The Lord Who Levels Up by Devouring - Chapter 284
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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 284. The Truth Revealed (1)
Adrian had shown no response to mana since birth.
Adrian’s father.
At that time, the head of House Whitewolf, Cedric Whitewolf.
He employed every conceivable method to treat Adrian’s condition.
As Cedric was an exceptional mage, he attempted every possible means at his disposal.
Resorting to forbidden arts was merely the beginning.
He dissected Adrian’s body.
He forcibly opened his mana circuits and repeatedly infused mana into them.
He transplanted foreign biological matter to induce mana responses.
Procedures that were scarcely distinguishable from torture were inflicted upon Adrian daily.
The young Adrian could not endure it.
He deteriorated progressively.
It seemed that was when it began.
When Adrian’s mind started to fracture.
Yet despite this, Adrian did not collapse—he persevered because—.
‘You have endured well. From now on, I shall remain by your side.’
Kai.
It was because he stood beside Adrian.
Bernard witnessed the two of them throughout.
Adrian did not release his grip on himself, even in endless darkness.
Kai did not release Adrian’s hand, even in endless darkness.
Then came that fateful day.
A bitter winter with howling blizzards.
Cedric summoned Bernard to the Administrative Office and spoke thus.
‘I am ceasing Adrian’s treatment.’
‘…I beg your pardon?’
‘There is no reason to continue. In his current state, keeping him in the house is nothing but a burden.’
‘You mean to say—.’
‘I am casting Adrian out.’
Bernard’s ears refused to believe what they heard.
‘You mean to… dispose of Adrian, my lord?’
‘Yes.’
‘Count Whitewolf!!’
Bernard cried out.
‘Adrian is your son!’
Your own flesh and blood, no less.
How could he speak of him so callously, as though he were merely a tool—.
‘That is precisely why I have tolerated him until now.’
Bernard bit his lip hard as he spoke.
‘…Adrian has never brought shame upon House Whitewolf.’
‘I know.’
‘He has been more diligent than anyone, setting an example for the people of his Territory, and has endured his suffering in silence all this time.’
‘I know that too.’
‘Then why—!’
‘Diligence is not ability. Adrian lacks the qualities necessary to become a patriarch.’
It was merciless.
As cold as the blizzard howling outside the window at this very moment.
‘One need not command mana to become an excellent patriarch.’
‘Without the ability to command mana, no matter how well one performs, they cannot escape the confines of an ordinary patriarch.’
Cedric Whitewolf’s gaze turned toward the blizzard beyond the window.
‘This Continent operates on the basis of strength. Ideals may serve as justification, but true authority ultimately falls to those who possess power.’
‘Surely not only martial strength—!’
‘How my brothers died, Bernard. You know, don’t you?’
Cedric’s eyes gleamed.
Bernard could say nothing before those blood-filled eyes.
Bernard bit his lips firmly shut.
‘…Kai will not remain idle.’
Cedric had once described Kai as ‘a stray dog with high intelligence but poor judgment.’
Thus, once he acknowledged someone as his master, he would never betray them.
True to Cedric’s words, Kai would not hesitate to give his life for Adrian.
Through this, Adrian came to trust Kai.
And Kai came to trust Adrian.
The two of them had come to regard each other as brothers, transcending their vassal relationship.
‘You intend to cast out Kai as well, then.’
‘There’s no need for that.’
Cedric added immediately.
‘Kai has his uses. His loyalty is certain.’
‘Which is precisely why he will never betray Adrian.’
‘Then I’ll simply have to make him betray.’
‘What… do you mean?’
Bernard did not understand the meaning behind those words.
But Cedric offered no further explanation.
‘Loyalty endures only because there is a foundation to protect and a master worth serving. When that foundation crumbles, loyalty cannot long survive.’
And so.
Adrian gradually began to descend into depravity.
But Cedric’s prediction was wrong.
Kai did not abandon his loyalty to Adrian.
He remained steadfastly at Adrian’s side.
Instead, he corrected Adrian as he descended into depravity, keeping him from straying too far.
Watching Kai, Cedric muttered softly to himself.
‘…He’s even less sharp than I expected.’
And so it came to pass.
Cedric committed an act he should never have done to Kai and Adrian.
* * *
It was a day when the snow fell with vicious intensity.
Snow piled high enough to reach one’s head refused even a single step forward, and the biting wind carved into flesh like a razor’s edge.
The sky churned in a hazy white chaos.
One could not distinguish between day and night.
On that day when the blizzard obscured the view so thoroughly that one could not see what lay directly ahead.
Kai held his sister tightly in his arms within the shabby Shanty House.
Each time his sister’s breathing grew labored, a fierce heat radiated from her forehead.
The gaps in the window frame lacked proper insulation, allowing the cold to seep through unfiltered.
No matter how many times he wrapped the worn blanket around her, his sister’s trembling would not cease.
All Kai could do.
‘It’s okay, it’ll be okay soon.’
Was to whisper such words and hold his sister even tighter.
Yet the merciless cold of the harsh winter slowly stole his sister’s life away.
As fear that his sister might die at any moment began to crush him, it happened.
Bang bang!
Someone knocked on the Shanty House’s door.
-Kai! Open the door!!
Kai’s eyes widened.
After covering his sister more thoroughly with the blanket, he opened the door to find a small boy standing there.
Black hair covered in falling snow.
Crimson eyes that seemed to tear through the darkness.
Delicate features that radiated nobility and refined beauty.
‘Adrian…?’
Before he could even ask how he had come all this way.
‘How is your sister? Is she alright?’
Adrian stepped quickly into the Shanty House.
He examined the sister covered by the blanket and placed his palm against her forehead.
‘Good heavens! Her forehead is burning!’
Adrian asked Kai urgently.
‘Do you have water?’
Kai nodded hastily.
Adrian immediately opened a medicine pouch he had brought and moistened his sister’s lips with water, making her swallow.
His sister’s breathing gradually began to stabilize.
But the fever in her forehead showed no signs of subsiding.
‘We need to raise the temperature of the room.’
‘I’ll pry up some of the wooden planks from the wall.’
‘What? The firewood?’
‘There is… no firewood to start a fire.’
Adrian bit his lip hard.
‘…This won’t do. We’re going to Count’s Castle.’
‘But in this weather right now—’
‘I know the way I came. It’ll be fine.’
Adrian immediately hoisted his sister onto his back.
Kai followed behind with trembling hands.
The moment the door opened, a blizzard howled from all directions.
And when they looked beyond the snow, Adrian and Kai’s faces hardened.
The path Adrian had carved through was already buried under a mountain of snow and gone.
A situation with no way forward or back.
Adrian’s crimson eyes gleamed as he spoke tersely.
‘Kai, you carry her. I’ll carve a new path.’
Adrian carefully transferred his sister into Kai’s arms.
‘You have to hold on tight. You absolutely cannot let go.’
Kai embraced his sister with trembling arms.
Adrian pushed the snow away with his bare hands, forging a path.
The bitterly frozen wind cut at his skin.
Snow piled as high as a small boy’s head blocked each step.
Yet Adrian tore through the tempest, carving the way forward.
And so his sister was able to survive.
And that day.
Kai made a vow.
That no matter what happened, he would never break his loyalty to Adrian.
Even if his strength failed, even if his life ended, he would follow Adrian’s back to the very end.
In the bitterly frozen tempest.
The oath carved so deeply seemed eternal.
But.
As time passed, that day’s vow crumbled entirely.
The cold corpse of his sister.
Standing before it… Adrian.
Adrian’s black hair was drenched in crimson blood.
Those crimson eyes that seemed to tear through the darkness were sickening, as if soaked in gore.
‘A… aah….’
I couldn’t believe it.
I wanted to deny it as a dream, as a nightmare.
Yet the reality before my eyes was cruelly vivid.
Kai embraced his sister’s blood-covered body.
…It was cold.
Bitterly so.
‘Aaaaaaaargh!!!!’
A scream tore from Kai’s throat.
Crimson blood spread across the white expanse of the Snowy Plain.
Each time, my heart toward Adrian swelled with resentment.
I wanted to tear him apart and kill him right then.
Yet I could only collapse and swallow my cries.
I suppressed my desire for vengeance against Adrian.
Because that was.
My final loyalty to Adrian.
* * *
Bernard’s lengthy account unfolded.
The truths revealed within it were profoundly shocking.
There were many revelations, but the most jarring was the reason my relationship with Kai had inevitably fractured.
“Father… manipulated Kai’s memories?”
“Yes, that is correct.”
Bernard answered with resignation.
“Kai had no family. All of it was reconstructed within a ‘framework of memories’ that the previous Count inserted.”
…
“And the reason Adrian became a scoundrel was—”
“Never mind that.”
I cut off Bernard’s words.
It was all in the past anyway.
Besides, even if it stemmed from Father’s doing, the fact that I had been a scoundrel remained unchanged.
I lived as a scoundrel and acted as one.
It could serve as an explanation for my actions, but not as absolution.
What mattered now was something else.
‘Father tried to cast me out from the House.’
To separate Kai from me, he made me a scoundrel.
And by manipulating Kai’s memories, he broke his unwavering loyalty….
“Why did he specifically manipulate the memory of me killing Kai’s Sister?”
“To be precise….”
Bernard paused briefly before continuing.
“He did not manipulate a specific event.”
“…?”
“From what I understand, he used advanced forbidden magic to reconstruct the framework of memories by reorganizing personality and emotional flow.”
“Explain further.”
“He overlaid only the ‘decisive emotions’ sufficient to shatter the loyalty Kai held toward Adrian, but….”
Bernard paused mid-sentence.
And then he continued carefully.
“I’ve heard that manifestation doesn’t occur even with the passage of time.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“There is only a decisive emotion. It means there are no concrete memories.”
“…Only emotion, and no memory?”
“That’s correct. For instance—”
Bernard’s explanation that followed was as follows.
The ’emotion’ that I had inflicted an indelible wound upon Kai was embedded within him.
But the memory of ‘what it was’ had not formed—it was a brainwashing spell.
That was why Bernard had not known.
Which of Kai’s memories had been manipulated.
It would have been more accurate to say there were no manipulated memories to begin with.
Mental manipulation that plants emotion without memory.
It was quite advanced magic.
But Father had been an extraordinarily skilled mage.
“Originally, there should have been no trace of memory remaining, only emotion…”
Kai had created the memory himself.
Bernard was puzzled by this, but I could understand it.
Why Kai had recalled such a memory only now.
‘It must be because of the elevation in realm.’
Transcendence into Perfect Immortality.
That ability made not only Kai’s body but his mind perfectly immortal as well.
Thus all wounds and injuries could no longer breach Kai, and even his mind and soul were now completely severed from external interference.
‘Father’s mental manipulation must have been distorted.’
But the emotion that had accompanied Kai through all these long years.
He could not completely cast it off.
In the end, to fill that void, Kai had created a false memory of his own.
Up to this point, it made sense.
Shocking, but I could understand the circumstances.
However.
“Why didn’t Father cast me out immediately?”
Kai’s loyalty had been shattered.
I was being shunned by the family as a wastrel.
Yet Father did not cast me out immediately.
He slowly isolated me from the family’s members and further solidified my image as a wastrel.
“If he was going to cast me out anyway, there would have been no need for all that?”
“….”
Bernard clenched his lips tightly.
His Adam’s apple bobbed once, as if swallowing his words.
His gaze soon fell downward, and he gripped his knees with both fists.
I opened my mouth to speak.
Then closed it again.
I drew a breath to exhale.
Then swallowed it back down.
As if standing before a truth too painful to voice aloud, I hesitated, torturing myself with indecision.
“…May I speak freely, Adrian?”
Bernard’s voice trembled as he spoke.
I nodded.
Finally, Bernard closed his eyes and spoke in a low murmur.
“…It was because of Seraphia.”
“Seraphia?”
I tilted my head in confusion.
“Seraphia stopped my father?”
But Seraphia was adopted years after that, wasn’t she?
As expected, Bernard shook his head side to side.
“That’s not… what I meant.”
A deep shadow fell across Bernard’s face.
His clenched fists trembled as his lips slowly parted.
“The previous Count left everything of the House to Seraphia.”
I knew that already.
“And I believe you also know, Adrian, that the previous Count placed tremendous importance on bloodline.”
I knew that too.
My father had valued bloodline immensely.
That’s why he would not tolerate me, as the firstborn heir, lying with other women carelessly.
Yet he tolerated my descent into gambling and debauchery.
Because I was still of his blood.
But precisely because of that bloodline, he would never permit my blood to mix carelessly with anyone else’s—
‘Wait.’
…Now that I thought about it, something was wrong.
Seraphia was an adopted daughter.
Meaning she shared not a single drop of blood with House Whitewolf.
Yet my father left everything of the House to her?
My father, who valued bloodline above all else?
There were only two possibilities.
First: the will’s contents had been forged.
But that was impossible.
The will was never forged.
Then the second possibility remained.
“My father didn’t treat Seraphia as merely an adopted daughter, did he?”
“…Yes.”
Bernard couldn’t meet my gaze, his head bowing deeply.
“Seraphia’s adoption wasn’t simply because of her exceptional abilities. There exists another truth.”
It was the reason my father hadn’t cast me out immediately.
And the ultimate reason he had made me into such a “reckless fool.”
“Seraphia was adopted so she could bear Adrian’s child.”
In that instant, the air in the room collapsed.
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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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