From the Tip of the Tongue of the Lowliest Maid - Chapter 79

This work contains scenes of sadistic coercion and hardcore depictions of BDSM. Reader discretion is advised.

He remembered there was something he hadn’t said.

‘Are you seriously thinking of marrying the hunchback?’

That wasn’t what he should have said.

“Damn it!”

Exion kicked a wooden barrel that had been left roughly on the ground. The rotting wood hit the black stone wall with a loud crash.

‘Why do you only remember Theogrim?’

“Damn it, damn it.”

‘I exist too, Arzeletta.’

…That wasn’t what he should have said.

Exion stood there, stained in the red light of the setting sun. The days he had spent eagerly satisfying his lust for battle, fighting in border skirmishes and minor wars against heretics—they had never tasted like this. For the first time in a very long while, Exion was consumed by the bitterness of defeat.

It was an utterly wretched defeat.

The marble floors of the grand corridor, lined with precious stone, were drenched in blood.

A body bound like a criminal’s writhed in pain. His skin was as pale as the marble beneath him, and his figure beautiful, like that of a god from ancient times. But on that sculpted back, there were unbelievably brutal lashes. The path of a sharp whip had gouged the flesh red, and here and there, even the white of bone peeked through.

Pain like this would surely have killed an ordinary man from shock alone.

And yet, this was the pain that the Great Del Rose endured every single day without exception.

The Saint of their god, the Great Impellias—this was the method of martyrdom he had once suffered at the hands of the savage heretics.

Theogrim’s body trembled. He didn’t let out so much as a groan. It was a scene so horrific it could stop the heart of any sane onlooker—but neither the man who wielded the whip nor the youth whose flesh had been mercilessly torn showed any signs of wavering.

Theogrim quietly caught his breath and looked up at the man standing before him.

The man who had lashed him so mercilessly showed not even a hint of disrupted breathing.

The look Theogrim gave Ragnar was silent. The violet eyes, praised as being those of an angel, trembled slightly under the strain of physical agony, but there was no humiliation or weakness in them.

The man who wielded the whip upon him held neither hatred nor affection.

And more than anything, this man had surpassed the very pain Theogrim was now enduring.

Theogrim bit down on his lips to keep a groan from escaping. He hated Ragnar. He hated the emotionless eyes that looked down on him as if he were nothing but a tool or a machine. He hated the overwhelming pain this man inflicted on him.

And yet, at the same time, Theogrim revered Ragnar.

He was the man who possessed everything Theogrim desired. This land. The fervent support of the Impellias that had spread across the entire continent. The status and fame and power of being God’s chosen representative. Even a body that transcended pain itself.

Theogrim recalled the pain of starvation that had once made him into a demon unfit to exist on earth.

…He would never become that again. He would seize power, never go hungry again, and at the same time…

“Stand against it, Theogrim.”

He would make all the power and authority that Ragnar possessed—closer to a god of death than any saint—his own.

“Only at the edge of extreme suffering, the kind a human can barely endure, can one touch the divine.”

“……”

“You will not burn even in flames, you will breathe even when submerged in water, and you will not break even after a thousand lashes. And—”

“……”

“Unlike the weak who lie scattered like stones, you will not be swayed by impure desires.”

Theogrim sincerely wished to become like Ragnar. Just like the man before him had accomplished.

“My son, of Impellias.”

Ragnar met Theogrim’s gaze.

The age difference between the two was less than ten years.

“……”

And not once had either of them held even a hint of affection for the other.

Ragnar lowered his eyes coldly. He valued that about Theogrim. From the very day this boy stepped into his domain—on the day he openly admitted he had not bothered to rescue him from the burning mountain—Theogrim had bowed before him as if nothing had happened.