I Was Kicked Out of the Hero Party and the Elves I Raised Are Obsessed With Me chapter 97

97 . The end of a bad relationship

The sound of Leon calling my name didn’t feel real, like a dream.

If I heard that voice again, wouldn’t it be that my rage would tear him limb from limb? There were times when I had such concerns.

But now it was strangely calm. It wasn’t that he didn’t feel resentment towards him. Was all the furious anger I felt when I thought of him a fleeting illusion stained with uncertain memories of the past? What took its place was anger as calm as a stagnant river.

When I clenched my fist and doubted my past feelings, Noah, who had been quiet until now, hinted.

“Dad, no one is genuinely angry when an ant bites them.”

It’s an ant, yes. Noah was right.

I can definitely feel it now. Leon was not my opponent. If he puts all his effort into it, it will be decided in less than a second. Just as humans kill insects by crushing them, the power gap between Leon and I was so wide that it would never be able to catch up again.

Are the emotions that have tormented me so far simply anger that will disappear just because I became stronger?

So, the emotion I have felt so far is the resentment of the weak caused by lack of power, is that the end?

Leon saw me in agony and came closer.

There was no emotion on his face. He simply threw out a short question in a cold, subdued voice.

“What’s that like?”

The reason I changed like this in the first place is because of this guy. So should I say I’m lucky? Because thanks to you, I was able to meet my children.

I answered Leon’s question in the same cold voice.

“How do I look?”

“What… I can’t say it’s good.”

I sighed briefly and spoke to Noah behind me.

“Noah, take Cassandra and leave.”

Noah nodded and headed behind me, dragging the still terrified Cassandra along. Actually, Cassandra was going to roll tougher than this, but it was a choice she couldn’t help it because it was the first time she’d seen her broken like this. Cassandra aside, I went straight to the point.

“Let’s ask one question.”

Leon’s eyes, which faltered for a moment, showed that he already knew what questions I was going to ask. Seeing Leon’s calm face again, I asked with a trembling voice.

“I’ve known since when.”

Leon didn’t answer right away, but looked away with a sigh.

“… It is from the beginning.”

“From the beginning? You mean from the moment you were chosen as a hero?”

“No, much earlier than that.”

Much earlier than that… I opened my eyes wide and looked straight at Leon. I could instinctively know that much earlier than he said was the day his younger brother was captured by the church. I asked in a trembling voice.

“So you were watching everything?”

Leon didn’t say anything and lowered his head. In fact, I felt betrayed again by the appearance that was different from affirmation. If you knew from the beginning, why didn’t you tell me sooner? There must have been several opportunities.

Silence was rarely accompanied by anger. I wish Leon would say something. Scared to think that, Leon slowly opened his mouth.

“Yes, I was watching everything. At the same time, I realized my helplessness. That was the first time I realized the position of a weakling who couldn’t speak properly even when the person he liked was arrested.”

Inwardly, he may have wished for Leon to deny it. He might have wanted to think that at the moment my brother was captured, he could not help it because he was carrying out his duty as a hero or training himself, and that it was all my fault because of my weak strength. However, Leon said in his own words. He said he was there the day everything was taken from me.

I continued to ask questions, barely calming the anger boiling inside me.

“Did you know that it was all Maria’s nefarious trick?”

“Didn’t I tell you? I was watching everything. I already knew that Maria was making dirty suggestions with the church.”

I couldn’t stand it any longer.

I quickly closed the distance with Leon and grabbed his neck roughly. Leon had no time to react and was caught by me, and his face looked quite embarrassed. It seemed as if he could tear all the muscles and flesh from his neck at any moment if he applied his strength. However, my anger came out through my throat, not my hands.

“Then why!? If you knew everything from the start, why didn’t you tell me anything! Then we wouldn’t have thought of a way to stop it together! I thought of you as family, at least until then!”

“Ahin, think about reality. What could you and I do at that time? Maria had already planned everything with the archbishop behind her. I was in that state. Above all, I was so weak that it would be embarrassing to even call myself a hero.”

“Still, we were able to fight together! How hard it was for me who was left behind, what kind of life I lived… Do you know!?”

In my belated memories, I forgot even my younger brother and made a living right away by taking care of all sorts of chores. The church, which said that if you sacrifice your brother, you will take care of me, said that the land that my parents had left behind, which did not even exist from the beginning, only prepared a place in the countryside, nothing more and nothing less. Neglected by society, I did not hesitate to do anything disgusting in order to survive. As a result, I became a porter in charge of chores for wizards, saints, and heroes in a party to subdue the demon lord, and finally arrived here.

Leon held my wrist and continued his words.

“I thought you were dead after that day. The guy whose younger brother was everything in the world had lost that younger brother, so I thought he would do a guest house on the street or even take his own life. I never dreamed that I would come this far with such a miserable life.”

I almost lost the strength I had inadvertently put into my hands at Leon’s unexpected curse words.

“… Is that what you want me to say now?”

“What… To be honest, I was surprised. When you came to our party, I was even more than happy.”

Contrary to the saying that a good heart came first, Leon maintained a cold attitude towards me from the beginning.

Actually, I understood. Of course, I wouldn’t want to pretend to know. The hero of the continent, Leon, who is expected by everyone, and a porter who used to roll at the bottom. Although he grew up in a nursery school, the gap between him and me was incomparably wider. He must have been afraid that he would get a bad reputation from people because he was stained with me even in his past, so he went around understanding that way.

At first, Leon’s attitude was just ignoring me.

I can roughly guess the reason now.

“Did you try to kick me out from the start?”

He didn’t say anything, just looked me in the eyes.

“Before, you didn’t seem to remember anything about your younger brother. Naturally, I thought that the church had tampered with your head. Would it have been right to let you and your brother meet under those circumstances? No, I was trying to kick you out because you could have been ruined by creating confusion in my memory.”

“Did you do that to kick me out? For me?”

It’s disgusting.

Why did you make such a big decision on your own without consulting me?

“Besides, you had good feelings for Maria, didn’t you? He must have done what the church’s pawn had told him to do. The priority was to somehow keep the two apart.”

I couldn’t listen to Leon any more.

“In the end, that’s your judgment as someone else!”

I tossed Leon away and screamed as if I was letting out all the emotions I had accumulated up until now.

I simply swung his hand sideways, but Leon made a loud noise and rolled for a while, only to stop after hitting a towering rock.

A small amount of blood gushed out of Leon’s mouth as if the cracked rock was not a decoration as it collided with Leon’s body.

“You must have looked at me as an idiot all this while. Huh? Both of you! How funny it must have been for me to lose my memory of the person most precious to me and to take the lead in a party to kill that little brother, doing all the chores!”

A voice that started to burst out shook the surrounding air, and the ground began to crack. Leon got up, brushed off the dust from his clothes, and roughly wiped the blood from his mouth with his sleeve.

“Isn’t it better to remove uncertain elements? I prioritized the task ahead of me over friendship with you or useless feelings like that.”

“Is this the result?”

My brother is still unconscious, and I have abandoned humanity by offering my soul to God. All I had left now was my four daughters who supported me on the verge of collapsing with the guilt of not being able to protect my little brother.

In the end, Leon couldn’t protect anyone. He was the worst warrior who ruined everything while chasing an unattainable ideal with only words and a double attitude. He didn’t need words.

There was nothing left of him. If someone gets in my way, I’ll just break it. Leon, as if he understood my intentions, also held the holy sword in his hand and glared at me without saying a word.

In the past, it was difficult to even breathe because of Leon’s energy, but now it was different.

I was convinced that no matter what Leon did, he couldn’t beat me. Leon knows that fact, so he only holds his posture, but he can’t run right away.

Leon, who had been silent for a long time, spoke for the first time.

“You remember this place?”

I just didn’t put it in my mouth.

There was no way I couldn’t remember. The place where Leon abandoned me, the place where he told me the end. And the place where I had to return with the truth in front of me.

“Let’s end where it all began.”

“End? Leon, that’s not for you to decide.”

The anger accumulated over the years ended so easily that it was futile.

Leon didn’t even know what had happened to him. It was natural. He didn’t need any will or life to carelessly trample on the bugs in the road. It was just my attitude towards Leon that the result of my careless actions led to the death of one life.

With my will to end this long evil relationship, the black light beams shot from the tips of my fingers pierced Leon’s body at once, bound his limbs and hung them in the air like a butterfly tied to a spider’s web.

I approached Leon, who was coughing up blood from his chest and making a painful expression, and said briefly.

“Now I am the one who decides the end of all things.”

After saying that, I left Leon behind and walked to the Demon King’s Castle where his younger brother was.

To the place where I had to leave on that day, unable to even take a step.