Chapter 77: Alexander II of Helios
Once the Amber Heart was securely tucked beneath my shirt, I turned my back on the stone sarcophagus and walked silently from the ancient chamber.
After all, it was exactly what it appeared to be: a desolate, hidden tomb.
A tomb built by Cassian Helios for his monstrous older brother, King Alexander II.
According to the royal archives, the relationship between the two brothers had always been described as cold and fractured. Alexander had never outright physically bullied Cassian, but he had consistently and publicly disrespected him, often loudly proclaiming that his younger brother was weak, pathetic, and entirely unworthy of carrying the sacred blood of Helios.
It certainly had not helped mend their fractured bond that Cassian had repeatedly spoken out against his sovereign brother, openly condemning his ruthless, unprovoked war against the entire continent as despicable and needlessly cruel.
Indeed, from the perspective of any other sovereign nation of that bloody era, they all believed Alexander II had gone completely mad. Without warning, he had openly declared total war against Gardenia, Radhamantia, Lunaria, and even the holy Empire of Luminar.
The worst part of his madness was that he was actually winning those battles.
There was no denying that Alexander II played a monumental role in nurturing the deeply rooted, festering hatred the surrounding kingdoms held against Helios today. This was especially true for the Radhamantian Empire, whose enmity toward Helios had already been inflamed by the tragedy involving the royal twins.
Over the intervening centuries, tensions had slowly cooled, eventually settling into a fragile, strained peace, or at least a tense neutrality between the two great empires. But then Alexander II had abruptly reignited the flames of war against them, and he had won a crushing victory.
To seal his dominance, he publicly executed the defeated Radhamantian Emperor and Empress by hurling them alive directly into the sacred Flame of Helios.
It was an act of great cruelty. He had kept them alive, shielding them from the blistering heat with his own fire as he dragged them to the very summit of the Tower. Only once they stood face-to-face with the blinding core of the Flame did he finally strip away his protection and throw them both into the blinding flame.
He sadistically forced their captive son and daughter to watch the entire, agonizing execution. In the immediate aftermath, he claimed the weeping Radhamantian Princess as a war prize, adding her to his already numerous collection of wives, while forcing her brother onto the throne to act as his obedient, broken puppy Emperor.
Yes, he was a truly hardcore King, wasn’t he?
That young, puppet Emperor remained traumatized by Alexander II until the day he died, long after the tyrant himself had died. That was the suffocating level of fear Alexander had successfully instilled across the continent during his reign.
And that was merely what he had done to Radhamantia. It was better not to even speak of the atrocities he committed to earn the eternal, burning hatred of the Lunarian Empire and Luminar.
As the King of Helios, Alexander harbored also a special hatred for both of those powers, and he never missed a single opportunity to humiliate their armies on the battlefield, gleefully rubbing salt into their bleeding wounds. It was widely rumored that he would purposefully allow their generals to win minor skirmishes, only to crush them in the end, making his ultimate victory all the more bitter, salty, and humiliating for his enemies.
Yes, he was a deeply twisted, sadistic King.
Yet, despite his casual, horrifying cruelty, his younger brother Cassian had still gone out of his way to recover his body and construct a hidden tomb for him. In the end, it was difficult to tell what Cassian truly felt toward the monster who had shared his blood.
As for what I felt? Well, I did not want to sound like a complete psychopath, but Alexander II was the King I admired above all others.
And surprisingly, that had been the case even before I had awakened the memories of my past life.
I admired him simply because of how strong, confident, and unapologetic he had been. He was a King who was equally feared and respected, holding the entire world firmly by the throat.
Throughout his entire, bloody reign, no one dared to even think about attacking Helios, let alone attempting an assassination or staging a coup. Even the most vile, shadowy organizations of the era, such as the Black Sun and the Thirteen Moons, cowered in the dark.
There were gruesome, detailed accounts locked in the archives describing exactly what Alexander II had done to the captured members of those organizations who were foolish enough to cross him.
And well... you can bet they thought three times before ever making another attempt on his life.
When I was a child, I had admired him simply for his courage. Right now, however, I admired him almost entirely for his ruthlessness.
He may have been definitely cruel, earning whatever dark insults history chose to hurl at him, but he had loved Helios more than anything else. The agonizing humiliations Helios had endured in the past under the rule of weaker Kings had deeply angered him. He was a patriotic man who burned with an obsessive desire to take revenge for those past indignities and honestly, he had succeeded spectacularly.
He had wanted to make Helios feared, refusing to let it be seen as just another small, insignificant Kingdom dwarfed by the great Empires surrounding it. And he had achieved that, too.
I sighed softly as I reached the top of the ancient stairs. The moment I cleared the threshold, the stone floor of the ruined throne room ground shut behind me, sealing the hidden passage as if there had never been anything buried below.
Now, however, six hundred years after the tyrant’s death, Helios had regressed back to its previous state as a ’small’, vulnerable Kingdom. Even worse, it was widely treated as a cowardly nation that ran from war, largely due to the strict policies of peace established by my late father.
Obviously, I was far from believing my father was a coward. On the contrary, I deeply loved him and remained grateful for everything he had accomplished during his reign.
He had successfully maintained a fragile peace and protected our borders for years, but he had ultimately died for it, assassinated in cold blood.
His sudden death had marked the end of that peaceful era. They had to lay hands on the one King who desired peace above all else.
I was not going to walk that same naive path, nor was I going to die at the end of an assassin’s blade.
As of today, Helios was universally perceived as cowardly, weak, and brittle, a dying realm teetering on the verge of collapse under the clumsy hands of a new King who was world-renowned for his incompetence and cowardice.
Yes, the stories of my former frailty had been spread across the world since I was merely a child. Salacious gossip, especially concerning a weak royal heir, was golden news, so of course it had quickly infected every court on the continent.
As a result, no one today considered Helios a legitimate threat. Far from it. The surrounding Empires were likely entirely focused on scheming how to snatch Helios away from their rival Kingdoms, rather than worrying about facing any actual resistance from Helios itself.
The level of disrespect was indeed quite painful to bear.
If King Alexander II were somehow resurrected today, he would likely have killed himself immediately, hoping this pathetic reality was merely a nightmare.
Throughout the long, bloody history of Helios, this might be the Kingdom’s weakest hour, or at the very least, it ranked among the top lowest points our Kingdom had ever endured.
In such times, showing kindness, altruism, or goodwill would only brand you as weak and ultimately get you killed. Now, more than ever, a King had to project power and strength.
And that was exactly what I was planning to do.
I reached up and gently patted the Amber Heart resting against my chest.
Of course, I was not going to reveal the true strength blatantly just yet.
As long as the surrounding Empires believed we were weak and fractured, they would arrogantly assume they had plenty of time to deal with us. They would not view us as an immediate threat worth crushing quickly.
I was going to manipulate that borrowed time to get exactly what I wanted at the academy in Luminar, all while planning the inevitable rise of Helios. I would force it to become the Kingdom it was always meant to be.
The strongest Kingdom on this entire continent.
Well, all of that would need some time and patience, something Alexander II of Helios hadn’t but which I had, a quality my father had taught me many times.
What was important was to learn from all the Kings and not only one, also the right ones.
Smiling to myself, I stopped briefly raising my gaze to the shining moon.
"Next is the Moon necklace."