351. The Immortal and the Mortal (20)
Kirhas seemed to have fully recovered her condition. The dignity of the Chieftain had vanished somewhere, and she was chattering non-stop, sticking close to Fernandez as if nothing had happened.
They were on their way to the tower. With just the presence of the Chieftain, no one dared to block their path through any gate or checkpoint. The guards stepped back, occasionally whispering among themselves.
“Wow, he’s alive?”
“Could it really be him?”
“Why? He looks exactly the same!”
Unable to ignore the words, Fernandez finally asked Kirhas, “How do they know me?”
“It’s the result of our efforts to find Your Excellency! Aren’t you proud?”
“…I’d like to hear what kind of efforts were made.”
“We distributed sketches of Your Excellency across the territory and even put out bounties with merchants passing through the gates! At least in the city of Bülrang, no one who has seen Your Excellency up close would fail to recognize you!”
Kirhas stood proudly, her tail wagging as if seeking praise. Fernandez, about to say something, instead sighed and held his forehead.
“I guess I need to change my appearance…”
“Is that… possible with a spell?”
“It requires a bit of procedure, but yes, it’s not impossible.”
“Uh… then maybe I should too, no. Wait, why? I like Your Excellency’s appearance!”
“Thanks to the efforts of many acquaintances, there’s nowhere in the world for me to hide, making the operational radius too narrow.”
Fernandez’s basic strategy was to utilize information superiority for surprise attacks. His enemies often failed to grasp his true identity, or they overestimated or misinterpreted him.
Now, there’s hardly anyone who doesn’t know him. Leaders of various nations have mobilized their forces to find him, making it impossible to conceal his identity through normal means.
At Fernandez’s words, Kirhas tilted her head in confusion. Why?
“Why do you need to hide?”
“Huh?”
“Is there a reason Your Excellency needs to hide your identity? I have complete control over the Federation of Beastmen, the Emperor of this Empire is favorable towards you, and even the sea elves wouldn’t dare refuse your requests. Is there a reason for Your Excellency to hide and operate in secret?”
It was a sharp question. Fernandez hesitated before answering.
There was no rational reason. It was just a matter of preference. Once a few urgent matters were resolved, there wouldn’t be many incidents in the Material World that required Fernandez’s direct intervention.
He had established Maledika to create such an environment, personally eliminated various threats, and even defeated the Great Demon. Now, he no longer needed to hide or ambush anyone.
‘But I just don’t like it.’
The aesthetics of his strategy lay in secrecy. An environment where enemies died without even understanding his true identity. It was based on overwhelming victory with minimal damage. This was more of a chronic preference issue.
“Moreover, I want Ana to grow up feeling Your Excellency’s presence directly.”
“Hmm…”
This was a foul move. Fernandez fell silent, lost in thought. After a long while, he finally spoke.
“I was thinking of disappearing after a few things were settled.”
“…What?”
“Disappear? Where to!”
Even Abel, who had been silently following him, suddenly shouted. Fernandez, without looking back, continued up the stairs.
“After the contract with Vaitas ends and the reversal is completed, what should I do? I hadn’t thought about it before, but now I have.”
It’s not entirely vague. The end of the contract was indeed approaching. While preparing his body after resurrection, Fernandez occasionally thought about it.
After defeating or sealing the last Great Demon and reclaiming the last Archangel. Once the reversal was fully completed, what kind of life would be left for him?
His new body operated differently from Diemonica’s. The divine power flowing through his veins wasn’t Vaitas’s. It was created by the Vessel of Creation and built upon his own accumulated deeds.
Fernandez, though he disliked the term, considered himself now a demi-god… no, a semi-god. If he wished, he could establish a sect and use divine spells.
Of course, he hadn’t acquired what could be called divine powers. To become an eternal being with such powers, he needed mortals to build up faith. He had no intention of doing such a thing.
Even so, he was a semi-god. His lifespan was far from that of mortals. His existence was closer to that of an eternal being. So, even after finishing everything, there would be a ‘tomorrow.’
There is a tomorrow. How strange that sounded, Fernandez pondered with his eyes closed. Tomorrow.
“I guess I was more of a planless human than I thought. What remains after the immediate goals are gone? I couldn’t imagine.”
“Your Excellency…”
Fernandez gripped the doorknob and took a deep breath. He quietly, very quietly, pushed the door open. The room bathed in the pale blue light of dawn came into view.
Luxurious items were scattered everywhere. Among the glittering ornaments, jewels, and expensive furniture, a small cradle was visible.
He slowly approached the cradle. It felt like his blood was drying up and his skin was cracking. His steps were unbearably heavy. Step by step, careful not to make a sound.
“Bwab.”
Inside the cradle, clear blue eyes were looking at him. Like the dawn sky outside the window, they were piercingly blue and flawlessly clear.
Chubby fingers wriggled and stretched towards the cradle, then weakly drooped. It seemed the baby wasn’t yet able to control its body. The baby, with shiny saliva-covered lips, kept fidgeting.
Fernandez stared down at the baby for a long time. Without a word, he listened to the baby’s babbling, even holding his breath.
“Abub.”
The baby wriggled and chattered. Small hands kept twitching. Fernandez carefully reached out his finger towards the baby’s hand but stopped.
He feared his rough hands, long accustomed to holding swords, might hurt the baby. His fingers were meant to conjure magic, grip sword hilts, and slice through flesh. They were no different from a beast’s claws.
They were meant to hurt someone.
It was his hand. The hand of a murderer, no, a mass murderer. He had always accepted this fact as a given, but now, even touching the small body of this child filled him with fear.
“You look alike.”
So, he withdrew his hand, placing it on the cradle, and let out a low sigh. Alike. Him, and Kirhas. Though the child had small, furry ears and a tail due to being a beastman hybrid, he could easily see his own traces in the child’s eyes and the shape of their lips.
“You look alike…”
To say the child resembled him was also to say they resembled his dead son. Fernandez couldn’t help but see his son’s face in this child’s. The sad eyes, the trembling lips.
The smell of the dead wafted like a hallucination. The stench of corpses tainted by hellish magic. The scenes from that day flashed through his mind.
‘Faijashi. So this is how you’ve been living.’
As Faijashi’s soul merged with his, he began to reclaim emotions from long ago. The death of his son, the death of Aria, the death of the world. All those moments played out in his heart like old photographs.
It was a sentiment he tried hard to bury, to forget, but it still haunted him from time to time. He looked down at the squirming child and tightly shut his eyes.
“Abub?”
At that moment, something touched his fingertips. Warm and soft. When Fernandez opened his eyes, the child was reaching out, fiddling with his fingertips.
The child seemed quite pleased. After playing with his fingers, the child soon met his gaze and burst into a big smile.
“Baba!”
At that moment, Fernandez couldn’t help but pick up the child. He held the child high, breathing in their scent.
“Yes, I am your father. I… Ana, Ana Fernanda Sernard. Yes… yes. I am your father.”
“Ba!”
“Yes… yes. Ana. Ana Fernanda Sernard.”
Ana stretched out her arms, laughing and babbling incessantly. She seemed delighted, as if she were flying through the sky. Fernandez looked at the child’s smiling face and spoke.
“I will protect you, Ana.”
“Ba!”
“Even if I have to be reborn again, I will.”
Kirhas saw Fernandez cry for the first time. She cautiously approached him. He was staring blankly at Ana.
“It’s a good thing the child isn’t shy, Your Excellency.”
“She takes after you, smart as she is.”
“If she took after me in smarts, she wouldn’t be mine.”
“She’s pretty, and kind too. Ana, you’re kind too.”
Fernandez kept muttering with a softened expression. Abel watched from a distance and sighed deeply.
“I should have expected this. From the moment he said he’d risk his life for his son. I knew he’d be a doting father, but this is serious.”
“Lindblum. Now you’re the serious one, aren’t you?”
“That’s serious too. As far as I know, there’s never been a child born between a dragon and a human…”
“Well… is there really no way? I’ll look into it.”
“Thank you, Banadis.”
Ignoring the murmurs of the two immortals, Fernandez and Kirhas were lifting Ana, tickling her, and chatting away.
“She’s a genius, a genius, Kirhas!”
“She takes after Your Excellency!”
“Hahaha!”
This is really serious… Abel sighed deeply and rubbed her forehead.
* * *
“What will you do now?”
Kirhas asked as she sliced meat onto Fernandez’s plate. She had stuck close to him, constantly bringing him various dishes.
A lavish feast, unusual for breakfast, was laid out. Fernandez held Ana in his arms, gently rocking her as he spoke.
“First, we need to strike Phaeirn.”
“You’re not returning to the Inquisition Office, are you?”
“My deal with the Pope ended the moment I got engaged to the Emperor. The Pope is now in a position where he has to listen to me, so there’s no need to stay in a subordinate organization.”
Fernandez spoke casually and took a sip of water.
The Pope could no longer suppress him with authority. Even before being canonized as a saint of the Great Wilderness, there was no one in the Material World who had achieved as much as he had. With his engagement to Rene, the Pope was now indebted to Fernandez.
The Vaitas Church’s influence was soaring across the Empire. It was partly due to the Emperor’s tacit approval and partly due to the aftermath of the last crusade led by Fernandez.
If the Pope got a little greedier, he could now establish a theocratic state. The council’s declaration of non-interference in secular politics was as good as a piece of paper. With such high authority, no secular royal family could ignore their demands.
The Vaitas sect, one of the major churches of the Temple of the Gods, had grown so powerful almost entirely thanks to Fernandez. In such a situation, was there really a need to join the Inquisition Office?
“Besides, the Inquisition Office no longer exists.”
“Huh?”
“Daryan burned it down, and Phaeirn destroyed it.”
“Uh…? Huh??”
“It’s not something for the child to hear, so we’ll talk about it later. Anyway, we need to strike Phaeirn. Kirhas. To the point where not a single root of the royal family remains.”
The Phaeirn Royal Family is one of the pillars of the Eastern Kingdom Alliance. Centered around fertile farmlands and developed ports, it wields immense influence across the Eastern Kingdom.
If Phaeirn is attacked, many small nations will join their side. The result is clear. A civil war will begin.
The Empire cannot actively participate in the Eastern Kingdom’s civil war. After the 50-year war, the civil war, and Karadskar’s northern campaign, the Empire’s economy is on the brink of collapse.
Kirzat is physically impossible, and the wraith warlords are the same. If Fernandez wants to intervene directly in the civil war, he has few options.
‘If we play by the book.’
If we move according to the standard strategy. The future actions of the Phaeirn Royal Family are clear. They will destroy the Inquisition Office and begin condemning the Church as the cause of hellish magic contamination in the southwestern regions of Phaeirn.
Before the Church can make an official statement, they will incite the entire Eastern Kingdom to uproot the Church’s influence and infiltrate all kingdoms with heretics. With the Inquisition Office disabled, there is no one in the East to stop them.
If we play by the book, it’s a dead end. Unless we prevent the destruction of the Inquisition Office beforehand, the eastern continent will become a hellscape.
“Then who can stop them, Your Excellency? Will you rally the other brothers and attempt an assassination? Or… Dane?”
“Dane’s Vicente has lost much of his international standing due to the Empire’s civil war. The Dane Kingdom can individually resist, but it’s not enough to rally forces for a full-scale war.”
Fernandez handed Ana to Kirhas and picked up a cup. Beyond the cup, Freya was munching on salad, chewing noisily.
She tilted her head and looked at Fernandez. Whenever complex conversations happened, she paid no attention and just did her own thing.
Fernandez chuckled at the sight and spoke.
“How is the North these days?”
“Why are you asking me that?”
It seemed she had forgotten that she was the goddess of the North.
![[TS] Obsessed Gamer: The Ultimate Return](https://i3.wp.com/novelhitam.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/TS-Obsessed-Gamer-The-Ultimate-Return2.png?resize=85,105 "[TS] Obsessed Gamer: The Ultimate Return")
