Chapter 209: An Ill-Fated Relationship (15)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 209: An Ill-Fated Relationship (15)
The Alitia Kingdom.
Known as the Kingdom of Pleasure, it was a place that stimulated the most primal of human desires.
The residents of other kingdoms envied it—a land where beautiful women were said to line the streets and festivals raged year-round.
To the people of the continent who lived harsh, day-to-day lives, the Alitia Kingdom they heard of in rumors was nothing short of paradise.
But the actual residents of the Alitia Kingdom would all say the same thing.
This place is a garbage dump.
The so-called beauties on the streets were mostly heavily powdered prostitutes, gold-diggers, or kidnapped slaves. The laughter that was supposed to bring vitality to the city was a drug-addled lie.
It was a place where fists came before the law, and knives came before fists.
A nation slowly devoured over hundreds of years by a vampire organization called the Snake Venom Society.
A kingdom whose supreme ruler, the king, had given up on governing.
That was the real Alitia Kingdom.
As a child, Gis hadn't hated this garbage country.
In fact, he’d liked it.
After all, if it was a hard place for the powerless to live, it meant it was a good place for the powerful.
Gis’s mother, Cassia, was a first-class dancer in the kingdom’s capital and wielded a fair amount of influence.
Thanks to her, Gis lived a life others could only envy, and he was proud of his mother.
That is, until he learned where her "influence" truly came from.
“Ah… ahn..! Nngh… Huh..? S-Son?”
Gis could still never forget the flustered expression on Cassia’s face as she let out those fake moans.
“What, why’d you stop?”
“I-It’s my son…”
“Your son? He’s old enough to know what’s what. You stopped your hips for that? Is this all the responsibility of a first-class dancer amounts to? I’ll have to reconsider my sponsorship.”
The man’s tone was arrogant and overbearing.
Intimidated, Cassia began to move her hips again. The man laughed at the stunned Gis and slapped her buttocks.
Cassia avoided her son’s gaze and continued to let out feigned moans.
“…”
After watching the scene for a while, Gis turned and left the house. He never went back.
Life on the streets was hard.
But it was nothing compared to the shocking truth that the mother he had been so proud of was, in fact, nothing more than a powerful man’s whore.
What must the neighborhood kids have felt when they heard him bragging about his mother? Did they pretend to be envious while secretly laughing at him?
Even if the children didn't know, the adults surely did.
He thought he had been treated as the son of a first-class dancer, but it turned out he had been treated as the son of an expensive prostitute.
He was trembling with deep shame and humiliation, wandering the streets in rags.
One night, under a beautifully shining full moon, he met an unbelievably beautiful woman. She had black hair that flowed down to her waist, sharp eyes, a high nose, and lips like cherries. Her skin was a little pale, which was a flaw if one had to find one, but she was a beauty who did not belong in a filthy back alley.
The beauty looked down at Gis and spoke.
“Is your name Gis?”
From that day on, Gis’s life changed completely.
“From this day forward, you are my adopted son.”
As the adopted son of Hailey, an executive of the Snake Venom Society and the lord of a bloodline, Gis no longer had to worry about food.
When the time came, he could now taste lavish feasts he had never even seen before.
And that wasn't all.
“Good day, Lord Gis.”
The noble vampires who ruled the kingdom’s nights also bowed their heads to him and, as long as it did not go against their lord’s will, they followed his commands.
The first thing Gis did with his newfound power was to have the man who had laughed at him and defiled his mother on that worst of days brought before him.
The Chancellor, a man whose power was second only to the king of Alitia, was captured in less than two days.
“You’re that lowly dancer bitch’s son?! Was this all your doing? You think you and your mother will be safe after doing this to me?!”
The Chancellor, who had been trembling when the vampires dragged him in blindfolded, became arrogant and defiant once he realized his captor was the dancer’s son he had looked down on.
Gis had the Chancellor’s wife, concubines, and daughters all brought in and raped them in front of him.
Only when the Chancellor, screaming with bloodshot eyes, finally begged him to stop did Gis halt the rapes and behead all the women.
The women’s heads fell to the floor with a series of thuds.
“Ah… ahh… AAAAAAAAGH!!!!”
Hearing the screams of the Chancellor who had lost his family, Gis smiled. A thrill of pleasure washed over him at the fact that he had crushed the man who had ignored and despised him with his newfound authority.
More than anything, the feeling of holding another person’s joys and sorrows in his hands was exhilarating.
Unable to forget that sensation, Gis continued to wield his power even after dealing with the Chancellor. And the more he did, the more he realized the greatness of his new mother.
No matter how much of a scoundrel he acted, the only restraint he ever faced was a scolding from his adoptive mother, Hailey.
Despite what must have been severe complaints from commoners and nobles, she suppressed them all.
She was on a different level from his real mother, who had cowered before a single chancellor and shown such a pathetic side in front of her son.
His adoptive mother, Hailey, was like a flower on a cliff.
She was polite, but she never bowed to anyone.
She was beautiful and noble.
For that reason, Gis admired her and loved her.
…Or so he had.
“Hailey, a sign of your obedience.”
“…Yes, Master.”
Why…
Why is she kneeling?
Why is someone so incomparably noble doing something as vulgar as kneeling and kissing his instep?
“Stop…”
That person…
That woman…
“She’s not someone a bastard like you can treat so carelessly!!!”
Gis roared with resentment and charged at Cloud. In that moment, the tearing pain in his muscles and the burning in his veins meant nothing to him.
His only goal was to rip the arms and legs off the damn bastard who was insulting Hailey.
Cloud sighed as he watched Gis charge, burning his own body as fuel.
“This fucking idiot…”
Does he not understand words?
Cloud pushed away Hailey, who was kissing his instep, and swung his sword to meet Gis’s dagger.
The two daggers and the longsword clashed in a dazzling flurry of trajectories, and before long, Gis’s dagger was sent flying.
“Damn it!”
Gis stumbled, grinding his teeth as he tried to pull out a new weapon.
“That’s enough.”
Cloud’s sword was at Hailey’s neck again, and Gis froze.
“I’ll let it slide once as a joke, but not twice. If you don’t drop the knife, I’ll slit her throat right here.”
“Y-You cowardly bastard…!”
As Gis trembled, unable to drop his dagger, Hailey spoke.
“Drop the dagger, Gis.”
“M-Mother! But…”
“If you still think of me as your mother, then drop it. Or do you intend to kill me?”
“That’s not it! It’s just… there’s no proof that bastard Cloud won’t harm you…”
“If my Master intended to harm me, he would have done so long ago.”
“…Mother.”
Gis bit his lip hard and dropped the dagger. No matter how angry he was, he couldn’t fight with Hailey’s life on the line.
Besides, he had no chance of winning anyway.
“I dropped it, just like you said. What now? Are you going to kill me?”
As if the question wasn’t even worth answering, Cloud sheathed his sword. He slipped his arms under Neria’s shoulders and knees and lifted her into his arms.
Supporting her lolling head, Cloud wore an expression that was hard to describe.
“I’m not killing you. I told you, didn’t I? Neria wouldn’t want you to die so easily.”
He turned his back on Gis.
“I’ll say it again: don’t die. Your life isn’t yours alone.”
Cloud started to walk away, and Hailey, her hands folded neatly, followed behind him.
“Wait! You bastard, don’t tell me you’re planning to do something strange to Mother!?”
It could be seen as a last, desperate act. Besides shouting, there was nothing Gis could do now.
Cloud could have ignored him, but he stopped and turned his head toward Gis.
“What does that have to do with you?”
“What?”
“What I do with Hailey is my business as her master. Not some adopted son who isn’t even related by blood.”
“You bastard…!”
Gis glared with bloodshot eyes, but Cloud continued calmly.
“So don’t let me hear any rumors that get on my nerves. Not if you don’t want to see your mother in a rough spot.”
With that, Cloud didn’t look back again. Hailey, following his back, also didn’t spare a glance for her adopted son.
Gis felt a devastating despair, as if everything he had built had crumbled to dust.
But unfortunately for him, the humiliation he was to suffer was only just beginning.