Chapter 687: Destiny for Two (1)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 687: Destiny for Two (1)
Night fell.
With Zephyrin and the other Kinzelo executives gone, Hedo and Sandra were the only guests left in Tikan.
But they could no longer be mere guests; they had to become allies. That was the safest way for Hedo to protect Sandra.
Fuuu—.
Thick smoke billowed into the moonlit night sky. It was the finest Mila Pine Smoke, a gift from Valkas, but all Hedo could taste was bitterness, not its signature rich aroma.
Leaning against the balcony, Hedo’s silhouette was that of a father burdened by countless worries.
“Tower Keeper.”
Jin leaned against the railing beside him and spoke his name.
Hedo didn't answer for a long while, just continuously exhaled clouds of smoke. Behind them, orange light and boisterous voices drifted from the dining room, where Sandra was chatting with Jin's comrades.
As she always did when visiting Tikan, Sandra was mingling naturally with everyone—except Valeria. Hedo had rarely seen her like this back in the Zipple clan, chattering away so happily, completely thrilled.
“I wonder what makes her so happy…” Hedo murmured to himself, his eyes fixed on the sky. “Do you also have moments where you laugh and talk with such excitement?”
“My personality isn't as lively as Sandra’s, but when I rest, I enjoy spending time with my friends.”
“I see.”
“Does Sandra not show that side of herself often in Zipple?”
“Since she was a child, she has never been able to stay purely joyful for more than a few hours. Perhaps only when she spent time with Young Master Veradin, back when he was still… himself. She’d laugh one moment and fly into a rage the next, then laugh again. As you know, the Young Lady has mostly lived like a madwoman. But after she met you…”
A headache throbbed in Hedo’s temple as he recalled Sandra’s room. It had been plastered with newsletters, flyers, and merchandise related to Jin, and she would just sit there, giggling to herself.
“…She got a bit better. No, I’m not sure if that’s the right way to put it. She was still just as strange. Perhaps even stranger. Regardless, since meeting you, she’s had these frequent, sustained periods of happiness, just like now.”
“Then joining Tikan is a good thing for her.”
“If you had seen that room, you wouldn't say that so easily.”
“Room?”
“Forget I said anything.”
“But, Tower Keeper. What about you?”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m asking if you’ve ever laughed and talked like that.”
“Never.”
Jin shrugged at the swift reply, which came without a moment's hesitation.
“Is it even possible for a person to be like that?”
“My emotions simply don't stir for anything other than the Young Lady. I have never kept anyone else by my side, and since meeting her, I have never been lonely. For me, this is quite natural.”
Hedo’s transcendent martial power, his lack of fame despite it, his history with Cyron, and his relationship with Sandra—Jin had been curious about the man named Hedo since they first met in the Sota Desert. He had a feeling this conversation might finally satisfy that curiosity.
“Now that I think about it, you’re the first person besides the Young Lady to ask me something like that.”
“We’re about to become family. We should at least know a little about each other.”
“Family, is it? I don't recall giving you a definitive answer yet.”
The night wind swept between them and vanished into the distance. Jin gestured toward the bottle and glasses sitting next to the ashtray.
“I saw you prepared two glasses, so I assumed you’d already made up your mind. Pour me a drink.”
They didn't clink glasses. They drank five rounds in silence. Jin waited, and Hedo took the time to look back on his past.
When Hedo finally began to speak again, the first name he mentioned was one Jin truly hadn't expected.
“Have you ever met Vanessa Olson, the former Black Knight?”
“I have.”
“I was the same kind of person as her.”
“The same kind…?”
“A monster from birth. The type who gets caught up in incidents just by sitting still and breathing.”
In his youth, Hedo had once clashed with Vanessa in the Black Sea. He hadn't heard her full story then, but he recognized that she and most of the other former Black Knights were individuals born with the destiny of monsters.
Jin understood Hedo’s meaning immediately.
“I realized that fact when I was about eight years old. The orphanage director’s daily beatings started to get on my nerves, so I threw a punch without thinking. Pop! His wrist just exploded. And he was a martial artist of about the 3-star rank.”
“I see.”
“Then, as he fell, he reflexively swung his sword, but it barely left a scratch on me. I hadn't planned on killing him, but the sword I swatted away broke, and a shard flew back and lodged in his throat.”
“You must have been shocked, at such a young age.”
“I didn't feel much of anything.”
“Because the director was a man who deserved to die?”
“Looking back, he certainly was. But at the time, I literally just didn't think much of it. ‘Ah, this is going to be a hassle.’ That was all I thought. I didn't even feel that killing was wrong. It stayed that way for a long time.”
Accidents and flight. That was Hedo’s entire life until he turned fourteen. At first, he caused trouble unintentionally; later, he simply dealt with those who annoyed him and moved to a different region.
“I wondered why so many people who looked like they’d die if I just poked them kept picking fights with me. It was probably because of my unusually large frame and my stiff attitude.”
Jin listened intently, sipping his drink.
“I’m surprised a bounty wasn't put on your head.”
“I spent my time drifting through the bottom rungs of society, so I rarely harmed powerful people or famous martial artists. Since I was so young, I naturally avoided suspicion. In fact, after I wiped out a few bandit groups and went into hiding, a lord once tried to find me to give me a reward.”
“Did you go to him?”
“He found me. I was about to leave for somewhere else because it seemed like a hassle, but he managed to track me down to the abandoned house where I was staying. He told me to serve under him, and when I refused, a fight broke out.”
“How old were you then?”
“Twelve? Thirteen? I’m not sure. The force the lord brought was about fifty men…”
“And all fifty of them attacked a twelve or thirteen-year-old boy?”
“I had a large frame, so I probably looked older than I was.”
“Still, you must have looked like a child. Even if it was an order, did they really have no qualms about attacking a young boy?”
“I found it more strange that they kept coming at me like demons even after the first subordinate who rushed me had his neck snapped instantly.”
“It’s not the strangeness that gets me, it’s the heartlessness.”
“Heartless things are common in this world. Anyway, there was one man among them who could be called a trained knight. The lord’s subordinates trusted him and kept attacking, even after seeing my monstrous strength.”
Hedo said that while facing that man, he felt an attraction to the object called a ‘sword’ for the first time.
“You’ve probably felt it before. That feeling when men who gathered to kill you with such bravado suddenly look as insignificant as stray dogs… I killed the lord and all his subordinates in an instant, and then it was just me and him.”
The man was the finest knight in that territory, but by any objective standard, he was average—someone who hadn't been able to break through to the 5-star rank even in his late thirties. In his eyes, the young Hedo looked not like a person, but like a monster or a demon.
“The area was filled with blood and corpses, and I had narrowly escaped death a few times myself. But at that moment, what filled my head wasn't fear or terror, but the thought that I wanted to learn the sword from him. So I asked him to teach me, and he made the strangest expression.”
“Understandably so.”
“Then he suddenly steeled his resolve and muttered to himself that he had to kill me here. He said that if he didn't, not just the village but the entire territory would be doomed.”
Naturally, the young Hedo hadn't understood his actions then, but now that he was older, he did.
“He had steeled himself for the sake of the greater good. If it were now, I would have spared him, but back then, I didn't have that luxury. He was stronger than me, but he was human.”
If that knight had defeated Hedo then, Hedo wouldn't be standing here now. As Hedo said, “but he was human,” his profile looked somewhat bitter.
“When I killed him, I felt something like guilt for the first time. Somehow, I felt he wasn't the kind of person who should have died like that.”
Hedo stared blankly at the Mila Pine Smoke in his left hand for a moment, remembering him. Among the knight’s belongings, there had been tobacco. He couldn't remember the knight’s face very well.
Afterward, Hedo took the knight’s sword and belongings and fled to another territory. But similar incidents repeated wherever he went, and Hedo grew stronger at an insane pace after obtaining the sword. He began to create his own swordsmanship by training alone, replaying the movements of the knight he had killed.
As pursuers began to follow him again, Hedo realized something: he was someone who could not blend into ordinary society.
“So the refuge I chose was the Black Sea.”
Hedo drained his full glass in one gulp.
“I was fifteen when I entered the Black Sea alone.”
“Did you never think of asking someone for help? Like seeking out a martial family?”
“Do you think I was in a state where I could think rationally?”
Hedo had never received a proper education, and his innate body and mind were far too different from an ordinary person’s. No one had ever taught him how to solve problems through means other than violence. If someone had told him, he might have tried to find a martial family or someone to guide him.
But having reached his own conclusions, he simply wanted to go somewhere without people.
“I heard the Black Sea had no people and was full of monsters, so I thought it would be the perfect place to train with the sword. In reality, the Black Sea was a perfect refuge for me. No matter how many monsters I killed, it didn't cause any problems, and every time I cut them down, I grew even stronger.”
“Then… is your fame unknown simply because you’ve been in the Black Sea ever since?”
“Just as Vanessa Olson remained unknown because she became Lord Cyron’s knight so early, I am the same. I haven’t counted exactly… but I was in the Black Sea for well over twenty years after that.”
Jin was momentarily speechless. Hedo was not the type of person to lie. A man who entered the Black Sea alone at fifteen and lived there for over twenty years… setting aside whether such a thing was even possible, it meant his past life had been nothing but grueling.
“It was also in the Black Sea that I met your father, Lord Cyron.”