Kirisins... That woman...
Where on earth did she come from?
Had she been standing transformed among the crowd, only to burst out the moment Lise was mentioned? It was entirely possible.
The crowd recognized her first. Of course, they didn't know the high-level information that she was a dragon, but since she was supposedly the missing Empress, her face was plastered on posters all over the place.
"Isn't that the Empress?"
"I thought she went missing..."
Murmurs spread like waves.
The scholar didn't understand the language.
But he accurately pinpointed the direction the murmurs were pointing.
"Two people... speaking Korean."
After muttering quietly, his gaze shifted to me. His eyes demanded an explanation.
Actually, I didn't know why she spoke Korean either. I just thought, well, she's a dragon, so maybe she can. Their magic was far more impressive than ours, after all.
For instance... magic that transmits memories. It was possible. According to ancient records, similar magic had been used.
But... for the sake of explanation, there was no need to go into such length.
"She's my mother."
I answered briefly. It wasn't wrong, and there was no reason to explain at length.
"Yuhwa, daughter of the river god Habaek... Ah, wait. That's not the Dangun myth, that's the Jumong myth. Anyway, the people of this world are incredibly beautiful..."
I heard him muttering and correcting himself.
Yuhwa? Jumong? Unfamiliar names.
In my past life's texts, it only went up to the Dangun myth.
But that wasn't what mattered right now.
"What happened to her!"
The next moment, the scholar's body lifted into the air.
With one hand. Gripping his collar with one hand, Kirisins raised the scholar to eye level.
It didn't even seem like she used any special force. She just... lifted him.
The thought crossed my mind that she was definitely Walther's wife.
The scholar's lips opened and closed. No sound came out.
He seemed to be choking.
"Let him go. He's an important source of information."
Kirisins's gaze flowed to me.
Her hand released, and the scholar collapsed, gasping for breath as his weight returned to his feet.
The scholar stepped forward.
"From what we've observed... she's currently engaged in combat with the black dragon. Initially, they were evenly matched. But looking at the pattern over the past three weeks."
The scholar paused there. It was the pause of someone weighing how to package the information.
"She seems to be gradually losing ground."
"Gradually losing ground" was probably the most euphemistic expression that could come from his mouth.
Considering her wing had been severed... that said it all.
Kirisins moved. It was just one step, but the scholar's shoulders reflexively pulled back.
"Is there a way? A way to intervene in her battle? If she loses, I die too. You die too. Every being in both worlds will die by that existence!"
"What is that existence? Who exactly is the being fighting Lise?"
I asked Kirisins. In this world's language, not Korean.
She was about to open her mouth.
"So..."
"I'll tell him. If she explains, it'll be unnecessarily long."
It was Father.
Thinking about it, there was nothing strange about it.
How many humans in the world had been that intimately involved with a dragon? Father was one of them. No, he was probably the only one.
They'd been together for a long time. I didn't know exactly how long, but long enough to produce me as a result. In that process, he must have heard something. Must have seen something.
Whether that woman (since she didn't particularly regard me as her son, I didn't want to call her mother either, at least not in my heart) told Father, or whether Father dug it up himself, I couldn't know...
Well, anyway. If Father knew, then he knew.
Kirisins looked at Father.
Father didn't look back.
It was funny. The woman he'd searched for so desperately was right in front of him, yet his attention was elsewhere.
"It's the one who created the dragons. No, it's the dragon that created dragons. People think the First Empire fell because of Krustein. That's not true. It's true that Krustein inflicted damage on the Empire. I won't deny that. But the real cause was something else."
It wasn't the scholar who reacted to these words, but the crowd.
Especially the team of archaeologists led by Duke Sylvester showed the most visceral reaction.
That made sense, since it was their main specialty.
"How does His Imperial Majesty know such information?"
"Isn't that a lie? He's just a knight... no, not even a knight, originally he was a mercenary..."
"Hey! What are you saying! Do you want to die!"
The guy next to him stopped the one about to cross the line.
What a shame. If it had been that guy, we might have replenished our eunuch workforce.
Meanwhile, the scholar from the other world blinked.
He didn't understand the language, but he seemed to read the atmosphere.
He glanced at me with a tense posture.
"Who is that magnificent person?"
"My father. I'll translate for you later."
"That existence created Krustein. She was the first creation. The dragon species itself is his work."
The cheers of the portal's success had long since faded.
Kirisins had her arms crossed.
I didn't know when she'd crossed them. The way she looked at Father was peculiar.
"You remember. Walther. For someone with a muscle brain."
Father didn't react.
There was no reason to intervene.
And Kirisins turned her gaze to the scholar.
"I ask again. How do I get to where Lady Krustein is fighting?"
Kirisins and Father looked at the scholar simultaneously.
Receiving both gazes at once, the scholar seemed to choke.
I understood. Even receiving just one of those gazes would make an ordinary human piss themselves.
"First... I think we need to call in additional personnel."
**
Once is difficult, but twice is easy.
The portal worked properly.
The problem was what came next.
"Kyaaaah! I escaped from that hellish planet!"
"Long live the Republic of Korea! Long live Hwanung!"
If the first to cross over was a scholar, from the second time on it was different.
The military and... cargo. Boxes, barrels, equipment with unknown names poured through the portal, and soldiers on this side rushed about frantically to receive them.
After that came people.
All with dazed faces.
Some knelt as soon as they landed, some burst into tears on the spot, some pressed both hands to the ground and didn't move for a long time.
The ways of confirming they were alive varied.
"The state you described to me was even worse than the original."
Well, at least there was a decent number of scientist personnel, and they began their research.
Receiving reports on Lise's condition... hoping the results would come quickly...
Hoping she would hold out until then...
One week.
Exactly one week later, the answer came.
This wasn't because I pressured them strongly.
Pressure wouldn't have made it happen anyway.
The one doing the pressuring was someone else.
It was Kirisins.
The Empress who had run away and returned made a very significant contribution.
None other than translation magic. Plus brain performance enhancement magic.
Thanks to her unleashing magic that ordinary humans couldn't use—no, that humans couldn't use—the research was completed in an instant.
Well, translation magic aside, I had a gut feeling that the brain performance magic would have severe side effects later, but I ignored it. They weren't important right now.
We can go with the newly created equipment. However, it requires an enormous amount of mana.
Mana naturally wasn't a big problem. It was within Kirisins's capacity.
The problem was something else.
"Your Highness."
A scholar coming to report something stopped when his eyes met mine.
Instead of opening his mouth, he bowed his head. His waist was at a right angle.
Of course, even normally one would bow at a right angle to the Crown Prince, but this was beyond a right angle... it seemed ready to become an acute angle.
Scholars who crossed over from that world, and scholars from this side. The way they looked at me lately was very unusual.
They weren't eyes looking at a human.
They were the kind of eyes one might have when facing a god, or a dragon, or such things.
I had a rough idea what misunderstanding they had.
Father, who occasionally dropped by, looked at me with similar eyes.
Of course, in Father's case, it wasn't just a misunderstanding... well, since he's my father, other emotions were mixed in.
It was a misunderstanding that didn't need to be cleared up.
At least not for the time being.
It was when Kirisins was away.
Duke Sylvester approached silently from the side.
"Your Highness."
It was a low voice. Closer to a whisper than a report.
"Why did you lie?"
"We can go. But... can we defeat that existence? This isn't a joke, it's a war of gods. It might be wise not to intervene. The claim that the black dragon will kill everyone is ultimately just Kirisins's one-sided assertion."
That old man's point wasn't wrong.
In front of Kirisins, he was no different from other researchers in sucking up to her, but that was only because Kirisins knew a lot of knowledge worth coveting, and he didn't particularly deify her.
But...
"Rejected."
I said flatly.
"Isn't it because it's her matter that you're deliberately thinking that way?"
Of course, saying he wouldn't deify didn't apply only to Kirisins.
The being who sucked up even more than to Kirisins.
In other words, it applied to me as well.
The story that if it were someone else, I would have given up quickly, but because it happens to be her, I'm trying to fight somehow.
Well, it might not be wrong.
But...
I had my own things to say.
"First. I can't trust her completely, but I can't completely distrust her either. Do you agree?"
"Yes. I agree."
There was no hesitation. It was a good answer.
"Second. There might be a way to win."
"What?"
This time was different. His expression wavered for the first time.
"There's something I collected while clearing the dungeon near the capital."
"Something you collected..."
Reclaiming the capital overrun with undead was ultimately thanks to the undead controller.
Only after the capital was cleared did certain things become visible.
The entrances to dungeons that had been sealed.
The places where undead had poured out. Naturally, we explored them. There were things that came out.
And among them... there were naturally items that were thought to be discarded.
But I took them anyway.
I presented them to Father.
"That thing that left Father traumatized. More precisely, that powerful thing that among existing humans, except for Father, there's no need to use, or more precisely, except for Father, there's no point in killing with it."
"Ah..."
Duke Sylvester widened his eyes and said.
"You're talking about Dragonsbane Poison."