The Distinguished Mr. Rose Chapter 139: Chapter 138: The Fields of Swaying Gold

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Chapter 138: The Fields of Swaying Gold The young emperor clutched his stomach and fell to his knee, wheezing, as the exhaustion of his final confrontation with the Demon King flooded into him all at once. His every muscle spasmed and his eyes struggled to remain open. Yet, despite how much he wished to collapse here, he still had one final duty to conclude. Karolus slowly stumbled toward the king’s cloven body. Just a moment ago, it had raged with all the weight of its soul, crying out and rebelling against the Stars, its face distorted into a revenant of pure rage, but now all the young man saw was a thin and gaunt husk. Its skin latched to bones soon to crumple. The black ooze that was its blood had long dried up. A weak, faint sputter escaped from the Demon King’s lips. It had no more strength to draw upon, no more life. The Demon King felt it. It would soon die. How should it act in its final moments? Angry? Bitter? Resentful, that all it had suffered through for the sake of that one tiny chance, a slim hope, that it could return home… would prove woefully futile? But it had already spent its tears. For untold millenia it mired itself in a self-destructive cycle of spite, guilt, and longing, unable to die or fully let go of its attachment. Now it was simply tired. It couldn’t muster even a single drop of care, as its breaths slowed to a gradual whisper. “Ah, young Karolus. Did it… work?” the Demon King uttered to the emperor as he silently gazed over it. “How blinding we were, when our dual fates collided. Betwixt the old and the new, the villain and the hero—surely it was enough, wasn’t it? To break free from those wardens up high. Now, say it. Surely you must know, don’t you? The name of our home. Please. If it is you, then it must be possible…” Karolus sadly shook his head. “I’m sorry.” The boy tried. He opened his mouth, forced the words through his throat and strained himself all he could, but in the end no sound came out. It was forbidden, a punishment. Not even the Demon King in all its power could stand against the Stars. “There is nothing to apologize for,” it said. “Perhaps it was a foolish endeavor to begin with, thinking man could ever go against the divine. But still I had to cling to it. It was all that kept this hollow shell from crumbling, and when I saw how different you were… different from me… I dared to hope that you who had broken away from fate could realize the impossible. Yet that naivety was too sweet. Such endings rarely come for fools like me.” The king stayed quiet for a moment, its eyes staring up at the starry sky which so tormented it. How dazzling those lights were so far away, and while it wished to revile them and blame them for this cruel conclusion to its long and tortured life, the fault was not entirely theirs. The king’s obsession was its own. Tucked in a hidden corner of its mind, perhaps it knew it was always destined to end this way. “Ah, Karolus, you cannot imagine how envious I become when I look at you. It is as if I am faced with my idealized self. Your words, your conviction, that bright light unburdened by the shadow of lordship… they are everything I yearned to be, but inevitably couldn’t grasp. As I sobbed alone in that mountain and reminisced about what could have been, the choices I could have made, you were right there. You were free. And I languished in my sorrow because I knew that the boy I imagined in those solitary nights was merely a possibility that would never be. “It was too painful, and yet I indulged in it nonetheless. I immersed myself in that dreamlike me and lived in a world made purely of my imagination. Inside, there was no wrong. Everything I did was right and everyone I met was happier because of it. I envisioned a better future where I had solved all that which made them suffer, and so they were meant to play along in the infantile stage that was my dreams, serving only to sate my self-pity. To make me feel better about myself and lull the aching loat