The Tyrant Won’t Let Me Go Chapter 113

 

Now, there was only one way left.

 

“Why are you going so far to stop me?”

 

“…You’re the one who’s going too far, ugh.”

 

In an instant, Jayden grabbed me by the collar, forcing my head up.

 

Jayden looked at me with a crazed glint in his eyes, yet his expression was filled with ecstasy.

 

Fortunately, that brought me a little closer to the broken sword. If only I could stretch my hand back a little more.

 

“You wouldn’t understand. The desperation of having to repeat 25 years of life dozens of times.”

 

I was focusing all my nerves on my fingertips, but his shocking words made my blood run cold.

 

“What? Repeat…?”

 

What on earth is he talking about?

 

“Yes.”

 

Jayden’s face twisted, veins bulging as it turned dark.

 

“In my first life, I was the rightful crown prince, but Persephine, who could barely wield a sword, took the throne from me. All because she absorbed Caliberne.”

 

“What…?”

 

My eyes widened at his story.

 

“When Persephine returned victorious from the war against the Deamant Empire, everyone turned against me and crowned her queen. My incompetent sister just happened to obtain Caliberne and luckily achieved all that.”

 

This was undoubtedly a continuation of the original story.

 

The story of Persephine, who absorbed Caliberne, restoring everything to its rightful place and bringing peace.

 

“I only fled to preserve the royal lineage, but with Persephine’s emergence as the one who fought the Empire, everyone turned their blame on me and cast me down.”

 

Then, he dropped me mid-air like throwing away trash.

 

“You’ll never understand how furious I was, seeing her act like she deserved to be queen. Just like her, you luckily obtained Caliberne without any real ability. You’ll never understand my despair.”

 

As my knees hit the stone floor, the shock reverberated through my bones.

 

Gritting my teeth against the blood welling up, I slowly swept my hand across the floor when Jayden spoke again.

 

“I couldn’t let my 25 years of struggle to become king turn to dust.”

 

“…Do you think Princess Persephine stole your throne?”

 

“Of course. The throne of Ackeleta was, is, and always will be mine alone.”

 

Jayden twisted his lips into a wicked smile.

 

“So before I was exiled, I stole the royal forbidden texts and learned about dark magic and black mana.”

 

“Is that how you figured out how to create black mana?”

 

“Basically. Of course, I expanded its applications after repeating regressions.”

 

Jayden looked down at the black mana swirling around his fingers with satisfaction.

 

There was still no sign of my fingers reaching the blade. I needed to buy more time, to keep him talking.

 

“Regression? That’s impossible.”

 

“Black mana, unlike regular mana, holds infinite possibilities. It’s tricky to create because you need to kill someone to obtain it.”

 

Jayden laughed, flexing his hand wrapped in black mana.

 

“Through the forbidden texts, I learned that with a certain amount of black mana and a forbidden incantation, regression is possible. Only the royal family of Ackeleta can use this spell, so others can’t do what I did.”

 

“So you kept regressing to try to obtain Caliberne? As a crown prince of a nation, instead of standing and fighting, you fled during a national crisis, and now you’re obsessed with not letting your sister have the throne?”

 

“Yes, that’s right. After regressing, I realized it even more clearly. Without Caliberne, I could never become king.”

 

Jayden gritted his teeth as he spoke. His pitch-black eyes looked truly insane.

 

“When you regress with black mana, half of that power remains usable even after regression. Although you can’t wield it from birth, you can master it through training by adulthood.”

 

Jayden’s temples, already bulging as if about to burst, swelled even more.

 

“Even then, I couldn’t defeat that damn Persephine with her sword! Even when the army dragged me off the throne, I couldn’t defeat Persephine, who had absorbed Caliberne!”

 

Jayden spoke, his breath ragged.

 

“No matter how many times I regressed, even if the process changed slightly, the result was always the same. Infuriatingly so.”

 

In the end, Persephine always became the master of Caliberne, following the original flow of the story, and became the queen of Ackeleta after the war.

 

Jayden always lost the throne, as if it were predestined.

 

“Even worse, every time I regressed, I could only go back to the moment right after birth. It drove me insane. I had to live another 25 years just to achieve my goal. Ah, there was even one time when I ended up in a completely different era instead of this one, and that was a nightmare.”

 

He must have truly gone mad.

 

To repeat his life so many times, all because he couldn’t let go of the throne.

 

‘So that’s how he managed to gather such an enormous amount of black mana.’

 

No matter how I looked at it, producing that much black mana seemed impossible, but now the mystery was solved.

 

Jayden, who had repeated his life dozens of times, had killed countless people in the process, and used a portion of the mana he gained from those deaths to repeat his regressions.

 

The black mana accumulated over dozens of regressions had grown exponentially.

 

‘No matter how you look at it, he’s insane.’

 

It was shocking enough that he had repeated his life so many times out of obsession with the throne, but I couldn’t even begin to fathom how many people he had killed in the process.

 

Some of his victims might have died by his hand multiple times.

 

“So, I’ve made it to this life. I thought this time, everything would be perfect. I succeeded in casting a much stronger curse on Persephine, weakening her body, and preventing her from even touching a sword since childhood.”

 

“You…!”

 

“I thought for sure I’d be able to claim Caliberne this time, but then you and that emperor showed up as new variables.”

 

Jayden glanced at Cedric, who was still glaring at him fiercely, his teeth clenched.

 

“Even the oracle changed. It said that Caliberne, which always appeared in Ackeleta, would appear in Deamant this time.”

 

“So that’s why you persistently tried to assassinate him.”

 

I moved my hand subtly behind my back, out of Jayden’s sight, and glared at him with furious eyes.

 

“You seemed to know a way to change the owner of Caliberne. If that’s the case, why didn’t you just invade directly from the start? Were you too scared and sent Persephine instead?”

 

“By doing that, I could also eliminate someone who might threaten the throne later. Two birds with one stone.”

 

“You’re not even human…”

 

“Well, there were other reasons too.”

 

Jayden smirked as he answered, “The oracle said that only two people in Ackeleta with royal blood—a boy and a girl—could claim Caliberne if it appeared in Deamant.”

 

“What does that have to do with—”

 

“And the boy could only claim Caliberne if he took the sword from the woman who became its master.”

 

Jayden’s cold voice echoed through the room.

 

“I naturally assumed the woman was the girl, so I thought if I let the sword go to Persephine first, I could kill her and take it. Oracles aren’t always accurate, but they’re usually right.”

 

That’s why he ordered Cedric’s assassination through Persephine.

 

‘So that’s why he didn’t bother trying to take the sword directly…’

 

“Well, damn Persephine ended up failing to take the sword, so I had to use Felix Flithia instead. I thought someone as skilled in swordsmanship as him could hold his own against that emperor who absorbed Caliberne.”

 

Then he glared at me with murderous eyes.

 

“At first, I thought the oracle was wrong, but now I see it wasn’t. The woman wasn’t the girl from Ackeleta—it was you.”

 

Jayden strode toward me as he spoke.

 

“Why on earth did that sword choose someone like you? A mere commoner knight who’s just good with a sword?”

 

I smirked at him.

 

“That’s why you repeated your life dozens of times and still couldn’t earn Caliberne’s choice.”

 

At those words, Jayden’s expression froze.

 

And in an instant, an excruciating pain shot through my neck.

 

“…Shut up.”

 

Jayden, his pitch-black eyes bulging, strangled my neck and growled.

 

“Ack…!”

 

“I couldn’t understand it. You didn’t suddenly gain mana like that emperor, who had none to begin with. You were just a commoner with nothing special about you except your swordsmanship.”

 

The crushing grip on my neck made it hard to breathe.

 

But I didn’t lose consciousness.