Thought It Was ‘The End’, Only to Return to a Changed Genre - Chapter 82

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 15. The Face of a Traitor (4)

Harrison was from a small domain in the western frontier of the Empire.

His father was a knight who pledged loyalty to the lord, and his mother was a maid who served the lady by her side and a nanny to her children. Naturally, he grew up mingling with the lord’s children.

The lord’s children were twin siblings, very clever and adorable, monopolizing the love of the villagers.

Harrison’s mother always strictly taught her own child, “Your status is completely different from the young masters’.” His father was the same.

He believed that someday he would follow in his father’s footsteps and become a sword to protect his milk brothers.

It was a dream from his very early childhood.

However, the peace was short-lived.

When the lord and his wife died in an unexpected accident, the poor but peaceful domain instantly fell into chaos. Relatives of the lord, who had only visited the domain a few times, appeared to take charge of the funeral and began fighting over the title and property.

Harrison could remember the events of that time as if they happened yesterday.

Because his father, who had passionately argued with veins bulging in his neck that he must protect the lord, was now laughing closely with those relatives with eyes Harrison had never seen before.

Harrison was a young child who respected his father the most.

However, his father’s profile reflected in the flickering candlelight and his glistening eyes were as cunning as a rat.

‘Where is Mother?’

Harrison’s parents, who had been fighting frequently lately, had been sleeping in separate rooms for a long time.

As soon as Harrison realized that his mother hadn’t been seen for several days, he was overwhelmed with terror. His father was so frightening that it felt like the world would end if he didn’t run away somewhere immediately.

The place Harrison fled to was the room of the brother he grew up with.

“Keith, where are you!”

“Harrison?”

“Keith, do you know where my mother is? I can’t find her no matter how hard I look.”

Harrison’s face as he grabbed Keith’s shoulders must have looked terrified to anyone. Keith calmly patted the back of Harrison’s hand that gripped his shoulder and said.

“Don’t look for her, Harrison.”

“What…?”

“It’s better for you to continue living without knowing anything.”

“What are you saying…?”

“Don’t ask, don’t listen, don’t look. Just live safely by your father’s side.”

“What are you talking about!”

“Harrison, I can’t take you with me.”

“Where is my mother!”

“…”

“Keith!”

“The fact that you don’t know that is your mother’s will. Harrison, listen to me carefully.”

Keith was strange.

It was the middle of the night, but he wasn’t wearing pajamas.

His milk brother, who preferred reading books to swinging wooden swords, was a thoughtful, gentle, and well-behaved child. Even when Harrison and Kaitlyn didn’t want to go to bed and ran around the entire castle playing pranks, he wouldn’t join them, saying they’d get scolded by the nanny, and would get into bed in his pajamas.

But now he was wearing the leather boots the lord had given him as a birthday present and had carefully wrapped himself in a dark navy cloak.

Even though there was nowhere to go on this night.

“If you want to live until we meet again, you must continue knowing nothing, Harrison.”

“I, I too…”

“If you just stay alive, I’ll come to rescue you someday.”

Keith left only those words and ran away.

When Kaitlyn, who had been waiting outside the window, briefly turned around, Harrison made eye contact with her but couldn’t say anything.

He thought that would be the last time.

*

The fate of traitors was always miserable.

No one would trust a knight who betrayed his lord.

After the twin heirs went missing and the new lord who inherited the title and domain seemed to rely on Harrison’s father for a while. But gradually, the lord’s manor was replaced with people the new lord had brought with him.

The old people were driven out for minor faults or met with unfortunate accidents.

Harrison’s father was the same.

The money received in exchange for betrayal scattered meaninglessly within a few years. Within a few years, he was confined to where he belonged. It was prison.

“You think you’ll be safe after doing this! I know everything! You damn bastard, what you did…”

That’s exactly why you’re in this state, Harrison sneered cynically while imprisoned with his father.

Who told you to betray your master first?

He taught his son that one should never betray those to whom one pledged loyalty, yet with that same mouth he bit and killed his own master. Harrison had been seeing his father not as a person but as a monster since then, so his screams were nothing more or less than noise.

“Damn bastard, if you have a mouth, help me!”

“…”

“You stupid mute bastard!”

Of course, Harrison could speak.

He simply lacked the ability to converse with monsters.

Though he himself, who pretended not to know while knowing all of that monster’s atrocities and stood by while the twin brothers were unjustly driven out and killed, was not much different.

Harrison hoped his father would pay for his crimes soon.

‘If you’re going to kill him, do it quickly…’

The whimpering sounds were so loud it was hard to bear.

“That’s what you get for being born from a lowly woman, damn it. Calling this thing a son…”

“…”

“Well, that woman only cared about the lord’s twins more than you, her own flesh and blood. She was crazy…”

If only he could tear apart that mouth insulting his mother.

But Harrison suppressed his murderous intent. Though his father had weakened, he was still stronger than Harrison, who was still young.

Keith said he would return and ‘ordered’ him to stay alive until then.

‘He’s probably dead.’

Even so, revenge wasn’t his role, so he endured and bore it.

His father, unable to control his temper, began beating and kicking Harrison. His underdeveloped bones broke easily. Harrison endured the violence silently without even a scream, let alone a groan.

He endured with his eyes closed, ears blocked, and mouth shut as Keith had said, afraid he might kill his father if he moved.

Then at some point, his father’s movements stopped abruptly.

“I told you to live safely, not to get beaten to death.”

A familiar voice flowed from the guard.

It was Keith.

*

“Killing them would be too convenient a punishment.”

Keith said, tilting his head.

The relative who had led the funeral, the attendant who often played with the twins, and Harrison’s father stood in a line before him.

Each time his gaze swept over them, only the eyes of the people who had frozen like wax dolls were colored with terror. They had no part of their body they could move at will except their pupils.

“Becoming my slaves while retaining their intelligence and working for me would be a much more humiliating punishment for traitors.”

“You’re going to keep the traitors alive? Even though these people killed your parents and my mother?”

“Death is just a moment.”

The death spoken of in that calm voice seemed very simple and straightforward.

“I won’t leave them anything they can do of their own will.”

“You won’t even reclaim your position?”

“‘We’ have found a new place. Kaitlyn will be happier there.”

Even at the lord’s manor, Kaitlyn grew up receiving good treatment, but the lord and his wife’s love was directed toward their son Keith.

The villagers also found the free-spirited Kaitlyn quite adorable, but they tended to prefer the thoughtful and clever Keith more. Because they believed Keith would become the lord.

“It wasn’t a status valuable enough to bother reclaiming anyway.”

However, Keith didn’t seem to value it that highly.

Among the villagers, there were still people who believed in the twins’ survival and waited for them.

But to Keith, his twin half would be more precious than the domain that betrayed him. Harrison hoped Keith would do exactly what he truly wanted.

“…Then what about me….”

“You need to stay here.”

At those seemingly cold, cutting words, Harrison felt like he was being abandoned for the second time. As he bit his lip in frustration, Keith chuckled and added:

“You need to live here for my sake.”

“…Will you allow me to?”

“If that’s how you want to live.”

“I’ll live for you, I will.”

“Then there’s something you need to do for me too.”

Become a knight for my sake, and go to Green Winsor’s Imperial Palace.

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