Just A Reincarnation Story (Summoning Japan Edition)

Chapter 121: The Parpaldian Circle

Every night, a crowd would gather around here, though it never made the place a bustling and lively one. Those men's capes all bore the same patch—a relic from a nation that was long gone.

"Even the people of my grandfather's generation can no longer speak the language of our homeland. He used to say his own grandparents would look sad when they realized he had no idea what they were saying to him..."

A man listened to the solemn conversation from the edge of the quiet tavern and turned his thoughts inward. For how long had he been waiting for this moment?

Even after turning the sphere over in his hands countless times, the heft of it still felt unfamiliar, his body having yet learned to take it for granted. Through a network of carefully cultivated contacts, he had managed to secure a crate worth of such objects, enough to craft his next plans around them. It wasn't much as far as stockpiles went, but he had seen what a single unit could do, and he was already building his next steps around that certainty.

"The time has come."

The words came out before he could stop them, and in his excitement his hand came down harder than he intended. The dull thud of metal striking the wooden table rang out, loud enough to make him flinch. At that moment, his eyes shot to the sphere, scanning it for any flicker of change, but the object remained inert, unchanged to his brief panic. It was, however, not indifferent to the figure standing in the shadows beside him.

"—That is quite a sensitive object. It will be best for you to handle it with care."

The faintly condescending cadence of a tutor correcting a slow child—that burrowed under his skin more than the words themselves. He set the sphere down with deliberate care, a pointed contrast to his earlier lapse, and let his gaze drift slowly over the figure's obscured form.

"Spare me your nursery warnings. It's sturdy enough, or am I to believe that your faction climbed out of the muck by designing ordnance that shatters at a stiff breeze?"

"We have invested considerable resources in your trajectory. Resources that could have gone to a dozen other operatives with cleaner psych profiles and fewer personal vendettas clouding their judgment. We chose you despite that—because of your proximity to the Dragon's head and your ability to sit in his shadow for years without once being compromised. That commendable restraint appears to be fraying at the precise moment it must hold firm."

"So in other words, you chose me because I was the closest," the sitting man spat bitterly.

"A brilliant observation."

The figure's tone took on a triumphant note, further reminding the man of 'his place.' Still, just as he grasped that severing the Dragon's head would be enough to plunge the whole nation into chaos, the man was also lucid enough to recognize that needlessly antagonizing the figure and the power they embodied would jeopardize his most treasured ambition. So he choked it down, again and again, marking the days until the appointed moment arrived.

As the man sitting on the throne, Leonius' head had long been a coveted prize for many, and the seated man was no exception.

A long time ago, during the early age of expansion, Parpaldius the Younger and his descendants led the fledgling state of Parneus into absorbing many countries. Theirs was one of them.

As the Parpaldia Empire carved its brutal path across the Philades Continent and ruthlessly leeched its conquered lands dry, it left a deep and enduring shadow over the Third Civilization Area. Even now, many who survived those invasions still nursed their hatred for the conquerors, patiently waiting for the moment to rise up. Rebel factions rose and fell, but the fervor never ceased, and the savvy ones learned from the failures to become an even better resistance movement.