Chapter 34

Chapter 34

I paused the scene playing out in my mind for a moment. I felt the need to organize my thoughts.

First of all, the person in the vision was definitely Cecil. She was just smaller in size, but her face was exactly the same.

It seemed that young Cecil had lived in a sewer swarming with sewer rats. Most likely, her parents had abandoned her there.

Maybe it was because of that aftermath.

The Cecil in the memory looked extremely unstable. At times, she would tear at her own hair or scratch her arms with sharp objects, harming herself.

It was behavior unimaginable from the Cecil I knew now. Since she spoke so little, I had no choice but to infer what she was thinking through her actions.

If I hadn’t heard her conversation with the beggar who gave her bread, I probably wouldn’t have even understood why she went outside.

After that, she had survived by stealing on the streets, only to be betrayed by a friend she had made there and sold into human trafficking.

It seemed this vision was showing fragments of Cecil’s childhood memories, but I couldn’t tell whether it was due to a problem with the memory crystal itself or if there was some other reason I didn’t know about...

■ ■■■■.

Certain words kept being replaced by a distorted, static noise. It was already frustrating enough not being able to tell what Cecil was thinking, and this phenomenon made it twice as frustrating.

【Hmm. It’s been a while since I’ve feasted. Looks like the assassin sent to kill you was at least a decent human. They had high-quality mana.】

The assassin’s corpse that had been lying on the ground vanished without a trace. The white whale floating in front of me had devoured it whole.

This creature, now more than twice its original size, was the magical beast of the Mythical Age—Behemoth.

Watching it evaluate the taste of a human corpse made me truly realize once again that this thing was indeed a magical beast.

【Of course, what did you think I was? Some mere animal? This great being has never had anything it couldn’t eat since the dawn of time. Even dragons feared me!】

Ignoring its words, I poured mana into the memory stone once more.

---

Count Zeln.

Outwardly, he pretended to be noble, honorable—putting on airs of virtue—but in truth, he was the worst of the worst, running a murder-for-hire business targeting nobles.

They said it had been the family business for generations, which meant contract killing itself was their legacy.

They would randomly buy children living on the streets and lock them up in an underground prison beneath their mansion.

As far as I could remember, there were at least several hundred children in the same situation as me.

-From now on, you will live as slaves of House Zeln. The Count’s orders are the law. Disobedience leads to death.

-Do not have a sense of self. You are tools.

To raise us into loyal assassins of the Count’s family, every child imprisoned there was given the same daily routine. There were no choices. Obey orders, or die.

I wore a necklace engraved with an identification number. It was a dog collar—a magical tool etched with spells, created so that we could not resist our master’s commands.

If a member of the Count’s direct bloodline injected mana beyond a set threshold into the bracelet they wore, it was designed to explode.

My number was 077.

My emotions were castrated, and day by day, I grew into a sharp tool filled with nothing but pure killing intent.

Slaves who failed to complete the training assigned to them that day were subjected to all kinds of torture.

Most things were bearable, but I remember that not being fed on time was quite painful even for me.

I discarded all emotion and will, yet despite that, this message echoing in my head never disappeared.

[Find ■ ■■■■.]

Perhaps that message was what kept me from dying.

The intensity of the training gradually increased, and most of the slaves died off.

When all the training was completed, only three of us remained, including me.

“077, 001, 004. Congratulations. You have officially become shadows of the Zeln family.”

“It is an honor.”

“So that you may take pride and repay your master.”

“Yes.”

“Remember this. You are tools. Blades whose sole purpose is to kill people. Tools do not need a sense of self. Understood?”

“Yes.”

During the day, we lived as maids in the mansion. At night, we carried out the missions assigned to each of us. The targets varied from young children to the elderly.

All the maids and butlers employed here were assassins raised by the Zeln Count’s family. Maids by day, murderers who killed people by night.

I, too, killed countless people. Regardless of gender or age, I carried out my missions like a machine. There was no sense of guilt.

I merely did as I was told. However, as time passed, the voice in my head became clearer.

After performing countless missions like a machine, I eventually became the highest-ranked assassin within the mansion.

And at last, a mission befitting that status was assigned.

[Eliminate Ran Winterbell, the youngest son of the Winterbell Ducal Family.]

The client was unknown.

The Winterbell family.

A family that was, in both name and reality, the greatest knightly house in the Empire.

Ordinarily, it was an absolute force so overwhelming that even imagining accepting a request against them would be unthinkable.

Because the family was shrouded in secrecy, detailed information was not publicly available. However, according to estimates by the Zeln Count’s family, assassinating even a single knight ranked within the top single digits of the family would require at least around 1,000 assassins on par with me.

Even that was a standard based on assuming the bare minimum of their combat power. In other words, even if the Zeln family were to stake their lives and wage an all-out battle, they would not be able to kill even one knight ranked below tenth place.

The reason the request to assassinate a direct descendant of such a group of monsters was accepted was simple.

The target was Ran Winterbell, the youngest young lord of the Winterbell family.

The exile of the annex. The disgrace of the family. A man born with exceptional talent, yet labeled a loser for giving up on the battle for succession due to his weak disposition.

These were all words that referred to him.

The Winterbell family did not protect a child who tucked his tail and ran.

Even if the family was the most impregnable fortress within the Empire, the annex where Ran Winterbell resided was not included in that protection.

That was what made the mission possible.

If successful, the Zeln family would be rewarded handsomely.

──Because it was the Winterbell family, after all.

“007. The moment you judge that the mission has failed, take your own life immediately. Understood?”

“Yes. Understood.”

“We trust in you. You're the greatest masterpiece we’ve ever created.”

And so, I spent about a year preparing thoroughly to infiltrate the Winterbell family.

I forged my identity, studied the history of the Winterbell household, and learned the conduct and duties expected of a duchy maid.

The preparations were perfect, but if luck didn’t favor me, I would likely be eliminated before even infiltrating.

The moment I aroused even the slightest suspicion, the Winterbell family’s intelligence network would surely discover the ambiguity of my identity.

Acting in a way that invited no doubt was the only path to survival.

Contrary to my expectations, the infiltration went smoothly. I was the only one who applied to the annex in the first place.

Well, it made sense. After surviving fierce competition to become a maid of the Winterbell household, no one would want to serve a failure with no future.

Thanks to that, I was naturally assigned to the annex. The Winterbell family’s disregard for the youngest son exceeded even my expectations.

The fact that there were only two servants in the entire residence of a ducal family’s youngest son—myself included—was already absurd.

The family treated him as if he were invisible, as if he had never existed in the first place.

For carrying out my mission, this worked in my favor. It was a fortunate situation.

The one thing that bothered me was that ever since entering the Winterbell household, the voice in my head had grown even clearer.

After finishing this mission, I decided I would take some time off to resolve this issue somehow.

It was the first day I would be going to the annex after being assigned. Normally, I should have gone much earlier, but the timing had been unfortunate due to a change in the head maid, which delayed me by about a week.

After half a year of preparation, I was finally about to see the target’s face.

For some reason, my heart was beating faster than usual, but I kept my composure as I headed toward the annex.

It wasn’t particularly small in size, but compared to other buildings I had seen within the family estate, it was astonishingly old and poorly maintained.

In front of it lay a maze-like garden, seemingly tended by an old woman who worked alone as the gardener.

When our eyes met, the old woman smiled and bowed her head. Since we would be seeing each other often from now on, I passed by her with a gentle smile of my own.

After walking a little farther, I finally saw the mansion.

Standing in front of it was a beautiful man with black hair and red eyes.

‘So that is Ran Winterbell…….’

His gaze turned toward me.

The moment our eyes met, I froze in place.

As if time itself had stopped.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

──At the same time, I realized it.

This mission had failed.

And I understood why I had lived, and what the meaning of my birth was.

It was love.

The man greeted me.

“Hello.”

The loathsome voice that had tormented me my entire life could no longer be heard.

“Found you.”

---

Ran Winterbell felt an intense sense of betrayal. That was because he could not hear Cecil’s inner monologue within the memory stone.

“……So she really was an assassin sent to kill me.”

From his perspective, Cecil was nothing more than a tool raised from childhood as an assassination weapon, and the reason she had infiltrated this place was ultimately to kill him.

Surely not, surely not…….

Yet that unlikely suspicion had become reality.

The woman who had stayed by his side without fail ever since he awakened to the persona of ‘Van Descartes’.

It would be a lie to say he had never harbored doubts, but now that he was facing the truth, a thick, viscous disgust welled up from the depths of his heart.

There truly was no one in this world who could be trusted.

The comrades who had shared life and death with him, and even the maid who had devotedly cared for him when he was half-crippled—every last one of them was the same kind of trash.

Veins bulged on the back of Ran’s hand as he gripped Behemoth. Uncontrollable killing intent enveloped his body.

“Haah…….”

There was still one question left unanswered, but he intended to ask her directly.

After all, that would be the end.

“Yeah. It’s laughable to react like this after already being betrayed once. What was I even expecting. From trash like them…….”