Chapter 237: Qiu Tailang Is Alive

"No, we tried to stop him too. But he refused to listen. He believed that if he sacrificed himself, everything would work out. We never understood his true intentions or his reasons, but that was how Qiu Tailang..."

"That’s a lie!"

Viktor’s scream sounded as though he were on the verge of tears, and Qiu Nuoya felt his own chest tighten painfully.

What happened in Viktor’s past? What exactly did Qiu Tailang do by risking his life?

"It isn’t a lie."

"Then why does the Monster Stampede still occur every hundred years!? Qiu Tailang’s death was meaningless! You people caused his death based on your own assumptions!"

"Qiu Tailang isn’t dead, Viktor."

"What...?"

"The problem is the Monster Stampede. If we can somehow resolve that, Qiu Tailang will finally be freed."

Qiu Nuoya had absolutely no idea what Cassian was talking about.

And Qiu Tailang isn’t dead? Qiu Tailang was supposed to be an ordinary human, wasn’t he? Considering his age, how could he possibly still be alive...?

Viktor seemed just as suspicious. He glared at his father again.

"What do you mean by that?"

"Exactly as I said. Qiu Tailang went there of his own accord to suppress the Monster Stampede, risking his life to seal that place away. Even so, the Monster Stampede still occurs every hundred years because the magic power leaking from that place cannot be completely contained. However, compared to what it was like before Qiu Tailang suppressed it, the amount is negligible. Even now, he continues to protect this world from there."

"I’ve never heard anything about this."

"Of course you haven’t. It is the most important state secret in this country. This country... No, this entire world exists, without a doubt, upon the sacrifice of a single person."

"Why...?"

Cassian gazed out the window.

"Why, I wonder?"

"It happened far too suddenly, and no one knew the reason. Even now, we still don’t know. The only thing we know for certain is that a source of magic power powerful enough to cover this entire world flows through that place. And there is a nameless Hero who continues to suppress it all by himself."

"Nameless... His name... You were the ones who erased Qiu Tailang’s name from this world!"

"Qiu Tailang himself wanted that. We merely granted his wish. Qiu Tailang never wanted fame or recognition for himself. He once told me that someday, in the distant future, you would surely come to save him. You were very attached to Qiu Tailang, and he doted on you as well. That is why he entrusted that future to you. I never imagined that you would one day say things that would disregard even a wish like that."

A heavy silence descended upon the room, an unnatural stillness filling the air.

Then Igor quietly broke the silence.

"You really shouldn’t be the one saying that."

Qiu Tailang is alive.

If Viktor had known that, Qiu Nuoya was certain he would have taken action much sooner. By now, Qiu Nuoya knew what kind of person Viktor was.

And Igor had known Viktor for far longer than Qiu Nuoya had. Naturally, he must have felt that he could not stay silent.

"I agree with Igor. You never told Viktor anything about Qiu Tailang until now, did you? And yet you’re blaming Viktor for not knowing anything. Isn’t that completely unfair? Viktor has been doing everything he can to protect whatever he believes he can protect, in his own way. He does lose sight of himself and end up going too far sometimes, but that doesn’t mean you have any right to blame him for it."

Cassian looked at Qiu Nuoya with a cold serious expression. However, when Qiu Nuoya calmly met his gaze, Cassian narrowed his eyes slightly and smiled.

"Viktor, it seems you have some good companions."

Honestly, that smile of his just looks more and more suspicious.

A lot of what he said was certainly reasonable, but whenever he did not want to answer something, he simply avoided giving an answer. And whenever someone responded to him with sound logic, he would casually sidestep the argument.

In the end, Qiu Nuoya never seemed to get a straight answer from him.

Qiu Nuoya remembered how Cardinal Bedros had once told Viktor, "This is why I hate elves," after Viktor had bombarded him with one sophistry after another. Perhaps elves became particularly skilled with words simply because they had lived for so many years.

"Viktor, I have no intention of forcing you to do anything anymore. The moment you abandoned the Silvermere name and chose the path of an adventurer, the elders of the village gave up on you. But I believe that was for the best."

"..."

"You should be free to live however you wish, without being bound by anything. That is also why I never told you the truth about Qiu Tailang until now. But I always believed in you. I believed that, no matter what happened, you would never abandon the country that Qiu Tailang loved."

"...You really are an unpleasant man."

Viktor muttered those words as he clenched his fist tightly.

"That’s more or less my job."

"Is it truly the case that Qiu Tailang is still alive?"

"Yes. His clone occasionally comes to visit me, after all."

Qiu Tailang can even do something like that?

Even while suppressing enough magical power to drive monsters insane, he had somehow continued to live.

So he really is alive.

For some reason, something stirred uneasily in Qiu Nuoya’s chest.

He should have been happy that the person so important to Viktor, someone Qiu Nuoya had believed was dead, was actually still alive. Yet instead, a complicated emotion seemed to burn within him.

Qiu Nuoya had virtually no experience with romance, and he had never felt anything like this before.

Is this jealousy?

The person who had been Viktor’s first love, the person in whom Viktor saw an echo of Qiu Nuoya himself. Qiu Nuoya was jealous of that person.

I wish he had never had to learn what this feeling was.