Just who is he?

However, despite Leona's and my apprehension, I entered the room and sat on the cushioned chair and wooden table set out for me.

"Peep!"

Luca, why are you going in? Are you going to stay here? I told you he smells off. I think he's dangerous.

<< Yes, but I need to learn my family's history. >> I replied. << And I know he's dangerous. The System told me he was born during the Flinx Calendar. >>

Then that's even more reason to leave.

<< Hardly. What better person to ask about history than him? And even if he is dangerous, wouldn't it be wiser not to draw unnecessary attention by abruptly leaving? >> I explained my logic to Leona.

Leona didn't respond and merely fluttered her wings. However, instead of leaving, I felt her claws dig into my shoulder, clearly intent on staying with me.

She didn't point it out, but I knew my logic was flawed. I had already drawn enough attention to myself from those living within the Frey Manor just by having killed Kaiden a few days back and having the crazy prince drop by with a massive cake. Guards would whisper amongst themselves while glancing toward me when I walked past. Others were more brazen, with one of the kitchen staff members asking if Chase Daylan would come by again in the future. By her stary-eyed expression, I comprehended that she had a wildly different perception of the crazy prince compared to what I thought of him.

Moreso, given Professor Whistle's age, I suspected he would have caught on by now to my peculiar behavior as had Azgralos and Chase.

But if I had already drawn attention to myself, why wasn't he behaving differently toward me?

My mind returned to the question I had at the start: who is he exactly?

"Since you came to the lesson, was there any particular area of history that you were interested in, or shall I dive in on the same that your younger siblings are covering?" Professor Whistle asked.

He closed the book in his hands and placed it back on the shelf. Golden speckles of dust floated in the air between us, illuminated by the sunlight rays streaming into the room from one of the large windows.

Four theories came to mind regarding his identity.

The first was that he was a phoenix disguised as an old man. I learned from Azgralos and saw firsthand how Leona could take on a different form. What's to say that a phoenix didn't take the form of an old man?

That said, I wasn't really sure about the timeframe of a phoenix's lifespan. Did the System consider it from the hatching, or were the lifespans of all the hangings compiled into one? Also, this theory was flawed in that Leona was clearly agitated by his presence. I would have expected a far better reception to a fellow phoenix.

That brought me to my second theory: it was a dragon. I didn't know whether dragons could take on the form of another, but if phoenixes could, what stopped a dragon from doing so too? Weren't dragons powerful magic beings as well, after all? But this was very much another assumption. I didn't know much about dragons besides the tales told to children and having met Azgralos.

My third theory was that Professor Whistle was, in fact, human. That typically wouldn't explain his long life, but what if he had consumed phoenixes and extended his lifespan? It wasn't a pleasant thought, but Arzgalos had suggested that humans, not dragons, had ended phoenixes. What if this was one such human?

I glanced at Leona, who had settled into a ruffled ball of fluff on my shoulder. Her golden eyes stared at Professor Whistle as if he was a fox wandering through the chicken coop.

Of course, there was the fourth theory. That he was a being unlike anything I had encountered before. Meeting Chase and learning about Players that had been summoned into my world in the past, I was relatively receptive to the idea that there was far more that I didn't know than I initially thought about my own world. Heck, I didn't know living dragons and phoenixes existed either until quite recently too.

Regardless of which theory was correct, I sat in my seat, looking up at the white-haired and bushy-eyebrowed man. As far as I knew, he had never done anything nefarious against my family in my original life, so there was no point in rushing out of the room. And if he did have bad intentions and simply managed to go unnoticed in my original life, that was even more of a reason not to raise any unnecessary suspicion.

And so I sat in my seat and made a request about what I wanted to study.

"I'd like to learn about the House of Arankagul's history," I said.

"Very well then," Professor Whistle waddled toward another bookshelf, running his fingers over the volumes' smooth, red leather covers. "Which particular part do you wish for me to cover?"

I blinked.

I knew so little about my grandmother's family's past that I was at a loss for words.

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"Everything. From the beginning," I said. "When the House of Arankagul was first established."

"Ah," he looked back and smiled at my answer. "Well, then, that will take more than a single day. Now for the early beginnings, I'll give you this to follow along, but as a fair warning, the historian that wrote this had embellished quite a few details, so I'll need to fill in the gaps."

Professor Whistle placed a red leather-bound book before me, its title embossed in elegant, gold lettering.

I blinked at the cover.

"Historian?" I asked.

He had placed before me a novel. A fantasy novel at that by Lillian Harper.

"Well, she was a historian. That was a fact," Professor Whistle explained. "But all of her historical texts have been destroyed. Well, I suppose an odd scroll or two are hidden away in someone's secret library. But in any case, she also enjoyed writing novels. Fortunately or unfortunately, she lacked creative thought and relied on history to dictate her works."

"The Revolt of Elmridge: Justice for Daisy," I read out the title. "Isn't this the tale of some guy who, driven by vengeance for his slain goat, ignites a revolutionary movement and manages to get the king dethroned?"

I couldn't imagine this tale actually having occurred in reality. It was too absurd.

I didn't know much about history, but I had, at the very least, heard this tale at some point in my original life. The main character was a mere farmer but managed to rally his fellow villagers and even neighboring communities to unite everyone under a slew of grievances, such as heavy taxes, forced labor, and general disregard for their well-being. He led the revolution to the capital, forcing the king to abdicate his throne. And it all started because the king's carriage trampled and killed his goat, Daisy.

"Not just some guy; his name was Ethan," Professor Whistle said. A knowing smile appeared on his lips. "And like I said, the book doesn't get all the details right."

He tapped the cover.

"It wasn't a goat. It was his daughter. She was two years old. The king's carriage didn't see her crossing the road and accidentally killed her—she was so small they didn't even notice. It was the middle of the night and the roads weren't great either, so running over a pothole or a stray rock wasn't uncommon, causing shaking of the carriage."

Professor Whistle had a slightly annoyed expression as he continued speaking.

"And the villages were so cut off and mismanaged by the nobles that any issues of disgruntlement never even reached the capital's ears. The king didn't even know an angry mob was coming to the capital until it was far too late."

"What does that have to do with the House of Arankagul?" I asked.

"Everything," Professor Whistle waved his hands and walked away, taking a seat on a plush, yellow armchair by the sunlit window. "Ethan is with whom House of Arankagul started. And with whom the Flinx family's rule came to an end."

My eyes moved back down at the red cover of the novel.

"Is Ethan the dark horse of how the Octavia family took the crown?" I asked, taking a guess.

I didn't know much about history, never seeing the point of learning about how some Adovorian noble or other died a couple centuries back. However, you'd have had to be living under a rock to not know a little about the War of the Shattered Crown and how Lady Aurelia Octavia had taken the throne, paving the way for the current rulers of Adovoria.

Lady Aurelia Octavia was said to be beautiful, kind, and righteous. Stories told of how she took the throne without a single hand in opposition, with everyone united behind her. But that's all they were: stories.

It was likely more complicated than that, and there were whispers of a dark horse that had allowed her to keep her hands clean that took care of the more unpleasant aspects of obtaining the crown. Not that you'd ever see a play during the Summer Festival depicting such a thing.

"Correct," Professor Whistle replied, pulling out a large pipe from his pocket. He stuffed it with some sort of purple dried leaves. "By the end of the War of the Shattered Crown, Ethan and his army of villagers successfully overthrew the king and bestowed the crown to Lady Aurelia Octavia. With her taking the crown, the Flinx Calendar ended, and the Adovorian Calendar began."

I gazed at the white-haired man seated by the window who had lit his pipe and was nonchalantly exhaling purple rings of smoke.

His last name being Flinx and being as old as he was, atop how annoyed he sounded upon recounting the carriage incident, suggested that he wasn't merely telling history. He had lived through it.

I bit my lip.

Should I ask?

"What was the name of the last Flinx king?" I asked.

Professor Whistle looked toward me through a purple ring hanging in the air. He shook his head in disappointment.

I felt instantly embarrassed for not knowing it. Lady Aurelia Octavia's name had been embedded into my mind, but all the rulers after her and especially those before, I never remembered.

"To think that aside from his crown being taken, even his name was lost to time…." Professor Whistle took in a breath from the pipe and blew out another purple ring. "Alaric Flinx."

I sighed in relief.

I had half-expected the old man before me to tell me that the last king's name was Evan Flinx, the same as the System had indicated for him through the Random Character Checker.

But just who was he? And why was a secretly ancient guy like him teaching me, the troublemaker of the Frey family, history?

"Why didn't Ethan Arankagul take the crown for himself?" I asked a different question.

"Well, that's where learning a little more about who Ethan Arankagul was is needed," Professor Whistle said. "See, two weeks after his daughter died, he completely changed—Lillian Harper mentions it in her novel subtly."

I flipped through the pages of the novel and found the text.

"Ethan Arankagul went into the Sacred Mountains to cool his angry mind and emerged an unrecognizable man with only one goal: getting justice for his goat," I read out.

"Yes, yes," Professor Whistle waved his pipe in the air. "Lillian calls it the Sacred Mountains in her novel, but she's referring to the Celestial Mountain Range. You probably have heard tales of it being haunted and full of spirits."

Damn it.

"Peep!"

Isn't where that friend of yours, Grandov, had gone off to?

<< It is. >>

"After his trip there, Ethan seemed to have lost his memory. His whole personality shifted. But, even though he changed, he was still as intent as ever on getting justice for his daughter," Professor Whistle said.

"What happened to Ethan in there? Do you know?" I asked.

My interest was mainly for Grandov's sake. Technically I knew him in the future and thus knew he would emerge fine, but I still couldn't help but worry. I had never heard him mention going there in my original life.

What if one of the other Awakened or I changed something that made him go there?

Professor Whistle tapped his pipe's contents into a small dish and smiled, looking up at me through his bushy brows.

"Possession," he replied. "Ethan was possessed by one of the spirits of the Celestial Mountain Range. Make no mistake, the farmer Ethan that went in and the Ethan that emerged and brought about the War of the Shattered Crown were two separate individuals."