NOVEL NEXT Chapter 646
Chapter 646: I Knew You Would Come
“Do you know my name?”
He clearly called out his name at the end.
Could it be that he read my memories? It seemed unlikely, though; the voice was warm and familiar, as if he truly knew me well.
“Young Master!”
“Your Highness!”
“Hey! Are you okay?”
Everyone rushed towards Ghislaine, who still wore a dazed expression in front of the curtain.
“Young Master! Are you alright?”
Belinda shouted, grabbing Ghislaine’s shoulder. Only then did he snap back to reality.
“Uh, uh… I’m fine. You all must have been really worried.”
“I thought we were going insane! It didn’t even break!”
“Uh, uh, right. Anyway, thanks for your concern, everyone.”
Seeing Ghislaine looking a bit absent-minded, Jerome asked,
“What on earth happened in there? What did you see?”
As a mage, he was filled with a mix of worry and curiosity.
“Um, just a moment…”
Ghislaine clutched his forehead to gather his thoughts. It seemed everyone was quite worried.
There was no way to brush it off now as if it was nothing. He had to face the adversary one day so the seals in this place wouldn’t be broken.
Ghislaine slowly began to describe the saint’s presence.
“Ever since I got this necklace, I’ve been having strange dreams…”
He had already told this to Ereness. She laughed it off as mere imagination, but others needed to know too.
Ghislaine selectively mentioned only the important parts, sharing that he had seen the War a Thousand Years Ago in his dreams and learned a lot from it.
He also noted that Yulien was a hero, and the adversary appeared to resemble Ghislaine himself.
Everyone gasped in surprise. Belinda rushed to ask,
“So, are you saying you are the adversary?”
Parniel gripped his mace tightly, clearly ready to swing it towards Ghislaine’s head if things escalated.
Ghislaine took a small step back and replied,
“No, no. That can’t be it! It was all due to Dark.”
“Oh.”
Everyone nodded. It was indeed only when Ghislaine used Dark’s power that such a form would manifest.
Before obtaining Dark, Ghislaine had no such abilities.
Suddenly, Ghislaine pulled out Dark, as if to explain. Dark, in the form of a crow, blinked blankly.
Jerome pointed at Dark and shouted abruptly,
“So you were the adversary!”
“What nonsense is that!”
Dark immediately got angry. If things went south, he could be labeled as the adversary and face annihilation.
Everyone shot suspicious glances at Dark, not because he seemed like the adversary, but rather as if to think, ‘That guy couldn’t be!’
Dark found the doubt offensive and it hurt his pride.
“Why would I! What have I done?!”
Belinda squinted and said,
“That can’t be true… right?”
Ghislaine nodded.
“Yeah, there’s no way he’s that kind of guy.”
Everyone agreed. Parniel released his grip on the mace.
Yet somehow, Dark felt even more insulted. He suddenly wanted to be the adversary.
Ghislaine continued explaining what happened inside the curtain.
“So, I met a light, and that light seemed to be the saint. It said it knew me…”
When Ghislaine finished speaking, Belinda curiously asked,
“But what does it mean to say we will meet again? Think carefully. Do you not have any forgotten friends?”
Jerome chimed in, questioning,
“Yeah! Maybe an old girlfriend!”
Ghislaine crossed his arms and closed his eyes. After a while, he replied,
“I… have never had a girlfriend.”
“Ah, uh… Sorry, I didn’t know…”
Jerome looked at him with pity.
Ghislaine made a face of disbelief. As far as he knew, Jerome was no different. So he immediately called him out.
“You don’t either. Why pretend?”
“….”
An awkward silence passed for a moment.
Belinda, after some contemplation, nodded. Indeed, the only woman Ghislaine could be talking about was his fiancée, Amelia.
Everyone in the territory had avoided Ghislaine. Other noble young ladies also refused to associate with the impoverished prince of Perdium.
So, it was all the more strange. If Ghislaine himself had no memory of it, how could the being he met inside the curtain claim they had already met?
Everyone fell into silence, lost in thought. No matter how much they pondered, their curiosity only grew.
Parniel tightened her grip on her mace.
“Devil, you’re possessed by a demon in there.”
She didn’t want to accept that the being Ghislaine met was the saint. The only acknowledgment she could give was that there was a source of power used by the Salvation Society in this place.
She could not tolerate mentions of unrecorded heroes or saints.
Ghislaine pulled his head back slightly and said,
“Hey, I’m fine.”
Vanessa quickly changed the subject.
“How about we wait a bit? You said that we’d find out everything upon meeting. Surely, she will come looking for you.”
“Um, I guess that’s the only way.”
Still, he felt a bit hopeful. Whoever that being in the curtain was, it assured him they would meet soon.
Ghislaine smiled brightly.
“Anyway, I’m fine now, so you don’t have to worry. Let’s head back now. My mana must be drained, so let’s just walk.”
They confirmed their positions in the center. After granting rest to the soldiers and laborers after the withdrawal, they planned to gradually expand the developed area.
The group sighed in relief. They wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible.
“Ah, do you want to hear a fun story?”
As they returned, Ghislaine shared the tale he hadn’t had the chance to tell earlier—the story of the heroes who fought alongside the hero and the apostles.
He decided to leave out anything about Perdium for now. It was unacceptable… no, it just wasn’t certain enough.
As they listened to the old stories, people wore expressions of wonder. Especially Jerome and Belinda seemed particularly interested.
“Wow, that person seems just like the founding ancestor of our Mage Tower!”
“Anette and the Shadow Knight Group could be descendants of that person.”
The two shared what they knew and began to find connections between Ghislaine’s stories and their own. The parallels were uncanny.
“Thank goodness there are no apostles in this era.”
Everyone nodded at Jerome’s comment.
It was hard to fully accept Ghislaine’s dreams as reality. But if they were true, and if the figures from those dreams still existed today, it could lead to significant consequences.
As they shared stories, they quickly arrived at the base where they had left the soldiers. Everyone promptly began preparations for withdrawal.
Ghislaine continued to greet and lead the soldiers with a smile. But inside, he wasn’t feeling at ease.
“My body feels strange.”
Since returning from the curtain, odd phenomena had been occurring. His concentration was slipping, and an overwhelming sense of fatigue was washing over him.
“What is this?”
Even upon introspecting, there appeared to be no other unusual symptoms.
He had long reached a level where he could maintain peak condition without much sleep. Yet now, this incredible fatigue was besieging him.
There was only one plausible suspect for this.
“The saint’s divine power.”
An uncontrollable energy had settled in his mind. Nothing else could possibly influence his body.
“This is…”
The saint’s divine power was something Ghislaine couldn’t control or expel.
He didn’t sleep a wink until they returned to the territory. A hunch told him that if he did, he might not wake up for a while.
“Young Master… are you alright?”
Belinda was the first to sense something was off.
Ghislaine seemed strong enough that it wouldn’t show overtly, but having cared for him since childhood, Belinda easily saw the fatigue accumulating around his eyes.
“I’m fine. I might just be a little tired from working nonstop for the past few days.”
At that, Belinda looked even more puzzled.
Ghislaine had been through a lot, working without sleep during tougher wars and fighting dragons. Yet he had never appeared as exhausted as he did now.
“Could it really be… just exhaustion?”
Having run without rest, maybe it was simply a moment of mental relaxation.
Since he didn’t seem to have any significant issues aside from looking tired, Belinda didn’t press on any further.
The reinforcements and laborers who returned to the territory were promptly reorganized for construction to expand the base.
They would soon form squads again and start the serious task of clearing the forest.
Ghislaine immediately went to see Ereness. Ereness was still inactive.
Ghislaine spoke bluntly.
“I met the saint.”
Ereness turned to Ghislaine without much interest, her voice bored.
“The saint is dead.”
“I went inside the sealed curtain.”
“……”
Only then did Ereness look directly at Ghislaine.
And slowly, she opened her mouth.
“What did you see?”
“Nothing but darkness. But I saw a small light, and it spoke to me.”
“I don’t know what happened, but that’s just your illusion. It couldn’t possibly look that way, and you can’t enter.”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you really think that power could be sealed by just the saint and the hero?”
“……”
“Dragons, elves, dwarves, humans. The heads and elders of each race gathered and assisted in the sealing. It’s not something a mere human can breach.”
Ghislaine sighed. He had expected such a response from Ereness anyway.
He just wanted to confirm one thing.
“You said you worked with the saint, right?”
“Yes.”
“The saint said she had met me before. And that we would meet again. So… did you meet me too?”
If the saint really had met him, then Ereness should have too.
Now, the only remaining figure from the heroes a thousand years ago was Ereness.
Ereness’s eyes widened. She stared at Ghislaine with a look of utter disbelief.
“Are you out of your mind?”
“……”
“The saint and I were together a thousand years ago. How on earth could you possibly meet her?”
“……”
That wasn’t plausible. At least not with the sincerity reflected in her expression.
Ghislaine clicked his tongue. He wondered if perhaps they had crossed paths when he was a child, but that seemed entirely off.
It looked like the only way to confirm the saint’s words was to wait.
He returned to his duties with little to show for the interaction. Regardless of his fatigue, there were still tasks to be completed.
He first checked on the status of the pursuit team.
“We haven’t found any traces yet.”
“Each kingdom has said they would increase the pursuit team’s numbers.”
“They’ve also devised plans to deliberately let some remnants go and pursue them.”
Ghislaine nodded as he received the reports. It would be difficult to find Gathros immediately. This was something that would take time.
Right now, the urgent matter was the rift research. Other than a few who had split off to different tasks, most of the mages were focused on the rift studies.
“How is Yulien faring now?”
“Still… no abnormalities have been found. We are searching for the cause.”
The energy that had permeated Yulien’s body was also under investigation by the mages. But they had yet to discover anything.
Still, the mages trusted Ghislaine and Yulien, continuing to search for anomalies. Priests had even come to regularly check on Yulien’s condition.
“Right, we need to be thorough.”
Ghislaine emphasized this multiple times. The energy from a mad dragon couldn’t be treated lightly.
Everyone in the territory was busy. Even though the war was over, there remained much to do.
Especially Ghislaine was dedicated to confirming everything from exploration to internal affairs for the stability of the kingdom.
It was just like any other day. That’s how he had always gone on.
But as time passed, the issues with his body intensified.
“Young Master! You need to sleep now!”
“Your Highness, you’ve gone a month without sleeping!”
Belinda and Gillian gasped at the sight of Ghislaine each time they saw him, urging him to take a break.
“Um…”
Ghislaine bit his lip with his tired eyes.
If he were in decent shape, going a month without sleep wouldn’t usually matter. But now, his condition was dire.
The bags under his eyes had darkened, and he had lost a lot of weight. Piote and Parniel had visited several times, pouring their divine energy into him, but it was futile.
People began to gossip that Ghislaine had fallen ill.
Even the superhumans found it strange. A person of Ghislaine’s caliber shouldn’t crumble just from a lack of sleep.
Belinda asked, sounding worried,
“What’s happening? You’ve been like this since that day, right? Is it possible you ingested too much poison or something?”
“No, the poison is not an issue.”
The poison had already been converted into mana. In fact, the mana levels had increased significantly compared to before.
This meant that going into the curtain was the real problem. He had no doubts about that.
Dark, who had been lurking nearby, ventured a theory.
“Maybe the saint wants to meet in the afterlife!”
Getting on Belinda’s nerves, Dark found himself caught by the throat as he struggled.
But in light of the current situation, that was perhaps the most credible hypothesis.
Ghislaine felt exasperated. Why the hell was his body doing this?
It felt as if his mana was sealed. Something was strongly binding him.
Using the power of will could slightly relieve that binding. That was how Ghislaine had managed to withstand the unknown power until now.
“This is a first for me.”
It was something of a different kind of training. Since he had been using his willpower daily to break the binding, he had become more accustomed to it.
And Ghislaine kept revisiting his hypothesis.
― It’s time for us to ‘meet’ again.
There was no way to meet with someone from a thousand years ago.
“But in dreams… perhaps…”
It was possible, as he had met the saint through his dreams so far.
“Could it be that she is calling for me?”
Since noticing these oddities, Ghislaine had been actively resisting sleep. So perhaps he was sending signals.
If he could endure like this, the strange phenomena might eventually fade away. And with his willpower growing stronger, the binding force that restrained him would weaken.
That made sense. No matter how strong the divine power the saint left behind, there would be limits to its influence on a being that exists in reality.
“Then…”
― The choice is also yours to make.
Ghislaine smirked.
Wasn’t everything up to this point just a series of choices?
“Alright, I’ll accept it.”
Since it had come to this, he might as well see it through to the end.
Ghislaine relaxed his body. He no longer resisted the calling force.
At that moment of resolve…
**Kuwung.**
Ghislaine closed his eyes and collapsed.