Chapter 109
Chapter 109
The girls stood frozen as the young man handed them the box.
Smiling, he added, “And keep that gold for yourselves. Don’t go making gold casually. If all the currency in the world turned to gold, you’d be exhausted!”
“We aren’t afraid of hard work.” The girls had not understood his meaning and continued foolishly insisting they did not mind being tired.
The young man burst out laughing and gently patted one girl’s head.
“Silly, what I mean is that I don’t want you to be tired. Lande has no nasty habit of exploiting people.”
They looked up at the young man’s gentle smile.
In that moment, every girl stared in a daze. It was the first time anyone had ever said such words to them.
They were witches, outsiders in the eyes of everyone else, rats in a sewer whom anyone could hunt and kill.
And yet the Kingdom of Lande… had taken them in.
They had seen a utopia.
A holy nation filled with ideals and light.
But did you know?
The taller a tree grew, the deeper its roots reached into darkness.
Wherever light existed, darkness would exist as well.
Their world was too beautiful. When they finally faced the darkness in human nature, how lost and helpless would they be?
The destruction of the Kingdom of Lande was inevitable. No utopia endured forever.
The world before Xiao Huai accelerated, and countless voices came from every direction as he stood in place.
“Have you heard? Gold covers every inch of the Kingdom of Lande! Once we conquer it, this treasure land will be ours!”
“Gold everywhere?! Hahahaha! Wonderful! With our five nations united, why would we fear one tiny kingdom?”
In the blink of an eye, crimson stained the heavens. Cannons thundered across the battlefield, ten thousand horses screamed, killing cries shook the sky, and voices roared in agony.
Heaven became hell in the span of a breath.
Human corruption rotted its roots, and the utopia fell within a single day.
The young man shed his boyishness. Clad in battle armor and holding a sword, he stood at the very front while the people cried, “Why? Why must we go to war against all the other nations?”
How could he not know?
Those rumors were to blame.
Yet he would blame no one.
The war could not be avoided. If Lande showed weakness once, it would face exploitation again and again, each time more brutal than the last.
They could not lose this war.
The young man ascended a high platform, his bearing proud and resolute as he rallied the people.
He saw anxiety on the witches’ faces below. He pressed a forefinger to his lips and smiled faintly.
As though saying, “Don’t worry. Everything will be all right.”
Xiao Huai’s eyes trembled. He knew how this battle would end.
Before war, life was worth nothing. It hunted every living being without distinction.
This was a massacre, an act of annihilation cruel beyond measure.
For the sake of imaginary gold, they shelled every inch of the Kingdom of Lande, gunshots ringing through the streets.
The adults comforted the children, telling them those sounds were only fireworks and firecrackers.
The children did not understand. They thought those brilliant “firecrackers” were beautiful and novel, never realizing they were savage weapons that had killed countless people.
How could cold weapons stand against firearms?
The prince knelt on the ground, covered in blood, his body riddled with holes.
Xiao Huai slowly crossed the mountain of corpses and came to the prince’s side. He reached out and, for one instant, almost seemed to touch him.
But he knew he had touched nothing but air.
“Fuck, what kind of barren dump is this? Weren’t they supposed to have gold everywhere? There’s nothing here! Even the palace vault is full of worthless toys.”
High-ranking officials and nobles stepped down from their carriages, complaining while pinching their noses against the stench of the battlefield.
“I heard their kingdom was hiding a group of freaks.”
“What freaks? They’re witches.”
“Right, witches. Maybe they can use magic to turn things into treasure. How about we find them?”
“Hee-hee, good idea. We can throw them away once we’ve had our fun.”
The prince’s lashes trembled. He spat out a mouthful of blood and staggered to his feet.
“Oh! Look! Someone’s still alive. Well, well. Don’t tell me he’s one of Lande’s nobles.”
“Interesting. He’s still breathing with wounds that bad. Give me the gun. I’ll put him out of his misery.” A middle-aged man with peacock feathers stuck in his hair waved cheerfully to a servant.
The gun settled into his hand. He pulled the trigger, sending a bullet toward the prince’s forehead.
At the final instant, the bullet struck an invisible barrier and stopped.
The nobles’ minds went blank. They had seen a monster!
A quiet transformation began behind the prince. His skin split open, and a pair of ink-black wings snapped outward like the fall of night, swallowing the air around him.
As the wings unfurled, his legs also began to change. They warped until they became a pair of vicious talons like those of a three-legged crow.
He opened his eyes. Crow-feather patterns covered every inch of his skin.
His voice was hoarse beyond recognition. “If you wish to harm innocent people, you’ll have to step over my corpse first.”
“Riiip!”
The nobles immediately sensed something was wrong and fled in great strides, but it was already too late.
The talons tore open their stomachs faster than the eye could follow, spilling intestines across the ground.
“Ahhhhh!!”
They roared in agony, but their pain did not amount to one ten-thousandth of what the prince endured.
All the hidden power of the Kingdom of Lande surged from underground and covered the prince. His expression visibly twisted in agony.
It was power, but also a curse. Only the royal family could control it.
It was the power the divine race had bestowed upon the Kingdom of Lande.
Yet the instant that power was unleashed, the end had begun. Lande would form a pact with a god, and the kingdom would become one part of the game.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
The prince curled up on the ground, trembling as his black feathers wrapped tightly around him.
Suddenly, he felt warmth against his wings. More and more warmth gathered there.
He froze, then carefully opened a slit between his wings. The witches were embracing him and weeping. They were not alone. Many citizens scattered throughout the area had also emerged from hiding.
“Your Highness, we swear to follow you unto death.”
“Even if we die, so what? My lord, you have borne so much for us!”
The prince shook his head and roared, “Stay away from me! I can’t control this power!”
He could not control the power of the three-legged crow.
The people shook their heads. “From the moment the nation fell, none of us ever intended to survive alone. Where the nation stands, our homes stand. You are the hope of us all…”
Tears filled the prince’s eyes, and his voice choked. “No. You have to leave this place! Live freely!”
As the last word fell, he soared into the air. He would rather burn his own soul, become a puppet without heart or spirit, and remain imprisoned here forever.
He would never force the surviving people to bear the consequences of the power he had used.
If the kingdom was destined to become part of the game, he wanted to be the only one imprisoned. Everyone else would be free.
But then… something changed.