The reason Ian was holding Keith’s hand had changed before he even realized it himself. He simply couldn’t let go of the boy’s trembling hand. Keith gripped him back just as tightly. Hand in hand, they listened to the exchange between the dwarf scholar and the wandering clan’s child.

“The person you met was a fraud. I don’t know what they hoped to gain by impersonating the clan’s traitor—that cursed man—but if they were going to lie, they should have done their research properly. Not even knowing his child was alive? Absurd.”

Louise practically spat the words out. Nameita, too consumed by his own thoughts, failed to notice the boy’s blazing hostility.

“Wait! Explain that. Rick’s child is alive? How... no, where?! Earlier, you said... ‘here,’ didn’t you?”

The sharp-minded scholar questioned himself and reached the answer on his own.

“Yes.”

“You’re saying you’re Rick’s child?”

“Yes! I’m the ‘traitor’s son,’ the one everyone in the clan despises most. What exactly are you trying to pull? Why are you deceiving Lord Ian?!”

Louise drew his bow with lightning speed. Yet Nameita charged toward him as though the arrow aimed at him didn’t exist. The dwarf slammed into Louise’s chest, his thick beard brushing against the boy as his sturdy arms wrapped tightly around him.

Startled, Louise hesitated. He couldn’t bring himself to stab the dwarf and lowered the bow instead.

“By the gods of fire and steel... by the gods of earth and stone! Rick’s child is alive? Oh... gods above... If Rick had known... do you have any idea what this would have meant to him...?”

“What... what’s wrong with you?”

For once, Louise was utterly at a loss.

The dwarf’s tears were hot against his skin, painfully real. Nothing about them seemed fake. And yet... could any of this possibly be true? Could something so impossibly fortunate really happen to him?

Louise was used to misfortune.

From the moment he was born, his life had been fixed to a path he could never escape. He was the clan’s scapegoat, the vessel for every ounce of hatred they carried.

Bad weather? Louise’s fault.

A poor hunt? Louise’s fault.

Someone fell ill? Louise’s fault again.

That was what the villagers always said.

He told himself it wasn’t true, but sometimes even he doubted it.

What if it really was his fault?

When the Demon Realm opened, the weather of the Middle Realm became erratic and violent. Even the beasts of the forest were driven to extinction by demons. Demonic energy preyed upon the weak, turning ordinary colds into fatal pneumonia. Children and elders alike sickened and died.

If it wasn’t Louise’s fault... then whose was it?

Even so, Louise wanted to live.

And for that, he hated himself.

When Ian accepted him into the village and said he believed in him, Louise felt as though he had taken his first real breath.

Until then, hatred was all he had ever known.

Only after Ian acknowledged him did the crushing pressure around his chest finally ease. Only then did he realize how fresh air was supposed to feel.

It wasn’t just the villagers who hated Louise.

Louise hated himself too.

Perhaps the person who despised Louise most in the entire village... was Louise himself.

The villagers only needed to spit curses whenever he passed by, but Louise could never escape his own existence.

And just as deeply as he hated himself, he hated his parents—the people who had brought him into this world.

Those wretched people who committed an unforgivable sin and then conveniently died, leaving him alone to bear the consequences.

“A friend of my father? That’s disgusting, even as a joke. Anyone defending that man has to be insane. Making up a story like that...”

If this dwarf had spent even a single day in the wandering clan’s village, he would never say such things.

Yet when Nameita finally loosened his embrace and stepped back, Louise felt an inexplicable sense of emptiness.

Still dazed, the boy stood there while the dwarf scrutinized him closely before rising onto his toes to run rough hands across Louise’s face.

Louise was still young, but he was a growing human child, his height shooting up like bamboo. The dwarf had to strain just to meet his eyes.

“You look exactly like Rick. And I don’t mean just because you’re human. Obviously not all humans look alike—that would be a racist thing to say. Even within the wandering clan, everyone looks different. That’s simply common sense...”

“Lord Ian.”

Unable to contain his agitation any longer, Louise turned toward the only adult he trusted completely.

His master.

He couldn’t judge this himself.

Some foolish part of him wanted desperately to believe the dwarf’s words.

A swindler tells people exactly what they most long to hear, and these words struck directly at Louise’s deepest desire.

If he wasn’t truly the ‘traitor’s child’...

If his real parents were somewhere else...

If the villagers had lied to him all along...

How wonderful would that be?

The dwarf seemed to read those wishes as clearly as if they had been written across Louise’s palm. That was why Louise couldn’t bring himself to attack him.

But his master was wise.

“Nameita. You still haven’t answered my question. You said the former chief’s entire family was sacrificed, yet here stands a survivor. How do you explain that?”

“Rick believed that. He truly believed it... If only he had known. How did you survive? Ah... I’m so relieved. Truly...”

Nameita muttered the words over and over as he stroked Louise’s hair. Ian pressed him gently.

“Nameita.”

“Ah—yes. What Rick told me was... that his pregnant wife had been sacrificed. She was close to giving birth. The child could have been born at any moment.”

“......”

“At the time, the wandering clan had visited a city inhabited by wizards. Those wizards offered to buy every animal by-product the clan possessed. Rick, who was chief then, struck a deal with them and planned to leave the city the following day. But before they departed, he received a letter.”

Nameita’s expression darkened.

“And when he regained his senses... he and his wife had already been chosen as sacrifices to open the gate to the Demon Realm. Rick’s companions... his comrades... were burned alive while screaming in agony.”

Nameita swallowed hard, his face drained of color.

Rick had been a quiet man. Even toward the benefactor who saved him, he rarely spoke about himself.

At first, Nameita assumed it was simple caution toward other races.

But after hearing Rick’s story, he understood.

Rick wasn’t silent because he wanted to be.

He simply couldn’t speak about it.

The memories were too painful.

“He said it looked like hell itself.”

The gate to the Demon Realm tore open, and demons poured out endlessly. The sulfurous stench of demonic energy mixed with the metallic reek of blood. Even as consciousness slipped away beneath the suffocating smoke, Rick witnessed everything.

The demonic army trampled through his family and friends without pause.

He himself was kicked aside like garbage, rolling helplessly across the ground. Even then, he desperately tried to keep his eyes fixed on where his wife had been standing—but she disappeared from sight almost immediately.

When Rick regained consciousness, he found himself somewhere unfamiliar.

A dwarf who had treated his injuries explained what had happened. Only then did Rick fully understand the scale of the disaster he had survived.

The wizard’s letter.

That was where it had all begun.

Rick wanted revenge.

He had to kill the demons.

Otherwise, he could never continue living.

But to the rest of the world, Rick had become a traitor to the Middle Realm—the man responsible for opening the gate to [N O V E L I G H T] the Demon Realm.

Rick had not done it willingly.

And yet he couldn’t claim innocence either.

How else could his wife and the villagers have gathered at the sacrificial site?

He remembered nothing after receiving the letter, as though that section of his life had been cleanly severed from his memory. But he could still imagine what must have happened.

Calling his wife there.

Leading the trusting villagers to their deaths.

He should never have opened that letter.

He should never have stopped in that city.

No...

He should never have been born at all.

If he had never existed, his people might have survived. The continent might never have been overrun by demons. Everything could have remained normal.

But deep down, Rick understood the truth.

Even if it hadn’t happened through him, the tragedy would still have come through someone else.

The fact that he survived meant there was still something left for him to do.

Frederick had been the finest poison hunter in the village.

And a great hunter was, by nature, also a great tracker.

So Frederick joined the Great Demon War to hunt down the wizard who had sent him that letter.

That was the story of Frederick’s past, as Nameita knew it.