A day and a half had passed since Renee had not returned.
Vera continued to breathe as if it were about to break, staring blankly at the ceiling.
‘… Did you go?’
did you leave Such a thought came to mind.
A dazed mind came up with such a thought.
Isn’t it? It was almost a full moon. Since I haven’t been able to eat even one meal a day properly, and I’ve been taking care of myself in an undeveloped body, it’s time to get tired of it.
For a moment, as the thought flashed away his laughter, Vera felt a choking sensation in the chest pain that followed with each breath.
Now it was definitely felt. The embers of the rest of my life were burning.
Now, this damn life was coming to an end.
Again, a smile appeared on Vera’s lips.
The damn hunter at the bottom of the gutter, the butcher at the gutter, the imperial dog, and the tumor of the continent finally died.
The sinner to be thrown into the bottom of hell was dying alone in a corner of this filthy ditch.
Isn’t this one of the bad news that the entire continent should be delighted with?
Vera, who had been laughing for a long time as he remembered such a thought, felt a ‘drop’ and the laughter stopped at some point.
It wasn’t what I wanted.
It is because there was a person who entered my mind.
An ugly woman with all her skin melted from the burns, covered in filth. she remembered
Every word I said reminded me of a woman who turned her stomach over.
A woman who seemed to have been formed by the word nobility, which brought to mind the feeling of regret, came to mind, who showed kindness to even this evil species.
Even at this moment, he was disparaging her, but Vera knew.
In a way, for a short period of time, she was a human who would never give up on herself.
She probably didn’t run away. If he was going to run away, he would have run away from hunger without holding on.
Vera knew better than anyone how painful hunger was.
So, I also knew how difficult it was to not express my hunger during that full month.
I never thought that a woman who had endured such hardships would have run away for that reason now.
‘… He must have died.’
She was a woman who didn’t listen to even a warning, so she would have died after being caught by a scavenger. The corpse must be lying somewhere in the gutter.
Vera, who looked up at the ceiling with his eyes out of focus, clenched his teeth in a sudden surge of emotion as he recalled Renee’s body lying in the muddy water.
It was an unknown feeling.
It was a feeling I had never felt in my life.
I know a lot of emotions similar to this, but I couldn’t think of a word to describe this feeling.
It resembles regret, and it resembles compassion. It took the form of guilt, but it could not be called guilt.
It seems that it could be expressed as fear, but rather than such an overwhelming feeling, it was a feeling that was felt as a small embers that spread dimly.
It was a feeling that felt both grateful and somehow guilty.
Vera felt his body shiver from this feeling that ran all over him.
It was such a complex feeling. It was a feeling that made me feel tighter inside than the chest pain that had tormented me until now.
So, Vera twisted his whole body, moving his body that had not moved at all.
“Heh heh… !”
As you move your fingertips, the pain spreads throughout your body from there. Then, as he moved his arm, he could feel the blood seeping from within.
However, I couldn’t stop.
Due to this dizzy feeling that made me vomit, I couldn’t afford to worry about the pain in my body.
raised the upper body.
“Cool… !”
Blood gushed out of his mouth.
The body fell down and made a ‘thump’ sound.
Vera, meanwhile, lifted his head, looking at the half-open door of the shack.
arms outstretched He touched the ground with his outstretched arms, and moved him by trembling.
He crawled so badly that he couldn’t even look at it.
Leaving the door, walking through muddy water, I crawled for a long time, not knowing where I was going.
The blood that was coming out of his mouth came back up and came out through his nostrils.
Every time I stretched out my arm, I felt a crushing pain all over my body.
Still couldn’t stop.
It was because of this strange suffocation that tightened his stomach.
Vera crawled so aimlessly like a madman, looking for a figure lying in the mud in the other corner of the gutter.
Vera knew at once who the seal was.
It was Renee.
Skin melted from burn marks, white hair stained with muddy water, and blue pupils with dimmed light exposed under half-closed eyelids were speaking of him.
The whole area was covered with black and gloomy colors.
It was the color of the dead. It was the same color as those dying in the gutter. It was a gloomy color that always came to mind when the hardened blood and muddy water mixed in.
Vera stopped as she saw the colors spread around her.
Crawled the whole time and stopped like that with a messed up mogol.
From https://noblemtl.com
On top of the strange feeling that has been tormenting him for a while, one emotion is added.
The emotion that came to mind this time was one that Vera knew for sure.
It was a feeling that dominated his childhood, so he couldn’t be ignorant.
despair.
That was the emotion that came to mind.
I didn’t know why I had such feelings.
I could only instinctively realize that the emotion that came to mind was taking the form of despair.
Vera stared at Grine’s corpse for a long time, his face covered in blood and filth, then very slowly crawled towards her.
It crawls as far as the hand can barely touch.
Vera, who had barely crawled there, burning the last sparks of his life, looked at René with a face of imminent death.
Somehow, even though she must have died so painfully, she had a calm face.
“… It’s ugly.”
sassy. sassy. It was a word mixed with breath.
Vera spoke and looked at her face for a moment, then continued.
“What did I say, I was going to die.”
I tried to smile, but I didn’t have the strength to raise the corners of my lips.
My eyelids were heavy. I couldn’t breathe.
Vera looked at Renee’s face, realizing that the end was coming.
She was truly a selfish woman.
I broke my vow to die wretchedly alone, bearing all my karma.
I still don’t know the identity of this upset feeling, but I fell asleep without teaching it.
My whole body was relieved of strength. The accident sank as heavy as cotton soaked in water.
Vera looked at Ren with half-closed eyes, and unwittingly bit his lip and uttered these words.
“… Do you know that?”
Talking to a corpse was such a ridiculous thing to do, Vera didn’t stop talking as he thought about it.
“I have a lot of great talent. With this talent, an inexperienced hunter could become the most evil species on the continent.”
Vera gathered all the strength he had left until then, and took her hand, which had barely been spread out in the muddy water.
Below Vera’s sleeve and forearm, a tattoo of eight strokes of curves intertwined to form a circle was drawn.
“Stigmata, you say. I have it.”
Vera said so and giggled. It was because it was funny that he was divulging his secret, which he had never told anyone, to the corpse.
“God of oath. his stigmata. With this stigma, I can put weight on my words.”
I don’t know why. Just one day, a stigma suddenly appeared on my forearm.
The stigma was a known miracle that the gods bestowed upon their dearest servant, so Vera wondered when the stigma appeared on him.
It was natural. He didn’t believe in God, nor did he want to represent God’s will.
So, Vera used this stigma simply for his own greed.
“… If I make an oath and pay a price for it, I get that much power.”
With this skill, with this miracle, he was able to hold half of the continent.
He was able to put all the shadows that had landed on this continent under his feet.
“Of course there are penalties. If I don’t keep my oath, in addition to what I gave in return, my soul will be cut by the amount of strength I gained.”
There was only one time when I did not keep my small vow.
Vera still vividly remembered the pain of that moment.
The pain of cold sweat running down my body just thinking about it, as if my existence was being torn apart.
The moment I feared more than any moment I had ever experienced in my life.
The pain that comes when you break the oath was that kind of pain.
So, I will never break my oath again. I promised so
“… But, because of you, I broke my oath again.”
Because of you, I broke that vow for the rest of my life, that I would never regret it, that I would be willing to bear the punishment for all the sins I had committed in my life.
Meeting you, I regretted my life because of your light.
Now the soul will be slaughtered. Will there be only a few specks left? Even if you don’t know, it will be difficult for you to remain in existence.
Vera, who had such thoughts in mind, looked at Renee blankly, reflecting on the time he had spent with her for the past fifteen or so days.
It was infinitely close to the main lamp.
If I had to pick one of the most miserable moments of my life, it would be number one. However, ironically, the moment when I can say that I was saved the most.
Vera savored the moments passing through his head, looking at René with a vision so blurred that he couldn’t properly distinguish the shape of things from now.
sweetly sweetly. My lips moved involuntarily as I spoke.
“… Lived for me, lived that way by the way.”
It wasn’t a thought-provoking language. It was just this unfamiliar feeling that made me say that.
That’s what I wanted to say to her, who had shoved her feelings of ‘regret’ into her.
“If there is a next life, if my soul is still there… .”
If so, you were the one who shook me here.
“… Then it’s okay to live for you With you, I think I will be able to live a life with no regrets.”
If you’re by my side, it seems that even this evil species can dare to live what is called life.
Saying so, Vera revealed the last stigma of this life.
“Yeah, that would be nice. It won’t be long, but… I will use all of my remaining soul in that oath.”
The stigma burned with gold.
Now, you just need to engrave the oath on this stigma.
Vera, as he has always done, engraved an oath on the golden stigmata.
“If I were given the next life, that life… , I will live for you. I swear not so much.”
I will put you in the most honorable place and live your life by protecting it.
I engraved such an oath into my soul.
An oath is engraved, and the body reverberates. I feel a burning sensation in my soul.
It was a feeling that was infinitely close to abstraction, but it was a feeling very familiar to Vera, who had been using stigma all his life.
Vera slowly closed his eyes after seeing the stigmata activated.
That’s how I was thinking, ‘You’re going to die at last.’
Tick-.
In Vera’s ears, the ticking of the clock was heard.