Chapter 30
I hated how he spoke tenderly with that utterly blank expression.
It was impossible to tell if he meant it. What scared me even more was how he declared he'd take me in without a flicker of consideration on his face. If he saw my true self, I was sure he'd toss me aside even more casually than now.
......I don't want to be abandoned.
Yes. I was terrified of being accepted only to be thrown away later.
A thick, unrelenting crimson gaze swept over me. Reading emotions in those perfectly still eyes, devoid of even a ripple, was incredibly difficult.
He'd been observing me, and now he spoke.
"You're terrified."
"Do I seem like I'm speaking lightly?"
Kaiser Crisis read me so effortlessly. As I flinched hard, he stroked his chin, then cupped my cheek and lifted my face. A faintly cool warmth spread from my cheek through my entire body.
"What do I have to say for you to believe my sincerity, little one?"
"If I told you I've been searching for you for a long time, would you believe me?"
What......?
My eyes widened. This was information that never appeared in the original story.
"......Didn't you have no idea I even existed until now?"
"I didn't know where you were living or how. But I knew of your existence."
Stunned by this new revelation, I hesitated as he pondered before continuing.
"The details...... can wait until later."
I could easily guess there was some story behind my birth from how he deflected, as if hiding something. I swallowed the questions on the tip of my tongue.
I didn't want to see him troubled.
He met my eyes steadily, without a hint of wavering.
"But I don't make empty promises. Saying I'd take you in wasn't some fleeting whim. From the moment you were born, I intended to take responsibility for you. And when I saw you as Mir...... I wanted you by my side."
Kaiser Crisis was an honest man. His matter-of-fact words pierced my heart one by one, and I bit my lip hard.
"When I asked why you became a hero, you said it was because it was what you had to do."
Kaiser took a step forward, closing the distance. He lightly scooped up me—head bowed, avoiding his gaze—into his arms. My body floated into the air, settling against his chest. His firm arm brushed my nape.
"For a father, taking responsibility for his daughter is only natural. That's why I want to take you in—it's my duty. But I have one more reason."
He tilted his head down to meet my eyes where I nestled in his embrace and gave a small smile.
"I like you."
I couldn't comprehend it, couldn't believe it. But even without understanding, I wanted to believe.
......Just for today, I'll believe him.
Exhausted in body and soul, craving warmth, his embrace felt searingly hot. I closed my misty eyes and let my thoughts fade.
Kaiser Calad de Kenis Crisis had been born with everything.
As the only son of the ducal house, the title of duke was his birthright. Blessed with genius-level sword talent, he reached the Sword Master realm at the astonishingly young age of twenty-four. Everyone agreed he was the empire's youngest Sword Master ever.
The immense power and wealth handed to him from birth, a privileged environment, and innate genius with the blade. Kaiser Crisis was the kind of man one could call flawlessly born.
The only problem among all he'd been given from birth was his father.
"That commoner bastard dares! Cut off this wretch's head!"
"I'm a duke! The only duke in this country!"
Kaiser’s father, Duke Kenis Crisis, was trash through and through. Blinded by a sense of superiority, he couldn't see straight— a violent brute with a foul temper. The mansion's furnishings shattered in his hands several times a day, and servants were beaten daily, carted out as corpses at the drop of a hat.
"Stop drinking and handle the paperwork? Have you lost your mind? Who do you think you're ordering around!? Beat this damned fool and kick him out! Bring more booze!"
His personality alone made him garbage, but he was incompetent on top of that. The non-recyclable kind.
His mother couldn't endure the old man's ravings and died young. Kaiser suffered under them throughout his childhood.
"You useless shit! Go buy me booze!"
"D-Duke......! How can you ask the young master to—"
"Shut your trap? This demon spawn's still standing there like an idiot!"
His father was the first in the Crisis line—which had produced great knights for generations—to be born without sword talent. Long mocked for being a Crisis who couldn't wield a blade, he envied the century's genius, Kaiser.
"Lazy brat! How dare you sleep already? Get out here and grab a sword!"
Every night, drunk, he'd barge into Kaiser's room, beating him mercilessly and forcing sword practice. Humiliating him in front of the servants was routine, laying hands on the innocent boy was frequent, and verbal abuse was daily life.
People pitied the young heir suffering domestic violence from his father, but no one intervened. Even if the duke was worthless trash, defying him was terrifying. It was only natural.
What a hassle.
But Kaiser felt nothing toward his father. No anger, no hatred—just indifference. Even when the old man punched him in the face, he felt no emotion. A trained swordsman like him wouldn't even feel pain from the geezer's blows anyway.
It was just a bother having to watch the ravings.
People get hurt by others because they feel something for them, even a little. Kaiser didn't love his father.
He didn't hate him either.
To him, his father was nothing.
Not even the death of the mother who bore him stirred any feeling in Kaiser.
Kaiser Crisis couldn't love.
He was born that way.
The year Kaiser turned twenty, Duke Kenis Crisis weakened from chronic drinking and took to his sickbed.
"I never once thought of you as my son. So don't think of me as your father—kill me."
The words of a man who'd wasted his life in envy and inferiority were pathetic. Gasping his last breaths with a frail body, the father issued his final command to Kaiser.
Stab.
For Kaiser, killing a person was easier than eating. He impassively looked down at his instantly dead father, heart pierced, then turned away.
The death of what was now just a lump of meat stirred nothing in him.
Ending the worthless old man's life painlessly was Kaiser's final mercy.
"The new Duke Crisis who inherited the title this time? Word is he killed his own father to get it."
"Really? Well, those blood-red eyes were creepy...... Demon spawn."
Officially, the previous duke's cause of death was illness, but rumors that Kaiser killed him spread like an open secret across the empire.
Word got out among the servants.
Kaiser didn't care if people called him a blood-mad demon or a cold-blooded killer who murdered his father for the title.
He just didn't want loose tongues around him.
Upon ascending to the dukedom, he dismissed most of the servants, staffing the mansion with only a minimal few.
"Did the Duke fire all the servants?"
"No, I heard he killed them all."
"Rumor has it servants drop dead by the dozen every day in the ducal mansion."
This sparked even more nonsense rumors, but Kaiser didn't bother stopping them. Before long, he was known empire-wide as a demon in human skin, and he didn't mind.
No flies buzzing around.
Normally, flies would swarm a young duke fresh to the title, hoping to leech something. But thanks to his infamy, people fled at his shadow.
Kaiser wasn't the maniac who sliced people on sight like the rumors, but he wasn't some angel who let provocateurs off easy either. He was glad not to have to swing his sword over annoyances.
And not long after ascending at twenty, one day.
"Your Grace, it's about time you married and secured an heir......"
His retainers pressed him to produce an heir.
As if I could ever love someone.
Kaiser held no expectations of love in his life. Following his retainers' recommendations, he entered a loveless marriage with the daughter of one of their families, a countess.
"G-Greetings, Your Grace."
His wife feared the infamous Kaiser. He only needed one heir from her to avoid the hassle.
After spending their wedding night together, he left her to her own devices. Even when he learned she was seeing other men, he didn't care.
She died giving birth to Kal that winter, when Kaiser was twenty.
He silently oversaw her funeral.
After that, the only Crises left in the mansion were Kaiser and Kal.
They lived in the same house like strangers.
Kal, who took after his temperament, had shown little interest in the world from childhood—including his father.
"Sleep well?"
"Yes. Good night, Father."
"Mm."
Their daily life was stiffly formal.
There was no warmth from Kal toward him, but Kaiser wasn't dissatisfied.
He had no passion to be a great father, but he refused to become like his own. Better a formal father-son relationship than that.
Kaiser didn't know how to love, and neither did Kal, so they had no complaints about each other.
Kaiser Crisis wasn't living.
He was just enduring the boredom that stormed in like gales, day by day.
He didn't want to be an incompetent fool like his father, so he fulfilled his ducal duties. But nothing brought him joy.
He'd reached the peak of wealth and status, indulged in every pleasure. His life had been so eventful he could claim he'd tried it all, yet it was all dull in the end.
He didn't want to die, but didn't want to live either.
He merely prolonged his existence because he was still breathing.
"Greetings, Your Grace. I'm Mir, a mercenary."
Then, one day, the existence called a daughter appeared before such a Kaiser—like the only living thing in a world of the dead.