The Emperor Has Returned

Chapter 235 – Earthquake (1)

Sina could see something.

To be precise, she thought that she saw something, but she wasn't sure if she really did.

Sina staggered to her feet. It was difficult for her to raise herself up; she felt extremely drowsy and exhausted.

Her surroundings were filled with black rocks, and everywhere Sina stepped on there were grains of soil that were blackish purple in color.

Sina’s first thought upon feeling the gentle and lukewarm wind that was blowing slowly from the outside of the cave was that she was in the underworld. But the sensation of the rock she felt in her hand, as well as the strange scent flowing into the cave gave her a sense of realism.

Just when Sina was about to step out of the cave in a daze, she almost fell due to her unfamiliar depth perception. Only then did Sina realize that her left eye had returned to its original state.

The scar was still unchanged, but her eyeball was well positioned in her eye socket, which used to be hollow.

Sina realized that she was still alive only after she touched the wound around her eye.

‘What happened?’

The last thing Sina could remember was Dismas looking like a monster. She had never considered that she would be able to survive in such a devastating situation.

‘No… If I was lucky enough, someone might have rescued me while I was unconscious.’

But if this really was the case, it was unknown why someone would hide Sina in such a strange cave.

Then Sina inadvertently recalled that Lenly had blocked her attack.

‘Lenly!’

Sina’s heart began to thump upon remembering the situation. She stumbled, but walked forward one step at a time by step.

‘Lenly betrayed all of us. I need to tell Juan before he…’

As soon as she stepped outside, Sina closed her eyes due to the bright light that suddenly assaulted her. It was only after a long time that Sina’s eyes began to get used to the light. For a moment, she wondered if it was daytime, but then she realized that the light was not being shone from above.

Instead, the light was coming from the bottom.

The light was radiating brightly from within a huge valley in front of Sina’s eyes. Meanwhile, the purple night sky didn’t have a single star, and gave off a grotesque atmosphere.

The size of the valley that was emanating the light was enormous. The other side of the valley was cloudy; it was as if the world had been split in half, making it so that Sina couldn’t even see properly.

Then, Sina saw someone standing right in front of the valley.

“Juan..? Is that…”

Sina was just about to call out Juan’s name upon seeing the familiar figure, but she quickly closed her mouth when she noticed the color of the opponent’s hair was unlike Juan’s black hair.

The man slowly turned his head upon hearing Sina’s voice. He had the same face as Juan.

“You’re awake,” the man opened his mouth when he saw Sina.

Sina only knew of one person who had the same face as Juan, but had blonde hair instead of black.

“Gerard. Gerard Gain…”

But she could not believe her eyes—she couldn’t understand what in the world had happened while she was unconscious.

“So you know me. I know you as well, Sina Solvane.”

Sina looked at Gerard with suspicious eyes.

Meanwhile, Gerard pulled down his long cloak and simply looked down at the valley once again.

Then, Sina inadvertently realized that she still had a sword hanging from her waist. Not only did she still have her short sword, but even the rest of her armor was also intact. Although there were some holes in her clothes here and there, she did not have a single wound.

“If you’re going to attack me, I recommend you to try it in a more normal condition than now,” Gerard murmured.

Sina did not reply. Despite being armed, Sina knew that she was not in a state where she could attack anyone yet—especially if the opponent was none other than Gerard Gain.

She had heard countless stories about Gerard’s valiant achievements. If even half of those rumors were true, then there was no way Sina had a chance of winning against him.

Sina turned her head in the opposite direction. The warm wind blowing from the valley was so moist that it almost felt sticky. Various types of moss that could rarely ever be seen seemed to be creating their own ecosystem, but there were no tall trees to be found.

After looking around, Sina found a mountain covered with white ice caps. It was above the cave that she came out of; there were not many places in the empire where one could find ice caps.

“Where… where am I?” Sina asked.

“Walls of Nulvin,” Gerard replied briefly in a calm manner.

Sina looked surprised to hear the name of a famous location that she had only seen on the map. The end of the empire’s territory was usually referred to as the boundary, but the areas beyond the boundaries had been explored to some extent and also had some people living there.

However, the Walls of Nulvin was a place that was called the ‘last land,’ even though it was located within the boundary. This was because nothing more was known about the area. This was the last patch of land that humans could reach, and beyond the Walls was only darkness.

“This mountain range has already been sucked into the Crack. This is basically the front line of this collapsing word,” Gerard explained.

“What are you trying to do here?”

Gerard continued to silently look into the valley in response to Sina’s question.

Sina hesitated for a moment, but soon approached Gerard to look down the cliff from beside him. The inside of the valley was a mysterious space—a space where one could only see a faint light and purple stones that were floating around.

Sina looked at the lights; for some unknown reason, they got on her nerves.

Then, she suddenly found something.

“...Huh?”

Sina couldn’t tell if what she saw was right. Beyond the hazy light coming from the Crack, something was slowly moving, almost as if it was pulsating.

Sina’s eyes widened, but that thing soon became invisible as it was swarmed by white light.

Based on what she saw, Sina had a feeling that they might be safe for now.

The Crack still seemed to be too narrow for ‘that’ to come out.

***

“This looks much better.”

Juan stood in the garden of the Imperial Palace and stretched out his arms.

Fortunately, Juan was able to return to his original height, allowing him to once again properly use his sword without feeling uncomfortable.

Although it had only been a short amount of time, some people felt both a sense of relief and sadness at the sight of Juan returning to his original appearance.

Nienna was mainly on the side of feeling sadness.

“It would have been fine to take time and proceed step by step,” Nienna murmured.

“Yeah… I don’t think so,” Juan said.

“I’m only saying this because I feel like everything happened far too quickly. The item that we were dealing with was none other than Mananen McLeir’s heart, albeit a clone of it. I think we have used it too wastefully.”

Mananen McLeir’s cloned heart was absorbed by Juan. Back in the day, after being transplanted with it, Juan had used Mananen McLeir’s heart like an infinite mana pump. However, at this moment, Juan didn’t have a strong enough vitality to attempt such a precarious method.

Instead, Juan decided that he would use the cloned heart as a single-use item, but increased the mana capacity to an extreme extent. No one besides Juan knew to what extent the mana capacity was increased, but this allowed Juan to regain his original appearance instantly.

In other words, while Juan would no longer be able to recover the mana he used up after this, he managed to restore it to the level it used to be before it was stolen by Gerard.

However, Nienna seemed to be unsatisfied with this.

“Wouldn’t it have been better to transplant the heart and use it as a mana source, even if it took a little time?” Nienna asked.

“I do not have enough time to check the stability of such a method, nor do I have anyone to assist me with the transplant. The power of the Crown isn’t the same as it used to be either. Above all else, we don’t know when and how Gerard will move,” Juan explained.

Nienna nodded.

“Well, Anya did dedicate it to you. So it’s entirely up to you how you decide to use it, Dad.”

“Yes. But, this means that I’ll have to save as much of my strength as I can when I fight from now on.”

The fact that Juan could no longer recover the mana he used up meant that he only had one chance. But this didn’t matter to Juan—it was highly doubtful whether Gerard would even give Juan a second chance anyway.

“The fight against Gerard is not going to be a battle of strength anyway. I’m no match for him when it comes to a battle of strength.”

“Then how are you going to win against him? Use the memories of love and friendship?”

Juan smiled upon hearing Nienna’s words.

“That’s an option… but there’s one thing that came to my mind while I was unconscious. That might just be able to solve the problem.”

“And what is that?”

“It’s a little hard to explain in words. Also, I don’t think you’d like it if you heard it.”

Nienna looked at Juan with suspicious eyes.

“If it’s something like a suicide plan, I swear I will…”

“It’s not anything like that, so don’t worry. Even if it was a suicide plan, I highly doubt it would solve the problem.”

Nienna felt that Juan was deliberately refusing to tell her what his plan was. She felt a little anxious, but decided to respect Juan’s judgment for now.

“So, how are you going to find Gerard, Dad?”

Juan took a letter out of his pocket. It was a ciphertext sent by Opert.

“Isn’t that the letter from Opert? Are you going to interrogate Dane or something?”

“Gerard is a project that Dane spent decades working on. Of course, that time may not be so significant to Dane, since he is very old. But the problem is that Gerard is infinitely close to perfection. If Gerard does something reckless with such power, there is no way that Dane would be able to progress his plans ever again. So, I bet he knows where Gerard is.”

“I suppose so… then we’ll have to head to Riol first.”

“We will have to capture and interrogate Dane Dormund first, then go on our way to find Gerard. We need to proceed as soon as possible.”

“I agree with your plan, but why? Gerard is doing nothing at the moment, so what’s the rush?”

“The fact Gerard isn’t doing anything bothers me even more. Think about it, Nienna. He has seized infinite power after spending decades staying still like a corpse, and can do anything he wants. Don’t you think he would want to do something he has been wanting to do as soon as possible? But Gerard doesn’t seem to be doing anything at all.”

“That’s true. But what if he just wanted to sleep or something?”

“That would be nice, but the possibility of that is very low. I feel like he is trying to make such a huge mess that he needs a long time to prepare, despite having enormous power.”

“A huge mess like what?”

Just about when Juan was about to answer, he suddenly started hearing a buzzing sound from the distance. The moment he was wondering what was going on, a sudden shockwave swept through Juan and Nienna.

Juan and Nienna managed not to collapse and quickly supported themselves by placing their hands on the floor.

“Is it an earthquake!? At a time like this?” Nienna shouted with a perplexed expression.

A tremendous shockwave shook the entire city of Torra. No matter how powerful anyone was, it was difficult for them to stand still if the surface they were standing on was violently shaken.

Beyond the walls of the Imperial Palace, screams as well as the sound of a building collapsing could be heard. Juan bit his lips. He could take care of a situation where gods or Gerard suddenly appear in front of him, but such a sudden natural disaster wasn’t something he could do anything about.

Fortunately, Torra was built on solid ground and a majority of the buildings were designed with the possibility of earthquakes in mind, at least to some extent. There were no big concerns since the most dangerous walls to collapse would be the walls around the city, but the Golems had the ability to actively maintain balance.

The vibrations began to subside before long. Thinking that everything was over, Nienna hurriedly stood up and ran over to the edge of the wall. Despite being well prepared for earthquakes, the damage would be significant considering the intensity of the vibration.

However, at that moment, Juan shouted.

“Nienna!”

With a loud sound, the wall collapsed in an instant, flinging Nienna into the air.

An even bigger shockwave swept through Torra.

Nienna quickly looked around while in the air. Then, she realized the reason Juan had suddenly called out to her was not that he was worried about her. The huge tower that was the Imperial Palace was still shaking from the shock of the earlier earthquake, and was starting to bend; it was as if it was about to break due to the second earthquake.

Nienna immediately summoned Fenrir. A huge white wolf appeared in the sky above Torra and bit down on the tower, using its mouth to hold out. However, the tower of the Imperial Palace was several times larger than Fenrir.

“Ugh!”

Nienna lamented the absence of Oberon that she had given to Sina, and used all the mana she had to support Fenrir. Each of Fenrir’s snowflake-like hairs stretched out and transformed into huge pillars of ice.

Thousands of ice pillars were embedded in the collapsing tower in just the blink of an eye. Soon, the speed of collapse began to decrease.

Fenrir’s legs were crushed with a grotesque sound, but even those broken fragments turned into pillars, slowly turning Fenrir itself into a huge structure of ice that was supporting the tower.

But in the end, ice was just ice. Nienna wouldn’t be able to last long.

“Dad!” Nienna screamed.

Finally, the ice structure failed to hold out any longer and broke down.

However at that moment, huge giants jumped over toward Fenrir—three Golems were rushing in.

Nienna looked back at Juan.

Juan had managed to move the Golems that were over a hundred meters tall with just a snap of his fingers, using them to ensure that the tower did not collapse onto the city.

Instead of collapsing, the tower was instantly destroyed by the Golems, sending debris flying everywhere.

Fragments of stone scattered everywhere amidst the clouds of dust. There seemed to be no major damage, since the complete collapse of the tower had been prevented. However, Juan could guess that there must be quite a lot of casualties.

Although it was better than the tower collapsing completely, it was still a terrible sight.

Nienna sighed and looked back at Juan.

At any other time, Juan would be giving out instructions in a hurry, but today he just stood still, almost as if he was distracted by something.

However, Nienna didn’t have time to wait patiently for Juan’s instructions.

“Dad, I will rescue the victims within the Imperial Palace first. You should call the other people and command the Golems to help repair the damage. Damn it, an earthquake at a time like this…”

Nienna was about to run toward the Imperial Palace, but she stopped upon seeing Juan not moving even a single inch. She tried calling out to him again, but realized that something was going on when she saw Juan’s serious face.

“What is it, Dad? Did you feel something else?”

Juan’s expression was indescribable. Nienna recalled that Juan’s expression wasn’t this serious even when Cainheryars had appeared all over the empire.

“Come on, tell me. Did something else appear?” Nienna asked in an anxious voice.

“The Crack has just made a move.”

Nienna’s expression hardened.

Juan slowly looked back at Nienna.

“This was the shock of the entire world being pushed at the same time. Not only Torra, but by now, the whole empire should have turned into a terrible mess.”