Theodore slipped a hand into his breast pocket and took out a tiny needle.
“Prick your finger with this. All you need to do is drop a single drop of blood on the crystal orb. Because an advanced spell has been cast on it, if you are confirmed to be a descendant of Emperor Crosen, the door will open automatically.”
Taking the needle, Damon made a joke.
“Seeing you holding a needle brings back old memories. It isn’t poisoned, is it?”
“Of course not.”
Theodore smiled bitterly as he watched Damon prick his finger with the needle.
Drip.
A drop of blood fell, but the crystal orb did not react at once. What was strange was that the blood, which should have run down its surface, seeped into the orb instead. Soon, without leaving even a trace behind, the blood vanished inside the orb. A moment later, the crystal orb began to shine dazzlingly. At the sight, Theodore’s expression brightened.
“It seems you have been approved. The door should open shortly.”
Just as Theodore said, a change began to occur in the door.
Rrrrrumble.
A flicker of disappointment passed through Damon’s eyes. It was because the entire door was not opening. Right beside the crystal orb, a hole opened its mouth. It was a narrow doorway, barely large enough for one person to enter.
“What the hell. Why is it so small? The whole thing wasn’t going to open?”
When Damon asked back as if dumbfounded, Theodore quickly gestured.
“The door will close soon, so please hurry inside.”
“Do you have any intention of coming in with me?”
Theodore smiled and shook his head.
“Only descendants of Emperor Crosen may enter this place. Until now, countless attendants have followed imperial descendants inside, but not a single one has ever come out. I cannot say for certain, but there are likely countless magic traps installed within.”
“Is that so?”
Damon nodded and moved his feet. His eyes were shining unusually brightly at the thought that he would be able to learn everything about Emperor Crosen. Standing by the doorway, Damon turned his head and looked at Theodore.
“You explain things to my companions. I’ll be taking my time in here, repairing the Bone Dragon.”
“Yes. I will instruct the guards to prepare meals and a change of clothes for you.”
“I’m counting on you.”
With those words, Damon’s figure disappeared. The moment he entered, the door began to close. Soon, the place vanished without a trace, as though there had never been a door there at all. Theodore let out a long sigh.
“Now I only have to worry about the coronation, then?”
After looking at the door once more, Theodore silently moved on.
“Impressive. To think there isn’t a speck of dust even after being left untouched for hundreds of years……”
Damon walked down the corridor, repeatedly exclaiming in admiration. Only after repeating the same procedure as at the main gate three more times was he able to enter the interior. What greeted him was a long corridor whose end could not be seen. Judging by its downward slope, it seemed to be a passage leading underground.
“There isn’t much to see aboveground.”
Damon hummed as he walked down the corridor. He had already visited three or four annexes located aboveground. There, sculptures and paintings praising Emperor Crosen’s achievements were displayed. They had surely been made by the greatest sculptors and painters in Arcadia, but from the start, they had failed to hold Damon’s interest.
What interested Damon far more were the paintings lined up along the corridor. The place was packed with paintings depicting Emperor Crosen’s life story. In a word, they could be called the footprints Emperor Crosen had left behind until now. Damon’s steps stopped before a large painting hanging at the entrance of the corridor.
The scene on the canvas showed a valiant knight riding a white horse, raising his sword to point at the sky. He wore armor and a helmet of unparalleled splendor, and judging by the dazzling light pouring from the uplifted sword, it seemed to depict an Aura Blade. The vivid sense of life overflowing from it made it seem to be the work of a painter of considerable skill. Damon’s gaze shifted to the painting beside it.
“So this fellow is Emperor Crosen.”
There, a man holding a sword was painted standing firmly atop the ruins of a battlefield. The black-haired, black-eyed man was wearing very unfamiliar clothing. It seemed to depict the moment Emperor Crosen first arrived here. The instant Damon saw it, his eyes gleamed.
“A blue changshan. As expected, he was from the Murim.”
Wondering if he might be able to identify Emperor Crosen’s true identity, Damon examined the painting thoroughly. But there was no gain at all. The face had not been depicted in great detail. A faint look of disappointment passed over Damon’s face.
“Well, to the eyes of people here, everyone from the Central Plains would probably look the same, wouldn’t they? The sword he’s holding looks like a Paegeom type. At least it’s clear he wasn’t a monk or a Daoist.”
Damon slowly moved on. The paintings that followed depicted Emperor Crosen’s later journey. Most of them were deeds Damon had heard about from Shrekheimer.
“Idiots. If they had simply carved it in words, one stone slab would have been more than enough……”
Even as he grumbled, Damon’s eyes ceaselessly scanned the paintings. Since even the smallest details were depicted, it was true that they were more interesting than reading a record.
Emperor Crosen, a self-made figure who had appeared alone in Truvenia and founded Arcadia. Yet his beginnings had been unexpectedly humble. The reason was the distinctly human envy people felt toward someone superior to themselves. The paintings described in full detail the difficulties Emperor Crosen had suffered then. As Damon looked over them, he clicked his tongue.
“Stupid bastard. He must have thought this place was like the Central Plains. If he fought a duel, he should have killed them without mercy instead of showing useless compassion…… Did he think the defeated would graciously accept their loss like in the Central Plains?”
Damon’s guess was correct. By chance, the first people Emperor Crosen met after arriving here were mercenaries. Without realizing it himself, he had become a mercenary. Afterward, Emperor Crosen fought countless martial duels to prove his skill. Those events were depicted in detail in the paintings. In the countless duels he fought, Emperor Crosen did not lose even once. The problem was that the knights defeated in those duels did not accept defeat gracefully. If Emperor Crosen had been a noble of high rank or a knight appointed by a king, things would have been different. But because he was a wandering mercenary of unknown origin, the defeated knights did not withdraw quietly.
“He is an extremely cunning and despicable man. He seized victory by means so petty they cannot be described. I can never accept such a defeat.”
“He acknowledged that he had lost to me. Then, from behind, he suddenly launched a sneak attack and gravely wounded me.”
Those defeated by Emperor Crosen slandered him by any means necessary. Their number only grew as the duels continued. Because of those rumors, the attention of several rulers who had taken interest in Emperor Crosen was inevitably obscured. His position continued to narrow.
Furthermore, Emperor Crosen, as in the Central Plains, usually held one-on-one martial duels in places without people. Naturally, there was no way there would be witnesses. Imagining the situation Emperor Crosen must have been in at the time, Damon smiled bitterly.
“He couldn’t speak the language here properly, so he had no way to explain himself.”
As the rumors spread, even arranging duels became difficult. Knights who received duel challenges either refused without even looking at them, or agreed only on the condition that the duel be held in secret. Even so, Emperor Crosen decorated every duel with victory, and the defeated knights invariably joined in the slander.
Only then, realizing the situation, Emperor Crosen tried to hold duels in public places. But not a single knight agreed. By then, the situation had already reached a point beyond his ability to remedy. Thus, despite his lofty martial skill, Emperor Crosen had no choice but to wander the continent aimlessly as a nameless mercenary. During that time, the Race War broke out.
The calamity of war covered the continent of Truvenia in an instant. Emperor Crosen also took the side of humanity and participated in the war. However, the achievements that he, a mere ordinary mercenary, could gain were clearly limited. No matter how exceptional his martial arts were, opportunities to stand out in a chaotic battlefield were not very common. Nevertheless, Emperor Crosen faithfully did what he could. He specialized in selecting and cutting down only the medium-sized monsters that were objects of terror to ordinary soldiers. However, because of the schemes of jealous knights, none of his tremendous exploits were reported to the higher-ups. Though it was a war that staked their fate, they could not overcome petty human jealousy. In this way, the Race War slowly moved in a direction unfavorable to humanity.
Then one day, Emperor Crosen encountered a turning point in his life. By chance, he met the king of the Kingdom of Crosena, who had been surrounded by a unit of medium-sized monsters and was on the verge of annihilation. At the time, Emperor Crosen displayed outstanding swordsmanship and single-handedly dealt with no fewer than seventy medium-sized monsters. Needless to say, the King of Crosena was captivated by his exploits. Emperor Crosen had finally met a ruler who recognized his true worth. As Damon scanned the paintings, his expression opened brightly.
“It’s a little different from what Shrekheimer told me. They didn’t meet through a duel; the king was rescued by him.”
The King of Crosena decided to entrust his fate to Emperor Crosen. The Kingdom of Crosena had already been brutally trampled under the hands of the orc army. The royal palace had been miserably destroyed, and the people had scattered in all directions. All the forces remaining to the King of Crosena were a mere fifty knights and five hundred soldiers. The King of Crosena entrusted everything he had to Emperor Crosen. Along with his beautiful daughter, Valerie.
“I will stake my everything on you. Please save the people of my kingdom.”
Emperor Crosen accepted the proposal. It was around the time when he could speak the language of this place, however awkwardly. Having finally seized an opportunity, Emperor Crosen resolved to teach martial arts to the soldiers who had come under his command.
“In war, hundreds of ordinary experts are better than a single supreme master. I will surely raise them to the pinnacle.”
Firmly resolved, Emperor Crosen taught the soldiers, who looked at him with doubtful eyes, his finest swordsmanship and internal energy cultivation method. In order to teach martial arts, one had to first capture the soldiers’ hearts. Through demonstrations of martial might that no one else could imitate, Emperor Crosen instilled in the soldiers the pride that they could absolutely become strong. His intention worked, and the soldiers’ skills improved with each passing day. Imagining those times, Damon nodded.
“It makes perfect sense. If this place’s abundant mana is combined with the high-level internal energy methods of the Central Plains, their skills would improve in no time.”
Emperor Crosen’s subsequent deeds were not particularly different from what he had heard from Shrekheimer.
Ten years later, an upheaval occurred in Truvenia. An unimaginably powerful knight order appeared in Truvenia, composed of no fewer than two hundred fifty Sword Masters and three hundred high-ranking knights who were not much inferior to them. Of course, they were the soldiers of the Kingdom of Crosena who had been personally taught by Emperor Crosen. With them as his foundation, Emperor Crosen entered the prologue of his legend. As Damon walked down the corridor, scanning the paintings, he frowned.
“He was a born strategist. I can’t know for certain, but I’d guess that in the Central Plains, he had been the head of an organization or the sect master of a clan. Otherwise, he could not have shown such command ability.”
Damon continued moving forward as he looked over the paintings depicting what followed. He viewed without filter the life story of Emperor Crosen, a story that could be called myth.
While viewing the achievements Emperor Crosen had accomplished, deeds that could be described in a word as legend, Damon did not even feel fatigue. The paintings depicted the advance into Arcadia, which had begun due to religious conflict. The pioneers united tightly around Emperor Crosen and steadily built a myth. Those efforts must have become the cornerstone that allowed Arcadia to develop to this extent.
Emperor Crosen was truly a great man. Though Truvenia had been the very place that had cast him out cruelly, when it faced danger from the invasion of the dark army, he raised his troops without hesitation. And in the end, he saved Truvenia from Neidelhark’s grasp. Each time Damon admired another painting, exclamations of awe burst from him again and again.
“To think a human could live such a life…… He truly is a figure worthy of being called a hero.”
It had truly been a turbulent life. Personally, he even envied Emperor Crosen for having walked such a path. If Damon himself had fallen into this land in Emperor Crosen’s place while retaining his martial arts of the past…… After thinking about it, Damon shook his head.
“I could never have left behind the same achievements he did. Even if my martial arts had been far stronger than his, it would have been the same. I don’t have the magnanimity, leadership, or popularity to follow in his footsteps……”
Suddenly, Damon was reminded of the old story of Han Xin. Emperor Crosen was precisely the kind of figure to whom the words “the more, the better” applied. A man capable of seizing the hearts of thousands, tens of thousands of soldiers and commanding them without discord—he was a great general fully comparable to Han Xin, and also a wise and thoughtful ruler. Damon gave a wry smile.
“The number of soldiers I could manage would be around a thousand at most. My vessel is even smaller than Liu Bang’s, who could command a hundred thousand.”
Though he keenly felt the difference in their abilities, Damon’s expression was not very dark. That was how captivated he had become by Emperor Crosen.
“What position could he possibly have held in the Central Plains? I’m so curious I could go mad.”
While he was absorbed in admiring the paintings, Damon had before he knew it arrived at the end of the corridor.