78. After the Cruel Massacre

2023.12.17.

After the Cruel Massacre.

Clade Euphris could not sleep peacefully for even a single moment.

Thanks to Marquis Rev’s relentless efforts, he could escape pain slightly during the day—but that was all.

While barely clinging to life, during every moment of rest when he could breathe easier, believing the pain had lessened, he could do nothing but replay the scene of that day—when he had done absolutely nothing.

The night when his beloved ones were trampled and killed, rolling lifelessly on the floor.

The night when this mansion, once filled with happy memories, burned to the ground.

“……Lancelot.”

“Huh?”

When Clade’s voice, who had silently kept people at a distance, spoke his name for the first time, Lancelot sprang up like a coiled spring.

He had been circling around Clade for several months now, following his father’s orders.

“What? Should I bring you a book? Or some food?”

Flustered, Lancelot quickly laid out on the floor the books and board games tucked under his arm—all things Clade used to enjoy.

But the words that came from Clade’s dry, cracked lips were entirely different from what Lancelot had expected.

“Bring me a monster.”

“……What?”

A monster? To Lancelot, who was only ten years old, such creatures belonged to a distant, almost mythical world.

Though he was training as a squire for his noble house, bringing a monster was beyond him. How? And why, exactly?

In contrast, Clade’s gaze, fixed on Lancelot’s bewildered eyes, did not waver.

The decisive reason Uncle Igor had earned recognition as a warrior was because he had hunted countless monsters in the north to gain his father’s approval.

Slaying a single monster was far more effective in building strength than sparring with several people.

Though monsters possessed low intelligence, their physical abilities far surpassed those of humans.

They carried weak magical energy, allowing them to vanish and reappear briefly, suddenly unleash monstrous strength, or accelerate their speed. Some even breathed fire or water to threaten their opponents.

Such overwhelming, unpredictable creatures strengthened the warrior who faced them.

From childhood, Igor Euphris had traveled across the country hunting monsters, and never failed to win first place at the annual northern Monster Hunt Festival.

After losing the imperial succession race at a young age, he was rewarded by the late emperor for his achievements by being granted the northern lands where monsters appeared, becoming a Grand Duke.

After that, until ascending the throne, Igor Euphris periodically fought the monsters of that region.

With overwhelming force, he won the loyalty of his warriors, became their leader, and ultimately claimed the imperial throne.

Of course, prolonged exposure to monsters was harmful to the human body.

The magical aura emitted by monsters not only disrupted the mind but was incompatible with humans, causing them to perceive a severe, repulsive stench.

Even Igor Euphris, who knew monster hunting was a fast path to strength, likely refrained from it outside designated periods.

Furthermore, after becoming emperor, such a need would have disappeared entirely. That was the nature of the imperial position.

A position where one no longer had to draw their own blade. A position where there were more than enough people willing to spill blood on one’s behalf.

But Clade Euphris was different.

He had every reason to willingly endure the risks and grow stronger.

“I’ve been thinking of building a secret passage into this mansion. I can’t tell anyone else, so you’ll have to make it for me.”

“Clade, you don’t mean…”

“And lure a monster to the other end of that passage. Bringing in a low-level monster shouldn’t be too difficult, right?”

Clade’s first command, immediately after barely recovering his strength, was precisely this.

To build a secret passage into the mansion, and lure a monster into it.

Every night, Clade Euphris gripped his sword and descended underground through a door in the floor.

Sometimes he fought monsters that had rushed through the tunnels, spending entire nights clearing their corpses.

The shrieks of monsters and the foul stench from their blood filled the room.

Clade willingly accepted it all.

In the moments he fought monsters, he could forget his pain.

Because the magical aura clouded his mind, and the stench numbed his nerves.

Clade poured his agonizing suffering into the tip of his sword.

He buried one pain beneath grueling training, and covered that pain with yet another.

It was almost comforting to think his body no longer belonged to him.

Before long, terrifying rumors spread throughout and beyond the mansion.

The disgraced prince, Clade Euphris, had not only become hideous, but every night, tormented by pain, he wailed like a monster, and emitted a horrifying stench.

Some of it was true. Some was false.

Clade Euphris had become hideous.

He was tormented by pain every night and screamed—but sometimes the monsters’ shrieks were louder than his own voice.

The terrible stench came not from him, but from the monsters’ corpses. Still, the rumors didn’t harm him.

And so, without a single day of rest, for ten years.

On the day when a particularly fierce swarm of monsters surged into the tunnels at night.

Ten years to the day since Apollini Euphris had been killed by his uncle’s hand. That unusually agonizing night.

The night when he ran to the end of the tunnel and slaughtered the last monster.

Clade collapsed, completely addicted to the magical aura.

“Clade! Clade!!”

Lancelot Rev caught him at the end of the tunnel, having waited anxiously.

Immediately, he carried the writhing, suffering Clade on his back, trampling over monster corpses as he made his way out.

He dragged Clade back to the bedroom, and stared in horror as Clade, briefly regaining consciousness, poured sleep medication and painkillers into his mouth far beyond the lethal dose.

“Clade!”

And so, for several months.

When Clade finally opened his eyes after hovering at death’s door, instinctively, he realized—he had become a Sword Master.

***

Marquis Rev opened his mouth like a tongue-tied man, then exhaled as if asking:

“Back when Louise Pelliese was still here… that time when Your Highness collapsed after consuming a lethal dose of sleeping pills—was that because of this? Then, what caused the curse to finally break now?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps the gods are giving me a chance now that I’ve become a Sword Master.”

It sounded like a joke at first, but Clade’s cold face showed not a trace of humor.

“I’ve decided I can no longer hide these scars behind the curse. I have no choice but to move forward.”

In Clade’s deeply sunken eyes, Marquis Rev saw a blue flame flickering to life.

The past ten years, which had seemed only listless and powerless.

What kind of resolve had driven his nephew, all this time, to sit like a gatekeeper at the entrance of the monster dungeon he had created, entrusting his body to a rocking chair?

To live such a difficult life—harder than dying—without anyone ever finding out.

“I’ve never forgotten, not even for a moment.”

“Your Highness.”

“The reason I didn’t take my own life. The reason I kept living, despite looking so wretched.”

The louder the vibration of the sword in his hand grew, the more heavily Marquis Rev breathed.

“To drive my sword into Igor Euphris’s heart.”

Even Eddie and Lancelot stopped breathing.

Clade’s cold words, as if the blood in his veins ran not red but icy, were enough to erase every trace of Yu An Pelliese’s betrayal from memory.

“Because that was the only reason I lived.”

***

After leaving Clade’s bedroom, Eddie Rev leaned his long body weakly against a pillar.

He was still staggering, dazed by the truth he had just seen and heard.

“So all those times you kept running around outside—it was to lure monsters and bring them to Clade?”

“It was tough. We replaced the nameless slaves brought from foreign lands every day while digging the tunnels. Since I was ten. I nearly died so many times luring monsters. Though thanks to that, I was knighted at an unusually young age.”

“I should’ve properly investigated when you were quietly spending the family fortune… Hah, really. The screams we heard at night weren’t just Clade’s—they were the sounds of him killing monsters. And the pounding noises, the terrible stench—it wasn’t all Clade’s doing…”

Lancelot gazed bitterly at the tightly closed bedroom door.

He had never dreamed their secret, shared only between him and Clade for ten years, would be revealed like this.

‘In the moments I killed monsters, I could forget my pain, even if just for a little while.’

‘After becoming a Sword Master, monsters stopped coming to where I was.’

‘I’d only catch the occasional foolish one and return. The rest of the time, I was drowning in agony.’

‘That woman was just another way to shorten my suffering. You’re right—spending the night with a woman became a painkiller for my torment.’

Clade muttered these words to himself, carelessly tossing his blood-soaked sword onto the floor before sending them away.

Eddie had smiled, relieved to hear something pleasant, but every time Lancelot saw Clade denying love for Yu An, his heart felt like it was falling apart.

After being cursed, Clade had repeatedly pushed everyone away, declaring he loved no one.

The Rev family was no exception.

Only when Igor, for public stability, reduced indiscriminate killings and formally allowed the Rev family to care for Clade, did he stop blocking their approach.

Lancelot could never forget the lonely back of young Clade, who wouldn’t even glance at the Rev brothers rushing to him with concern, merely finishing his business and telling them to leave.

Now, as Clade emerged into the world, free of the curse and a Sword Master, Lancelot kept seeing that same boy from back then.

It felt as if something inside Clade was collapsing, and he was standing precariously atop a fragile, loosely woven structure.

“Lancelot, don’t say anything weak to Clade. No matter the reason, when Clade has resolved himself like this, we must help him.”

“……I know.”

“Just as Clade said, nothing has changed. Whether that woman is Bollonico’s subordinate or mistress, if she was the trigger for Clade’s awakening, then that’s all that matters. Of course, there will be a day when this betrayal is repaid. But for now, I’ll help Clade quietly—so stop talking and just help too.”

A dark night.

No more monster shrieks. No more cries from Clade.

No overwhelming stench capable of paralyzing the nose.

An utterly peaceful night.

As Lancelot led the Marquis and Eddie out of the mansion, he found himself thinking that this eerie silence was just as agonizing to hear as any scream.