The Youngest Hides a Lot - Chapter 252

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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 252
“You think you can do it? Huh? That’s right, look here. If you can, shouldn’t I hunt down those parents who abandoned and fled from you and take my revenge? Isn’t that so?”
“….”
“XX, there you go shutting your mouth again. You’re damn terrible at understanding what people say.”
The Mysterious Man brushed off his hands with a flick.
“Anyway…. Raising a brat takes a lot of effort, they say. Hey! Don’t feed this bastard.”
“Again? Tsk tsk. That’s why he keeps acting up.”
The men standing nearby snickered and laughed before walking away.
Kalid silently reached into his pocket and carelessly picked up the fallen objects from the ground.
“….”
Three acorns rolling across my filthy palm.
‘Why did I pick these up….’
I couldn’t eat something like this.
A bitter smile escaped me.
The Young Boy, thinking himself rather foolish, eventually ran to the Well and secretly filled his belly with water among the Maids doing laundry.
The Barracks where the lower servants gathered was always cold.
The adults in similar circumstances were too burdened with their own survival to care for the Young Boy. It was a familiar reality.
Kalid pried up a creaking wooden floorboard and pulled out a thin scrap of cloth he had hidden away.
It was the only blanket he possessed. If he didn’t hide it like this, someone would surely steal it.
A few of them soaked hard bread in water to eat or boiled together the remaining crumbs.
Kalid turned his back and lay down.
A throbbing pain radiated from deep in my stomach, but I simply endured it, thinking it was just hunger.
“Ugh. It’s so cramped, really.”
Those enslaved by the Mercenary Company were mostly people dragged here after incurring service debts, or those sold in place of families who couldn’t pay them off.
Life truly seemed to be an endless cliff of descent.
‘Ah.’
Now that I thought about it, that was what my Mother used to say while looking at me.
And then the next day, she abandoned and fled from me.
Perhaps my Mother had simply rushed toward another misfortune.
Thinking of it that way, there was nothing to resent.
Kalid closed his eyes.
“….”
In the Barracks made of hastily erected wooden pillars and canvas, a biting draft always blew.
Kalid wanted to know when this descent would stop, when my body would crash against the hard ground and shatter into pieces.
Whether my eyes were closed or open, there was only darkness.
It felt like being trapped deep inside a Cave.
‘Soon.’
I wished everything would end soon.
He had not spent a single day without thinking of death.
That morning, fever burned through his body.
“….”
I smiled faintly upon seeing blood mixed with my cough.
Finally, the bottom was right before my eyes.
My stomach churned. It felt as though some colossal force was devouring my organs.
The men, as always, ordered me to chop firewood. I heard that one of the servants who used to chop wood with me had died last night from the fever that swept through the Village.
Kalid climbed the Mountain alone, axe in hand.
The wind was particularly fierce today.
‘Was there ever a path like this…?’
A lush Forest stretched far in the distance.
It seemed like I was seeing it for the first time. What was it?
In that moment, an inexplicable force grazed my cheek. Simultaneously, my stomach lurched violently.
“Cough, cough.”
Kalid wiped the blood carelessly on his garment and moved forward as if entranced.
It felt as though I had stepped into a world that wasn’t quite real.
Shhhhh- Shhhhh-
The sound of leaves rustling in the wind felt surreal. I didn’t stop my precarious steps.
“Gasp, gasp.”
Thud.
I managed only a few more steps before collapsing.
That was when it happened.
“Who are you?”
An unfamiliar presence loomed over me. Or rather, it was less a presence than an alien aura.
Goosebumps erupted from the thunderous telepathic voice.
Despite the depth of winter, a fierce hot wind blew from where the voice originated.
“A human child…. So the power maintaining my barrier has finally weakened.”
“Who are you…. What are you…?”
Kalid felt pure terror. I barely managed to turn my head while lying face down.
Beneath the Cliff, a prison-like chasm so deep I wondered how I’d never noticed it before was revealed.
Thin gray eyes emerged from the darkness.
“I sense…. magical power from you. So that’s how you easily pierced my weakened barrier….”
A growling voice continued.
‘Father was said to be a Mage….’
Did I too possess even a pittance of magical power?
But a power I couldn’t use held no meaning whatsoever.
“A vast amount. Yet your body cannot control that power at all. You will die consumed by it soon.”
Ah, so that’s how it is.
“But that power…. It resembles mine.”
The eyes spoke. As if gauging something, a rumbling breath escaped from the prison.
“Yes, I remember now…. The first human to whom I granted magical power. You are their descendant.”
“I don’t know…. I don’t know anything about that.”
Kalid tried to push himself up by tensing his arms. But he failed.
Why was his body refusing to obey him?
He lay prostrate on the ground, his breathing ragged and labored.
“Do you wish to live?”
The words carried the weight of divine pronouncement.
Perhaps this was all a dream?
Absurd as it was, Kalid laughed for the first time—a hollow, bitter sound.
“There hasn’t been a single day I haven’t thought of death….”
Days devoid of anything good, anything worth remembering.
“I’m done now.”
After merely a dozen years of existence, Kalid was utterly exhausted. It was enough. If all that remained was the fall, he wanted it to end quickly.
The eyes fell silent for a moment.
“I see. But….”
Then, a delicate breeze swept across and caressed his cheek.
“Why do you weep?”
“….”
The tone carried no warmth whatsoever.
Yet it was only then that Kalid realized the burning liquid streaming from his eyes was tears.
And the truth was….
He had always wanted to cry like this.
What had he been hoping for to come this far?
What do I truly want to do?
“Are you…. a god of some kind?”
The young boy asked, his voice fracturing.
“Some call me that.”
“Then tell me just one thing.”
“What is it?”
“If I continue to live like this…. then….”
Kalid, who had always been composed, fell silent. Only for a moment.
His rigid, wooden expression crumbled pathetically.
“Will something good ever happen to me?”
To always live thinking of death.
That was, in truth, the same as living in greater fear of death than anyone else.
Perhaps the boy had been waiting all along.
For a hand to reach out to him as he fell endlessly into darkness. For the day he might grasp that hand and rise buoyantly to the surface.
If he could live without being tainted by those mercenaries, with dignity and without shame.
Perhaps someday someone who took pity on him would discover him buried in this place, wouldn’t they?
Someday.
That someday.
“I do not understand the human life. Though I have dwelt here for a thousand years, it remains incomprehensible to me.”
His god answered.
“But Wistal said that human lives are always beautiful.”
The Young Boy reached out slowly toward the prison.
“My god has never spoken a falsehood. So perhaps… your life too will become beautiful someday.”
In the moment Kalid’s final breath was about to escape.
The eyes within the Cave.
That beast, which once took the form of a dragon and was called the god of strength and war.
Breathed its own magical power into the dying Young Boy’s body.
The Dragon God was slowly fading away.
The shattered barrier surrounding the Cave—meant to keep humans at bay—was proof of this.
Whether it could endure another hundred years was now uncertain. There were many reasons for the loss of power.
Perhaps it was because human faith in the divine had dwindled incomparably from ancient times. Or perhaps it was the arrangement of some greater existence, their unspoken law, that gods no longer naturally belonged in the human realm.
‘The Goddess has still not returned.’
The dragon, bound within the Cave, made a decision.
‘I shall use him as my vessel.’
It would be possible—he was human who inherited my power, essentially my descendant.
“You shall become my new incarnation.”
The two powers intertwined.
A whirlwind beyond comprehension erupted.
Darkness consumed all directions in an instant, and endless thunder and lightning poured from the parched sky.
The shackles binding the dragon’s legs rattled. Though bound by these chains of its own will, only one could break them.
“You said you waited for something good? I too have someone I wait for. So come out of this place and wait with me.”
The one who will free you from this Cave must be that person I have been waiting for.
In truth, we have been waiting for the same thing.
The dragon’s power seeped through Kalid’s shadow.
And after some time had passed.
Within the Cave, where the tempest had gently subsided.
The dragon that had been bound in chains was nowhere to be found—only the Young Boy remained.

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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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