379 Five Years Ago (3)

Hey guys, Aidka's Here!

After reading the comments in the last chapter and taking into account today's chapters, I decided to give my opinion.

Neither of Bloed's parents can be considered evil. Just like the king says in this chapter, he is first a king than a father. His choice is justified from their perspective. They sacrificed the life of one person for the stability of the entire kingdom.

Now, things are completely different from Bloed's perspective. No matter how 'justified' his parents are, the truth was that he was abandoned. He has every right to hate his parents. I mean, he was just a child and he was left in such a place. I would hate them if they were my parents.

I will not say much to not spoil the next two chapters, however, I think that Bloed's choice was 'real'. After all, it's what most people would have done.

Enjoy the chapters :p

...

Cursed children, Children of the Blight.

Since the war against the Blight one hundred years ago, manaless children had been called like that.

It was a baseless name. There was no proof that children born without mana were related in any way to the manaless creatures known as the Blight.

However, to the people who had seen the war against the Blight, who had seen their loved ones die under the claws of the mana-devouring monsters, living beings without mana, like the Blight, were a cause of hatred.

Thus, children born without mana started to be killed. Even if their parents tried to protect them, they were killed by the people in their surroundings.

Sometimes, even the parents themselves were killed.

It was a cruel act that did not deserve forgiveness, but the world was recovering from the war against the Blight and everything related to the Blight was sensitive, so many people closed an eye to this cruel situation.

And for hundreds of years, hundreds of manaless children were killed mercilessly.

Thus, when a manaless child was born in the royal family of the Kingdom of Alterna, the king and the queen knew what they needed to do.

To kill the child.

However, the love of the queen towards the child and the love of the king towards the queen allowed the child to survive eleven years.

Until finally, it was impossible to continue hiding him anymore.

"The child must die, Soraya." Said the king.

But the queen could not allow it.

As a mother, she could not see her child dying in front of her eyes. She needed to do something.

So, she cried, pleaded, and begged the king to allow her son to live.

She asked him to send him away, to hide him from the eyes of the public in a remote village, but the king did not agree.

He had made up his mind.

While the child was alive, he could be used as a weapon against the royal family.

And no matter how well they hid him; he would be a latent risk that could explode at any time.

He was a king before a father, and for the wellbeing of the royal family and his kingdom, he had to kill the child.

Thus, in her despair, the queen finally suggested something.

"Send him to the Exiled Lands. Please, just don't kill him… Please"

And this time, the king did not refuse.

He knew his wife's goal. She was betting on the extremely small chance that her son could survive in that godforsaken place.

As long as the child was not killed, there was hope that he could survive.

However, the king knew more about the Exiled Lands than his wife.

It was a terrifying place, filled with bloodthirsty monsters, endless deserts, and hostile beasts.

It was a place of death, where only the most terrifying criminals could barely survive.

The king knew that sending the child to that place was the same as killing him.

Thus, the king agreed.

He waited for a while to not make the disappearance of the prince seem suspicious, and two months later, he asked his most loyal subordinate to send the prince to the Exiled Lands.

At the same time, he announced to the kingdom that the prince had succumbed to his illness.

After that, both the king and the queen thought that the child had perished.

Every night, the queen cried for her child, hoping that he was still alive but knowing that he was already dead.

Like that, five years passed.

And then, the queen got a piece of news that not even herself could believe.

Her child was alive.

And he had left the Exiled Lands.

"Do you know excited I was when I found you?" The queen asked as she looked at the young man in front of her with a warm and sad expression. "I didn't want to abandon you, son. I never wanted. But… That was the only option… That was the only way to keep you alive…"

"The only option, huh." The young man chuckled self-deprecatingly.

He looked at the woman in front of him before sighing and looking up with a bitter smile.

He thought about his life five years ago, when he was in the Exiled Lands, using his teeth and nails to fight against bloodthirsty beast for a chance to survive.

Each night, his life was a nightmare. Each night, he would cry alone, wondering why he was abandoned.

He lived as a savage, eating raw flesh and drinking blood just to survive. Just to keep living.

Until he met her…

His mother.

His true mother.

Smiling slightly, the young man grabbed the necklace below his clothes.

A memento from the woman that accepted him and raised him despite his circumstances.

The woman that taught him everything, despite him not being her flesh and blood.

What he is now, the relationships and bonds that he had today, everything was possible because his mother accepted him when he was nothing more than a savage living in the Exiled Lands.

Bloed felt the necklace carefully and sighed.

"So that was what happened, huh."

Bloed knew that the queen was looking at him. He could feel the anxiousness, nervousness, and fear in her eyes.

At the same time, he could feel the concern coming from Regina, Eve, and Eres.

In truth, he already had an idea about what happened five years ago before hearing about it from the queen.

Although he only learned the whole history today, it was not much different than his guess.

Hence–

"It changes nothing."

Looking at the anxious and expectant eyes of the woman in from of him, Bloed put on an ice-cold expression.

"If that is everything you wanted to say, I should leave then, Your Majesty."