Chapter 258: All For Nothing

Seeing that the royal daughter who rarely stepped out of her palace was guiding these beings that looked like the humans depicted in the texts, the elves couldn’t help but stare at them with shocked expressions.

“tahW si gniog no?”

“yhW si eht layor rethguad htiw meht?”

“erA yeht yllaer humans?”

(What is going on?)

(Why is the royal daughter with them?)

(Are they really humans?)

The elven crowd mumbled among themselves before they fell to their knee and recited,

“hO, layoR rethguaD! nrobtsriF fo eht rehtoM,

ekat ym luos, ekat ym niap.

nruB em htiw eniht dercas emalf.

hcrocs ffo ym snis dna tfil ym sehsa ni eht enivid eman!”

(Oh, Royal Daughter! Firstborn of the Mother.

Take my soul, take my pain.

Burn me with thine sacred flame.

Scorch off my sins and lift my ashes in the divine name!)

Their cacophonous voices echoed throughout the settlement, and Rion and others looked at them with curious eyes.

’Isn’t this a bit too much?’ Rion thought, but soon remembered how the tribe had chanted his name.

’It isn’t even that much…’ he mumbled in his head as he followed behind the royal daughter.

A few minutes later, an enormous shadow towered over them, and Rion’s gaze fell on the mystical pale tree before him. ’The heavenly tree…’

As they neared the tree, his gaze fell on various elves standing around it; all of these elves wore a white robe with the image of the heavenly tree depicted on the back.

’Are they guarding the tree?’ He concluded upon seeing that no other elf wore an attire similar to theirs.

“You must be here to get her cured, right?” The royal daughter questioned as she stepped near the tree.

Rion nodded. “Yes.”

The royal daughter turned her head towards him and said, “I am sorry to disappoint, but there’s nothing we can do to cure her.”

’What…?’

Just as those words reached his ears, the world beneath his feet shifted, and he stared blankly at her.

His heart beat loudly, he tightened his embrace around Dora and mumbled, “What did you just say?”

The royal daughter looked at him with a worried face and said, “We cannot cure her.”

Rion stumbled back, his limbs felt weak, and his mind spiraled into itself.

’It can’t be…’

“So, I did all of this for nothing,” he whispered, his lips arched into a crazed smile, but before he could laugh like a madman, Yuura placed a hand on his shoulder and said, “My liege, let’s hear her out first.”

Rion looked at Yuura and gave him a nod.

He took a deep breath, and the royal daughter’s voice reached him: “We may not have a way to cure her, but we have a way to keep her alive.”

Rion furrowed his brows and asked, “What do you mean?”

The royal daughter brushed her hand against the trunk of the heavenly tree and said, “With the help of our sorcery and the heavenly tree, she can then enter the trial of boundless, and as long as she is in the trial, the heavenly tree will feed her with life essence.”

Upon understanding what she meant, Rion frowned and said, “Wouldn’t that just make her die slower?”

“It would,” she answered without hiding anything.

Rion genuinely felt furious at the suggestion, and without meaning to, he asked in a voice too cold, “Then why would you suggest such a stupid thing?”

However, no one reacted to his words as they couldn’t even understand what he was saying.

The royal daughter chuckled and asked while looking at Zaelyane, “I believe Zaelyane told you that this is related to the soul?”

Zaelyane and Rion nodded at the same time, and the royal daughter added with a chuckle, “Well, it’s not.”

Hearing her, Rion’s mouth went agape, and he looked between Zaelyane and her.

“What do you mean?” Zaelyane questioned flatly.

The royal daughter smiled. “She has two curses placed on her, the first is on her death fate, and the second is on the bridge between soul and fate.”

“Can you explain it like you’re explaining to a child?” Rion muttered with a puzzled expression.

The royal daughter laughed and said, “Each mortal has a death fate which relates to the end of their life. The first curse is pulling that near, while the second curse is using her life essence and aura to weaken the first and push the death fate back at its intended spot.”

“You could say the second curse is what keeps her alive against all odds,” she concluded.

Rion and others looked at Dora with a puzzled expression, and she mumbled like an offended pet, “What?”

“Why do you think The Remnant did that?”

Dora shook her head and whispered, “I don’t know…”

A faint smile appeared on his face. He looked at the royal daughter and asked, “What would happen inside that trial?”

“As the name suggests. The trial is about boundless possibilities of life.”

“Upon entering the trial, she would relive her life, but with her current memories. She can live as many lives as she wants, and the longer she stays, the better it would be.”

’That sounds like regression…’ Rion remarked inwardly and asked, “Would she know that it is nothing but a lie?”

The royal daughter smiled as she raised her hand towards the mythical heavenly tree and said, “How do you know it’s a lie? What makes something a lie is the lack of belief.”

She smirked and added, “Do you think she would be able to differentiate between lie and truth once she is allowed to live a better life — over and over again?”

Rion fell silent. The gears turned in his mind, and he muttered, “I can’t let her go through such a torturous event… We don’t even have a direction to follow. All of it would be meaningless without a cure.”

His words hung in the air.

The royal daughter blinked a few times before she frowned and finally understood where she had slipped up.

“Ah, I forgot to tell you, but there’s a guaranteed method to get her cured.”

Rion and others shot her a deadpan stare.

She let out an embarrassed chuckle and said, “There’s a race that holds power to change and see fate… the giants.”

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