Chapter 457
Chapter 457
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 21
Chapter Title: Another Solo Play (16)
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“This place is a mishmash of mansions from the surface that came crashing down when the rift first appeared. They’re astonishingly lavish and sturdy.”
“The mansions in the City of Saints belonged to the empire’s top-tier nobles, after all. Er… Mutts, originally known as Mutation Blood, are a race that gradually emerged around 220 years ago and reached their peak. They’re divided into the queen, named ones, production-type Mutts called Chambermaids, and the lesser Mutts—a simple structure relative to their sizes.”
“The queen and the named ones. Chambermaids and their underlings below them, huh.”
Scratch, scratch—
“That’s right. Among them, the named ones—direct offspring birthed by the queen herself—and Nigmi now—”
Whoosh, whoosh!
Clack!
“N-Nigmi was included…”
“Hold on. The quill broke.”
Because Pauld was treating this ‘talking-to-ourselves’ situation with utmost seriousness, the king and my conversation proceeded with us facing opposite walls.
Of course, humanly speaking, it took tremendous self-control to tear my eyes away from that bizarre spectacle.
The king of the Mutts. The ruler of a mongrel race of every species imaginable, the one who nearly devoured the world in just two years, was passionately taking notes behind my back.
He’d propped a door-sized book emblazoned with the Wisdom Church’s symbol atop legs covered in insect chitin like armor over animal limbs.
His massive hand, fitting his build, wielded a luxurious quill the size of his fingernail without rest.
The lion-headed king, who exuded an aura that overwhelmed me, huffed excitedly enough to make the stacked books around him flutter as he documented the queen’s life story—things he didn’t know.
That was the king of the Mutts. The infamous terror born from a black magic mishap, the ‘king’ of Mutation Blood that nearly swallowed the world in a mere two years.
“…Grrr, ahem!”
“Ah, uh… Nigmi was among the named ones, and unlike now, she resembled a lizardman, with scales in a mix of green and turquoise.”
“Green and turquoise. Quite an elegant appearance, I imagine.”
Poke, poke!
Something jabbed my back, so I turned to see Kauld pretending to look away while shoving his massive book and quill toward me.
Ahem, ahem!
“W-What?”
“…In this place thick with the emperor’s curse, seeing illusions and muttering to oneself isn’t such a big deal. And there are those who lose their minds like sleepwalkers and act without knowing it.”
Poke, poke, poke!
Urging me on, his book contained my mutterings recorded in elegant handwriting worthy of royalty and prose rivaling a master novelist, with a half-finished portrait beside it like an illustration.
With the caption [Queen. Age 1 at the time].
“…You want me to draw it?”
“I’m just talking to myself, and unbeknownst to me, I’m recording what I see and hear through hallucinations.”
“I can’t draw.”
“Roughly, just the outline.”
Good lord. Kauld’s dignified baritone voice trembled with anticipation.
So, he was obeying Nigmi’s order not to investigate her past with the Mutts while still desperate to learn about it somehow.
‘This is the king of the Mutts?’
How could this not be an illusion but reality? The king of the Mutts—a blood-soaked monster the size of a castle wall with hundreds of eyes—not buried in books like a mother-complex lion-head! I’d pinched my cheeks over ten times already and fiddled with my few holy water vials five times. No matter how I looked, this screamed curse-induced hallucination.
I shook off the ridiculous thoughts and roughly sketched the illustration before handing it back. A pleased growl came from behind, followed by Kauld’s mutterings.
“You wouldn’t understand easily. Why we follow the queen so devotedly. Even though the Mutts once called the ‘Evil Spirit Queen’ had no mental waves or any coercive power.”
Kauld brushed away the ruined illustration with the back of his hand (the outline before I touched it had been near-artistic).
“…Since this is our story, no need to mutter it as a soliloquy.”
The creak and scrape of his large, worn chair turning to face me.
The face mimicking a lion through patched-together bits,
still looked awkward and menacing. But it held a hint of human warmth somewhere.
“Do you know what it feels like to be born lacking something.”
“Lacking?”
“Yes. That hollow sensation unique to those born without the essential conditions of a living being. I don’t know about the ancient ‘Mutation Blood,’ but today’s ‘Mutts’—every individual carries that sense of deprivation from such deficiency.”
Kauld said this as he reached into his mouth and yanked out a molar.
Crunch!
A purple shard of the queen, shaped like a molar, with a bit of blood.
“We were born from this unknown fragment. I don’t know what creature I was before, but when I came to, I was already a complete Mutts Lord. All I had was a sturdy body, hatred for humans, and the urge to grow my pack. Nothing else remained.”
“Like a vast lake with just a single handful of water. The loneliness, the emptiness you feel staring at it. If the ancient Mutts were violent due to the queen’s commands, I believe today’s Mutts are aggressive to fill that innate void. Minds vast but empty, so they frenzy to expand that handful. Craving larger packs, hating humans more fiercely. We had nothing else.”
It was a fact I’d never even considered. I’d never once thought about why Mutts attacked humans. I’d just taken it as a given.
“Then… you see today’s ‘Mutts’ as a different race from the ancient ‘Mutation Blood’?”
“If we’re talking biological traits as living beings, it’d be hard to separate us.”
“But. Are we even the kind of living beings worth judging by biological traits?”
Kauld twitched his insect-animal hybrid legs. Clearer than words.
“We’re a race born by devouring and mixing other species. Physically, we can’t be classified as one species, meaning mental bonds are the root and foundation that make ‘Mutts’ a single race.”
“Mental bonds as root and foundation…”
“That’s what we, made from fragments, were born without. Thus, our race has lived as meaningless individuals, like accidental natural disasters.”
“Until I met Your Majesty, that’s how I lived too.”
Flutter, flutter—
Kauld’s massive book flipped back to the first page.
Unlike the sketch he’d dashed off earlier, the crude illustration looked like it was drawn by an alcoholic artist—barely recognizable without effort.
Rock and shore. Someone washed up by the sea, and another collapsed before them.
Below the illustration, crude letters read [O God].
Kauld caught my gaze and gave a wry smile.
“Back then, I didn’t know what a god was or understand human speech, but I remembered that phrase from the countless humans who died by my hand. And when to use it. Thinking back, it might’ve been the first time my speech unlocked, since I only communicated via underlings and mental waves. I had to let out those bursting emotions.”
The white-scaled being had washed ashore gravely wounded.
Kauld, with his small pack then, approached thinking it was meat brought by rough waves, as usual.
And the moment he faced that snake-human hybrid white creature, Kauld encountered something he’d never seen in his life.
“She felt relieved seeing me. Despite injuries she couldn’t recover from and utter terror, she collapsed in relief just because I approached, assuming we were the same kind.”
“Isn’t that natural?”
“Don’t assume what’s natural for you is natural for us.”
The modern ‘Mutts,’ born from fragments, lacked the most crucial thing.
Their root. Not mere pack instinct, but a solid familial love seeing all Mutts as siblings from the same mother.
Nigmi, the sole survivor of the lost ancient Mutation Blood, retained that instinctive bond they’d lost.
“In that moment, I realized I was bound to her. I felt my entire existence disassembled into thin threads and rewoven tightly around her.”
Nigmi had no abilities, no powers—not even the purple essence every Mutts Lord possessed—as if forcibly ripped away.
“That’s how I met Your Majesty. The moment my life of mere existence and desire gained true meaning. She’s the only being in this world capable of true affection for us. Not just me—every Mutts who meets her feels it inevitably. That’s why she alone is our queen. The wish of all brothers with her is simply to fulfill her desires. We’re merely the pack that moves for that.”
“Then, the reason you’ve attacked the empire meaninglessly for the past three years…?”
“Because the queen desired it. No other reason is needed when she wants it.”
“Then why did Nigmi want the empire…?”
“…Because of us.”
At my question, the lion-like face darkened slightly.
“You’ve noticed how Your Majesty acts a bit childlike now.”
“…She’s a bit different from before.”
“Your Majesty bears many wounds. Having a heart big enough for all of us means that many wounds too. Some are irreparable.”
Once, when she lost her mother who birthed her and her siblings to one called a saint.
Again, to one called a Warlord. Before Kauld, she’d already lost her pack serving her, and the purple fragment she’d painstakingly regained was torn from her living flesh.
“The loss and fear shattered her mind. I don’t know what she was like before, but now Your Majesty… is like a pure child.”
‘I want the empire.’
The day Kauld rescued her. While eating meat he’d personally shredded, Nigmi said.
‘The empire? What of the empire does Your Majesty want?’
‘Just the empire. I heard the empire is where one family has lived together in the same place for 700, 800 years. A family living together that long!’
‘No way…’
‘Then I want an empire too! All my brothers together, build big walls, a cool palace, and live together for a hundred, a thousand years!’
‘Kauld too, me too, all other brothers… no one dies, just live together forever.’
“I’d never received such emotions before. No one there had. We Mutts, born into this barren world, had never imagined someone could hold that much affection for us.”
Kauld’s fingers tracing that record trembled with an old, unweathered emotion.
“Having endured the same twice already, Your Majesty feared her new family would suffer it again. Amid countless trials, she recalled the empire that had upheld its imperial line for ages. Purely, truly envying them. In her trauma-hardened mind, that was the only way for her brothers to avoid her past tragedies.”
Childish thinking, as Kauld said—something only a child would do. Ignoring causes, projecting ideals onto outcomes. That was the limit of her broken mind.
‘…Yes, Your Majesty.’
‘If that’s your wish, so it shall be.’
That day, Nigmi became Kauld’s queen.
A small dungeon on the empire’s coastal fringe rampaged without warning, spewing Mutts.
Mutts who’d fight until one pack absorbed the other upon overlapping territories joined Kauld’s pack heading to the capital without friction.
Their forces snowballed, the number of joined Lords too many to count on fingers, and soon they battered the capital’s gates.
“Ruined city or not. Shattered throne with an empty title is fine. At this city’s heart, Your Majesty will add ‘Empire’ before our name, and that will make her happy.”
Kauld unpacked his passion in a calm voice.
I didn’t miss a word, mulling over their meaning at length.
Pondering, analyzing, trying to understand.
“Is that it? Just that?”
But the conclusion remained the same.
Their actions held no complex meanings to unpack or ponder.
Pure, simple desire. Nigmi’s childlike wish of ‘I want it that way,’ and an army moving to fulfill it purely, without coercion.
One phrase—wanting to be like the empire—drove them there.
It ignited war in a world ravaged by the two empires’ war and leyline twists.
It choked the empire’s breath.
And led to the mad emperor unleashing plague.
“That’s why this war… why the all-out Mutts-human war that reduced the western imperial territories to this? Over one meaningless whim?”
Even in a world where lives were worth less than a loaf of bread, this was valueless.
Kauld sneered at me chewing my lip over the unwanted truth.
“Funny. As if you humans have fought for meaning all this time.”
“At least we—!”
“We. Yes, what have human struggles been for all this time.”
Thud.
Crash!
The books he toppled with his toe spilled out. Fingerprinted on over half the pages by some large-handed reader, titled [History of the Empire].
“Struggles. Pure continuity of struggles. From villages to kingdoms. Kingdoms to empires. Empires to remain empires. Not just yours—other human histories too. You fight. Culture, religion, economy, or force—endlessly. Fights never cease. Like a hamster wheel, spinning forever.”
“But we keep advancing! We claw through the mess, progressing bit by bit!”
“Yes, dazzling progress enough to seem utterly different from the past. And with that achieved progress, what do you do?”
Smack!
From nowhere, his tail—sharp fragments pieced together—flicked a book toward me.
[History of the Empire], spine creased from constant single-page reading.
‘They, we, touched knowledge humans must not reach.’
An illustration of the entire Blue Line Mountains glowing green.
‘Imperial House, bless the empire.’
The name ‘A-Tomb’ etched clearly in history.
“So fiercely advancing, with brilliant achievements, to struggle again.”
“Not blaming. Just saying—we all fight for meaninglessness in the end.”
Kauld, king of the Mutts, voiced the conclusion from his fingerprint-stained books, his quest filling the grand librarian’s shelves.
“Will to ascend. You humans simply want to improve. Instinct dissatisfied with the present, pursuing higher value. That’s why you struggle.”
“You grind all achieved reality for it. Once reaching the moment you chased, you crush it pathetically for the next. Endless hamster wheel. From worn wheels to better ones. Brilliant progress leads to shinier, larger struggle wheels.”
“That’s your nature. Innate racial instinct—no blame or defense needed.”
The king answered my doubt.
“Now tell me.”
Now it was the king’s turn to ask.
“What meaning lies in your eternal self-destructive leaps? What meaning do your struggles hold?”
“What difference between you repeatedly discarding pasts for futures you’ll destroy yourselves, and us discarding all for the queen’s meaningless desire? Does one hold value worthy of condemning the other?”
In the end, I couldn’t answer.
“…”
“No answer, then.”
“Then back to our soliloquies until you think of one. From your tone, you seem to know more of Her Majesty’s actions beyond that.”
The suffocatingly heavy mood lightened as if never there, and the sage who’d memorized all imperial history and struggles to fulfill the queen’s sole wish ‘to have an empire’ reverted to the bizarre lion-headed creature humming with a small quill.
“By the way, this isn’t my original form. Just dressed to suit since Her Majesty wants the empire. Lions are the empire’s symbol, no?”
The Mutts’ king, Kauld, muttered this and turned his back to me.
Thereafter, two voices muttered soliloquies in the grand librarian’s shelves. One on Nigmi dynasty history, the other on named Nigmi’s tales.
One grew happier with each word, the other deeper in thought.
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