone caught in the grip of the divine affliction. These substitutes live their entire existence never realizing they are just shadows.”

“And what happens to the original people who are afflicted?”

“They are scrubbed from every official record. Even if they were to reappear, they are dismissed as mere lookalikes with no claim to their identity.”

Total erasure from history.

This was a detail I hadn’t heard before.

‘The high-ranking members of the Reaper Church were supposedly all victims of the divine affliction.’

Does that mean they didn’t have doubles?

It would make sense—the ‘true lineage’ pact likely necessitates the affliction itself.

They appeared to be the outliers.

Regardless.

“So, returning home would have been a waste of time?”

Isabella had gone back to the Dersian clan, only to turn up shortly after as a trainee within the Palga Knights.

Even the Knight Commander, Raiga, was under the impression she was just a Dersian child.

“The Dersian lady… she is dead.”

“……?”

……Beg pardon?

I was momentarily stunned by the statement.

Hadn’t that girl been the type to fight tooth and nail for survival?

The woman who had groveled at my feet and pledged her soul just to stay breathing.

And she just… expired?

I gave her a skeptical look, and Isabella’s expression turned as cold as granite.

“The Dersian clan. They murdered the lady because she started poking around in their dark secrets, and then they tossed me into the ‘underground dungeon.’ That family—they are far from sane.”

She had the look of someone who had witnessed something traumatic.

For the Queen of the Desert to be wearing such an expression was telling.

If Isabella, a woman forged in the fires of hell, was this unsettled, the reality must have been nightmarish.

“What exactly did you find down there?”

Isabella took a heavy breath and forced the words out.

“Biological experiments, the mass-production of doubles, mental conditioning… I feigned a successful brainwashing and took on the persona of the deceased Dersian lady. That allowed Raiga to notice me and pull me out into the knights… but…”

This was insane.

If her account was accurate, these people were the definition of monsters.

The Dersian family were the wealthiest financiers in the empire.

For them to be conducting such atrocities in a hidden basement meant the imperial government was likely complicit in the cover-up.

Isabella had pretended to be a broken puppet, mimicking the dead lady to catch Raiga’s attention and secure a spot as a Palga apprentice.

“But while I was in that dungeon, I caught whispers regarding the Reaper Church. Specifically, that the leader in the golden mask is actually a ‘double’ for Wilhelm…”

The rabbit hole just kept getting deeper.

What kind of revelation was this?

The golden mask was a stand-in for Wilhelm?

It wasn’t that the masked man had the affliction, but that he was filling the void left by an afflicted Wilhelm?

Wait, even before considering that—was Wilhelm originally from the empire?

Was he of the imperial bloodline?

Isabella looked me straight in the eyes and clarified.

“They claimed the legitimate successor to the imperial throne isn’t the man in the golden mask, but Wilhelm himself.”

“……”

I found myself at a loss for words.

There was no proof this was the truth, of course.

It could very well be baseless rumors circulating in the dark.

Still, I couldn’t simply dismiss it.

To get a definitive answer.

‘I have to tear that mask off his face.’

I needed to see what was behind it.

If the man under the gold mask shared Wilhelm’s features, the theory would gain massive weight.

That mask, which supposedly couldn’t be removed—I would have to rip it away by force.

Our talk persisted for some time.

It mostly centered on the observations Isabella had made while following Raiga and the Palga Knights.

About Raiga’s pursuit of the shards and the so-called ‘blessing.’

“The Fragments of Ruin trigger ‘anomalies’ whenever they emerge. Raiga referred to these as ‘bugs.’ He stated that one requires a ‘blessing’ to stand against those ‘bugs.'”

“A blessing?”

I remembered the ongoing debates about whether Wilhelm or the Knight Commander Raiga held the title of the strongest.

That was the context in which Isabella brought up the ‘blessing.’

“Yes. However, the method to acquire it is a secret known only to Raiga. Only the ‘disciples’ he deems worthy are granted the ‘blessing.'”

“Is that why you’ve been biding your time as a trainee?”

“…It is.”

Isabella gave a firm nod.

She likely stayed behind thinking it would eventually benefit me.

A disciple, eh?

Raiga was scouring the world for a successor worthy of Palga’s legacy.

He had even organized a grand tournament this time to filter through the elite.

‘I should sign up.’

…It looked like participating in the tournament was unavoidable.

The blessing was a far more valuable target than any trophy.

As long as I kept the goat mask firmly in place and maintained my cover, I could probably pull it off.

“Randolph.”

“Yeah?”

“If I may be so bold… could you tell me about the ‘insurance’ you mentioned?”

“Are you still concerned about Serengeti?”

“……I am.”

Isabella and Serengeti had developed a surprisingly close bond.

Their temperaments were opposites, but they seemed to balance each other perfectly.

And regardless of Serengeti’s prowess, King Friedrick was a genuine terror.

Her anxiety was justified.

I gave a casual shrug.

“I dispatched my kids to handle it.”

“Your… children?”

Isabella’s eyes went wide, looking like dinner plates.

She looked at me as if I had been harboring a secret family in the shadows.

Since I had never mentioned having offspring, her shock was understandable.

I replied with a smirk.

“They refer to me as their father.”

They weren’t my biological children, obviously.

But the mere thought of those two caused a genuine smile to touch my lips.

“Lukaria. What’s the plan?”

“Father… he told us only to step in if his life was on the line…”

“He’s not ‘father’—he’s the Lord God! Have you already lost your mind?”

“B-But…”

The two youngsters.

Isera and Lukaria were having an intense whispering match in the middle of the bustling crowd.

As Lukaria’s eyes began to well up, Isera let out a frustrated click of her tongue.

“Did you forget what Queen Hana instructed? We have to use the proper titles. Lukaria, are you really going to keep being disrespectful to the Lord God?”

The two had emerged from the Dragon God hearts of Isera and Lukaria within the breeding chambers.

They were loyal ‘Overlords’ entirely consecrated to Queen Hana and Randolph.

They were evolved beings who had fully inherited the essence and the divine status of the Dragon Gods!

“F-Fine…”

“Good. So do you understand what our objective is now?”

“What are we supposed to do?”

Isera slapped her palm against her forehead at Lukaria’s blank question.

She had already gone over the strategy more than a dozen times.

Lukaria only seemed to process the information she found entertaining.

“…Pay attention. If that woman gets into trouble, we intervene. You use your powers to brainwash every single person in the vicinity, and I will take on the appearance of ‘Serengeti’ and make my move.”

“That one demon over there looks like he might be resistant to mental control…”

Isera crossed her arms, deep in thought.

It was a fair point—there was one demonic entity present who was clearly more powerful than the rest.

Then, her gaze locked with the demon’s, and Isera tilted her head curiously.

“Hmm. I suppose we should take care of that demon first then?”