Black Killer Whale Baby - Chapter 98

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

Chapter 98
Crash!
The drawing room lay shrouded in darkness.
What had once been an elegant and refined space was now utterly devastated.
Porcelain that once displayed beautiful patterns lay shattered across the floor, while the carpet was drenched in some unknown liquid—whether wine or water.
No, that dark crimson stain soaking the floor was unmistakably warm blood that had been flowing through a human body mere moments ago.
“Gasp, cough, hack, ah….”
The figure collapsed on the floor was a young orca beastkin from a branch family, perhaps only sixteen years old.
“Worthless creature.”
“Hack, cough! Just once more, please give me one more chance… Lord Baian!”
Though the plea was desperate, the child’s mouth could open no further.
A cruel foot had trampled it shut.
“How dare you, weak thing, talk back to me? Do I amuse you? Don’t I?”
“Ahhh, no, no no no!”
Soon the child could not even scream.
Baian’s kick had struck precisely at the vital point.
And in one corner of the room, bound children trembled uncontrollably.
They were all children from common aquatic animal beastkin families—far weaker than Baian and utterly incapable of resistance.
Beings who could not protest even if Baian took them away on a whim.
“Sniff, sniff, mama, mama….”
Among them, the Anchovy Beastkin Child was busy stifling their sobs.
This youngest of the group was barely three years old.
All the surrounding children were beastkin of negligible strength.
Yet they all seemed to have silently agreed to save only the anchovy child, discreetly hiding the weeping little one behind their backs.
“Sigh….”
When Baian slowly turned his head, his face was smeared with blood.
His gleaming eyes burned with cruel laughter and madness.
It was the gaze of one viewing toys to be trampled to death for amusement, rather than prey hunted to satisfy hunger.
“Who should be next?”
Rodesen, who had been watching this spectacle, quietly covered his mouth.
The room where Baian currently was had been specially arranged.
From where Rodesen stood, he could see Baian, but Baian could not see him.
He gazed at the secluded room where Baian was confined and swallowed hard.
‘How could he have fallen apart like this….’
Rodesen watched his eldest son’s actions unfold clearly while
pressing his face in his hands and releasing a sigh tinged with lamentation.
“Baian Aquasiadel is hereby ordered to withdraw from the Intermediate Institution for three years and placed under confinement for one year. All external activities and contact with others are forbidden.”
Three years. He had been punished for three years.
In truth, Rodesen found this duration perplexing—it was not as long as one might think.
Merely three years was far too brief to crumble the power Rodesen himself had spent over twenty years building, so firmly and solidly established.
I held the belief that it would never crumble.
‘So all Baian needed to do was make a comeback….’
Furthermore, Rodesen had devised a plan to leverage his own influence, and the methods were endless.
Among them, he had even calculated ways to persuade the Matriarch—his mother—to reduce both his confinement period and his house arrest duration.
If Baian remained in his right mind, a comeback would not be difficult.
‘One year. If Baian could just endure for one year… or at least six months…!’
But as it turned out, Baian failed.
Rather, he fell.
It was about four months after the house arrest order was issued.
From then on, Baian began to show disturbing signs.
He had always been the type to fail at concealing his vicious nature, and his desire for the Matriarch’s position was evident.
He was a child who watched his parents’ expressions carefully.
But then.
“Ha, haha. Father… what were you doing while I was locked away?”
“Baian?”
“What were you doing! Yes!”
Baian began to fall apart.
The remaining time was all downhill from there.
A precipitous descent into the abyss.
Only then did Rodesen realize.
…This Baian was not fit to be Matriarch.
Perhaps he had known this all along, but as a parent, he had desperately wanted to overlook this flaw.
Even knowing that if he loosened the button even slightly, he would find not solid substance but worthless crumpled paper, he had stubbornly pretended not to see—his own failing.
Yet Rodesen could not abandon his eldest son.
He needed a means to redirect Baian’s attention.
In his current state, there was no way to employ the schemes he had prepared to reduce the punishment period!
“…Father will find you a toy. Beat it to death or stab it to death—I don’t care.”
The first target Baian beat to death was a servant.
…Killing a servant risked too much exposure to the outside world.
Since Baian had already lost public favor, beating them like this would make a comeback impossible.
From then on, Rodesen secretly brought weak beastkin children.
Children from insignificant families whose deaths would raise no questions.
What did it matter?
After all, they existed for the orca. They existed to be dominated.
Ironically, Baian’s strength grew day by day.
He could easily dispatch even adult beastkin, but Baian did not.
He only targeted those who resembled Calypso Aquasiadel—the one who had created him this way, who had cast him into the abyss—or those smaller and weaker than her.
Even Rodesen, who continuously brought children, occasionally grew weary.
‘Survival of the fittest’ and ‘massacre’ were different things.
No matter how much one invoked survival of the fittest, there was always a limit.
Doing as one pleased with an opponent one had defeated was one thing, but massacre was a merciless act devoid of even justified combat.
What my son was doing….
The possibility of offending the Matriarch, who despised those who broke rules or engaged in tedious battles, was far too great!
‘Sigh, if only his mind and temperament had kept pace with his strength…!’
Every time Baian threw a tantrum and exposed his madness, Rodesen would
devote himself all the more to external affairs and gathering his forces.
In truth, he had lost many of the elite he had sent five years ago to assassinate Calypso Aquasiadel.
Yet he still possessed enough power that those numbers were inconsequential.
Not only that—the powerful Branch Families still supported him.
So, his successor need only become sound again. His successor alone need only recover.
‘He will recover. If he satisfies that desire to his heart’s content….’
But Rodesen did not know.
Just as one who tends to the mad gradually goes mad alongside them, Rodesen too was slowly being stained with madness by the fall of the son he had expected.
“Bring more children. Ten, or perhaps fifteen should suffice.”
“…Yes, Lord Rodesen.”
The warriors who received the order quietly bowed their heads and left.
Behind Rodesen stood two people watching the scene intently.
“Father.”
A clean and crystalline voice reached his ears, and Rodesen turned his head.
He forced a smile upon seeing who had called him.
“Yes. Lirivel. What is it?”
“Are you truly planning to leave Eldest Brother as he is?”
Lirivel.
The child, who had just turned thirteen, was Rodesen’s second and only daughter.
Rodesen’s smile twisted, but only for a moment.
“My dear Lirivel. You, who have grown up so beautifully, wouldn’t understand, but orcas naturally grow this way.”
….
“Yes. Baian, your Eldest Brother is simply letting his instincts run ahead for now…. He will soon return to his former self. Yes. To the reliable and wise Eldest Brother you knew, and a dependable successor.”
At Rodesen’s firm words, Lirivel tilted her pretty face.
‘But you’ve been saying that for five years now. Five whole years of chances given, and if he still can’t seize them,’
Lirivel blinked her eyes.
‘then he’s garbage. Father.’

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————