I Will Protect My Brother - Chapter 56

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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 56
Rosien, driven by her relentless determination, spent the next several months scouring every corner of the realm in search of an elixir.
“Kalien, I’ve been thinking about this. I believe a living elixir would suit you better. Something that won’t die easily even after receiving the Transcendent’s power! So here’s what I thought….”
Could it be? Finally?
Kalien was on the verge of shedding tears of joy when he froze. Rosien extended both her hands toward him, cupped together.
“How about a pet turtle?”
“…?”
“This one lives for a hundred years! With proper care, it can live up to two hundred, so it won’t die before you, right?”
A small turtle crawled slowly across Rosien’s palm.
It soon transferred to Kalien’s hand, then curled into itself and withdrew its head into its shell. Rosien clenched both her fists tightly.
“It looks like you two are bonding!”
“….”
“Will you give it a name?”
“…Yes….”
Eventually, a small aquarium for a turtle named Kiri appeared in one corner of Kalien’s bedroom.
At this point, Kalien began to grow anxious.
Without an elixir and having barely eaten properly, nearly a year had already passed.
‘It’s fine for now, but will it stay fine?’
This wasn’t part of his plan. If he continued not eating like this, something would surely go wrong.
‘I suppose I’ll have to abandon the idea of dietary restraint.’
Yet every day when Rosien came to check on the bond between him and the baby turtle, a conscience he didn’t know he possessed pricked at him relentlessly.
Kalien steeled his wavering resolve once more.
“Yes, I mustn’t be impatient….”
If I became a better person, Rosien would love me even more. I couldn’t afford to ruin things through hasty actions.
Kalien ignored the faint pangs of hunger and lay down beside the turtle.
‘Somehow, it will work out.’
I can endure this. It will be fine….
But as always, things did not unfold as he had hoped.
* * *
Exactly three years later.
“Damn it. This isn’t fine.”
Cold sweat dripped steadily onto the blanket he gripped with all his strength.
Kalien twisted his brow and opened and closed his eyes slowly. The world spun in dizzying circles.
‘A miscalculation.’
Those two words burned themselves into his mind. For nearly three years, Kalien Wynack had been learning this truth with excruciating clarity through his body and soul.
Whether human, beast, or something neither—everything dies without food.
Or at least comes close to dying.
“D—… I should never have made such a vow….”
Kalien muttered every conceivable curse while forcing strength into his arms.
As he barely managed to sit up, his sweat-soaked shirt made a squelching sound. He tilted his head back and opened and closed his eyes slowly.
“Haa….”
Desire slowly filled the crimson eyes embedded within bloodshot whites. It was a destructive hunger—a yearning to devour anything alive, dismantle it piece by piece, and consume every trace without remainder.
‘I don’t make promises with Rosy or anything like that.’
I would sooner lie and conceal the truth.
From the beginning, I never truly listened to anyone’s words.
A non-human masquerading as human could never become virtuous.
I was fundamentally a malformed existence from birth.
A monster corrupted in the opposite direction from my intended purpose. I had been recreated—from Rahnar’s faithful and righteous guardian into the harbinger of the world’s annihilation.
A cosmic nightmare and darkness, shadow and apocalypse incarnate—the Dark Castle’s “Broken Chaos”—fused into an entity that transcended both divinity and humanity, becoming something unknowable.
Slaughter, destruction, ravenous consumption—these were the instincts carved into my very essence from the moment of my rebirth. Suppressing them for years on end? There was no sanity in that.
And on top of that, the heat descending from the “Broken Chaos” within me, combined with this body bearing the crest of Wynack Castle, meant the power of the “Judge of Darkness and Chaos” burned with its own separate intensity.
It was a complete catastrophe.
【That’s what I said. Once you start accepting the heat, you can’t spit it back out, right?】
The Lost Soul crawled from the shadowed corner, sneering mockingly before vanishing once more.
There were only two ways to quench this thirst that burned even my eyeballs. But the problem was I couldn’t use either.
Kalien tore open the collar button at his throat and rose from the bed.
When I yanked the bell pull savagely, it wasn’t long before footsteps echoed in the corridor. An attendant, terrified by the summons at this late hour, approached hesitantly.
Knock, knock. A muffled sound.
“Young Master, you called…?”
Kalien’s eyes, blazing like wildfire, snapped toward the doorway.
─A human!
In the blink of an eye, I threw the door wide open. The moment our eyes met—the attendant’s gaze frozen in terror, the pulse throbbing powerfully in his neck detected—I was already tearing at his flesh.
A terrible ecstasy surged through my entire being.
‘Yes, this is it!’
My ‘sustenance’ was not blood or corpses. The rapture derived from the act of destruction and slaughter itself—that was my food.
I am one who lives by breaking things.
One was not enough. The hunger remained unsatisfied, the maddening emptiness unabated.
I stepped into the corridor, pursuing the footsteps echoing from the lower floor.
Faces drenched in terror turned toward me.
Perfect. That’s it. That….
Just one more!
“….”
Kalien opened and closed his eyes slowly.
The dim corridor vanished before me as if washed away.
No sound echoes from outside. No blood, no corpses, no metallic stench.
I was still on the bed in my own chamber, my hand reaching toward the bell pull.
‘A hallucination…?’
I couldn’t even muster a bitter laugh. Hunger was driving me mad.
Everything I had just witnessed was possible only within my imagination.
Yet it was not distant. The moment I pulled that bell pull, those events would become reality.
For the past three years, Kalian had waged a fierce battle against this dangerous impulse. Just once—surely just once wouldn’t hurt, as long as I never did it again?
Yet fortunately, his reason had always emerged victorious. Because.
Because….
Kalian’s fingertips twitched. The noose nearly brushed against his fingers.
“Ha….”
He clenched his trembling fingers and cursed again.
“Damn it…”
Because Rosy was in the next room, for crying out loud.
Unable to do this or that, I was on the verge of going mad.
I wished I could at least lose consciousness. But my cursedly strong willpower wouldn’t even allow me that mercy. How could I faint when I couldn’t even sleep?
“I’m so hungry….”
In the end, I was back to square one. Kalian struck the ground in regret.
Why did I do that?
With my senses heightened to their peak, I caught the soft, peaceful breathing of Rosien sleeping soundly, oblivious to the world.
Kalian briefly imagined tearing down the door that separated them and consuming Rosien whole.
The only remedy for all this agonizing hunger and impulse was an elixir.
A vessel to claim the raging Power of Stars in my stead. A sedative to suppress the unsatisfied bloodlust.
Rosien was the only human who satisfied both requirements.
Her presence brought me stability, and the Crystal of Resurrection pulsing vibrantly within her body drew in and cooled the scorching heat.
But what good was it to have her right beside me when I couldn’t even lay a finger on her?
Merely staying glued to her side all day, absorbing the faint aura of the Crystal that seeped from her body, was woefully insufficient.
‘At this rate, I might actually do something unforgivable in front of her….’
Through my blurring vision, a memory suddenly surfaced—a promise I’d made with Rosien years ago.
‘A wish.’
Seven years ago, I had extracted a wish token from her.
A wish that allowed me to demand anything except for her to become an elixir, with no right of refusal on her part.
Could I use it right now?
Kalian gripped the doorknob with a hand drenched in cold sweat, nearly crushing it.
‘…No.’
What would I even say?
I’m so hungry I’m going insane right now—would you mind if I ate you? I think just one finger would do.
Or maybe just a cup of blood. If you hate that, would you cry for me? Even tears would suffice.
Or would just one kiss be acceptable?
The Broken Chaos whispered directly into his ear.
【Don’t hold back, Karga. Let it all out.】
“…Disappear.”
Kalian swept the shadow away with a hand dripping with exhaustion, flinging it to the floor.
“And if Rosy comes to hate me because of it, will you take responsibility?”
I had invested years of effort into this. I couldn’t let it all crumble to nothing now.
Besides, the wish token had another purpose. I had to preserve it until the very end.
I couldn’t waste myself on something as trivial as hunger.
【And if I explode, don’t you dare blame me for it.】
The Lost Soul cackled with amusement as it vaulted through the window and vanished into the darkness.
Kalian reached for the water glass on the side table to hurl it, but at the sound of breaking glass, he jolted upright—imagining the Young Girl rushing in—and ground his teeth.
Though his hands trembled violently, he managed to set the cup back in its proper place.
Disgusted with himself for such weakness, Kalian cursed again.
“Damn it….”
Another wretched night was crawling by.

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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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