Let's start over, Your Majesty.

Chapter 56 The truth back then

"What?" Caesar frowned.

"That's true. Those people in the Fata overestimated the power of the Cocoon of Origin. For an ordinary great hero-level mage, resurrection is no problem, but for you, who already had a certain level of divine consciousness at that time, the power of the Cocoon of Origin was far from enough."

Sothos said, “The reshaping process stalled less than a year after you entered the Cocoon. According to observations, you remained in an extremely vulnerable infancy. What’s worse, the purification of your curse also progressed slowly. In that state, you would probably have been killed by the curse inside the Cocoon.”

Caesar frowned: "That..."

Sothos sighed, "There was nothing I could do but send you magic power again and again so that you could withstand the erosion of the curse and survive the purification."

Caesar paused for a moment, then suddenly realized something: "You ultimately died from a curse?"

He repeatedly channeled magic into himself, and it was impossible not to be tainted by the curse during such contact.

Sothos shrugged: "Anyway, I didn't have any grand ambitions. I was already so old back then. Even if I hadn't been cursed to death, I would have died of old age in a couple of years."

But Caesar knew that Sothos was a great hero-level sorcerer at the time, and if he hadn't been tainted by the curse, he could have lived for at least another fifty years.

Moreover, back then, he endured the corruption of the curse while helping him govern the country and cultivate a new emperor, persisting in this way for a full seven years.

A mix of emotions welled up inside him. He pursed his lips, silently patted Sothos on the shoulder.

Sothos chuckled and patted the back of his hand: "Alright, let's not bother with this anymore. Ever since that sheep pen, our lives have been tied together."

He coughed and continued, "In short, you eventually survived the curse and completed the purification, but the reshaping of your physical body is still stuck in infancy."

"At the time, the entire higher-ups of the Fata were busy with this matter and tried various methods to solve it, but to no avail. Fortunately, the Cocoon of Origin can continuously provide you with vitality, keeping you in a state of being neither alive nor dead."

"Then we came up with a plan, which is to wear you down," Sothos said. "To exhaust all your magic and divinity, only then can the Cocoon of Origin complete its reshaping of you."

"However, this will take a long time, at the most optimistic estimate it will take seven hundred years, so we injected a lot of life force into the cocoon of origin so that it can carry you to that time."

Sothos sighed again: "I really went to great lengths to save your life."

But Caesar frowned: "You're saying that the Cocoon of Origin requires me to completely deplete my accumulated power before I can begin the reshaping process?"

“Yes.” Sothos nodded.

"Then how do you explain this?" Caesar raised his left hand, the imperial seal on the back of his hand glowing slightly: "The imperial seal still exists, the status it carries has not weakened, and even the divine consciousness I left on it still exists."

"Moreover, after I woke up, I was no longer in the forbidden area. The Cocoon of Return to Origin had even drifted out of the palace."

The Imperial Seal, his most basic power, is still intact, only its magic power has been exhausted. However, its rank and nine powers are still beyond the level of a great hero. According to Sothos, it is still impossible to reshape it.

But it was done before that.

Sothos realized this as well, and frowned in confusion. After a moment of thought, he said, "Perhaps, perhaps something has affected the Cocoon of Origin, causing the resurrection process to begin, but it's incomplete, only reshaping you to infancy."

"What could that be?"

Caesar lowered his head in thought, and suddenly, something occurred to him.

Yumilia.

As an elf, and a member of the elven royal family at that, although she doesn't possess magic, she does possess extraordinary life force.
Moreover, he emerged from the cocoon the day after she retrieved him.

Could it be that it got stuck right at the point where the cocoon was reshaped?
Caesar's gaze fell upon it.

Could it be that Yumilia did something that night to enable his resurrection?

He hadn't really thought about this problem before; Yumilia had only said that "it hatched after being held for one night."

But that's definitely not the case in reality.

Yumilia must have paid a heavy price for his resurrection.
And that's probably something more important than life itself.

Caesar remained silent until Sothos called out to him:
"What did you think of?"

Caesar snapped out of his reverie, looked into Sothos's pale blue eyes, and shook his head: "It's nothing."

Sothos let out a long sigh: "So, after that, we knew you wouldn't be able to come back alive anytime soon, so we had no choice but to announce your death and begin the King-casting Ceremony to select an emperor to take the throne."

A deep weariness suddenly appeared in his eyes: "Those years were really tiring. Problems were happening everywhere. The laws that were promulgated had problems and needed to be revised. The southern reclamation plan also encountered various incidents. Rebellions started in various places, and many people within the royal court were also restless."

He looked at Caesar: "You're right. Fanit raised an army in his territory immediately after learning of your death. That ingrate, it really wasn't worth letting him go last time." "I heard you killed him in the end?" Caesar asked.

Sotos nodded: "I put Galicia in command, and I also sent Meyeris up there. Although Galicia is old, he is still good at fighting. Fanit was no match for him and was wiped out in less than three months. I sent him to the execution platform and, according to the imperial law, his entire family was executed."

Sothos sighed:
"But in the end I softened and listened to his request, sparing his two one-year-old sons and exiling them to the frontier, as a way of showing some consideration for his many years of hard work."

He smiled again: "Forget about that. Anyway, we got through it, the situation stabilized, and the princes gradually grew up and were able to handle daily government affairs."

His smile was tinged with bitterness: "It's a pity I didn't live to see him ascend the throne."

After a moment of silence, he asked, "How's Isaac doing? That kid's not much worse than you were back then."

Isaac was Rean II's original name, and he never used it again after obtaining his princely status.

Caesar nodded: "Well done. History books say that his era ushered in an unprecedented golden age."

"Is that so? You have lived up to my expectations." Sothos nodded in satisfaction.

"How many years has our empire existed?"

“Fifty-one years,” Caesar said.

Sothos frowned and looked at him in surprise.

"51 years? You were in there 18 years ago!"

Caesar nodded and began to tell him what had happened after Sothos left.

Sothos's brow furrowed even more deeply: "The palace fire, the great destruction... what is this? How could these things have suddenly appeared?"

Caesar shook his head: "I don't know, this part of history is a mystery now."

He asked, "Weren't there any signs of this happening during the two years you were gone?"

Sothos shook his head: "Absolutely not. Everything was the same during that period. Apart from the large number of rebels, there was absolutely no fluctuation in the magical realm."

“That is the sin committed by our descendants,” Caesar said.

What exactly Rean II did to cause all of this remains a mystery to them.

"I can't be bothered with that," Sothos waved his hand and said. "Tell me about yourself, how are you doing right now?"

"I was found by an elf after I woke up."

At that moment, Caesar told Sothos everything that had happened over the years, including the descendants of Holonig, the events in Ita, the changes that had taken place in the world over the years, the liberation of thought, the rise of technology, the conflicts between kingdoms, and the impact of the Eldaria Empire to this day.

Sothos listened quietly, occasionally interrupting him to ask a couple of questions before letting him continue.

After he finished speaking, he leaned back on his throne and sighed, "We've all become old men."

“Yes, it’s only been six hundred years, but things have changed dramatically. I was quite startled when I first woke up,” Caesar said.

Silence fell again, then Sothos suddenly said, "Oh, right, there's something else I need to tell you."

"what?"

"Grace is still alive."

Caesar looked up in astonishment, as if struck by lightning: "What did you say?!"

“Grace is alive, I’m not kidding you.” Sotos looked at him calmly.

“She is different from me. She has someone to wait for. She can’t let you go. After the final plan was born, she chose to stay and wait for you until you are resurrected.”

"She accepted the use of the sacred artifact, the Helen Box, and transformed herself into a soul state, similar to yours—neither alive nor dead. The Helen Box is placed in a forbidden area, and her tomb, like yours, is empty."

"Even now, she is still waiting for you, waiting for you to wake her up."

[Please, everyone! There will be an extra update tomorrow, Tuesday. Please give me some time to read and help Hagichuan win the revival match! 0n2]

(End of this chapter)