Lord of the Truth

Chapter 2451 Evidence

"...Do you mean the incident involving your wife's murder?"

Badum

The hesitation that had been lingering on Robin's face vanished almost instantly, replaced by an expression that was far stranger and considerably more difficult to interpret than anything he'd shown throughout their conversation...

His eyes opened as wide as they possibly could, while a faint, almost unnatural smile slowly settled across his lips. For a brief moment, he appeared as though he'd completely disconnected from the reality surrounding him, as if Helmor's few words had pushed everything else out of his mind. "...What did you say?"

"...?" Helmor immediately felt the sense of danger he'd already been experiencing from Robin rapidly multiply, rising so sharply that the laughter disappeared from his face and his expression shifted to complete seriousness in an instant. "Anything related to you has already become public knowledge by now. Anyone willing to spend a little money can learn about your origins and trace your history all the way back to the beginning, so the incident involving your wife's murder isn't exactly something hidden or particularly difficult to uncover."

"Do you think I care how you found out?!" Robin sharply raised his voice, his previous calm disappearing completely from his tone. "Why did you mention this now, Helmor?"

The only thing preventing Robin from standing up right now and personally dragging Helmor over by the neck was the fact that Helmor had chosen to bring up this particular subject while the two of them were discussing the Seer. That connection alone was enough to force Robin to restrain himself, because regardless of what he currently wanted to do, the only way to understand why Helmor had mentioned it and learn whatever else he knew was to remain where he was and continue listening.

"I don't mean to sound cold or insensitive toward your tragedy, but to be frank with you, when I first heard about your wife's murder and the torture your son suffered, I laughed." Helmor spoke with complete seriousness now, his tone carrying noticeably more caution than before as he watched Robin's reaction. "Without meaning any offense toward you or what happened to your family, this is something that has happened to every single one of the Seer's Candidates."

"....?!" Robin's brows immediately furrowed deeply, the strange smile remaining on his face as he focused completely on Helmor's words. "Continue."

"I'll give you a simple introduction to the matter, and afterward you can investigate the history as thoroughly as you like and verify everything yourself. Just as Qarun publicized the visible history of the Candidates and revealed what was openly known about them, you can also trace their hidden histories if you're prepared to pay enough to obtain that information." Helmor raised his head slightly before delivering the important point. "Every single one of them suffered the extermination of everyone they cared about near the beginning of their time as a Candidate."

05:56

"....?!"

Helmor continued without stopping, "The closest example is Sevar. His mission included rapidly advancing his planet, and because he was still too weak to properly protect it at the time, the entire planet was wiped clean. Even the people he'd personally arranged to escape before that happened were killed in an extremely strange manner, through an error in the gate coordinates, if I remember the details correctly. That incident was what caused Sevar to transform into the person you know today."

"......?!"

"Qarun is also a Candidate, in case you weren't already aware of that. Only a hundred years after he was chosen as a Candidate and sent away to another planet, he learned that the small group of humans he'd particularly cared about had been killed in an extremely brutal manner... I don't know whether that particular incident had any effect on shaping his twisted personality into what it later became, but regardless of whether it did or not, the incident itself unquestionably happened."

"......?!"

"Every single Candidate who came before you went through something similar, and listen carefully to this part... Some of them didn't even have any loved ones before they were chosen as Candidates, so they later met people they came to love after their selection and eventually got married, only for those loved ones to be killed afterward as well. One of them didn't have anyone at all except for a pet... and even that pet was killed. At this point, you could almost describe the whole thing as some kind of coming-of-age ritual that every Candidate goes through."

Then Helmor raised his head slightly, a strange smile appearing on his face as he recalled his own reaction to learning about Robin's past. "When I first heard about what happened to you, I immediately told myself, This is it!" After a brief pause, he continued, "But at the same time, I felt that you somehow managed to come out of your own ritual with the smallest possible losses. Usually, every relative and loved one connected to a Candidate is completely wiped out, whereas in your case, you only lost a wife."

"..." Robin slowly lowered his gaze while maintaining exactly the same strange expression as before, his eyes still opened as wide as they possibly could as Helmor's words continued echoing through his thoughts.

Losing his entire family?

That had undoubtedly been on the verge of happening, and Robin knew that better than anyone.

His wife's father and every one of her close relatives had been killed, his son Caesar had been taken prisoner, and the rest of his children had been hunted across the continent with no place truly safe for them to remain. The Burton Family itself had lost half of its members during the long war, while Robin had personally killed another half afterward, until only a few hundred people remained from a family whose numbers had once been counted in the tens of thousands.

The survival of that small remaining handful hadn't simply happened by chance; it had been thanks to the Integrated Laws they possessed, thanks to the training they'd undergone, and thanks to their long history filled with fighting and experience in surviving dangerous situations... Without those things helping them endure everything that had happened, there was little doubt that they would've been completely wiped from existence as well.

The Flame Empire's war against Jura City at that exact point in time, arriving precisely when everything else had already been falling apart around them... Had that incident been part of his planning as well?!

But then again, after everything Robin had just learned about the Seer and the extent of what beings like him were capable of doing...

Was something like that truly too much to expect from a Transcendent who had built his very foundations upon the Master Law of Causality?

"...." Helmor maintained his silence for several minutes, patiently watching Robin without attempting to interrupt his thoughts, but eventually, even he began to find Robin's almost complete lack of visible reaction somewhat strange. His brows furrowed slightly before he finally resumed speaking, "Actually, after I first read about that incident and understood what had happened to you, I wanted to send you a message and tell you what was going on, but of course, there was no reason to believe that you would've listened to someone you considered a traitor and an enemy. I would've merely embarrassed myself and diminished my own prestige by approaching you like that. You would've assumed I was simply trying to sow discord between you and the Seer, dismissed my words as an enemy's attempt to manipulate you, and ignored everything I said, so I ultimately chose to remain silent."

Then he continued, explaining why he'd decided to speak now despite having remained silent back then, "But now that you've personally mentioned that you're already close to reaching the truth, I wanted to tell you something from the past that might help quicken your steps and allow you to reach your own conclusion sooner. After all, what does a man truly want other than to possess the right to make his own decisions instead of having them made for him? Do you think I was wrong to mention the Seer's atrocities at this particular moment? If you genuinely believe I crossed a line by bringing this matter up now, then forgive me and simply consider it as though I never said anything."

"...."

Once again, silence completely dominated the conversation, this time stretching on for nearly half an hour without Robin giving Helmor any answer.

Helmor furrowed his brows more than once during that long silence and nearly opened his mouth several times to say something, only to close it again each time and continue waiting for Robin to speak first... Instead of disturbing him, Helmor gradually shifted his attention toward the Spacetime Gate connecting the two sides, and as he continued observing it, he found himself increasingly astonished by its extraordinary stability.

A Candidate like Robin, supposedly nothing more than a human possessing a relatively small amount of momentum granted to him by the Seer, shouldn't have been capable of constructing stable gates like this that crossed the enormous distances between entire sectors in the first place, much less maintaining one continuously without even a single visible fluctuation throughout a conversation that had already lasted nearly an entire hour!

"In your opinion, Helmor..." Robin finally broke the prolonged silence, speaking in an extraordinarily calm and controlled voice while his gaze remained lowered toward the ground. "Why would the Seer... do something like this? These are self-destructive actions that could easily turn against him... Surely at least some of his Candidates would eventually sense that something was wrong, become suspicious of what was happening around them, and abandon him altogether... Why would he repeatedly do something like that?"

"Of course, I don't have a complete answer that can explain everything with certainty, but based on what I've managed to understand from the Seer's past and from the plan he's followed throughout this cycle, his objective is primarily to destroy and sabotage his opponents rather than to build up a Candidate capable of dominating the cycle and ruling it on his behalf. Consequently, what he actually needs is a vengeful person with little attachment to life, someone willing to silently carry out the impossible missions given to him without caring much about what happens to himself, until he's eventually killed and the Seer can begin arranging the next board with another Candidate."

Helmor then continued, "That's why the Seer constantly tries to erase every trace left behind by his previous Candidates, so that future Candidates won't be able to discover what happened to those who came before them, investigate their histories, and understand the final fate awaiting them as well, because once they know those things, their minds will inevitably become distracted and they'll begin thinking about what might eventually happen to them instead of simply carrying out what they're supposed to do... But we have Sevar and Qarun, both of whom possess extremely high levels of Causality and are therefore capable of tracing things like this, documenting what they uncover, and even selling that information to others for the appropriate price, and naturally, everything they provide comes backed by evidence."

Then he quickly added, as though wanting to make this particular point completely clear, "If you contacted either one of them and specifically requested that evidence from them, I'm certain they'd give it to you immediately and completely free of charge."

"....." Robin continued staring silently at the ground, his posture hardly changing despite everything he'd just heard. "Do you think... they also have evidence of what happened to me?"