Chapter 538: . The Princess and The Prince

538. The Princess and The Prince (2)

Step. Step. Step.

Oliver walked in silence towards the center of the Sleeping Forest.

There was only one reason. To meet the Princess, the owner of this forest.

The Princess, who used hundreds of thousands of people as materials to create the Sleeping Forest and who played a ridiculously cruel joke.

Oliver walked in a straight line, almost as if he were possessed, only to meet her.

The Sleeping Forest emitted a faint sense of rejection as a result.

Even though Oliver didn’t focus on using his Warlock’s Eye, he could feel the immense aura formed from hundreds of thousands of people.

But Oliver didn’t care at all.

Why? Because there was no reason for him to care about such things.

As he continued walking through the forest, a massive tree and rock suddenly appeared, blocking his path.

The giant tree, which seemed to have lived for thousands of years, was larger and thicker than a building, and the rock was bigger than a cliff.

It resembled a natural fortress wall.

Although it was an awe-inspiring and majestic sight that couldn’t be seen in reality, Oliver stared at the obstacles before him with indifferent eyes.

No matter how majestic they were, they were nothing more than creatures in essence.

Oliver reached out and touched the endless tree and rock.

Then, he analyzed and interpreted the magic formula that formed the creatures, breaking them down into particles.

Into the countless energies that made up the Sleeping Forest.

Without wasting any of this energy, Oliver held onto it and continued walking forward.

Without a moment’s hesitation and in a straight line.

As Oliver continued walking silently, a cliff with no end appeared.

Using the energy he had just obtained and by reconstructing the terrain, Oliver created a path and continued forward without any deviation.

The forest was unsettled, but Oliver didn’t mind at all. It was as if it were the most natural thing.

Next, a river appeared, followed by a lake, and then a swamp, but nothing stopped or even altered Oliver’s path.

No matter how rugged the path was or how easier paths were formed, Oliver only moved forward on his own.

During this process, the Sleeping Forest sent out countless creatures to stop Oliver. But Oliver had the shadows devour the creatures or used the Blood-Stained Dagger to slice through them.

This was repeated several times. Eventually, the creatures could no longer approach Oliver and either retreated or watched from afar.

Creatures obeyed their master, but they also had their survival instincts.

Even special creatures made from people weren’t exceptions.

After walking silently for a long time, Oliver finally stopped at a certain spot.

On a barren plain and with nothing around.

The Sleeping Forest, realizing it couldn’t stop Oliver, gifted him with an endless journey instead.

Facing the vast landscape that could cause a sense of panic, Oliver briefly recalled his conversation with Claude.

What did he say?

Claude said that the Sleeping Forest moves to a different location at certain times, many creatures appear, and there are also distortions of time and space.

It feels like one has been there for much longer than actual time, and the terrain constantly changes, he said.

Claude mentioned that this was actually the most dangerous aspect.

More so than the endless creatures, the constantly changing terrain and the never-ending size of the Sleeping Forest.

Like ants in a cup, it was only natural to be toyed with one-sidedly.

Granted, it wasn’t usually this severe, but right now, it seemed the situation was different.

Whether it was the Princess’s will or the forest’s will, Oliver couldn’t tell, but the Sleeping Forest was desperately rejecting him.

“Should I just burn it all down…?”

Oliver muttered quietly.

It was entirely possible if he used Devouring Fire, a mix of greed and magic.

This forest, born from black magic of the creation type, was like a fuel depot for Devouring Fire. All it needed was a single spark.

However, Oliver shook his head.

Despite being fundamentally creatures, this Sleeping Forest was created from hundreds of thousands of people, and Oliver couldn’t be sure what it was capable of.

If its existence were threatened, it might react with a corresponding countermeasure, even if it had to suffer severe harm.

People tend to hide a trump card, after all.

Above all, the biggest problem with this method was that Oliver wouldn’t be able to see the Princess’s face directly.

That was absolutely unacceptable.

Oliver had to see the Princess’s face with his own eyes. To see who played such a ridiculous joke. To see, and then…

“…Gulp.”

Oliver swallowed quietly. He was starting to feel hungry after all that walking.

The shadow, who had also been feasting until now, begged to be allowed to devour the surroundings.

That might not be a bad idea. If he couldn’t find her, he could start devouring until she appeared.

But this idea was dismissed for the same reason as before.

The creatures might end up eating the Princess, too.

That couldn’t happen. Oliver had to see the Princess with his own eyes.

The shadow was disappointed by Oliver’s decision, but it had no choice but to obey, and Oliver continued to ponder.

How could he meet the Princess in this forest that rejected him?

Oliver checked the communication device attached to the inside of his collar. Unsurprisingly, it wasn’t working, so he couldn’t get Eve’s help.

Even focusing with the Warlock’s Eye, he couldn’t scan the entire forest as he usually would in a City, due to the overwhelming energy and hellish aura that made up the Sleeping Forest.

Once the range exceeded a certain point, the massive energy clouded his view like a thick fog, and there was no way to grasp the extent of the Sleeping Forest.

Searching was practically impossible. So the only option was to summon the Princess here.

If going to her wasn’t possible, then she had to come to him.

But how?

Oliver looked at the shadow.

It had absorbed the emotions, vitality, and magic power of the Flesh Cook, was modeled after Unbent Knee’s shadow-creature from the New Continent and was temporarily made by imitating it.

Thanks to devouring Fen and the creatures of the Sleeping Forest, its power and attributes had expanded greatly.

To the extent that even Oliver couldn’t fully grasp the limits.

Oliver briefly considered embedding the shadow into the ground again to manipulate the Sleeping Forest itself, but he shook his head.

Though Oliver’s shadow had grown stronger, it still couldn’t compare to the entire Sleeping Forest.

To summon the Princess here, Oliver needed to command the whole forest, but embedding the shadow into the ground could only cover a few dozen meters at best. Far too inadequate.

While it could be used in a limited capacity, it wasn’t the scale Oliver was aiming for.

Meanwhile, the Sleeping Forest continued to expand the space around Oliver, until it was now an open plain that was vast to the point of being empty.

Hmm… how annoying.

It had been a long time since something annoyed him this much.

So Oliver recalled all the times he had been annoyed before.

“Martel… Bathory… Seamus… Flesh Cook…”

He pondered deeply, thinking back to each of them, and among them, only Bathory and the Flesh Cook triggered the same frustration during missions as he felt now.

Oliver remembered those moments.

When Bathory threatened to kill everyone Oliver held dear.

When the Flesh Cook judged him freely.

Even now, those moments were utterly infuriating.

With a makeshift knife forged from his annoyance, Oliver cut off Bathory’s arm.

Her body, which she regenerated using blood as a medium, didn’t heal, and Oliver then cut off her limbs too.

In panic, Bathory tried to manipulate the blood to retaliate, but Oliver mixed a few drops of his own blood, negating all the efforts, emotions, and entire life she had built up.

“… … …”

The Flesh Cook extracted Oliver’s emotions, injected them into his body, and fully awakened as a dragon.

His fiery red and hot eyes, gigantic maw that could swallow everything, his dark red scales covering his entire body, massive wings shading the sky, and a body larger than a mountain yet nimble as the wind.

Like a caterpillar transforming into a butterfly in a cocoon, the Flesh Cook transcended the limitations of a human.

In hindsight, it seemed calculated, but Oliver, with no hesitation, suppressed the dragon using black magic through his blood.

A disease that even legendary dragons couldn’t withstand spread everywhere, and Oliver slashed the dragon, harder than steel, with the dagger stained with his blood.

“… … …”

Back then, Oliver didn’t give much thought to this fact. Maybe he was avoiding thinking about it.

Though Oliver couldn’t be sure, at this moment, he came once again face to face with that fact.

His blood, which had nullified the efforts of ancient monsters in an instant.

A deeply unpleasant yet incredibly useful fact.

Without hesitation, Oliver used the dagger in his hand to make a small cut on his index finger.

Drip.

A drop of red blood from the wound slid through the air and fell on the vast ground below.

That single drop soaked into the barren plain.

Compared to the sheer size of the Sleeping Forest, made with hundreds of thousands of people, it seemed insignificant, almost nonexistent. Yet, curiously, the Sleeping Forest began to stir.

Sensing the unusual occurrence, the Sleeping Forest raised countless creatures from the earth.

To stop Oliver. But despite their purpose, the creatures couldn’t dare to approach Oliver.

Because Oliver put his finger over his lips.

“Shh.”

A gesture telling them not to make noise or interfere.

At that small gesture, the creatures that had appeared to stop Oliver didn’t move, nor did they utter a sound.

The creatures were overwhelmed by that simple action, laced with Oliver’s subtle emotion.

It was unimaginable that such an action could exert so much influence over another’s creatures, especially those belonging to the Princess of the Sleeping Forest.

But ignoring that, Oliver stared at the ground where his blood had fallen and began to intervene with the Sleeping Forest using his blood as a medium.

Boom!!!

As the fading blood mark became the center, the ground trembled, and the space distorted, causing the earth to buckle and crack.

A testament to Oliver’s will taking effect.

Feeling and understanding this sensation, Oliver extended its scope throughout the entire Sleeping Forest.

As if expanding the Warlock’s Eye to its limit, darkness spread all around, allowing Oliver to see not just the surface, but beneath it.

The twisted hundreds of thousands of people that made up the Sleeping Forest, and the trace amounts of hellish aura enabling it.

Oliver knew the Sleeping Forest was vast, but the power hidden within was beyond even that.

However, no matter how vast it was, it wasn’t infinite.

Oliver took in the forest, vast but finite, in a single glance.

His head throbbed from the sheer volume of information, but this allowed Oliver to see countless people in the forest, as well as many other people waiting outside. Including the owner of the Sleeping Forest.

It was obvious where she was hidden because the vast, precise, and intricate formula that made up the forest revolved around her as its root.

As soon as Oliver discovered her, he focused all his attention on her, and the forest tried to interfere.

At that moment, Oliver used the blood he had just spilled to project his will. He pushed aside the will of the Sleeping Forest, seized the entire magical formula that made up the forest, and forcibly pulled it towards him.

With overwhelming, one-sided, and unreasonable power.

The ground began to shake as if an earthquake had hit, and the creatures that filled the surroundings started to collapse, unable to maintain their forms.

Evidence that the will of the Sleeping Forest had been broken by Oliver’s will.

The tiny fracture that had been distorting grew wider, eventually reaching its limit and causing the ground to cave in.

Rumble… …!!!

As the earth shook violently, a wound opened in the ground.

Like squeezing out pus, a small, dilapidated castle emerged from the crack.

It was hardly large enough to be called a castle, and its appearance was unremarkable.

Yet, Oliver continued walking towards the castle gate, confident that the Princess was inside.

Why? Because Oliver had personally drawn the Princess out just by thinking of her.

As Oliver was about to open the gate and enter, the statues of a dignified King and a compassionate Queen, which had seemed like mere decorations of the castle, suddenly moved, blocking Oliver’s way.

Boom!

Boom!

The giant stone statues, around four meters tall, hit the ground with a thud, making the earth tremble, exuding an immense sense of pressure.

But Oliver didn’t care at all. Just as before, he continued moving straight ahead.

As the statues tried to block Oliver, a voice echoed throughout the Sleeping Forest.

[It’s okay. Please step aside.]

It was the voice of a young girl.

Oliver paused for a moment at that voice, and the stone statues of the King and Queen, which had been blocking him, moved aside and made way for Oliver.

Oliver glanced at the statues of the King and Queen for a moment, and then continued on his way.

“… … …”

Creeeek—

When Oliver opened the gate, an overwhelming amount of information flooded into his mind.

***

The space inside was pitch-black, like the void world of the World Tree.

In that darkness, Oliver watched a shadow puppet theater.

A play performed by casting light on objects to create shadows.

There, a small but beautiful castle appeared, and in front of the castle, countless people were gathered, rejoicing.

“Long live Her Grace, the Princess! Long live our wise Princess!”

“Long live! Long live!”

“The treasure of our kingdom!!”

“The flower of the kingdom, our Princess!”

Through the play of shadows, Oliver could infer that although the Kingdom was small, it was well-governed, and the people loved it.

The beauty of shadow puppetry lies in discovering hidden meanings through small hints.

Moreover, the shadows before his eyes were not just shadows but shadows forged from emotions and memories. As a result, they felt even more vivid.

More vivid than any ordinary play, radio drama, or movie.

Because it was a re-enactment based on the truth, using the memories and emotions of the time.

Oliver realized he had felt a similar sensation in the past. When he smoked Filgarett.

Filgarett, made of a beautiful light that could be described as the will and emotions that transcend death.

It allowed for the indirect experience of someone’s life based on their memories and emotions.

Perhaps that’s why Oliver decided to exercise patience and continue watching the shadow puppet theater before him.

Among the crowd gathered in front of the castle, a man raised both hands toward the sky and shouted passionately.

His voice carried nothing but respect and love for the Princess.

“Let’s all shout long live with greater fervor! For the wise Princess who saved us from countless disasters by seeing into the future! For the living mercy that God has bestowed upon us!!”

At his words, invoking even the name of God, the people showed no resistance and wholeheartedly echoed his cry.

“True words! Thanks to the Princess, we were able to avoid the wildfires!”

“And the plague!”

“She helped us avoid war too!”

“We even survived the famine!!”

Each and every one of them was sincere.

It seemed that in the Kingdom depicted in the shadow performance, they had avoided countless disasters thanks to the Princess’s foresight.

Her power was truly remarkable, leading to the love of many people for the Princess.

A Kingdom united in its affection, respect, and worship of the Princess.

Shortly after, the scene transitioned from the outside of the Kingdom to its interior. But the atmosphere hadn’t changed at all.

Inside the small but somewhat luxurious palace, the dignified King, the compassionate Queen, and the capable ministers were all busy praising the Princess.

They marveled at her extraordinary foresight and showered her with praise for generously bestowing the blessings of her vision.

The King, the Queen, the vassals, and the citizens. None of them were jealous; they all truly loved the Princess.

The Princess, in turn, accepted their love with joy and didn’t hesitate to return it tenfold.

A kingdom of dreams where laughter never ceased. A golden age that seemed as if it would last forever.

And then, a melancholic flute began to play quietly.