Chapter 57
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 57
Chapter Title: A Friend's Sacrifice
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Bernard drew in a deep breath.
That breath carried the villagers' disappointment with it, stabbing into his lungs like a knife.
"Again? Come on, everyone, let's just get back to work. The tasks are piling up, and here we all are, gathered like this doing nothing."
The young man spat out the reed leaf he had been chewing and turned away.
"Farming this land is impossible. Ah, no, aside from those crops, we haven't grown anything else. Yeah, whatever, sigh."
The farmer pulled his straw hat low over his face.
"It's a curse from the gods. Yeah, how else could this land, once so bountiful with all sorts of crops in our childhood..."
"Father, that was ages ago. You know what happened to our village after that monstrosity..."
The old man with liver spots on his hands trailed off as his daughter scolded him, then stopped abruptly.
The unspoken words were a taboo best left unsaid.
"Ha, Father, let's go."
Even the old man and his daughter left the scene.
All that remained were Bernard and the Corel siblings.
Yet the villagers' disappointed voices lingered in his ears, making it hard for Bernard to breathe.
'Is it really hopeless...?'
He had truly thought this one would succeed...
He had been so sure, but he'd been wrong?
One hundred twenty-three failures, turned into lessons for this ambitious No. 124.
And yet, failure.
Too many numbers to learn from, really?
But sitting here moping wouldn't accomplish anything.
He shook himself, trying to rally and persuade Deyan.
"Huh...?"
Deyan's group had vanished without a trace, as if they'd never been there. Only his friend Corel remained.
She bit her lip and shook her head.
"They're gone..."
It was all over.
He really should have seized this chance.
Bernard's gaze fell on his wrecked invention. It seemed to mock his pathetic state.
"Am I really no good...?"
He'd considered himself a genius, thought he could save the village.
But he couldn't.
"I'm done for now..."
Grab!
"...?"
Someone seized Bernard by the collar. The pebble-rough hand made him tilt his head in confusion.
It was Derek, Corel's younger brother, who looked up to Bernard like an older brother and loved bragging about his inventions even more.
Tears streamed from Derek's eyes.
"Don't act so pathetic!"
No one wanted success more than him.
Bernard's chest ached.
"You can do it! You can...!"
Derek shook Bernard by the collar.
Yeah, let's smile.
What good would wallowing do?
Turn failure into lessons and move forward.
"Alright! Derek, we can do it. We can!"
Bernard hugged Derek. Derek grinned through his tears in response.
"That's the spirit, big bro!"
"Yeah... that's right!"
Bernard responded vigorously to Derek's words, but his face was twisted in anguish.
'Can we really do it...?'
His stomach churned at the sight of the shattered remains of the Soil Nutrient Device No. 124.
He'd tried as much as anyone could...
Corel pressed a crumpled handkerchief to Bernard's tear-streaked face.
"Sigh... Get up, you idiots."
"Sniff...!!"
Bernard wiped his tears with the handkerchief from Corel and sniffled loudly.
"It failed!"
"I know, you fool. What are you gonna do about it? But... that Pador guy left."
"It's fine! You think he's the only one who might sponsor us? There are plenty more!"
Who else is left...?
There was no time left for sponsorships anyway.
This land was doomed to become ruins. Everyone knew it. Ehalin Village was visibly gasping its last breaths.
'Where did it all go wrong?'
The sudden land development that had swept into Ehalin Village, changing the soil. And now, the villagers couldn't even leave.
The village was far from normal. It was being toyed with by Imperial Land Supervisor Cecil and his gang.
'Is escaping the answer...?'
He knew that was the only option.
But was it really?
No, don't give up yet.
While the villagers still had their sanity, he needed to revive the land quickly.
But reviving the land wasn't the only solution.
The critical financial issues had to be resolved too.
Bernard had two things to fix.
Sever the debt ties between Land Supervisor Cecil and the villagers, and restore this land.
Only then could the village survive.
For that, noble patronage was essential.
Forget the research costs for the Soil Nutrient Device—the debts the village had racked up to Cecil were beyond what Bernard could handle alone.
That's why the villagers were at the mercy of Cecil and his mercenaries.
So, the only thing on Bernard's mind was noble sponsorship.
A headache throbbed in Bernard's skull as he stretched.
"What a shame about that guy. I had even cooler inventions left to show!"
Bernard forced a smile and headed back to his workshop.
And...
There were eyes watching the three of them.
From a hill overlooking the village, Deyan's group had even spread out a mat.
Jayvolg glanced at Bernard's back and asked Deyan.
"Young master, are we really leaving? It failed, sure, but he seemed decent enough."
Deyan replied from his half-reclined position.
"Hardly. Turning away after one failure is like dropping your sword after one botched swing."
Then why leave?
Deyan had stormed out of the village like a disappointed noble after the invention flopped.
The others, feeling regretful, had grumbled to him.
"At least tell us why. I'm too dumb to get it!"
"Yeah, there were some amazing inventions too."
"I agree."
Deyan smirked, seeing that all three had acknowledged Bernard's talent.
"When bringing someone into your fold, you approach carefully. To make them truly believe in and follow you, you must become the one who can grant their deepest wish. And most importantly, the follower and the leader must share aligned interests. In other words, they must dream the same dream."
Jayvolg and Nellin gave up trying to understand Deyan's cryptic words.
- Don't overthink it.
The young master always did this.
Just follow along, and the answer would come eventually.
In truth, Deyan had never intended to look at the inventions from the start.
'His talent is proven...'
Hadn't the future already shown it?
And in person, Bernard had demonstrated more than enough skill so far.
Then why not take him in?
Blindly recruiting based on talent alone would be foolish.
Talent mattered, of course. But character mattered more.
What Deyan knew about Bernard: he was an exceptional inventor.
That was it.
He didn't know who Bernard really was.
Why he craved sponsorship funds so desperately.
Why he stayed in the village despite his skills.
What drove him to create the Soil Nutrient Device.
He knew none of it.
Deyan's sole purpose in coming to Bernard's village was to learn who he was.
So, he had to judge for himself if Bernard was worth keeping close.
'If he's anything like Ian and the Evil Society... those rotten seeds of malice, no need to associate.'
Bernard was just a potential ally, not an absolute necessity.
From the situation so far, Bernard didn't seem ill-hearted, but Deyan wanted to peer deeper into his soul.
To Deyan, Bernard could leave this village anytime. He wasn't the type to stay trapped.
Selling just a few of those inventions would draw plenty of admirers.
Noble heirs ignored him due to his appearance, but commoners would lose their minds over those gadgets.
So why stay here?
The reason Bernard was bound to this village would reveal his convictions.
Observing was the obvious way to find out.
Deyan stood up.
"Where to? Back to the inventor's place?"
Nellin started to rise excitedly, but...
"You all stay here."
"Pardon?"
"I'm just going for a short walk."
Deyan's voice echoed from afar as he moved.
"Wait, young master, where are you going?"
Nellin grumbled, but Marian smiled and offered her bread.
"Here, eat this."
"Whoa?! Morning bread?! How'd you know I love this?"
Truly an easy girl to handle, Nellin was.
A crude tin house built by stacking iron sheets like wooden planks.
Corel climbed its ladder.
"Knew you'd be like this. What a sorry sight."
In the triangular tin hut, Bernard huddled, staring blankly at the sky.
Caught in his ugly state, Bernard hurriedly covered his face.
"H-how'd you know?"
"I've known you since you were smaller than Derek. How could I not?"
Bernard bawling his eyes and nose out?
She was used to it.
The Bernard she knew always holed up in this childhood tin house after failures, gazing at the sky.
Each time, he seemed like a fledgling bird trapped in a cage, yearning to fly.
The difference? The fledgling truly couldn't fly, but Bernard could—yet he sat idle.
That was it.
"Chin up. It's just one failure. I asked around—the noble hasn't left the village yet."
Corel poked Bernard's arm.
Bernard forced his lips upward with his fingers at his childhood friend's comfort.
"Really? Knew he couldn't just leave after seeing my inventions."
"Sigh, here, eat this. Grandpa Lorede said it'd perk you up."
Corel unfolded the cloth bundle in her hand.
Food was inside. Bernard swallowed hard.
Grandpa Lorede's bread, steeped in their shared memories.
Made from Ehalin wheat and milk in perfect golden ratios, the pinnacle of softness!
Bernard snatched it and bit in ravenously.
But.
Crunch!
"Ack!"
Bernard dropped the bread, hit by a log-like texture and hardness.
"W-what's wrong with this?"
"What do you think? We can't even make proper food anymore..."
The two sank into gloom again.
The bread that had made them happy since childhood.
Why had it turned so tough...?
"Grandpa Lorede has no ingredients left."
The bread's insides were empty, truly nothing there.
Once stuffed with fillings.
Now, no ingredients could be sourced from this land.
All Cecil's gang's doing.
Since they came, the land dried up, and people suffered.
Realizing this, Bernard picked up the bread and forced it down.
"Tastes great! Still!"
"......"
Bernard swallowed half-chewed bread and spoke.
"Don't worry. Once the Soil Nutrient Device succeeds, this land will live again. No more freak crops or villagers slaving for Cecil's coin. Noble sponsorship handles the money and research; the device fixes the root. We can do it!"
Bernard peered through his telescope at the village, bread in mouth.
Men and women, young and old, trudged off with farming tools.
Mercenaries watched them, alongside haggard folk.
The barren village resembled a machine grinding to a halt.
Bernard's telescope shifted to the village center.
"Haa."
At the center, the guardian tree stood like a withered sentinel, shedding leaves like bleeding tears.
Like that parched tree.
Cecil and his crew slowly, insidiously drained the village's life. Property, emotions, people.
Taking everything.
Resistance was impossible.
The whole village owed Cecil. They'd collared themselves.
It was debt born of Cecil's deceit, but...
His scheme was so airtight, nowhere to report it.
'We have to break free somehow...'
Hence the Soil Nutrient Device after much deliberation.
Why was heaven so cruel?
It wouldn't easily grant his success.
"Grr!"
Bernard lowered the telescope.
"No sign of that noble!"
"Don't rush. It's late already."
"True."
Corel stared blankly at the rising sickle moon atop the tin house, then murmured.
"Bernard."
"Yeah?"
"How did our village end up like this?"
"......"
"......"
She really wanted to ask.
Why had those monstrosities taken root in this peaceful place?
Who were those trash humans?
An Imperial-sanctioned project.
Supposedly land reclamation, but laughable.
This once-fertile land?
If it was desertification, they'd deserve applause.
They'd done it masterfully.
By the time suspicion arose, it was too late.
The villagers had all fallen for Cecil.
Who to cry injustice to?
Couldn't tell outsiders. They'd drag the whole village as accomplices.
Currently, villagers aided the villains' scheme.
Bernard stretched grandly, consoling Corel.
"Who knows? At first, no one knew Cecil was such a scum. Even if we owed him, our villagers are so kind. Normal debt? We'd have paid. But we all know now—he tricked us. Well, I never fell for it."
Corel gave a wry smile.
"True, thanks to you not falling for it, I didn't either since I trusted you. Should've convinced our parents better."
"Would they listen to me?"
"Fair, you're the weirdo."
Corel paused, gazing at the night sky.
"I wish we could turn back time. I'd yell till everyone snapped out of it."
At first, everything was normal.
When Bernard and Corel were kids, real trees—not this sheet-metal mock—not iron-sheet trees stood.
As children, fields taller than them tickled their hair.
Now, barren wasteland.
"Haa."
Corel stretched.
She half-closed her eyes, glancing at Bernard.
"Hey. Haven't we done enough?"
"Huh?"
"Can't fight back, research dragged on, sponsorship plan failed... It's over. Haven't you used up your inheritance from your parents?"
"T-that's..."
Corel showed a sad smile.
"Let's run away, Bernard."
Bernard never expected those words from Corel, who cherished the village more than anyone.
Misheard?
"What?"
"Just leave. You and me, escape together."
"As if. How from those mercenaries? And even if, what about your parents?"
"They paid off their debts. Worked hard, I guess. So, give up already, Bernard."
"But the village...!"
"You've done enough, Bernard. If you really want to save it, escape, make money, buy it back later. Or pay off everyone's debts."
Bernard studied Corel's face.
"You're serious?"
Corel nodded faintly.
"Yeah, I'm tired too."
"Alright... We can escape. To a big city. Live well with Uncle, Auntie, Derek, and us two!"
"Ugh, off in dreamland again. Listen, you go first, Bernard. We've secured the escape route."
"What about you?!"
"Hear me out, idiot. You're the only one who can freely come and go from this village. Cecil won't care if you leave."
"True... But so what?"
Corel smiled, turning Bernard's telescope westward.
Then she told him.
"Remember the cave west of the village? Where we played adventurers. Someone to help us escape will be there. Parents' old friend."
"Can we trust them? Even if they help, can we get out?"
"Yeah. Parents said he's high-ranking in another country—Cecil can't touch him. So don't worry. Leave tomorrow night. He'll wait three days max, then go."
Corel descended the tin house.
Bernard stayed atop, steeling himself anew.
"Alright! Let's do it! Succeed, return, save everyone!"
Corel, hearing this, gave a faint smile.
But as she walked away from Bernard's tin house, her head hung lower, like a slope descending.
And.
Atop the tin house roof.
Deyan, having eavesdropped, stood up.
'He craved sponsorship, made those inventions... all for the village?'
A self-sacrificing man.
He hadn't grasped the debt details yet, but Cecil seemed the creditor, villagers debtors.
Would their escape plan have succeeded?
'Was there a Corel among Bernard's close aides...? Not in my memory...'
Deyan decided to check the western cave Corel mentioned.
He unfurled Shadow Step from the roof, slipping out of the village. The western cave wasn't far...
"Not a soul, not even a beast."
No trace of the noble she'd mentioned.
Instead, a small box inside the cave.
Deyan opened it: a letter and a pouch of silver coins.
The letter caught his eye.
He read it.
It began, 'Remember the night sky from the tin house roof?' and ended, 'Go to the City Alliance. Unleash your talents there.'
'She never planned to escape with him.'
From the letter and their situation, Corel had chosen this for Bernard's sake.
And Bernard wouldn't foolishly return.
The letter urged him not to, and going back would render her sacrifice meaningless.
Having read it, Deyan finally understood Bernard's baffling actions in the future.
The world's richest man.
Bernard Sherman lived alone his whole life.
He deliberately kept women at bay.
Maybe no interest in them—but no.
Bernard loved one woman his entire life. And she couldn't stay by his side.
He named his company Corel Bernard.
To remember her forever.
'Corel.'
The woman with that name died without leaving the village.
'Now that absurd bounty makes sense.'
When Deyan was hunted as an Imperial traitor, wandering.
He'd stared blankly at his wanted poster. The price on his head.
Unimaginable sum.
But one man had a higher bounty.
Enough to buy a duchy outright.
What was the man's crime?
Nothing major.
Just murdering one woman.
Corel.
The killer was likely Cecil, circumstantially.
Bernard lived for revenge against Corel, and after achieving it, wouldn't he drown in grief over someone he couldn't return to?
Deyan knew.
Because he had too.
A man driven by clan revenge, and one for neighbor and lover's.
Regretting his trapped past with childhood friend Corel and villagers due to money, he'd amassed wealth?
Continent folk called Bernard money-obsessed over people—but wrong.
He didn't love money.
'More like a scholar indifferent to personal gain...'
In his first life, that fortune was obsession from unresolved grudges.
Then realization: no amount brings them back.
'Shared suffering...'
What venomous heart did that innocent man harbor for a woman's revenge?
How that grudge sparked a continental scientific revolution.
What he aimed with that wealth.
Deyan knew, having lived it.
But one puzzle remained.
Bernard succeeded in revenge.
Captured Cecil, took his head.
Yet Bernard inexplicably pushed the City Alliance to attack the Empire.
Why?
Because Cecil was Imperial?
Too simplistic.
There was a reason...
'What truth did Bernard know to move a nation against the Empire?'
To wield the massive City Alliance against the Empire, his revenge blade likely aimed higher—at the Empire's puppeteers.
And the future court was the Evil Society's stronghold.
'Bernard's revenge... was it against...?'
The Evil Society?
Deyan looked up from the letter.
The cave, moments ago ordinary, now brimmed with inky darkness, looming to swallow him.
Yet Deyan laughed skyward.
"Hahahahaha!!"
The cave shook.
This letter was the fuse. The bomb it ignited...
Corel couldn't have foreseen the colossal deeds Bernard wrought for her vengeance.
Deyan gazed at the village from the cave.
The Empire's future warzone from his first life reflected in his eyes.
'Am I going mad?'
The situation amused him suddenly.
An Imperial frontier village.
This tiny speck, unworthy of a continental map.
Here, genius Bernard began his secret revenge unknowingly.
In this small land!
Yes, that's how it goes.
A dismissed small act births a grudge, snowballing beyond control.
Resentments are like that.
Deyan presumed boldly.
Future Bernard: deeply unhappy, madness-consumed.
He recalled Bernard inciting the City Alliance against the Empire—but they failed.
What were his feelings then?
And that man...
'Like me.'
First life: grudge-laden, miserable end.
Regretting it, reborn as Dark Venerable.
Third life: still unfulfilled, driven to revenge.
Already in the first life, he and Bernard raced toward the same goal.
Shared scars and wishes—inevitable, not coincidence.
'Left alone, he'll tread the same path.'
Deyan thought.
If he intervened, how would the Empire's fiery battlefield change?
Like before?
Unknown, but Bernard's fate—he'd alter.
Enough.
Knowing he'd suffered before.
"In this life, one harboring revenge is plenty—me."