Adopt 182
by Cristae182
As breath filled my chest, my mind’s gears began to spin furiously.
Once consciousness returned, one thought alone came to me:
What must I do to prevent the extinction of humanity?
Clinging only to that thought, I opened my eyes—and saw my younger brother’s anxious face gazing down at me.
Poor thing. For all the ways he had resisted fate, how wretched he must have felt when, as prophesied, he was forced to stab me in the back.
I reached out my aged hand toward him—
“Lady Blanche.”
“……”
“Are you all right? You don’t look well.”
And I went rigid.
With that simple phrase from Sir Cherry, the king’s persona, which had enveloped me like a transparent veil, slipped away.
The king’s death, the tragedy, the regrets of a lifetime, the rage at helplessness—all of them slashed through my mind as sharp, searing memories.
A single tear slid down my cheek, betraying that pain.
Whether it was mine or the king’s, I could not tell.
Catching sight of my tear, Sir Cherry was so startled he froze, then bent on one knee before me.
“I-I am sorry. Please, I beg you, do not cry.”
Seeing him so helpless before a single tear finally made the reality sink in.
I lightly wiped my face and, still holding Sir Cherry’s hand tightly, asked,
“It’s just the sunlight—it’s too bright. In any case, Sir Cherry.”
“Yes?”
“Is the reason the royal family treats the Valoishten family as enemies because your ancestor killed the first king?”
History records that the first king perished at the hand of his son, unable to bear any longer his father’s tyranny.
A rebellion, justified on noble grounds.
But the truth I had seen was not that.
“Yes, the founder of my house was a traitor who killed the king. He offered the bloodstained blade to His Highness, who was then just a prince, and swore fealty. But the stain of treason can never be erased.”
Without so much as hinting at curiosity about how I’d learned this secret, Sir Cherry went on.
“For that reason, the Valoishten family swore never to set foot in the capital without the royal family’s permission, to prove our unwavering loyalty.”
Now I finally understood why the timid king had been so harsh towards northern nobles.
He hadn’t feared only their vast military might.
He feared history itself would repeat.
Gripping Sir Cherry’s hands between mine, I deliberated for a moment.
Every time I blinked, the first king’s vision of ruin flickered in my mind like a failing lightbulb.
The future had been so distant that the first king had never learned why the kingdom would be destroyed or the continent laid waste.
All he knew was that demon beasts would once again sweep over the land.
But now, with that foretold calamity only six years away, there were those able to see what the first king could not.
‘In the end, it seems I can’t avoid being entangled with Giuseppe.’
Suppressing a sigh, I faced Sir Cherry.
If things were to go wrong, I would need a place to hide Leo safely.
And there was nowhere as secure as the north.
‘Besides, with Sir Cherry, I want—for once—to tell the whole truth without hiding anything.’
I spoke carefully.
“There’s something I wish to tell you. It may be something you find hard to believe.”
“That is no concern. For me, it would be harder not to believe the words of my lady.”
At such a firm reply, so contrary to my worries, I burst out with a laugh like a sigh.
Unlike Belinda’s, the first king’s memories were riddled with holes, as if eaten away by insects, leaving sections I could not discern.
Perhaps after seven hundred years, the fragment of memory had merely decayed.
Seven centuries is a long, long time.
For now, let me organize the facts I had managed to obtain:
- The first king, by virtue of his foresight, glimpsed a catastrophe that would destroy humanity seven hundred years hence.
- To prevent the doom of humankind, he turned to black magic.
- The black magic the first king completed—at the sacrifice of half the people in his kingdom—
I paused there, unable to finish the thought.
The black magic circle he had perfected lingered dimly in my mind, but I lacked the knowledge to decipher it.
Still, I wasn’t wholly without leads.
“I have prepared one who will raise an extraordinary hero to stop the coming catastrophe.”
“You will be amazed when you learn who I have chosen as the hero of the future.”
Again and again, he had told his brother:
He had chosen a hero to confront the disaster, and had prepared someone to raise that hero.
In which case—
- The black magic completed by sacrificing half the kingdom’s people served, via “Thump Thump Hero Maker,” to raise a hero who would avert the coming catastrophe.
‘Yes, it all fits if I think of it this way.’
That the game’s name was, of all things, “Hero Maker.”
That the residue of the first king’s black magic lingered within me.
That Giuseppe, himself gifted with prophetic sight, did not know about the Star of Heroes.
Because in truth, the Star of Heroes was created by the first king himself.
Just as fate had made him the hero-king, now he became fate itself in a bid to prevent the world’s end.
There were, of course, remaining gaps in this hypothesis.
Why, of all people, was “I” chosen to be the hero’s guardian?
Had someone from this world—from the start, perhaps the Swordmaster or Mikhail—been selected, the hero could have received first-rate instruction from an early age.
‘Why go to the trouble of dragging in someone from another world through black magic—such inefficiency…’
That’s when Giuseppe’s words came to me, all of a sudden.
“Sometimes, there are those born into this world who are not bound by the fate of the gods. Because they are free of its restraints, they might know the future, or even disrupt fate itself.”
“Marchioness Blanche, do you—by any chance—carry memories from another world, or know of such things?”
Those not bound by the fate of the gods.
In other words, outsiders to this world—people like me.
‘So that’s it. To avert the disaster, not only was a hero like the first king needed, but also someone capable of changing the world’s destiny itself!’
The question of why I had possessed Belinda rather than Ophelia in still remained, but now, grasping the first king’s plan, my next step was clear.
Strike while the iron is hot; I went straight to the temple.
With confidence, I announced,
“I am the very person His Eminence the Cardinal has been seeking.”
Giuseppe looked at me for a long moment, the fatigue clear on his face, before raising his teacup to his lips.
From the steaming tea drifted a familiar scent.
That smelled suspiciously like my favorite blend…
Click.
With an elegant motion, Giuseppe set the cup back upon its saucer and nodded calmly.
“So it is.”
A single, concise assessment, as if to say, “And?”
I masked my impatience with a practiced air of calm, waiting for what would follow.
There was no winning the opening move here; I was already at a disadvantage.
After all, when Giuseppe had previously asked if I held memories of another world, I had flatly denied it.
To now admit, “You were right after all,” would be to openly contradict myself—so I’d decided brazenness was the best approach.
‘Still impossible to read him.’
I searched his faintly smiling lips for any flicker of emotion, but found nothing.
Soon, those neat, decisive lips parted.
“So, what brings you here again? If I recall, you said you hoped that filthy entanglement that day would be the last time.”
He even remembered my last dismissive words, word for word—how embarrassing.
Clearing my throat to lighten the atmosphere, I spoke bluntly.
“You remember how I told you, a few days ago, that I’d recalled memories of living in another world, through a dream?”
Of course, I omitted all mention of the first king, black magic, and Hero Maker—I simply claimed that I’d recalled memories of another world through a dream.
“What I remembered wasn’t just my life in another world. I also saw, at least in part, the future of this world.”
“A fascinating story.”
Only now did Giuseppe seem to take interest, a smile flickering across his lips, but I wasn’t about to trust that smile.
Hadn’t he himself said it? Those who defy the fate of the gods can also know the events of the future.
Perhaps Giuseppe thought I was lying.
But the moment I spoke again, the smile vanished from his face.
“It seems this continent is in great peril. At the hands of the demon beasts, no less.”
Locking eyes with him, whose irises now glimmered with a golden divine light, I smiled as if to prove a point.
Of course, I didn’t know the precise reason the continent was in danger.
Until now, I’d only barely learned that the kingdom would be beset by calamity in six years.
But Giuseppe didn’t know that.
Which made this something of a game of intrigue.
Hide the joker, and draw what information you can about the future from the other side.
Giuseppe was an inscrutable opponent, but luckily, since becoming Belinda, I’d never lost a game.