Now the ball was thrown into their court, and it was their choice what to say right now to salvage the situation.
No one spoke for a while, and then finally, Lia opened her mouth and started talking.
“What is your goal?” she asked, her voice calm and composed. Silva heard the question and actually fell into thought.
He thought about her question on a deeper level. He asked himself, what was his goal? What was the reason he took up the blade?
He thought and pondered on it for a while, but he could not think of anything that was truly his goal.
If this question had been asked to him on a whim, he would have thrown out an answer like “to be the strongest,” but that goal didn’t make as much sense to him now as it did back then.
Were all his drives targeted at him just being the strongest? Was that all he lived for? The question rolled in his mind. He pondered and pondered, but he could not find an answer.
Or maybe he was overthinking it. Maybe the goal of being the strongest was good enough. Maybe he didn’t need any other goal. Maybe that was more than enough.
“To be the strongest,” Silva responded.
“I see. Now tell me, what reason does someone who wants to be the strongest have to go to the empire to look for and probably stop the demon blood?
It holds no importance to you. Your aim should be to get stronger. You should be far in the forest or something, fighting stronger opponents.
That’s how to become stronger, not by taking it slow like this, not by going on missions. All these do not make you strong enough to actually be the strongest.
So does it make sense? If all your goals are simply targeted at gaining strength, then you should not be on this mission,” Lia said.
Silva paused on the road. The carriage came to a halt. He looked forward, took a deep breath, and started speaking.
“A puppet wants to be free. If it had the power, it would break out. The pet doesn’t want the cage. If it could, it would break out.
I learned a while ago from Fay’s father that there is always someone stronger. There is always a bigger fish. Yet, I always kept that mindset that I would rise to the top and become the power above.
I didn’t want to be controlled, to do what I didn’t want to, to not have real control over myself and the things I do.
To help you all better understand, I’ll tell you a story—a story about me before this world. I was a normal child, a boy living happily. Back then, in that world, I smiled, and I was happy.
I have memories of running around the house without a care in the world. I have memories of the places we went to and more.
But I was killed one night, and that was when the world I knew changed. My soul was taken by the goddess. She wanted me to be the one to help her agenda and to stop certain things.
After I was born, the mission began. From such a young age, I had to start carrying out tasks, whether I liked it or not, because I believed that the goddess had the best interests of her world in mind, and I also owed her for saving my life.
I listened until things started getting different. The tasks included new and different things that were questionable, but that was the least of my problems.
Because I started getting hunted by beings so powerful they rivaled the goddess—and even beings stronger than her.
I have been in so many battles beyond this world that I have lost count, and I finally realized that I was a puppet, a pipe thrash carried along by the flow of the goddess.
She was the only person I genuinely listened to. My pride as a dragon blocked me from listening to others, filled me with arrogance, and made me see other races as lesser and lesser every day until it became a part of me.
That’s my story in summary. This is me, the Silva you know—a person from another world who is confused about what he really wants, only following the instructions of a deity.
So now you all know my biggest secret—something I would never tell anyone in this world if it were left to me,” Silva said, and then turned around. To his surprise, he saw all of them sleeping in the carriage.
“It’s happening again, but I didn’t speak about the continents. Does that mean he stops me from revealing sensitive information about this world?” Silva asked himself, and that was pretty much what it was.
He came down from the carriage and walked to the back. He saw the space shifting like a curtain. He didn’t even wait a minute—he transformed into a full dragon and then summoned all his clones in their dragon form.
They all flew in formation, and as the being stepped out from beyond the emptiness and the void, Silva and all the clones blasted it with thick streams of flames.
The flames hit their target and scorched the figure. They kept going with the powerful flames until they ran out of breath and had to stop.
Shockingly, the creature’s skin had charred in certain places, but it started healing up immediately. And then the creature moved.
Silva moved at the same time. Both figures vanished. Silva’s feet touched the ground a hundred meters away, but as soon as his feet touched the ground, the creature was already near him.
Silva was shocked, and his mind panicked, but his other minds took control. He quickly made a move and leaped backward a few meters to ensure there was enough distance between them for him to think of a way to fight the creature.