Chapter 329: Crown? (2/2)

Standing in front of this crowd, I could only watch how the primate himself emerged from the crowd with two random nobles holding a long and thick, ceremonial cape behind him.

”Sir Mike Tarnowski, of the Tarnowian household. Kneel.”

Still stupefied by the situation, I could only follow the orders of the primate spoken with an uncommon authoritative tone of his. Only now did I understood how this otherwise calm man could serve as the Royal regent without anyone opposing him!

”You are hereby named as the new King of Commonwealth…”

With my head lowered as it was expected of me while kneeling, I could only feel a strangely dangerous weight appearing over my hair. Spreading the weight of the objects over its entire circular base, it would take an idiot to fail to recognise what was currently happening!

But this was all wrong! ;

Becoming a King right now would foil all my plans, and force me to actually waste my efforts on the court games! This was the exact opposite of what I wanted to happen!

Raising my head… Or rather, I attempted to raise my head in order to stop the ongoing makeshift ceremony before it would be too late. Sadly, strange dizziness made me fall right back on my knees after just the single attempt at standing up. ;

”May… reign… in glory… peace… land…”

The next sentences spoken by the primate were already turning incomprehensible. Out of the entire crowd, only Elia seemed to notice that something strange was happening. With my vision turning blurry, I could still notice her falling right on her knees beside me while ignoring the entire ceremony, instantly disturbing the awestruck peace in the castle.

”WHAT DID YOU DO?!”

Her shout was the last thing that I could fully understand. With all my senses quickly dulling up as if I was either disconnecting from this world or simply dying, I desperately reached out for her hand. ;

The warmth of her fingers intervening with mine brought me peace only for a moment.

”We are almost ready!”

A new, strange voice shook my entire self. Form the speech mannerism and the accents alone I could tell that this voice… came from my original timeline!

”Elia…”

Unable to even form a single word in my normal voice, I could only whisper my wife's name, while I could still feel the warmth of her hand wrapped around my fingers. ;

My vision completely ceased to work, shrouding me with pitch-black darkness. Only the heat of Elia's hand still accompanied me on this most likely last route of mine. ;

”Hit it!”

Blast.

All at once, all my senses returned in a single wave that nearly eradicated my consciousness. With the feeling of something being brutally torn away from my self, all my senses exploded with information, instantly putting my brain into the state of permanent confusion.

”Stabilise him!”

Those strangely… familiar voices were the only thing that I could somehow understand. But the meaning that was most likely hidden beneath them, was far worse than anything that I could imagine.

And then, everything suddenly stopped.

Opening my eyes, I saw a perfectly white ceiling, one that one could experience only in high-end private clinics. For some reason, my body felt way better than before, no matter whether I would compare it to how it was during my original timeline or how I felt in the body of Mike of Tarnow. ;

”Welcome back, Mike.”

The state of my emotions was critical. As much as I longed to go back to the normal times just for the sake of doing so and only for a while, I never considered this to be something that I could achieve. All the things that I wanted to experience at least once in modern, civilised society, were nothing when compared to the things that I lost by leaving the earlier timeline!

”Elia…”

A soft whimper escaped my mouth, with my mind fully occupied with the attempts to fall back into sleep as if returning back to the world that I already considered to be my reality would be possible just like that.

”Mike, I won't infringe on you right now. Take proper rest, try to sort everything in your head, and then we will have a long, long talk.”

Following those words, I felt a quick, sharp pain in my arm, before the world that I just returned to once again melted down and turned into endless darkness.