Children of the Rune – Winterer - Chapter 153

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 153.
Two Swords, Four Names (37)
Boris stood draped in a great cloak, his upper body bare due to his wounds. In such a state, moving even a single arm should have been agonizing, yet his face bore only a slight frown—no further sign of pain.
Hebetica and the others had advised him not to rise, saying they would bring the captured woman to him, but Boris refused to listen.
This life had been preserved by so many; I did not wish to appear weak until the very end. Moreover, I felt that a minimum of courtesy was necessary when interrogating an enemy I had not personally captured.
Boris did not realize it, but his bearing resembled the solemnity of his father, Yulken Jineman.
Having heard the situation from Isolet, I first expressed my gratitude to Izak.
Yet Izak merely received the thanks with a vacant expression, as though uncertain what great favor he had rendered.
Then Boris stood before Marinov. Though others offered to bring a chair, he refused even that.
As the cloak fluttered in the wind, his bare chest was exposed slightly. Boris leaned upon his sword as though it were a staff, steadied his breathing, and spoke.
“Marinov. Your name is familiar to me—it is the name of your homeland. I thought my Uncle sent you, but since you have already denied it, I ask again. Who sent you to me?”
Marinov hesitated briefly before speaking as though spitting out the words.
“You think I’ll tell you willingly?”
“If you do not speak willingly, perhaps I should remove your fingers one by one?”
Marinov flinched. She had not imagined that someone so young would know such methods. She considered changing her approach, but for now she held her silence.
“Let us set aside the methods for further consideration. Then what is your purpose? Why did you attack me?”
This time there was no reason to hide it.
“I meant to capture you. Instead, I was captured myself.”
“Why?”
“Because someone wants you.”
“You mean it is not my Uncle?”
Suddenly Marinov burst into laughter.
“Hahaha… Your Uncle Blado, you mean? Hehehehe, do you truly think that man has the ability to employ someone like me? I do not speak of money, but of the capacity to command people. He lacks all virtue. His subordinates distrust him, and even his own wife does not believe in her husband.”
Marinov’s eyes gleamed as she fixed her gaze upon Boris, then smiled wickedly.
“Ah, there is one person who trusts him—his little daughter. Two years old this year, I believe? But the problem is that in Trabaches, there is not a single person who does not trust that daughter! Hahahaha…”
That Uncle Blado had married and fathered a child was entirely new to me.
Yet if he had cast out Father and my Elder Brother to seize the name of House Jineman for himself, he was a man capable of accomplishing far greater deeds, so I said nothing more.
But the moment I heard Marinov’s words, I felt strangely displeased. I could not say why.
“He lacks not only virtue but ability as well. Moreover, he has grown lazy besides—what a worthless creature. You probably do not even know where he wanders these days? These days he shuts himself away at home and seems too lazy even to stir. I have no doubt he has long forgotten all about you!”
Since Blado was my enemy, I thought there was no harm in cursing him. Then, with a meaningful smile, I continued.
“You need not trouble yourself thinking about him. Instead, if you grant me a few days—three days or so—I will tell you everything about him and the circumstances since you left your homeland. You will surely hear many things you have wondered about.”
“So you do know my Uncle. And you…”
Boris’s voice dropped an octave, turning glacial. Both Marinov and those standing nearby were startled by the unexpectedly menacing tone that emerged from the young man’s lips.
“You have been captured by the people of this place, and your fate has been entrusted to me. Understand your position well. If you persist in addressing me so casually, I shall reciprocate in kind. Listen carefully.”
When necessity demanded it, I overcame my nature and became cruel—much like my Elder Brother Yefnen.
Yet unlike Yefnen, who shared a strong bond with Mother, I resembled more closely my father, Yulken Jineman, whom I had always feared and observed.
In other words, this behavior was not entirely at odds with my true nature.
“You have failed, and your companion is dead. Yet you maintain an unchanged demeanor, which suggests you have faith in something else. Who is it? Are they nearby? Could they arrive within three days?”
“There is no one!”
“No one, you say? Can you stake your life on that claim?”
“….”
Marinov had decided not to answer hastily anymore.
Boris continued without hesitation. It was hard to believe these words came from a fifteen-year-old boy who had forced an adult to their knees.
“It doesn’t matter what the truth is. If I move, they’ll chase me, so the village won’t suffer any harm. That means you have no leverage. You won’t speak of those behind you? I don’t care. Your reason for capturing me? I can guess it all without you saying a word. Rather, I have something to tell you. Aren’t you curious about your own fate? I don’t have your habit of dancing around words, so I’ll tell you straight.”
Boris grimaced slightly as if enduring pain, then spoke curtly.
“I’m going to kill you now.”
Marinov’s pupils dilated as if infinitely, and a wave of shock rippled through the crowd.
Isolet kept her gaze lowered, listening only to Boris’s voice. Lost in her own separate thoughts.
“I, I! Why are you trying to kill me already…. There’s, there’s no need for that… is there? I’m not stammering because I’m afraid of dying! I have so much more I can tell you, not just what you asked but so much else, everything! Just, just wait a moment….”
“If you’re not afraid of dying, then stop stammering. What use is bravado when you’re about to die?”
Boris drew the sword he had been leaning on with a sharp motion. It was a movement impossible for a body in his condition, yet there was not a hint of hesitation.
Everyone who had seen his wounds at Grandmother’s House just moments before doubted their own eyes.
“No, no…. I, I merely… what I said was merely….”
She tried to pretend otherwise, forced herself to appear composed, but Marinov’s jaw trembled violently. Her eyes reddened, the skin around them flushing deeply.
It would be a lie to say she had never thought of death in her life as an assassin, but she had never imagined meeting it in such a helpless state, subjected to one-sided slaughter.
Had she truly feared death, she could not have thrown herself into battle so easily each time. She could not have thought so lightly of others’ deaths as to collect the hair of corpses.
Yet was what she had felt back then merely an addiction? Had she, intoxicated by the scent of death without knowing it, wandered through life in delusion, fearless like a child because she did not understand?
Such recklessness and true death were entirely different. As different as last night’s dreams from reality, as different as red paint in a picture from real blood.
“I don’t want to die….”
At last, an honest word escaped. But Boris showed no sign of wavering.
“You killed a villager who bore you no grudge without a shred of guilt. You also slaughtered the mercenaries you brought. And you tried to deceive me while waiting for your comrades to come rescue you. You wanted them to come and kill everyone in the village? I’m sorry, but I’m neither foolish nor idle enough to wait for that. All of this is your sin. You have more than sufficient reason to die.”
Boris raised his sword. Every eye fixed on his face and the blade’s point.
“Why, why won’t you try to get information from me? I’ll tell you everything about who’s targeting you! I’ll tell you who to avoid, what they want, everything!”
Boris’s hair scattered with his cloak. Expressionless eyes looked down upon her. Hope crumbled to ash.
Were those the eyes of a fifteen-year-old boy? Were they not the eyes of one who had witnessed and endured countless evils of the world, an executioner without hesitation at the moment of judgment?
“Even if you bare what you know, you won’t be forgiven anyway, so why betray? You’ll only soil your own heart. Isn’t that so? And.”
Boris had already decided not to hear the names behind this. He was a body destined to return to the Island. And until he came of age—or perhaps never again.
What would he gain by learning of one more human bearing a grudge on the Continent?
The very existence of Uncle Blado and Count Belnoir was already clouding his heart, which sought to live as a Pilgrim. Did he need to add new enemies to that?
There was no need to know. Whoever it was.
“Such words! How could you possibly….”
With a dull thud and a wet sound!
The blade pierced through ribs and heart, trembling slightly, and as it was withdrawn, blood poured forth like a stream from front and back.
Boris’s arm convulsed briefly, then stilled. The wound on his back, which had borne such force to pierce through in one motion, tore open and blood and pus dripped steadily.
It was his first killing with the sword Nauplion had lent him. As a metallic stench spread, Marinov’s unfocused pupils fixed on Boris’s face.
Looking down at the blood flowing along the blade, Boris murmured softly.
“…Your final sin was cursing the name of House Jineman before me.”
The trembling body collapsed. Blood pooled like a spring and flowed to the bonfire, hissing and turning to smoke.
And Isolet found the end of the thought she had been pursuing.
A Pilgrim of the Island, a descendant of the Ancient Kingdom, a child of the Moon Queen—yet something different. A blood-soaked human of the Continent.
Boris was not the Pilgrim Daphnen. Never. The fallen House Jineman of Trabaches, a land she would never know—that was his name.
A man rooted in the reality of the Continent could never become like a Pilgrim who yearned for the Ancient Kingdom and chose isolation; Boris Jineman would remain Boris Jineman until death claimed him.
He could not abandon that name. He would….
Return to the Continent.
Whether from the agony of his wounds or the lingering aftermath of what he had done, Boris leaned his sword back against the ground, swaying slightly.
Isolet approached and grasped his arm. Her gaze fell upon the blade. In that moment, Boris saw it too.
Inscribed upon the blood-soaked steel were characters he had never seen before.
Just below the edge, words revealed themselves in white where the blood had cleared away. He had never known such markings existed.
Isolet’s expression shifted.
“This is….”

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