Kingdom's Bloodline, page 7
Damn. Wasn't I supposed to be an adult? Why do I still cry?
"What a pity. Swallowing it or pushing it against the eye would have been better." Quide carefully picked up the silver and threw it into the fire. "Never mind. Let us do it again."
Thales closed his eyes tightly. The burning pain in his chest had not diminished. Instead, it grew increasingly painful. It was like an onslaught of pain; it was growing.
Let me cut out Quide's throat. That would be great. He said silently in his heart.
When Thales opened his eyes again, he just stared at Quide indifferently. Quide looked at those lifeless eyes and got bored.
"Hey, brat. Don't want to play anymore?" Quide kicked Thales. Thales simply looked back at Quide coldly.
"Come," he thought, "This time, it would be the eyes and nose. Up to you. Either way, ever since I transmigrated, I could not accomplish anything, right?"
Quide looked at Thales' eyes and confirmed Thales' indifference. When he was still a debt collector, he hated debtors that had this expression. This meant that no matter how he tortured them, he would not get any money.
Quide spat, feeling bored. He felt as though his delight had been destroyed.
I have wasted too much time.
However, when he turned around and saw the two beggars in the walls, his eyes turned bright again.
Coria was crying and Kellet glanced fearfully. Quide stretched his hand out to one of the six holes in the sixth house, reaching out for the youngest girl.
Thales pupils immediately refocused. Sinti looked at the scene alarmingly. Even Ryan forgot about his broken hand and raised his head.
No. No! That's Coria. She is the youngest here. That child!
The burning feeling in his chest grew hotter. His muscles seemed to burn.
Coria simply wailed. She was only four.
Bastard! How dare you!
"Coria!"
"Demon! Come to me!"
"You dare! You wouldn't!"
Thales, Sinti, and even Ryan who was still holding on to his broken hand, all frantically crawled towards Quide. However, with a swing of his leg each, they were swept to the corner of the wall.
"You cannot hurt her!" At this moment, a figure obstinately blocked the hole in the wall.
This was Kellet who had been so frightened he withdrew again into the hole. At this moment, he courageously stood in front to protect Coria.
But Thales shook his head in pain. No. You're not enough.
Kellet's fist was easily seized by Quide.
"Don't interrupt my entertainment" Quide laughed. He then cut Kellet's neck without any hesitation, interruption or restriction whatsoever. Kellet widened his eyes as though he could not believe what just happened.
Thales fell to the ground paralyzed. Ryan seemed to have a mental breakdown as he laughed and cried. Sinti simply hammered the ground ferociously.
Kellet's trachea was broken and his blood spurted out of his arteries. Quide then pushed Kellet to the side.
Coria wept more and more uncontrollably.
"Don't! Don't catch me! I am a very good child! I do not have typhoid fever! I do not!"
Quide held Coria's hair and carried the crying girl out of the hole like a pet.
He then picked up the silver coin from the bonfire with the dagger.
"Bastard! Damned bastard!"
Thales closed his eyes and roared with all his strength. He hated himself. He hated this damn world. He then watched Quide helplessly.
While the girl struggled desperately, the man took the silver coin that was heated a second time with the dagger and pressed it onto Coria's face.
Sobbing sounds of the children could be heard from the side while Coria's cries were no longer coherent.
Why did this happen?
Thales laid down on the ground as though he had lost all hope. His eyes were filled with despair and he was motionless. Only the burning pain continued to throb in his chest.
Quide worked the dagger and flipped the silver coin off the girl's face, making her scream sharply.
He breathed heavily and looked around, suddenly feeling bored.
Time to finish this up and go find the other brats. Wait. Wouldn't doing this be bad for the Brotherhood?
Quide's drunkenness gradually began to disappear.
Whatever. Since Rick and his thugs did not show up, it means that there's no problem.
He closed his eyes and shook his head. He then thought of using both hands to break the girl's neck.
Huh?
When Quide raised his left hand, he suddenly noticed something strange. Wasn't I just using a dagger to press the silver coin on the girl's face?
Dagger?
He did not think too much and continued to raise his left hand to place on Coria's neck.
At that moment, Thales who was lying on his stomach and had given up hope, suddenly touched something with his right hand that made him tremble.
Dagger?
Without any hesitation he got up, concealing his hand behind his back.
Then, everything happened abruptly. In Sinti's eyes, the terrified Thales who had still been on the ground suddenly attacked.
"Go and die!"
The seven-year-old transmigrator released two lives' worth of furor at Quide's neck. He made a stab and a twist.
"Annoying!"
Quide had already noticed his movements and carelessly made a reflexive push with his elbow. Thales was sent flying by Quide.
*Boom!*
Thales' head hit the edge of a hole and was instantly dazed. However, he tenaciously lifted his head and looked at his hand.
There. The dagger stolen from Sunset Pub. A sharp dagger with blood on it.
At that moment, everything seemed still. Quide froze for a moment. He lowered his head in surprise as he looked at Thales, who was coughing on the ground after he was sent flying.
Quide's surprised gaze did not last long. He had already realized what happened to himself. He suddenly let go of Coria and touched his neck with trembling hands.
A warm, moist, and sticky feeling flowed down his collarbone and onto his chest and abdomen. In full view of Quide, the damned brat Thales struggled but steadily stood up from the ground. Thales held the dagger with a trembling right hand. Although he was trembling, it was stable.
At that moment, Quide felt somewhat flustered. He absent-mindedly placed both his hands at his neck, terrified. He desperately tried to cover the wound that was squirting blood, but his trembling hands and chin seemed to revolt against his intentions. The blood that was bright red like a dye spurted relentlessly from his artery.
Quide clenched his teeth. He felt his legs turn soft so he took a step back. However, this made him fall softly to the ground and no longer able to get up.
The burning feeling in his chest continued but Thales lifted up his head. In the eyes of Sinti's and Coria's fearful gaze, and Ryan's unfathomable laughter, Thales was watching Quide with staunch indifference.
One word at a time, he spat out, "Go to hell, trash."
Quide clenched his teeth tighter as he became angry again. However, unlike before, when the flames of fury arrived, Quide's vision turned darker. Everything seemed further and smaller before turning faint and falling apart.
His eyes protruded out as though it was going to pop out of their sockets as he glared unwaveringly at Thales. He then stretched out his trembling hand that had been stabbed by Jala towards Thales, pausing every now and again.
He opened his mouth and said in a hoarse voice, "Damned… brat…"
He swept his bloody hand past Thales' cold face.
Those were 'Blood Axe' Quide Roda's last words in Errol.
Chapter 6: Escape Plan |
"Bite on this piece of wood tightly and you will feel better. Sorry, I… I can only think of this solution."
Thales furrowed his brows and kneeled in front of Ryan.
The crippled child beggar was half-lying on the floor with his upper body against the wall. Holding up his broken, badly injured, and almost torn off right hand that was steadily bleeding out, he stared blankly at Thales who was sharpening a dagger against a blunt piece of stone. He let Thales insert the piece of wood into his mouth.
Behind Thales, the little girl Coria sat on the stairs between the house and the yard with a blank expression. The area on the left side of her face which was burned by the silver coin was already treated with medicine and covered with a piece of cloth.
She held the charred silver coin tightly in her hand.
The little girl opened her eyes wide and looked at her surroundings, even rising her head to look at the moon after a moment before she let out a nervous chuckle.
Behind her, Quide's wide-eyed corpse leaned against the broken wall.
Thales felt nauseous.
That sensation... that of thrusting metal into flesh and blood, kept returning. It would occasionally appear in Thales' sword arm.
Thales sighed, suppressing the strange discomfort that came with killing someone for the first time. The burn on his chest was still aching, taking away a lot of his attention from that matter.
He had to kill Quide—Thales did not regret it at all.
The moment he thrusted the dagger into Quide's neck and watched him fall with all his unwillingness to admit defeat, Thales had even felt a surge of satisfaction rush into his heart.
That was the pleasure of revenge.
At that moment, it was as though all his grievances and hatred were soothed and released.
Simple yet brutal, effective and straightforward.
"However," Thales closed his eyes, and said to himself repeatedly, 'I must not fall in love with this feeling.'
After all, he took away a life.
He might have killed a fellow human because he had no choice. However, no matter the circumstances, it was not something to be proud of.
He definitely did not kill Quide so that he can become scum like him.
'More importantly…' Thales turned and looked at Coria. He sped up his sharpening of the dagger.
'What these children just experienced was most likely the most crucial point in their lives.'
Another vision from his past life bloomed in front of his eyes. The light from the projector and the words on the slides appeared like crashing waves.
"For the thesis I will be talking about in this lecture, its literature review mainly focuses on the field of psychology. From the perspective of developmental psychology, one's childhood and teenage years are the most vital in shaping his or her mind and personality. According to Bloom's longitudinal studies, the environment, interactions, and behaviors one experiences at those stages are strongly correlated to their future character and psychological development. Plenty of theoretical studies also suggest that this influence might even last through their whole lives…"
Thales shook his head and kept the newfound memory deep inside his heart.
The psychological health of the child beggars was only secondary—the problem at hand was survival.
Thales suppressed the nausea inside his heart and shifted his focus to the dagger in his hand.
This dagger was shorter than an adult's forearm. It had a single cutting edge, the tip curving slightly to the side. A black leather belt was wrapped around the wooden handle to prevent slippage while both sides of the blade were smooth…'Hmm?'
Thales suddenly discovered that, after being soaked in fresh blood, two engraved alphabets appeared on one side of the blade.
JC.
'JC?'
Thales' gaze shifted slightly and his heart jolted.
'Haha, no matter how many more tricks I have up my sleeves, how many more plans I concoct, or how much more intelligent I am,' thought Thales, 'none are as useful as this dagger called JC.'
Thales' gaze turned icy. In one moment he was sharpening the knife edge, but in the next he appeared beside Ryan's broken hand.
*Cha!*
Thales cut without hesitation.
The blade severed what little skin and flesh was left between Ryan's palm and wrist.
"Hmm! Hmm… hmph hmph!"
Ryan's whole body started convulsing vigorously like a Mariahilf river prawn that has just been dropped into boiling water.
He bit hard on the piece of wood, letting out a horrifying sound from his throat. His eyes were shut tightly from pain and his face was distorted in an over the top manner.
Tears and snot flowed ceaselessly.
Thales immediately took the piece of cloth that had been applied with medicine, though it was just some Urth Dragon Leaves, and wrapped it around Ryan's severed wrist. He made a tight knot on it.
'Hopefully this will help in stopping the bleeding and prevent infection, or else…' Thales looked towards the fire and shook his head.
Ryan was still convulsing in pain. Thales pressed down on his severed wrist with one hand and embraced him with the other.
"Hang on, Ryan, it will be over soon. Hang on!" Thales shut his eyes and softly comforted Ryan. Ryan's hair brushed over the burn wound on his chest, causing another fit of unbearable pain.
Thales looked to the other side. Kellet, Ned and Ursula were lying quietly under the moonlight.
It was as if they were asleep.
Ryan's breath started to calm. However, Coria started crying softly again.
"Thales… *sniffs* I'm so scared. Coria really doesn't have typhoid, Coria has already recovered…"
Thales let go of Ryan and turned to embrace Coria in his arms, taking care to avoid the burn wound on her face as he patted her gently.
"It's okay now, Coria. Everything is okay now."
'I'm sorry.
'I couldn't protect all of you.'
"Thales!"
Thales opened his eyes and saw Sinti, who was gasping as he ran. He calmly asked, "How is the situation outside?"
Sinti sustained the fewest injuries out of all the children in the sixth house. Life as a child beggar allowed them to pick up plenty of first aid skills such as the setting of bones, or even the breaking of bones, and after Thales fixed his dislocated leg, he sent him out to gather information. He also asked him to gather information and spread news to warn the other members of the Brotherhood who might come.
"No one from above is coming. Not Rick, not the thugs either. There's no one from the Brotherhood. It seems like no one from outside the Abandoned Houses knows about this."
Sinti was the eldest among them and had worked with Thales for quite some time, he immediately answered Thales' biggest concern.
"It seems like Quide went to quite a number of houses, some of the children managed to escape. But, excluding our house and the seventeenth house, at least six or seven houses show no movement inside at all."
Thales' gaze dimmed. The sixth house was not the nearest Abandoned House to the front gate. He could already sort of guess the fate of the child beggars in those houses.
"Right now, all the child beggars already know what happened. They are spreading rumors among themselves that the Brotherhood is planning to kill us all. Some of them are hiding in the houses, too afraid to come out, but most of them ran out to the streets, and some even want to escape."
Thales' eyes lit up, "Wait, you mentioned that all the thugs are not around anymore?"
Sinti knew what Thales was thinking. He shook his head and bitterly spoke, "It's no use, the front gate is locked from the outside. Karak and the people from his house are shouting in front of the gate, but no one came. There's no way for us to escape unless we can cross through the moat and the thorns inside."
"Do we..." Ryan struggled to stand up while hugging his right hand, his face was pale as he asked, "Do we have to escape? We can stay here and wait till the morning, and when Rick and the others come, we can tell them that Quide went crazy himself…"
"No!" Thales firmly cut Ryan off, "Quide died in our house. If they manage to find the culprit, we will surely die. Even if they can't find the culprit, they will still blame it on us. Moreover, Quide's father is one of the elders in the Brotherhood, they won't let this go easily."
"Plus," Thales looked at Ryan coldly, "Do you want to wait for them to send the next Quide over? Even if the next ringleader is not someone like Quide, when he knows that his predecessor died under the hands of child beggars, do you expect him to feed and serve you well, then kneel down and beg you not to kill him?"
Ryan, Coria and even Sinti could not quite understand what Thales just said. The three of them blinked in confusion.
Thales looked at them and lowered his head in exasperation. He sighed and said, "Ha… to put it simply: we must escape."
"Oh."
The three children nodded their heads in unison.
Thales shook his head helplessly.
Another scene suddenly appeared in front of his eyes.
Snow was falling on the almost empty streets. A graceful figure was skipping in front while he kept talking.
"…Therefore, in his book, based on his observation along with historical data, which is the origination of capitalism in Europe, Weber mocked Marx's theory that the economic base determines the superstructure…"
"Although I don't understand what you are talking about, it all sounds very intellectual."
"Ha… in short, it means that Weber is looking down on Marx."
"Oh, I see. Let's go for hotpot then!"
"You were the one who asked me about my class today, can you not change the topic so quickly? And why is it that you can do it so naturally?"
"It's decided then, Korean barbeque! Strike Freedom, attack!"
"Weren't you talking about hotpot just now- Hey don't push me- And what is Strike Freedom- I told you not to push me-"
Thales shut his eyes tight and chased away the illusionary memory that surged back from the void.
Lately, his memories had been surging back towards him more frequently, "past incidents" came back to his mind one by one.
But please let it not be now.
It cannot be now.
There were more important things to do right now.
Thales opened his eyes and realized that the three children were waiting for his decision.
He stood up quietly and pulled Ryan up with him while taking a deep breath.
