Awakening the Great Bloodline Chapter 163

Chapter 163: Gray Confession

Hoofbeats tore at the earth. A ssenger rode into the main camp, caked in dust. Word from Royce's detached unit.

"The Iron Well—secured!"

He shouted himself hoarse, then unconsciously wiped his mouth. His leather gloves were sared with dried blood and sand.

Those crouching around the tent rose as one. The dwarves lifted their helts, and Adrian threw his arms around Airien's shoulders without thinking, only to be imdiately subdued. A short, rough cheer swept across the field.

Calix stepped forward and pressed for details. He would have liked to be everywhere at once, but with the coalition forces grown to this size, he could not keep everything under his direct control.

"The walls had collapsed, just as expected. The iron chains on the gate were severed, and through that gap, we drove our hoofbeats in. The clerics also purged the wicked power with their hymns. But inside……"

For a mont, the ssenger's throat trembled.

"There was a pit—filled with iron and blood. Sir Royce called it 'a workshop for breeding the Corrupted', and after pulling out the survivors, burned everything to the ground."

He let out a long breath after the final words. Calix's gaze softened for a mont, then sharpened into a narrow focus.

'So it wasn't confined to just one place after all.'

The news of victory spread fast. Stew sloshed in its bowls, water ladles were overturned. Eyes dulled with exhaustion slowly regained their focus.

Of course, Royce and Sier had not been the only ones moving separately.

The Mountain Rabbits had been conducting relentless independent operations with the goal of seizing southern Elvra. Sotis it was dozens; sotis the thunder of hundreds of horsen shook the earth.

They reclaid crumbled small towns and planted the coalition's banner in the ruins of large settlents.

Through Snor Pass, onward to their next destination—the Arde Plain. They pressed forward, toppling the steles rooted in the wide grasslands.

"No way……"

"Volga, what's wrong?"

"I'm actually pretty good at this, right? I feel like I've turned into a complete veteran fighter."

"……"

Dwarf Basim did snort at his apprentice's fuss—but it was an undeniable fact. Neither the Corrupted nor the Tunnel Worms posed any obstacle. Not a single enemy ambush had succeeded, and the cavalry had grown accustod to running down routed troops.

At this point, it would have been strange for morale to falter.

Just then, riders ca galloping from beyond the horizon. Hadiya's scouting party.

"Calix, I've confird the Legion Commander's position. He's at the border between central and southern Elvra, and he's staying there to gather troops."

Calix asked in a clipped voice.

"Scale?"

"By headcount alone…… It's close to a hundred thousand. The place already seems to have beco a core logistics hub. Crude tents blanket the field, and weapons made from Rite-Stones stretch on endlessly, like a constellation. Because of that, I could estimate the scale without even getting close."

For a mont the atmosphere stiffened, and murmurs broke out. Knights who had been loosening their armor straps froze. The string of victories seed to deflate in an instant.

'He was building up troops from the pits. It was right to press forward carefully, even if it took ti.'

Calix turned conjecture into certainty. A second question shot out.

"The other Legion Commanders? I spotted at least two or three within Elvra. Are they still in the north?"

"I couldn't confirm that. Only one has shown its face in the south."

It was Mage Yelayen who completed the incomplete answer. He walked out from the shadow of the tent.

"One has vanished without a trace."

Yelayen's gaze pointed toward the distant eastern lands.

"And another is being held in check by the Gatekeeper. The only thing standing in our way tomorrow is Verhas."

His voice was calm, but the weight of what it carried was heavy. A simple comparison put the enemy's numbers at over three tis their own.

Calix's personal role mattered more now than ever before.

Imran Akran had left his sword behind and departed on a distant journey. Yelayen had said he could not easily take the field himself, and Sevi Belgrado was not in any condition to enter battle either.

'This ti, it falls entirely to .'

There was nowhere to turn back to.

He locked eyes with the Mountain Rabbits and steeled his resolve. That lasted only a mont—at so point his gaze fixed on sothing. On the eve of yet another fierce battle, one of his longti comrades was mired in turmoil.

***

The sky was overcast in ash-grey, and the wind carried the chill of early spring. The further the coalition forces crossed the south, the more pits revealed themselves. So had their ash hardened into blackened crusts; others still had scraps of flesh writhing within them.

Each bore a different size, yet all were built for the sa purpose.

Devices for wringing out human vitality. Fields for raising monsters.

And at a distance, beside the pits, figures trembled. Survivors. Not a single elder or child remained—only youths with their joints laid bare had barely clung to life. Even they wore threadbare clothing that fluttered precariously in the wind. Their stained faces were blank—there was no guessing what thoughts, if any, moved behind them.

Ella was watching them in silence. She had taken the Order's emblem hanging from her neck into her hand, but no prayer ca forth.

She had seen 'death'. She had witnessed, with her own eyes, the sight of innocent lives being exploited deep within those pits. Until just monts before, another monster had been born and raised in this very place.

Ella furrowed her brow. In place of exhaustion and anger, a question she could not na filled her heart.

'Can tragedies like this truly not be prevented in Kriya's na?'

How many days had she spent in prayer and devotion?

All those days felt hollow in the face of this darkness. Without realizing it, disillusionnt had begun to raise its head.

It was then.

"A sorrowful sight. But honestly…… It isn't a strange one."

"……Calix."

The young man's tone was asured.

"It was the sa during the Draug extermination. We had to hold our faith—and carry it out with the sword."

The woman's gaze turned toward him. The words sounded like comfort, yet also like a cold rebuke. It was impossible to say with certainty which it was.

But in that mont, between the two of them, an emotion shared long ago stirred back to life.

Calix asked quietly.

"Do you still hold to the faith you had back then?"

Ella parted her lips, then pressed them firmly shut. Her gaze grazed the ground, and her fingertips closed once around the Order's emblem at her throat.

A short breath soon slipped out.

"I…… am a hypocrite."

She did not lift her eyes for a long mont. As she slowly closed them, mories buried long ago ca flooding in all at once.

The deep pit before her overlapped in her sight with the alleyways of the city she had known as a child.

"Where I lived as a child, death ca every day."

Yes.

This was the confession of a certain priestess.

***

Roughly ten years ago, the capital of the Elvra Holy Empire.

Wind laced with white snowflakes cuts through a narrow alley. Along one side of the alley, corpses lay tangled together in a frozen heap, and rats burrowing through the pile scattered when a human shadow approached.

"……Another one's dead over there."

"Froze to death? They say the mont right after soone's just breathed their last is the best ti to divvy things up."

A middle-aged man in a worn-down cap ca out with an axe. What could be burned served in place of firewood; what could be eaten stood in for bread.

A bitter winter wind carried the sll of human flesh charring, while from the city center ca the scent of incense burned by the clergy.

Young Ella had been born in such a wretched place, and had been chosen by Sier.

And she had returned, the girl now grown into a woman.

"Let help."

She hadn't yet learned to use healing sacred arts, but she had learned to handle dicinal herbs. There wasn't enough food, but she could share a little.

Above all, the slums always needed help.

The makeshift treatnt center was a disaster from the start. The neighborhood barber doubled as the physician. False doctors—trimming hair and treating people at the sa ti.

Sure enough, their quack treatnts were making the patients' wounds worse.

When the wrapping was peeled away, a wound from a tal cut was exposed. The barber reached with rough hands and picked up a heated branding iron.

Tssss—!

"Aaaargh!"

The patient's scream rang out, and Ella's eyes went wide as she watched.

"Don't move. If it's left any longer, the flesh will rot and—"

"Stop, please stop!"

It wasn't treatnt—it was torture. For minor wounds, a heated branding iron; for festering wounds, boiling oil was poured over them. And those with swollen heads, necks, and chests had no recourse but to offer prayers to Kriya.

In the worst cases, they entrusted their bodies to the back-alley magitech engineers. These n experinted with chanical devices and injected strange substances. Naturally, most died in the middle of the experints.

Ella struggled in that barren environnt. She prayed every day, took pity on the poor, and blad herself for her shortcomings.

But her gentle heart could save only a handful—it could not bear the weight of so much suffering.

"Lady Saint!"

"Bibi, have you been well?"

Then one day, Ella ca to know a family.

A husband ravaged by famine and illness, standing at death's door.

A wife worn hollow by hunger and despair, too weak to move.

Five children growing up beneath them.

Of these, the eldest daughter—Bibi—was a gaunt sight, yet every ti they t, she showed a bright smile.

Ella did her utmost to help, as she always did.

For nearly half a year she shared food and dicine, and she asked her teacher—Sier Lagrin—to arrange for the family to receive treatnt from a high-ranking priest.

"……Very well. I will find a mont. Bring them to ."

"Really, truly? You've promised! It's a promise!"

"Ha, would I speak falsely before the goddess?"

On the day she finally received permission, Ella set out with lighter steps than she had in so ti. But when she entered the slums, she sensed at once that sothing was wrong.

That wife—the mother of five children—stared at her for a long mont, then fled.

The ill on beca reality through the slum's gossip.

"She sold her eldest daughter."

"S-sold her? But why? For what reason……"

"I heard she said her husband must rest in the goddess's embrace—that she bought him the right to have his na entered in Kriya's hall."

Bibi had been sold off sowhere. The wife was satisfied. She believed she had bought her husband's peace with money. Two days later, after her husband drew his last breath, she ca to the temple and offered a prayer of gratitude.

But Ella knew it was all a grand illusion.

The eldest daughter had beco an offering for the Order. And thanks to that, the Order had been able to put it toward the funds for its 'holy war'.

After that, Ella spent more and more ti staring blankly out the window. Those two eyes took in the pale streets below.

"The world cannot simply be divided into good and evil."

Her teacher Sier's counsel drifted past her, hollow.

Poverty had bred misfortune—but it had not guaranteed goodness.

And after that incident, she resolved to see a wider world. Because she had co to understand that there were things which could not be saved by the Order's prestige alone, the countless believers, and the prayers raised to Kriya.

***

The mont Ella opened her eyes, she let out a long breath. Drums and footsteps rumbled in the distance, and dust drifted low across the plain. The sunlight continued to paint the ash-grey fields, and the traces of pits lay scattered across the flatlands.

To her, the sight looked just like her own heart.

"That was how I left the Empire—and after that…… I ca to be with the Mountain Rabbits. But even now, I still don't know what the answer is."

To this, Calix replied in a low voice.

"That's actually a good thing."

"……?"

"The fact that you're still wrestling with it ans you still have the will to search for it."

He offered no clumsy consolation. Ella was a Rank 4 Cleric who had reached Blooming—the flowering of faith. She had wavered once, but by now she would surely use even that as a stepping stone.

If Ella believed in Kriya, then Calix believed in Ella.

"Is that not what life is, at its core?"

Vice-captain Marik seed to share the sa thought.