BXBX NOVEL Chapter 47 - The Seven Kill Squad (4)
Chapter 47 - The Seven Kill Squad (4)
The scene suddenly shifted from Ilsal’s office.
Lloyd blinked slowly.
He was bewildered.
This place was unmistakably the execution grounds from the day he was beheaded.
“You filthy scum!”
“Kill him! Kill him!”
The spectators’ shouts were deafening.
Of course, it made sense. In a world devoid of much stimulation, the execution of a condemned criminal by beheading was the most thrilling spectacle.
“Walk!”
Clang.
His feet dragged as he was pulled forward by the executioner.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to die; it was more likely the aftereffects of the torture.
Collusion with the Demon King.
They had tortured him mercilessly while he was imprisoned, demanding he confess to a crime that didn’t even exist.
Painful memories resurfaced unnecessarily.
‘...’
Lloyd bit his lip.
What on earth was going on?
Time travel?
Regression?
A thousand possibilities flashed through his mind.
Given that Lloyd had already experienced resurrection once, there were many possibilities to consider.
‘But that’s not what’s important.’
What mattered now was whether he could survive or not.
During his actual execution, his mana circuits had been completely destroyed from killing the Demon King, rendering him unable to use magic and making escape impossible.
‘But now…’
Lloyd looked around.
There were a few guards, but none of them seemed particularly threatening.
And then, the familiar faces on the platform.
Several high-ranking officials, and the Three Heroes seated quietly, watching him.
They were the real problem, but now he felt that even they wouldn’t be too difficult to defeat.
‘I’ll escape.’
Lloyd blinked and immediately tried to activate his mana circuits.
Or at least, he tried to.
‘Damn it.’
Lloyd cursed internally.
No mana gathered. In fact, he couldn’t even muster any strength in his body.
It felt as though his hands and arms were flailing in empty space, as if he were trapped in a dream.
‘…No.’
Lloyd tried to bend his index finger slightly.
But it wouldn’t move.
That’s right.
It didn’t feel like he was in a dream.
He had no control over his body at all.
All he could do was watch and feel, as if he were merely an observer trapped in the body of his former self, Lee Han.
“…Hah.”
A sigh escaped his lips.
To be precise, it wasn’t his sigh.
He had sighed at the exact moment his past self, Lee Han, had sighed.
‘Am I losing my mind?’
That thought flashed briefly.
Then, one of the many possibilities that had come to mind earlier rose to the surface.
This wasn’t possession or regression.
Rather, it was a vivid replay of the memories buried deep within his mind.
In other words, this was an illusion, a hallucination.
The world hadn’t changed, but images and sensations were being replayed in his head.
The vivid visuals, the smells, the sounds, even the emotions.
Everything was familiar.
Unbearably familiar.
Grit.
He ground his teeth.
And then.
“Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!”
“The prisoner has reached the guillotine!”
“Waaaaaah!”
The raucous cheers were terrifyingly vivid.
— I killed the Demon King to save you all.
The sense of betrayal that had sunk to the depths of his heart floated to the surface once again.
‘Foolish, short-sighted humans…’
Any lingering attachment to humanity evaporated as if in direct response.
He had always known.
Lloyd knew just how foolish humans were, how they could never see beyond what was directly in front of them.
But still!
How could they treat the person who defeated the Demon King—the one who sacrificed everything, who achieved an impossible feat for the sole purpose of saving them—how could they treat him like this?
In the vast square of the capital.
Kneeling in the dirt, waiting for death, Lee Han had been thinking exactly those thoughts.
Those emotions were conveyed to Lloyd now.
His body couldn’t move, but at this moment, he was still Lee Han.
‘Stay down, Ortega.’
Even though Lloyd couldn’t speak, even though he could only watch as Ortega waited silently for the right moment, he remained cautious of him...
‘Because I’ve replayed this scene in my head hundreds, thousands of times.’
There are memories that, no matter how much you hate them, keep playing over and over in your mind. For Lloyd, the memory unfolding before him was one of those. Ever since he had been reborn in this body, he had stayed cooped up in his room for months, buried under his blankets, reliving only this memory.
That was how he had kept his sanity.
Before, Lloyd’s vision had been blood-red with anger. Now, his mind was calm.
His tunnel-visioned view, narrow from the psychological trauma, had broadened.
He could now take in his surroundings.
The first thing that caught his eye was the Three Heroes.
Seated on the high platform, gazing down at him, their figures slowly came into focus.
The reason they were blurry was because his past self had been crying tears of blood at the time.
Lloyd bit down on his lip, which didn’t even hurt anymore.
“Commence the execution!”
Someone shouted.
Lloyd’s eyes remained fixed on the platform.
His vision was blurry, but he could still make out the shapes.
Over there, that would be Claire, staring blankly at the sky with her eyes tightly shut. Her red hair fluttered in the breeze.
Aria must have been bowing her head. The only thing visible through her fluttering saint’s veil was the veil itself. Her hands were clasped as if in prayer.
And Aina.
She was staring straight at him.
Her piercing eyes, sharp and unwavering, alternated between the blade and Lloyd’s neck.
‘Is she smiling or crying?’
Aina’s barely noticeable trembling shoulders made it unclear.
Lloyd tried to focus, but it wasn’t easy.
No wonder.
“Kill him! Execute the demon!”
“Waaaaaah!”
The cheers of the people.
And that one sound that Lloyd had yet to overcome.
— Clap. Clap. Clap. Clap. Clap!
The sound of applause filled his ears.
Ah, yes, he remembered.
This applause was burned into his memory for exactly this reason.
He had heard it before the guillotine blade fell.
— Thud!
He had heard it as his head rolled across the ground.
— Waaaaaah!
— The demon is dead!
— Clap clap clap clap clap!
He had heard it even then.
The taste of blood was bitter.
‘Damn it.’
He had thought he’d gotten used to it.
— Clap clap clap… clap clap… clap… clap.
As his consciousness grew faint, so did the applause.
And just before the final claps faded completely, as darkness began to overtake him.
“Hey. It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Lloyd?”
The man with red eyes, whom Lloyd had never wanted to see again, was welcoming him.
◆
A pit of mud that no matter how much you swam, you couldn’t escape.
Even so, Yulia did not stop moving her arms.
If she stopped, she would surely die.
Someone would come to help her.
She just had to hold on.
She kept paddling her arms desperately.
She tried not to look at the corpses and ghosts staring at her from the sides, just kept swimming.
Then.
“Yulia…!”
A distant voice called out to her.
It must be her savior, someone coming to rescue her.
With hope, she paddled harder.
It must be someone wonderful…!
“Snap out of it, Princess Yulia!”
A rough voice rang out.
A voice as if the person had spent decades drinking and smoking.
It sounded less like a savior and more like the voice of a drunken old man.
Yulia frowned as she heard it.
“This is an illusion spell! It’s playing on your traumas! This isn’t real!”
“…Ah.”
Yulia’s eyes snapped open.
Gasp!
She let out a sharp breath.
Collapsed on the ground, she gasped for air several times before she could raise her head.
“Are you back with us?”
“Y-yes…”
“What kind of hallucination were you seeing? You were flailing your arms like you were drowning. Have you almost drowned before?”
“…Something like that.”
It was far worse than drowning, but Yulia swallowed the words before they could escape.
“More importantly, what about Lloyd?”
“Ah! Lloyd… that young man’s not in a good state! You at least showed some reaction, but he hasn’t moved at all!”
The chief’s panicked voice rang out.
Yulia quickly looked around for Lloyd.
She didn’t have to look far.
He was standing right beside her.
“…Ah.”
Lloyd.
Lloyd, her advisor.
Yulia’s expression crumbled as she found him.
Lloyd was standing completely still.
And then, drop, drop.
Tears fell from his eyes, trailing down his chin and staining the floor.
A pool of red had formed beneath him.
Yulia staggered toward Lloyd, whose tear-filled eyes remained eerily calm.
“Lloyd…”
Forgetting her dignity, Yulia reached out and wiped away Lloyd’s tears.
“Lloyd… are you alright?”
She stroked his face gently.
The dark circles under his eyes. His sunken cheeks.
His sharp jawline.
She kept wiping his face, hoping to ease even a fraction of the pain he must have been enduring.
“Lloyd…”
Just what—
Just what had this boy gone through?
She couldn’t even begin to imagine what could have happened to make him look like this.
“Please, snap out of it…”
Was Lloyd’s soul being pulled into the abyss right now?
Would this help even a little?
She didn’t know, but this was all Yulia could do for him.
She didn’t know the life Lloyd had lived.
At that moment.
— Flash.
Lloyd’s eyes opened.
“…!”
Yulia instinctively took a few steps back.
Lloyd’s eyes were different.
And then.
— Srrk!
The sound of something tearing filled the air.
Yulia blinked in confusion.
— Splurt!
A fountain of blood sprayed everywhere.
Beyond the cascade of blood, an arm fell to the ground.