ALL NOVEL Chapter 30
30th Chapter
I hated how he spoke with a gentle expression as if he felt no emotion. It was hard to guess if he was being sincere.
It frightened me to hear him say he would take me in without even a hint of thoughtfulness. Seeing my true self, he would surely cast me aside just as swiftly.
‘…I don’t want to be abandoned.’
Yes. I was afraid of being taken in only to be thrown away afterward.
A thick, persistent red washed over me. Reading emotions from his calm, untroubled gaze was incredibly difficult. He, who was observing me, finally spoke.
“You’re paralyzed with fear.”
M | M
“Do I sound like I’m joking?”
Caesar had read me too easily. Observing my startled reaction, he stroked his chin before gripping my cheek and lifting my face. A slightly cool warmth trickled down my cheek, spreading through my entire body.
“What can I say so that my daughter understands my sincerity?”
“Would you believe me if I said I’ve been searching for you for a long time?”
‘What…?’
My eyes widened. This wasn’t even mentioned in the original story.
“…Didn’t you not know of my existence until now?”
“I didn’t know where or how you were living. However, I was aware of your existence.”
Caesar, considering my shock at the new information, continued speaking.
“It’s probably best we discuss this in detail… later.”
Seeing Caesar evade my question as if he were hiding something, I could easily guess there was a story behind my birth. I merely swallowed the questions hovering on my lips. I didn’t want to see him flustered.
He met my gaze with steady eyes.
“However, I don’t speak empty words. My intention to take you in is not a lighthearted whim. From the moment you were born, I intended to take responsibility for you, and when I saw Mir… I wanted you by my side.”
Caesar was an honest man. Each of his calm statements pierced my heart, making me bite my lip.
“When I asked you why you became a hero, you answered that it was because it was your duty.”
Caesar took a step closer, closing the distance. He gently embraced me while my head hung low, avoiding his gaze. My body lifted off the ground, settling in his arms. His solid muscles pressed against my back.
“As a father, it’s natural to take responsibility for your daughter. My intention to take you in also stems from my duty. But there’s one more reason.”
His eyes met mine as I hid my face against his chest, and he gave a sly smile.
“I found you appealing.”
I couldn’t comprehend, let alone believe, his words. Nonetheless, I wanted to trust him.
‘…I’ll just believe him for today.’
The warmth of his embrace, which I desperately craved for both body and soul, was acutely comforting. I shut my eyes with a sigh, putting my thoughts at rest.
Caesar Crisis was born with everything.
As the only son of the Duke’s Mansion, his title was guaranteed. He possessed a genius talent for swordsmanship, achieving the rank of Sword Master by the young age of 24. People acknowledged him as the youngest Sword Master in the Empire.
Magnificent power and wealth in hand from birth, coupled with a genius aptitude for the sword—Caesar Crisis could be said to have been born perfectly.
The only problem among the things he was born with was his father.
‘How dare a commoner! Kill this brat!’
‘I’m a Duke! The only Duke in this country!’
Caesar’s father, Duke Kenis Crisis, was nothing short of garbage. A drunkard trapped in a mindset of superiority, oblivious to his surroundings, and with a violently temperate personality. Items within the mansion shattered countless times a day under his hands, and servants were routinely mistreated, landing at times as corpses outside.
‘Stop drinking and deal with the paperwork? Are you insane! Who are you to give orders!? Beat this bastard and throw him out! Bring more alcohol!’
Even with such a personality, he was utterly worthless. It was as if he couldn’t even be recycled. His mother couldn’t withstand her husband’s madness and passed away at a young age, leaving Caesar to endure his father’s insanity throughout his childhood.
‘You useless brat! Go buy me some alcohol!’
‘Y-you, Duke…! How could you speak such words to your son!’
‘Can’t you shut your mouth? This devil still isn’t leaving and is just standing there, yapping!’
His father was a person born into the Crisis family, known for producing great knights, yet he had no talent for the sword. Though he was a Crisis, being unable to wield a sword made him a target of ridicule for a long time, resenting his son, who was acclaimed as a genius of the age.
‘Lazy bum! What do you think you’re doing sleeping already! Get up and grab a sword!’
His father would barge into Caesar’s room every night after drinking and ruthlessly beat him while demanding he practice swordsmanship. It was common for him to humiliate Caesar before the servants, and it wasn’t rare for him to lash out, pouring verbal abuse.
People sympathized with the young lord suffering domestic violence, but nobody intervened. It was natural that no one wanted to confront a Duke, regardless of how useless he was.
‘So annoying.’
Caesar felt no particular emotions toward his father. He felt neither anger nor hatred, only indifference. When his father swung his fists at his face, Caesar felt nothing either. The old man’s punches didn’t hurt him at all. He merely found it tiresome to tolerate the madness.
To be hurt by another person requires some emotional investment in that individual. Caesar loved his father. He didn’t hate him either.
His father meant nothing to him. Even the death of his mother, who gave him life, stirred up no feelings in Caesar.
Caesar couldn’t love. He was born that way.
The year Caesar turned 20, Duke Kenis Crisis succumbed to his deteriorating health caused by persistent drinking.
“I’ve never thought of you as my son, even once. So don’t think of me as your father—kill me.”
Those were the words of a man who squandered his life filled with jealousy and inferiority. With his weakened body gasping for breath, the dying father gave his last command to Caesar.
Thud.
For Caesar, killing a person was easier than eating. He indifferently gazed down at the corpse of his father, who had died with a pierced heart, then turned away. The death of his now mere flesh-and-blood father evoked nothing in him.
Caesar’s final act of mercy was to allow his father’s life to end peacefully.
‘They say the newly appointed Duke of Crisis murdered his father to take the title!’
‘Is that true? That red-eyed demon… he truly was a devil.’
While the official cause of the former Duke’s death was reported as an illness, the rumor that Caesar had killed his father spread like a public secret throughout the Empire.
‘The servants must have leaked the information.’
Caesar didn’t care whether people labeled him a blood-crazed demon or a cold-blooded killer who rose to Duke after slaying his father. He simply didn’t want to associate with loose-lipped individuals.
As soon as Caesar ascended to the title of Duke, he expelled most of the servants, filling the mansion with only a select few.
‘They say the Duke of Crisis fired all the servants?’
‘No. I heard he killed them all.’
‘Rumor has it that servants are dropping dead daily at the Duke’s Mansion.’
That entire process sparked countless absurd rumors, but Caesar made no effort to stop them.
Before long, Caesar had become the human-shrouded demon of the Empire, yet he didn’t find it unfavorable.
‘No flies buzzing around me.’
Normally, a young Duke who had just received his title would attract a swarm of people hoping to gain favors, but due to his infamous reputation, people fled at his mere shadow.
Caesar wasn’t a reckless killer, as the rumors claimed; however, he also wasn’t an angel who would allow anyone to touch him. He was relieved that he didn’t have to swing his sword to deal with annoyances.
Then, not long after he ascended to the title of Duke, one day when he was twenty.
“Your Grace. It’s about time you should consider marriage and heirs…”
Caesar’s retainers pressed him to produce an heir.
‘How could I ever love someone?’
Caesar had no expectations of love in his life. Following his retainers’ recommendations, he engaged in a loveless marriage with the daughter of a Count family.
“Er, Your Grace…”
His wife feared the infamous Caesar, feeling she only needed to bear one heir to avoid troubling him. On their wedding night, he spent it with her, then thereafter left her to her own devices. He didn’t care when he learned she met other men.
She died giving birth to a son during the winter of Caesar’s twentieth year. Caesar quietly arranged her funeral.
Afterward, the only remaining members of the Crisis family in the Duke’s Mansion were Caesar and his son. The two lived together under the same roof while remaining distant as strangers.
The son, who resembled Caesar’s disposition, had shown excessive indifference to those around him since childhood, and that applied to his father as well.
“Did you sleep well?”
“Yes. Did you rest well?”
“Sure.”
Their daily life was exceedingly rigid. If there was any affection from his son toward him, it was nowhere to be found, yet Caesar held no complaints.
Caesar didn’t aspire to be a good father nor did he want to be like his own father. He thought the formal father-son relationship was far better than that.
Caesar didn’t know how to love, and neither did his son, so they had no grievances toward one another.
Caesar Crisis was not living. He was merely enduring the monotony that crashed upon him like a storm day after day.
Not wanting to become an ineffective human like his father, he fulfilled his duties as Duke. However, otherwise, there was no joy in his life.
Having reached the pinnacle of wealth and experienced every pleasure imaginable, he could confidently say he had lived a tumultuous life, yet ultimately, all of it felt dull.
He didn’t want to die, nor did he wish to live. He was merely surviving because he was still breathing.
“Your Grace. I am Mir, a mercenary.”
One day, the being who called herself his daughter appeared before someone like Caesar, someone thought to be the only person alive in a world full of the dead.