It had been another hour since I had tried to kill that beast that had disappeared from my clutches, having no idea where it had vanished.
This had been progressing quite smoothly for the past few hours with little to no trouble heading my way. We were just walking, following right behind Amelia. However, I couldn’t help but think that all of this was a little bit too easy.
If I had been Zero, I would have made sure to prepare a bunch of different traps for me, making sure that when I would arrive, I would be exhausted. However, as far as I could tell, there was absolutely nothing waiting for me for the past hour.
It was either there was nothing, or we were walking past all those traps without even realizing it. I would like to believe that it was the latter, but I didn’t believe so.
‘Well, maybe he’s confident enough to face me, or he already left the Icy Lake as soon as he heard that I was looking for him,’ I thought in the back of my mind with a slight frown.
I truly hoped that it wasn’t the latter, but the answer to that would have to wait since we were still a few hours away from the Icy Lake. Amelia had told Phoebe and me that there were still around three hours left before they would arrive.
“So, how did you meet this Zero?” I asked Amelia since she had said that she knew of him. However, the situation was too complicated to explain right now.
But right now, they have more than enough time to go through all this stuff without a single doubt. They had a whole three hours to talk about their past relationship. There had to be a reason why the Royal Adviser had managed to make contact with Zero, and my guess was that it was related to the queen.
Amelia, who heard this question, pondered for a moment, wondering what to answer.
After all, she knew that I was going there to kill him; she knew that our relationship with Zero wasn’t one of love, which was probably why she was thinking so much about what to answer me.
“Don’t worry. I don’t care if you were once helping him; you aren’t anymore, and that’s all that matters.”
While I said that, if I learned that she helped in the killing of hundreds of people, even indirectly, I would have no choice but to give her some kind of punishment. I don’t know if death would be the right punishment for her. But what I had in mind certainly wouldn’t be nice.
Amelia rubbed her chin. “He approached me around a year ago. Asking me to allow his use of the Icy Lake. He told me that he wanted to use it for personal uses.” She shook her head slightly. “Obviously, I refused at the beginning without the slightest hesitation since there was no reason for me to accept. However, he came back a few days later with quite the proposition, which was obviously something I could not refuse at the time, so I accepted.”
“What was the proposition?” I frowned. “What did he offer you?”
“Ugh…it was something that would benefit me and the rest of the elves right away. That’s all I will say about this matter, sorry.”
Seeing the complicated expression on Amelia’s face, I could clearly see that she was debating whether to tell me. Obviously, I wanted to know. However, I didn’t push her.
Instead, I asked, “Do you still have or use whatever he gave you?”
She looked down as if ashamed of herself. “No, I stopped using it when I realized what it truly did.”
“Can you really not tell me about it?” I asked.
After all, whatever she had gotten from Zero wasn’t something that was morally correct. I could see it on her face. She was ashamed of her actions.
“I-I…”
She stuttered as she tried to open her mouth.
“I didn’t mean to hurt anyone. You must believe me.”
I patted the back of her shoulder, trying my best to calm her down. Phoebe was also listening to the conversation, curious as to what Zero could have offered, which was so great.
“So, what did he give you?” I asked once more.
“H-He made it possible for the Ice Elves to be mass-produced.”
‘Mass-produced?’ I thought, unsure what that truly meant.
“What do you mean?”
Amelia started crying as she stopped walking forward. She turned toward me, tears falling out of the corner of her eyes.
“H-He made it possible for me to ‘create’ ice elves out of nowhere. Soldiers that would listen to my every word…he gave me a device that made it possible to do such a thing.”
Create ice elves out of nowhere. If that device was still in the hands of the Royal Adviser, then this could also create quite a bit of trouble in the long run.
“Who did you give the device to when you realized what it could do?” I asked as I hoped that she didn’t give it to the Royal Adviser. If that was the case, then he would probably have been using it ever since she had gotten “rid” of it.
“I-I gave it to my adviser…”
Realizing her mistake, Amelia was at a loss for words. If her adviser had betrayed her, then there was a pretty good chance that he hadn’t stopped using it and had been creating an army.
“And what did you have to give in exchange for creating those elves,” I asked, curious because of what she had said beforehand.
“I had to give life in exchange.”
“Life? What do you mean?” I asked with a frown as I was already imagining the worst of the worst.
“Life as in human lives, elves lives, any life that the artifact chose.”
I frowned as some aura of mine was released from my body. “And you used that artifact knowing that?”
