167. Love You

2024.03.15.

After countless similar conversations, physical pain always vanished.

As if he had been injected with a massive dose of stimulants.

The giant man swayed like a candle flame in the wind, then finally collapsed forward.

The kneeling man’s head slammed harshly against the cold floor.

His body convulsed violently, as though all his blood were draining away.

A curse lasting over ten years. Suffering worse than death.

It felt as if the torment had never transferred to Yuan, but instead remained within him, now pouring out at last.

They say a dying person sees their life flash before their eyes—then perhaps he was already a man on the brink of death.

After less than half a year. After Yuan Pelliese had entered his bedroom. After countless nights of forced intimacy, of slapped cheeks and ugly lips pressed against his own, after experiencing an unprecedented peace at the end of it all—what had that peace truly cost?

When servants giggled awkwardly, complaining they couldn’t sleep due to the lady’s moans every night.

The image of a small figure trembling beside him through countless nights, biting their lips, appeared before his eyes with painful clarity.

The face that faintly smiled, saying it was fortunate she felt no pain after leaving him.

The pale face, filled with unbearable resentment, now burned into his bones with searing agony.

The first time he visited his wife’s bedroom.

When he said he wouldn’t sleep, and she replied, “I love you.”

The moment he had buried his entire body and soul into that desperately tender face.

The morning two days later, when he emerged from that room—a monster turned into a perfectly cleansed human.

The truth that this result was precisely what he had become by trampling over Yuan Pelliese—burned every nerve in his body white, finally reducing him to nothing.

Unbearable curses slipped through his clenched teeth.

Not directed at Gerret Pelliese, who had once profited by feeding pain to young Yuan, but hurled at himself, Clade.

He smashed his head against the wooden floor like a flintstone, and still it wasn’t enough—his hand reached out toward the sword lying on the ground, as if unable to endure without cutting himself open.

Lancelot grimaced and kicked the sword away.

Clade groped the floor, muttering as he searched for something to tear into his own body.

“…I need to see her.”

“Clade.”

“I have to see that woman….”

His voice faded like the final cry of a trampled beast.

The mumbled words, crushed beyond recognition, spread across the floor.

He had slammed his head so hard that his smooth, fair forehead split open, blood trickling down.

Lancelot, too, could neither stop him nor encourage him, only lowered his head with a twisted expression.

Clade staggered to his feet, brushing blood-soaked golden hair from his face with trembling hands.

He compulsively wiped the blood on his hands onto his clothes.

He had to see Yuan immediately.

Even though he couldn’t even begin to imagine what he would say, the unbearable urge to see her crushed his heart.

His face, still not fully relaxed, was frozen like that of a paralyzed man, unable to utter another word.

As Clade, having roughly wiped off the blood, tried to pass by the dazed Lancelot.

Maxim, who had gone to fetch a doctor, returned with a face as pale as Lancelot’s.

The red letter in his hand dropped the already bleak room’s atmosphere to freezing point.

“Y-Your Grace… Lord Lancelot…”

A deep shadow of despair fell over Maxim’s bewildered, helpless face.

Instinctively uneasy, Lancelot took the red letter.

His trembling gaze traced the ominous paper. As if to confirm it couldn’t be real, Maxim collapsed as he explained:

“Marquis Rev was gravely injured during the monster extermination mission and has….”

At the shocking news that followed, Lancelot’s eyes rolled back as he collapsed backward.

***

North of Count Kimfri’s domain lay the Grand Duchy of Drietter.

The first prince, Bollonico Euphris, commissioned by the Emperor to exterminate monsters, had issued a mobilization order to several nobles.

Among them were Marquis Rev of Mount Ra and Marquis Companni’s proxy, Federico Companni.

Answering the call to exterminate monsters was the highest honor in Euphris.

Though this tradition had weakened over time, Euphris was originally a nation that revered strength.

Opportunities to grow stronger were never refused, whether by young knights or seasoned veterans—it was the way of Euphris.

Yet, some people were particularly worried about Marquis Rev.

Federico Companni, still young and with prior experience in pirate suppression, might somehow adapt to confronting unfamiliar monsters. But the Marquis was a man far removed from martial prowess.

While Emperor Igor, of similar age, had spent his life on hunting grounds and battlefields and still overflowed with vigor, Marquis Rev was no different from a rabbit before a tiger.

Fortunately, his eldest son, Eddie Rev, joined him and seemed to keep up well in the monster extermination campaign—yet who could have foreseen he would be attacked by a flying monster and thrown from his horse?

Inside the massive carriage, not even a breath broke the silence.

This was the carriage provided by the elderly Count Kimfri upon hearing the same tragic news.

After a full day’s ride, they arrived at the entrance of the Grand Duke’s mansion, where Ariesta and Grand Duke Drietter stood together, their faces pale, waiting to greet them.

The two men followed without even offering formal greetings, like lifeless puppets with strings.

Soon, a door opened, heavy with the acrid smell of medicine.

On the bed, surrounded by a gaunt Eddie and several doctors, lay Marquis Rev of Mount Ra, breathing weakly.

Only then did Lancelot break into tears and rush toward his father.

Behind him, Clade stood frozen at the doorway like a man facing a cliff, staring at his dying maternal uncle.

“That bastard Bolonico….”

Eddie, clutching the old man’s frail hand, pleading with God to save him, raised his bloodshot eyes.

“It’s clearly that bastard’s doing. That son of a bitch… that fucking dog….”

Gnashing his teeth, Eddie Rev buried his face in the blanket and sobbed hoarsely.

The face that had whispered words like a final testament to his tear-soaked younger brother now turned toward Clade, still standing at the door.

“Your Highness…” A sigh-like voice seeped into the darkened room, drawing everyone’s gaze to Clade.

Marquis Rev gestured repeatedly, urging Clade to come closer.

An eternity passed before Clade’s footsteps slowly, slowly moved toward him.

The doctors bowed their heads and stepped aside. Clade approached silently, finally looking properly at his uncle’s face.

“Your Highness…”

A dry, withered face like lifeless driftwood, streaked with gray hair.

A face that looked decades older than others of his age, yet smiled with eyes that seemed to see his son.

“Your Highness…”

That smile was genuine. Like a father rejoicing at the gathering of all his children at last.

“…Clade.”

A thunderous cough tore through the gloomy silence multiple times.

The Marquis’s body, lying down, curled up like a shrimp, trembling.

Gasping out breaths that sounded like noise, he desperately hid a clot of blood spat onto his handkerchief, still smiling.

“Clade.”

The amethyst eyes gazing at him in silence.

The boy who had been blessed throughout the ten months in his mother’s womb, born into the world surrounded by the most beautiful and radiant things.

The treasure of Euphris, the joy of the late Emperor and Empress, the young man who had suddenly become Marquis Rev’s son—when had he grown so tall? And when had he been broken again, forced to witness the death of family once more?

Words flooded his mind like a river rushing toward the sea.

Old anger gripped his heart. Regret remained for a past where no matter how hard he tried, it never felt enough. He wanted to fall to his knees.

But he knew such words were useless to his third son, standing broken before him.

The Marquis’s trembling hand fumbled at his chest, then finally pulled something out.

A ring case wrapped in soft velvet.

The very same ring case Clade had once asked to return, which had simply been handed back to him.

“I carried it with me, just in case.”

He stared at his son’s face, which only looked down at the offered object without taking it, for a long while.

What came from his lips wasn’t so different from the words Emperor Alexei once said to his own son.

Only when facing death did he fully understand the late Emperor’s intent—bitterly, ironically.

“Be happy, Clade.”

His dying uncle, exerting every last ounce of strength just to pass this trivial ring, filled Clade’s dark eyes.

Monster or Bolonico or Emperor—kill them. Take revenge. Flee. No additional words were added.

Those who leave behind others always say such things.

With lifeless eyes and hands, unaware of the heart of the person standing before them.

“Love you.”

As if that single phrase were enough to be the only thing left behind before death.

Clade’s lips twitched several times, then moved once—spasmodically, without thought.

“Love…”

A rasping, metallic voice, and yet a smile spread across the lips of the man lying down.

His trembling lips were met with a merciful, tender gaze, as if silently urging, “Say it once more.”

Clade moved his jaw, rolled his tongue.

His bloodless face flushed red from the voice lodged in his throat like a thorn, refusing to be expelled.

To finally utter that one phrase that had tormented his heart his entire life. And as if understanding his heart completely, as if showing him the way.

The remaining voice was drawn out—the Marquis’s blue lips moved.

“Love you, Clade. Love…”

“Love…”

The unfinished words lingered darkly in the mouths of the living and the dead.

Beneath eyelids that never fully closed, the eyes he had seen for nearly thirty years turned toward Clade.

Now, upon their surface, within them, the hollow pupils that could no longer bind him—before Clade could even reach out and cling—flickered faintly, then extinguished, leaving only an empty shell.