Chapter 224

I couldn’t even blink. All I could do was carve every detail of the boy standing before me into my memory.

The king who had introduced himself as Berius was unquestionably a face I had never seen before.

And yet he wasn’t unfamiliar.

If anything, he felt achingly familiar, like someone I had known for a very long time. The longer I stared into his eyes, the deeper that bone-deep longing rose inside me.

I stood there rooted to the floor, staring openly at the king, until Theo coughed awkwardly beside me.

He was signaling for me to get a hold of myself.

And the boy receiving my burning stare gave an embarrassed little smile.

“Hm. I asked how you know my childhood name.”

The question came in a voice that had only recently passed through puberty.

Just like the Drunkard’s metaphor, my mind felt like a tangled ball of a thousand twisted threads.

Instinctively, I could feel something.

But that sensation was trapped between the fragments of reason I was desperately clutching onto, leaving me unable to react at all.

I could only stare at the boy before me with trembling eyes.

When I remained stiff and frozen, Berius’s clear brown eyes turned toward me. He even tilted his head slightly, as if asking whether I was alright.

At that moment, my heart dropped straight to the floor.

It wasn’t even a special gesture. And yet to me, it felt unbearably special.

The memories that surged up the instant I saw Berius refused to fade. Familiar scenes flickered before my eyes.

“......”

Whenever I sat motionless after work, exhausted to the bone, Berry always used to do that.

He would look at me with clean, innocent eyes and tilt his head like he was asking whether I was okay.

They only shared the same eyes.

So why did that tiny tilt of his head feel so devastating?

Why... was I looking at a living person while feeling absolutely certain he was my dead dog?

There was no evidence for it. It wasn’t rational in the slightest.

More than anyone, I knew the thing controlling me right now was a ridiculous delusion.

And yet this powerful pull was impossible to describe.

It felt almost identical to the first time I had met Varen.

At that moment, the one who interrupted the flow of my thoughts was Morpha.

They stepped closer and lightly grabbed my forearm.

I forcibly turned my rigid neck toward them, and Morpha met my gaze as their voice rang through my head.

‘I believe I told you to refrain from unnecessary behavior.’

If we met the king, Morpha was supposed to handle everything.

Me stepping forward had never been part of the plan.

Their calm voice carried a faint undercurrent of anger, and my mind abruptly snapped back into focus.

For a brief moment, my brain had completely shut down.

Now it began functioning again.

Where I was. Who I was. Why we had come here.

I rapidly retraced all of it before immediately bowing my head toward King Laskar.

“M-My apologies, Your Majesty. I was so nervous meeting you for the first time that... I behaved discourteously.”

I awkwardly imitated noble etiquette.

Fortunately, King Laskar merely laughed lightly and let my rudeness pass.

“It’s quite alright. Those who see me for the first time are often surprised.”

The king approached us, his white robe fluttering softly behind him.

The attendants waiting nearby hurriedly brought forward an armchair.

With elegant movements befitting his status, Berius sat down.

Then he looked up at me with eyes that resembled Berry’s.

“To discover that the king of a nation is merely a young boy. It’s an understandable reaction. I’m quite accustomed to it by now, so don’t trouble yourself over it.”

“Ah...”

I couldn’t bring myself to look directly at him.

As long as I kept meeting those eyes, I felt like I would lose the ability to think rationally.

But King Laskar—

No, Berius—

froze me all over again with a single sentence.

“Still, I’m already eighteen this year. I’m not quite that young anymore.”

Berius added jokingly that he would soon become an adult.

He even teased that he might be married once he turned twenty.

The moment I heard his age, the tangled threads in my head slowly began to unravel.

Eighteen.

King Laskar was the same age Berry had been when he died.

Could that also be a coincidence?

At this point, my absurd delusion was beginning to line up far too neatly to dismiss as chance.

I swallowed hard, my fists clenched tightly.

Varen glanced toward me at my reaction.

‘Ceryl, what’s wrong? Why are you shaking like that?’

I could understand the dragon’s true speech, but I couldn’t answer him.

Instead of speaking aloud, I forced the corners of my stiff mouth upward to show that I was fine.

Only after my strange reaction toward the king had finally subsided did Morpha step forward.

They approached the seated Berius and bowed politely.

“Your Majesty, how has your condition been today?”

“Much the same as always. The headaches have been particularly severe these past few days, so I haven’t been able to sleep at all.”

Why headaches of all things?

Berry had died from an illness in his head, and even the symptoms were similar.

If it really was the same disease, then he needed proper examinations as soon as possible.

Though this world obviously didn’t have the equipment necessary to diagnose meningitis.

“......”

To stop my irrational thoughts from flowing naturally in that direction, I squeezed my eyes shut.

Then I repeatedly forced myself to recall everything I knew about King Laskar.

The man before me was the son of the Laskar family, the usurpers who had driven out the true royal Lavier bloodline and seized the throne.

Not only that, he was the culprit who had kidnapped Dravergh’s son for the sake of the heart contract.

The one responsible for establishing magical creature management facilities all across the nation in order to exploit the magical creatures of this world however he pleased.

And...

the publicly acknowledged puppet king everyone whispered about openly.

The moment that final phrase surfaced in my mind, my eyes snapped open again toward Berius.

At some point, Morpha had already extended a hand over the king’s head.

“Please excuse me for a moment.”

Morpha naturally played the role of the king’s personal physician.

But the faint trembling in their breathing revealed that even they were tense.

A dim light spilled from their palm.

The king’s nurse and attendants watched them anxiously.

A moment later, a voice echoed simultaneously through both mine and Varen’s minds.

‘Well now. Even I can’t read him precisely. This human is covered in an absurd number of spells.’

At their concise report, Varen and I immediately exchanged glances.

The reason we had infiltrated the royal palace was to determine whether the death army belonged to the king.

If the king was covered in countless spells, then the magic we sought could be among them—

or it might not be.

We had at least glimpsed a possibility, but there was no way to confirm anything here and now.

As if thinking the same thing, Varen’s mouth hardened grimly.

Though transformed into a silver-haired nobleman, his blue eyes—the ones that revealed his true soul—remained unchanged.

‘It seems we underestimated this.’

At Varen’s true speech, Morpha gave the slightest nod.

They withdrew their hand from the king’s head and stepped back.

Putting on an apologetic expression, they lowered their head respectfully.

“My apologies, Your Majesty. My limited knowledge is insufficient to determine the cause.”

“That’s quite alright. You’ve nothing to apologize for.”

The young king smiled benevolently.

He showed mercy even toward an incompetent physician.

‘There’s no need to drag this out. Let’s leave.’

Rather than taking risks to uncover uncertain information, Morpha chose to withdraw cleanly.

Their decision was perfectly rational.

But that didn’t stop my stomach from twisting bitterly.

It had taken immense resolve just to infiltrate the royal palace.

Compared to how ambitious the plan had been, we had gained almost nothing.

At this rate, we would have to find another method.

The mystery of the death army still remained unsolved.

“...Ah.”

Grinding my teeth in frustration, I lowered my gaze.

And by pure coincidence, Berius’s ankle entered my field of vision.

His frame already looked thin at a glance, but the exposed ankle seemed so fragile and delicate that it looked like it would snap if someone touched it too hard.

I still couldn’t be certain the boy before me was Berry reincarnated.

And yet I kept overlapping them in my mind.

Worse still, fury twisted violently through my gut.

In my previous world, I had never once let Berry miss a meal.

After I began studying veterinary medicine seriously, I even prepared carefully balanced raw meals for him myself.

In summer, I worried about him suffering from the heat.

In winter, I worried he might lose strength.

Every season, I made sure he got proper nutritional food.

No matter how busy I was, I walked him for two hours every single day.

And on weekends, I took him out to open fields and let him run around for half the day.

Thanks to that, Berry had maintained a healthy, balanced body for all eighteen years of his life.

So what the hell was with those shriveled ankles?

Could he even walk properly looking like that?

These fucking bastards. Puppet king or not, shouldn’t they at least feed the kid properly first?

“I will prescribe medicine to help you sleep. It may not completely remove the headaches, but at the very least, you should be able to rest comfortably tonight.”

At Morpha’s light gesture, one of the rebel members disguised as a servant of the Litmus family stepped forward.

When he handed over a bag, Morpha removed a single bottle of potion from inside.

A pale pink liquid filled the fist-sized glass bottle.

I narrowed my eyes at the suspicious medicine.

What exactly is in that thing?

Is it actually safe to drink?

Surely Morpha didn’t prescribe Berius something strange.

...Have I lost my mind?

After everything it took to get here, I was subconsciously worrying about King Laskar.

Honestly, I wanted to raise my fist and repeatedly smash my own skull in.