I Became a Slave to the Man I Abandoned Novel (Completed) - Chapter 97

“…”

“Why are you so dedicated to my escape?”

“That’s…”

“It feels a bit excessive to call it repaying a kindness to someone who helped me, unlike the Emperor who abandoned me.”

“…So?”

“So I kept thinking. Why are you so desperate to make me escape? Why do you constantly, me…”

Nox’s eyes narrowed. “Why are you so desperate to get rid of me from your sight?”

Nox continued. He was fully aware of what was attached to his neck. If Khalid saw this conversation, so be it; if he didn’t, it didn’t matter. He was going to end all these tiresome things soon anyway.

“The achievements you gained. You didn’t do that yourself, did you?”

“…What are you saying!”

He rose from his seat as if in a fit of rage. Nox calmly wiped the blood from his cheek with his sleeve and said, “I thought the Emperor used me and then discarded me. After all, the Rainerio family was too deeply involved with the Crown Prince’s faction to be used again.”

Nox looked at him, standing, and subtly sneered at him. No, it was also a face sneering at himself.

“I thought the information I handed over was credited to you, and the Rainerio family itself was eradicated. My father died. Me by slavery.”

Nox’s eyes widened. “But what if the Emperor didn’t abandon me?”

Valthias Deron clutched his hair frantically.

“What if the information I’ve given you so far, the secret letters informing of impending attacks, went in under Valthias Deron’s name from the beginning, not Nox Rainerio’s?”

“No!”

He roared. Nox remained calmly composed. The contrast between the two was stark.

“I was just foolishly trusting you, wasn’t I?” Nox laughed aloud. “You wanted to push me out of your sight because you stole my achievements. You did.”

Valthias Deron gasped. He glared at Nox with bloodshot eyes. Then he suddenly laughed, a booming sound that echoed through the carriage.

“So, what are you going to do? What can you do now, known as a slave? Are you going straight to the Emperor to tell him everything? He’d never believe you! You’re of the same blood as that snake-like Duke Rainerio!”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“What?”

Valthias Deron abruptly stopped speaking, as if doused by Nox’s cold voice, which seemed to quell his fervor.

“It doesn’t matter anymore.”

Nox rose in the carriage and drew the sword he was holding.

“There’s nothing I want back.”

Again.

“I’ve done everything I needed to do.”

Again.

“I have no desire to go back.”

“You, you don’t mean…” Valthias Deron’s eyes widened.

“Even if you realized it, it’s already too late.”

Nox gripped the sword and seized Valthias’s neck. He struggled, but not enough to break free. He was, after all, a scrawny figure. There was nowhere to escape in the confined carriage. The sword slid smoothly between Valthias Deron’s ribs.

Thump, thump.

No scream escaped, and blood poured onto the floor. Nox pulled the sword from Valthias’s collapsing body and climbed atop him. He then raised the sword once more.

“I was unlucky,” Nox’s eyes, looking down at Valthias, were simply burned black. “And you… you were just unlucky too.”

Crunch!

The sword plunged into his head. His skull shattered and split, and a mixture of blood and brain matter began to ooze. Nox tapped on the carriage and called out his original destination.

“Go to the closed Rainerio family mansion.”

The coachman, unaware of what had transpired inside, was puzzled but quickly turned the horses towards the Rainerio mansion. Nox, still covered in blood, leaned back against the carriage’s sofa, letting his arms and legs dangle, and closed his eyes for a moment.

He felt nothing. Nothing at all. From the heat flowing from his cut and torn back, everything.

***

“What… what in the world is this?” Ellerdin Weiss said, his voice trembling, as he watched the transmitted footage. The Emperor and Khalid, as well as everyone else, stood with their mouths wide open. No one could utter a word.

“All the information Valthias Deron has been providing until now was Nox Rainerio’s?”

The Emperor stared at the footage, his face in shock. And then, Nox’s subsequent actions.

The scene of Nox stabbing Valthias’s chest with a sword and then smashing his head was imprinted in their eyes. At that moment, someone spoke.

“Wait, wait. If it was Nox Rainerio who informed us of the impending attack, then he was…”

A slave…

“Silence!” The Emperor quelled the commotion. He then gasped and slumped into his seat.

“What in the world did I just hear? Khalid, Khalid. Do you understand this?”

Khalid was frozen. He stared blankly at the footage, unable to show any expression or speak. But something whispered in his ear. A deep unease within him softly whispered that what he thought he could possess forever would slip from his grasp. Such thoughts pounded wildly in his heart.

“I… I have to… I have to go.” Khalid gripped the armrest of the sofa with trembling hands. He had clearly just said he was going to the closed Rainerio family mansion. Khalid was wildly uneasy. He began to feel incredibly anxious about what Nox might do in that grand, deserted mansion.

Those gathered in the Emperor’s office continued to stare blankly at the ongoing footage.

The situation was hurtling towards its end.

***

The Rainerio family mansion, seen after a long time, was a sorry sight. The garden was untended, looking like tangled, dirty hair, and the iron-barred gate was even messier, secured with rusty chains. The coachman, seeing Nox alight covered in blood, screamed and fled. Valthias Deron, it seemed, wasn’t lucky with people either.

Clang!

Nox raised his sword and cut through the rusty chains. As a former captain of the Rainerio Knights, this was not difficult.

A long, old creak echoed. Nox walked along the path from the garden to the mansion’s main entrance, lost in old memories for a moment. Ah, in the end, something so easily broken. Like himself.

Nox thought the mansion resembled him.

He opened the main door and began to ascend the dust-laden stairs that hadn’t seen human touch in ages. The Rainerio mansion had five floors in total, with his mother occupying the highest floor. Nox headed not to his own room, but to the floor where his mother’s room was located. And for the first time in a very long while, he opened her door.

“Ah…”

The room was a mess. But he also felt that it hadn’t changed much from before. His mother had often thrown tantrums as her illness worsened. He slowly entered the room, trying to recall what his mother’s last moments might have been like. But ever since that incident, his mother’s presence in Nox’s mind had faded.

When Valthias Deron said his mother had been killed, when he said she begged for her life. From that moment on, his mother no longer felt like the mother he knew. Though it was possible he had lied.

Nox took a deep breath. He threw the blood-stained sword onto the bed and took off his blood-splattered jacket. When he tried to wipe the bloodstains from his cheek, they only smeared, and the marks on his white shirt were beyond saving. Yet, he wanted to be as pristine as possible.

Because his end was now approaching.

Though it would ultimately be a mess, for now, he wanted to return to being Nox Rainerio, his past self. The name he had denied and denied, but ultimately pointed to him: Nox Rainerio. He needed that.

Nox immediately found the largest window in his mother’s room and placed his legs on the windowsill. Looking down, he saw sharp railings dividing the flowerbeds below. Nox felt a sense of relief looking down. No second chance would be needed.

He adjusted his clothes once more. He rolled up the blood-splattered shirt sleeve and placed everything he was wearing around his neck onto the windowsill.

He saw the sky.

Nox exhaled. He felt nothing.

No tears came. There was no resentment towards anyone.

Thinking that this was the end didn’t even make him feel bad.

Nox recalled someone one last time. Perhaps they were watching. But even that…

“It doesn’t matter anymore.”

Nox muttered softly one last time and placed his foot on the windowsill.

He looked back at his mother’s room once. No long time, no one’s scream was needed. Nothing existed for him, and what he was about to throw away was merely the body of someone who had once lived.

He stepped into the void.

His body tilted.

He felt the floor give way.

Emerald hair flying.

A moment that felt like an eternity.

And thus.

He fell.