I Became the Patron of Villains (Novel) - Chapter 113 - Truth.. (3)
Chapter 113 – Truth…? (3)
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Translated by Jinmu
Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net
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“Sit first.”
“Excuse me.”
At the order, Alon bowed lightly and sat before her.
Then, as though she had been waiting for this very moment, Siyan smiled and held out a sweet potato to him.
“Eat.”
“Ah, yes.”
He had in fact eaten one yesterday as well.
Still, he did not dislike them, and in any case refusing something directly bestowed by the king was impossible.
So he accepted it obediently.
‘…Still, why is it always sweet potatoes lately?’
Naturally, the question occurred to him.
“They say they do not taste as good once they cool.”
“Then I will eat it now.”
At her urging, he obediently began filling his mouth.
Regrettably, however, he still could not properly taste the sweet potato.
Who could sit comfortably and eat before a king?
And on top of that.
‘…No, why am I the only one?’
He alone was chewing on a sweet potato.
If Siyan herself had been eating something too, whether sweet potatoes or anything else, then he might at least have been able to watch her and fill his stomach with a little less tension.
But instead, she simply sat there watching him chew.
‘At this rate, my face will be bored through.’
He felt deeply burdened.
Yet he could hardly tell her to look elsewhere.
“…”
Chew, chew.
“…”
Chew, chew.
And so Alon, seated before the lightly smiling king, forcibly finished the entire sweet potato.
“You eat well.”
“…Thank you for the praise.”
Along with the brief thought, Should I be pleased to be praised for eating?, Alon kept silent for a moment.
Siyan nodded with a satisfied expression.
“Good. Now that you have filled your stomach, let us talk.”
As if she intended to enter the real matter now, she leaned forward slightly.
“What did you obtain from the ruins?”
“I obtained a Shadow Dragon egg.”
“And what is that?”
“…To be honest, aside from the name itself, I do not really know. Though may I ask one thing?”
“Go on.”
“…Your Majesty does not know what a Shadow Dragon egg is?”
Was that not strange?
There had surely been a reason she sent him there.
And yet.
“Of course I do not.”
Siyan nodded as though that were obvious.
“…?? Then why did Your Majesty order me to visit the ruins?”
Alon’s confusion only deepened.
Siyan seemed to organize her thoughts for a moment, then looked directly into Alon’s eyes.
“Marquis Palladio, how much do you know about the Critenia royal line? No, more precisely, do you know of the Golden Chronicle Eye?”
Alon nodded.
“Yes. I know of it.”
“Do you know what it does?”
“…I understand it to be the power by which the accumulated strength of the great royal bloodline is inherited.”
Siyan nodded as though he was correct.
“Indeed. As you say, the Golden Chronicle Eye, which has been passed down generation after generation among the Critenia royal family, inherits power. And that means, in turn, that it also inherits the past.”
She lightly lifted her index finger.
Flare.
At the same time, a small flame appeared on her fingertip.
“What do you think?”
“…It is magic.”
“I have never learned magic separately. Is that not surprising?”
“Inherited power?”
“Yes. A power inherited from the Second, who was a seventh-circle mage. And not only this. Swordsmanship, alchemy, engineering, strategy. And beyond that, I have inherited many things.”
She tapped lightly at the corner of her eye with her free hand.
“Through these eyes.”
Critenia Siyan extinguished the flame and added, “From the outside, you must find this rather unfair, do you not?”
Alon fell silent.
To be honest, he had not fully grasped what she was trying to say.
Siyan continued.
“Still, even if it appears that way to outsiders, this power has side effects. Do you know what they are?”
“…That, I do not really…”
Even as he answered, Alon felt inwardly puzzled.
As far as he knew, the side effects of the Golden Chronicle Eye had never been described in Psychedelia.
“Memory.”
“Memory?”
“Yes. The Golden Chronicle Eye passes power down to its descendants, and along with that power it also passes down memory.”
“…That is the first I have heard of it.”
“Naturally. Only the kings who inherit the Golden Chronicle Eye know this fact.”
“Then do you inherit all memories?”
“No. Nothing so complete. Only fragments. Usually strong memories and precious recollections remain in the mind. And they surface slowly.”
Siyan looked fixedly at Alon’s face.
“Marquis Palladio, you are curious why I sent you to the Malaka Ruins, are you not?”
“To be honest, I am.”
At Alon’s nod, Siyan answered at once.
“It is because in the memories inherited through the Golden Chronicle Eye, there is someone who resembles you.”
“You mean that I am present in the memories inherited through the Golden Chronicle Eye?”
“Yes.”
“Truly?”
That made no sense.
Because, as she herself had said, the Golden Chronicle Eye was a power that inherited the past.
“Why would I lie about such a thing? It is an undeniable fact. A fact without even the slightest lie in it.”
“…Is there any possibility that you are mistaken?”
“No. There is none. The reason I can possess so many inherited memories of the previous inheritors without going mad is because even when I inherit those memories, I know they are someone else’s. And…”
And this is unquestionably one of those inherited memories, she said firmly.
So Alon asked.
“…Do you know when that memory was inherited?”
“No. Regrettably, I cannot know that. As I said, inherited memories contain only strong impressions or cherished recollections. They do not permit anything beyond that to be inferred.”
They are merely inherited.
Nothing else is known.
Not when.
Not from whom.
Not why.
“That is why it is strange, Marquis Palladio. What, exactly, are you?”
“…What Your Majesty says is an extremely unfamiliar matter for me as well…”
“You say that, and yet you are neither surprised nor shaken.”
“My face simply does not show much change.”
Siyan let out a small hum and shrugged with what looked like mild disappointment.
“I had hoped that by speaking with you, I might at least gain some clue. Apparently not.”
“…May I ask what those inherited memories contained?”
Siyan fell silent for a moment while sorting through them.
“…There are two memories that have surfaced so far. In one, a man who looked exactly like you told a king carrying inherited memories that there was something very important in the Malaka Ruins.”
That was the reason she had sent Alon to the Malaka Ruins.
“And in the other, you, dressed in formal attire, saved the kingdom from some crisis and were publicly praised for it.”
Even hearing that, Alon could make no real sense of it.
“…Was the face truly mine?”
“Do you think I would fail to recognize even that much?”
“…That was careless of me.”
Then Siyan suddenly let out a low sound of realization.
“Ah, and the you in those inherited memories was rather expressive.”
“…Expressive, you say?”
“Yes. For example…”
She pressed at the corner of Alon’s mouth with one finger and drew it upward.
“Like this.”
“You mean he smiled often?”
“He was grinning almost constantly.”
Siyan smiled as if she had just been treated to an amusing spectacle.
Alon thought quietly for a moment.
“May I ask whether the rank of the man in those memories could be determined?”
“I cannot say.”
“I see.”
“There are memories of speaking with him, but while only your words remain, the words of the owner of the inherited memory cannot be heard.”
After that, Alon asked her several more questions.
But in the end he could not determine from which king’s memory the inherited image had come.
When their conversation had gone on for some time.
“In any case, it was because of that inherited memory that I sent you to the Malaka Ruins.”
“…You have my thanks for the favor.”
“Favor? Hardly. It was all an investment.”
“An investment?”
“Yes. The you in the inherited memory saved the kingdom. I thought that perhaps you would be of help this time as well.”
“I do not think that man was actually me.”
“…Is that so?”
Siyan rested her chin on her hand and smiled faintly.
“In the end, then, I gained nothing from these strangely inherited memories.”
“My apologies.”
“There is no need. It was quite interesting. If more surface, I will call for you again.”
“…Do such memories emerge gradually?”
“Most often, yes. Ever since I inherited the eye, they simply surface from time to time without warning. Or when I experience some strong shock similar to something in the past. In any case…”
Let us speak again next time. I am beginning to grow sleepy, she said.
With that, he was dismissed.
Alon bowed lightly and left her office.
####
A few days later.
“Marquis?”
“What is it?”
“Well, ever since you returned from the royal castle, you have been thinking very seriously about something. What happened?”
At Evan’s question from the driver’s seat of the carriage, Alon shook his head.
“It is nothing serious.”
“…If it is not serious, then why have you been thinking about it for days?”
“Strictly speaking, I only think about it when I blank out. It is not that I have been doing nothing but thinking for days.”
Leaving behind Evan’s long-drawn, Is that so, Alon returned his gaze to the forest flowing past the carriage.
What filled his mind was precisely the inherited memory of the Golden Chronicle Eye that the king had told him about a few days earlier.
‘…No matter how I think about it, it makes no sense.’
As he had thought again and again, the Golden Chronicle Eye was a power that inherited the past.
It had no power to foresee the future.
If it did, then Siyan should not have died protecting a kingdom in decline, and Alon too would have known of such a setting.
In other words, the inherited memory of the Golden Chronicle Eye was overwhelmingly likely to be a memory of the past.
What Alon could not understand was.
‘…A noble with the exact same face and the exact same voice as mine?’
That the man in that memory had the same face as him in every respect, save only that he was far more expressive.
‘…An ancestor?’
House Palladio had many ancestors, so that thought had occurred to him.
But even then, it was strange.
‘…To begin with, the Malaka Ruins were only discovered not that long ago.’
As far as he knew, even now, with less than a year remaining until the start of the main story, the Malaka Ruins were a comparatively recent discovery.
Which meant they should not belong to a past old enough to leave behind inherited memories.
‘…There is, according to the setting, that event a hundred years ago when the jungle was devastated once and all the research records were lost. If the Malaka Ruins had been discovered before that and the memory was inherited from then, it would not be impossible.’
Even so, there were too many details that felt off for him to accept it cleanly.
So after thinking for a while.
“Whew.”
He lightly ended that line of thought with a sigh.
Because with the memories granted by the Golden Chronicle Eye being so limited, inference itself was essentially meaningless.
Instead, Alon turned to the last remaining question.
The one that had not been resolved since the moment he met Critenia Siyan.
‘…Why is she treating me well?’
The Golden Chronicle Eye reflected the past.
Which meant that, from a rational point of view, even to her, the formally dressed man in those inherited memories ought to be someone other than Alon, no matter how much he resembled him.
And yet she was extending him favor because he looked exactly like the man who had saved the kingdom.
That in turn meant that she was effectively convinced that the man in the inherited memory was Alon himself.
‘…And there is also no reason she needed to tell me to visit the Malaka Ruins in the first place.’
So.
‘What exactly is she hiding?’
Alon could only continue pondering for a while with a strange expression.
####
Meanwhile.
Inside the office of the Asterian royal castle.
“…You have been much lost in thought lately, Your Majesty.”
Critenia Siyan, who had been staring blankly out the window, turned slightly at her secretary’s words.
“Does it appear so?”
“Yes. Especially since meeting Marquis Palladio. If I may dare ask, what is the reason?”
“The reason? Well… do not worry. It is not a serious concern. If anything, it is an interesting one.”
“…Interesting?”
Siyan gave a small nod.
“Yes. Very interesting. In more ways than one.”
With those cryptic words, a small smile hung at the corners of her mouth.