CHAPTER 2 – AWAKENING

“Is there anything?”

“It looks like nothing but straws. I’m going first, so see if anyone is hiding.”

“Oh, let’s go together! You’re so cheap!”

He could feel the footsteps of the looters talking to each other moving away.

‘Did they really go? Maybe they’re just pretending to be far away and waiting?’

After a long time in the pile of straw, he was hot and sweaty, but he didn’t dare to even wipe off his sweat.

Arsene quickly curled up at the sound of someone’s feet returning, fighting the urge to sneak a look at whoever came.

“Ah, damn it. I’m the only one doing this…”

There was a rattling sound, followed by a pok, pok, pok.

Arsene thought for a moment what was going on, and then realized that the looter was stabbing the barn’s bales of straw with a pitchfork in the corner of the barn.

And the sound was getting closer.

“Come out, come out, come out. If you come out now, I’ll cut you into pieces~.”

The marauder was sticking pitchforks here and there, singing songs that shattered the notion of tones.

Arsene realized that he was grinding his teeth unconsciously, and quickly pressed his head and chin up and down to shut his mouth.

‘Please, please, just pass by.’

As he was clenching his teeth, shouting inwardly, something passed in front of his eyes.

Arsene fell into a moment of panic at the fact that a pitchfork was struck in front of his nose, about 3 cm to 5 cm away.

Ironically, thanks to that, he wasn’t able to make any sounds again.

“I told you there wasn’t anybody, damn it!”

Arsene regained consciousness only when he was startled by the sound of a slamming door.

He must have been holding his breath without realizing it, and his breath reached under his chin.

‘Damn, I’m tired.’

Then he felt something wet and hot running through his pants.

‘Thank you, Leha. Really. I don’t have anything, but I’ll donate a lot when I get rich.’

Arsene, who expressed his gratitude to God while holding a stone instead of a relic, spent time praying, waiting for the sound to subside.

Time passed, and as his pants got cold, a new threat arrived.

There had been a foul smell of something burning combined with the bloody smell from before, and the smell got so bad that it was hard to breathe.

It was clear that the looters set fire to the barn or the fires set elsewhere spread to it.

“Oh, come on.”

After carefully walking through the piles of straw, he looked back and saw a few piles of straw burning.

It has become impossible to hold out in the barn until it is safe.

As soon as he carefully stepped out of the barn, a sharp shout pierced his ears.

“What’s with that little boy?”

It was only then that Arsene was able to face the looters who had invaded the fortress for the first time.

He looked like he’s dressed in rags, a face that has not been washed for ten years and was full of soot and dirt, his face didn’t even show the color of his skin.

In fact, Arsene was also wearing rags, but the atmosphere itself was different.

If Arsene was a poor man or a beggar, the expression ‘wild man’ was just right for the looter.

“Catch him!”

Arsene ran to the other side with all his might as soon as he was pointed at by them.

He’s not well-nourished, so he didn’t have a big and strong physique, but he was naturally agile and his feet were fast.

In addition, the looters did not want to exhaust themselves to catch a small boy who was neither a grown-up soldier nor a coveted pretty woman.

Thanks to that, the looters were quickly left behind.

But he was not in a situation to be relieved.

‘I don’t think there’s an answer to that.’

Perhaps the area has already been swept away by looters, as the corpses of the dead and broken doors were eerie.

He thought it would be okay to hide in any of the houses there, but he couldn’t feel safe no matter which building he was hiding in as the fires were moving from place to place.

He had to hide in a place that would never burn.

‘The well!’

Recalling that there was a well nearby, Arsene leaned down as much as he could and crept toward the well.

Fortunately, he was able to arrive at the well without encountering anyone.

He looked into the well and saw a body floating.

He didn’t know who it was, but he thought it was a good thing, so he went into the well and hid under the body.

Fortunately, he was able to stand on my feet because the water level was low.

It was disgusting and uncomfortable to use a human body like a blanket, but it was bearable because the slaughter of small animals had strengthened him.

‘Ha-ha, is that even important in a life-threatening situation?’

If he holds out there for more than a few hours, he’ll suffer from hypothermia, but up there, he’s going to be stabbed or burned to death, so that wasn’t the time to argue.

He was thirsty, but didn’t feel like drinking from a well that contained blood from a body and dung filth.

‘Deep in the mountain, there’s a little spring, Who comes to drink from the spring…’

(Korean children’s song, “Little Spring”)

Arsene spent time in the well, singing in his heart.

There were a few steps he heard going his way, but there was no problem, as whenever he heard something, Arsene stepped back after putting the body above him.

How long has it been? He decided to go up as he couldn’t stand the feeling of his teeth shaking because of the coldness, not fear.

The calm at the top also raised hopeful conclusions that the looters might have fallen out already.

When he was about to climb up the rope to get back up–

“Huh?”

With a popping sound, the old rope could not withstand Arsene’s weight and broke.

Fortunately, he didn’t get hurt because he didn’t go up much, but this situation itself was enough to hurt Arsene’s heart.

In a situation where no one could help, he was trapped in a well that was 3 to 4 meters high.

“No, wait! What the fu*k…”

He tried to climb the wall to try to get out somehow, but he couldn’t.

This needlessly well-made well was hardly a structure to climb, as there was hardly any space for the fingers to hold onto.

Once, twice, and several times in a row, he tried to climb up, but after going up about a meter, it was smooth and there was no place to hold with his hands.

Unless it was a professional climber, there was no way an ordinary child like Arsene could climb it.

“The Almighty Leha, I pray again. Please save me this time, too.”

Arsene prayed standing in the well, hoping that he’d eventually turn around and become a prayer meta.

Of course, he wasn’t just praying in despair.

He tried to walk outside by tying the shoes of the corpse to the rope that had fallen off, and he used the gravel on the floor to frantically cut the wall of the well to make a groove for his hands and feet.

But all he could do was pray after everything was ruined.

He also began to fall asleep for a while, perhaps because he had been in the water for a long time already.

It is said that frustration is the way to raise a man, but you have to live to grow.

‘Oh, damn it. I’m really going to die if I sleep.’

He tried to wake up by slapping his cheek until the end, but his consciousness continued getting blurred.

A blurred consciousness, water that is no longer cold but feels warm, and a body that slowly sinks into the water due to lack of energy.

Arsen’s unconscious body drifted into the water.

A miracle happened when he took one step towards his death.

Long ago, ancient wizards built castles and territories, which were basically based on mana centers flowing through the land.

Naturally, there was also a center under the fortress of Krata, and there was a lot of magical power flowing there.

Normally this magical energy just flows without meaning, but the situation changed when Arsene’s half-dead body touched the bottom of the well.

Even within the whole fortress, the closest to the ground was the well, and as the body was in a suspended state, touching the base of the well, a part of the mana permeated Arsen’s body.

Normally nothing happens, but his body, which became extremely sensitive to external stimuli in the state just before his death, instinctively sensed the magic and swallowed it.

It was the catalyst that revealed the power of the knightly bloodline that Arsene inherited from his father.

The body, which was able to circulate its own mana, transmitted the mana received from the bottom of the well to the heart, and the mana emitted from it was carried into the blood vessels and flowed all over the body.

The mana in the blood circulated throughout the body, supplying oxygen and energy to the body and brain, which had slowed due to the cold, raising his body temperature.

Arsene, whose consciousness suddenly returned with the sensation of his body warming up, jumped to his feet.

“Kuh-huh, huh! Weak…”

Arsene, who came to his senses after throwing up the water with long nausea, felt much better in the well than before.

In addition, the cold that made him feel like dying just a moment ago was gone, and an unknown power surged from his body.

Only then did Arsene realize that he had stepped on death and back.

And the power that he just received.

‘Is this… mana?’

He felt hot blood circulating all over his body, and he was energized.

Arsene immediately took out a pebble under his feet and stamped the wall vigorously.

Unlike a while ago, the walls of the well began to crack after hitting them with gravel a few times.

It would be difficult to break out of the well after completely crushing it, so he made enough space to put his hands and feet in it, stepped up there, and repeated the same work.

After going back and forth several times, breaking some pebbles, Arsene was able to step on the ground again.

“I survived!”

He screamed with joy without knowing it, but when he saw the situation around him, his mood quickly subsided.

The wreckage of the burning buildings was reflected in his sight, and the floor was full of corpses, whether they had been burned to death or burned after death.

The castle protected by ancient magic was intact, but probably no one was alive inside.

He carefully looked around and listened, but there was no sign of anyone moving.

Arsene, who confirmed that all the looters were missing, entered the castle hall.

Inside, there were only bodies rolling around, and all the priceless items were robbed by the looters.

They were so thorough that all that was left was a piece of furniture that was too heavy to take with them.

“Rick, Ria, Auden, Erta…”

All of Lord Lenock’s immediate descendants, who were eligible to enter the castle, died there.

Since the grown children went hunting with their father, they were all children of Arsene’s age.

The children’s mothers and servants were all dead.

And Arsene was a scavenger looking for something to eat to survive among the bodies of his siblings.

Fortunately, there wasn’t Lapram’s body, who was closest to him.

It might be out there somewhere.

“The plague.”

I searched all over the castle hall, repeating the insults that he didn’t know whether they were addressed to the looters or to himself, but nothing came out.

Maybe because they live without it, they really stole everything without a handful of flour.

There was no income to be gained except by stripping off the clothes of one of the dead brothers.

He didn’t want to wear them because it was too dreary, but he had no choice but to do it as even the clothes soaked in blood with holes at its stomach were much better than the rags Arsene was wearing.

After the investigation, the moment he opened the door of the castle building, a filthy vagabond stood right in front of him with a knife that looked like a machete.

“Oh, sh*t. Did you hit your head?? It must be painful, I’ll go after… Eh?”

It wasn’t hard to guess that he was in the same league as the looters he saw earlier.

‘I thought they were all gone!’

It was rusty, but when a man with a sword that was stained with blood stood in front of him, his body stiffened as if he had met a snake.

Arsene knew he had magical powers, but this did not give him any confidence to go against an opponent with a sword, as he had never fought before.

The swordsman was also stiff at the moment because he didn’t know there was another living person, but Arsene was small and young. When he found out that he was even scared, he smiled dejectedly.

“It’s just another bastard. I’ll send you to the underworld myself…”

The swordsman who was approaching, swishing his sword from side to side, suddenly stopped talking and looked at Arsene’s face.

He also briefly caught a hideous smile on the face of the swordsman, who was staring intensely.

Arsene instinctively felt the intention on his opponent’s face, and he felt goosebumps all over his body.

“You look pretty cute. I’d like a kid like you.”

It was lust.

The swordsman with his sword stuck in the ground grabbed Arsene’s stiff arms.

It was natural to let your guard down. Although he was not tall, an adult who is 170 centimeters tall can beat a child who was one or two heads smaller than himself with bare hands.

Unfortunately, however, Arsene had the magic he had just acquired.

Arsene’s body, which came out by activating his magical power, was stronger than expected, and by shaking off one of his arms, he was able to shake off the swordsman’s hand in an instant and thrust his fist into his stomach.

It was a punch that had enough power to subdue it in one shot with a speed that he couldn’t even react to.

“Kah-Heuk! Keuk!”

As soon as the swordsman, who had one of his ribs broken, sat down, Arsene climbed right over him.

His body was so light that he could shake it off with all his strength, but he didn’t give it any chance, and slammed his fist right into his face.

Each time a fist filled with power like one or two sledgehammers landed, the swordsman’s face was stained with blood.

“Die! Die! You fucking dog, die!”

Arsene was half panic-stricken by the threat to his life and chastity, the fear that he might be hit back, and the excitement of using violence.

He didn’t stop until his teeth broke and flew around, and his hands fell to the ground.

He could barely calm down after he punched dozens of times.

“Haak, hak… Haa…”

The swordsman had already stopped breathing.

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Realizing that the situation was still dangerous, Arsene quickly looked around and pulled out the sword that had been stuck in the ground.

When he opened two leather bags hanging from the body’s waist, they contained water and several dried jerkies.

He didn’t know how many more would come, or if that was the only one left behind.

Arsene, with a sword in one hand and a bag in the other, stepped toward the west gate of the citadel.