novelraw Chapter 182 : Chapter 182
Chapter 182 : Chapter 182
Chapter 182 - The Executioner's Dilemma (6)
There was a noble knight.
A knight who was stronger and more upright than anyone of his time.
Power, comrades, conviction, companions, popularity, faith. The knight had everything, and thus, he praised the form in which the world was made.
He might have even offered thanks every day to the god who must have created this world, wondering how such a beautiful world could exist.
In that beautiful story, the knight accomplished various feats that are still passed down in fairy tales and oral traditions, living a faithful life as a knight.
Yet, there was one fact he failed to recognize.
The fact that after a rise, a terrible fall awaits.
As stories often go, the knight had a downfall as miserable as his rise was brilliant.
A downfall so cliché that it needed no lengthy explanation.
The knights failed to stop a disaster and needed a scapegoat to cover their own shame, so they made the noble knight their scapegoat.
Thus, the noble knight was framed and criticized by those he believed to be his comrades, falling endlessly—that's the story.
Since this has been repeated countless times in history and novels, no one would have felt any particular emotion from this story.
At the end of the story. The knight survived even beyond it. Although it was an ambiguous form, not a complete resolution.
The knight made the world believe he was dead.
He cast off his sword that held his honor, his armor engraved with magnificent decorations, and the banner that represented his past achievements, and wore stitched-up rags.
His once-neat hair became a dirty, disheveled mess.
He disfigured his own face so that pursuers wouldn't recognize him, and swallowed heated charcoal to disguise his voice strangely.
With that desperate disguise, none of the pursuers would have recognized him as the noble knight of the past.
It was only natural. Who could have imagined it?
The knight who had shone brilliantly as everyone's idol, now living on as the messiest of back-alley vagrants.
That was the epilogue of this tale of knights, of this tragedy.
The surviving knight thought.
‘How did it come to this?’
He was furious at those who had abandoned him, despised their cowardice, and cursed their futures.
But even those cursed thoughts didn't last long.
It was an event that would have been natural to curse for a lifetime, but soon enough, those feelings naturally evaporated.
How was that possible? The answer to that question was simple.
It was simply because he still possessed a noble character.
Yes, the knight was so noble that he couldn't fundamentally curse people. He couldn't look at their evil as evil itself and hate them.
‘How sad.’
He didn't turn his arrow towards people⋯⋯ or perhaps he couldn't, but since the arrow had left his hand and the event had occurred, some entity had to become its target.
So, to whom was the arrow aimed?
The target was the world itself, or the god who created this world.
‘Why were they born with such a nature?’
The knight didn't hate evil; he merely felt sorrow for those who were born evil.
If they were just born that way, if the weak were just made in a weak form and made weak choices, there was nothing to resent.
Considering the maddening conclusion that could be glimpsed from that excessive nobility, perhaps the knight had been twisted somewhere from the start.
The knight's conclusion was this. The comrades he had seen were certainly fine individuals, but they couldn't overcome their weakness in the end.
‘Is that truly an individual's fault?’
If God exists, why did God create humans in this form?
Why did he give a strong will to only a select few?
Why didn't God bestow goodness and justice upon everyone living in this world?
Why were we born in this form?
He tried to turn the arrow of resentment towards individuals, but he couldn't suppress the thoughts that seeped from his mind.
If God exists, why did he make humans this way? He still couldn't find an answer to that question.
But if there was one thing he could be sure of, it was this.
‘If God exists, God does not pity humans.’
If God felt pity for the creations born from his own hands, he wouldn't have made them in this form.
That was his conclusion.
Time continued to flow.
The internal conclusion he reached intertwined with the grim reality, and it turned into hatred for the world itself and the existence of God.
Was it a reaction to the boundless praise he had given the world when he was still shining?
Hatred for a god who does not pity humans.
This was what the knight, who had fallen to a vagrant, had to carry for the rest of his life.
By rights, he should have disappeared into the back alleys of history with that hatred⋯⋯.
At the end of his life, the fallen knight finally came face to face with it.
The 'god' he had truly been searching for, the one who truly pitied humans.
***
To repeat death is to endure the effort and pain within that process, but it is also to endure the tedium.
Some might tilt their heads at the fact that pain, effort, and tedium appear in the same line, but at least from my experience, it was so.
In the same time that repeated like a hamster wheel, what did I have to do to not be consumed by tedium?
The answer was thought.
The exploration of how to overcome this ordeal, the split-second thinking in battle, and so on⋯⋯.
There were many topics to think about, and plenty of time as well.
And, among those topics, insight into the enemy was also included.
The study of the ‘Knight Executioner,’ Grændal.
‘It wasn't that I intended to think about it.’
Naturally, in that urgent situation, it wasn't that I had the intention to gain insight into Grændal.
It was just that in the torrent where various thoughts were mixed in confusion, I had simply fished out the contemplation that had been completed at some point.
Grændal’s life had aspects that reminded me of ‘Judgment,’ whom I had swept away at the beginning of the semester.
‘The part about being framed and betrayed by those they trusted.’
Though the eras were different, it could be said that their lives were so similar that you could say they were practically carbon copies.
However, there was a big difference in how the two, who faced almost the same situation, felt about the incident.
First, Judgment felt anger towards those who had abandoned him.
Endless anger towards those who had abandoned him, regret for having trusted them.
That had sickened Judgment's mind, and he was soon reborn as a monster.
A tragic end, but if you think about it, the emotions Judgment felt were all too natural for a human.
‘That might be why Judgment was able to die without being chosen by The One.’
On the other hand, in Grændal’s case⋯⋯ he felt sadness for those who had abandoned him.
Why were they born in such a weak form?
It's really not a thought a sane person could have. Considering the description in
Grændal truly felt sadness for the very fact that they were born that way, and that must have been what made The One choose him.
And, the conclusion of this story is one.
‘Grændal is not sane.’
As someone who had pierced through everything about the trajectory of his life, I could say that with confidence.
He had devoted himself to the world, only to be cast aside like a worn-out shoe by the very people who were that world.
That was enough reason to point his sword at the world, at least that's what I think.
But for his motive to be begging for pity from a god.
It was absurd. The word ‘preposterous’ was too good for it.
I couldn't agree with it to the point that I wanted to spit every time I looked back on it.
‘But, why?’
Why am I denying Grændal’s ideology to this extent?
Once my thoughts reached that point, all questions were clearly resolved.
- Why do you stand against us?
- Is it your desire to protect the world? Does that noble heart whisper to you to wield your sword?
The answer to that question, which I had heard repeatedly with every death.
And the answer to why I was fighting them to this extent.
‘I just couldn't stand the sight of it.’
The answer was as simple as that.
I still remember the question I had asked The One, who had offered me rest when the incident at the Exchange Meeting occurred.
- Is our life⋯⋯ pitiful to you?
- Is it merely pitiful?
And the image of The One, who had answered that question with boundless pity.
- ⋯⋯Yes.
For some reason, that answer drew a violent rejection from me.
To the extent that in that bleak situation, instead of choosing rest, it made me choose a path full of pain.
Yes, I hated the look of pity The One had sent me that much.
I found that pitiful expression the fake god had sent towards humanity detestable.
It was a life in the gutter, but even so, I wanted to shout that our lives were not merely pitiful.
And my enemies were those who affirmed that pity.
That was all.
The reason I fought so hard, and the reason I hated and detested them so much.
“⋯⋯Haha.”
Which regression was it?
When I reached that conclusion, I let out a small, dry laugh.
To think that the reason I fought while bearing this pain wasn't from any noble reason, but simply from the feeling that I couldn't stand the sight of it.
‘I guess I’m a pathetic human too.’
But, so what?
I knew that I wasn't that great or noble of a person.
When I put a bullet in Gabriel, and when I escaped from the mire of that nightmarish Exchange Meeting, the emotions I felt were not noble at all.
It was a natural conclusion.
If that was the conclusion, there would be only one thing left for me to do.
Unlike the original's rival, Elwin, not nobly, but pathetically all the way.
To end the executioner's tale in my own way.
In other words, to execute the executioner.