Sensations that had been asleep until now woke up and cruelly lashed his entire body.

Unable to bear it, Zion screamed like a beast.

Even that was a mere wheeze, hardly more than a groan rather than a scream.

He felt like he was dying. No, it wouldn’t have been strange if he were already dead.

The injuries he had dismissed over the last two years flashed through his mind.

He had blocked Amaneser with his entire body, desperately healed himself while it was dormant, and returned to the battlefield.

Like a toy, bursting and being sewn up, repeated like a rag doll.

So, Zion wondered as he pounded his head on the ground and howled.

How am I still alive?

How am I alive after being so mangled and torn…?

As shock was added to the pain, he suddenly couldn’t breathe.

His breath was short but he couldn’t inhale the air, and eventually, his vision began to flicker black.

“Calm down and breathe.”

Then someone lifted Zion up and forcibly opened his mouth, supporting his jaw so he could breathe.

Zion managed to breathe again, and his darkening vision soon recovered.

Having barely calmed down, Zion looked at the person who had helped him up.

He was a tall man with a black hood turned back.

“Who are you….?”

In response to Zion’s question, the man pulled back his hood.

And Zion felt a pain as if he was crumbling once again.

…

…

…

The day he met the astrologer, Zion was freed from the curse.

And the Duke, noticing that the curse was broken, came to find him the next day.

“Have you arrived?”

In the commander’s office of the Tardes Hall, Zion spoke to his father.

Then, he was sitting crosslegged like a lion on a throne.

So the Duke groaned with a face that looked like it would crumble.

“What has happened, why…”

“Why am I sane? Is that your question?”

The son intercepted his father’s question, then added with a cold smile.

“Make your excuses first. Before I lose the will to listen.”

Zion’s eyes, as he asked this, were quietly flickering.

His cold anger made the Duke’s knees tremble.

Zion had always been a difficult child, even when young. He was overly talented, stubborn, and rebellious, inheriting the strong traits of a ruler—a pureblooded Laurel.

Now that such a son had gained the strength to face a dragon and revealed his intent to live, the Duke was unbearably frightened.

“……I didn’t want to make you like this either.”

So he pleaded, abandoning both the authority of a Duke and the dignity of a father.

“But it’s the destiny of our family, an unavoidable duty for me. To endure the sacrifices to prevent disaster, it’s the way of our Laurels…”

“Really?”

Zion cut off his father’s words with a bright voice.

Then he asked as if it was funny.

“Is it really unavoidable? I don’t think so?”

Contrary to the grand pretense of preventing a disaster, what the Laurels, including Zion, had done so far was a pathetic dogfight, using only their bodies without strategy or tactics.

They weren’t a meager family relying on a grown son to survive, and if they had the will, they could have found much better ways.

But to gloss over this with words of destiny and duty.

Zion coldly mocked his irresponsible and neglectful father.

“It’s not that there’s no way, but you have to monopolize this role.”
The sole guardian of the unique continent. A noble Laurel facing disaster.

How great a delusion this is, and how cheap a deception.

All that was needed to control the world was one son.

Even that was not made with his own wife’s child but well made from the outside.

When I was young, I wondered why my father, who cherished the prime minister so much, made this mistake, but this too was utmost love.

Zion’s feelings hit the floor in the disgusting reality of my family.

And Zion didn’t hide it.

He was barely holding back from smashing everything, and there was no intention to show mercy to his father who thoroughly deceived and used him.

Furthermore, although really disillusioned, Zion was also a noble.

He too was accustomed to choosing like a ruler to maintain power. So he understood this damned situation to some extent.

Because he understood, he waited.

To hear what his father would excuse.

After taking what he would take and discarding what he would discard, he intended to tear down the structure of this slaughterhouselike border.

Of course, after completely taking the initiative from his father, who was treated like a puppet.

But just as Zion was not a good son, Zion’s father was not a good father at all.

The Prime Minister gasped and staggered to the window.

Zion still sat in his place, watching him, and the Prime Minister’s eyes darkened a shade more at his son’s ruthlessness and arrogance.

Here the view was good, as befitting a commander’s room.

Above, the blocked valley formed a beautiful scene, and below was just the right height.

The Prime Minister assured himself of this fact and said,

“Forgive me, Zion. Please let this appease your heart.”

With those words, he threw himself out in front of his son.

.

.

.

The former Laurel Prime Minister died on the spot.

Fortunately, Zion had no cause for unjust suspicion.

Whether he came for this purpose in the first place, a will was found in the Prime Minister’s study.

The will, dotted with appropriate excuses without any mention of curses or surveillance of the border, thus packaged the Prime Minister’s visit to his hall as a desire to see his son’s face for the last time.

He was a father who outdid the worst of the worst, but there was one thing to be thankful for.

He didn’t leave the slightest room for Zion to suffer from guilt.

As soon as the Prime Minister fell, the deputy commander ran to Zion’s room.

He naturally asked about the situation, and Zion tried to answer in shock, but received another shock.

He couldn’t speak.

He couldn’t even write. Every attempt was blocked the moment he intended to convey this fact to others.

So Zion realized.

That a new curse had been cast upon him.

Also, that his thoughtful father had kindly allowed him to despise him freely.

Zion was really grateful for that.

It’s been 5 years since he was gagged and couldn’t do anything.

Zion rested his chin on his shabby desk, recalling Evie’s words last night.

―So the curse you have now, Count, is a curse that prevents you from revealing secrets, she guessed.

It still gave him chills to think about it.

That she figured that out, something he wanted to tell but couldn’t, something that had been gnawing at him all this time.

So Zion had to overturn his assessment of Evie once again.

His first impression of her was just a pretty fool, and after revealing her true nature, a cunning opportunist.

But now…….

Anxiously glancing out of the window, Zion jumped up from his seat.

He saw a girl walking in the distance, bathed in sunlight.

It was Evie Ariate, whom he had been waiting for since early dawn.