Chapter 58

It was a cruel thought, but it was a thought that he could accomplish. Not only that, but anyone in his situation could think so. Intense assaults obscured a person’s morality. It broke down the standards of what was moral and immoral. When someone was in a beating situation, the body realized that such standards would never help.

For Lucio at the time, that thought was a kind of defense mechanism. He wanted to live and had to live. However, he thought that if things stayed this way a bit longer, he might die. He continued to struggle with pain, making noises with his mouth, and finally asked Alyssa as if he was about to die.

“Your, Your Majesty… please save me, please save me.”

“…”

At those words, the beating stopped momentarily. Of course, that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt. Pain was something that always came late. Alyssa, who was looking at the wounds soaking with blood, smiled and asked him.

“Shall I stop?”

“Please save me, Your Majesty… please save me…”

“Did I say I would kill you?”

Soon after Alyssa said that she pulled out a long sword into his hand. He had an expression as if he was almost going to fall but used all his strength to hold on to the sword, as he knew if he missed what she was passing over to him, he wouldn’t know what kind of retaliatory beating would come in return. She soon whispered in a sweet voice.

“Why, do you want to stop being beaten?”

“SOB… yes, Your Majesty. Please…”

He pleaded, but Alyssa didn’t even pretend to hear it, but she continued to speak.

“Then kill.”

“… ”

“I will give you the time of a minute. During that time, I want you to cut the last breath from her.”

“Ah…”

He looked at his mother with a desperate expression, but his mother’s expression did not look like a face ordering her child to murder. Lucio predicted his future with a disastrous expression. If he didn’t kill this person, the beatings would surely start again, and he might really die. No, beyond anything else, he didn’t want to go through that terrible pain anymore. He really hated that so much

“SOB SOB.”

He slowly stood up by stabbing the sword on the floor, making a sound that belonged to neither a human nor a beast. It was as if the beating had broken his bones, as his legs shook with great pain. With both a blood-stained and tear-stained face, he stepped up to the person tied up and sitting on a chair. The person was covered with a white cloth, and it was hard to see, but she also seemed to have foreseen her death coming soon, and was weeping. He looked at the wet cloth on the eye area, and he made an empty facial expression.

“I am sorry.”

‘But I want to live. I want to live. I am sorry. I am sorry. Do not forgive me for killing you, when I am crying that I want to live. Never…’

-STAB

‘Do not forgive me.’

-STAB

-STAB

-STAB

-STAB

…

How many times did he stab her? It wasn’t until the white cloth was soaked with the warm blood that he stopped stabbing. He dropped the sword with a blank expression that had nothing left.

CLANG, the sword fell and splattered blood. Along with the blood smeared on his face and body, he now had blood on his legs. He looked up and turned his head towards Alyssa, looking like a person that lost his wits.

Alyssa was smiling.

Lucio thought he wasn’t sane. Not only that but her too. A human was dead. To be precise, he killed a person, and she ordered him to kill this person. He didn’t cry or laugh, but she was smiling. Was she happy that a person had died? Lucio spoke to her in a cracked voice.

“Now…”

“…”

“Please save me…”

“Lucio.”

She laughed brightly at his words and approached him. Lucio had no strength anymore. Now it would seem that if she beat him anymore, he would really die. No, maybe he just wanted to die. He looked at Alyssa, approaching him with an empty face. Alyssa’s laughter was terribly beautiful.

“Congratulations. You have also finally killed a person.”

“…”

She was congratulating him on something a mother should never do to a child. Lucio began to cry at the end. When he started crying like a child, Alyssa frowned as if it were annoying. But she waited patiently and only opened her mouth again when his crying died down.

“Lucio.”

“… ”

“Would you like to take the cloth that covered that person?”

“… ”

“Hurry.”

This was something he couldn’t do. But Lucio thought there was nothing more to ruin him when he had already killed someone. He stretched his trembling fingers and lifted the cloth covering the deceased person. The woman was dead with a face full of tears. She seemed to have cried a lot before she died. The maids next to them turned their heads or threw up, but Lucio, the party involved in the murder, had no emotion. Ah, his mental state was too overwhelmed to have that kind of feeling.

“She is dead.”

“Yes, she is dead.”

She laughed and agreed with his words. Then she called Lucio with a friendly voice.

“Lucio.”

“…”

“Lucio.”

“… yes.”

“Do you know who this person is?”

To that question, Lucio looked at the dead person for the first time. She was a woman, and she looked around the same age as Alyssa. She was beautiful and she might have been a maid, as her clothes were ordinary. Lucio soon replied in an empty voice.

“… is she a maid?”

“Similar. Who could she be?”

“…”

To be honest, he wasn’t curious at all, he just wanted to wash himself quickly, and go to sleep. No, maybe he wanted to die. Just in this situation that he wanted to flee as quickly as possible.

Then suddenly the rain began to pour, and soon there was thunder and lightning. All the maids rolled their feet together and made expressions showing that they wanted to return, but that expression could not affect this situation now. In the pouring rain, she faced Lucio who was standing with a blank expression, and Alyssa whispered into his ear with a bright smile.

“It is your birthday today, so should I tell you something interesting?”

“…”

“I did not actually give birth to you, baby.”

Baby. Lucio realized for the first time that such a sweet title did not fit in the relationship between her and himself. Lucio just laughed when he realized that his mother was not Alyssa.

Yes, this was correct. If his mother was really Alyssa, that would have been shocking. However, Lucio’s expression that showed some emotion, was forced to harden completely at the following words.

“Your mother is alive.”

“…”

“No, she was alive.”

Past tense. Lucio momentarily thought about vomiting and trembled due to his imagination. No, it couldn’t be. No way. Nonsense. Ey, really…

“But you killed her?”

Really…

“Well done.”

“…”

In that moment, Lucio had an expression that he had never been able to make before. Perhaps such an expression would have been difficult to make for people living in this world to build. If his expression could be described in one word…

“… ah!”

Madness.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaack!”

He screamed. Lucio sat down on his knees with an astonished expression and struck the stone floor with a clenched fist. Blood seeped out of his hand, and bloody tears flowed from his eyes. There were constant thundering and lightning striking behind him. And Alyssa was watching all those images with a satisfied expression.

“Ahh… Aaaack!”

He had no interest in his face that was dripping with blood, and approached the dead Janet, crawling like a turtle. The traces of the stabbing remained. He found his dead mother and cried even more bizarrely.

“Ugh… ughaaaugh.”

Janet’s body that still had some warmth was gradually cooling down due to the cold water from the rain, and Lucio was wailing as his tears of blood began to mix with the rain. All the negative emotions that humans could feel poured into him.

The tremendous shock made him crazy. That would also have been a kind of defense mechanism. He had killed a person, and in the face of the ruinous truth that this was his birth mother, was there anyone that would not go crazy?

“Ugh… ughaaagh!”

He grabbed the already dead Janet and cried mournfully, wept, and wailed. He looked like he was a demon in the madness. He screamed his throat away, thinking that he would rather go crazy. His brutal cries rang in the Empress Palace for a long time.

Eventually, when he passed out due to the huge shock and a long streak of wailing, Alyssa watched all this and laughed with a bizarre expression on her face.

“Ah, aha. Ahahahahaha!”

Alyssa, who laughed so much, then cried after a while. And after that, she began to make a sound with a weird face, where her cries and laughter intersected. She smiled and cried as she looked on at the mother and son on the floor, with an inexplicable expression.

The rain was falling unceasingly, and thunderstorms continued to strike.

“The Emperor…”

Lucio spoke with a trembling voice.

“After the victory, he returned to the Imperial Palace.”

“…”

“And he found out everything. The Empress was, of course, dethroned.”

His voice, speaking of this, no longer trembled. It was a cold, icy voice.

“I keep remembering that day. I keep thinking of the day I killed my mother with these wicked hands. I have nightmares. I am killing my mother again. Then my mother is smiling. The dethroned Empress is smiling beside her. Then I go crazy.”

He spoke with an empty facial expression.

“A few days later is my birth mother’s death anniversary. The one I killed… my mother’s…”

His face looked like someone who seemed to have lost everything. After revealing the story, he looked back at Patrizia for the first time. He was scared. That maybe she would blame him. Despite the fact that he deserved the accusations, and it was justified, he was afraid of being blamed. Then he rebuked and reprimanded himself.

‘I am still a selfish and dirty child.’

“This kind of day… you cannot understand.”

He laughed bitterly. And for the first time, he met Patrizia’s eyes. Patrizia was…

“Ah…”

It was a blank expression. Like a shocked person. Lucio murmured in response.

“You also to me… blame me.”

“… ah.”

“It is natural. I am not a person. I…”

He swallowed his dry saliva.

“I am a monster.”

“…”

Patrizia said nothing. Instead she…

“Empress?”

“… ”

“You… why…”

She cried.