Chapter 59
Orl was a not-so-large territory at the border.
Because of its ambiguous location, it had long been a region bound to its neighboring kingdom by ties that could not easily be severed.
The Emperor, too, was well aware of its special circumstances.
Since the lives of those who survived like weeds could not be blocked even by borders. More than half of the territory’s residents were related by blood to the neighboring kingdom, and they freely mixed the imperial and kingdom languages in daily life.
The tragedy that befell that idyllic and peaceful territory started almost overnight.
A land that had long been incorporated into the empire without a single disturbance suddenly came under the kingdom’s rule due to the lord’s ambition. Only God would know what the lord was guaranteed in exchange for handing over the land.
The imperial house did not sit idly by in the face of such an unprecedented betrayal. It did not take long for them to decide to erase the long-troubled region from the map altogether.
The Emperor did not even wish to bother with the trouble of war. Naturally, the task was assigned to Clausewitz.
At ten years old, at the very age when the young heir Claude’s abilities were being tested, he was dispatched to the site with the knights.
Erasing an entire territory did not necessarily require force alone.
Clausewitz, well-versed in destruction and annihilation, knew how to achieve maximum results with minimal manpower.
That year, Claude, together with the knights, sowed poison throughout all the farmlands of Orl. The earth was quickly contaminated, and the soil, stripped of its fertility, turned into barren land that could produce nothing from that very year.
As if struck by divine punishment, only that area suffered a terrible famine. Though people hushed it up, everyone knew that it was not divine retribution but man-made disaster.
After famine, pestilence broke out, until there were more dead than living. The lord abandoned the land and fled to the neighboring country. As always, it was the powerless and innocent commoners who died without recourse.
The following spring, Claude visited Orl once more to witness with his own eyes the hell he had created.
Not a single drop of blood had been spilled, but death, which had clearly begun because of him, was piled up everywhere along streets and fields.
They had even poisoned the wells, so corpses lay scattered and tangled, forming mountains across the land.
Even so, as Claude gazed upon the horrific scene, he felt no guilt.
To survive, there was no other choice. You would have done the same in my place. Who would want to live this way if they could help it?
As he repeated those excuses in his mind, he thought. Perhaps I am no longer human.
“Pl… Please, spare me…”
It was in a village at midnight, so silent not even a single rat seemed to have survived, that he sensed a faint sign of life.
Walking through the ruins, dulled by despair that overwhelmed reason itself, Claude found a small figure stirring amid the wreckage.
There, where there was nothing but ruins and moonlight, a brown-haired girl struggled to lift her upper body.
To survive even in a place like this… Such tenacity went beyond persistence. It was grim.
Claude, thinking up to that point, let out a faint, bitter laugh. He found the fate of this child, born to a life as wretched as his own, almost laughable.
“W…Water…”
Her brown eyes, which might once have been bright, were completely devoid of light.
She moved on pure instinct, not even aware of what she was saying. She was very much like him.
She was a girl not much younger than he was. Her terrifyingly thin body, smeared with filth and grime, looked more like a breathing mummy than a living child.
If left alone, she would not last even half a day.
Claude hesitated for a moment. Wasn’t it a mercy to take her life as quickly as possible, since her life was already as good as gone? Even if she survived by some miracle, what awaited her would be a life worse than death.
In that instant, the girl’s life and death seemed to rest, as if tangible, in Claude’s hands.
Just as he was about to give up on being human and transform into a demon disguised as a god, an impulse he’d never known before suddenly surged within him.
Before he had even finished weighing it in his mind, his body was already moving.
The girl seized the canteen he offered as if it were a lifeline, drinking the water. Though the sound of her desperate gulping echoed, she did not stop. Even in her unconscious state, the way she swallowed the water was no different from parched land soaking up rain.
Strangely, the more the girl’s thirst was quenched, the more Claude felt as if the humanity that had been fading within him was returning, just a little, by the tiniest amount.
Did he think that with this one small act of kindness, he might be forgiven for all his past sins?
He let out a derisive laugh at the thought that even the devil would slap him for having no conscience. Yet, separate from that, for the first time in his life, a desire that was not imposed from outside took root in his heart.
He wanted this girl not to die.
A simple, unadorned, almost primal wish took hold within him.
Thus, the girl he met beneath the moonlight became the first and last symbol of his humanity.
Discussion
0 CommentsNo comments yet.