Chapter 262 – Side Story 11 – The Boy, The Girl. To Earth (1)

The first thing Vlad felt after crossing dimensions through the gate wasn’t the unfamiliar scenery or the strange scent carried on the breeze.

“Ugh!”

It was extreme nausea.

The world was spinning, and his stomach felt like it was turning inside out.

Vlad had to lie face down on the ground and dry heave for a while.

After a bout of fruitless retching, he managed to get up and saw the young knight standing beside him, his face pale.

Though the young knight hadn’t collapsed to the ground like Vlad, he clearly wasn’t in good shape either.

However, Lady Selena was different.

“Are you both alright?”

She was completely fine, just as she had been when entering the gate.

In fact, she was concerned about Vlad and the young knight Seowoo.

She then turned her head to look at the woman who had crossed the gate with them.

“I know. I was just about to help.”

With a comment that gate sickness was better to get used to, which was why she hadn’t helped right away, Duchess Yerim infused divine power into the young knight and Vlad.

Woong.

The churning in his stomach subsided, and the dizziness began to fade.

At the same time, there was pain deep inside his head.

Vlad deliberately ignored the pain and looked around.

“Where is this…”

In front of him were the forest and mountains he had seen before crossing the gate, but on the opposite side stretched a scene he had never witnessed before.

It was an enormous city.

A city filled with buildings unlike any he had ever seen.

The city was full of tall, large buildings that looked somewhat old but still appeared to be inhabited.

“Ta-da! This is my hometown, Daejeon. Welcome, everyone, to Daejeon.”

The duchess stood in front of the city with her arms spread wide, proudly introducing it as if presenting a show.

The young knight shook his head at her words, but neither Vlad nor the young lady paid any attention to the duchess’s playfulness.

“Wow, it’s more vibrant than I’d heard.”

The young lady ran to a railing and grabbed it, frantically looking around the city.

“Well, this is now Korea’s new capital. It’s not comparable to Jeju City yet, but of course it’s growing.”

In response to the young lady’s words, the duchess puffed out her chest and shrugged her shoulders, as if she had built the city herself.

Vlad also cautiously walked to the railing.

Placing his hands on the railing and looking around, he realized that the gate was installed on the rooftop of a not-too-tall building.

Unlike the forest, mountains, and park behind them, and the city full of buildings visible ahead, this area had trees and forests intermingled with the buildings, as if they were buried in a forest.

“Oh right. Vlad doesn’t know where this is, does he? This is Earth’s first sacred zone. Inside Hanbuk University in Daejeon.

Now the entire Daejeon area has been sanctified, but the gate was placed here to commemorate this spot.”

The duchess looked around with an expression that seemed lost in distant memories.

Vlad found the duchess’s nostalgic expression puzzling, but the young knight and the young lady seemed to understand why she spoke that way.

“It’s already been 20 years… Anyway, let’s quickly check and go. First, we need to confirm if we can use the gate, right?”

“Yes. Just a moment.”

At the duchess’s words, the young lady returned to the gate and placed her hand on it.

As she placed her hand on it, the circular structure of the gate began to glow softly.

After checking the gate for a moment, the young lady turned to the duchess with a bright face.

“Yes, it’s possible. It’s just as Mother and Master explained.”

Satisfied with the young lady’s answer, the duchess raised her hand and patted the young knight’s head.

“Great! Then, shall we first go meet Seowoo’s parents?”

Afterward, the four of them descended from the rooftop.

There were armed guards both on the rooftop with the gate and on the ground below, but they didn’t stop them.

Instead, they all bowed their heads deeply to show respect to the duchess as soon as they saw her, almost touching the ground with their foreheads.

It wasn’t just the people there who showed respect to the duchess.

The four who had come down to the ground were led to a large waiting car, which set off without needing specific instructions.

“How are Seowoo’s parents doing?”

“They’re both doing well.”

“But how did Secretary Kim know we were coming and wait for us here?”

“Actually, we didn’t know the Saintess was coming. We were just following the prediction of awakened seers who said ‘an honored guest would arrive.'”

“It seems the management of awakened ones is going well too.”

“There are some issues, but with the President and First Lady here, and the Saintess visiting frequently, and the Hero’s memory still present—it would be difficult for awakened ones to run wild in the Korean Peninsula of all places.”

“I’m just a Saintess in name. But, well, if my husband were to move, things would be settled quickly… So I suppose that makes sense.”

While the duchess and the man in the driver’s seat conversed, Vlad silently looked out the window.

Unlike the young lady and the young knight, who nodded as if they understood what the duchess and driver were talking about, Vlad could barely comprehend half of their conversation.

Although he could understand the language thanks to magic, he couldn’t grasp the meaning of many words in their conversation, which made it not much different from not understanding the language at all.

But even he could tell at a glance that the duchess was a person from this world.

Black hair, black eyes, and fair skin without freckles.

The duchess closely resembled the people he had seen after crossing the gate.

The same was true for the young knight sitting beside him.

Seeing this, Vlad felt a surge of resentment.

‘Different dimensions, different races, people from different worlds. What’s the difference between Lady Selena, whose mother is from another world, and me?’

One lived in luxury as the lord’s daughter, with her entire family working to alleviate her minor suffering,

While he was doing spy work he hated on the orders of his blood relative.

And now, due to strange complications, he had ended up in this unfamiliar world.

Vlad couldn’t help but sigh.

The streets were filled with many cars.

Most were old vehicles, but they still raced down the roads, spewing black smoke.

“Have they not yet restored the car factories?”

“I heard they recently started test production. However, they still lack the workforce for mass production. Since there are still many functioning cars and not many people, the President seems satisfied with just maintaining the production line.”

“Is the population still very low?”

“Though we’re encouraging childbirth, people were already reluctant to have children before the disaster. And since it’s still not completely safe, the population isn’t growing easily. The Korean population has just exceeded 400,000. Of that, Daejeon has 100,000.”

“Then, on Jeju Island…”

As Vlad looked out the window, trying to ignore the difficult-to-understand conversation, he soon realized the car had stopped.

The car had arrived in front of tall twin buildings.

Vlad didn’t know it, but this was the Daejeon Government Complex.

Of course, now it was called the Korean Government Complex instead.

The man called the secretary got out of the car first and opened the door, and the group followed the duchess into the building.

There were many people inside.

The people moving busily around the large lobby looked curiously at the group being guided by the secretary.

And soon their eyes widened.

“It’s the Saintess!”

They recognized Yerim, who was walking in front, first, and those who recognized her bowed their heads with surprised and moved expressions.

“Then, is that the Saintess’s daughter behind her?”

“Oh, could that be the Hero’s daughter?”

“Wait, that boy, could he be…”

“I think so!”

After recognizing Yerim, they quickly deduced who the young lady and the young knight were.

“The Saintess has come!”

“Goodness. What a miracle!”

“Thank God!”

The people were overjoyed to see Yerim, the young lady, and the young knight.

They bowed deeply to the three, and some even shed tears.

Additionally, some made the sign of the cross, prayed, or rolled prayer beads, expressing gratitude to their respective gods.

The young lady looked with surprise at the people bowing their heads, but the duchess seemed accustomed to such reactions, smiling and waving at the people.

At the same time, divine power spread from her.

The people were moved once again by the divine power they felt in their bodies.

Passing through the grateful crowd, the group boarded an elevator.

The elevator, now functioning well after power had been restored long ago, headed directly to the top floor.

Ding dong.

Shortly after, the elevator doors opened at the top floor, and the group passed through the secretarial office in front of the door and headed to the inner room.

“They’re waiting for you.”

With the secretary’s words as he opened the door, a man and woman sitting on a sofa smiled brightly at the group entering the room.

“Welcome!”

“Welcome.”

A woman in her 40s wearing a suit and a robust man who looked younger than her.

The two rose from their seats and approached the young knight.

“I’m back.”

“Welcome home, our son.”

“You’ve worked hard.”

The couple then embraced Seowoo with open arms.

The young knight also smiled as he hugged them back.

“I’m back.”

As the three embraced, the duchess who had entered with them pouted.

“It seems my sister and brother-in-law can’t even see us.”

“You haven’t changed at all despite your age. Doesn’t the lord say anything?”

“Hmph, what could a mere lord say to me, the sworn sister of Korea’s President?”

“Goodness. No matter how I look at it, you being Earth’s Saintess seems like a mistake.”

“If you have complaints about that, take them up with the higher-ups, not me.”

The father of Seowoo just laughed at the banter-like conversation between the two women.

After exchanging greetings with Yerim in a joking manner, Seowoo’s mother turned to look at the young lady.

“Then, you must be Selena.”

“I am Selena de Egger, President Jo Seo-eun of Korea.”

Selena curtseyed, holding her skirt and bowing her head in greeting.

“Call me Aunt.”

Seo-eun, Seowoo’s mother and former Hero Egger’s old acquaintance, now the President of Korea, smiled at the young lady’s words.

While they exchanged greetings, Vlad stood quietly to one side, observing them. As he stood silently, various emotions continued to well up inside him.