Chapter 40


I waited and waited while advertisements played.

The ad effects barely kicked in after a long wait.

Someone tried to summon me.

But unfortunately, for some reason, the attempt failed, and unlike last time, no fishing line came down from above.

  

Still, it’s important that someone is trying. The more attempts there are, the higher the chances of returning to the world.

In the meantime, a lot has happened in the world where I first set foot.

First, Isla decided to take revenge on Witga. So, she stayed in the Ansellus Kingdom. She knew that Wide would invade the Ansellus Kingdom no matter what because he hated Tisah. She thought that if she just waited in the Ansellus Kingdom, Wide would come to find her.

And in the moment when Wide and Tisah fought and both became weakened, she hoped to stab Wide then.

So, Isla decided to stay in the Ansellus Kingdom until Wide came looking for her, training herself in the meantime.

Surprisingly, the Ansellus Kingdom allowed it.

Of course, it wasn’t just like that. Unlike Tisah, she was pushed into a place a bit away from the capital like she was under house arrest.

Considering that the country had lost everything, it wasn’t strange at all if Tisah had been killed, so it was a fairly lenient decision.

Meanwhile, Tisah rebuilt the Ansellus Kingdom with his companions.

Like something out of a novel, one of the companions who fought alongside him was a member of the Ansellus royal family.

Coincidentally, he had a good reason, being the one who defeated the villain who blew up the Ansellus capital, effectively making him the next king.

To be precise, she became the queen.

Not him, but her.

Moreover, she had feelings for Tisah.

Despair and frustration often have a connection with love, so I’m quite familiar with that expression.

But the situation is quite complicated.

The relationship between men and women is intricately tangled, and it wasn’t a situation where they could easily get married just because of feelings.

I can’t know for sure from Tisah’s perspective, but there must have been many other issues.

So, while procrastinating, some nobles revealed their ambitions.

It might sound strange to suddenly have ambitions, but we need to look at the overall context.

First, the Ansellus Kingdom was not entirely devastated. Only the areas attacked by the Future Hope Church suffered great losses.

This means that other places, excluding the path they advanced and the capital, were safe.

Even if someone had been a proper subordinate when the kingdom was intact, when a vacancy arises in leadership, people start to think differently.

Yes, that’s right.

Eventually, a civil war broke out.

To be honest, I’m not someone who can really predict political things. But I can hear about them from others.

Tisah was a key figure in the current royal family, so he could participate in meetings and hear various opinions. It seems that’s why one must bless the higher-ups.

Anyway, no matter how ambitious they are, because they are still from the Ansellus Kingdom, or perhaps because if they completely overthrew the royal family, they’d lack justification, they did not think about killing all the remaining royals to take the throne.

Instead, they declared the current queen’s aides to be puppets manipulating her.

Ironically, they themselves were contemplating making the queen their puppet.

Moreover, the person who became the current queen is still just a girl.

She’s at an age where forced marriage wouldn’t be unusual. In short, it means she’s a living crown.

To obtain that crown, two noble families, the Count and the Marquis, raised their banners and revolted in the Ansellus Kingdom.

When I heard Count and Marquis, I thought it was ridiculous for mere nobility to stage a rebellion, but it turned out to be about rank and hierarchy here.

Let’s skip the Marquis for now.

I thought the Count was too lowly.

But it turned out to be the largest force in the Ansellus Kingdom.

Their territory had iron and silver mines. Moreover, their territory was positioned on the southeastern border, which means it was located on the route that must be passed during trade.

They were strong nobles.

Then, what were the other nobles doing?

They remained silent.

If one side would become king, they wouldn’t know how the future would unfold, so they pulled back, unsure whose claim was right.

Especially since a girl who was originally thought incapable of becoming a king became one, they were even more cautious.

In other words, it was a very dangerous situation.

Since I first met Tisah, I’ve thought this feels like a story where Tisah is the protagonist.

But seeing it through Tisah’s eyes, I realized being a hero isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Tisah had true regenerative abilities and struggled just to stay alive.

Unlike most works I’ve seen where companions would communicate and spend time together, fighting to resolve crises to gain wealth and fame, Tisah had it much harder.

Tisah had to oversee that entire preparation process while simultaneously handling the responsibilities of running the country.

Normally, someone would have been there to help, but when the royal castle fell, everyone died.

The Blessed Ones, including Wide, were so paranoid that they killed everyone alive in the castle.

That day, over a hundred thousand warmth came to me.

Hehe.

Ahem. Anyway, so, with people in short supply, the living had to work non-stop to fill the gaps.

Wow, regeneration ability is really an incredible power.

Otherwise, without the Future Hope Church or before fighting the nobles who revealed their swords, Tisah would have died from overwork long ago.

While working, suddenly two nobles announced their declarations and brandished their weapons.

The first to fight was the Marquis. Their territory was relatively close, so they arrived at the capital first.

The fight itself ended quickly.

The people in the capital were elite troops who had survived a battle against a superhuman legion, and the Marquis’s soldiers were mostly inexperienced fighters who had hardly fought.

In an instant, the Marquis was captured and soon imprisoned.

But the Count was a much more formidable opponent.

He didn’t come immediately with an army; instead, he tightened his grip on the economy slowly.

Even for the powerful Count, it was difficult to push the royal family off their pedestal. I didn’t know this, but in a meeting Tisah attended, the queen became furious, saying no one was coming to help.

She lamented that they couldn’t guarantee victory if they continued to fight like this and that she was sure Tisah would lose.

Why, you ask?

Do you remember the people who separated from Wide? The Blessed Ones who fled east after Tisah’s people were defeated? They judged they could not trust Wide, who had lost the authority of power, and fled.

They flowed southeast after separating from Wide.

I mentioned that the Count was on the southeastern edge, right?

Exactly 17 people.

The Count absorbed them.

If among them there had been an experienced older person, the outcome might have been different, but they were all children of the Blessed Ones, similar to Wide.

They were strong kids, making it easy to sway them.

Yes.

When one suddenly gains a great power, ambition is bound to arise.

Thus, the Count decided to seize the current royal family by force.

He marched towards the capital, leading the Blessed Ones.

But unfortunately, the Count made a wrong choice.

At that time, resentment towards the Future Hope Church still lingered. And the national religion of the Ansellus Kingdom is Seongsin Church.

It’s a country with many pious people, to the point that it erased the Yeongyang Church Nation from the map once for the sake of faith.

Nobles from the opposite side of the Count, centered around the capital, joined the battle.

Then suddenly, there was a chance for victory.

And at this point, something very interesting happened.

Isla decided to fight alongside Tisah. She joined forces, reasoning that if Tisah died, Wide wouldn’t come invading.

Hehe.

But I know the real reason. Because she was lonely.

Isla was confined to a remote area where she knew no one.

She wasn’t actually restricted in her movements, just had someone watching her when she went out. That was all, but even that disappeared when the Marquis attacked.

However, when the watchers disappeared, Isla actually became weaker. One might think she should be happy with newfound freedom when surveillance is lifted, but Isla was not.

Being alone seems to be painful.

So she decided to join the group. Of course, she made excuses to Tisah and those next to him about needing to train since she was getting rusty or needed to train to kill Wide when he arrived.

But at night, Isla couldn’t sleep, clutching her blanket and trembling that she didn’t want to be alone.

That’s probably why.

After Isla joined, nobles from the north and west also joined in.

And soon after, they began to fight.

In that battle, many died. Not just Tisah, but Isla and the remaining 17 took lives.

In other words, they gave me a lot of warmth.

Hehe.

But a fight is a fight.

The 17 became 8, and Tisah lost a friend during the battle.

Only hatred remained on the battlefield, and there was no turning back unless the end was reached.

At that moment, surprisingly, Tisah proposed a negotiation.

He suggested stopping the fight, claiming they had already killed too many.

The opposition was fierce, especially from the nobles who joined, yelling that they must brand the Count as a traitor and kill him.

But Tisah forcibly moved to negotiate. However, it wouldn’t matter if the Count refused the negotiation…

But the Count accepted the negotiations.

From Tisah and Isla’s viewpoint, perhaps they both felt they had already killed too many.

They first agreed to stop fighting and clean up the bodies that filled the battlefield.

Only then could people finally see the war from Tisah’s perspective.

Once a forest, but now a blackened plain. And rotting corpses with wild animals feeding on them. It’s a scene that would bring tears to sentimental souls.

Both sides stopped fighting and began to clear the bodies.

For two weeks.

And only after that did they agree to find another way instead of continuing to fight. So they decided to return home.

But did you know?

That this moment was the weakest point in the Ansellus Kingdom.

Tisah was walking back to the capital with his people.

Wide appeared, leading the Future Hope Church, to kill Tisah.

It was an incredibly dangerous situation. The soldiers, already worn out, faced formidable enemies who were cult warriors mixed in.

Nobles supporting the queen, and Tisah with his friends.

The most crucial forces were ambushed while in their weakest state.

  

Let me rewind the timeline a bit.

Originally, Andrew intended to somehow placate Wide from attacking the Ansellus Kingdom. But the tides were turning in Wide’s favor.

Civil war, of all things?

With both Queen’s side and the Count’s side equally matched, the battle dragged on. From then, Andrew began to accurately gauge the situation and sold the idea to Wide that he would grant his four wishes.

And when the fighting paused, Andrew immediately poured everything he had into Wide and the Blessed Ones he gathered.

Thus, Wide, Tisah, and Isla found themselves in the same place.