Chapter 429: [Extra 1] : Cute Emperor
Chapter 429: Cute Emperor (Extra 1)
"There was an order from His Majesty to honor and respect you, princess. If you ignore his favor, your country won't be able to escape his wrath."
"What about the baby in my womb?"
"The bloodline of a filthy country. It will die as soon as it's born."
"That can't be…"
She entered into a political marriage with an ally to face the golden golem of a new empire that had emerged as a new powerhouse.
However, their alliance was destroyed within a year, and the royal family was annihilated while fleeing.
She was still alive only purely because of her beauty, widely known throughout the Northern Continent.
"Follow me. If there is even a scratch on your body, we won't be able to face His Majesty."
"Don't come any closer."
"Give up. We have massacred even the knights who were escorting the royal family. There will be no reinforcements coming to save you."
Amid that desperate situation, the princess remembered her past. Her desire to live then was strong, at least until she married the prince of her humble ally and bedded him.
However, as new life began to grow in her belly, she had a change of heart.
For this child, who was to be born out of the selfishness of adults, she decided to live in atonement.
"Our offer to you is fair, princess. It is an honor to have the child of a great ruler who will unify and rule the Northern Continent like the ancient Magic Empire. Compared to the wretched lineage you have now…"
Flap!
The new empire's knight abruptly stopped midsentence, his eyes gazing up into the sky blankly.
'What happened?'
She wondered, following the direction of his stare until she saw a being that made her lose her mind and forget about the situation.
Beautiful. Noble.
Since birth, she always received such compliments, but the existence before her was on a completely different level.
"Goddess…?" She uttered, thinking the creator of Fantasy would definitely look like her.
Slowly descending from the sky with her platinum-colored hair fluttering, she glanced around her.
"He must've been put in great danger." The goddess said, her voice domineering all sounds, almost as if she spoke right into her audiences' ears.
Each act of hers was a work of art, and her presence overwhelmed those before her like a natural queen."
"Hey, identify yourself!"
The bewildered knight demanded as he took a step back from the princess.
Those two words represented the confusion of everyone gathered here.
'Do I really want her to answer?'
They couldn't help but feel that way, considering she might be like the emperor, who didn't waste time on wretched slaves.
But the woman was kind.
"Do you need to know?"
She didn't answer properly, but just the fact that she did made her emotional.
The commander of the knights at the forefront was the first to come to his senses in this strange and absurd situation.
"Capture that woman alive!"
His loyalty alone could be said to be the best.
"Ah!"
"Yes, Baron!"
The knights and soldiers surrounding the princess narrowed the distance between them.
The new empire's main weapon was their golems. However, fighting against all the countries of the Northern Continent, it had none to spare for such a 'trivial hobby.'
They were overflowing with knights, though.
Many people had sworn allegiance to the new empire to turn their lives around, and even mercenaries were joining their faction one after another even at this moment.
"This is going to be difficult, but…"
Pop!
The woman summoned a staff seemingly out of nowhere, the head of a beautiful elf hanging from its tip instead of a magical orb.
Her image, which had been akin to a goddess until just now, changed to that of a witch in an instant.
"Fight." She ordered her weapon.
A very odd request.
"Why me?" The elf head hanging from its tip asked.
"There is no time to argue. Would you prefer to be destroyed?"
"How am I supposed to fight without limbs…"
Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop!
A geometric magic circle appeared around the grunting staff.
Ancient magic.
There was no wizard present in their vicinity with enough wisdom and expertise to identify it, making her opponents unaware it was 'real' in the sense that it wasn't a skill provided by the system.
"Magic!"
"Be careful—"
Pop! Swoosh! Pop! Pop!
Not long after the magic circle's emergence, fireballs darted out of it, burning all but one of the knights and soldiers into charcoal.
"Hurry and tell His Majesty—"
Taking advantage of the confusion, the knight commander immediately turned away from the battlefield and made a quick escape.
"End him." The woman ordered the elf once more.
"That's going to be hard. That knight has high resistance to magic, so my orthodox magic…"
Boo-woong—
The woman flew towards her remaining target and swung her staff at him.
Kang!
"Ahhh?!"
The female head collided with his plate armor, the sound of a blunt weapon striking metal echoing across the field.
Considering the back of his armor had been dented, at least his spine had to have been smashed.
"Krrreughh… Cough!"
Despite his stats being close to level 300, the commander soon fell down and stopped breathing.
"Ah…" The princess uttered, unable to keep her mouth shut after witnessing such a horrific scene from beginning to end.
What brought her back to her senses was the head attached to the woman's staff.
"Don't you know who I am?! I'm the sister of legendary 3rd Elf King Elfheim Kahn Lanuberk—"
"I'm not interested."
"Even though I'm now no better than a golem, my soul—"
"Be quiet."
"Listen. Winners should show mercy and generosity to the loser—"
"Should I bury your face into the ground?"
"…"
After silencing her chatty weapon with a gelid tone, she slowly turned to the princess, her expression changing from winter to spring.
She looked at her belly, which hadn't swelled up yet.
"I'm glad that you're safe."
Her words were quite vague.
Was she speaking to the child in her womb, the last scion of an exiled country?
Or was she simply showing pure concern for the pregnant woman?
Whatever her reason, the princess felt relieved.
"Who are you?"
"I'm Hippolia."
"Hippolia…"
The continent being unaware of such a beautiful woman was quite surprising.
It was as if she descended from the skies above.
Her guess wasn't entirely wrong, though, since she actually did.
"Are you an angel?" She asked. The symbolic wings on her back were a clear giveaway, but she couldn't be certain until Hippolia confirmed it herself.
She had never seen an angel in person, after all, since their noble race disappeared quite long ago.
"I was a human just like you until recently."
"I see…"
Unable to determine how to reply, she turned her gaze away and looked around her, finding nothing but corpses.
Hippolia's magical offensive annihilated all of the princess's pursuers.
If it had been her in the past, she would have trembled in fear of her and vomited, but for better or worse, she became numb after seeing a man with mixed flesh being brutally murdered in front of her eyes.
"Let's move before our opponents' reinforcements come, shall we?"
"Ah, yes!"
The two women disappeared into a burned forest.
*****
They had been together ever since their first memorable meeting.
The princess thought it would be nice to return to her home country or her parents to ask for a favor, but if she were to be sent off to get married in a foreign country again, everything would go south for her.
Moreover, she was the princess of an already ruined kingdom.
She was no longer of value, considering she couldn't be used as a political tool anymore.
"Miss Hippolia."
Hence, this angel was the only being she could rely on.
"Are you unwell? Did your legs swell up again?"
"No. The swelling's diminished a lot since yesterday."
"That's a relief. I apologize for not being able to prevent natural phenomena from occurring using my healing abilities…"
"Don't be sorry. If you hadn't been here, by now, my baby and I wouldn't have survived for this long."
Special magic would've gotten her child killed, and she would've been reduced to a toy of the new emperor.
Terrified just by imagining it, she trembled.
Whoosh.
And Hippolia immediately put a thin blanket over her shoulders, thinking she was cold.
"Are you really okay?" She asked, her eyes filled with concern.
"Yes. I'm fine. I'm sorry for making you worry."
"That's good to hear. Your child and your safety are more important than anything else in this world."
"… Why?"
Was it because of her imminent childbirth?
The princess carefully expressed her doubts, which she had been carrying all this time.
She was a princess of a ruined kingdom, and her son was its grandson.
She still didn't know whether it would be a boy or a girl, but she was certain a miserable life awaited it.
If so, then wouldn't it be better for her to commit suicide with her child?
On that day, even if Heavenly luck allowed them to escape from the empire's pursuit, they would be caught and killed sooner or later.
Her pregnancy was daunting as it was already, considering she had never done any hard physical labor before.
If not for Hippolia staying by her side, she wouldn't have been able to endure this far.
"Listen. Your child will change the world."
"Your words give me strength."
"I'm serious. Don't you believe me?"
"No! Absolutely not! That's not what always happens!"
"…"
"… I apologize for stepping over my boundary."
"You didn't cause any problems, so raise your head already."
"Okay…"
A few days after, her fated delivery finally happened.
"Wah…"
Despite the extremely dire circumstances and poor environment, her child was born miraculously healthy.
But the princess, unable to bear her childbirth, died.
… And was reincarnated as a demon.
"Congratulations on being born again. Are you alright?"
"Miss Hippolia!"
"Before anything else, you need to wear something first."
"No, more importantly, my baby… Oh!"
She couldn't understand how it was possible, but her baby was already standing on his own two feet as soon as he was born.
"I think you need to cut your umbilical cord so we can move immediately, master. I'll provide all the information you need on the way. Things aren't going quite well for us…"
"Wah."
"Ah… Aren't you so cute?"
Her sister-in-law, passionately obsessed with her child, put them in no position to converse.
"Smooch!"
"I don't even know what happened after the big explosion. When I woke up, all I was aware of, though vaguely, was that you were in the womb of the girl in front of me. Ah, if I'm interfering with your fun meal, I can just discuss all the details with you once you're done, master."
"Wah."
"Yes. She was the princess of that alliance. In return for military assistance, she married the king of their kingdom's neighboring country and became pregnant with you. However, after suffering a tremendous defeat, their nation was obliterated until none of it were left but her. Forced into exile, she began her escape from the grasps of the new empire— Master? Oh! Sleep well."
"Ahh…"
The newborn baby fell asleep while drinking milk from the princess's breast.
Hippolia's gaze turned to her.
"Thanks to your hard work, this world is now saved."
"Huh…?"
At that point, she was still unaware that her son would overthrow the new empire and become the first emperor to unify the Northern Continent at the age of three.
But that wasn't the point.
At the time, Hippolia's words, "this world," had a far greater meaning that she only became aware of now.
"What's on your mind?"
"Ah! Miss Hippolia."
Despite being busy with public affairs, she still took the time to play tennis with her.
She didn't know what to say.
"I was right, wasn't I?" She asked with a smile.
"You can read my thoughts so easily."
"That's only because I think about the same thing every day."
"Well… You're not wrong. I feel like I really did give birth to an amazing baby."
"Whew! Let's have another match! Don't you think it's quite embarrassing to end our session with a loss?"
"Yes, Miss Hippolia!"
Taang—
Fantasy 8's Mollan Shrine in the Northern Continent.
This was where the woman who gave birth to the cutest emperor in the world lived.
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-- Power
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