I’m the Future Crazy Male Lead’s Mother – Chapter 69

Author: isuzuuy

“Now, Axion. Where should we go first?”

I stood in the middle of the Imperial Palace’s enormous annex, holding Axion in my arms, and grinned.

Today, I planned to go around every room in this place with just Axion and me.

‘They said there’s a different event being held in each room, right?’

I tightly held the schedule Cedric had given me as I started walking.

Somehow, I felt like I understood how a mother must feel when she takes her child to an amusement park for the first time.

A little excited, yet a little nervous.

“Whoa!”

“Here? Should we start here?”

I was taking a small breath when Axion pointed somewhere.

It was the corridor on the right.

“Let’s see. Here it says poetry recitations… and a book salon… Uh, and lectures by intellectuals…?”

It really didn’t sound fun at all.

“Whoa! Whoa!”

“…Really? Do we have to go?”

Because Axion kept pointing in that direction, I let out a deep sigh and started walking that way.

Planning to show him around quickly and then head somewhere else, I entered the first room I saw as soon as I reached the corridor.

Without even checking what the theme was.

“Do you believe that the world is soon going to be destroyed? Everyone! We must prepare for the end!”

And there, I encountered something I had only ever heard about through rumors back in Korea—a doomsday prophet.

‘Huh…?’

The destruction of the world.

Why did that sound so familiar?

‘Where have I heard that before?’

I thought hard…

“Whoa!”

…But what was there to think about? I already knew the answer.

It was the future that the child in my arms would bring.

No, let me correct that.

‘The future he might bring.’

According to the original story, Axion destroyed this world after living a miserable life, but by raising him instead of abandoning him, I was probably changing the future.

“……”

‘Let’s hope it’s changing….’

Surely, it would.

I gently tightened my arms around Axion, hugging him close.

“Ue?”

Perhaps Axion felt the pressure, because he tilted his head in confusion. I was about to let out a little laugh at his adorable face when the booming voice rang out again.

“Everyone! You must believe me. ‘He’ will appear and cleanse this rotten world of everything!”

The man standing at the podium was passionately lecturing, raising one hand high and practically spraying spit as he spoke.

On the blackboard, the words ‘THE END OF THE WORLD’ were written in large letters.

“Hmm…”

Since I knew the original story, I listened intently, startled by how he could possibly know such a thing. But to everyone else, it was nothing more than a ridiculous story.

“How did someone like that even get into the Imperial Palace?”

“I know. Apparently, he’s actually a professor at the Imperial Academy.”

“Doesn’t your nephew attend that academy?”

The nobles sitting in their seats frowned and began getting up.

“Ahem. That’s right. He used to be a renowned scholar, but apparently he suddenly started making claims like that recently. And, amusingly enough, they say there are people who actually believe him.”

“Ha! What a world we live in. What a world. Some people are forcing others to open their storehouses, and now a professor from the Imperial Academy is spreading doomsday theories.”

A middle-aged nobleman passed by me, shouting in a dissatisfied voice.

A crowd followed after him.

“This country is really going to ruin!”

With those final words, a group of nobles clicked their tongues and left the lecture hall.

I was about to follow them out, but I glanced back.

‘Huh….’

Surprisingly, quite a large number of people were still sitting in their seats, listening to him.

And they were listening rather seriously.

“We must praise ‘Him,’ who will purify this world!”

“…Hear, hear!”

Some people even quietly voiced their agreement with the professor.

Looking at them, a question suddenly occurred to me.

‘How did they know that this world would be destroyed if everything went according to its original course?’

If things proceeded exactly as they did in the original story, then just as that professor claimed, the world would indeed be destroyed.

By none other than Axion.

“We must believe in ‘Him!’”

As I watched the professor raise both hands high and shout as though he were preaching a religion, I suddenly remembered that the Followers of Ruben had infiltrated this Hall of Rest.

Could that man be one of the Followers of Ruben?

Wondering whether my suspicion was correct, I noticed that the expressions of the Imperial Guards standing watch over the lecture hall were strangely serious.

‘But how on earth did they know that the world would be destroyed?’

No, more importantly, I think there’s something else I need to address first.

I stared at Axion in my arms.

Axion was looking at the man shouting at the top of his lungs with his hand raised high at the podium with innocent curiosity.

The fact that this innocent-looking child could really be Ruben.

The fact that he had grown when the food shortage became even more severe, just like Ruben, who was said to grow by feeding on misfortune.

And the fact that Axion’s actions in the original story resembled Ruben’s fate.

It was certainly a reasonable suspicion.

‘No matter how I look at Axion’s behavior in the original story, he really was Ruben.’

The name Ruben itself had never been used in the original story, but when I looked at his characteristics, most of them matched.

Now, it was going beyond suspicion and becoming almost a certainty. Though no reply to my letter had arrived from Silvestain yet since the last response I received.

‘But even if Axion is Ruben, nothing changes.’

The way I treated Axion would not change.

All I could do was protect Axion and do my best to let him grow up happily.

For a moment, I quickly pushed away the faces of Vanilla and Dazar that flashed through my mind.

Instead, I thought of something else.

‘In the original story, the necklace Vanilla would eventually obtain… seemed to purify Axion’s pure evil.’

The necklace that had severed the Dragon Heart of the Demon Dragon in the original story.

If I could obtain that necklace, I felt like there might be some way to solve this.

But the necklace still hadn’t appeared around Vanilla.

Even in the original story, it only appeared when Vanilla genuinely came to love Axion, so it would still be a long way off.

‘For now, it’s better to leave.’

I didn’t feel comfortable staying in the same room as someone I suspected to be one of the Followers of Ruben. I left them behind and walked out of the room.

“Well, shall we head back now?”

“Uung?”

Once I was back in the corridor, I gently brushed Axion’s bangs away from his forehead and grinned as though nothing had happened.

“Hehe.”

When I brushed his forehead, Axion giggled happily.

Since I had listened to the lecture as Axion wanted, it was time to get out of here.

Ignoring the sounds of poetry recitations coming from both corridors, I quickly picked up my pace.

If I stayed here much longer, I felt like my body would start smelling like ink.

“Ugh. It smells so strongly of ink here!”

“I think the same thing. We shouldn’t be here.”

Perhaps there was someone who felt the same way as me, because I heard someone complaining from around the corner of the corridor behind me.

The voice sounded strangely familiar.

“Let’s get out of here, quickly!”

“I know. I’m going. But we got lost.”

“Hey, move. We need to get out—Huh? You?”

“Hmm? Who are you?”

That peculiar way of speaking.

Even if I wanted to forget it, there was no way I could.

“Eishu? And… Cora?”

The two Transcendents I had encountered in the temple corridor before.

Eishu, the Transcendent in the form of a young boy, and Cora, the Transcendent with her unique way of speaking, were standing before me, tangled up with each other.

As soon as I called their names, they both pointed their index fingers at me at the same time and exclaimed.

“Oh! The person who openly badmouthed Dazar!”

“Amazing person!”

I had at least remembered them by name.

But what was with “the person who openly badmouthed Dazar”?

Though I had to admit, “amazing person” was kind of nice to hear.

“What’s the name of that amazing person?”

“Uh…”

As I stared blankly at them, Eishu paused and awkwardly scratched the back of his head.

“W-What was the name again?”

Then Kora slightly lifted the tip of her nose and said,

“I know, you know. It’s Cilia.”