Records of the Weakest Emperor

"Hahaha." The old lady dryly laughed, "I'm nothing but an old woman with a foot in her grave. Besides, I should be the one asking you that question, right?"

Calvin glanced at the Ghoul before he turned to look at the old lady, "Why do you have such a repulsive creature in your backyard?"

"Why are you in my backyard?" The old lady retorted with a question.

Calvin bitterly smiled. It seemed that he must answer the old lady first and satisfy her with his answer before she would respond to his questions.

"I came here to retrieve something." Calvin vaguely said. Honestly, he had no idea what to say.

"Retrieve? Are you here to retrieve Presto's bones, perhaps?" The old lady smiled. Her mouth went slightly ajar, revealing her unsightly blackened gums that had no teeth attached to them.

"How did you know?" Calvin's pupils constricted.

"Young man, do you believe in divination?" The old lady asked.

"Divination?" Calvin blankly uttered, "Are you saying that you divined my arrival here?"

"Nope... You're half right and half wrong. Your arrival was indeed divined, but I was not the one who did it."

"Who predicted my arrival?" Calvin frowned.

The old lady shook her head, "I have no idea. But he knew that you are going to arrive. At first, I didn't believe his words, but when he told me that I have a rare constitution that gives me the ability to tame monsters as if they are my pets. I became a believer in his words."

The ability to tame monsters as if they were her pets?

Calvin thought to himself.

He knew a lot of orthodox and unorthodox information with his decades' worth of knowledge, but this was the first time that he heard that there was a rare constitution out there that could let someone tame monsters and treat them as if they were household pets.

But Calvin was willing to give the old lady the benefit of the doubt—after all—it wouldn't be strange if he hadn't heard of them since they were 'rare'.

But...

"How can I be so sure that you are not lying to me?"

Calvin asked.

The old lady smiled before she turned around and started walking into her house, "Come inside. I'll show you my collection of pets."

"No thanks."

He wasn't stupid.

If the old lady did have a collection of monsters as her pet inside her house, then it was tantamount to suicide if he went into that house.

"I am not going to harm you." The old lady added, "If I wanted to harm you, you would've died already."

"Oh?" Calvin raised an eyebrow, "How certain you are that you'll be able to kill me so easily?"

"This is not a matter of certainty, young man. It's an irrefutable fact." The old lady simply shrugged.

"Interesting." Calvin let out a smile, "Since you're that powerful, then I will surely not go into that house!"

The old lady stopped in her tracks. Then, she started laughing, "Hahaha... It sure was foolish of me to invite you to go into my house after I've told you that I am powerful enough to end your life. Of course, you'll have your guard up!" She raised her arm and all of a sudden, a chair came flying from inside the house into her hand.

The old lady handed over the chair to Calvin and gestured for him to sit, while another chair flew towards her hand.

"Okay..." Calvin took the seat and he sat a few meters away from the old lady. He focused his senses on the old lady's arm, then he discovered that despite the chair weighing at least ten kilograms. The old lady's arm didn't even tremble as she caught the chair in mid-air!

What did this mean?

It meant that she was physically stronger than she looks!

Calvin placed one of his hands into his pocket as he clenched a few pieces of crumpled paper under his palm. He was ready to react at any moment and if the situation soured, he was confident that he could escape.

He sat there staring at the old lady as the old lady let out a sigh and said, "Seeing that golden light that you threw earlier to Chad, you must be a member of one of the three Judiciaries of the Kingdom, am I right?"

"Yes..." Calvin glanced at the Ghoul and he didn't know whether to laugh or to cry knowing that it had such a name as 'Chad'.

"In that case, then I shall find solace to the fact that not any soul would ever find out as to what had been the topic of today's discussion."

The old lady chuckled.

"The topic of today's discussion?"

"You came here for Presto's bones and that is enough for me to know that Freya..." The old lady sighed, "Let's not talk about that anymore."

"I made you take a seat because I want you to know that the Village of Tulog has a danger that you could not possibly hope to defeat. If the danger in that village is only in the form of a few Corpse Eaters and monsters, then it would be fine..."

"But that is not the case when it comes to that village."

"I'm sure you know about the Our Lady of Holy Death, right?"

"Yes, I've heard its origins from one of its residents."

"From one of its residents?" The old lady's pupils constricted, "There's still someone alive in that damned village?!"

"Yes, he's part human, part monster. He managed to survive by eating his own flesh and relying on the regenerative properties of his cursed body to recover that consumed flesh."

"My goddess..." The old lady gasped in shock.

"But since he's already affected by the curse, there's only one way left for him. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about."

Calvin nodded, "He's going to be eliminated in the end. There's just no way that the church would give him sanctuary given that he possesses a curse whose means of infection isn't even known as well as its origins."

"Then, knowing that he's still going to die in the end. Why is he struggling to live?" The old lady asked.

Calvin turned to look at her and replied, "That is also what I am perplexed with. If I were in his position, I would've already killed myself, yet he's still hanging to life..."

"Earlier, I noticed that he seems to know a lot about Freya and he's even the catalyst that led to Freya's recovery of her own memories. He sure is not a bad apple from what I can see."

"Do you really think so?" The old lady raised an eyebrow.

"Nope..." Calvin lightly chuckled, "But prima facie says that he's innocent and the victim." A mysterious smirk plastered across Calvin's face as the old lady also let out a chuckle.

"How clever, so that's what your plan is. If the other members of the church possess your brains instead of muscles, then they would've already conquered land for their own instead of relying upon a derelict Kingdom with a dumbass King."

Calvin revealed a look of astonishment on his face hearing the old lady's words. For someone her age, she sure talked as if she was a member of a contemporary neighborhood.

"Now that I think about it, tonight should be a full moon. Yet you managed to escape from that village unscathed? Wait, did you take advantage of the downtime between the conversion ceremony and the ceremony where 'He' returns?" The old lady asked.

"Why do you know so much about the customs of the Village of Tulog, madame?" Calvin decided to retort with a question.

"I am a previous resident of the Village of Tulog." The old lady directly dropped a bombshell onto Calvin's head.

"What?"

"I knew everything that happened from the beginning until the end. If you are asking how I managed to escape the village. It's because I've been good to 'that' Freya."

"You've been good to 'that' Freya? What do you mean?" Calvin furrowed his eyebrows.

The old lady nodded, "You see, I am one of the maidservants assigned to take care of Freya when she had just been kidnapped. I detested the culture of the village, so I helped her escape multiple times behind the scenes. The assistance I gave her when she was in need might be the reason why that damned monster spared my life and exiled me from the village..."

"That monster? Are you talking about the monster that's been converting monsters into people?"

"Yes! It's that monster!" The old lady grew agitated and the Ghoul sat restlessly beside her, "The day before Freya died, 'he' brought her over to a hill adjacent to the village. I was afraid of Freya's safety so I followed them. However, I wasn't able to follow them into the hill since it was being blocked by veins that continuously squirmed as if they were alive."

"The hill had a warehouse where we store our food in preparation for winter, but the doors of the warehouse had been changed into something else! I saw it... It had become a cocoon of some sorts and Freya was fed into that cocoon against her will by that young man!" The old lady's eyes went bloodshot and the Ghoul stood up before growling at Calvin.

It seemed to have misunderstood that Calvin was the reason why its owner grew so agitated.

"When she came out of the cocoon, she had no injuries on her whatsoever, but the young man became agitated. She beat her up so badly, and in the end, he left her battered body outside of the village before he called over the elders and told them that she had 'escaped'..."

"When they found out where she was, the young man acted incredibly angry that she wanted Freya hanged at the village center."

"The elders didn't want it to happen at first, but they were afraid that the young man's miracles might turn against them! I was vocal about my rejection of the idea at first, but when I noticed that Freya had become an entirely different person. I thought that... I thought that it was better for her to be dead than to be nothing but an empty shell."

"That was when the nightmare started—'she' contaminated the water supply of the village and forced everyone to drink the water tainted by her curse. Everyone quickly became her slaves and she controlled their life and death..."

"I have no idea what happened when she was still in the cocoon, but I knew that she was never the person that she once was when she came out from that cocoon."

"After cursing the village, she controlled them and made sure that they often kidnapped outsiders for their sustenance and sacrifice. I wanted to stop her. I really wanted her to stop."

"But I was powerless under her might..."

"Eventually, I was about to be executed—when Freya came to her senses."

"When her eyes riddled with resentment became replaced with tenderness, I knew it was Freya."

"The real Freya."

"Freya then sent me away."

"Apparently, she had made a deal with the sinister being in her soul that I must be spared and exiled if the sinister being didn't want Freya to commit suicide. It seemed that the sinister being cannot survive without Freya's nourishment, so it compromised..."

"That is the reason why I am here right now... and as for the reason why I chose to live in this village? It's to atone for my sins. You see, before Freya let me go, she told me to inform her lover that she was alive and that Presto was the only person that could save her from the depths of despair and from the clutches of this sinister being."

"At first, I didn't believe her, since what can a mere power of love do against a devil?"

"But when I discovered that her love for Presto was the only reason why she was awake at this moment... I turned into a believer and did not dare to delay my journey back to Kingse village anymore."

"Unfortunately, I was too late..."

"I traveled as fast as I can but I have an irrational fear in regards to monsters and since I used the shorter valley-route which was filled to the brim with ghosts and monsters... I fainted the moment I saw one."

"This was a fatal mistake, for when I finally returned to the village. Presto had already killed himself. In the end, it was me who had let Freya down. It was me who let Presto down. And this is why I am living right now in Presto and Freya's matrimonial house-to-be."

"Ever since that day, my irrational fear of monsters disappeared..."

"I also gained this change constitution and that is why it is now my hobby to dominate these monsters into submission." The old lady glanced at the Ghoul and it immediately turned submissive.

Before Calvin could recover from his shock after knowing that the old lady had such a hardcore hobby, the old lady spoke up: "The reason why I told you all of these is that I want you to know that if you really want to rescue Freya from the hands of that sinister monster..."

"You must bring Presto's bones with you to her and you must also burn that cocoon into cinders!"

"By the time you've returned to the village. It must already be in the middle of changing. The tormented souls of the deceased residents will probably attack you to take over your body and escape the village, so I will give this to you." The old lady wrapped a beaded bracelet around Calvin's right arm

The bracelet was made out of an unknown material, but Calvin knew that it wasn't something sinister.

"This will protect you once. The keyword is 'once' remember that!" The old lady emphasized.

"Young man, I wish you luck. If you managed to cleanse the village of the curse, then I can finally be at peace."

The old lady smiled before she disappeared into her house along with Chad.

"Remember this when you return to that village..."

"There is a thin line between illusion and reality."

"Do not be easily deceived!"