Why did things turn out this way?
"The title for you, the fief for you—everything is ready. Do you see? The land and its people spread before your eyes will all belong to you."
A woman, radiant enough to hurt the eyes with her long golden hair, so beautiful and dignified it almost didn't seem real, looked at me and spoke.
"I told you, didn't I, Swen? You belong to me. I would give you everything—wealth, honor, power… If you so desired, I could even give you the name 'Aingart.' You understand what that means, don't you? Neither Lynn Brance nor Baranga Yuuri Aishas could offer you what I can."
She stared straight into my eyes…
As if she were looking at something unbearably precious.
"Even if that's not the case… you can never, ever escape me. You will be with me forever. From the very moment we first met… it was destined to be so. Fufu…♥"
Why?
With that low voice, she smiled at me again, and then—like a girl full of wonder—she sparkled with anticipation as she asked that question again, the one she always asked.
"So… give me your [Prophecy of the Inner Eye] once more. Tell me… can I—Serpina von Aingart—truly grasp this world in my hands?"
Once the question is asked, I begin to see the answer whether I want to or not.
I pause and think.
Could she truly become the unifying monarch who would bring an end to this era of chaos and seize the world in her grasp?
The answer comes quicker than expected, absurdly simple.
Well, after all, my intelligence is 100.
And so, I had no choice but to give her the same answer I always have.
"…My liege will not be able to seize the world."
Not yet, anyway.