novelzi Chapter 198:
Chapter 198:
Chapter 198:
[Join the pantheon, Dragonia, we are willing to accept you into our community of destiny.]
""""
For a long time, no one responded to the goddess's voice.
Neither King Lionheart, who had long served the gods, nor Dragonia, the dragon king who had been their arch-enemy and ultimately defeated.
"This can't be happening!"
Leon was the first to react, recognizing the implications of the offer to join the pantheon.
Dragonia will join the Alliance. It meant one thing.
It meant to recognize Dragonia as one of the faithful, to give him sanctity.
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The dragon spirit, now a thought, laughs maniacally, and rightly so.
The enemies it had fought for so long, the ones that had finally defeated him, had now come to him with a humiliating offer.
And it's all because of a single human.
They have come to the unthinkable conclusion that the gods will surrender their divinity to save a mere mortal.
[Laughs]
They would give up their divinity for a mere mortal? Is a mere mortal worth that much?
[This is not a mere mortal. This is my knight, the honored daughter of the Lionheart King, the Grail Guardian, the representative of divinity.]
[I know what the Lionheart King means to you. Have you ever offered such convenience to any of his predecessors, not even the first Lionheart King?]
Of course not.
The gods are the guardians of providence. They must adhere to principles, and while they favored and blessed their agents, they never departed from reason.
This was even more unconventional than raising the dead in paradise.
"Impossible! Impossible!"
Leon dropped to both knees, sheathing the sword he had pointed at Dragonia, as if ecstatic to even hear the gods' proposal.
"To surrender the seat of exalted divinity for the convenience of a mere mortal, and a vile lizard at that!"
[This guy?]
Dragonia bristled at the insult, which was the last thing he wanted to hear, but Arianna persuaded Leon to listen.
[Leon, my knight, you are not a mere mortal. The gods, the world, all the souls that have accumulated since the beginning of history owe you a debt, and the gods owe you repayment.]
"But!"
[Say no more, my knight, for the gods' love for you is more than you can imagine. You deserve it.]
[Ha.]
The dragon king was dumbfounded that a human could be so favored by the gods.
It was not merely unreasonable, but a surrender of the gods' absolute authority, their divinity, to an enemy they had long sought to destroy.
Did I mention that he single-handedly destroyed the demons?
There were not only feeder demons, but also Lords.
The transcendent power of Demon Lords is something the Dragon King knows well. Although they tend to be regarded as being just above the level of an archduke, they are not archdukes'.
They were older than the Dragon King himself, and even the gods of the Ten Thousand Gods could not surpass the power of the Demon Lords.
A being that could defeat such demon lords and save even their afterlife, which should have been destroyed, would be
The only hope.
No wonder the gods were so desperate.
The gods, their temples and their paradise, are sustained by the existence of a single man, Leon.
[But, arrogant gods, do you think that I, the Dragon King of Drakkara, will sit on the same cushion as you? I am a myth. You are but a second-class citizen.]
"How dare you, you lizard, if you receive the offer you kneel down and take it!"
[Say one thing for or against.]
Dragonia said something in disbelief, but Leon returned it with a barrage of colorful insults and accusations.
[Consider our proposal, Dragon King, it is not a bad one, even for you.]
After the dragon king rejected the humiliating proposal, the goddess calmly began to persuade him.
[Our world has already been destroyed by evil, and we have found a new home, where it is not a far stretch to restore our faith.]
In other words, with a spoon, Dragonia could become one of the gods.
Dragonia retorted.
"Mr. President, Mr. President, Mr. President!"
Aides rushed to the bleary-eyed President Hobson, who had spent the night without sleeping in the temporary presidential office away from Washington.
"At the gate! At the gate, the hunters are returning!"
"All right, let's go!"
President Hobson straightened his tie and hurried to the military airfield. He wanted to get a handle on the situation as soon as possible.
* * * * *
"There really are beasts of iron running around."
On a busy street in Washington, D.C. Karina strolls down the street with Leon, marveling.
The streets are deserted, filled with tall buildings and shops. Karina wondered how such a busy street could be so deserted.
"When the gates appeared, people took refuge in case the monsters inside came out. This gate was the highest ranked of them all, so there shouldn't be anyone around here."
"Indeed."
Nodding in agreement, Karina looked around at the empty storefronts.
"Is your body all right?"
"The body of a Holy Knight can't be bad."
"Okay then."
Leon walked awkwardly ahead down the street. A walk together after hundreds of years was both welcome and awkward.
"And yet, do you resent this king?"
The words implied so much but Karina shook her head.
"As I told you two hundred years ago, it was a choice Your Majesty had to make."
"Not as King Lionheart, not as Archduke of Dragonia, but as LeonKarina, your father."
""
Karina stopped in her tracks at Leon's question. Her footsteps stopped in the snowy street. Even as the snow piled up around her feet, she couldn't answer easily.
Leon's actions and his judgment were absolutely correct as a king but as her father, as Leon, as Castile's husband?
It was wrongshe had to say so. Leon the husband, Leon the father, Leon the king, no matter what logical or grandiose reasons he might give, should not have done it.
The clear answer did not fall easily from Karina's lips.
It's hard for her to say the words, not just as Karina, but as Karina Dragonia.
"I think you're wrong. Or, more accurately, I wish you hadn't."
For the sake of 30,000 Northern troops, for the sake of their souls Leon, the father, doesn't want her to sacrifice. He says it's wrong.
" Me too."
Because Leon said it first, Karina could speak her mind.
The words she's been holding onto for so long, the words she wanted to say but couldn't. For the first time, Karina vented the resentment she thought she shouldn't even think about.
"My father, my mother's husband, shouldn't have done that. He should have saved her."
There's no blame in her voice, just mutual empathy.
For the first time in two hundred years, they're honest with each other. The initial resentment between the father and daughter, who knew each other's responsibilities and couldn't blame the other, actually made them laugh.
For two people who don't laugh much, it was a faint, faint laugh, but it would grow.
-Kii-ii-ii-gain!
A large SUV screeches to a halt in front of the two on Washington Street deserted by evacuees.
"Your Majesty Leon!"
It's President Anthony Hopson, bursting out of the car door.
He's been traveling nonstop in military transport planes and bulletproof vehicles for two hours since the pair crossed the gate.
"You're safe!"
"Who is it?"
"The king of this country or something."
"???"
If it's a king, it's a king, but what is a king or something like that?
Apart from that, President Hobson, who had been waiting anxiously for Leon's safe return, expressed his delight and noticed Karina at Leon's side.
"And her?"
As President Hobson expressed his curiosity, Karina introduced herself.
"I am Karina Dragonia, the rightful heir to King Leon Dragonia Lionheart and the Grand Duke' of the realm of Dragonia."