Chapter 407: The Truth She Wanted
The pillow hit the door with a muffled sound and fell to the floor.
Lian only looked at it for a few seconds, then raised his head and his eyes settled on Seris again.
The girl was half-sitting on the bed and staring at him as if she was seriously considering more dangerous options instead of the pillow.
Her face was almost the same as always, cold and controlled, but there was something else under it too, anger.
He had known Seris well enough to understand the difference, this was not one of those short moments of anger that ended with a cold look, a few sarcastic words, and then indifference.
This time it was personal and if he judged fairly, the girl had some right to be angry.
He opened his mouth to say something, but finally gave up, his instinct told him that making a joke would not make the situation better.
Maybe the second pillow would not be a pillow either.
The Young Pendragon took a few slow breaths.
Her chest moved slightly up and down with each breath, the clear anger that had escaped her control for a few moments slowly went away and the familiar cold wall returned to her face.
A few seconds later, it was as if she was not even the same person who had thrown a pillow at him moments ago.
"How are you?" she then asked in a calm and cold voice.
But Lian knew exactly what she meant.
How could a man whose heart she had pierced with her sword be standing in front of her three days later without even a single wound?
"I had gotten an extra life from a mission before, when I died, it activated by itself and rebuilt my body." He did not try to hide the truth and spoke directly.
Seris stared at him for a few seconds, but she was not surprised.
The System had proven many times that abilities, titles, and rewards far stranger than the normal rules of the world existed.
An extra life was rare and unbelievable, but it was not something she could deny existed.
However, her problem was something else.
"Wouldn’t it have been better if you had told me this small detail before you forced me to pierce your heart?" she asked with the same cold face.
Her tone was calm, and that calmness made the sentence even worse.
She had never, ever in her life felt regret or felt as if her heart would break from pain because she killed someone or something.
But thanks to a Vorhelm, one of the greatest enemies of her family, she had experienced something this stupid too.
"Becoming the vessel of Black Silence was not exactly part of my plan." Lian answered in a realistic tone.
Seris said nothing and waited for an explanation.
"I didn’t know I was going to need an extra life before that, and after it took my body, I didn’t exactly have a chance to sit down and talk to you about the plan."
His explanation was so stupidly logical that she could not find any reason to stay angry and her face became calmer.
"So you were there the whole time? Inside your body and alive?"
"Almost." Lian did not answer immediately and thought for a moment, although he finally spoke.
Seris waited for more explanation.
"Everything wasn’t clear, the sounds, the feelings, the movements... most of it was unclear and scattered, and sometimes I understood things with a delay." He was trying to explain the truth in a twisted way so that this girl would calm down.
Normally, he did not care about other people’s anger toward him, they could feel anything they wanted about him.
He did not think he needed to explain his actions to other people.
But this girl had helped him too much, in fact, he had even used her feelings.
At least giving her an explanation was the least he could do for her.
"But you could understand what was happening outside." Seris concluded.
"Almost, yes."
A short silence appeared.
"Could you hear everything?"
This time Lian knew exactly what she was referring to, he really had heard everything.
One.
The screams.
And even those two words, "Help me, damn it." that had come from the Young Pendragon’s mouth and all the moments when she thought he no longer existed.
He had seen and heard everything.
"Enough." He finally answered honestly but vaguely.
Seris’s face remained cold.
But her fingers slightly tightened on the bedsheet for a moment.
"But you didn’t answer any of them, even when I needed to know you were alive more than ever." Seris said in an emotionless tone.
This time it was not a question, it was a fact.
Lian was a little stunned, he did not know why he felt like a man whose wife had caught him cheating and he was making excuses to clear himself.
"I couldn’t, I interfered twice, once near the tree, when it was going after One." He paused and then added.
"And once for you."
For the first time, something changed in Seris’s eyes, the memory returned very quickly.
Two strange pauses.
Two moments when Black Silence had stopped for a fraction of a second, as if something inside its own body had fought against it.
"So those two times..." she said quietly.
"That was me, but then I realized that if I interfered again, it would notice that I had not completely disappeared yet." he confirmed and his voice became a little more serious.
"If it realized that, it would probably find the remaining part of my identity."
Seris lowered her eyes.
"So when I called your name too..." Seris left the sentence unfinished.
"I heard you, but I had to stay silent." Lian answered without trying to avoid the question.
The Young Pendragon asked nothing else, she really did not need to, she had understood everything she wanted to know.
Lian had been inside the body, he had been alive, he had heard and seen everything, but his silence had not been because he did not care.
Knowing these things did not completely erase all the feelings of the past few days, but it definitely helped her feel better, the anger she felt, as if she had been tricked, had completely disappeared.
Lian only looked at Seris for a few seconds, the girl’s face was completely cold again, it was impossible to tell if she was still angry or not.
She probably was, but not as much as before and she simply was not showing it anymore.
To most people, Seris the Pendragon was always like this, a sword genius, the heir of one of the greatest families in the world.
Cold, proud, someone who seemed to feel no difference between the presence or absence of other people.
But he knew better now, Seris might never say it out loud, but she had accepted him as a friend.
And knowing her personality, this probably meant much more to Seris than it would to a normal person.
Because a girl like her probably never had many friends.
Maybe she had never let anyone get close enough that she would truly feel pain from losing them.
And he had created almost all of the worst possible situations for her one after another in just a few days.
First, her body had been taken by a Calamity, then he had almost killed Seris several times and Seris had also been forced to kill him several times.
He had not answered any of her calls the entire time and in the end, he had forced her to pierce his heart with her own hands.
That word, "do it." that he had said in his final moments might have been only a few words to him, but it had affected this girl much more than he had expected.
Even if the plan had succeeded, this was not something that a few simple explanations could erase.
Lian let out a short sigh, he was not going to expect Seris to smile right now and forget everything.
"I only came to make sure you’re okay." He finally said simply.
"I don’t die that easily." Seris said in her usual cold tone.
A small smile appeared on the Young Vorhelm’s face, at least this part of her personality was completely fine.
"I understand."
A few seconds of silence passed and she looked toward the window for a moment, then as if she had remembered something, she looked back at him.
"One more thing....be careful of your brother, I don’t know if you will believe me or not, but he does not have good intentions."