Side Story 2: The Story of Jean Emilia
Chapter 1
A long time ago…
Atlantis, which had been nothing more than a small city-state near the sea, began to focus on conquest after the 14th king, Delons, ascended to the throne.
King Delons, with the powerful military force left behind by his predecessors, conquered neighboring countries one by one. Under his ruthless invasion, the other nations, who hadn’t even considered guarding against a small city-state, fell one after another, almost too easily.
And when the entire territory of the First Continent, where Atlantis was located, finally became theirs, Delons declared himself not a king, but the first emperor of the Great Atlantis Empire.
Year 0 of the Imperial Calendar.
On the day King Delons ascended to the throne as emperor and proclaimed the birth of the Great Atlantis Empire to the world, the loud cries of two babies echoed through a small village in a mountain valley.
“Waaaaah!”
“Hehe… My precious children…”
The two newborns, a set of twins born at the same time, were named by their mother, who decided that the larger baby girl would be the older sister.
The mother, having just given birth, took deep breaths and gazed lovingly at the two babies in her arms. And then, she softly whispered the names she had chosen for them before they were even born,
“Emilia, Jean, these are your names.”
***
The twins’ mother, unfortunately, passed away soon after.
All that was left in the old, dilapidated hut were a cold corpse and two helpless infants. But no one came forward to take care of the twins, who had been left alone with their mother, who would never open her eyes again.
‘It’s unfortunate about the dead woman, but her children will starve to death soon. This isn’t a village where people can afford to raise someone else’s children. That house will collapse if a monster attacks it anyway. It’s too much trouble to even dispose of the bodies, so let’s just think of that place as a grave for the three of them.’
But something amazing happened.
Contrary to everyone’s expectations, the old hut wasn’t attacked by monsters. The twin siblings, Emilia and Jean, grew up in that place, somehow surviving. Even though no one fed them or changed their diapers.
Time passed, and Emilia and Jean started crawling around the small hut. And then, they learned to walk, and soon, they were speaking properly, not just babbling.
***
Year 10 of the Imperial Calendar.
Ten years had passed, and the twins were now able to freely come and go from the hut. They had naturally become a part of the village.
The villagers hadn’t even imagined that the babies from 10 years ago would still be alive. So most of them assumed that the two children were orphans who had lost their parents in the war and had wandered into the village.
The two children, who called each other “Jean” and “Emilia,” looked almost identical, despite being of different genders.
Their jet-black hair, their large eyes, their unblemished white faces… They were handsome children, a rarity in a remote mountain village where they ate dirt for a living.
And their dark, unreadable eyes made it difficult to discern their thoughts, so some of the villagers even suspected that they were illegitimate children of nobles.
Whether they had survived in the old hut, or had lost their parents in the war, or were abandoned illegitimate children, Emilia and Jean lived in the village where they were born.
Their favorite game was hide-and-seek. Emilia and Jean would always play hide-and-seek in the hills behind their house, their faces bright with joy.
And when they were hungry, they would come down from the hills and eat the moldy bread that the village elders had discarded.
“Jean!”
Emilia, rubbing her nose with her dirty hand, suddenly looked out the window and called out her brother’s name. Jean, stuffing his mouth with blue moldy bread, tilted his head.
“What?”
“What’s outside the village like?”
“Outside the village? …It’s all mountains.”
Emilia shook her head and slammed her hand on the dusty table.
“No, we saw it in our book. There are so many villages in the world!”
“Then they’re probably all the same as our village.”
“Really?”
Jean nodded vigorously.
“Yes, we saw it in our book. It said there are many villages in the world. So what would be different about them?”
“…I see…”
Emilia’s face fell, and she started kneading the bread in her hand like clay.
“I wanted to meet the prince and princess in the book. I wonder what village they live in? Jean, do you know?”
Jean shook his head, his face indifferent.
“I don’t know, Emilia. I’m hungry. Give me that if you’re not going to eat it!”
He pointed at Emilia’s moldy bread. Emilia, looking at Jean and the bread, hesitated for a moment, then slowly handed it to him.
***
Year 12 of the Imperial Calendar.
The remote mountain village was surrounded by mountains, so it was rarely visited by outsiders. And the villagers rarely left the village.
It was an indifferent and closed-off village, where people wouldn’t even bother to dispose of their neighbor’s corpse.
A monster might attack me at any moment. I might run out of food at any moment. My neighbor might rob me at any moment. A natural disaster might strike our village at any moment…
Their worries were always about their own survival, and it was a perfectly rational thought.
So there was no one in the village who knew what was happening in their country, how much war was going on in the world, or how many soldiers were dying.
Until the Atlantis survey team discovered the village.
“To think there was a village in a place like this.”
The survey team, dispatched from the Imperial Palace, was surprised to find a village deep in the mountains. And it wasn’t even an abandoned village, it was a village where people were actually living.
It was common for villages to be destroyed by monsters if they weren’t protected by the state or a lord. So finding an intact village in a remote mountain valley was an unexpected discovery.
The survey team cautiously entered the village. A project to develop the surrounding mountains was about to begin. They decided to survey the village, as it might become a problem.
One of the survey soldiers, following protocol, approached an old man who claimed to be the village representative and explained the situation, requesting permission to survey the village. But the ignorant old man, who had never left the village in his life, just blinked at him blankly, not understanding a word he was saying.
“L-look… Those people… They might kill us…”
The villagers, watching from a distance, didn’t know what those people in armor were doing in their village, but they knew what they were carrying.
Large spears and sharp swords.
Things that could kill them.
So while the old man who claimed to be the village representative was yelling at the survey soldier, the other villagers quietly started to leave.
It was smooth sailing after that. The size of the village, the location of the roads, the number of households, the crops they were growing, the livestock they were raising, the villagers’ economic status, the frequency of monster attacks…
The Atlantis survey team diligently gathered all the necessary information.
A few hours later, the survey soldiers, having almost finished their work, gathered in a potato field to rest.
And then, one of the soldiers, who hadn’t finished his task yet, approached the advisor of the survey team, as if he had discovered something.
“Advisor, I found another house.”
“Another house?”
The advisor asked, looking in the direction the soldier was pointing.
“Yes, it was hidden away in a secluded spot. But…”
The soldier paused, taking a breath, then continued,
“There seem to be only two children living there, no adults.”
“Only two children?”
“Yes.”
The soldier hesitated, his eyes darting around, as if he had more to say.
Had he found something unusual?
The advisor gestured for him to speak. The soldier gulped and mumbled,
“There was… a corpse inside the house. No, it wasn’t even a corpse… It was a skeleton.”
The soldier, remembering the sight, covered his mouth, unable to hide his horror.
“The children said it was their mother… But I’m not sure.”
“…Okay, I’ll go see for myself.”
The advisor patted the soldier’s shoulder and headed towards the house with the corpse.
“Is this it…?”
The old hut was located even deeper in the mountains, beyond the path the soldier had pointed out.
The advisor, standing a short distance away from the hut, took in the scenery. It looked so dilapidated that it seemed like it would collapse at the slightest gust of wind.
‘Something’s strange…’
The advisor slowly stepped into the weed-covered yard. It was an eerie sight, but she felt strangely calm and peaceful. It was a different feeling from when she had been surveying the rest of the village.
The hut’s door was slightly ajar. The advisor, about to knock, reached for the doorknob. And then, she felt a tingling sensation, like static electricity, run through her hand.
“…Could it be…?”
It was definitely magic power. She realized the source of the strange feeling surrounding the hut.
‘It’s a barrier.’
Threads of magic power were woven around the hut, forming a barrier.
It was a barrier that those who were ignorant of magic, like the villagers and the survey soldiers, wouldn’t be able to detect.
The advisor hesitated for a moment, wondering if she should open the door. She was the chief mage of the Imperial Palace, and she had been semi-forced to join the survey team.
This land survey was torture for her, who had spent her life immersed in magic research.
‘They said there were only two children living there… And there was a corpse… And the house is surrounded by a barrier, woven with a strange magic power…’
The advisor’s heart started to pound, feeling like a whole new world would unfold if she opened this door.
At that moment, Karina Yermel, the advisor of the Imperial Palace survey team, thought, for the first time, that she was glad to be the advisor of the survey team.