Chapter 175: 175. Meeting - 2
Chapter 175: 175. Meeting - 2
"Orion Darkwood, right?" Erick asked.
"Yes, Your Highness." Orion bowed in gesture.
"Tell us, what do you know then?" Erick nodded and asked about the fruits.
Orion nodded and said, "You Highness, truthfully, I am as doubtful as everyone else in here but I know someone in here who could definitely answer your question."
Evans almost cursed Orion after understanding what he wanted to do and for a moment he regretted his decision to go and poke at him earlier.
"And who would that be?" Erick became interested.
Orion smiled and turned to Evans. "Your Highness, and everyone, when you came to this planet, have you noticed the smoke residues or the wreckages around the cities?"
Erick nodded and so did others.
Especially Erick felt responsible for forgetting about that place and what happened there because of the fruits. As the crown prince of the Magus Kingdom, it was his duty to oversee situations he could handle, and matters concerning a 3-star planet fell under his purview.
"Well, if you wonder what caused the city to turn like that, you can always ask the Valen Family about this." Orion said, looking at Evans, whose eyes were emitting fire as he looked at Orion.
Erick then turned to Evans and saw his black face. "Evans, what happened there?" He asked solemnly.
Evans sweated heavily as he saw that everyone was looking at him for answers. He didn't know what he should tell them. Should he tell them the truth? But wouldn't that mean he would also have to reveal why he was here in the first place?
"Evans?" Erick's cold voice sounded in Evans's ears and he couldn't help but clench his fists tightly as blood started to flow from them but he didn't utter a single word and remained silent about all of that.
Seeing him like that, Orion laughed. "Your Highness, let me tell you what happened there. Last night..."
As everyone heard him, they were a little shocked. Although there were some conflicts between the seven magi families, it wasn't on the scale that they would start attacking each other's planet.
They knew that it could ultimately result in a full-blown war between the two families.
"Not only that..." Orion also told them about his suspicion about how they were the first ones to be here and it looked like they were waiting for them. He didn't even leave behind his suspicion about the Valen family being the ones who spread the rumors. He told them everything.
Everyone's attention was immediately drawn to Evans as they Orion. They felt that if the Valen Family knew about this before them and instead of taking all the fruits for themselves, they invited the whole world, then they were definitely scheming something about it. No one in their right mind would want to share something that precious until and unless one had other motives.
"Evans?" Astral asked, his face serious. "Tell us, what is your family scheming this time?"
He had the same calm and serene expression on him as Orion had seen on his before he told them about the Valen family.
'Is that guy always having a serious face or what?' Orion thought.
"Evans!" This time, even Erick shouted at him.
Evans finally sighed and looked at Orion venomously before turning to Erick.
"Your Highness, it is indeed my family that spread the rumours about the cursed tree." He accepted the claims Orion had put on him.
Orion was surprised to see that. He had believed that Evans would never accept that all of this was his doing.
However, what he or any other person in the room failed to notice was the subtle smile on Evans's face before he accepted his family's fault. It was only there for a moment before it disappeared from his face.
"Why did you do that? What are you conspiring?" Erick asked solemnly. Conspiring against the entire kingdom was a crime punishable by execution. Even if that crime was done by a member of one of the seven Magi families,.
Evans's face was dark but he still explained the situation.
"It has nothing to do with my family; it's all my fault. I found a book ten years ago that mentioned the illustrious cursed fruits. Eating one of them could get rid of one's curse permanently. I was tempted and began a thorough search for this tree throughout the entire kingdom. And I eventually found the tree here. But then I noticed that the fruits hadn't grown at all."
The more he talked, the more he seemed obsessed with the fruits, as if he were enchanted by them.
"It turned out this tree needed a huge amount of mana to successfully bear these fruits and that's when I asked my father to drain some low-level planets of their mana completely by extracting the mana from the mana cores. It was a successful process and I succeeded in extracting mana from many of these small, low-level planets, which I supplied back to the tree."
At that moment, he turned his attention to Orion, and his eyes were filled with nothing but hatred.
"However, when it seemed everything was going well, someone thwarted our plan, which not only caused us to lose the mana from a planet we were supposed to get but we were also warned by the emperor not to do that unless we wanted eternal prison life."
He clenched his fists tightly and glared fiercely at Erick.
"I was so close to success. I was so close to achieving what no one in this world had ever achieved. But in the end, it was all for naught. The tree stopped growing after it didn't receive the mana."
Everyone was shocked by Evans's words. Nobody had thought that he had been eyeing the fruits for so many years, and he had nearly succeeded in obtaining them.
The two most shocked were Orion and Erick.
After all, it was Orion who caused their plans to fail on the planet Sadola. Knowing it was all one big conspiracy to get fruits that could remove curses permanently, Orion felt disgusted. For these fruits, Evans and the Valen Family had taken countless lives across many planets. And they would have continued to do so if he hadn't intervened.
Erick also understood everything. He had heard his father talk about what happened on a small 3-star planet called Sadola. He knew it was Orion who had thwarted the Valen Family's plan back then. But they had thought it was the Valen Family's first attempt at something like that and were timely stopped by Orion.
However, who would have thought that Sadola was only one of many planets they did the same thing to? Sadola was fortunate to have Orion and an apocalypse-level monster guarding the core, preventing an unimaginable catastrophe. But many other planets weren't as lucky, and with their destruction, countless humans perished.
Erick couldn't control the anger he was feeling at this moment.
"So, why did you spread the rumours and call us here?" He asked Evans, his voice ice-cold.
"Why? Hahaha!" Evans started laughing like a madman. "You asked this question a little too late. But I will tell you why. You see, when I again came here a few days ago, the tree spoke to me. It told me to bring as many humans as I could here and in return, it would give me one of its fruits."
Erick was shocked. Everyone was shocked by his words. However, before they could react more, they suddenly found themselves falling into a grey world.
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