The Demon Lord's Bride (BL)
Chapter 200: How often can you say that your family history is part of an important global event?

Chapter 200: How often can you say that your family history is part of an important global event?

"What would you like to know?" Amarein asked first on our way back to the mansion.

This time, she was the one who held into my elbow, so it looked like I was escorting her on a morning walk. Rather fancy, except for the fact that I was still barefooted.

"Mm..." I muttered unsurely. It was the confusion of someone who didn’t know anything about the subject at hand, so I had no idea where we should start from.

Fortunately, Amarein was a proper lady with a lot of experience in life. "Should we start with me?" she offered with a smile. "I should introduce myself properly to you since I’m going to be your teacher in the future, no?"

"Mm!" I nodded in agreement.

She patted my arm and then started to tell her story as we strolled through the garden. "It might be confusing for you if I talked about lineage and whatnot, so I’ll just tell you about my relationship with your grandmother,"

"Oh, did you live in the palace?"

"For quite some time," she nodded with a smile on her lips. There was a fond nostalgia there, but also sadness, which was understandable. After all, the palace had been razed to the ground. "I was the only daughter of the Chief of my tribe--ah, I probably should explain our system for a bit. You know that we live in tribes, right?"

"Yes," I nodded, trying to recall all the information on druids that I managed to get. While they had the Kingdom as the center--or at least used to--the rest of the druids were living in tribes, which would make their reports to the King. "I heard the Chiefs are the druids who have royal blood."

"That’s right, because we need the blessing from the First Druid’s bloodline, the one who was birthed by Mother," she explained.

Oh? This was new. I only knew that royal blood supposedly had a blessing that made them able to purify mana. But rather than a blessing...wasn’t this more of the case of divine blood? So the ancestor of the Royal Family was supposed to be a demigod?

Oh? Wait...

"Oh! Is that why we call Her...Mother?" I exclaimed, eyes widened with sudden realization as I looked at her in astonishment.

"Why, of course," she replied matter-of-factly. "She’s the Mother of the First Druid, the First Elf, and the First Drow."

"Ooh!" this wasn’t in any book! So learning from the real source was indeed the best.

[Ooh...]

Jade cooed me, and Amarein laughed at our similar expression. I didn’t know if the little bird would be able to fully understand what Amarein told me, but Ignis on the other hand didn’t seem to care since it wasn’t about Salamander. The gecko had been sunbathing on top of my head as we walked back.

"The Chiefs and their children have royal blood, but they are not Royals, if we go by technicality," she continued.

"Why?" I tilted my head in confusion. How could they treat me, who was only half-druid, like a Royal but not them? Wasn’t this included Amarein too since she was the daughter of the Chief?

"Because while we do have royal blood, it’s quite thin. We are just second or third cousins of the Royal Family. The amount of Mother’s blessings in our system is different."

Different...I looked at my wrist in reflex, at the green and blue strikes running up my arms. Was it truly different, those second or third cousin’s descendants and me, a half-druid?

"Yes, you are different, Valen," she touched my solar plexus lightly. "You have more blessings running in your blood than mine, because you are part of the Royal Family."

"Even though...I’m not fully druid?"

"Yes," she stopped walking, and looked at me keenly. "Because Mother’s blessing runs the strongest in your vein--which, I reckoned, was what almost killed you."

When my mana gates were blocked...it was this druid bloodline that got me dying instead of living as a normal cripple. A dangerous blessing that would kill me if I couldn’t get my body filled with magic. I let out a sigh and we resumed our walk through the rose bushes and rows of winter flowers.

"Now, if we exclude you, my family had the thickest sacred blood among other druids," she continued.

"Oh..." I scratched my neck awkwardly.

I kind of feel, umm...guilty? No--perhaps more like...flustered?

She chuckled and patted my arm again. "Don’t worry, it’s not a competition," she glanced at me and winked. "I’m telling you this because it had something to do with how I came to live in the palace."

I grinned sheepishly and nodded so she continued her story, which she did. "As the only daughter of the Chief, I was destined to be the High Shaman."

"Oh...like...priestess? Church maiden?"

"Yes," she smiled amusedly at the comparison that I made. "I am the connector medium between Mother and our kin. Once my bloodline fully awakened, I was sent to the palace for training and forging relationships with the Royal Family."

"Including Grandma,"

"That’s right," she looked up at the sky, smiling sweetly with a distant gaze, as if reminiscing about beautiful memories. She turned her head to look at me, still with that smile on her face. "In fact, she was my closest friend in the palace, even with our big age gap. She took care of me like her own sister, perhaps because she always wanted a younger sister."

Was it because I kind of looked like my grandmother? She looked like she was about to cry as she gazed at my face. But she swiftly turned her face away, focusing on the path and the garden instead as she started to talk again.

"She was already married when we met, and by the time I finished my course, she was pregnant with your mother,"

Hmm...technically not my mother, but it wasn’t the time to nitpick. Not that I could do that without telling her the entirety of me and Valmeier’s history.

"I spent around three years in seclusion to strengthen my channel with Mother, and I visited them once before I got back to my tribe," her voice grew fainter then, and her bright green eyes got dimmer. "That would be...the last time I saw them."

"Oh..."

I couldn’t help but bit my lips. After going through Valmeier’s memories and experiences, I could understand more the sadness and devastation of war; something that couldn’t be said to have a real victor.

"The war broke out less than a year after I got back," she told me, her voice filled with heartbreak.

"...did...didn’t Mother give you any warning?" I asked quietly, biting the inside of my cheek.

"No," her smile was back, but it was bitter. "It’s not in Her power to see what’s inside a human’s heart. And even then, if She told us, the human’s Goddess would give information to the human kingdom too,"

Ah...and should that happen, it’d become a crusade--for lack of better words.

"In that case, the war might escalate to a war between realms," Amarein’s hold on my elbow tightened slightly. It was clear that she still felt the bitterness of the Kingdom’s fall.

At that point, I was suddenly reminded of the question I had thrown to the elven contingent about this war. "Is that...is that why the elves did not help?"

"Perhaps," she smiled mysteriously.

What...wasn’t that mean the druids became sacrificial lambs to preserve world peace--or something like that? So they thought rather a single Kingdom than the whole world, huh?

"And...as the High Shaman, I was not allowed to step into the war," she added bitterly.

My eyes widened at that, and my voice raised on its own. "Why?"

"Because I have to stay alive,"

She said it in a dry tone with an expressionless face; not because there was no emotion behind it, but because there was too much she had to suppress.

"That’s...sad..." I couldn’t help but mutter quietly. Without meaning to, our step had become slower, as if reflecting the solemnity of our topic. It felt like an irony, talking about this surrounded by vibrant flowers. She looked at me and smiled subtly, lightly pinching my lowered chin. "It must have been frustrating."

Knowing that you couldn’t do anything while the people you hold dear were dying out there, even while you possessed a power that maybe, maybe could save just one more person.

"Yes, that is so," she said with a forlorn smile, for the first time letting out a tired sigh. "Frustrating, angering...especially when day after day, all I heard was about how worsening it became," she let out a cynical chuckle, before ending it in a low, devastating tone. "Until everything collapsed."

We walked in silence after that, not even Jade made a chirping sound. Now that I knew Grandma truly came from here, the Kingdom’s fall was no longer a mere story for me. It became personal, and it upset me to hear about it. The brooding and forlorn gaze that my grandmother sometimes cast toward the lush forest of the hill felt different now. They held even more meaning than ever.

"We couldn’t even salvage anything from the remnant of the territory," Amarein continued her story after a while, as we walked out of the garden into the vast green field. My feet didn’t have to suffer the sharp pebbles anymore, enjoying the cold but soft soil and tickling grass. "It wasn’t until the elves investigated further that we found out Princess Yuralein and her child had never been found."

I almost stopped then, but she kept on walking, so my legs automatically moved along.

"We started to hope, we thought they might manage to escape..."

Well, technically they did escape. I had no idea how Valmeier’s mother ended up in the human territory, but my grandmother definitely escaped--or rather thrown--to another world.

"We asked for help from the elves to look for her secretly in the human realm while we search in the realm of nature to no avail," she sighed again, and gave out a self-deprecating smile. "We couldn’t even find her daughter."

"We thought that surely, if they were alive, they would try reaching for us. But no news came even as we continued searching and then decades passed and we just...didn’t think there would be any hope left,"

Now she stopped, and turned to look at me with a smile, green eyes glimmering brilliantly beneath the sunlight. The bitterness was gone from her voice.

"Until the Demon Lord of Greed contacted us."