Son of the Hero King

Chapter 720: Sharpness

The return flight home was proving to be quite a bit entertaining for Sol. His back was wide enough and his scales smooth enough for everyone to sit comfortably and chat.

On their way to Southern Pride, the talks had been quite animated, but now that they were going back to Lustburg, there was a rather unnatural, subdued silence present at the scene. The cause of it was clear— the presence of the queen of the elves, Satella.

And that was also the reason for Sol’s amusement.

There was a subtle tension between Satella and Persephone. A thousand years ago, Persephone, under the banner of Lustburg, fought and beat Satella in such an overwhelming and overbearing manner that the elven queen’s path to godhood was completely broken without any hope of repair.

In the end, Jupiter, who spearheaded this whole mess, betrayed even the witches, but that did not do anything to mitigate the damage.

The path towards transcendence was something very personal and precious for the pursuants of the path. Destroying someone’s path, for some, was no different from killing their loved ones.

It went without saying that Persephone and Satella were, in many ways, deadly enemies and might have fought to the death if the situation had been even the slightest bit different then it was now.

Fortunately, though, they were sharing the same man now and fighting under the same banner.

And for that very reason, calling the current atmosphere awkward was a severe understatement.

Furthermore, as Pandora and Camelia were Persephone’s old-time comrades, they were mostly siding with Persephone and thus were slightly alienating Satella to support their friend.

Nefertiti meanwhile, was fully content to just sit aside from everyone else and smile, creating a weird three-way confrontation between them.

Thankfully, while the tension was high, there was no killing intent being spat around by anyone.

The proud Queen did not know how to approach her once enemies, and the haughty witch did not know how to approach the one she had beaten down once in the past.

Sol briefly wondered if he should intervene, but decided against the idea in the end. Problems like this were too deep for him to poke his nose in. This was something they needed to work out between the two of them.

Not all his women liked each other. Some even resented each other. So this was nothing new to him in the slightest. They simply needed to not cross the intangible line that he had set up for them and keep to themselves.

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“Sol, how far are we from the Capital?”

Pandora chose to break the silence first among his retinue of women. It was predictable since she was the one with the least amount of nerves among them and was suffocating from the awkward ambiance. She was at the point where she was considering the option of simply jumping out of Sol’s back and fly by herself to escape the whole damned thing.

“Not far. We should enter Lustburg’s airspace in a few minutes. Then I will accelerate.” His voice came out in deep rumbles like the reverberations of thunder, “Please cover my body in illusion, Pandora.”

“Sure.” Pandora nodded and started using her spells. At this distance, she did not need to conjure anything complicated. A simple spell to affect the light refraction around Sol’s body was enough for the result they were aiming for.

The spell’s effect was immediate, and from the perspective of anyone who might have observed from below, the huge dragon that was flying in the skies would vanish like smoke. Anyone who might have spotted him would take a double-take and wonder if they were hallucinating for a second.

Seeing this, Sol started to ascend higher, and only then did he start accelerating his flight speed. Flying too fast while close to the ground would only result in disturbing the lives of the common people.

Once Sol reached a cruising height and speed, Pandora turned around and spoke to Satella.

“Speaking of. Will this be the first time you visit Lustburg?”

“No. When the human kingdom was still under our control, I did visit while following the then Queen.”

“Oh…” Pandora clamped her mouth shut at her reply, prompting an amused chuckle from Sol.

His poor succubus had a heart of gold, but she was truly lacking when it came to tact. There was no good blood between Lustburg and Southern Pride.

Before Jupiter rose to power and obtained the help of the witches, humans, dwarves, and beastmen were slaves under the control of the elves, demons, and angels.

The elves, in particular, were basically the hegemonic power back then and had more slaves than everyone else combined.

This was a dark part of history for all of the races. After all, unlike the current legal slave system that was slowly developed in Lustburg, making slaves more akin to civil servants, the slaves during that era had no rights and were treated worse than animals or even state criminals, for that matter.

The prideful elves saw all races that weren’t them or dragons as inferior, and while they would not get out of their way to treat someone particularly badly, they were not kind masters in the least.

This was why Jupiter’s movements brought about all out rebellion from all the oppressed races. It allowed the dwarves and the beastmen to escape from the control of their oppressors by siding with the humans and actively participating in the rebellion.

Elves looked down on the world and were thus hated by the world as a result. This was also why, even when Echidna was rampaging and all kingdoms brought people to create the hero party, the elves stayed entirely out of it and simply did their own thing, whatever they were.

Camellia, who had stayed silent and unmoving till now, asked, “So, do you guys have any remorse for your actions?”

Satella furrowed her brows, “Why should we? I do not think we did anything wrong. It’s the right of the strong to control the life of the weak. In the same way, humans nowadays have slaves from all races. You guys were weak then. Now you are strong, and you acted no different than we did.”

Camellia had nothing to retort to Satella’s statement, which only showed cold hard facts. Humans were not saintly creatures. In terms of damages alone, they had a more sordid past than any other race in existence.

“If there is one thing that I do admit is that we should have been more careful when screening for talented individuals. We missed many people of high caliber. Perhaps if our overall system were better designed, we would also have had fewer rebellions in our heart. But this does not change the overall dynamic of our relationship with other races. Thinking anything else is nothing but hiding yourself from the col,d hard truth.”

Satella sneered, “Furthermore, in terms of human losses, you should look at this woman over there. I am pretty sure she killed more humans and other people than anything we ever did. How do you think she obtained the name of Poison Princess?”

Persephone shrugged, “Personally, I do not care about the bothersome and tiring things that you did back then. But thanks to you, I was able to get in contact with Ambrosia and become her daughter. I have a few regrets regarding the atrocities I committed all those years ago, yes…

“But if you were to ask me whether I would do so again or not if I could go back to the past, the answer would be, yes, without a shadow of doubt.”

The more he heard about her past, the more curious he was about Persephone. It seemed like she had been an absolute menace in the past. And Sol was not averse to that fact.