Hero, Go To School! - Chapter 41

Ares Balthazar.

Hailed as a hero of turbulent times, this name became a legend etched deep into the empire’s history. Yet his past was more pitiful and wretched than anyone could imagine.

He was born in the slums of Kaslik, a place known as tainted ground, and abandoned in a sewer with neither parents nor kin.

Taken in by a butcher, he was never given the luxury of an education. Learning letters was out of the question. He wasn’t even properly taught to speak like a person.

Instead, he first learned how to grip a sharp blade. The slaughterhouse ran red each day with dripping blood, the shrill death cries of goats and pigs echoing without end.

Young Ares spent his days scraping up the carcasses of butchered animals, surrounded by the stench that seeped from their meat. Yet he was never once allowed to taste that meat himself.

The only food permitted to him was the rats that roamed the slaughterhouse. He survived each day by skinning those palm-sized creatures and swallowing their bloody flesh.

His childhood wasn’t merely unfortunate. It was sheer misery. And that was precisely why his monumental feats as a hero shone even brighter and moved so many hearts.

At the time, the world was like a powder keg, dangerously unstable.

Ambitions of multiple nations clashed, fueling relentless wars for supremacy and territorial expansion. The front lines only grew, and into those merciless flames were thrust not just grown men, but boys who didn’t even know how to wield a sword.

The faces of the boy soldiers were marked with fear and despair. Children far too young to be torn from their parents collapsed helplessly before massive blades and flying arrows. Some wept and tried to flee in terror. Others stumbled and fell from the recoil of swinging a sword for the first time. The battlefield was a scene of utter chaos.

However, even amidst that hellish chaos, there was one boy who stood apart.

Ares Balthazar.

Though he had never received formal training in swordsmanship, there was no hesitation in his strikes as he brought his blade down upon the enemy. Instead of fear, he wore a blank expression as he severed enemy heads. His gaze remained steady and calm, driven purely by the instinct to survive.

It was then that someone took notice of him. Gilbert, a prince and a military strategist.

Gilbert recognized Ares’s potential and brought him under his command.

That was the beginning of the bond between Gilbert and Ares.

Gilbert was a true leader, one who sought not personal ambition, but the peace of the kingdom and the well-being of its people under the sun he so dearly loved.

But the battlefield remained a living hell.

Land, sea, and air alike burned with endless battles. Smoke from burning corpses thickened the skies. The world had faded to black and white, and the only color that remained was the red blood dripping from the tip of a blade.

In that chaos, Ares knew neither how to complain nor how to defy. He had no grand ambitions. He held no lofty ideals.

He simply followed orders, drew his sword, killed, and survived.

There was no purpose in Ares’s life, only survival. Day after day, he obeyed commands and wielded his sword. On the battlefield, such a life made him appear as nothing more than an efficient tool. Watching this, Gilbert felt both reverence and sorrow.

As the unending war wore on and even the meaning of survival began to blur, Ares began to learn about the world from Gilbert. He was taught how to read and write, how to read coordinates on a map, and what was useful for strategy and tactics.

But that was not all. Gilbert opened up a world beyond war for Ares. For the first time in his life, Ares saw and listened to works of art he had never even imagined.

He spoke of the myths behind famous paintings, the tragic loves of kings, the ugliness of human nature, and the beauty that embraced all that ugliness.

Why people look forward to the first snowfall every year, or why the sight of a rainbow after the rain lifts the spirit. Ares came to understand that such a world existed, but he still could not fully feel those emotions. That world was too far from him.

To Ares, who had lost his parents and believed himself to be abandoned, Gilbert was more than just a teacher. He was someone who felt emotions on Ares’s behalf and tirelessly persuaded him that he too had the right to feel those things.

To someone who had no parents, Gilbert was nothing short of a father.

***

Thanks to playing Sweet Everyday, I was already familiar with the basic story of Ares Balthazar, but this was the first time I’d read so closely into the details of his life.

The impression the book left lingered heavily. The solitude and inner conflict of a man who had to remain human amid war and violence, and the journey of learning what it meant to be human, surged through my chest like waves.

And the one who used to be a fictional character was now the person closest to me in this world. Thinking that Ian, who breathed and spoke to me now, had such a past left me feeling strangely heavy.

“Compared to that, getting extorted by older students when I was a kid doesn’t even count as a hardship.”

I used to be so scared of running into them again that I’d avoid shortcuts and walk the long way to cram school. Damn it.

I rested my chin in my hand and gazed out the wide open window. There were no streetlights in the night, but the moon was large and bright, casting a soft glow over the mansion’s beautiful landscape. When I inhaled deeply, the air carried a damp, earthy scent.

“Feels like it’s going to rain.”

Noticing a familiar figure moving busily between the trees and bushes, I closed the window.