Future Knight [EN]: Chapter 133

As Kang Chan stood with Zekyon, gazing at the nearly completed Red Mars, a wave of emotion washed over him. Arteon approached from behind and spoke to Kang Chan.

“The battleship looks quite different from before.”

“Yes, it seems to have changed quite a bit.”

As the massive hull of the Red Mars reflected the evening glow, bathed in golden light, it truly resembled a divine ark from legends.

“So, you’ll be fighting the enemy with this?”

“Yes, Master.”

“…….”

Eladione didn’t seem too pleased about fighting the invaders with a weapon of murder they had created.

“Now that we have a weapon to fight back, all that’s left is to have a good fight.”

“Yes, Master.”

It was obvious how fierce the war would be.

Of course, there was no guarantee of victory. But even if the battle seemed hopeless, they had to fight and win. They had to return this continent, seized by the invaders, to its rightful owners.

It was a promise he made to the deceased Jaina, and the only thing he could do for her.

Thinking of Jaina, Kang Chan suddenly thought of another person.

‘I wonder if Platina is doing well?’

“Zekyon.”

“Huh? What’s up?”

“I’m going out for a bit.”

“Where are you going? I’ll come with you.”

“Sorry, I need to go alone.”

“Are you going to see that girl?”

Kang Chan nodded silently, and Zekyon shrugged, saying,

“Then there’s nothing I can do. I’ll watch over things here, so hurry back.”

“Thanks, Zekyon.”

Without looking back, Kang Chan used a teleportation magic circle to head to the elves’ village in Raksha.

It had been a month since he last saw her.

Thanks to Zekyon’s help, Platina had the appearance of an elf, but since she was a green elf, she couldn’t live among the other elves. So, she resided alone by the waterfall on the outskirts of the village.

The place was very similar to where Kang Chan and Jaina had trained in secret together.

Kang Chan rushed to the waterfall and found the elf woman with a familiar face sitting in front of it, washing vegetables and fruits.

Kang Chan felt a pang in his heart at the sight of her.

It was a familiar sight that he would never tire of, no matter how many times he saw it.

‘Jaina…….’

Of course, she wasn’t Jaina, but Platina.

He knew very well how selfish it was to chase after old memories by looking at her. But he couldn’t help it.

To Kang Chan, Jaina was someone he could never forget or erase.

“Ahem! Ahem!”

Startled by Kang Chan’s presence, she quickly turned around while washing vegetables and fruits.

“Kang Chan!”

As she greeted Kang Chan with her wet hands, the fruit she had been washing floated away in the water.

Suddenly, Kang Chan’s figure flashed, and before she knew it, he was holding the fruit that had been floating away.

Platina stared at him with wide eyes in amazement.

She already knew that he was a Sword Master, an ultimate being. But this was the first time she had seen his inhuman movements.

“Ah! Oh my, I’m so sorry……”

“Here.”

“Thank you.”

Platina blushed and accepted the fruit from Kang Chan.

Kang Chan’s heart fluttered for a moment at her shy smile, making him feel dizzy.

It was as if he had returned to the time when he and Jaina shared their love by the waterfall.

But he didn’t show it. He knew very well that it would hurt her.

“It’s been a month since I last saw you.”

“Indeed…….”

Kang Chan hadn’t been able to wash properly for four days and had been traveling all over the continent, so the cool waterfall water made him want to take a bath for the first time in a while.

As Kang Chan suddenly took off his top, Platina was startled and turned her head away.

“Oh my!”

Platina tried to hide her flushed face, and Kang Chan turned his back to her and began to wash his body under the waterfall.

His smooth, porcelain-like muscles glistened as they were soaked by the waterfall, and Platina swallowed hard at his wild appearance.

“H-Have you been very busy lately?”

“…….”

“Have you eaten?”

“No.”

“Then let’s eat together. I was just about to eat.”

“Alright.”

At Kang Chan’s words to eat together, she smiled so happily and ran home with her arms full of the fruits and vegetables she had been washing.

Kang Chan watched her go with sad eyes and blamed himself inwardly.

‘I shouldn’t be doing this…….’

He vowed and vowed not to give her any more affection, but he couldn’t help but waver whenever he stood before her.

After showering, Kang Chan sat across from Platina at the table.

Being a green elf, the food she ate was no different from that of other elves. The table was full of greens and fruits. But Kang Chan didn’t mind much. The elves’ table was very familiar to him as well.

“Try this.”

She took a bite of pineapple and cheese gratin and held it out to Kang Chan.

But Kang Chan refused the food she offered with a stern expression.

“I’ll eat it myself.”

“Yes…….”

Platina, disheartened by Kang Chan’s cold words, drank her lemonade with a gloomy expression. Kang Chan cleared his throat and spoke to her.

“Ahem! Ahem! So, is it uncomfortable living here?”

“Uncomfortable? No, not at all. This is the first place I’ve ever been that’s so beautiful and has so much to eat.”

Although it wasn’t quite like the Elven Forest, the Raksha Forest was a remarkably abundant forest, rare even on the continent.

To her, who had lived in the barren Iceland, it was like paradise on earth.

“This is a really nice place. If only I could raise children and spend my whole life with someone I love in a place like this, how happy would I be?”

Kang Chan felt a tearing pain in his heart at Platina’s words.

The wish she spoke of was the wish he had desperately wanted in the past.

With Jaina…….

When Platina saw Kang Chan looking at her with the same sad eyes as before, she didn’t avoid his gaze and looked straight back at him.

Even if he was looking for another woman in her appearance, she was the one in front of him now.

Besides, the woman he was looking for was already gone from this world. She wasn’t a rival to be jealous of.

Platina was willing to be a substitute for the other woman who had died.

She just wanted to be by Kang Chan’s side for the rest of her life.

After a while of silently looking at each other, the two broke the awkward atmosphere and focused on their meal again.

In the meantime, Kang Chan asked her a question in a somewhat more affectionate tone than his initial cold one.

“Were you born and raised in a place called Iceland?”

“Yes, I lived there for about 300 years.”

“…….”

Kang Chan was a little surprised to hear that she was over 300 years old.

She was older than he thought.

‘Then should I say that Jaina resembled Platina, not that Platina resembled Jaina?’

Kang Chan didn’t show any of this on the outside and calmly moved on to the next question.

“I’ve heard that Iceland is a forsaken land, is it that difficult to live there?”

When Kang Chan asked if it was difficult to live there, Platina looked out the window for a moment, sighed, and slowly opened her mouth.

“It’s somewhat livable now, but when I was born, it was a truly harsh place.”

“Because of the cold?”

“It’s incredibly cold. Iceland is a land where the ice doesn’t melt all year round, just like its name. But what was even harder to bear than that was hunger. For races like us who can’t eat meat, all we could eat there was moss on cave rocks or seaweed in the cold sea.”

“So you thrived by eating only moss and seaweed?”

“No, of course not. When we first lived on moss and seaweed, so many of our brothers and sisters died. They froze to death from the cold, starved to death from hunger…….”

Platina’s face was filled with sadness as if she had returned to that time.

“My younger sibling also died back then. We called that time the March of Tribulation.”

“Oh dear…….”

Her eyes welled up with tears at the thought of the past, but she forced herself to hold back her tears and said with a confident smile.

“Then we discovered it.”

“It?”

“Have you ever heard of mushrooms that bloom on ice?”

“Mushrooms that bloom on ice?”

“Yes, mushrooms that only bloom on ice. We call them Ice Mushrooms.”

“So you thrived by eating those mushrooms?”

“Yes, they’re so delicious. And they’re nutritious too. Our Green Elf tribe cultivates Ice Mushrooms on a large scale in the vast glacier plains. Ice Mushrooms don’t require much effort to grow and grow quickly, so there was enough to feed our millions of Green Elves. But there are so many monsters that target those Ice Mushrooms, and Ice Trolls invaded the farms almost every day. Everyone had such a hard time stopping them…… Well, thanks to that, we all became excellent warriors.”

Platina kept talking about her hometown without stopping, as if she had met someone to talk to after a long time.

Even though she had followed Kang Chan, forsaking her own kind because she liked him so much, homesickness was not something that could be easily forgotten, no matter how strong her heart was.

Kang Chan was lost in thought about Jaina again as he watched Platina talk so excitedly.

Her non-stop chatter was just like the talkative Jaina.

Kang Chan unknowingly wore a happy expression as he looked at her, and Platina also smiled happily at his smile.

But as soon as Green’s name was mentioned from Platina’s mouth, Kang Chan’s expression changed as sharply as a knife.

“…….”

“Why, why are you suddenly like that?”

Platina, who didn’t know that Green was the one who killed Jaina, was flustered because she didn’t know why Kang Chan was suddenly serious.

Looking at her, Kang Chan carefully asked a question.

“Do you know Green’s past well?”

“Of course I do, she’s the mother of us all.”

Kang Chan wanted to hear about Green’s past through this opportunity.

He wanted to know why that damn woman who killed Jaina started the continental war.

“Tell me, her past…….”

“Do you want to hear about Mother?”

“Yes.”

To the Green Elves, Green was like a god, so Green’s past and ideology were like faith to them. There was no way Platina wouldn’t know her past.

“Where should I start?”

“From when she was born.”

“Then it’s going to be a bit long, are you okay with that?”

“I don’t mind.”

At Kang Chan’s words that he didn’t mind, Platina cleared the dishes on the table and brought out tea. It seemed like the story would be a bit long.

Soon, Platina began to tell the story with the hope that Kang Chan would understand their feelings even a little.

“Mother was born on this land about 500 years ago.”

After that, she told Kang Chan in detail about Green’s past, and Kang Chan listened to Green’s past seriously. As the night deepened, Kang Chan heard all the stories about Green.

He didn’t feel anything.

He just felt empty.

No matter how unhappy her childhood was, that alone couldn’t forgive her for killing Jaina.

Platina looked at Kang Chan with earnest eyes. She wanted him to understand the situation of their race even a little.

But Kang Chan’s thoughts were the opposite.

‘Just because she was unhappy, she made others unhappy, she wasn’t the only one who had an unhappy childhood.’

Green’s unhappy past only stimulated his desire for revenge even more.

Kang Chan, who had lived a more unfortunate life than anyone else, had never thought of taking revenge on the world. Rather, because he knew the pain of wounds so well, he felt even more afraid of hurting others.

But Green was different.

She was returning the pain she had received to others without any hesitation.

Without knowing that revenge begets revenge…….

She became a henchman of the invaders from Earth.

Rather, Kang Chan’s heart was at ease.

Now he could destroy them both at once.

Benziller, who was lying next to the naked Edeline, got up from the bed as if something suddenly came to mind and poured a glass of the finest whiskey next to him into his mouth.

Edeline, who woke up at his movement, buried her face in the pillow and asked.

“Hmm, aren’t you sleeping?”

“I have something to think about, go to sleep first.”

Edeline, who had mixed her body with Benziller countless times for three years, had already become his woman.

Living with him had become a daily routine.

She had also adapted to the given environment.

Benziller covered Edeline with the blanket that had fallen below her chest and stood in front of the terrace.

Then he fell into thought again.

Everything was going smoothly.

As planned, this planet was now his, and there was nothing to stop them.

But something was uneasy.

It was suspicious that the dragons had disappeared since that day and had been quiet as mice for three years, and it was also suspicious that the royals and knights who had disappeared from each kingdom without a trace were quietly hiding without any resistance.

It was as if they were waiting for something…….

‘What is it? What are they up to?’

Instinctively, something was irritating him.

No matter what they were up to, what could they do, but it was true that something was fishy.