Chapter 112

“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 could not 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.