Others Summon Dragons, I Summon Legendary Knights

Chapter 505: A Lie

Standing beneath the bright sun, Ronald folded his arms as a young man with black, silky hair approached. "Do you need help? You’ve absorbed the memories of quite a lot of people. I heard you’re also attacking prisons in the outside world."

Isaac puffed, hands tucked into the pockets of his hoodie.

"What’s the problem? Last I checked, your mother is doing fine," Ronald said. Sentinels went past them, their boots scraping the concrete floor. Rows of Sentinel trucks stretched along the road to their left.

Isaac lifted his head. "The city’s been much better with you and your wife, sir. And I know you’re connected to almost everyone, and they fuel your strength, but—"

"Is it him?" Ronald gestured with his head at a distant tower.

Isaac shook his head. "I want to be the one to clear the Ruination. And I’m there. I’ve been there for a while now, but I keep accumulating strength without an end in sight. I don’t want to admit it but... I’m afraid."

’Yet I want to rescue my friend. Godfrey can’t carry all the burden.’

"We’re all afraid of something. Just don’t do anything stupid. Inform your friends, and stop rampantly taking people’s memories because they’re on death row or have committed crimes that sound horrible to you. Be careful with that ability of yours, or you might come to live with regrets later on."

Ronald placed his hand on Isaac’s shoulder. "Trust me when I say regrets hurt more than a dozen deep wounds—" He suddenly grimaced, his expression twisting into pain as his eyes flashed with fear.

"What is it—?!" Isaac asked thin air. Ronald was gone. A gold coin struck the concrete, ringing as it spun in widening circles before Isaac’s feet.

***

Godfrey’s wide-open eyes reflected his mother’s face. Her own were dull, emptied of their irises.

Blood blossomed from his chest. She tightened her grip around the handle and was about to pull upward.

In his strangely calm eyes lingered disbelief, pain... and the last fragile trust of a child. It shattered before her.

Cold gripped Godfrey as he held the dagger his mother dragged upward. She wanted to slice through his heart.

"I’m helping you," the mana tree said, caressing his golden hair. "It’s harvest. I brought you, I took you. Bear no pain, you’re a success in my eyes," she whispered.

"No!" roared a loud voice, like the vengeful cry of a bear, as the coin on the table transformed into Ronald.

He arrived just in time to see a purple light flash, and Godfrey was gone. And there sat his wife, eyes without irises, one hand stained with blood.

Her son’s blood.

"Argh!" Ronald hadn’t even realized he’d made a fist. He became aware of himself when his fist stopped before her face.

Tears welled in Ronald’s eyes. He staggered. His leg gave out, and he collapsed, leaning against the wall as he stared at the woman.

"You wanted him to get to the top. He could have done it," Ronald said, eyes red. "Why? Why, you damn thing!"

"That wasn’t his purpose."

"So you lied...you lied."

"Something I’ve learnt from you intelligent beings." She finally stared at him seriously. "His soul will be in Cain’s custody. Join Cain, you’ll be with your son again. You’re a unique specimen, Ronald. You have the potential to become so powerful, but your weakness is too glaring. With Godfrey gone, once I die, you’ll be merely a flicker of what you are now."

"Don’t lecture me! You don’t have that right!" Ronald screamed at the top of his lungs. Stuck in frustration and helplessness, he could only scream.

That was his wife. The dead was his son.

She had kept insisting that Godfrey couldn’t fail, he had to succeed. She created him to succeed.

All that... was a lie.

"I never intended for him to succeed the way you imagined. I wanted him to be a great catalyst for another. Him and Cain, together. One exceptional master, one great servant. Maybe then, I would know what’s up there. Don’t you want to know, Ronald? Don’t you wish to know why I am as I am, why the wind blows in certain directions? Why do countless races exist, yet you all are similar in heart? Why bask in ignorance?" the mana tree said, then sighed.

Ronald’s eyes were clouded with hate. Short-sighted, as all other races.

They all lived in the moment, relishing their ignorance. Never did one stop to think. According to their world’s logic, whales descended from creatures that once walked the land. Did they mourn what they lost? Did they long to have legs again, exploring the land instead of floating on water?

No, men considered such evolution to be normal. This was the same. Why this hate? They didn’t hate the chasm for falling into it or the sea for drowning people.

What they hated was its intelligence. It was curious too. There was once a time it flowed through the boundless expanse, free, lively, without a thought or logic.

"I know you’ve seen what he wants to do. He wants to survive, to reach the top."

"Ronald, Ronald, Ronald. I can read the hope inside of you like a man reads a book. If I knew the future, there would be no need for all this research. In a blink, I would have seen the end. Manipulating fate, I’m able to let men see the future, then probe their minds to get a glimpse."

Then it chuckled softly. That soft chuckle became a sudden burst of laughter. A loud, hollow one, like she was forcing herself to show a reaction.

Bewildered, Ronald rose to his feet.

The mana tree looked at him, nodding slowly, her lips exposing her white teeth in a way that made her face look ugly. "Even at the threshold of oblivion, he refuses to die."

Ronald frowned.

"Even when the doors of death pull him in, that child still fights. He refuses to die. I know all he thinks about, I’ve seen his lows, I know how desperately he wants peace. This is peace. So what exactly can’t I perceive that makes him still cling onto life?"

Ronald chuckled. "The same thing that kept his old man going. You’re still a tree. Reading our emotions won’t change your nature."

"If he succeeds, Earth will become a failure, and I shall crush it like I did the first men. Haven’t you ever wondered why there are relics scattered all over every world?" she said.

Ronald leaned forward. Great Lord, he had never felt this smug in his life, and for the first time, this tree, this damn tree, needed to realize it dealt with the Daniels.

"Go stop him then," he mocked.