The silence lasted for a long time.

Brandon froze in place with his hands on the table, his bright eyes staring motionlessly at the black-haired wizard, at Loren Turin, whom he seemed to have suddenly become unrecognizable.

"Your enemy?"

His Majesty the Emperor's expression was the same as his mood at the moment, complicated and messy: "How do you know... No... Listen to you as if I shouldn't be asking. ”

"If I don't make such a big fuss, don't I even have the qualifications to know?"

As if laughing at himself and sarcastically, Brandon's face was gloomy.

"No, you'll know for sure. Loren shook his head: "When it's all over, you'll know the truth of everything." ”

"After it's all over?!" Brandon raised his voice, his eyes widening:

"That's enough, isn't it?!"

The black-haired wizard sighed, and in the face of Brandon's gaze that he wanted to kill but desperately held back, he reluctantly spoke: "Your Majesty, how much do you know about the Black Duke?"

"Don't digress the conversation, is there a connection between the two?!"

"Yes!"

Looking at Loren's expression when he finally became serious, Brandon raised his eyebrows, turned his head angrily and sat down with his back to Loren: "Roland Turin... I don't know much about this man. ”

"Charlotte de Salion, where's Her Majesty the Dragon Empress?"

"She's my great-grandmother, considering the age, do you think it's possible that I've seen her?!"

"What about grandfather, have you heard a story about the Dragon Empress from your grandfather?"

"What the hell are you trying to say?!"

Brandon blew up again.

"I want to say that if you know about the Dragon Empress and the Black Duke, you should understand why I haven't talked to you about it. Loren, whose face did not change, said slowly:

"Roland Turin, the famous black duke, conquered the centaur tribe, conquered the dwarven kingdom, conquered the imperial rebels, went north to garrison the fortress of Broken Mountain, fought against the invading monsters, and won brilliant victories again and again......"

"This man who forged the glory of Byrne with his own hands, but the deeds of the second half of his life are unpredictable, more and more weird, and more and more with His Majesty Charlotte I......"

"Later, when he rejected His Majesty's marriage proposal, he was found to be an evil god on his body, and became an apostate of the Holy Cross......

"In the end, when Charlotte was about to be defeated, she appeared and single-handedly turned things around, ended the monster invasion, and disappeared into the wilderness of the backdrop ice field......

"No one knows what happened to him. ”

Brandon, who had his back to the black-haired wizard, kept his head down and didn't say a word the whole time.

Although he was explaining it to Brandon, the black-haired wizard himself seemed to understand something.

If I'm not mistaken, Roland Turin may have faced an even more difficult situation than himself, desperately searching for traces of the Black Cross and the fallen evil gods, and on the one hand, dealing with pressure from Byrne and the Heavenly Dome.

Because of the Byrne knights, who grew stronger and more ambitious with his conquests, and the nobles of the empire who felt the threat from the south and began to desperately suppress him and block him.

Faced with the rebellion, Roland chose to go north in a desperate gamble, and after a disastrous defeat, he dragged his dying body back and destroyed the army of monsters that invaded the empire with the last trace of strength.

"Why didn't Roland tell Charlotte the truth, why didn't he let the knights understand that what he did was to save the world, why did he ......" Loren asked rhetorically, as if he was talking to himself:

"Because... It's not something they need to know. ”

"If he wins, no one needs to know what's going on, everything will be back on track for Roland Turin, who is going to turn things around, and probably plan to go back in time to when he first met Queen Charlotte, and let everything start again, right?"

Brandon, with a gloomy face, didn't speak, he already knew something about the Void and the Evil God from Peter Fasha.

"If he fails, then he fails... Everything will be controlled by Black Cross Serol, and even if he tells Charlotte, he will not be able to return it. ”

"But he just failed!"

"He didn't fail, he just didn't succeed. ”

The black-haired wizard shook his head and said word by word: "If he fails, then we don't even have the qualifications to sit here and discuss his qualifications, and Black Cross Serol will become the god who truly controls everything, even if the world changes to another shape in an instant, we will not notice it, and we will take it for granted that this is what it should be." ”

Brandon remained silent.

"That's why I won't tell you, Brandon, that this is not your war. Staring at his back, the black-haired wizard whispered:

"He... Seliol, what he wants, more precisely, the two Holy Grails of the Nine-Pointed Star on my body, as long as he doesn't get one of them, he can't really control the whole world. ”

"Then why not just destroy the Holy Grail so he doesn't ......"

Before he finished speaking, Brandon's stunned voice interrupted, and he looked back behind him: "Can't destroy it?"

Loren shrugged.

"The two nine-pointed star chalices are the key and connection between the void and the real world, not something that really 'exists'. Loren explains:

"Seliol has returned from the Void to the physical world, but the power is not as strong as he is now probably looking for another Holy Grail, as long as there is one left, he will not be able to achieve his goal of devouring the whole world. ”

"So why don't you just hide with the Holy Grail... Ah, can't hide?"

"Seliol... He was able to perceive all the places in the world where the Void Reaction existed for a moment. Loren nodded: "There is still a slight possibility of face to face, and there is no point in hiding." ”

"Logan in a hat, Roland, the Black Duke... In the hundreds of years since the destruction of the Dragon Kingdom, generations of people have stood up and stood alone against Seriel the Black Cross, are they crazy? No, they are sober, they know that the chances of success are slim to none, but they do it anyway. ”

"It's not about ability, it's not about status, it's about bloodline... Just because that's what they were supposed to do, they did it, and that's it. ”

"So you don't have to be angry, because all this fight has nothing to do with you from the beginning to defeat the Azorean elves, you've done enough. ”

The words fell, and Loren said no more.

He knew very well that this would not be enough to convince Brandon, but it was enough to make him understand the situation, and just after the Battle of Eboden, the strength of the empire was already extremely weak, and it was impossible to immediately organize an army to attack an enemy who might not even be able to determine where.

The rest is just Charlotte and ......

“...... Every de Salion, at the moment of his birth, at the moment when he or she is crowned the Supreme Emperor, has a crucial choice to make. ”

"To be unscrupulous, to use all means to extend empire and family rule into the next generation;"

"Or inherit the last wish of the dragon kingdom and confront the enemies of this world;"

With a somewhat hoarse voice, Brandon suddenly spoke up and interrupted Loren's thoughts: "This is Eckhart II... My father... Before he died, he told Peter Fassa's secret. ”

"Every emperor has faced this problem, and the vast majority chose the first, and a very small number chose the second, such as the 'sage' Brandon I, my wonderful great-grandmother, Charlotte I, felt that she could not do this multiple-choice question, and she was hard with both hands. ”

"As a result... We've all seen that she left behind a frail vault that my grandfather spent the rest of her life trying to make up for, and if it weren't for the Black Duke's sacrifice, she would probably have lost another war. ”

Brandon sighed.

"And my father, Eckhart de Salion, and guess what... He wanted to do the same thing as Charlotte, but not quite the same. ”

"My father was the oldest of his siblings, so he must have seen the Dragon Empress, and how the Empress was as dusty as she was when she was young, and who lost everything in the end.

So he learned to be good, he learned to be smart, he was careful, he was very cautious, he knew how to avoid the mistakes that Charlotte made. ”

Turning around, Brandon smiled at the corners of his mouth, stared at his bright red eyes, and gestured with Loren's dancing in a subdued tone.

The black-haired wizard knew that this was his attitude when he got serious.

"Charlotte failed, why? Because she wanted to win two wars on her own, she deserved to be unlucky, love, career, inheritance... So Eckhart understands that if you want to win, you can't just count on yourself, but on everyone. ”

"In the Battle of Broken Mountains, he supported Drexis and a strong army of veterans, and he won the hearts and minds of the people by indulging the Church of the Holy Cross;"

"Indulging the wizards and Ebolden has given rise to a force that can confront the old forces and the old aristocracy. With his eyes wide, Brandon said with a smile in a very grotesque tone:

"You might not guess the rise of the Centaur tribes, the civil strife in the Dwarven kingdoms, the Azorean elven incidents... Well, yes, he already knew that even the enemy was his pawn, and it was all in his calculations. ”

"Me, Conrad, Aunt Fitronay... Including you, especially you, Loren Turin... It's all in his calculations!" Brandon's smile grew:

"What you've done... He knows everything, and he even knows that you are not a descendant of a 'Turin' family at all, you are just a small retinue that Leonardo Turin picked up in the forests of the Lothair Mountains, and impersonated the surname of the Turin family. ”

"No! it's not an impostor, because Leonardo has no grandchildren at all, and his only son died when he was in Arles, and you are a real fake Turin!"

"He even ......" Here, Brandon paused deliberately, and looked at Loren's expression very playfully:

"I even know that you once met and met an evil god in Wild Dog Village, and that it was called... The evil god of Asriel has been around you at least twice since. ”

The black-haired wizard's expression changed slightly.

Not because of how surprised... Brandon is not a wizard, and his void reaction, though weak, also exposes what he thinks in front of Loren.

If this is the case, then it means that the De Salion family has always known the truth, and Eckhart de Salion ......

"From the moment he became the emperor, he has been laying out all the time, in order to one day, to achieve his great cause or... The Dragon Empress Charlotte I, an unfinished feat. ”

Brandon's voice sounded faintly:

"For the sake of this goal, everyone... All of it... Imperial... It's just his pawns, and even his own life and death are in his plan. ”

"This man planned his death with his own hands, for... It is to let his plan be successfully executed, even if he is destined to be invisible, he must continue to manipulate this entire chessboard until this moment. ”

"Do you understand what I mean, Loren, can you understand what I mean... You, me, and hundreds of thousands of people out there are all living in his mind, all living for his ambition, for the ambition of a dead man......"

"Wait! ”

Loren interrupted him with a chuckle, "It's a bit too much, I know you don't have a good relationship with your father, but if this plan works, why ......"

"No, you still don't understand!"

Brandon, who suddenly turned around, looked at Loren with impatience in his eyes:

"Loren Turin... Do you really not understand, or are you playing dumb with me?!"

"I repeat my father, Eckhart II, the Twelfth Emperor of the Twelfth Generation, who went mad to accomplish the failed cause of the Mad Empress and the Black Duke. ”

"He used everyone's life, including you and me, and his own life for this purpose;"

"But he does not intend to be on his own hands, or even to see with his own eyes the day when his plan will succeed, he is so ambitious that we will act according to his plan from the moment he dies... Until this moment. ”

"Got it... Your choice is not your choice, but it was planned by this guy to send you to your death, and I become the fool who knows nothing and carry on the blood of De Salion to the next generation;"

"Got it, fool?!"

Brandon roared heartbreakingly.

But Loren was quiet, as if he didn't even know that there was such a thing: "But isn't that what you expected, becoming the emperor of the empire, and continuing the blood of De Salion to the next generation?"

"Yes! But definitely not according to his ideas, never according to his will... It's my idea, and it should be my way, not someone else's, not even another De Salion!"

Brandon said coldly: "And in my experience, if it is my omnipotent father's game, then there must be what he wants... Not only to continue the bloodline to save the world, there must be something else he wants. ”

"So... Loren Turin, we need a plan. ”

"A new plan. ”