Apparently, the king seemed to have something to tell me. He must have thought that a more suitable place to talk to me would be more impressive, which he was acting on. Honestly, I had a few questions I wanted to ask him. So we left, as the king said, and I went after him.

We walked through and passed some places on the road, while the king was walking with slow steps, and speaking in a low tone of voice,

"I heard that you beat the epic one-on-one, and that surprised me quite a lot. Apparently, my brother was right about you."

"What do you mean? Are you able to speak with him?"

"Of course. It was a matter of time for us to know about such a thing and make an assumption about the fact it could have affected people. So after you defeated the elite soldiers and the epic there, we were able to communicate again."

"So that is how it is."

I then looked at the King, and added while continuing my speech with honest words,

"Obviously, we managed to achieve this in the form of more than one person, and we managed to achieve as many possibilities as a success as possible. But if it weren't for my friends, I would really have had a much worse outcome than I could have had. So I really respect them endlessly."

The king smiled at me gently, knowing that those words were just as meaningful to him as they were to me, since he was somebody who had to think about others's wellness.

"I have a few things to tell you and your friends, but we have talked many hours about many things. And that's enough for today, so now you need to rest. We'll talk about what we want to tell you in King Egnor's conference room tomorrow at noon. I'm sure you have time to get the answers to your questions, and listen to a few of mine you're wondering, together while we think much more efficiently. I would be glad to do it and will spare the needed time."

The King and I spent our time together discussing the facts that we had to and ended everything with an honorable farewell that we both see suited at the moment.

But even though I was able to talk to him and get certain answers about certain things, the things we actually left behind in the course of doing this were much more vulnerable to my heart. It was just hours and minutes ago, feeling the cold blood in my own body and veins, slowly dripping and quickly rushing through my brain.

Losing tens of hundreds of people just to protect the peace in the king's, and the dozens of people's hearts in the possibility of an uncreated future.

And just as was that, we had lost a much important part of ourselves.

Even though we had no intention to hurt, nor memory with such a good-hearted and noble person like him, I, which was unable to have a word that would have caused us to understand each other, my friends, and especially Babu, had lost our honorary knight, Akihiko, to the evil paw that we so giving efforts tried to run away.

It was just... so intense. Having every single second I had stood behind the king, thinking about him, thinking about how he fell into those vicious hands, going back and forth with the most unbearable pain that he could carry in his chest. Losing everything that he had, that he so much called his friends as "Family." It was just like a screeching sound that couldn't get out of my head. Shouting, begging to be heard by all of the souls around him. But not even getting heard as the tiniest raindrop that could ever fall to his desert of loneliness.

He served all those years for the king, thinking about how to be a better person one of each day.

So I stood there, and changed every idea and thought I had with another perspective.

Maybe he kept falling deeper. Maybe he had nowhere to run other than giving his all in the war. And maybe he had no other option than just to give his heart and soul to the very real purpose that he had carried.

But he was at least and most, was the person that we could never imagine having on our side.

With having the noblest heart that we could ever see in this world, even though he kept getting deeper and falling apart from us, he fought until the very end and saved many more lives, while creating the possibility for us to see the other day and make the other ones smile.

It wasn't just our mourning. Not the mourning that I kept trying to wrap my head around. It was just that, his heart was just like a lost feeling, promised never to come back, and was a hopeless thing to save.

So as I thought, that it would be just better to let the night end with just a small talk,

So before I left the King's side, I said one last thing to the King,

"The Black Knight was a great warrior. I wish there was something other I could do."

I was there, trying to keep my emotions together, not to float in the air and keep me captured in the dark waters I had in my head.

But the king, with the kindest voice ever possible, kept everything together with his words,

"This land has given a lot of heroes like him. To the place that every such living would lay at the end. But don't worry. Even if he didn't walk the same path that his father walked, even if he didn't crave the path that he crave, just like him, he sacrificed his life as a hero for this purpose. Therefore, just as a human life is a value worth the worlds, the value of the choices he had was not something that could be placed in the mind and imagination. And thanks to him, as long as our land remains standing, he will always be remembered as a hero, and many more heroic-hearted people will walk this path that he created. That's why we can never let this end."

He then looked at me and said,

"So warrior, you are just another torch, that would carry the flames of his ambition. And what you will do, will decide the fate of the world."

**

Shaking my head at the king, I left the king's side to inform the others. When the moon hit the hill, fatigue hit our eyes and we retreated to rest.