Chapter 86: The Price of Third Place II

Mana lights ignited along the walls, and pain stabbed through his eyes. Toren clenched them shut, then slowly opened them again, forcing himself to adjust to the brightness as shapes emerged from the darkness.

Two figures stood in front of him.

One was the man who had tortured him.

The other...

Toren stopped breathing.

He knew that face.

Relief hit him so hard that his vision blurred.

"Fathe—"

Blood exploded across the floor.

Toren’s body jerked violently as his mouth tore open from one corner to the other. The pain arrived a second later, sharp enough to overwhelm even the damage already inside him.

He tried to scream.

Nothing came.

Blood spilled from his ruined mouth and ran down his chin while Valerius looked at him without the slightest trace of concern.

"Don’t call me with that filthy mouth of yours."

Toren stared at him.

He could not understand.

His lips moved soundlessly.

Valerius continued in the same calm tone.

"I wanted you to be first place."

Toren’s eyes widened.

"But you failed."

His father’s gaze moved over his emaciated body with open disgust.

"You’re not my son. You’re filth that lost to a cripple and a commoner."

Something inside Toren collapsed.

He shook his head, unable to accept what he was hearing. His father had come. His father was supposed to save him.

Valerius turned toward the cloaked figure beside him.

"How is he still alive?"

The figure looked down at Toren.

"It’s a surprise. He’s considerably more durable than the last ones."

Valerius sighed and let his gaze wander through the room.

Only then did Toren notice what surrounded them.

Skulls.

Bones.

Bodies reduced to little more than remains.

Some still wore fragments of clothing, while others had been stripped down to white skeletons scattered across the stone.

Valerius looked over them as though examining a room that needed cleaning.

"I’ll need another child."

He sighed.

"Why can’t my children simply be perfect?"

Toren’s eyes filled.

Tears slipped down his cheeks and mixed with the blood covering his face as he stared at his father with a hatred so intense that it almost overwhelmed the pain. He wanted an answer. He wanted to scream. He wanted to ask what he had done wrong, but his throat could only force out wet, broken breaths while blood continued spilling from his ruined mouth.

Valerius looked back at him.

"Send him to the Nightmare Lands."

Toren’s eyes widened, and his entire body began trembling.

"N...-no..."

The word barely existed, indistinguishable from a whimper.

Valerius looked at him.

Toren shook his head harder, the blood in his throat making each breath wet and uneven.

"N-...no..."

He tried again, forcing the sound through the pain.

"No...t... th...ere."

The Nightmare Lands.

Even S-rank awakened approached those regions with caution, and for someone in his condition, entering them was neither a difficult assignment nor a dangerous trial. It was disposal.

Toren had heard stories from people who had survived those lands. He had seen what came back. Some never returned, while those who did were often missing pieces of themselves, physically or mentally, and some spent years wishing they had died quickly instead.

The monsters there did not always kill their prey. Some played with it. Some dragged it away. Some kept it alive.

Toren knew enough to understand exactly what his father had condemned him to.

He pulled against the chains, and metal screamed against the walls.

"No!"

The sound tore from his lungs with what little strength remained.

His body shook harder as he threw himself forward again, making the restraints rattle violently.

"NO!"

He had never looked this desperate. He had never needed anyone this badly.

His thoughts raced as he tried to hold onto something, anything, that would keep him from breaking completely.

It’s because of them.

That cripple.

That commoner.

The people who took him.

The ranking.

Everything.

He tried to force the anger back into place, tried to give it somewhere to go, but then he looked at his father again.

The thought died.

It was him.

It had always been him.

The person Toren had spent all this time waiting for had been standing in front of him, watching him die.

His breathing became ragged, and his head began shaking.

"P...-ple..ase..."

The word slipped from him without meaning.

A short, broken laugh escaped his ruined throat, but the sound died almost immediately.

His eyes remained fixed on Valerius.

He couldn’t look away.

Valerius’s expression never changed.

"This is only happening to you because you matter."

Toren’s face twisted.

"All the other Vesperas who failed to take first place had their names revoked, and they simply left the house."

He paused before continuing.

"But you were different, Toren."

His voice remained almost gentle.

"You were my child."

Toren’s eyes trembled.

"You were number one."

Valerius’s face hardened.

"But now you’re not."

Silence settled between them.

"I don’t keep failure children around."

His smile appeared slowly.

It was the most horrifying expression Toren had ever seen on his father’s face because there was no anger behind it.

Only pleasure.

"I killed them all."

Toren stopped struggling.

For a moment, his body became completely still.

Then his face crumpled.

The tears came harder as his breathing broke into uneven gasps, and he began pulling against the chains again with whatever strength his ruined body could still produce.

Valerius watched him with an almost peaceful expression.

"Take him away."

The chains released.

Toren dropped, his knees striking the stone before his body collapsed beneath its own weight. Before he could even lift his head, the cloaked figure seized him by the back of his clothes and dragged him toward the door.

Toren clawed at the floor, his nails scraping against the stone while his broken mouth opened in another silent scream. The chains dragged behind him, rattling across the ground as blood smeared beneath his body.

He tried to hold on.

There was nothing to hold.

Toren looked back one final time.

Valerius was already turning away.

He didn’t watch his son leave.

The door opened.

Darkness waited on the other side.

Toren disappeared into it.