SWY 157

How much time had passed? Sharhan had apparently blacked out for a moment.

“Ugh!”

Sharhan groaned and opened his eyes, unconsciously clenching his teeth. His whole body felt as though it had been pummeled with a club. Dust filled the air, making his vision blurry. A high-pitched ringing shrieked in his ears, gradually fading.

What finally brought Sharhan back to himself, squirming like he had been trampled by a massive beast, was a faint groan in the distance.

“Le-Lestel?”

The warmth that had held him when the explosion hit was gone. He tried to shoot up, but pain surged through him like fire, making him bite down on his lip.

Blood welled where his lip tore, but Sharhan ignored it and forced himself to stand.

“Lestel? Lestel!”

The dust hadn’t cleared yet, so he swept his hand through the air as he shouted Lestel’s name.

“Over here… Shan, I’m here.”

Relief washed over him at the sound of the voice, and he ran toward it. Lestel had been thrown a great distance and was now half-sitting upright.

“Are you-”

Sharhan’s question trailed off. The sight of Lestel, now visible as the dust thinned, was horrifying. Half of his clothing had been torn to shreds, and the skin underneath was raw and soaked in blood. If Sharhan so much as brushed him, it looked like dark red fluid would pour out.

He looked as though he’d been slashed over and over by the talons of a wild beast. The countless shrapnel fragments from the explosion had done this. Sharhan’s chest ached as he stared at the wounds. Fear crept in, what if something happened to Lestel?

“Are you okay? You look seriously hurt. Does it hurt a lot? That bastard Parel…”

Even in that condition, Lestel worried about Sharhan more than himself. Of course, Sharhan wasn’t unharmed either, but thanks to being shielded in Lestel’s arms, he hadn’t been wrecked. His throat tightened with the urge to cry, and he inhaled over and over to keep his emotions in check.

“Worry about yourself before me. You look-”

“I’m fine.”

“Fine? Do you know how terrible you look right now? Why did you throw yourself over me?!”

“Shan, I’m not dying, so don’t make that face. I could never die and leave you behind. We haven’t even done it once since becoming lovers.”

“Are you seriously saying that right now?”

“Of course I am. I’m covered in dust and blood, and still, just looking at you turns me on.”

“…You’re impossible.”

Lestel smirked and wiped a thumb across Sharhan’s dirt-smudged face.

“And I’m your lover. Of course I’m going to protect you, isn’t that obvious?”

Sharhan, his eyes red, pulled Lestel into an embrace. Though the wounds burned where they rubbed together, Lestel smiled and patted Sharhan’s back.

“If we… make it to the Ice Cave, we’ll be okay. There should be healing stones there…”

He didn’t finish. Groans rose around them. There were others who had survived the blast, just like them.

Startled, Sharhan pulled away and quickly grabbed a sword. Lestel also forced himself to his feet.

Gripping blades, neither knew whose, they immediately searched for the marquis.

The surrounding scene was hellish. It looked like more than half were dead, but none of the corpses were intact.

One knight’s body was torn in half. The closer they moved to the blast’s center, the worse the corpses became. Some were so mangled they couldn’t be recognized by face.

Only scraps of uniforms gave any clue who the bodies belonged to.

“That’s… Parel, right?”

Parel lay face-down, missing his left arm and right leg. Not far from him was the emperor’s corpse.

Sharhan saw that the severed arm gripping the emperor’s robe belonged to Parel, and was struck speechless. It was a terrifying level of vengeance.

“Ugh, ugh…”

While Sharhan stared in a daze at Parel, a low groan came from someone just waking up. Sharhan turned his head, and his face hardened.

It was the marquis.

He was stubbornly clinging to life.

But it was just as well. Now Sharhan could kill him with his own hands.

Sharhan pushed aside the pain aching in his limbs and glared at the marquis.

The marquis shoved aside Harrel’s corpse, who had shielded him with his body, and used a sword to prop himself up. He looked relatively intact.

Clicking his tongue, the marquis surveyed the area. It seemed very few knights had survived. Harrel’s death in particular stung, he had been the most loyal and most skilled.

The emperor… is dead?

The marquis’s face twisted at the sight of the emperor’s corpse. All the knights who had surrounded the emperor were dead too. After enduring so much and bringing him all the way from the capital to Serman, it was a hollow end.

‘I never even got the imperial seal!’

The marquis had only protected the emperor because of his own ambition. When the empire was still intact, he had pretended to be loyal to manipulate the foolish and petty man for power. With the empress’s family in ruin, the emperor had no choice but to rely on him.

After the empire collapsed, the marquis had brought the emperor to Serman to obtain the imperial seal. Once he opened the ancient ruins using the Kaios family heirloom, he planned to gather the artifacts inside, declare himself emperor, and receive the seal from the current one. Of course, now he would have to search the corpse for it.

But now that the pretense of receiving power from a living emperor had vanished, the marquis’s plan had crumbled. Of course he was furious.

Above all, the loss of knights was significant. In their rush to escape the castle, they had left behind soldiers and brought only the knights who were in decent condition, yet now barely any of them seemed unharmed. Most had only barely survived and likely couldn’t even perform at half their usual strength.

‘According to the records, there should be healing stones inside the ruins, right? I’ll have to use those for treatment, then gather people with the relics and build a new nation.’

The weakened forces from the loss of knights could be compensated with mana explosive. Once he proclaimed the founding of a new empire, survivors would surely flock to him.

Among them would be nobles with their own troops. He had intended to sway them with the authority of the emperor, but now that the emperor was dead, he would have no choice but to subdue them with force. At least the power of the mana explosives had exceeded expectations.

‘Defeat the surviving nobles with mana explosives… and where will the new capital be? I’d planned to make Ailun Castle the imperial city…’

While building plans in his mind, the marquis caught sight of Sharhan and Lestel, and a murderous aura surged from him. Though Sharhan’s clothes were torn and his body bore many wounds, he stood tall and upright.

“Stubborn little wretch, you really won’t die, will you, son of Kaios.”

“If you survived, Marquis, then of course I couldn’t die.”

There was not a trace of respect or fear in Sharhan’s tone. The marquis’s lip curled, and when his eyes fell on Lestel standing beside Sharhan, he scoffed.

Even upon seeing his son in such a miserable state that he might drop dead at any moment, the marquis felt nothing. He had never harbored deep affection for his son. A child who defied his father was useless to him. What he needed was a child who bowed low and obeyed every command, like a dog wagging its tail.

Besides, he still had two other sons who could inherit his new empire.

He glanced at the well. The explosion had blocked the entrance, but it would hold for a few hours at least.

‘The mana explosive’s power is truly remarkable… Wait a moment!’

The marquis’s gaze fixed on Sharhan, who was swinging his sword through the air to loosen his limbs.

Only now did he realize something strange. Why had the one who attacked the emperor in the castle ended up here?

“You… were working with him, weren’t you?”

He knew who Lillian was. The man had shouted her name and spoken of revenge as he died, so he must’ve been from Luhas.

At a glance, there seemed to be no clear connection between Sharhan, Lestel, and that man. But it was strange that the one who escaped from the castle ended up here. And that mana explosive, he couldn’t let that go. Maybe it had been obtained elsewhere, but the fact that the assassin was with the son of Kaios, who held the ruins’ key, was far too convenient.

‘Don’t tell me… they opened the ruins!’

Sharhan said nothing as he watched the marquis’s face grow more and more twisted with suspicion.

“I asked if you were working with him!”

There was no need to ask who “him” meant. Sharhan glanced at Parel’s corpse, then, after a moment’s thought, smiled.

“That’s right.”

“You… opened the ruins?”

“I did. Did you really think I’d hand over the ruins you wanted so badly without touching them? Of course I opened them the moment I arrived in Serman. I took everything I could inside. That man was an assassin from Luhas. He wanted the emperor dead, so we snuck into Ailun Castle together, and I gladly handed him a mana explosive. How was it, Marquis? How did the blast feel? I found it exhilarating.”

“So, you’re the one who destroyed my castle, trampled my plans, and killed my knights?”

“You killed my parents. You imprisoned my sister. I only gave you what you deserved. Tell me, how does it feel when your grand plans fall apart?”

The marquis’s temples throbbed, veins rising under his skin. Even after witnessing the emperor’s death and the mountain of corpses around him, he had managed to think rationally and craft new plans, but now that calm was crumbling.

Sharhan saw the marquis’s chest heave and gave a scornful laugh. He kept goading him.

“Even if you take the heirloom from me, you’ll never get the relics. The place is empty now. Dozens of mana explosives, healing stones, mana stones, heatstones, rations… there was so much in there. Thanks to you, I learned the Ice Cave was the ruin, and that the heirloom was the key. I’ve secured the resources needed to survive in this ruined empire. For that, I’m actually grateful.”

“…”

“So watch closely, Marquis. Watch how I survive to the very end using the relics I got thanks to you. Watch from the depths of hell.”