Chapter 1400: Paradise Lost (11)
“…I don’t understand what you’re trying to say.”
In the frozen silence, Lennok slowly opened his mouth after hearing Jinwa’s proposal.
“You’re asking for my help… to break off the deal with the Imperial Three Grand Dukes?”
The deal with the Imperial Three Grand Dukes, exchanging Myeong’s Legacy in Paradise Lost, was one of the most crucial secrets of this plan.
It was information Lennok only learned after deciding to participate in the plan, information even Pandemonium had barely acquired with Maiya Lonsdale’s help.
Considering the words left by Jain, a vassal of Yeongheo encountered in Gateway City, it was clear how vital this transaction was to both sides.
Lennok had thought that Jinwa moving Paradise Lost towards Yeongheo Palace was clearly for this very deal.
He had never imagined that the Ascendant appearing here would express an intention to break the deal itself.
And what’s more, she offered to restore Lennok’s lost memories of the past.
“…”
It was an absurd proposal, but the moment Lennok heard it, he knew it wasn’t impossible.
Jinwa’s Spell-Word was the authority of a Transcendent, reaching a level where its mere existence could alter physical laws.
It was a power capable of reproducing or interfering with memories and records that existed in this world, based on language.
If she used her Spell-Word and Lennok cooperated, recovering his lost past memories might indeed be possible.
But—
“The deal will proceed at noon in the upper antechamber of Yeongheo Palace. That’s likely the only time you can move in mundane time.”
Jinwa didn’t give a proper answer or explanation to Lennok’s question.
Instead, she simply began to speak as if she had already decided what to say.
Resting her chin in a languid manner, she slowly tilted her gaze as if contemplating something.
“Those stiff-necked nobles will walk down from the sky to observe imperial etiquette. They’ll bring retinues, too.”
“…”
“There might be Dragon Riders or Titan Legions mixed in. You might need to watch out for Dragon’s Authority or Deep Domain at the commander level. Those are authorities that have reached a different realm from my Spell-Word.”
These were the most intimate and crucial pieces of information about the deal, which Lennok would ordinarily never have heard.
The date and time of the deal. The strength of the Imperial Three Grand Dukes and even the abilities to watch out for.
Was it a mistake to sense a faint sneer mixed in Jinwa’s voice as she nonchalantly explained all this information?
But there was no time to deeply ponder what feelings Jinwa harbored toward the Imperial Three Grand Dukes.
Leaning an arm on one side of the table, she raised her teeming gaze and stared at Lennok.
“So, you interfere. Do you understand?”
“…”
“Just come to Yeongheo Palace at the appointed time. Any justification or excuse that can ruin the deal will suffice.”
Jinwa said this nonchalantly.
“After that, I’ll take care of the rest.”
“…For someone making a request, you’re quite lacking in explanation.”
Lennok met the Ascendant’s gaze head-on.
“Without any explanation as to why the deal needs to be ruined, or why you’re asking me to do it. Are you telling me to just proceed as you wish?”
Jinwa’s proposal lacked explanation, reason, process, or cause.
There was only the obvious expectation that she would simply throw out what she wanted and Lennok would deliver the results.
But Jinwa, hearing Lennok’s question, merely smiled.
“Excuse me, do I look like I’m asking for a favor right now?”
“…”
“I’m not asking you to do it, am I? You look smart, but you’re not getting it.”
The Ascendant leaned back slowly in her chair and said.
“[Do it.] Do you still not understand?”
“Kugh…!”
A sharp hum—
Even though she already knew her Spell-Word didn’t affect Lennok, she still drove it into his mind.
Her unreserved attitude, as if what she requested and desired should naturally be fulfilled by others.
This, in turn, made Jinwa’s very existence all the more inscrutable and terrifying.
“…No.”
But Lennok, despite feeling an intense headache piercing his skull, stared directly at Jinwa.
“Tell me a proper reason. Are you playing games right now?”
“…”
“You’ll have to explain the reason for such a proposal fully. To begin with, there must have been a reason you initiated this conversation.”
Although he was confronting Jinwa’s Incarnation Body in the heart of Paradise Lost, Lennok had no intention of being arbitrarily led by her.
There had to be a reason why Jinwa had requested to speak with Lennok first, even after discovering intruders rummaging through her Cradle.
Instead of immediately going berserk to kill Lennok, there was undoubtedly a reason she was offering such a proposal in exchange for his past memories.
It was certain that at least that much regret or desperation existed within the Ascendant before him.
Hearing Lennok’s words, Jinwa furrowed her brows slightly, then smiled.
“Hmph, you keep making me repeat myself. Do you really need to ask again when you’ve already understood?”
“…”
“This is why I dislike thoughtful children. You just need to listen quietly when I speak, but you’re full of unnecessary curiosity… Kugh.”
Jinwa, with a wry smile, looked at Lennok, her eyes glistening.
“Well, fine. But I need that kind of talent for this, so there’s no helping it. I’ll tell you.”
“…”
Indeed, Jinwa had something she wanted to achieve, and only by using Lennok’s abilities.
She hadn’t revealed it not out of annoyance or laziness, but for another reason.
However, being called out by Lennok and still having to accede to his demand meant she, too, had her own circumstances.
“The Imperial Three Grand Dukes chose Yeongheo Palace as the trading location, not me. We agreed to transfer what that black wizard left behind to them within that annex palace.”
Jinwa said this in a casual, passing tone.
“But after bringing my garden to Yeongheo Palace, I discovered something hidden in the annex palace.”
“Something hidden in Yeongheo Palace?”
“I don’t know if you remember now, but—”
A cold smile played on Jinwa’s lips.
As if she suspected who Lennok was, but chose not to ask.
“Originally, Yeongheo Palace was an annex palace used by the Emperor. It was a frequent retreat during the reign of the former Emperor.”
“…”
“So, after he departed, this annex palace was considered as a candidate for the mausoleum to bury his corpse… but when I arrived at Yeongheo Palace, I found something entirely different buried there instead of the Corpse Emperor.”
“…What is it?”
“I’m telling you this now to find that out.”
Jinwa said with a chilling expression.
“The reason the Imperial Three Grand Dukes chose Yeongheo Palace as the trading location must be related to that.”
“…”
“They dared to insert an imperial secret I didn’t know into this deal and tried to humiliate me… How can nothing change after decades?”
Jinwa’s eyes froze coldly.
“When the Imperial Palace was intact, they could hide whatever they wanted. But not anymore.”
“…”
“Rather than leaving causality I don’t know about to unfold in my garden, I might as well ruin and destroy everything, right?”
In the suffocating silence, Jinwa smiled faintly.
“That’s why I decided to use you for this. Do you understand now?”
Everything that happened in Paradise Lost belonged to its owner, Jinwa.
Causes and effects existing in this spacetime must always be subservient to her.
If she couldn’t possess it, she destroyed it; if she couldn’t perceive it, she buried it; if she couldn’t interpret it, she erased it.
That incomprehensibly blind obsession and madness were precisely what came closest to the identity of this fallen Ascendant.
“Because a contract exists between you and the Imperial Three Grand Dukes, you can’t break the deal yourself, can you?”
Lennok, lost in thought, spoke.
“So you need an external variable. Someone unbound by contracts or constraints, let alone Spell-Words…”
Jinwa vaguely suspected who Lennok was, and what privileges he possessed.
The freedom from interference by Spell-Words due to his Targeted Resistance. She must have thought that could be the variable to ruin this trade agreement.
Because if Lennok intervened in the deal between the Imperial Three Grand Dukes and the Ascendant in any way, the mere existence of his Targeted Resistance could potentially unravel the contract itself.
Jinwa had tried not to reveal this to Lennok because she didn’t want to show that she needed his abilities or talents.
“If the contract is broken, they won’t just stand by and watch either.”
Lennok looked at Jinwa.
“They will also move to get what they want, no matter what. Do you have the confidence to handle them?”
“What? Ahahahahaha!!!”
At that moment, Jinwa burst into laughter unlike anything before.
“That’s absurd. Are you asking me that right now?”
“…”
As if Lennok’s question itself was ironic, she leaned back in her chair, cackling.
A violent shift in emotion, so much so that Freya, who sat frozen beside her, trembled.
Was it an outrageous question for a mortal to ask an Ascendant if she had the confidence to handle it?
Or perhaps, was it the very fact that ‘Lennok’ was asking Jinwa such a question that made her laugh?
In the moment Lennok fell into thought over her incomprehensible yet strangely understandable reaction.
“I know what you’re thinking, but—”
Jinwa said nonchalantly in a languid tone.
“Right now, I’m confident I wouldn’t lose even if I fought the entire continent. Are you playing games?”
“…”
An arrogant confidence that an Ascendant, having manifested an Ideological Domain and built her own world, would naturally possess.
But Jinwa’s words, separate from that, seemed to possess a definite basis and reason.
Something, an overwhelming power that made her certain of victory even if she literally turned the whole world into her enemy.
A power that made her disregard not only making enemies of the Imperial Three Grand Dukes, but even being declared an enemy of the public across the entire continent—
“I think I’ve said all I need to say. I don’t need to explain your lost memories, do I?”
Creak—
Jinwa placed one hand on the table and slowly adjusted her posture.
“You’ll pay dearly for demanding such complicated explanations. Do you know how difficult it is for me right now to connect words and form concrete meanings?”
“…”
“I’ll give you a day. Find your way to Yeongheo Palace yourself. If you’re pointlessly late, or if you happen to die somewhere…”
Jinwa’s expression, as she looked down at Lennok, settled into an incomparably chilling gaze.
“Then, I’ll dig up your corpse and make it useful somehow.”
Jinwa’s strange attitude: breaking off the deal with the Imperial Three Grand Dukes and trying to uncover the secret hidden within Yeongheo Palace.
Was her obsession with causality she didn’t understand so strong that it made her violate the contract she had with the Grand Dukes?
Perhaps it was because she was bound by such regret and obsession that she initiated contact with Lennok, who had infiltrated Paradise Lost.
Perhaps that was the reason why Jinwa, an Ascendant, had become so powerful yet so grotesquely fallen.
“…”
Jinwa’s words had chilling aspects from moment to moment, but the proposal itself was certainly meaningful.
Lennok had come to Paradise Lost to intervene in the deal between the Imperial Three Grand Dukes and the Ascendant, and to recover Myeong’s Legacy.
At the point when an Ascendant sought Lennok out and offered help to intervene in the deal, it was clear that things were likely to proceed easily.
If the direction didn’t stray too far from his original plan, and with Jinwa’s help, Lennok could recover his lost memories—
It was clearly a proposal that could benefit Lennok in many ways.
But, even so—
“No.”
Lennok had no intention of accepting Jinwa’s proposal at face value from the beginning.
“I refuse. Thank you for the explanation, but I will not cooperate with you.”
“…!”
“…”
Freya gasped, and Jinwa, who had been about to rise, froze.
An utterly chilling silence filled the luxurious reception room.
The Ascendant, who had been pondering the meaning of that answer for a moment, slowly turned her gaze.
“How unexpected. I thought you hadn’t changed from before, being quite amenable to reason.”
“…”
“In my garden, words become seeds, characters become rules, and language blooms.”
“…”
“Taking back words once spoken in my presence was not permitted even in the Empire. Even so, must I ask the same question again?”
Jinwa, looking at Lennok, said with a smiling face.
“Now what kind of utterly preposterous thing is this… Shall I hear your reason?”
“Because you’re not simply trying to break the deal just because you dislike an unknown fact.”
Lennok said calmly.
“If the Imperial Three Grand Dukes are hiding something necessary for this deal, you could just use that as justification to break the contract. The fact that you’re borrowing my power instead means there’s something in your desired objective that conflicts with the existing contract.”
“…”
“You were willing to make the deal until you brought Paradise Lost to Yeongheo Palace, but after inspecting the place, your mind changed so drastically that you needed an external variable…”
Lennok’s gaze pierced through Jinwa, staring intensely.
“Isn’t that because the secret hidden within Yeongheo Palace is related to Myeong’s Legacy?”
“…”
“So you’re trying to take the Legacy, which you had agreed to hand over to the Imperial Three Grand Dukes, even breaking the original contract. It makes sense then, that you needed my help instead of obtaining a legitimate justification.”
If the Grand Dukes were hiding a secret necessary for this deal, Jinwa could simply use that as a legitimate justification to break the contract.
But Jinwa, here and now, was forcefully trying to ruin the contract and sever the trade relationship, even going so far as to borrow Lennok’s help.
Lennok had realized that this fact itself was proof that Jinwa’s objective harbored as many suspicious aspects as the Grand Dukes’.
That Jinwa had become interested in Myeong’s Legacy itself, which was supposed to be handed over to the Grand Dukes according to the original contract.
Lennok was pointing out that the catalyst for her change of heart was also related to the secret hidden within Yeongheo Palace.
“If you intend to use me to break the existing deal and seize the Legacy. And if that secret is so significant that you have to resort to coercion—”
Lennok’s eyes, staring at Jinwa, turned cold.
“I see no reason to risk my life and be used by you.”
“…”
The various pieces of information about the deal between the Imperial Three Grand Dukes and the Ascendant, taking place at Yeongheo Palace.
Having gained information that he would never have known at this point in time, his gains were sufficient.
Once he confirmed that the Ascendant’s ultimate goal was the same as his own, he couldn’t possibly accept her proposal.
“…How regrettable.”
Jinwa’s voice, sinking low, turned profoundly ominous.
The Ascendant slowly lifted her fingers, her two eyes gleaming stark white.
[IF THE WORM INSISTS ON BRINGING JUDGMENT UPON ITSELF, THEN SO BE IT.]