Me, the Weakest Member of the Hero’s Party? I’m the Villain Though? - Chapter 64
“So then, Lysian, do you dislike helping others? I thought you, of all people, would understand me best, since you were once the Great Sage.”
Now that he said it, Lysian had once been the Great Sage who helped people. Thinking about that made me wonder. What kind of person had the Black Flame Dragon Lysian been before I became him?
If he had once been a Great Sage who aided humans, why had he become the Black Flame Dragon who sought to kill them?
Was it really the so-called Dark God who controlled the Black Flame Dragon? Or, like Kyle believed, did he attack humans simply because he was an evil monster?
“Kyle, do you think all monsters are evil?”
“Of course.”
Kyle answered instantly, without even a second’s thought, as if the question were too obvious to ask.
“But higher-ranked monsters have their own languages. Some can even speak with us.”
Monsters of high rank and above had intelligence enough to form complex languages. Especially beings like dragons or liches, they could communicate with humans.
“Have you ever tried talking to them?”
“Why would I?”
Kyle’s reply was brief, but it carried weight. Things like: Why would anyone even think that? or Why bother doing something so pointless?
“They might have their own reasons too.”
“Why would you think that?”
I wasn’t trying to convince Kyle. I already knew how deeply he hated monsters.
I was just curious about why he hated them so much.
“I don’t know. The thought just crossed my mind.”
At my answer, Kyle let out a deep, weary sigh. At that moment, a cold night wind blew in from the north, brushing against my forehead.
Moonlight glinted off his golden hair as it rippled softly in the breeze, like starlight scattering and catching the air.
“The day the Black Flame Dragon attacked Blaine… my mother was there, in the eastern quarter of the capital.”
Kyle began quietly, and a sudden uneasy feeling crept over me. I felt like maybe I shouldn’t hear what came next.
“When the black flames swallowed the eastern quarter, my mother and countless others were slaughtered. Monsters don’t care about human circumstances. So I have no reason to care about theirs.”
His tone was calmer than I expected, but his blue eyes shifted restlessly, like waves in turmoil.
Only then did it come back to me the reason Kyle, who’d once abandoned the sword, picked it up again to fight the Black Flame Dragon.
So to him, no matter what story or tragedy a villain might have, some things can never be forgiven.
I looked at him bitterly, and the memory surfaced of reading that scene in the novel where Kyle lost his mother and fell into despair… and the reason the Black Flame Dragon had attacked the imperial capital.
“…Come to think of it, Emperor Ferosen had promised the Black Flame Dragon something, hadn’t he?”
Ferosen was never a man who kept his word. He hadn’t with the hero’s party, and apparently, he hadn’t with the Black Flame Dragon either.
“Yeah. In exchange for helping turn the tide of a losing war, my father promised to hand over the imperial family’s heirloom to the Black Flame Dragon. But he didn’t keep that promise.”
“Why did he break the promise first?”
The question slipped out sharper than I meant. Thinking of that lich who’d been falsely accused and killed, being in the Black Flame Dragon’s body myself made me feel indignant.
“By the time my father was going to hand over the heirloom—the ancient relic—it was already gone.”
Ancient relic? What was that supposed to be? Was that even in the novel’s lore?
I dug frantically through my memory, trying to recall what I’d read. I thought maybe I’d seen something about it… or maybe not.
In the end, I couldn’t remember and decided to just ask Kyle honestly.
“What exactly is this ancient relic?”
“So even you don’t know, huh, Lysian? Or maybe you forgot when you lost your memories.”
Thankfully, Kyle didn’t seem suspicious about my ignorance. He folded his arms and gazed out at the distance, thinking how to explain.
“Then do you remember that there were once five kingdoms in ancient times?”
“I think so.”
Truthfully, the original novel’s lore was vast and dense. I’d skimmed a lot of it because it was so long, so details were fuzzy.
As far as I recalled, before humans became the dominant race, other species had their own kingdoms too… something along those lines.
“In the beginning, the gods left one sacred relic in each of the five kingdoms.”
Gods… naturally, the so-called Dark God came to mind at the word.
“When all five ancient kingdoms fell, their relics scattered across the continent. According to legend, if you gather all five relics, the god will grant you a wish.”
