Immortal's Ascending path - 61
Episode-61
Roslavyen.
Hearing that place name, Roberta narrowed her eyes.
"Have you heard of it?"
"Yes, I heard it a little while ago."
It was the place name the minstrel had mentioned in the plaza.
She had heard that after Akeon and the eleven knights finished their journey, one of them became the Count of Roslavyen. When Roberta said this, Ulrich nodded.
"Indeed, it's a famous story in this region."
"Is that story related to the purpose of your visit?"
"Yes, very deeply. It relates to the old master of Roslavyen."
Ulrich said, watching Fritz.
"Going back, it's been nearly a thousand years. Roberta, do you remember Banares of Carbonihar? This was even before I met the Emperor."
Roberta nodded, saying she knew. When she was in Ditmarsken, she had visited Duke Bailen, who was looking for a guide to the Ice Peninsula; his grandfather was Banares, the king of the Carbonihar Kingdom from more than six hundred years ago.
It was quite a long time ago, but the emotional impact was small. Since she had encountered Emperor Akeon in a history book, she immediately realized it when she saw the bronze equestrian statue.
There was someone living far longer than that in front of her, so what emotion would a mere thousand years give her?
"Time is..."
However, Ulrich seemed different.
Roberta had only encountered the subject in records, but he must have met Banares and Akeon directly and formed a relationship. Their names, the passage of time, and the emotions they invoked were bound to be different for him.
Without continuing, he paused, and only after a long time did he open his mouth.
"What kind of person is the Akeon you know?"
"Well."
Because it was a sudden question, the end of her sentence trailed off.
"Even if you ask what kind of person he is..."
"It's hard to answer, given his lack of brilliant achievements as emperor."
"Yes. It seems like he was brilliant before he wore the imperial crown, though."
"The reality is quite different, though."
Roberta smiled lightly.
"You speak as if you saw it by his side."
"I suppose I was his guardian."
Stopping there, Ulrich checked the firewood Fritz was holding. It was dried to the core; the grain was not severely split, nor was it overheated.
Praising him for doing well, he was about to hand over the next piece of firewood, but seeing the empty basket, he got up from his seat.
"This much practice should be enough. Next, let's talk over a cup of tea." He shook off the wood chips stuck to his scorched clothes and left the room.
***
The inn's restaurant was deserted.
During lunch and dinner, it was crowded with guests indulging in meals, alcohol, and gambling, but between those times, only one or two people remained at their seats.
The innkeeper was also sitting in the corner, nodding off, and didn't realize that Ulrich and his party had come down the stairs. The party sat silently at an empty table.
Ulrich brought water boiled in a metal kettle and poured it into teacups. Since there were no tea leaves in the inn, they each brought their own. Ulrich's, as always, was Songhwa tea.
*'No matter how much I look at it, I can't get used to it,'* Roberta thought.
At the pungent scent of the Songhwa tea, Roberta unconsciously narrowed her brows but swallowed her words. It wasn't just a day or two, and what was the point of telling someone who drinks it every day that they don't get tired of it?
"To continue the story," Ulrich opened his mouth again after drinking tea for a while.
"The reality is often very different from the records."
"Well, yes. Records can't contain all the facts."
"And there are important facts that are not recorded."
"Is this a story about Akeon—about him?"
Ulrich nodded.
"To be exact, it's about Akeon and his sister."
Roberta tapped the teacup with her index finger.
"A sister. That's a story I'm hearing for the first time, as always."
"But you can guess who I'm referring to."
As she nodded silently, Ulrich emptied his teacup and said.
"The beginning of the problem was with a profligate emperor. He was a prodigal son who no one thought would ascend to the throne, so he was never restrained. Naturally, he had many, many successors."
Among them were two children: the Akeon siblings Ulrich mentioned. The first was born two years earlier, and when the second was born, their birth mother passed away.
"The two children's mother knew that the emperor would not care about her children. She also knew that if she left, the remaining children would be killed by their rivals. So, she left a request for me."
It was a request to entrust the children to someone trustworthy, someone unrelated to the emperor.
Ulrich entrusted the siblings to a couple who could not have children to fulfill the request. They were not nobles, but they were wealthy farmers, so they had an environment where they could grow up without any shortcomings.
"The fact that the blood of Yokester flowed was not even told to the adoptive parents. The secret was hidden so that they could live a simple life as their mother wished. The result is as you know."
"The result was completely opposite to what was intended."
Smiling softly, Ulrich shook his head.
"He was a brave boy. In other words, Akeon was fearless. In the midst of the dead rising from all over the country, he didn't run away; instead, he struggled to put on his adoptive father's armor by himself."
At that time, when Akeon was fifteen years old, a magician who dreamed of immortality rose from the tomb and became the lord of the dead.
The living in several countries were deprived of their land by the dead, and even their lives were taken. Ulrich tried to evacuate the adoptive parents and siblings, but Akeon did not follow his wishes.
"It seemed like the situation wouldn't calm down easily, so I gathered people, and the boy intervened. He followed me, hiding with his sister in a baggage cart. I wanted to send them back, but knowing his personality, I couldn't help it."
"The story I heard is… very different."
What did the minstrel say?
'The knight in the top seat came and awakened his mission,' didn't he say? But where in Ulrich's recollection was there such a story?
The story told by the poet was exaggerated, so she didn't believe it much, but she laughed in vain at the development that didn't match at all.
"He had learned from his adoptive father and me, but not enough to deal with the dead. If he had immediately grabbed a sword and charged out, as the story claims, he would have only become a corpse."
Ulrich assessed that he was more clumsy than Fritz.
The eleven knights were also different from the tradition. They were the people Ulrich had gathered, and the number was naturally more than eleven. The reason why there were eleven was because that was the number of people who remained until the end.
Those who did not survive did not come out of the mouths of the poets, and the survivors only had the fame of the dead added to them, becoming music.
"The process of chasing that dead magician continued for several years. He became a skeleton and even lost his reason, but when he realized that there were living people chasing the dead, he hid his appearance."
And in the long pursuit, Akeon grew. The boy, who was only a novice, eventually emerged as a knight and dealt the final blow to the lord of the dead.
The magician, who had resisted the offensives of even the secular lords, crumbled with that single blow. Although the beginning was different from the tradition, the ending was almost similar.
"What happened to the other person?"
Roberta cautiously mentioned Akeon's sister.
"Moira, his sister, was also there."
After defeating the lord of the dead, the remaining twelve people each took their spoils. The dead do not covet treasure, but they had claimed the land of the living as their own, so the land was the spoils.
"She received Roslavyen as her share and disappeared. The siblings heard about their birth together, but I remember that Moira didn't react much, unlike her brother."
The fact that she was in a position to claim the throne yet showed no reaction lingered in Roberta's mind. It was a stark contrast to her brother, Akeon, who eventually claimed the throne and became emperor.
"There must have been a reason."
"From her point of view, it was a reason greater than the throne."
Roberta knew the reason.
The minstrel had said it. 'There is a knight who could not resist temptation,' and 'That person learned the magic of immortality through a method different from that of the lord of the dead.'
It was said that the knight was cursed after aiming for something he could not obtain, and eventually, he was cut down by Akeon's sword.
"Moira pursued immortality."
She secretly took the relics left by the lord of the dead. Based on the data he had researched during his lifetime, she pursued a different method of immortality. If she followed the same method, she would only become a mindless skeleton.
For a long time, she repeated research alone and learned how to continue her life without becoming a skeleton, without using the dead.
And until then, her secret was not revealed. She was a person who was better at hiding her inner thoughts than anyone else.
Akeon and Moira, though siblings, shared few similarities. The younger brother was transparent and fiery-tempered, but the older sister was cold-hearted—you could never tell her inner thoughts from her outward appearance.
"As time passed, we realized what Moira was plotting. We couldn't leave it alone, just in case she might use the dead."
It was after Akeon became emperor and half a century had passed.
The young Akeon, who was too young to stand above everyone, had now become an old man who could not get out of bed.
Ulrich said that he had revealed his sister's secret to the old man, whose years had eroded his body and who was facing death right in front of him.
"Akeon was silent for a long time and then handed me his sword."
It was a request to judge his sister on his behalf.
"I went to find Moira with the knight who became the Duke of Sirkaf. Because he had the blood of a fairy, he was the only person who had youth until then, except for Moira. We grasped the gravity of the situation and decided on her fate."
Stopping speaking, Ulrich got up from his seat and poured water from the kettle into the empty teacups. Roberta waited for him to continue speaking. But as time passed, he only drank his tea and did not make a sound.
"Please continue the story. You decided on her fate, so why are you trying to visit that place? I heard that the current Count of Roslavyen is a vassal of the old master who is unrelated by blood."
She asked, unable to wait any longer.
"I suppose I've been speaking too indirectly. We did not kill Moira. We punished her. The crime was not severe enough to take her life, but we decided to take away many of the things she possessed."
Ulrich put down his teacup.
"And the reason I am looking for Roslavyen on this day after so much time has passed is to see her. Moira is neither immortal nor ageless, but she is alive."
Roberta trembled, her hand about to grab the teacup. The finger that touched the handle fell onto the table as if slipping. From her throat, only the single word "Yes?" came out.
"You also saw it in Ditmarsken. What kind of result a person who pursued immortality met."
He smiled bitterly.
"She is a fragment of that very outcome."