The next moment, the broken body lying several metres away suddenly began to move.
No.
It wasn’t resurrection.
Kael could clearly sense the difference.
Life hadn’t returned.
Death hadn’t accepted him either.
Silen now existed in a strange state suspended between the two, neither truly alive nor completely dead.
His body slowly stood once more.
His severed head remained exactly as it was.
Yet somehow...
He could move again.
The headless body walked toward the decapitated head before carefully lifting it with both hands.
Not a single drop of blood flowed from the severed neck.
The sight was unsettling beyond words.
Without speaking another word, the mysterious man turned around and began walking away.
Silen followed.
From the memories flowing into his mind, Kael soon learned the man’s identity.
Baron Rhesus.
A minor noble from the Taria Kingdom.
His territory lay near the kingdom’s borders, small and insignificant compared to the lands ruled by greater nobles. On the surface, Baron Rhesus appeared to be exactly what people expected from a benevolent ruler. He was polite to his subjects, generous toward the poor, and treated those beneath him with surprising kindness.
At first...
Even Kael believed he had simply encountered an unusually compassionate noble.
But appearances were often the greatest deception.
As the memories continued unfolding, another side of Baron Rhesus gradually revealed itself.
Everything...
Every smile.
Every act of kindness.
Every generous deed.
They were all carefully crafted masks.
Hidden beneath that calm and approachable exterior was an ambition that burned hotter than any flame.
An ambition that would stop at nothing.
To Baron Rhesus, people were tools.
Some generated wealth.
Some generated influence.
Some generated fear.
Silen simply happened to be the sharpest blade among them.
It wasn’t long before Silen himself realized the truth.
He understood that the man who had saved him had never intended to save him out of kindness. He had merely discovered a useful weapon lying abandoned in the ruins of a destroyed village.
Yet, Silen didn’t care.
Or perhaps...
He no longer possessed the strength to care.
The boy who had desperately tried to protect his mother had died alongside that village.
What remained behind simply followed orders.
His work began with small assignments.
Bandits.
Murderers.
Slave traders.
Corrupt officials who secretly preyed upon the weak.
Each target deserved punishment.
At least...
That was how Baron Rhesus presented them.
Silen never questioned his orders.
He simply carried them out.
One execution became ten.
Ten became a hundred.
As Baron Rhesus’ influence continued expanding, so too did the scale of Silen’s assignments.
Soon, ordinary criminals were no longer worthy of his attention.
Nobles.
Military commanders.
High-ranking ministers.
Political rivals.
One after another, they disappeared beneath the edge of his axe.
His name spread throughout the kingdom with astonishing speed.
No...
Not his name.
His legend.
People began whispering about a monster wandering beneath the cover of darkness.
A headless executioner.
A figure carrying his own severed head in one hand while an enormous executioner’s axe rested upon the other shoulder.
No one knew where he came from.
No one knew why he killed.
The only certainty was this.
Anyone whose name reached the Headless Executioner rarely survived long enough to see another sunrise.
Those fortunate enough to escape with their lives described him as something less than human.
A nightmare.
A ghost born from countless resentments.
A walking omen of death itself.
As fear of the Headless Executioner spread across the kingdom, Baron Rhesus quietly climbed higher and higher.
Years passed.
Perhaps decades.
The memories flowed too quickly for Kael to keep count.
Every scene blurred into another.
Bloodshed followed bloodshed.
Execution followed execution.
Corpses continued piling higher with every passing year.
Eventually, Baron Rhesus reached the throne of Taria.
Yet even that failed to satisfy his ambition.
War erupted.
Kingdom after kingdom fell beneath his armies until countless banners were lowered before a single imperial standard.
An empire was born.
For a time...
It flourished.
Roads stretched across continents.
Trade prospered.
Cities expanded.
People praised Emperor Rhesus as the greatest ruler in generations.
But beneath that prosperity lurked an unspoken truth.
The empire stood upon mountains of corpses.
Anyone who questioned the Emperor vanished.
Anyone who resisted his rule disappeared overnight.
Anyone who dared incite rebellion was swiftly executed before the first spark could become a flame.
Behind every one of those disappearances stood the same silent figure.
Silen.
Time continued flowing.
The prosperous empire endured for many years.
Until one day...
It ended.
The memories offered no explanation.
There was no beginning.
No cause.
Only destruction.
Flames swallowed entire cities while the heavens themselves seemed to burn crimson. Towers that had once scraped the clouds collapsed one after another as endless screams echoed throughout the empire. Millions...
No.
Billions of lives vanished beneath that catastrophe.
Even Baron Rhesus disappeared within the inferno.
Silen fell alongside the empire he had spent a lifetime protecting.
Death came for him once again.
Yet once again...
It failed to claim him.
Something twisted.
Something changed.
The boundary between life and death shattered completely.
The silent executioner who had once obeyed a single emperor disappeared forever.
In his place remained only a wandering existence bound to one purpose.
Execution.
Judge.
Kill.
Anyone deemed worthy of the axe would face judgment.
No king.
No master.
No empire.
Only endless execution.
The memories abruptly ended there.
The world around Kael shattered like fragile glass as his consciousness was violently dragged back into reality.
The moment his eyes opened, an unbearable headache exploded inside his skull. Countless memories that didn’t belong to him collided with his own, causing his vision to blur as his entire body swayed violently.
A powerful wave of nausea rose from his stomach.
Kael barely managed to climb out of bed before stumbling toward the bathroom. The instant he reached the sink, he doubled over as violent retching overtook him. Everything he had eaten earlier came pouring out while his entire body trembled uncontrollably.
Only after several minutes did the nausea finally begin to subside.
Kael remained leaning against the sink, breathing heavily as cold sweat soaked his back. He raised his head and stared silently at his reflection in the mirror while fragments of Silen’s memories continued surfacing inside his mind.
"What... a tragic life..."
He spoke almost unconsciously.
From beginning to end, Silen had never truly lived for himself.
As a child, he lost everything.
As a corpse, he became someone else’s weapon.
As a legend, he became fear itself.
And after death...
Even that wasn’t the end.
Kael had just begun organizing the enormous amount of memories and combat experience flooding his mind when a familiar notification quietly appeared before him.
---
[You have successfully absorbed the memories and experience of Silen the Executioner.]
[Congratulations! You have obtained 10,000,000 Experience Points.]
[Congratulations! You have acquired a new skill.]
[Focus to view details.]