The letter began: What I write here is little more than excuses and cannot be of any comfort to the reader of this letter. I know I can’t repent for what I’ve done, but still…I wanted to write these words. I’m sorry, Jeong-woo.
* * *
It all began with Bayluk’s words.
“Bayluk?” Yeon-woo hadn’t expected to hear that name, and the pocket watch began to tremble uncontrollably. Yeon-woo put his hand around it to comfort it. Along with Vieira Dune, Bayluk was the one who benefited most from Arthia’s fall and Jeong-woo’s death. He was the one who had secretly fed Jeong-woo the poison that eventually killed him: Red Lotus Eye.
The pain of the poison had been cruel, and Bayluk had even taken his time to poison Jeong-woo so that it would be undetectable. By the time Jeong-woo realized that something was wrong, the poison had already invaded his marrows, and it was too late. It was around that time that Jeong-woo’s condition worsened, causing him to become erratic and moody.
Bayluk was essentially the culprit who caused the disbandment of Arthia. ‘But the problem is that no one knows where he is now.’ Bayluk had hidden himself at the same time Jeong-woo collapsed. There was no way to find him.
Bayluk suddenly asked me, “Don’t you want to find your family?” It was the morning that we were preparing for the war against the alliance of clans, no different from any other morning, but I’ve never been able to forget it since.
The word triggered a desperation in me, someone who has never known my identity. However, when I asked him what he meant, he only smiled strangely like always and said, “I’ve found the ruins of the Giant species.” Those words were enough to drive me mad.
Valdebich had always struggled with his identity since he was someone who was neither human nor Giant. Being a mixed breed in the Tower wasn’t anything special since so many players from different planets and dimensions were there. However, Valdebich’s struggle was different.
He wasn’t as smart as humans, and he didn’t have the outstanding fighting spirit of Giants. He was neither a mortal or an immortal, and he possessed an uncertain position. Because he was the descendant of an extinct species, he drew a lot of attention, but it was always a source of trauma for him.
Valdebich also didn’t know anything about his birth. He had faint memories of his childhood, of a house with a large backyard, of siblings and friends who played jokes on each other, parents who smiled at him and told him that they loved him.
However, those memories were foggy, and his parents’ faces seemed obscured by shadow. The clearest memory he had was from when he was around five years old. He remembered his grandfather, who called himself the family butler, forcing him to learn the basic techniques of the Giant species.
His grandfather was different from his affectionate parents, and he always scolded Valdebich cruelly and called him “loser” and “idiot”. He said that Valdebich wasn’t good enough and was an embarrassment to the Giant species.
Because of this, Valdebich became a timid child who truly believed that he was a useless being. This trauma persisted even after he gained the nickname Sword Yaksha and caused a ruckus in the Tower. It was also the reason he’d become obsessed with the idea of family.
Who was he? Why did he have to leave the family that loved him? Did they abandon him? Or had there been some kind of incident?
If he hadn’t been raised by the strange grandfather and stayed with his family, he would have grown up normally, right? Valdebich did everything he could to find his roots, but he failed every time.
