‘Now what should we do?’
Hyeonu finished dinner and pounded on his bloated stomach while thinking. It was still too long before he could return to the demon world. The week that the emperor mentioned hadn’t passed by yet.
‘What can I do that isn’t just hunting?’
He wanted to do something to help him with the main scenario, rather than just hunting. It was time to do that.
‘Or should I prepare more for Arena Week...?’
Otherwise, was there a way to acquire more strength for Arena Week? He just had to work the Crescent Moon players harder under the name of ‘special training’. Hyeonu shook his head. ‘That won’t work. They can’t even digest the current training well...’
Thinking about it, he felt it was too much. Just the training with the three of them—Kim Seokjung, Gang Junggu, and Hyeonu—had already pushed the Crescent Moon players to their limits. They would become frustrated at the difference in skill that couldn’t be narrowed, then switch repeatedly between giving up or challenging it.
‘All that is left is the territory...’
If a person couldn’t be stronger, he could make his territory stronger and more prosperous instead. In other words, it was about making the soldiers of Phinis stronger.
‘There is nothing to touch...’
The problem was that just like Crescent Moon, there weren’t any aspects of his territory that he needed to work on. The territory was proceeding well right now, so it was just a matter of time before everything came to fruition. Other than that, no obstacles existed.
‘Should I just go to the demon world?’
No matter how he thought about it, there was nothing for him to do. The emperor had told him not to go over, but Hyeonu had respected his words enough. He didn’t fulfill the order of waiting the entire week, but he’d waited for more than five days. Hyeonu had done as much as he could.
‘It isn’t a quest anyway.’
He wrapped up his brief troubles and immediately took action.
“Return.”
Hyeonu returned to Etono.
***
When Hyeonu appeared in Etono, he looked incredulously at the scene before his eyes. He blinked and repeatedly rubbed his eyes with both hands. A long time passed before Hyeonu opened his firmly closed lips and asked, “Why are you here...?”
The light voice that emerged from Hyeonu’s mouth didn’t contain any power at all. At Hyeonu’s question, the man sitting on one side of the office said, “Why? That is what I want to ask.”
Obviously, the owner of the castle here was Hyeonu, since he was the lord of Etono. Nevertheless, Hyeonu failed to give a proper answer as the identity of the man made him hesitate. The man—the emperor—stared at Hyeonu and asked again, “Why aren’t you answering? Are my words ridiculous after you have become a marquis?”
The emperor’s eyes didn’t have their usual sense of boredom. Instead, they were emitting heat. Hyeonu relaxed the tension running through his entire body and barely managed to open his mouth again. He answered, “No, Your Majesty. A week has passed, so I came back...”
“One week? It has been less than a week since I’ve left the letter.”
“That...” Hyeonu was rendered speechless by the emperor’s words because they were true. Hyeonu had waited five days exactly—only five out of the seven days.
Right then, a voice saved Hyeonu: “Just end it here. Hasn’t it been 10 days since Your Majesty came to Etono? I think it is better to stop joking around.”
Lebron—Hyeonu’s master and a fellow student of John Blake—started to clean up the situation.
The emperor clearly showed that he didn’t like Lebron’s intervention. He frowned and released a rough pressure. “Why are you saying that already? I wanted to have fun. In any case...”
“Then go drink or maybe we can call it a day. There is something I want to say separately...” Lebron didn’t care about the emperor’s words and only expressed what he wanted to say.
The emperor scowled at Lebron’s actions. “Why are you interfering in the emperor’s speech? You, a duke?”
Lebron stood up from his seat and bowed to the emperor. “I’ll go first, Your Majesty.”
The emperor brought Lebron back to his seat. “Where are you going? And you, Marquis, take a seat. I have something to say.”
Hearing that, Lebron sat down again. It was because he felt the playfulness disappear from the emperor’s words. The moment Lebron sat down, Hyeonu sat beside him. The emperor asked, “Since you’re here, it means that things worked out well in the East Continent, right?”
“Yes, that’s right. I got the official seal from the emperor of the East Continent.” Hyeonu removed the white roll of paper from his inventory and carefully handed it to the emperor. Upon receiving the paper, the emperor unfurled it. As Hyeonu said, the seal of the emperor of the East Continent was stamped there. It was the same as the one in the memory of the West Continent’s emperor.
“Yes... you always complete my requests well.” The emperor smiled deeply at Hyeonu.
Then he blew the paper into the air and said, “The demon world... Every day has been boring since I learned about the demon world.”
The paper quickly turned into black ash and scattered over the table. The emperor’s eyes turned toward the scattered ashes.
“At the same time, I was amused. I was looking forward to it. There are too many things binding me down on the continent—the position of the emperor, the constraints of the lizards. However, there are no lizards in the demon world. There is no one here who cares what I do,” the emperor said while his eyes emitted a golden light.
When Lebron heard the emperor, his expression changed rapidly. His memories from the past came to mind—ones of the emperor who once had such vigor...
‘It is just like when he was cleaning up the inside of the empire.’
The emperor had been at the vanguard of their troops. It was a time when they dyed the continent red with blood together.
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