"Mischael." It was as if someone was calling his name. The young child opened his eyes and saw a mountain of adults towering around him—his father crying, his mother comforting, and the small figure of himself standing on the outside, at a loss.
"I’m sorry, Mr. Mischael, your father has passed away." A young officer made his way through the crowd, removed his hat, and placed it over his heart with a sorrowful expression, "He was a good gentleman, we are very sorry, there was nothing we could do to help."
Ah, it was when I was little, when my grandfather... was assassinated on the street.
The bewildered child took a step forward, and the faceless crowd parted before him like the sea.
The elderly man lying on the ground was no longer breathing, no longer smiling, and would no longer show his grandson the kindness an old man should have.
The young child knelt by his grandfather’s side.
It was unknown when, but the Mischael family had always been plagued with suffering and curses.
Family members either died unnatural deaths or, in their final trajectory in life, twisted into beings of chaos and spirits.
When Mischael was still too young to remember, his grandmother had already died, the cause being excessive drinking, a very... very strange cause of death.
Everyone said his grandmother never touched a drop of alcohol, and though Mischael had never seen his grandmother, if everyone said so, then it was probably true.
Why she died of excessive drinking, no one said, and Mischael would never know, just like he never knew why his grandfather was murdered on the street, the assassin not even using a dagger or a short knife; instead, an iron chopstick used by Thanan, driven into the grandfather’s heart from behind.
Funnily enough, the Thanan people of Carterburg don’t use iron chopsticks; they believe metallic objects are not fit for the act of dining.
Where the chopsticks came from, no one knew; who the assassin was, no one was sure, Mischael was only sad that there was one less person in the family to talk with.
Later, a sister was born, and as Mischael looked at the sister in his mother’s arms, he felt that things were getting better.
Yes, they were getting better, just like ’he loves me,’ and ’I can win,’ part of the three great delusions of life.
Mother died... killed by an assassin’s bullet, selecting the moment she went to worship with the sister to strike. The bullet entered from behind her, meant to pass through her abdomen and blow a large hole in her sister’s head.
But, as the bullet was exiting her skin, it hit the bulletproof panel mother had prepared in advance, so the mother died, and the sister lived.
"Who is killing us, Father?"
The child, now grown older, looked up at his father and voiced his biggest doubt of many years.
Who is trying to kill us, Father? Is it the King you offended at court, holding a grudge? Is it colleagues harboring resentment from being pressed for money too insistently? Is it the slaves sent to the factories as a form of debt repayment, growing hateful?
"How could you think of slaves, they lack the Transcendent power, the courage to slay their master, they can’t even muster a rebellious thought... my little Mischael." The tender face of his father carried a sorrow mirroring that of the slaves in the factory, including resentment, dissatisfaction, and pain.
But there was no anger.
Five years later, his father was found to have jumped from the top of the factory in the middle of the night.
Death had never been as cheap as on that day, a Transcendent of the fifth tier was confirmed to have fallen from almost twelve meters high, and then... died from the fall.
It was then Mischael understood why there was no anger on his father’s face.
Because he knew he was powerless, whether against his grandfather’s death or his mother’s death, even towards his own end... equally powerless.
The young Mischael, understanding his youngest sister’s ignorance, learned one thing—to survive, sometimes you have to become just that.
Thanks to the Goddess of Harvest’s watch, the Mischael children finally grew up, but the kindly old Bishop who signed the adoption contract wouldn’t know, and neither would the nannies who raised them, nor the old Proxies who bathed them.
Under the smiling façade of the child named Mischael lay hidden a frightful monster.
Only two children of the Mischael family remained, and he had to ensure that he and his sister survived, even if it meant becoming a devil himself.
Besides that, there was vengeance to be had.
Vengeance, only by killing the assassins could the Mischael family escape repeating such a tragic plight.
Mischael opened his eyes. The young patriarch watched the carriage come to a stop, impatiently pushed open the door, and jumped out. At the same time, three coins landed in the outstretched hand of the Coachman.
"Sir, that’s only two dimes."
"That’s for your driving skills as a tip."
The exchange between the driver and the passenger ended there, and Mischael pushed open the graveyard’s gate, came to a corner, and looked at his mother and father’s small gravestones. Like a magician, he pulled out a bottle of liquor from his pocket, uncorked it with his hands, and, as if by magic, another hand produced three small cups from another pocket.
One for the father, one for the mother, and one more for himself.
Sitting down on the steps beside him, Mischael tossed the contents of the cup into his mouth.
Father, you would never have thought that those who wanted to kill the Mischael family would be other families among the Thirty Braves.
How could that be imagined? Those nobles, who showed genuine expressions of sorrow at grandfather’s death, were in fact the murderers hiring assassins, working as a group.