The Demon Kings Cowardly Vessel - Chapter 317

Back in Atlantis,

After Juin was safely placed at the top of the volcano, all three boys agreed on the things that they would tell Crown Prince Warrick before burning the talisman that the crown prince gave them.

Once the talisman was completely burned, they waited for the portal that connected the volcano to the royal library to open up. It did not take long before the portal appeared in front of them.

“Should we?” Juin glanced at Luca and Wolfe.

Both boys nodded, and the three of them then walked through the portal one at a time.

In just a few seconds, they were back at the royal library.

“Crown Prince Warrick,” Juin said, “we…”

He suddenly frowned and took a closer look at the Crown Prince’s features. “We have only been away for a short while… Why are there wrinkles on your face now?” said Juin as he tapped the side of his eye. “And… you seemed to have aged slightly.”

Crown Prince Warrick grinned and shrugged. “I’m probably too tired. You guys have been away for 6 days, actually, and I was worried that I won’t be able to see you guys again.”

“What?” Wolfe gasped upon hearing that piece of information. “That doesn’t feel like 6 days…”

“6… Urgh…” Luca g.r.o.a.n.e.d. “That place must have moved slower than here… Sh*t, we really need to get back to Earth soon, or we will miss out the Battle for sure!”

“6 days…” Juin’s face turned pale. It had just occurred to him how fleeting time was. Sure, theoretically, he knew that times in other dimensions moved at a different pace, but it was only now that it dawned upon him what this truly meant.

He could go to another dimension and return back to his friends turning old, or worse… dead. He looked at Luca and Wolfe and a thought popped up in his mind, “These two… They have been to other dimensions, right? Could they actually be older than me?”

He then facepalmed himself and mumbled, “Of course not, otherwise, they wouldn’t be able to join the Battle.”

“What are you mumbling to yourself for?” Luca said. “Quickly hand the thing over to the Crown Prince so that we can leave.”

Juin nodded, and he took out the ring. “This… I believe this is what you want us to find…”

He then handed the ring Master Shawn, who after a thorough inspection, handed it to his master. “Your Highness… The Soul Transference Ring.”

However, the look on Crown Prince Warrick’s face confirmed Juin’s suspicion. The guy didn’t know what he was looking at. All along, he only knew the name of the iteam that he was looking for, but he had no idea whether the thing actually existed or not, or what it really looked like, other than the fact that it was a ring.

Which meant that Crown Prince Warrick basically pushed Juin and the boys to danger just to confirm his theory.

“We checked,” Juin said, clenching his fists in anger. “You are not looking for the ring, are you? You are looking for your father.”

The Crown Prince’s eyes widened slightly, but he quickly calmed himself down. “My father is back in Wisteria.”

“The one in Wisteria is not your father, and you know it,” Juin said with a blank expression. “The one inside the ring, however, could be your father.”

“What…” The Crown Prince gasped and looked at the ring for a long time. He then looked at Juin and asked with a stern expression, “You sure?”

“I have talked to him. He misses you…” Juin said, and he told the Crown Prince the story of how the latter’s father was trapped inside the ring.

“I knew it…” The Crown Prince held tightly onto the ring for a long time.

“When did you realize that current King Alphonse is a fake?” Luca asked out of curiosity.

The Crown Prince’s face showed a pained expression, and when Master Shawn glared at Luca angrily, Crown Prince Warrick waved a hand and told him to stop. “They didn’t know…”

He looked at Luca, and with a heavy tone, he answered, “When he executed my mother…”

At this moment, Crown Prince Warrick felt a sharp pain coming from the ring, and he looked down.

“That’s how he can communicate for now…” Juin said.

Warrick nodded. “When I was five, my fa… That man sent me to Terre D’eau to be a hostage prince. It’s the custom for the weaker countries to send one of their princes to the stronger country for study exchange purposes, but in reality, it’s always a hostage situation. My mother fought back, of course, but she was just a weak woman, and he executed her for treason just because she disobeyed him…

“That was when I started harboring thoughts that he might not be my real father. Mother told me that my father, the real King Alphonse, loved her, us, very much. But ever since he returned from his exploration with his friend, he started showing changes. They were subtle, but for Mother, she could see him for who he was. Even then, she never told me about it, and she kept trying to hide me away from him.

“I was kept here as a hostage prince for many years, until the little king was around five. During those years, my older half brothers died in various situations; alleged treason, accident, assasination. My half sisters were married off to countries far away, and they all died as well. When the little king was born, King Adam let me go home since I was the only remaining heir of Wisterion. He could have kept me, but I guess King Adam felt bad. He was always a kind old man. Plus Cecile and I kept getting into trouble, so he probably wanted to separate us…”

A smile appeared on Crown Prince Warrick’s face when he remembered the time he and Cecile used to prank Cecile’s royal tutor whenever they got bored of studying. But an angry look quickly replaced the smile and turned it into a frown.

“When I got back, my maternal uncle, whose power and body were crippled by that man, told me the truth, that my mother believed that the King Alphonse on throne was a fake. I started doing my own investigation while pretending to know nothing. Then I saw in one of my father’s old diaries. He mentioned that his friend had an item called The Soul Transferrence Ring… And on one occasion, when that man talked to a foreign merchant, he mentioned about The Doomed Volcano and how he threw the Soul Transferrence Ring in out of boredom…

“I put them together and deduced that the man’s body is that of my real father, but the soul inside is not.”

“How did you know?” Juin asked. He doubted that if this were to happen to him, without his soul related ability, he wouldn’t have known for sure.

“The scars on man’s body are the same as what my father’s body should have, even those that he got in childhood… But his deranged behavior, and his cruel gaze… A lot of people mentioned to me before, that his gaze has changed. And he occasionally slipped and talked about himself in the third person…” Crown Prince Warrick said tersely. “And sometimes, you just know…”

Juin slowly nodded.

Wolfe suddenly asked, “What are you going to do now?”

With his eyes narrowed, Crown Prince Warrick said in a cold tone, “Kill King Alphonse.”