Chapter 105: The Serpant Who Sought Moon.
As Seles stood at the doors of her palace and saw him sprinting towards her with his arms open and the softest look in his eyes, she couldn’t do anything because she didn’t know herself how to face him.
She didn’t care about the other women following him, she didn’t care about that blonde summoner who had been with him since the academy, she didn’t care about how possessively she looked at him.
At this moment, all she cared about was seeing him fine.
But just then, a black-haired maid beside her, the sister of the same knight who had informed her of Zenith’s arrival yesterday and her personal servant, Eliz, looked at Zenith and the women beside him and whispered in Seles’s ear.
"According to the rumours, the women are the ones Lord Zenith is going to take as his wives." Eliz’s voice was soft. "Every one of them is as strong as a Transcendent and that blonde one is said to even surpass that."
As soon as Seles heard the words, a strange feeling she had never expected emerged within her. She knew how Zenith was. At the beginning of their relationship, she herself had encouraged him to marry Hope for political gains and as long as his love for her wasn’t diminishing, she didn’t care about whoever he took as wives.
But...
The way Eliz said it, and the way... everyone around them started whispering, an ugly feeling started taking root inside her.
If he had so many strong people, what was her position in his life? What was she? A wife who didn’t trust her husband when another one did? What right did she even have to stand beside him?
Did she even deserve it as much as that blonde summoner who had followed him through his worst times?
And instead of greeting him with a smile as he hugged her... she pushed him back with a frown. She herself couldn’t understand why she did that... for a moment.
"What happened, Seles? Aren’t you glad to see your husband fine?"
He asked with a smile, without a hint of anger at her behaviour but as if she couldn’t control her emotions or her words, she muttered.
"...I would have been happier if you weren’t followed by those three women."
Zenith simply chuckled.
"Don’t worry, they are just friends." He said as the blonde summoner standing behind him, Lillian, narrowed her eyes at him.
Zenith immediately switched the subject.
"Let’s talk about it some other time and don’t worry, Seles. You are my first wife. I would never make any sudden decision without your permission. So, trust your husband, will you?"
Seles simply nodded as the coronation ceremony of Zenith as the Duke Ruinbringer began.
***
[Zenith’s POV]
[You Have Successfully Witnessed a Fragment of Forgotten History]
[The Serpent Who Sought the Moon (I)]
"What the hell was that?!"
My mind suddenly snapped back into place as I saw the scene of my coronation fade into the background before I was suddenly transported to some endless void.
For a brief moment, there was nothing before a vast blue sea of water reaching my knees appeared, with a few celestial bodies in the sky.
I recognised it immediately.
It was my Soul World.
The large grey sun of my Regression talent was the same but the blue sun which represented the Eye of Usurper had changed because around it, a small moon had appeared.
And as soon as I looked at it, a name came to my mind.
[The Serpent Who Sought Moon]
And as soon as it did, I understood what it was immediately.
It was the true name of Seles, while the moon represented the Talent I had copied from Seles.
[Uncanny Adaptation]
But I barely cared about any of that because what I had just witnessed a few moments ago made my blood boil with anger.
I hadn’t just seen the fragment like the time when I saw Chiki’s rise as the God of War. Instead, it felt like I was practically inside the mind of Seles herself at that point in time.
The memory itself was accurate.
It was the time when I had returned from the hidden continents with Lily and slaughtered the Ruinbringer.
Back then, although I did love Lily, I hadn’t yet married her because... well, I was kind of an actual weirdo back then.
I married everyone else but the one I actually loved the most.
And actually, I loved Seles back then as well because the memory was from before Seles betrayed me and framed me as a Demon King who was later hunted by Aurelion.
I trusted her with all my heart and depended on her but when she betrayed me, I thought that all the things she had done for me, all the love she had shown me, had all just been an act.
But after living inside her head like this, did I understand that...
The love that she showed me was actually real.
Still, that wasn’t what made me angry.
The things that did were the knight who reported my arrival and his sister, Elliz. Both had pitch-black hair and a facial structure I recognised but there was something even more recognisable about them...
A vile energy I had seen only one person use before.
Askruak — The God of Pride.
I hadn’t seen him in my last life but I knew what he looked like now, after the Trial of Forbidden Ruins and both that knight and Elliz shared his exact features.
And whether it was because of the Eye of Usurper or something else, I noticed something I hadn’t in my last life.
That Vile Energy.
I had seen Ron and Elliz hundreds of times as Seles’s personal servants but I had never made the connection. In my memories, they were insignificant extras. But now, seeing them through Seles’s perspective, I noticed what they subtly did.
Whenever either of them talked about me, they released that same vile energy towards Seles. I didn’t know what their intentions were but the energy was undeniable and every time they did it, I felt as if there was a small spike in Seles’s emotions.
Did she betray me later because of that?
Or was it something she did out of her own free will?
I didn’t know but one thing was sure now, everything that happened to me last time wasn’t solely done by Seles herself.
I always suspected that myself as well. Seles did have considerable influence across the three continents but I never understood how she could influence my perception across other continents beyond Crimson Mist.
I thought maybe she had built her network after I established a trade route with them but I was even more confused about it now.
Me being framed as the Demon King, Lily being recognised as a Calamity and the countless people across many continents pursuing us...
Could that bastard, Askruak, have had a hand in all of it as well?
I thought he only knew me because of my master.
But it turned out that the bastard, someone I had never even met, might have been influencing my life from the shadows long before I ever went to the Hidden Continents and met my master.
Because Ron and Elliz had existed long before any of that.
But what I couldn’t understand was... why?
Why was he targeting me?
Before I met my master, I was just an ordinary and pathetic guy without much strength, so unless he could have somehow known my future, it seemed useless to assign two devoted followers who could use his divinity around me.
Just then my eyes widened in realization.
Or was I never his target to begin with?
Was Seles the one he wanted, while I was just meant to be used to manipulate her emotions?
But then again, why would he target her?
What did she have that he wanted so much?
"Fuck!"
No matter how much I thought about it, I couldn’t understand shit but at least not everything from that memory was such a mystery.
The memory had at least given me a hint about how to find him.
Ron and Elliz.
If everything went similarly to my last life, they should still be present in this First Ring of the Great Sea even in the current times.
Although I didn’t know where to find them before they became Seles’s servants, I had names now...
... and it was better than not having anything.
A smile stretched across my face.
"I won’t let you do as you please in this life, Askruak."
As I was lost in my thoughts, a small green orb of energy drifted through my soul world before stopping directly in front of me.
It radiated a brilliant glow, its energy purer than anything I had ever encountered before but there was something strange about it, something almost sentient.
The energy within it seemed to possess a will of its own.
"What the hell is this?"
The thought had barely crossed my mind when the orb suddenly shot toward me as if offended by my confusion and swung itself straight at my face.
I instinctively dodged, feeling it zip past my head before coming to a stop behind me.
I stared at it in surprise, still unable to understand what the hell it was.
Just then, I remembered something I had seen before I fell unconscious.
"The Blessing of the Spirit King?!"
Could it be that?
I wasn’t sure but there was one thing I understood clearly.
It wanted me to touch it.
I sensed no hostility from the strange orb and honestly, I was pretty sure it couldn’t do shit while it was inside my soul world so after a moment of hesitation, I took a few steps toward it and cautiously reached out.
The moment my fingers touched its surface, the orb erupted into a blinding green light and then, something I never could have expected appeared out of thin air.