The Demon Lord's Bride (BL)
Chapter 136: Gifts are nice as long as they are not mentally challenging

Chapter 136: Gifts are nice as long as they are not mentally challenging

Perhaps because it was a familiar thing, Jade jumped off my shoulder and scooted closer to peek into the box.

[Master, it’s like the one you use for Spear]

"Yeah," I reached out my hand, but before I could touch the scroll, it was already trembling and elevating out of the box, hovering in front of me before softly landing on my stretched-out palms.

The scroll was visibly in a better condition than the previous one, probably because it ended up in elven hands, who knew better about the significance of the scroll. It didn’t look worn out, tied in a cord with a small, round seal bearing the shape of a great tree--the symbol of the druid.

I brushed my finger over the seal, sending a thin string of mana inside. And just like that, the seal cracked open.

"Why...didn’t you hand this to one of the druid tribe’s Chiefs?" I held the scroll from opening and looked up. "They are of royal blood too."

The elf lady smiled and answered simply. "Because they aren’t the direct descendant of the royal family."

Well...that was true. While those Chiefs had royal blood, which was blessed by the Goddess with the ability and responsibility of purification, they came from indirect families; illegitimate children, cousins, children who didn’t like royal duties--people like that. And then the position was passed down from generation to generation, so the blood became tinner. In this case, the blessing also got thinner.

"But you don’t know if I--"

"You are," she let out a small, soft laugh. "The fact that the scroll responded to you is proof of that."

Wow...this thing could detect something like that? And then I remembered that Alveitya also suddenly woke up and flew toward Valmeier that wasn’t even in the palace at that time.

Well...in theory, considering the timeline, one of my--I mean, Valmeier’s--grandparents should have come from the last generation of the royal family before the kingdom fell. So the royal blood was still quite thick there, despite Valmeier being a halfling.

I gripped the scroll hard and took a deep breath, before returning it inside the beautiful box. "Thank you," I told the elves, genuinely this time. They returned my smile with a nod, and then brought out another thing.

It was a book this time, leather-bound, thick, and again, fitted with a preservation spell. They laid the book down on the table, but there was no title on the cover; just a plain leather dyed in green color. The only identifier was the same great tree carving inside a small circle that was used to seal the scroll, embossed in golden ink at the center of the book.

"And this is...?"

"It’s one of the last souvenirs we have from your kingdom, before everything..." the elf that laid the book answered before pausing, and then pressing his lips together with regret on his face.

Before everything turned to ruin, you mean? I muttered inwardly and glanced at him briefly, without a word, and the elf coughed awkwardly before averting his eyes.

"It’s a handbook of druid royal ancestry," the elf lady came to the rescue, shifting my attention back to the book.

My eyes widened at the revelation. "What..."

"It’s a very precious book for us since there’s not much written about the royal family, and much of local literature had been...lost," the elf lady told me. "The original is still being kept carefully, but we only made three other copies; one is kept by our King, one had been passed down to one of the tribe’s Chiefs, and the last one..." she gently pushed the book closer to my direction, and said with a gentle smile on her face, "...is in your hand."

Staring at the book, I blinked in a realization that this was a registry of the royal family line, and...I should probably have felt touched or overwhelmed or something. But all I could think about right now was that it was Valmeier’s ancestors, and not mine. Just like how I felt when Valmeier’s box came, and there was nothing but confusion and emptiness in my mind as I stared at the military tags of deceased soldiers as well as all those letters and little trinkets.

It wasn’t my life. And it constantly reminded me that I wasn’t from here, that this world was built from papers and ink.

So all I could do was just...stare, in silence.

The elf lady proceeded to open the book, and I could see paintings of druids, their names and eras, and little explanation of who they were at the bottom. As the pages flipped one by one, I also glimpsed family trees, names written beautifully in dark green ink, and list of tribes scattered through the realm.

"We received it a few years before the war broke out, so if you opened to the few last pages, you might find your grandparents,"

"My...grandparents..." I swallowed, the word seemed heavy on my tongue.

Among all members of my family, the only ones I could still remember vaguely were them. They were the ones who actually treated me well, although Grandmother left us before I was big enough to remember her properly. Grandfather, however, was the one who took care of me after my parents died, making sure I could live as long as I could muster.

Oh, how I wished the one painted there was truly my grandparents. But they wouldn’t be, would they? They would be Valmeier’s grandparents--or at least one of them.

So I couldn’t bring myself to be happy. I dreaded that feeling of emptiness that I felt when Natha brought me Valmeier’s box. And I...I really didn’t want to feel that again.

But what could I do? It wasn’t like I could just ask Natha to get rid of it like how I asked him to get rid of the box.

"Ah, here," the elf lady, meanwhile, kept opening the book until it came to a section near the end of the book. "This is the page listing the last generation of princes and princesses," she stopped and showed me a spread page of the last generation of the royal family tree. The top being the King and Queen, and below them were three sons and two daughters. Three of them had also married and birthed four royal children, whereas the youngest son and daughter were still--

As my eyes fell on the picture of the youngest princess, I froze.

"You probably have no memory of them, but--"

It was an instantaneous reaction that I had no control over. Two seconds after I saw the picture of the young princess, I stood abruptly and stumbled back, clutching my mouth tightly to prevent any strangled noise from coming out.

No one expected it, not even me. The only reason I didn’t end up falling to the floor was that Lesta standing right behind me and swiftly supported my trembling body.

[Master!]

"Sweetheart?" Natha immediately took me over and seated me back on the chair, while Jade frantically hovered around me. I reckoned the elves were standing in surprise at my abrupt reaction, but...

I was probably the one who experienced the biggest shock here.

Because I remembered. A fleeting memory that I saw when I was transmorphing into water. A wall full of photographs. Some of them were old and blurry, some were even in black and white. But there were two particular photographs that I remembered; a portrait of a young woman and a wedding picture. And the protagonist of said pictures was identical to the picture I saw in that book.

My Grandmother.

At that point, my nape and back felt cold--a different kind of cold than Natha’s, or even the weather. Because what--what the hell is this?!

I felt dizzy, and my ears were ringing and buzzing. My vision felt blurry, and it wasn’t until I felt Natha’s soothing voice and familiar cold skin that I realized my lungs were ceased functioning.

"Breathe, sweetheart," Natha grasped my cheek, pulling the hand covering my mouth so I could suck on the air. "Slowly, just take a breath."

I listened to his voice, and shallowly suck on some air until my ears stopped ringing and my vision gained clarity. The first thing that I saw was a pair of silver irises filled with concern, and lips that soothingly called my name whilst telling me to breathe. And then I started to register the frantic, anxious chirping and my hands moved to bring the little bird and pressed it against my chest, embracing the only entity I knew belonged solely to me.

"Would you like a drink, sweetheart? Water?" I heard Natha ask, and I shook my head in response. I just...wanted to go back. But before I could utter the request, the elf lady already spoke.

"Do you recognize her?" she framed the picture of the youngest princess as the golden eyes looked at me keenly.

"I...I saw her," I replied weakly.

"You saw her?" Natha raised his brows, looking as surprised as the elves. Of course--Valmeier was an orphan; he didn’t even know his parents, much less his grandparents.

So I told them the truth. "When I was...transmorphing into water,"

"Ah, yes," the elves nodded then, as if that one piece of information perfectly answered everything. And then the elf lady added; "Water is where the past, the present, and the future converge. You must have seen the past through your blood connection as your consciousness became one with the water."

"I..." my lips parted, but I couldn’t utter anything more. My tongue and my mind felt like they were made of lead; heavy.

If only it was that simple. If only what I saw was this druid princess.

But no--what I saw wasn’t the princess, but the grandmother who liked to live in the countryside, beside the river on the hill, with a forest as a background. The grandmother who raised a lot of animals in her backyard and liked to talk about fairies.

My grandmother from Earth.

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