The meeting lasted less than an hour, but it was decided what we would do from now on, tonight Elsaris and Nix will do the negotiations with the Black Market, I have already explained to them what they can do from there if they accept our demands.
When the meeting was over Rakan approached me to talk, to my surprise Rakan remained silent most of the time during the meeting, the only time he said anything was when he said it would be better to interrogate the Demon than kill him, the same opinion some others had, but now Rakan has an expression as if he wants to say something.
I turn away from the others and call Rakan outside the mansion, I sit at the foot of a fruit tree behind the mansion along with Rakan.
"If you had something to say you could have said it in front of everyone." (I)
"I still don't know others well enough to know if I can trust them, I don't even know if I can trust you completely yet, master." (Rakan)
"After all you've been through I can understand that it's going to be hard to get you to trust other people, but this is something you're going to have to learn to do if you want to stay here." (I)
"I don't usually hide secrets from those who follow me, you must have seen it during the meeting." (I)
"But let's leave that to time, I hope you soon learn to trust those around you." (I)
"There are still many things for me to absorb, do you realize that everything I saw that day is crazy?" (Rakan)
"These various races of monsters living together and speaking the common language, the slain Prince of the Trigan Kingdom who became an Undead, the Demon woman, the members of the three Elven races, this Dungeon and the absurd job proposal that you did for me." (Rakan)
Rakan stops talking and looks around in wonder before looking at me like I'm some life form that needs to be studied.
Sigh
"I don't even know how you managed to make so many Fairies live inside a Dungeon." (Rakan)
"The more I learn, the harder it is to understand how all this is possible." (Rakan)
"Believe me I know how you feel, but over time I've learned to stop thinking about complicated things, it won't change what's already been done." (I)
"So your solution is to ignore these absurd things around you? Are you crazy? How did you do all this?" (Rakan)
"…" (I)
"Will you believe me if I say most of this was an accident?" (I)
"…" (Rakan)
"You mean you woke up one day and this was all around you?" (Rakan)
"Please don't insult my intelligence, I resort to believing accidents can result in this kind of situation, I can't even conceive a thought of such a thing." (Rakan)
"(Apart from the Dungeon which was my plan, the rest was all one big accident after another, Érica became a Demon by accident, the Cradle of the Fairies was an accident, me meeting Ivan and his daughter was an accident, I becoming the leader of the village people was not an accident, that's why I was tricked by my family into accepting it.)" (I)
"(But even if I tell him these things, I find it difficult for him or anyone else to believe me, that's because I'm fully aware that if I were in someone else's shoes and heard everything that happened to me in this world, I wouldn't believe it either.)" (I)
Sigh
"Let's cut to the chase, what you wanted to talk to me about." (I)
"You haven't asked me once if you want about the Makari Kingdom, why?" (Rakan)
"I thought you'd say when you were ready, I know today could have been a stressful and confusing day with all these changes for you." (I)
"I thought giving you some space to get your head in order would be better." (I)
"But don't you want to know what's going on in that Realm?" (Rakan)
"We've got plenty of time for that, so I'm in no rush, anyway there are some things I still have to do in this Realm, so I thought I'd give you a few days before asking questions." (I)
"I appreciate the kindness, but this is a failure as a leader of such a large community." (Rakan)
"You shouldn't leave a source of information about an enemy aside indefinitely, ignoring the types of information I might have will be detrimental to your decision making." (Rakan)
"You talk like Ivan, he told me the same thing when I told him that." (I)
"But if you're already more comfortable, then I think you'll have no problem telling what you know, right?" (I)
"That's exactly why I'm here, I want to tell you what I know before this Demon's interrogation, so you know the kind of questions you should ask him during the interrogation." (Rakan)
"The first thing you should know is that Prince Henry was not the only Demon, the King is also a Demon, the Kingdom was founded by a Demon from the beginning 50 years ago." (Rakan)
"…" (I)
"The King is smarter than this idiot you captured, he never let me be around him for long, so I don't know his specific plans." (Rakan)
"But half of the nobles in the Realm are also Demons in disguise, the other half of the nobles are Humans who are worshipers of Demon Gods, traitors to their own continent." (Rakan)
"Do you know the number of Demons?" (I)
"There are around Ten among the Nobles and five who serve as Royal Guards protecting the King." (Rakan)
"One thing you should know is that Makari Kingdom soldiers are very strong, but that's because of a medicine they took." (Rakan)
"There are many talented people who have been captured and are being enslaved like I was, among them was a great doctor." (Rakan)
"I feel so sorry for him, of all of us forced into slavery his work is the cruelest." (Rakan)
"What is this job? Does it have anything to do with soldiers being stronger?" (I)
"These are human experiments, he's been doing grotesque experiments on the King's orders for over 30 years." (Rakan)
"…" (I)
"The medicine I talked about at the beginning is a prohibited drug that shortens the life of the person taking it by decades, in exchange for permanently tripling the status, it also has some side effects such as increased aggression, and sometimes it can cause some physical deformity." (Rakan)
"The forbidden medicine is just the basics for all soldiers, some are also required to undergo physical modification processes where monster body parts are implanted into their bodies, many go crazy during the process if they survive." (Rakan)
"The King uses a magic item that has powerful mind magic along with his own magical curse to control these Kimera soldiers." (Rakan)
"Sometimes I was forced to help during his experiences using my magical knowledge, he is a good man who never lost hope of one day freeing himself from his suffering, very different from me who had given up a long time ago." (Rakan)
"…" (I)
I never expected to hear about experiments using Humans as guinea pigs, for someone who was once responsible for saving lives having to do these activities must now be a nightmare, but from what Rakan said it sounds like he still keeps his sanity clinging to hope.
"The worst thing is that these Kimera soldiers only survive from 4 to 10 years maximum, their life expectancy is very short, in addition, they suffer a lot of pain in their bodies continuously, because of that they are almost Berserks." (Rakan)
"This explains how he managed to win the three wars he fought in, Ivan was right to find it strange that he had such a quick military force." (I)
"The most abominable thing is to see the King being adored and revered by the people." (Rakan)
"Like this?" (I)
"The Kingdom's population increases every year, that's why the Kingdom has low taxes, plus a 1-year tax exemption for new Kingdom residents." (Rakan)
"Also strangely, there are always epidemics, internal strife or prolonged periods of famine in the Realms around the Makari Kingdom, but no one realized that these are things the King did to make people leave their Realms and migrate to the Makari Kingdom." (Rakan)
"This is weird." (I)
"Also, there's something very strange that always happens when Renino Makari conquers another Realm." (Rakan)
"For some reason, the King always gives orders to rebuild the capital of these Realms, I don't know why since that's a lot of money being thrown away on an already habitable city." (Rakan)
"That doesn't make sense, given where the Makari Kingdom gets so much money, spending on the grotesque research you mentioned, military spending, spending on rebuilding entire cities and not counting the normal spending that all nations have." (I)
"Also, the Makari Kingdom keeps taxes low and even has a one-year tax-free policy for immigrants, so it's not raising enough money from the population to do these things." (I)
"So you noticed? You're right." (Rakan)
"The Makari Kingdom is the biggest drug manufacturer on the continent, they do it well hidden while the Vampires take care of distribution in other Kingdoms." (Rakan)
"I'm sure the other Realms must know about the large number of drugs coming out of the Makari Realm, but they don't know that the government itself produces these drugs." (Rakan)
"Did you say Vampires?" (I)
"Yes, there are many Vampires who pretend to be government officials or work in the secret labs, they are all loyal to the King." (Rakan)
"That's all I know, unfortunately, I've never been able to understand your goals, I don't know about your plans either." (Rakan)
"I'm going to talk to Ivan who has the Black Market information, after these five days he should have finished seeing everything, let me see if he will have anything to add to his information." (I)
"Thanks for telling me all this, Rakan." (I)