Wendy was stunned. She had only made a wild guess, yet it had turned out to be true.
Had her great ancestors been watching over her after all?
With no time to wonder how she had stumbled onto the truth, Wendy's expression turned grave. "Captain, are you sure? This isn't something to joke about!"
"What's that supposed to mean? I'm always honest and true to my word!"
John shot Wendy an annoyed look. As he recalled what he knew about the side story behind the Brown Royal Family's downfall, he said thoughtfully, "If my information is right, the fall of the Brown Royal Family was connected to the De Vries Family, who've since withdrawn behind the scenes."
"The De Vries Family?"
Wendy froze at the name, disbelief written across her face.
As she remembered it, her father had praised that family more than once when she was young.
In the Brown Kingdom's histories, the De Vries Family was celebrated for its generations of loyalty and sacrifice. Not only had it contributed greatly to the kingdom's expansion, but in the Middle Ages, its head had also faced thousands of assassins alone during an invasion by the Loran Kingdom. He had given his life to save the third prince from that treacherous attack.
That prince was Kahn Brown, later granted the title of Stoneheart King by the emperor for his valor in battle. In the history of the Brown Empire—which had once dominated the world through the might of its Golden Bloodline, before that bloodline weakened and the empire declined into a kingdom—
he was the only duke to rule a duchy comparable in size to the imperial family's own lands. Though born to a collateral branch, he had won the Golden Tree's recognition and was hailed as the bearer of the