The Nymph Wants to be Plundered - Chapter 123

If the king and Iel’s steps had been late at that time, she would have died, wouldn’t she? Even though standing in court must have been frightening and terrifying… that nymph neither glared at him, mentioned him, nor resented him—the one who was Lya’s guide and bore responsibility. When she finished saying what she had to say and breathed roughly as if that was all, Brax felt tremendous self-loathing.

“That’s why caring for someone is such a difficult task. To consider and anticipate everything in advance? It’s difficult—who could do such a thing? We are not gods.”

“Sir Iel.”

“Sometimes I too think of that colleague I sent away forever. When he first entered the knight order, he had a youthful face and vowed to guard Jupiter for his entire life, forming a balance with the boundary guards. That memory feels like yesterday.”

Even in someone else’s pure old story filled with memories, Brax could easily find something he had never experienced himself. An expressionless face of someone he didn’t even know, yet smiles resembling blue leaves that seemed familiar, passionate shouts, and so on….

Whether becoming a boundary guard or a knight, the initial excited heart had to be the same. Because Brax too had walked that path, he knew it well.

“I thought I would become close with him for a long time. Because I thought he resembled me—that character that held the duties of a knight sacred… he was similar to me when I first grasped a sword.”

“I… am….”

This wasn’t the time to stand there listening blankly. What was Lya’s beginning like? What were the beginnings of the other boundary guard trainees like? Brax tried hard to recall his first meetings with them that he had carelessly let pass by, their innocent expressions.

And then, surprisingly, he realized that he couldn’t remember the faces of those who must have passed by him. Only the expression of the nymph who had tremblingly held up her face wanting to greet him most recently was clear in his mind like an inked woodblock print. Brax was shocked because he prided himself on having a good memory.

That’s… was it because the nymph wasn’t a public target from whom I had to produce results, but purely a private matter that was interesting, so she remained in my memory?

At some point, he too had become markedly different from the beginning. Not from when he looked after and cared for each of those aspiring to be boundary guards individually, but from when he began to focus only on ability and obsess over the number of graduates. When exactly did this useless obsession begin?

After fiercely searching through his own mind, he witnessed the one standing at both the end and the beginning, and felt a sense of emptiness. It was Cassis. The one who was with the nymph that Lya, whom he had failed to properly care for, had harmed….

There was no need to look back at what the reason might be.

When the previous king had experienced the nymph extinction crisis and declared he would lay down his crown after feeling the limits of his abilities, the one who emerged as the second competitor for the throne alongside Cassis, who had risen to become the guardian of the World Tree, was Brax—himself. The whispers that he, born of traditional guardian bloodline, truly had the qualifications to be king—hadn’t those been going on for more than just a day or two?

Brax had adamantly waved his hands in denial, and prided himself on having consistently acted that way even after all decisions had been made.

However, when he looked into his own heart, that wasn’t the case. He too had been shaken by the aftermath, sometimes falling into daydreams. In the valleys where he led trainees, on the mountainsides, in front of the hermit’s hut where the previous king’s benevolence was praised. What if… if the current king had been himself, Brax—what would Jupiter be like now?

‘Foolish bastard!’

Inappropriate greed had blinded his eyes. The tragedy of being unable to abandon lingering attachments had trapped and confined him, ultimately making him harm even others.

“Ahh….”

Hearing the moan tinged with deep sighs, Iel leaned his body against the streetlight. It wasn’t an empty, bitter laugh but a sincere sigh, which pleased him quite a bit. Night moths that had seen light after a long time swarmed in droves, then fled again, startled by his deep and rigid aura that resembled an old broadleaf tree.

“Brax.”

“In the end, it was my oversight. However, that doesn’t mean I’ll give up.”

“How?”