If someone committed a grave crime worthy of execution, their family had only two possible futures. To die together, or to live on in an even more horrific state.
The fact that Count Elmore's family wasn't executed alongside him meant they were not involved in his deeds.
Whether they were completely ignorant or merely weak bystanders remained to be seen.
Liam, with the help of others, barely managed to kill a low-level demonic beast. But another demonic beast charged in, instantly ending the lives of two others beside him.
Leaving the spurting blood behind, Liam frantically fled and hid among the corpses. He muffled his breath with one hand while clutching his sword tightly with the other.
Then, a young-looking knight, fleeing from a demonic beast, tripped over a carelessly strewn corpse and tumbled near Liam's hiding place. At that moment, a demonic beast immediately turned its body.
Kee-eek?
The outcome for the two was easily predictable. The demonic beast, never one to miss defenseless prey, would rush in and tear the young, weak knight to shreds in an instant.
After much deliberation, Liam carefully rose. His face and body covered in blood, he put down the sword he had been gripping so tightly his knuckles were white, and picked up a roughly discarded spear nearby. And when the demonic beast was almost upon him, he thrust the spear with all his might.
Kieeeeek!
But the spear only grazed the demonic beast's leg, and because it wasn't a fatal wound, it only enraged it further.
The demonic beast shrieked and turned toward Liam. Liam, his grip loosening and dropping his last weapon, collapsed to the ground, his face pale. His eyes squeezed shut in terror, as if sensing the end.
I shook off my feet once more and immediately flew, grabbed the demonic beast, and threw its body, which was beginning to melt from the divine power, far away.
The demonic beast, hitting the base of a tree, moved away from me and stopped melting, but it had already softened so much that the impact with the tree caused its body to burst.
Certain it was dead, I didn't bother to check and instead landed in front of Liam, returning to my human form.
"That you smeared on yourself is human blood. You should have used demonic beast blood to avoid getting caught."
Of course, he must have grabbed whatever he could in his panic, so it was a pointless piece of advice.
Liam, still dazed, just stared up at me. No words came from his open mouth, only ragged breaths.
Remembering how he had hidden among the corpses to survive, yet still rose again, his body trembling convulsively, to save someone else, I asked.
"Do you want to live?"
He nodded. It was a reflexive action, driven purely by the desire to live, before he could even think.
"I, I have to go back alive..."
"Why?"
"I promised, I promised I would definitely, definitely go back for her... I have to go back..."
Watching him babble as if he didn't even know what he was saying, I remembered that Count Elmore had another daughter besides Liam.
I wondered what her situation might be. Normally, they would just strip the title and force them to live as commoners, but because the Count's crimes were so severe, the situation was likely to be much worse.
I stared at him for a moment, then said.
"Follow me."
ꕥ
After the demonic beasts were somewhat cleared, they created a base camp by erecting a barrier with pre-prepared holy relics.
The demonic beasts that occasionally came, drawn by the scent of blood, couldn't get close to the barrier surrounded by divine power and instead avoided or fled from it.
Occasionally, more aggressive ones, sensing the divine power, became even more ferocious and slammed into the barrier, but instead suffered burns as if being burned by fire and self-destructed.
Shuian watched the scene quietly before turning away. Seeing their foolish behavior, he didn't feel the need to worry.
"From now on, the demonic energy will start to intensify, so we'll use the holy relics to create a barrier and set up a base camp. Then, we'll send the slave soldiers and lower-ranking knights in first to start slowly advancing. Once we've used all the holy relics we brought, we'll be moving non-stop until we close the rift."
The Ruina Knights had a high proportion of slave soldiers, but other knight orders also had them.
The longer they were exposed to demonic energy, the more severe the poisoning symptoms became, and the holy relics were limited, so they were saving the main forces needed to close the rift and fight the strong demonic beasts.
"But what is that?"
The fact that Theodore asked "what" instead of "who" clearly revealed his discomfort.
Liam must have sensed it too, as he flinched and stepped back, then hid behind Shuian.
Shuian, looking at the scene with a bewildered expression, barely managed to lift the corners of his lips in a wry smile.
"I picked him up earlier."
"Picked him up? Why?"
"To be precise, I'm still considering it."
Shuian looked around. The number of tents had noticeably decreased, and few of the survivors seemed to be in good condition.
He couldn't possibly find out how many truly innocent people were among them, nor did he want to.
However, if he happened to catch his eye, and if his intuition wasn't wrong this time... perhaps it was worth checking out.
Shuian stepped aside and said to Liam.
"Tell me in your own words how you ended up here. Liam Elmore."
"H-how does the Lord Divine Beast know my name...?"
We all knew it, only you're surprised, can't you tell? Shuian replied, looking dumbfounded.
The story seemed like it would be long, so the four of them sat down around the campfire. Liam's face was suffocating with discomfort, having to sit with the prince known as the tyrant, the prince's aide who was even more ruthless and called the viper, and the Divine Beast who was only known through rumors.
"Well... I don't know what to say... As you know, my father was a black magician and..."
"Not that. Tell me your story."
"M-my story...?"
"Your story of how you came to be here instead of being executed with the Count."
Liam paused for a moment, fidgeting with his fingers uncomfortably.
"You don't have to tell me if you don't want to. But you'll have to go back there."
Shuian pointed to the tents where the lower-ranking knights and criminals were gathered.
He wasn't really planning to send him back even if he didn't tell him right away, but he didn't want to wait too long.
Perhaps his subtle threat worked. Liam stared at the groaning wounded soldiers for a long time before finally making up his mind and opening his mouth.
"My... my story isn't anything special. I know what my father has been doing as a pawn of the Empress and Duke Raymond. This incident must be related to that. I can't say I know the details... but yes, I know it's not something to be proud of. I even tried to stop him once in the past, but I stopped because I was scared."
"Of what?"
"...It was when I was young. When I was naive and thought I was righteous... I found out that my father was involved in the slave trade. So I went there without thinking and freed the slaves, and my father was very angry. I could endure being beaten by him, but when he stubbornly caught the slaves I had freed and killed them in front of my eyes... I think it was a little hard to bear."
Liam still remembered that day. He had been beaten as punishment for freeing the slaves without permission and locked in a dark, damp warehouse.
The violence, with hands slapping his cheeks and hitting various parts of his body, was fierce enough to be called discipline, but even so, he vowed to never give in.
He thought he was a righteous person, so he had to say that what was wrong was wrong.
However, when his father, who had rounded up all the slaves Liam had secretly freed, tortured and killed them cruelly in front of him.
And when he heard that it was all his fault that these people, who could have met good masters, had died in such pain. He thought that his choice might have been wrong.
'You foolish thing... You don't know the hardships your father has endured to wallow in filth for you!! If you just stayed still, I would have put you on a smooth path!! How can you show your sister's face if you keep throwing mud like this!'
Count Elmore grabbed Liam's hair with his blood-covered hands. Liam thought his glistening eyes looked like artificial eyes.
Even as he faced that inhuman gaze, he couldn't bring himself to call his father a beast.
'Son, think of your sister. We have to marry her off to a good match, now that we've raised her so beautifully. You can't become the heir of the Elmore family, which is just a facade, can you? Huh? How are you going to face your sister if you keep throwing shit like this?'
Even if everything Count Elmore did and said wasn't right, it wasn't something that couldn't happen.
He didn't care about becoming the heir to the crumbling Count's family, but he couldn't bear to watch his older sister be sold off like cheap goods in a marriage.
'I believe you'll be good and smart.'
Liam willingly decided to become a cowardly bystander.
'You have to answer.'
'Yes, F-Father.'
After that, it was the same. A series of moments where he closed his eyes and turned away from countless things he thought were wrong.
At some point, he stopped caring about what his father was doing altogether. He was a coward anyway, and nothing would change even if he became a little more despicable.
"Then things went wrong and I ended up here. I think I thought this would happen someday... but I don't know. Maybe, maybe I'm being punished."
Liam, finishing his words in a fluster, seemed to remember something, and prostrated himself in front of Shuian, burying his head on the ground.
"You said you would save me. I definitely heard that. If you just save me, if you just save me and let me go back safely, I'll do anything. My sister is waiting for me. She's waiting for me... I promised I would definitely go back for her...!"
His voice was closer to crying as he went on, but he desperately begged. He had to go back alive.
He didn't know where she would be sold, and his own situation was just that of a slave soldier to be used as a meat shield. Even so, he had to be alive to hope for the future. It was pathetic, but that was the reality.
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