4 Legend of the Sun & Flames

After destroying the dragon, we were hailed by the people when we arrived at the Mutual-Aid Association in the kingdom of Ingrassia; apparently some people had witnessed the confrontation and spread rumors.

"Hey! Isn't that the Hero of the Sun?" Some murmurs were going around as we entered the inn. We decided to rest for a while after that.

That's right, I also got an epithet, and I don't think this is a coincidence, like my name is also Karna, and one of Karna's names in Hindu mythology was the "Hero of the Sun."

I had quite a few broken bones. I decided not to go to the doctor because I didn't want to show weakness in front of others. Shizue did scold me and try to convince me, but I firmly told her:

"I will not show weakness in front of the weak and the ones who I do not trust." This made her blush and smile, and I meant what I said.

Opening the door to our room, I sat on the bed, removed my shirt using "Spatial storage," and laid down on my stomach as Shizu used her healing magic on me.

She will need to use this magic again tomorrow; it needs to be slowly injected because of my passive magic purifying, so only a small amount of healing magic can be of use, but if she had any holy healing magic, it wouldn't have been a problem at all.

"I'm sorry.. For kissing you like that," I said as I closed my eyes, ready to hear whatever she said.

"Let's not talk about it. It will get awkward if we talk about it anymore." Surprisingly, she didn't want to talk about it.

She finished the healing for today, and I put on my shirt, sat up next to her, and decided not to talk about 'that' just like she said, but there was something else I had to ask her.

"Did you also hear that? At 'that' moment?" I had heard the Voice of the World at that time when I kissed her.

"Yes." She nodded her head and took her mask in her hands as she caressed it. "It seems I won't be needing this anymore." In a way, yes, she wouldn't need it anymore.

Because the exact words we heard were:

<<Confirmed. Establishing a soul corridor between individual "Karna" and individual "Shizu"...Successful...Evolution of Individuals "Karna" and "Shizu" from Humans to Sages... Strengthening spiritual bodies and evolution of Individuals into sages... Successful..>>

At that moment, we felt the bond between us increase a hundredfold, and our strength increased tenfold; at that moment, we were being connected by the soul.

"You know, I gave up years ago. I was going to let Ifrit slowly consume my life force in order to keep it from rampaging and make me kill more of my friends and people, and cause destruction around me."

When she said that, my heart skipped a beat. For once, I was scared to the core. Even though I didn't show It on my face, she could tell; we are what people call "soul mates," if you will, and so our emotions will be felt by each other.

"Don't worry, I'm not going to do that; I don't want to die alone anymore." Though this will not convince me, it still gave me some relief.

"I hated this world, that man, and Ifrit. I hid it under a smile every single time, but now I can smile more genuinely because of you, Karna." She put her hand on my cheek and smiled.

"Because of you, I learned to love; because of you, I decided. I want to live in this world as long as you would live." She said it with a smile and tears glinting in the corner of her eyes.

And I was sitting there, dumbfounded, as she more or less confessed to me, "Shizu, you took care of me, even when I was nothing but a nobody in this world." I decided to tell her. I love her, and I will tell her. I will not chicken out now.

"You taught me how to live my life joyfully; even when I was a clumsy student, you took your time and still taught me." Memories of us training and the amount of time we spent together flashed before my eyes as I relished the moment.

"You gave me a goal: To spread happiness in this world. Even though we can't do it for the whole world, we can do it for some people, and I want to do it with you. So, I ask this of you; Shizue Izawa, will you...Become my life partner for eternity?"

"Yes, a hundred times yes!" Her tears now streaming down her cheeks, she jumped and embraced me; we both fell on the bed with her on top of me as she cried happy tears, and my cheeks were wet with some of my tears too.

I brought my hands around her back, And I embraced her as I swore to myself that I would always love her and be there for her.

"I love you," I muttered into her ear as we fell asleep holding each other. Waking up and finding her on top of me, and the feeling that we both got was exhilarating, we decided we would sleep together every day from now on.

Several years passed, and we became something akin to legends; we trained lots and became more powerful than ever before, and our skills had reached what we call the peak of the game.

Currently we were walking through the lavish halls of the Raja Kingdom; apparently they heard about the Heroes healing and helping people, vanquishing many monsters, and bringing peace to many kingdoms.

Well, we did that, as my magic is being turned into holy energy constantly, so my healing techniques are more effective and efficient.

Raja Kingdom is a small kingdom with only a gold vein as their sole economic advantage, they had a small military hence they were being harassed by the other western states because of this. For this very reason, we were invited to the queen's chambers as we passed by the guards and inside the door.

We were welcomed by some elders who looked like the queen's advisors, and I had sensed some demons around here and a massive demonic magical artifact. We shared glances and decided to ignore them for now.

The Queen was resting, looking exhausted as she rested. She had black hair and green eyes; she looked quite young too, and on her head was a tiara, the source of the demonic magic. It looked ominous, and it had some kind of demonic enchantment engraved with magic runes inside it. My eyes had evolved into [Appraisal eye] after all the training we had done.

"Sorry for requesting your presence in my small country, but I had to ask you this at least once." She opened the conversation with some hardship as she panted.

"It's not much of a problem, Queen Tetris; we can see you are enduring a lot right now, and that tiara," Shizue, who was standing at my side, said as her eyes traced the tiara with caution.

"Ah, so you guys noticed? This tiara is passed down generations to the royal family; it corrupts the users of it and slowly kills them." She said that as she took it from her hands and presented it to us, I took it in my hands and inspected it.

"Hm, This seems like some kind of ancient magic, but why do you use it if it corrupts the user?" I couldn't help but ask her as I gave it to Shizue, she looked at it once and nodded to me; others were confused about this gesture.

"We can't do anything about this as he said; this is some kind of ancient magic we have no idea about." Saying that she put the tiara down on the side of the bed.

"I just wanted you to heal me so that I could be of use to my people, but I will tell you the story of this tiara and my cursed bloodline." She then began to explain everything in detail, starting with her ancestor and the tiara.

We keenly listened everything she had to say, and to say we were surprised would be an understatement.

A short summary of the story is like this: Her ancestor desired to cure her people from the poison from the river but couldn't, so she decided to do something about the river, but whatever they tried was also in vain. And so she prayed for a goddess to give her the power to do it, and the goddess gave her the tiara. It was definitely not a goddess; the enormous demonic energy is the proof.

"Hmm, could you show us to the lake where the poison is, and we will at least try to do something about it" It was the least we could do, also we plan to settle down here in this small kingdom after retiring and if we could live in peace then it's all good.

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See the auxiliary chapter to get more information about his skills, and do I need to make an auxiliary chapter for Shizue too?

I plan to use a lot of time skips towards the canon timeline. Also what are your thoughts on what should they do? become the kingdom's protector or the rulers?

Also, Ifrit is still inside her but he can't do anything to her now that Shizue has evolved into an enlightened one and is connected to Karna via soul corridor, sharing his holy energy by a miniscule level, it's just enough to isolate ifrit but can't use it a lot.

And Shizue is stronger than Karna for now because of her unique skill "Degenerate" giving her the advantage of using Ifrits abilities.

Also, is the romance going too fast? not that I care anyway but I have a thought that it's way too fast.