Reincarnated in the Royal Family with a Plunder System-Chapter 35: The Dark History (1/3)

An hour passed in procrastination and walking around in the palace without direction.

Ryan ambled through the corridors with a sigh.

Where is Kaelith... why can’t I find that little woman in the morning ever?

No matter what he said or did, Eleanor’s words had rattled him.

It made him a bit on edge.

Ryan had learned that his own soul was "incomplete" until recently. He learned that from Seraphina’s Bond—that new knowledge about his own condition had made him feel nothing. After all, he already had a Class, so what if he used to be a cripple so far?

He hadn’t lingered on the thought.

Then—he had also come to learn about Seraphina’s hidden trauma about her belief that "she had ’eaten’ that missing half of his soul."

Understanding her trauma had made him feel a gentle stir of sibling affection. What a funny sister; she was walking around with that in her head all these years?

Like sis, be chill.

Like fr, fr.

And then, he had learned that his "missing" soul had never been "eaten" but had gone to Earth instead.

That had made Ryan feel smug.

Look at that, that was how a main character’s story was. Transmigrator, complicated soul, and all that. Wasn’t he the template of a protagonist?

That was him. ƒreeωebnovel.ƈom

But then now, Ryan had been told that his own mother did not conceive twins because of love. She had done that to use one of the twins for the second twin as fuel.

To create one better child with the power of both her children.

The thought of him being just fuel for Seraphina’s growth in Lysandra’s heart made him feel cold.

No way. Fucking Eleanor. Like damn her. Who does she think she is?

Just because she had a nice ass, did she think she could manipulate him?

Ryan’s pace quickened.

He soon reached his mother’s room and burst in without a knock.

"Mom!"

A sharp, purple pair of eyes locked onto him.

Lysandra sat by the window, not on her desk this time. She leaned against the sill, a small guqin on her lap. This was something she brought from outside the Human Kingdom—something she adored.

A musical instrument that was wildly popular on China, Ryan thought. Why is it in Mugen as well? As I thought, the connection between the two worlds are not too subtle.

Lysandra’s fingers traced the strings, not yet playing anything.

With the gentlest of voice, she asked: "Why are you in such a rush, my son?"

Ryan sat on her bed and looked deeply at his mother.

That continued for a few seconds.

She pushed a stray strand of hair behind her ear. "Do I look good?"

Ryan frowned.

She had such striking purple eyes.

"I am wondering why none of us have similar eyes," he complained. "I would have looked much more handsome with your eyes. Or even Seraphina’s red hair would have made me—or no, forget it, I’d look like a clown with red hair like hers."

She smiled. "I have purple eyes because of a Healing Art. Your sister has red hair and eyes because of her weird constitution that gives her two classes. You know that—yet you are still fumbling around like a fool. Seems like you have something to ask."

Ryan rubbed his nose. "You know me."

"Well, what’s got you so worried? Love? A fight with your sister? Did Kaelith dump you?"

"She won’t do that, and I met Eleanor."

Her face changed.

She stepped down from the windowsill, put the guqin aside, and walked towards him with a frown. She climbed the bed and sat down in the seiza position with a focused expression.

"What happened?"

Ryan decided not to talk about Eleanor’s layered plot with the recording potion. There was no need to talk about that.

"She said things about you," he said.

Lysandra became silent.

"Are they true?" he asked.

"What did she say, son?"

"That in your eyes, I am nothing but a fuel for Seraphina to grow stronger. That you never had twins because of love, but because you just wanted one of us to act as fuel for the other. She also said that I am nothing but an experiment to you."

Lysandra rubbed her eyes.

"Is it true?" he asked.

Lysandra asked softly: "What do you think?"

"Of course I think it’s a lie!"

"..."

Silence.

Ryan had a bad feeling.

"It is not a lie," he said. "Is it?"

Lysandra... nodded. Then, she closed her eyes.

"I have wronged you, my children."

Ryan’s face contorted slightly. "What did you do? Tell me in exact terms."

His lips couldn’t help but tremble.

"I was not the person who I am now when I was young," Lysandra said, eyes still closed tightly. "I had you both in my twenties, and at that point—I was an arrogant princess who just wanted to prove the world wrong. I wanted to create a human stronger than any other race."

Ryan’s hands clenched. "So you did something to us when we were in the womb?"

As if they were experimental rats?

Was that what they were to her?

Lysandra opened her eyes. Her eyes were moist. Red.

"Yes, I did."

Ryan stared at her silently.

"Elaborate," he said.

"The previous King of the Human Empire—my father, your grandfather—was the strongest human in history. But even he could not surpass Level 80. The human body could not handle anything more than that, that is a human’s hard limit.

"The current King, who has reached the same level as my father, is also at that stage. Now, it is clear to us. Level 80 cannot be surpassed by normal humans. No matter which class they were.

"I wanted my children to be the exception to that rule."

Ryan took a deep breath. "So you did it for our good."

She continued, not answering his statement: "Many people knew of my desire to surpass the human limit. Eleanor was my best assistant of sort. Many truly believed I could do it—after all, I am history’s first genetic healer."

"Then?"

"When I became pregnant and revealed to Eleanor that I plan to make my children special, she became really excited. You might not know her like that, but those days, she used to truly be your loving aunt... she was even the one to name you."

Lysandra clenched her soft hand on the guqin’s strings.

"Me and Eleanor began our research to make you both special, but it soon became clear that to make one child special, I would have to abandon the other child. Let one of them consume the other."

Ryan became silent.

"Eleanor and I spent days—months—trying countermeasures to make both of you special. But in the end, we were incapable of doing that. At that point, I had a realization. It was possible to make one child special by letting them consume half of the other child."

Lysandra’s eyes became redder. But she still appeared calm.

"Then, we had to choose which child we would give the powers to."

Ryan looked away. "So you basically chose Seraphina over me."

Her hand moved and wrapped around Ryan. She tightly embraced him. "No, son. Your mother is greedy. Your mother is never, ever satisfied with one-over-the-other solutions. I am a person who wants everything."

Just like me, Ryan thought. "What did you do then, didn’t you say there was no way to make both of us special?"

"That’s why, I did something incredibly cruel to you, my child. That must be what Eleanor wants me to tell you by talking about it today."

She continued: "I did something that could either make both of you special, or will end up killing you and letting only Seraphina live. Your aunt was against that sort of gamble with your life in line. She wanted to abandon the experiment and make me give birth normally."

Ryan paled. "But you insisted on it. Right?"

"I did. And son, please—please don’t look at me with that sort of eyes. I regret that decision to this day. If I could turn back time, I would have never done it that way."

"Continue the story."

She hesitated. "I began my life’s craziest experiment using the world’s most brutal poison. A poison that even the level 160 creatures from the core of Mugen feared. It was a poison called the Shard of Infinity. If one ingests that poison into a living being’s soul, the soul starts to expand infinitely and until it explodes.

"My thought was to make one twin eat that poison and have their souls infinitely expand, then make the other twin absorb the excess soul. That would keep both of you in a strange sort of equilibrium, both not exploding.

"But that equilibrium was only in theory and Eleanor did not believe in my theories anymore.

"And I had to choose who I fed that poison to—and if my theory failed, that child would die. No matter what, one child would survive. I chose you to eat the poison."

Ryan chuckled softly. "I feel a bit hollow."

Shard of Infinity, the world’s vilest poison, huh?