🔊 TTS Settings
Chapter 53
The Blood Sword.
Doceph brushed back his hair.
It was troublesome enough that something like the Holy Knights had appeared out of nowhere, but now he was seeing the Blood Sword—something even he, who had conquered this world, had never touched.
The Holy Knights could perhaps be tied to the downfall of the family, but the Blood Sword was an entirely different matter.
Even the master blacksmith hiding in Bloody Mary had said that he had never seen a Blood Sword awakened in his lifetime.
Though Blood Swords were said to be scattered across the world, the number of people who could awaken one was…
“It was Narari who found it for me. Don’t get any ideas.”
“…Narari?”
Helbern chuckled bitterly.
“You don’t even know her name?”
“Are you saying Halara gave it to you?”
“Yeah, that woman. She said it was perfect for me and gave it to me.”
In truth, she had probably just tossed it to him out of fear, but in Helbern’s modified memories, that’s how it seemed.
‘Halara again.’
She had already restored a legendary sword through Moldorf and a master, and now she had given Helbern the Blood Sword. Moreover, it was already awakened.
“When did it reach this state?”
The Blood Sword had surely been an ancestral heirloom, but there was no way it could have been awakened.
Helbern gazed at the sword. Was Doceph recognizing it because it pulsed in sync with his heartbeat?
“A lowly first-rank punk actually knows this sword is special, huh.”
“When did it get like this?”
Doceph asked again.
Helbern once again felt a strange déjà vu from the previous encounter. Even though Helbern’s blood energy had awakened, creating an immense gap between him and Doceph, why did he still feel suppressed in front of him?
‘So annoying!’
Both Nikolai and Doceph were irritating in their own ways, but at that moment, Helbern sensed something from Doceph that he hadn’t felt before.
“Rogue, have you awakened?”
“Thanks for the congratulations.”
“Seriously? Is this real!?”
Only then did the awakening become vividly clear. Being blood-bound brothers, it was unmistakable that he had reached fifth-rank awakening.
“Lately, all sorts of crazy things are happening.”
“So that sword…”
“Do you want me to tell you?”
Helbern scoffed. Giving him the information he wanted was out of the question.
‘I’m the strongest.’
Doceph, knowing Helbern’s temperament, gave up on asking about the sword.
“Just ask Halara.”
“Damn it! This is a secret between me and Narari.”
“…A secret between the two of you?”
Doceph, usually unmoved, furrowed his brows at that.
Helbern grinned, sensing that Doceph had noticed.
“Yeah. Why else would they give it to me and not you? Giving it to someone like you would only cause trouble. But they gave it to me, not my father or brother. What do you think that means?”
“What does it mean?”
Thumbs up!
Helbern pointed to his own face.
“It means I’m the strongest in the family.”
Nonsense.
Doceph turned his eyes coldly and walked away. He judged that there was no information to gain from Helbern, Holy Knight or not.
“Hey!!”
Halara…
Her face kept flickering through his increasingly complicated thoughts.
‘What on earth is your true identity?’
Though he needed to prevent his family’s downfall, his suspicion of her only deepened.
Meanwhile…
Aunt Michelle went off to check the kitchen.
I took the opportunity to gather information about the Holy Church.
The Ducal library, the pride of the powerful family, was a place commoners like me couldn’t even approach. It was basically a treasure trove of books passed down through generations.
However, the head butler noticed me lingering nearby and kindly opened the door.
“Thank you for the tea you gifted Madam last time.”
With a brief word of thanks…
‘I guess Francesca didn’t mention that she ended up crying peeling onions because of me.’
Had she known, the devoted butler wouldn’t have been so hospitable. Ignorance was bliss.
The library smelled of aged wood and paper, with ceilings so high my neck strained to look up. Shelves connecting the ceiling to the floor were densely packed with books.
In true K-fantasy fashion, the books were arranged in alphabetical order.
“Here it is.”
Following the path, I finally found a book about the Holy Knights. While their actions appear only later in the original novel, the more information I could gather, the better.
‘They’re looking for me. This smells bad.’
It was necessary to investigate their connection to Halara, or rather, the Brininharta family.
The fallen angel, cursed for betraying God, was named Johannes of Lucidfall. He despised humans whom God loved.
Humans were weak, constantly hating and killing each other. Whenever misfortune struck them, they accused God of abandoning them, pouring out their resentment onto him.
Johannes told them to abandon humanity. God replied that humans deserved love as they were, but He shed tears for being unable to protect their suffering.
This was why Johannes decided to betray God.
“Complete love deficiency, seriously. God loved humans and he came down to kill them?”
Johannes fell to the demon realm, losing his wings, but caught the Demon King’s attention and gained power to enter the human world.
He planned to wipe out humanity, but God gave humans the power to oppose him—the Stars. Those who awakened the Stars possessed immense power.
Initially, humans awakened with different powers formed families and eventually an empire. Together, they sealed Johannes’ power and imprisoned him in an abandoned temple.
After the long war, peace returned. The thousands of Holy Knights who followed Johannes were presumed extinct, trapped in the sealed temple. Each family placed enormous barriers using their inherited powers.
Among the five great war hero families, each led empires successfully. The Brininharta family, who communicated with spirits, was destroyed, leaving only the current four families. The empire became divided by territory rather than by family.
“Yeah. There’s no way they’d intersect.”
The Brininharta family had no connection to the families that sealed Johannes, and even less to Bloody Mary.
“Are they seeking revenge…?”
That was the only possible link. Humans powerful enough to oppose Johannes had ruined his plan, making them targets.
In the novel, Johannes was the final villain.
Doceph embarked on adventures seeking his family’s revenge but, as he grew, became a hero who saved the world, separate from that revenge. He wanted no one else to suffer like those who lost family helplessly.
He even encountered people from Bloody Mary. Some were traitors, but Doceph did not resent them, nor did he interrogate them for their masters. That knight was too insignificant to oppose. Probably, he was soon forgotten in his mind…
“Wait, wait, wait. There was a traitor!”
But as a reader, I didn’t forget.
At that time, public opinion of Doceph wavered significantly.
‘Should have just killed him.’
“Seems the rat heard me.”
At that moment, Nikolai’s disgusted gaze fell upon me. His brow had noticeably deepened recently.
Had the Duke been present, he wouldn’t have felt so stressed. But with him absent, the person who had to uphold the family as its head was Nikolai.
‘I still haven’t adjusted to this weight.’
The Duke often left for war, especially recently, investing great effort to pass the family on to his grown children.
For Nikolai, who would risk death for the family and his father, the burden on his shoulders was immense.
