Chapter 638

What triggered people to change could be so trivial.

It did not require a dramatic incident to trigger it, but a trivial matter that could come suddenly. And before you know it, it has changed you.

For me, it all started with a request from an acquaintance.

It was a request from Murellia. A pitiful woman whose spirit has been corrupted by the Evil God. A woman whose only interest was Romio. And she was a beautiful woman.

I remember how shocked I was when I first saw her. It was the first time I had ever looked at a woman and thought she was beautiful. It was not because of lust. I was just fascinated by her beauty.

It was not about the beauty of her facial features. It was because of her fierceness, her twistedness, and her cold-heartedness. I was fascinated by the existence that had them all.

I was someone who was born, abandoned, and grew up on the battlefield.

When it comes to the battlefield, people tend to think that it was a place where people killed each other 24 hours a day from morning till night, but that was not the truth. It took days to advance, and both sides often retreated at night when they couldn't see the enemy well.

And a little further back from the front lines, the soldiers spent their days drinking and gambling. Merchants would come to sell goods, and prostitutes even come to sell themselves.

They were prostitutes who came all the way to the battlefield. They were not high-class prostitutes for nobles. On the contrary, they were all women with special needs who could not even afford to stay in the brothels in town.

And apparently, my mother was one of those prostitutes. Well, I'd never met her, so I could only assume that she was, given my circumstances.

I didn't know how it happened. But I was born on a battlefield and was sold off. It seems that I was bought by a mercenary corps of magic beast users.

The reason why the mercenary corps bought me was simple. It was to feed me to the magic beast. By daring to teach the magic beast to love the taste of human flesh, it would increase its will to fight on the battlefield.

However, the mercenary corps was destroyed before I was put into the magic beast's stomach, and I survived. I must have been two or three years old at that time.

I didn't know if they'd raised me to a certain extent before being sold or if the mercenaries just raised babies for a little while before being fed to their magic beast.

However, thanks to the fact that I was already able to move around on my own at that time, I didn't meet my worst possible end, which was to die of exhaustion while being abandoned.

I stripped clothes from dead bodies, sipped muddy water, ate the dead flesh of people and Evil People, and made the battlefield a place to live for a long time. My memories about my childhood were a little vague, and I had nothing to be proud of.

I was living like that of a beast until I was picked up by a mercenary corp. They picked me up―――or perhaps I should say, they captured me. Anyway, the mercenary corps that picked me up belonged to a survivor of the mercenary corps that bought me from my mother, and he taught me a lot of things.

It seems that the mercenary corps was planning to make up for the reduced number of soldiers with children. Instead of buying slaves, it would be cheaper to just pick them up. For that reason, I was given the name 「Zelos Reed」 and raised as a mercenary.

He taught me everything I needed to know to be a mercenary. He also taught me about my origins and the story of the previous mercenary corps. But in the end, that corps lost the war a few years later and was wiped out, including my caretakers.

After that, I continued to live on the battlefield, moving from place to place as a mercenary. I'd tried to live in towns but that was just suffocating.

Guards would come flying at the slightest disturbance. Money, money, and money were involved in everything. It was a place where everything was lukewarm and frustrating.

In that sense, the battlefield was the best place for me. I could kill as many people as I want, and I could always keep getting stronger. And above all, I felt alive being there.

And I also liked the simplicity of it. The strong were righteous. The dead were the losers. Winners took all, losers were robbed. There was no other place in the world that was so simple as the battlefield.

The reason why I accepted the old man Linford's invitation was because I heard that I could get stronger. I didn't care if he was an Evil Person or a wanted man. As long as there was a fight, that was all that matters.

I'd seen mercenaries who were addicted to gambling, but for me, all I wanted was just a battle.

The best liquor has never quenched my thirst more than the blood of my enemies. I even tried to hold a woman for fun, but it didn't give me any more excitement than slashing a strong enemy.

But for the first time in my life, I was moved by someone that did not belong to the battlefield, and that person was Murellia. I'm not going to say that I'm in love with her.

But that was the only time, ever, that my desire to talk to someone came first then my desire to fight a strong enemy.

When I actually had a conversation with her, I found out that she was really fucked up beyond my wildest imagination. Well, I guess I was crazy enough to think such a woman was beautiful.

And such a person tells her last request to me, and I'd make it happen. That was what I thought, and I took Romio with me, but...

「Oji-chan, who is that?」

「Oji-chan, what's that?」

「Oji-chan, run faster!」

「Oji-chan, are you okay?」

「Oji-chan―――」

I'd never taken care of a kid before. It was so tedious and troublesome. He would sit down and say he was tired, and he would say he was in pain at the slightest thing. I was glad that he didn't start crying in front of me, but I was really troubled by the fact that he was strangely fond of me.

Why was that, you ask? Well, I certainly handled him very well for a man of my stature. But it was just because of Murellia's request, and I'd been asked to make sure the kid gets to safety.

But what was it about me that made him so fond of me? Was this kid crazy, too?

Still, I managed to continue my journey and even took him to an orphanage in Barbra, but... I didn't expect him to start screaming that he didn't want to leave me. I didn't understand why.

But what made even less sense was that I had decided to take care of Romio. What was I doing? I wonder.

But I just couldn't bring myself to leave Romio behind. I saw the kid's laughing face and found myself smiling bitterly.

At such times, I remembered Murellia for some reason. And I also remembered that Black Cat Kin old hag.

The eyes of those two people. They shouldn't look alike at all, but the eyes of the old hag who launched her attack at me, and the eyes of Murellia who asked me to save Romio, come and go in my mind. Those eyes, desperate yet clear as water.

I didn't understand why.

「Oji-chan, what's wrong?」

「It's nothing, just sleep already」

「Okay...」

Why I urged Romio to sleep already even while he had a fever? It was because we'd been spotted by that monstrous High Elf. If I leave Romio here and run away, I might be able to escape on my own.

But I couldn't do that. I just couldn't.

I, what the hell was wrong with me...?

「Uwooh?」

It seems that I was out of my mind for a moment. I think I was remembering something from the past, but I didn't really remember. Was it just a flashback?

Now, Sierra――or should I say, Romio's grown-up form was in front of me. It was hard to believe at first, but he looked just like Romio. So, I decided to protect Sierra as well.

It seems that Romio's special ability could affect and control Evil People, but...

「It doesn't matter...!」

I could tell all the reasons why I care about Romio if I wanted to. But all of it didn't matter.

Right now, I just had to protect Sierra. I had the power to protect him, and everything else was a trifling matter.

「UWOOOH! Hey, you big monster! I'm not dead yet! Come at me! Haaaaah!」

「Ooobeeey Meeee!」