C689
"It wasn't that it couldn't be done, but that it shouldn't have been done."
"I believe you had enough strength."
"It wasn't just an expression, but Sir Cyron truly classified me as non-human. How can someone who is not human become a knight?"
"It wouldn't have cost my father much to educate you and turn you into a human."
"I don't think your father is someone who strives to tame anyone. Much less a beast."
"Well, that's true. If my father hadn't recruited you directly, the Black Knights wouldn't have tried to persuade you either."
"I didn't particularly want to be Sir Cyron's subordinate. I only had the desire to reach his level, and the encouragement from the Black Knights was the greatest. So, from that moment, attacking Sir Cyron and the knights became my most important routine. But it was no longer one-on-one; it became common to be easily subdued by multiple opponents."
"Even if they didn't want to recruit you, there's no reason to force you against an opponent you don't want to kill. In your own words, well, since they found you cute..."
"And when they subdued me, I always ate with the Black Knights at their camp. Even if I tried to escape, they caught me and forced me to eat while I was tied up.""Did they really go to such extremes? Did they receive orders to eat together if they encountered you?"
-If you kill me, he will kill you, what kind of bullshit is this?
-It's an order from the patriarch. To eat with you.
"That's how it was."
At that moment, Jin fell into contemplation for a moment.
Why had Cyron given such an order? he wondered, wanting to find out for himself rather than hearing it directly from Hedo.
"The act of sharing a meal... I think my father must have thought it was a good way to acquire humanity. And it also seemed to help the mental state of the Black Knights. The Black Sea is a dreadful land, after all."
"I agree, Twelfth Flagbearer. It was possible because I was a beast."
The two don't know, but at the time, Hedo played a role similar to that of Ozdock, who is currently part of the current expedition team.
Hedo spent a lot of time with Cyron's knights during those moments.
They ate together, sat idly by the campfire, and then left.
Sometimes they had conversations, and sometimes the knights advised Hedo on swordsmanship while he ate, and sometimes Hedo was attacked while eating and subdued.
They were becoming something like friends.
"Well, in that case, it would have been better for you to simply become a Runcandel back then. Why did you end up entangled with Zipple and taking such a long detour?"
"Because it wasn't destiny."
At first, if they continued like that, it seemed possible that Hedo would blend in with the Black Knights.
Both Hedo and the Black Knights thought so.
But it was only for a brief period.
"I was a beast; Sir Cyron and the knights were human. But in the end, we were all becoming monsters. The desire to resemble Sir Cyron's sword gradually faded. The madness outweighed the motivation."
While the Black Knights fought against the Black Sea, Hedo deteriorated due to an increasingly inexplicable madness.
The same thing was happening to Cyron.
The demonic and unique nature of the Genesis Knight kept distancing him from the others, and the meetings they used to have to eat became less frequent.
Cyron's orders were undoubtedly useful for those who were withering, but they were only temporary reprieves.
"In the Black Sea, you can't survive without abandoning your humanity, and reaching Genesis Knight, the point where you can't control it without abandoning your humanity, is the pinnacle."
The time and place.
The meeting of Hedo and Runcandel was not pleasant in any aspect.
Without anyone saying it before, from the moment they stopped eating together, Hedo and the knights raised their swords again only to kill each other.
"That's how Sir Cyron, the black knights, and I grew older. Every time we met, we could see the hollow traces of the passing years on each other's faces. It was like looking in a mirror. They must have felt the same when they looked at me."
The past that Cyron's Runcandel and Hedo had was much longer and more melancholic than Jin had imagined.
"And I had planned to meet Sir Cyron one last time."
"...Judging by the flow of the story, it wasn't out of determination or a desire for victory."
"That's right. I had thoughts of dying. Just as I learned shame and the desire for revenge through Vanessa, at that age, I experienced emptiness for the first time. It was something that had always filled me, even though I didn't realize it."
Hedo's gaze remained fixed on the sky.
That emptiness was the cause of Hedo's madness.
"As soon as I realized it, the urge arose that there was no longer any reason to live. The days I spent exploring swordsmanship and simply surviving meant nothing."
The knights, even when they were becoming monsters, had clear goals and dedication, so they had no reason to give up on life.
But Hedo was different.
He was truly a man with nothing.
"I met Sir Cyron again and drew my sword. Until then, although I aimed my sword at Sir Cyron, other knights took care of me, but no one stepped forward. Instead, Sir Cyron chose Barisada. Just as when he silently cut down previous challengers."
Hedo's skill at that time was just a few steps behind what it is now.
After years of training in the Black Sea, along with the advice of the Black Knights and frequent sparrings, his achievements really exploded from that moment on.
However, the fight didn't even take place. Cyron, the unbreakable wall even now, was already completed back then.
"When I came to my senses after being absorbed in the fight, Sir Cyron was looking at me, who had fallen. 'Kill me,' I said. What do you think Sir Cyron would have told me?"
"Hmm..."
Jin tried to imagine Cyron's thoughts.
Unable to think of anything, he simply gave the answer he would have given in the same situation.
"He would have asked why you had no intention of leaving the Black Sea."
Hedo's eyes widened.
"Indeed... as expected from his son."
-Why are you still in the Black Sea?
"Now that I think about it, it was a question I had never heard despite fighting for so long. The Black Knights never said such things to me. It was like not asking a wild animal why it lives here."
In other words, it meant that only then did Cyron try to see Hedo as a human and not as a beast.
-Leave and live a human life. Stop pursuing us.
"When I heard those words... I felt like I was going crazy. I'd rather die, I shouted several times. I tried to reach Sir Cyron and his knights, who suddenly left, but my battered body didn't listen to me. They had things to do, but I had nothing."
Hedo remained slumped in that place for three days.
He couldn't move, but, as usual, he expected the monsters to attack and devour him.
However, just as beasts avoid the smell of predators, the monsters didn't even approach Hedo until he got up again, all thanks to Cyron's lingering aura nearby.
"And then, I left. I was expelled from the Black Sea by Sir Cyron. I didn't know the way back, but I wandered aimlessly, and before I knew it, I was in the human world. Not once did I encounter a monster attack on that path. It seemed as if they followed Sir Cyron's will."
Leaving at fifteen and returning as a middle-aged man, the human world was nothing less than hell for Hedo.
Because he had nowhere to go.
"Twelfth Flagbearer, I kept calling the Black Sea my refuge."
"Yes."
"A person cannot grow in a refuge. When I emerged into the human world again, nothing had changed since I left the Black Sea fifteen days ago. I became a Warrior close to 10 stars, but internally, I was still the same as when I killed the orphanage director."
The situation was the same as before going to the Black Sea.
The only difference was that no one dared to underestimate Hedo and attack him recklessly.
With a build similar to now, the image of a disheveled madman with a gigantic long sword and a clear sense of overflowing emptiness and gloom, he had no need to get entangled in criminal disputes.
Furthermore, except for a few cases where he took the wrong path, Hedo never sought places with people.
Most of the time, he wandered through mountains, seas, and uninhabited islands, lost in his thoughts.
"Didn't you think of going to the Garden of Swords?"
"Because I became a dead man. You didn't have that experience, I suppose."
When Jin was expelled from his clan before the regression, he remembered that he was just a broken man until he met Valeria.
"Maybe.... I think Zipple would have approached you first. You said you had cared for Sandra since she was very young. That's all in terms of time."
"Yes. Suddenly, the White Night came looking for me when I was on a deserted island."
"Why did the White Night seek you out?"
"It seems there were some remnants of Zipple among the unfortunate challengers I killed in the Black Sea. One of them, who survived and returned to their family, informed them of my existence. Since then, they had been waiting for me to leave the Black Sea."
Even if it wasn't Hedo, Zipple always planted people near the Black Sea.
That way, they could confirm the passage of the Runcandels through the Black Sea.
When Hedo emerged into the human world and caught their attention, it was almost inevitable that they would pursue him.
Hedo went hungry for a few days, but he easily faced the White Night.
However, he couldn't handle the Spectres who attacked him later.
"They imprisoned me instead of killing me. I thought that if I stayed still, they would stop trying to persuade me and kill me. But I was already in a state of being alive only in body, dead in spirit. So all the conditions offered by the clan were meaningless."
Of course, in the end, Zipple didn't kill Hedo.
Losing a few White Nights was nothing compared to gaining an unaffiliated superhuman.
Furthermore, Zipple was already investigating mental manipulation even back then.
If Hedo wasn't eventually subsumed, it would be enough to use mental manipulation magic once developed.
Hedo didn't know such plans, but even if he did, he wouldn't have acted differently.
"How did Sandra manage to move your heart in such a state?"
At those words, Hedo turned around, leaned on the railing, and looked beyond the restaurant, towards Sandra.
For some reason, she laughed even more joyfully than before.
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