May You Walk a Different Path
Lactea Babylonia.
Blood elder sister of Emperor Reyna Babylonia, and vice-captain of Black Wolf.
Like the other members, she lived at S-rank — and among them, she stood at the very highest, S+. There was, however, a single difference. The others, bound by the constraints of Black Wolf, fell far short of the ranks that were truly theirs—
“Even if you can't breathe, bear it. You're used to this.”
“Ghk—!”
—while Lactea, though that same constraint lay upon her, wielded her original power exactly as it was.
“L-let... go...!!”
“Shh. Keep chattering, and you know I'll want to kill you.”
She pinned the struggling Luna with ease, then turned her gaze on the remaining members.
“Come to your senses.”
In the same instant a white-gold aura poured outward, tangled through with black and crimson.
Vice-Captain — Lactea Babylonia (S+)
Skill 1 — Word of Command
A hegemon's nature, born into her with royal blood: the power to bind another person's actions with words alone. Crushed beneath an aura that dominated the space, the three members who had been staggering closer went down in a crash.
Crack!
And in that same instant, the masks shattered. The masks that had been forcing the members' bodies broke all at once, as if they had promised one another they would.
Dalan was the first to come back to himself. Yielding to the compulsion of the Word of Command bearing down on him, he carefully lowered his head.
“I have shown you a shameful sight.”
“Clear them out.”
“Yes, Vice-Captain.”
Dalan gathered Ruby Red and Hanryang, bowed once more to Nahan, and stepped out of the tent.
A concise order, and obedience without a wasted motion. Watching her stand as a sovereign greater than he was, there had been a time he wondered why a woman like that had ever come into Black Wolf — and it was then that Lactea, wearing the faintest smile, met his eyes with Luna still locked in her grip.
“Captain. Your orders.”
The overwhelming presence of a moment before was gone without a trace. Faced with a beauty so exquisite it hardly seemed real, Nahan barely managed to tear his gaze away.
The situation is settled, at any rate. Luna had gone berserk when the sub-quest failed, but if they dealt with Mother from here, everything would return to the way it was meant to be.
And yet — why?
...That's too cruel.
......I believed you.
The look in Luna's eyes, in the moment he cut Mother down, kept catching at his heels.
Why?
The woman called Mother, as he had met her inside Luna's memories, was garbage. Nothing more. An auctioneer who took in orphans, locked them away, abused them, and sold them off to trash. The scars on Luna's face, the rusted chain that had choked her throat, even that grotesque shape her love had taken — all of it was a nightmare born of Mother. Memories she must have wanted to forget.
So why, Luna —
“Let go...!! Mom......!!!”
—were you so afraid of losing a Mother like that that you cast even your own life aside and thrashed?
I'll save Luna. But Mother...... wouldn't it be better to erase her?
Aside from Luna thinking of her as a mother, she was a woman from whom nothing good could come.
“......Captain?”
“Wait. I'm thinking.”
“Yes, Captain.”
While he turned over what was to be done with Mother, a conversation with his big brother came back to him all at once. That day, he had been collecting a debt from a young man sunk under the money his father left behind — the father who had abandoned him and run. When the collecting was finished, his big brother worried a cigarette between his fingers and asked.
“You an orphan?”
“......Pardon?”
“No...... I'm not cursing you. Just asking. So look me straight in the eye.”
“Yes, hyung.”
His big brother leaned against a battered door, watched the young man cry, and let out a short breath of a laugh.
“It's a good thing.”
“What is?”
“Not having a family. That's a good thing.”
A cigarette butt dropped with a soft tap.
“That's what family is. No matter how worthless they are, you can't throw them away so easy.”
He learned it too late. His big brother, too, had lived with a father addicted to gambling, then come out onto the streets as if fleeing. Even after becoming the head of the greatest organization in Seoul, he still could not cut the tie, and from time to time he went to send money.
“Beat me 'cause there was no money. Beat me 'cause I got on his nerves. Beat me 'cause I was breathing. Hell of a fine gentleman.”
“Then you ought to throw him away. Same as you just told that man — don't pay, and dump your old man.”
“I want to. I want to, but......”
His big brother ground the fallen butt dead under his shoe, scratched his head, and muttered.
“I keep remembering the times he was good to me. The way he'd beat the shit out of me and then be the one crying. A single cheap chicken he'd bring home, saying he was sorry. ......Fuck. This is pissing me off. Let's go drink some soju.”
“I'm a minor.”
“......Always such a pointlessly upstanding little bastard.”
A few years later, his big brother died.
The cause was loss of blood. He was stabbed by a stray blade while trying to save his gambling father, after the man got himself tangled with a rival organization.
That's what family is. No matter how worthless they are, you can't throw them away so easy.
How many times had he turned it over, standing the funeral hall as chief mourner?
If only his big brother had been an orphan, the way he was. If only — even if that gambling uncle died a wretched death — he had stopped his brother from going. If nothing else—
“He's my son!! The condolence money's mine to take, obviously, you bastards!!!”
—if he himself had killed that man.
“......Lactea.”
“Yes, Captain.”
The optimal choice, drawn up out of a past failure, seized Nahan's mind.
“Kill.”
And its target was—
Just as the cold gaze of Nahan, of Black Wolf, passed over Luna and slowly began to move—
Splat.
Something black and viscous caught Black Wolf by the ankle, just barely.
“...na... no.”
Mother's muttering, which until now had sounded like nothing but noise, grew sharp and clear the instant they touched. Lactea, reading it as an attack, was on the verge of moving—
—when Mother ground the ruin of her severed torso flat and lifted her head toward Black Wolf in a plea.
“Not Luna. Kill only me.”
“......What?”
He was about to shake her off his ankle, wondering what she meant to bewitch him with this time.
“Nahan. May you walk a path different from mine.”
In accordance with the contract between Black Wolf (Ex) and Aria (???), the world assists you.
The memories of Mother (S-) flow in.
Along with that overwhelming voice, Mother's memories began to pour in.
Mother.
A woman who had drifted into the Ash-White Wasteland, her feelings as parched as the place itself. Leader of Troupe — Loss, and the foremost trafficker of human lives in the Babylonia Empire.
“So that's the woman. The one who takes in orphans, raises them, and sells them off.”
“Takes them in, raises them, then sells them on. Not something a person in their right mind could do.”
“Tell me about it. She's no ordinary wicked bitch. Well — not that we've got any right to talk.”
The character of the region meant criminals seethed there from the start; wash your eyes out looking and you still would not find a decent soul. Even among them, Mother had been especially notorious. And so the villains who drifted into the Ash-White Wasteland grew curious about the life she led.
“So what's it supposed to be for?”
The reason she made money even by selling the children she had raised with such care off to noble brats.
“Who knows? Isn't it just the money?”
Money, after all, was the sort of thing that could blind even a sage who had once been perfectly sound.
“No. I heard she went blind with wanting to get stronger.”
She's from the Ten Great Powers, you know.
Heard she brews an elixir that swells your aura out of kids' hearts.
Every kind of guess ran wild among the villains. None of them was the truth.
Mother. There was only one reason she had come to drift into this place, the Ash-White Wasteland.
“The promise that they would keep my daughter from dying. I have to see it kept.”
“You, above all.”
It was a promise sworn with a mysterious armed group — Eclipse.
“......Selena.”
“I'm gonna be a strong mercenary like Mom!”
“Pfft! When you can't even do a sit-up?”
“I can too! I can do one now!”
“Even an E-rank mercenary knocks out a hundred without breaking a sweat.”
“Eh......”
Unlike her own darkened self, a child who rose like a moon, endlessly bright.
“An incurable disease?”
“I'm sorry. The intervals between when she opens her eyes will grow longer and longer, and in the end......”
“No.... That can't be......!! A child who never even caught a cold!!”
She had lost consciousness to an illness no one could name, and even pouring astronomical sums into it, all they could do was keep that thin life going.
“I... we can't go any further.”
“Shut up. I said I'd bring it soon.”
“But what's already overdue, that alone......”
“Hey. Money's only worth spending if you're alive to spend it, isn't it?”
“......One week. We'll wait just one more week. Beyond that, we can't manage it either.”
Not even the earnings of a mercenary ranked among the world's Ten Great Powers could cover the treatment. She was agonizing over whether she would have to let her daughter go when Eclipse came to her with an offer.
“If you carry out the work we assign without a single mistake, we promise not only every cost of treatment, but the development of the cure itself.”
A mercenary's instinct howled. The offer, suspicious at a glance, was a brilliant flower cradling a deadly poison. But she had no choice except to take it.
“Mom! Don't I seem a little better?”
“You do, my girl.”
“Right?! I have to get well soon so I can train. Even if I start late, someday I can be like you, can't I?”
“Yes. Of course.”
On a shabby mercenary's road that had never held a single point of light, Selena had been the only light there was.
“...Is that true?”
“Yes. In exchange for employing me for the rest of my life, they agreed to handle everything. So you, Selena — don't worry. Just rest.”
“...Mom. If it gets too hard—”
“Quiet. Don't... don't say any more.”
“......Okay. I'm sorry.”
From that day on, Selena fell into a sleep with no promised waking, and she, having thrown her name away, drifted into this place — the Ash-White Wasteland.
The work was easy.
“Bring the abandoned orphans, restore them, and put them up for auction.”
The seller was me. The buyers were nobles. In other words, the selling of human beings.
“Don't make that face. Orphans who were going to die anyway — if they linger on in comfort under the nobles, isn't that a good thing?”
“I understand. Get out.”
“So cold. In any case, turn all of the proceeds over to me, and I'll deduct the funds to run this place and pass the rest back to you.”
Time flowed on without mercy.
One year. Five years. Ten.
Ten years had passed since Selena fell asleep. Mother waited quietly for the cure, and she no longer went to see her.
If I go to you like this, soaked through with evil, I'm afraid that alone will hurt you.
“Auction begins.”
There was no longer even anything left that could be called guilt.
“Auction ends.”
Thinking on it, I was exactly as that piece of trash had said — keeping children who were going to die anyway alive, if only for a little longer.
“Auction begins.”
Of course, a child who cried in the middle of an auction lost their life that same day, at the hands of the one called Number One — a man who gave off the same aura as that trash.
“Auction ends.”
Better to die quickly than to live a life worse than death.
“......Is this better?”
From time to time a sense of déjà vu rose, and I doubted myself. But I was already broken as far as a person can break, and I could no longer reach a true answer. As if I meant, to the very end, not to lose even a single thread of goodness, I only ever whispered one thing to the children I had dragged in.
“Smile. That's how you live.”
“Auction begins.”
Mother carried out her work in silence.
“Auction ends.”
Time flowed on without mercy.
“Auction begins.”
Mother, who had come to loathe herself to a sickening degree, grew to hate even the sight of her own face and took to wearing a mask. Ten years after that day, once again—
“Auction ends.”
She closed the auction as she always did, and stepped outside to look for orphans. That day.
“...?”
For the first time in years, a portion of the ash-white fog drew back, and moonlight came in from beyond the wasteland. A child set down beside that brilliant moonlight asked her:
“...Mom?”
...Mom. If it gets too hard.
Quiet. Don't... don't say any more.
Caught in the memory that flooded up all at once, Mother kept her eyes on the moonlight alone, and murmured.
“No. I am not your parent.”
And at the same time, she asked herself. If Selena saw her as she was now—
“But if you want, I can become one.”
—would she still smile, and say she wanted to be like her?
Then.
The grimy child beneath the moonlight—
squeezed.
—took her defiled hand, and held it tight.