"Father-sama, what are you looking at?"
As Samael stood before the stone pedestal, lost in thought, Barghest, who had followed him over, asked seriously.
Their personalities were simply too different. Unlike the other little troublemakers who amused themselves by chasing butterflies, catching beetles, and stepping on ants, the rather serious Barghest naturally had trouble joining in their games.
So she habitually chose to follow in the footsteps of the strong, becoming a little shadow constantly trailing behind Samael and showing great curiosity about everything he did.
The Ancient Serpent turned around, rubbed Barghest's head, and answered with a light laugh.
"This is the stone pedestal that once held the Sword of Selection. Legend says that whoever drew the sword would become King of Britannia."
"What a shame someone got to it first. Otherwise, I would have liked to test my strength and see if I could pull it out."
Barghest looked regretfully at the sword mark left on the pedestal.
"Haha, there was a special spell placed on it. If you weren't the one destined to fulfill the prophecy, brute strength alone wouldn't have been enough to draw the sword."
Samael chuckled and patted Barghest on the shoulder as he corrected her.
He then began recounting the legend of the Sword in the Stone, a classic tale straight out of chivalric romance.
The little ones nearby quickly gathered around Samael and sat down, listening with great interest.
Even Melusine, who had been sitting apart beneath the sunlight with an aloof expression, staring blankly into space and keeping to herself, somehow ended up at the very back of the group.
Their caretaker's bedtime stories were always in high demand among the children.
Unfortunately, ever since the calamities had been quelled, he had only grown lazier and lazier.
The ideal Eternal King...
The Sacred Round Table Domain...
The pure-white millennial kingdom...
After listening to the story with lingering excitement, Barghest could hardly stop those phrases associated with the legend from filling her mind. Standing within the Holy City of Camelot and having personally witnessed the grandeur of the fortress, the Dog Demon fairy felt her blood surge as she imagined herself becoming a knight one day.
"To rise in a time of crisis, answer the call of prophecy, draw the sword, become the hero chosen by fate, defeat one powerful enemy after another, and create a legend of your own. It's absolutely perfect!"
Barghest, who pursued strength and greatly admired heroism, could not stop praising the idea.
"Perfect? Usually, the more perfect something appears, the more fragile it is."
Samael smiled, his tone carrying a deeper meaning.
Barghest looked up at her caretaker in confusion.
Instead of answering directly, Samael pulled a white handkerchief from his pocket and held it up.
"What do you see?"
"Strawberry jam!"
Barghest stared at the fingernail-sized red stain in the middle, leaned closer to sniff it, then answered excitedly with absolute certainty.
"I know! Baobhan Sith got that on there while sneaking food, and she was caught red-handed too."
Habetrot gleefully exposed her secret, earning a fierce glare from Baobhan Sith.
"Should I take it back and wash it?"
Freya, as diligent and sweet as ever, immediately offered to help.
"But this is such a large white handkerchief. Why did all of you focus only on that tiny stain?"
Samael abruptly shifted the subject, his voice becoming more serious.
The children stared at him blankly.
"The more perfect something is, the less people can tolerate even the smallest flaw. A tiny stain that would normally mean nothing can be magnified endlessly in the eyes of ordinary people."
The Ancient Serpent reached out and touched the sword mark on the pedestal, his expression thoughtful.
"That's why drawing this sword, answering the people's expectations, and becoming their ideal King might not necessarily be a good thing."
After all, even if someone acted according to pure reason, there was no guarantee everyone would be satisfied.
And once doubt began to spread, once the god lost its radiance and fell from its pedestal, the ending would only become even more tragic.
There was something else Samael did not say.
Light was dazzling and precious precisely because darkness existed to set it apart.
Once outside threats disappeared, people with too much time on their hands would naturally start looking for flaws in the light instead.
At least, judging by his experience after serving as a ruler across several eras, a nation had to deal with one of two things sooner or later, foreign enemies or internal turmoil.
Now that the darkness was gone, eternal light would naturally become painfully glaring.
With such a large target standing there, who else were they supposed to turn on?
As far as Samael remembered, aside from the King of Knights' disastrous personal relationships, she had committed no great crime against either her country or her people that truly deserved condemnation.
And what happened in the end?
The resentful masses were still incited by rebellious knights and foolishly threw themselves into the unrest.
Eventually, they destroyed their own country.
The Celts, once glorious in their prime, would later end up laboring under the Anglo-Saxon bandits who landed on their shores.
"As far as I'm concerned, the more perfect the original concept and design sounds, and the more impressive promises attached to it, the more likely something is to go wrong later."
Samael tapped the stone pedestal, mockery in his eyes.
"But the ideal Eternal King... the Sacred Round Table Domain... the pure-white millennial kingdom... Haven't all of those already been achieved?"
Barghest scratched her head, still confused.
"Eternal? A thousand years? How long has it actually been? It's easy to act like a saint for a while. The difficult part is doing it your entire life."
Samael gazed toward the chalk-white city, his expression openly mocking.
"I've lived for this long, and I've never once seen a perfect ruler or an ideal kingdom."
Then the Ancient Serpent ran his fingertips over the remnants of the spell engraved into the stone pedestal and gave a cold smile.
"Besides, think about it. If it were really that easy, why didn't those two old fools, King Uther and Merlin, do it themselves from the beginning? Why did they insist on entrusting something this important to a child they deliberately planned to bring into the world?"
That was true.
Why?
The children scratched their heads, equally puzzled.
Samael's eyes flickered as he spoke with playful amusement.
"Legend says there are three kinds of birds in this world. The first is very clever and knows how to fly from the moment it hatches. The second is stupid and can't figure out how to fly no matter what, but it works hard enough that one day it finally learns. The third is neither clever nor hardworking, so it lays an egg and pins all its hopes on the next generation."
The vivid and amusing comparison immediately made the children burst into laughter.
They understood at once.
There was no question about it.
Merlin and King Uther were clearly the third kind of bird.
"One is an old fraud whose specialties are breaking into places and picking locks. The other was, at best, a middle-ranking officer who once served in the Roman legions. They read a few chivalric romances and children's fairy tales from who knows where, then decided to copy their fantasies directly into reality and even use their own offspring as guinea pigs. They clearly never learned the hard lessons of real life."
The ever-sharp-tongued Samael remembered everything the two sisters had gone through and immediately let loose, pushing his mockery to the limit.
The children listening nearby laughed even harder.
"Ahem. My friend, openly criticizing the late King and slandering the State Preceptor in public... That's not exactly appropriate, is it?"
At that moment, accompanied by a dry cough, a handsome young man with short golden hair and gentle, refined features emerged from behind a pile of stones nearby, an amused smile playing at the corners of his lips.
Uh...
He had gotten carried away and really had said a little too much.
Samael tapped his forehead, feeling a rare trace of regret, while his eyes shifted rapidly as he considered how to clean up the situation.
"That's a serious crime!"
The handsome young man placed a hand on Samael's shoulder and declared with righteous indignation.
Could it be time for a memory-erasure technique, the physical kind?
Samael gave an awkward, submissive laugh on the surface, while his eyes quietly settled on the handsome young man's chin with decidedly malicious intent.
Before the Ancient Serpent could make his move, however, the young man casually hooked an arm around Samael's neck, leaned in conspiratorially, and held out his right hand with a sly grin.
"Ten silver coins. Buy me a round of drinks, and once I'm drunk, I won't remember a thing."
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