Chapter 103: Rast, Read Me a Story
Torrential rain poured down, shrouding the royal city outside the palace in a misty rain haze, making it hard to see clearly.
The world was silent and desolate, leaving only the roar of wind and rain.
Rast stood between the thrones, gazing at the frenzied downpour outside the palace.
This palace, located at the center of the royal city, had no such thing as floor-to-ceiling windows.
Yet the rain streaks from outside drifted in, only to freeze within the dim yellow glow inside the palace, unable to inch forward.
No matter how the storm raged on outside, between the thrones remained spotless.
It had already been a week since he disguised himself to infiltrate the royal city of Paradise and entered the palace.
Ever since that near-death encounter when they first met, the queen of the Underworld Nation seemed to have given up on bestowing her blessing upon Rast—turning him into an immortal undead to accompany her forever.
Instead, she settled for making him her personal attendant.
As if only by keeping Rast within her line of sight, able to see him at all times, could she feel at ease.
This feeling was hard to describe... like a child who caught a pretty butterfly in the wild.
At first, they wanted to make it into a delicate specimen, preserving its beauty for eternity.
But after being stopped by a parent, they instead placed the butterfly in a plastic box, carrying it around constantly—even sneaking peeks at it during class, afraid it might die.
Rast was that butterfly, and Helen was the insect-catching child.
「Fruit」
An icy blue trail suddenly appeared midair.
It then gathered into two characters, gently pulsing before Rast's eyes.
The moment he saw the text, Rast swiftly rose to his feet.
His wrist moved slightly.
A silver table knife flashed and vanished in the air, drawing a pale arc as it sliced into the fruit that the other maids had brought in from outside the palace, already cleaned.
Swish, swish, swish—
Fresh fruits and vegetables were cut into suitable sizes, falling like strings of pearls onto a ceramic plate.
No need to arrange or decorate—the moment they landed, they were already laid out into a delicate fruit platter.
Rast picked up the two ceramic plates filled with fruit, added picks, and skillfully brought them to the side of the throne.
As if he had been waiting for this moment all along.
A fair hand followed closely behind, picking up a fruit pick and skewering a slice of orange, bringing it into her mouth.
Although the Queen of the Underworld had a slender and tall figure, her fruit-eating movements were surprisingly swift, full of a sweeping vigor.
Helen leaned back on the azure throne, one hand flipping through the fairytale book on her lap, the other flying over the fruit platter with the pick.
Within just a few minutes, most of the fruit had disappeared.
When the pick reached the last piece of fruit, Helen’s fair hand suddenly paused slightly.
Her gaze shifted from the book on her lap to the now-empty fruit platter and the final piece of fruit… a trace of reluctance flashed in her dark purple eyes as she put the pick back onto the ceramic plate.
Then, she gently pushed the fruit platter—with only the last piece left—toward Rast.
So, this is for me?
Rast looked at the platter with the lone piece of fruit and couldn’t help but muse inwardly.
He was truly becoming more and more like a hand-fed little pet.
But in a way, that wasn’t entirely wrong either.
After all, for the vast majority of residents in Paradise... their very existence was maintained by Helen before him.
The entire Paradise was a kingdom born of her.
And the residents who had received her blessing were, in a sense, merely the 「specimens」 collected by this Queen of the Underworld.
Of course, as a personal attendant, Rast naturally had no right to refuse a gift from the king.
He picked up that small piece of apple, placed it in his mouth, and felt the sweet juice ripple and spread within.
This era didn’t have things like refrigerators—at least not in the royal city of Paradise.
But the solidified dusk that enveloped the palace seemed to possess the power to slow time, causing fresh fruit to decay at an extremely slow rate, even better preserved than refrigeration.
After finishing the fruit, Helen slouched back again, continuing to flip through the fairytale book spread across her lap.
Rast simply tidied up the ceramic plates and brought them to the back for cleaning.
…
Over the past week, the relationship between Rast and Her Majesty the Queen had developed into a relatively stable state.
Rast gradually adapted to his role as a personal servant in the palace.
During his three hundred years in Deep Blue Port, he had once cosplayed as a butler for a noble estate, so the profession wasn’t unfamiliar to him.
Even the head maid, who had served Her Majesty for a long time, found it difficult to fault Rast’s performance—so much so that her initial distaste upon discovering Rast was cross-dressing had significantly lessened.
Helen, too, became accustomed to Rast’s presence.
This new butler always managed to do things the other maids couldn’t—like including fruit picks with the platters, so she wouldn’t get her hands dirty when eating.
Or like handing her a cup of warm milk every night before bed.
These were insignificant details to the Queen of the Underworld—a sovereign of death’s laws with countless means to avoid dirtying her hands.
Yet it was precisely these little things that brought her and Rast closer.
In just one short week, Helen had become more familiar with Rast than even the head maid who had accompanied her for many years.
It was a delicate relationship—clearly, only a week had passed since their first meeting, yet it felt like they had known each other for years.
Their mutual understanding required no words—just a simple word and Rast would know Her Majesty wanted fruit.
And when eating fruit, Her Majesty would always leave a piece for Rast.
The sound of water flowing echoed as Rast set the cleaned dishes aside.
Over time, he also gradually realized that Queen Helen of the Underworld was quite different from what he and the Shadow Servant had speculated based on their intelligence.
He had thought that as the ruler of a nation and a long-lived being from the Golden Age to the Era of Calamity, she must be similar in character to Sisel, the leader of the Shorekeepers—a deeply shrewd and inscrutable figure.
But in reality, Her Majesty’s mental age was at most seventeen or eighteen, perhaps even younger.
As one born bearing the relics of the God of Death, Helen was indeed innately powerful and had spent a long life in the Underworld.
But her life experience could only be described as pitifully barren.
This era lacked convenient things like the internet or electronic devices.
Therefore, this palace at the center of the royal city, shrouded in twilight, along with the maids who served her… was Helen’s entire world.
Because she needed to sustain the existence of the Underworld, she had never left the world of Paradise—
She had rarely even left this palace to see her own country.
Most of the time, Helen could only take the opportunity during blessing ceremonies, standing atop a high platform in the eyes of the masses, to catch a distant glimpse of the royal city’s scenery.
She was the queen of this Underworld nation, so whether it was the palace maids serving her or the other subjects, they all showed her the utmost reverence whenever they encountered her.
Yet it was precisely because of this that Helen’s worldview was flawed.
She did not understand what the real world was like, nor did she grasp what ordinary life or a common person’s existence truly meant.
Each night and day, she stayed in this closed-off little world, flipping through fairytale books that had long been read countless times.
Through the lines of dull text in those fairytales, she imagined the splendid scenes of the real world.
She imagined the rise and fall of tides, the blooming and withering of flowers.
She imagined the passage of sun and moon, the changing of seasons.
That was why Helen believed the power to keep Rast by her side forever… was not a curse that stripped away life, but a blessing and a gift.
Because this was her sincere belief, born from her limited experiences and twisted, pathological values.
She truly believed she was doing something good for Rast—only, since Rast himself was unwilling, she had no choice but to stop.
Strictly speaking, in the modern world with internet access, even middle schoolers aged thirteen or fourteen were mentally more mature than Helen.
Because the information they accessed through the internet and smart devices… was already a dreamlike realm beyond Helen’s reach.
“Truly… a customer type I’ve never served before.”
Rast stored the cleaned dishes in a wooden cabinet and let out a silent murmur.
This too was a rare blind spot in Rast’s knowledge.
After all, though he had extensive experience as a host, the customers who went to such places for host services were at least somewhat mature mentally.
So, even as a host with a perfect 100% customer satisfaction rate, he had never served a client like Helen—whose mental age was extremely low and whose worldview and values were gravely incomplete.
A week ago, during their first conversation, everything Rast said must have planted a seed in Helen’s heart.
With time, that seed should be able to grow vigorously into a towering tree.
However—
Compared to Rast’s objective, it was still too slow.
This queen had already spent centuries in this palace, surrounded by unchanging scenery.
Her sense of time was different from that of normal people.
If left to develop naturally, the seed Rast planted in her heart might not sprout for several more years.
But Rast clearly couldn’t afford to wait here for Helen for years.
As a Traveler of the Night, whether he could even survive that long in the Nightworld was questionable… let alone the fact that the Shorekeepers wouldn’t wait that long for him either.
According to Sisel—
That critical turning point was already drawing near.
So, what Rast needed to do now was to catalyze the growth of that seed within Helen’s heart.
Only then could he achieve the goal of his visit.
Fortunately, he still had other members of the Shorekeeper squad to support him.
As these thoughts flashed through his mind, Rast saw an ice-blue character quietly appear in the air before him.
「Come」
If it were an ordinary person, they might be confused by this one-word, contextless message.
But after spending time together, Rast had already figured out Her Majesty the Queen’s personality.
She was the type to never work hard if she could be lazy, and to use just one character if it could get the job done.
This 「Come」 was her way of calling him over.
With that in mind, Rast quickly returned to the space between the thrones.
On the throne sat a girl with ice-blue hair, looking a little tired.
She leaned her head on one hand resting on the armrest, her dark purple eyes half closed.
She pointed to the fairytale book spread open on her lap, and another character appeared midair.
「Read」
So, Her Majesty wanted him to read a story to her?
Rast stepped forward and picked up the fairytale book from the lap of the ice-blue-haired girl, which had only just been flipped through a few pages.
The book looked rather old, with visible white creases from frequent folding.
Yet it was also clear that its owner had taken good care of it—despite its age, it was spotless and free of dust or stains.
The few damaged parts of the pages had been mended with ice-blue thread—likely some power Helen possessed and manifested into physical form.
Rast opened the fairytale book.
The cover seemed to depict the story’s main characters—
A young knight holding a silver sword, and a female protagonist shrouded in shadow and black mist, like a witch.
Above the illustration was the title of the fairytale—
Chronicles of the Silver Wing
What a retro title.
In the real world, the novels popular among Starfall University students had already evolved into plots of betrayed lovers, broken engagements, dragon son-in-laws, and war gods returning.
Rast couldn’t help but mock it inwardly.
He had once asked the head maid about the origin of these fairytale books, but even the senior maid who had received Helen’s immortal blessing didn’t know for sure.
She only had a vague guess—
That it might have been a gift from Helen’s mother, the previous Queen of the Underworld who had passed away over a hundred years ago.
A relic from before the Great Cataclysm, from the Sixth Golden Era.
Rast ran his fingers over the book’s surface, feeling its rough texture.
Then, in a calm voice, he began to read aloud.
“The story begins in the western town of Yato, with a boy who dreams of becoming a knight…”