Chapter 113 Brothers
Finally, Ole lay contentedly in the snow, panting. The man who had beaten him stood over him, looking down at him, his face unclear.
"Hiss, you're so cruel..." He muttered as he half sat up, and immediately grimaced in pain because of the wound.
He gently kicked his friend's calf: "Hey, heal me."
Azuka lowered his eyes silently, and soon, the wounds on both of them began to heal rapidly, but before the bruises on Ole's face disappeared, the other man stopped.
"I won't heal the part on your face, because I think you need to learn a lesson." Under Ole's incredulous and angry glare, his friend snorted coldly, "You can explain to your fellow assassins why you're so bruised and battered."
...No wonder this guy wanted to hit him in the face just now!
"Why?" Orel tutted his words, unsurprised. "Is it just because I injured the tyrant's hand?"
He frowned and said in a somewhat dissatisfied way, "I didn't mean to do that. Who knew that guy was so bold and his claws were so fast..."
Azuka interrupted him mercilessly: "Because you are stupid."
"--ha?!"
"Use your brain. It's not for show." The smile on the savior's face had completely vanished. A man accustomed to a gentle smile, he looked particularly intimidating when his expression turned cold. Even Orel and Maxine wouldn't dare to provoke him at this moment. "Impulsive, irritable, arrogant, and stubborn... You've lived your life in vain."
Look, look, which eye did all those fanatical admirers of this guy in his previous life see in him his gentleness and consideration? Ole couldn't help but think sarcastically, who is this devil who is now sneering at him?
Azuka grabbed the assassin's collar and pulled him up, veins bulging on the back of his hand. The assassin was stunned by those blue eyes that seemed to carry the cold wrath of the universe, and was unable to move for a moment. "I dare say that if you continue like this, the time you have to wait will be a waste of time."
His voice was soft, but every word was deafening: "The Shadow Chasers will be torn apart, Port Morris will be reduced to a sea of fire, Daniga will die, Pierce will die, Maxine's family will die, those who have died in the past will die, and those who will die in the future will still die..."
In Orel's violently trembling pupils, the savior pronounced the cold verdict word by word.
"—Ore Asachi, you can't change anything."
He let go of his friend, whose face had turned extremely pale, and let him fall stiffly back into the snow, coldly wiping the indistinguishable blood from his fingers.
Neither of them spoke for a long moment. Azuka sighed deeply, his tone softening again. "Since the professor has instructed you to do something, you should do it diligently. There's a deeper meaning behind it. Even if you think he's plotting against you, you can always get some useful information from it."
It was useless to reveal the truth directly. He knew his friend's stubborn temper too well. It would be harder to change his mind because of the words of someone he didn't trust, especially a "tyrant", than to kill him.
Azuka pinched the bridge of his nose wearily. "That's all I have to say. If you still insist on being stupid..."
He smiled tenderly, "—I'll break your spine. Even if it leaves you paralyzed for life, it's better than letting you die anywhere."
Ole: “…”
——So, what kind of blind guy would be interested in this brutal bastard?
The Savior watched his friend's changing expression with indifference. No matter how one looked at it, the Temple of Eros had no advantage in trapping their god's chosen one within the Inquisition. Regardless of whether this "chosen one" was real or fake—after ruling out all possibilities, he and the professor could only come to one absurd conclusion: "Only in this way could the plot become sufficiently dramatic."
God wants him to fall into the abyss, because only the abyss can highlight his greatness; God wants him to be in danger, because only danger can make him a hero; God wants him to be loved, and then sets up "tests" to cruelly deprive him of it one by one, because only tragedy can win the audience's attention and tears - just like a naughty child playing with an ant, first crippling its body, then blocking its path, and finally destroying its nest, until it becomes a lone hero among the ants.
——But what is the purpose of the gods taking so much trouble to create a plot that is attractive enough?
"...Do you remember when I first found out you were a Faithless?" Orel suddenly whispered.
In their previous life, they had the biggest argument ever over this. Maxine was fine with it. The Kasa Strait was a mixed bag, and she had seen countless people with vastly different beliefs since she was a child. Simply not having faith didn't seem unacceptable. She was even more angry about why her best friend had kept it a secret from her, and why it had nearly killed her.
Orel, however, nearly broke with his people. Three hundred years ago, King Corentin became the "Mad King," abandoning his people and their subjects. Life was hard for the Wind Chasers who chose to stay. They hid from place to place, eventually fleeing to Port Morris, then devastated by war but far from the heart of the empire, to evade the Restorationists.
Outside, they are hunted and surrounded by the imperial troops, and inside, they are excluded and fought by local forces. They want to escape to the sea, but they are faced with unpredictable and dangerous sea conditions, as well as ferocious and bloodthirsty pirates and sea beasts. They are exhausted, their manpower is exhausted, their tribe is declining, and the number of survivors is becoming fewer and fewer.
The desperate tribesmen prayed to Utoska, the god of storms, but as always, there was no response; they tried to pull out the Breath of Storm, the legendary sword that could summon a world-destroying storm, but no one succeeded.
Unwilling to vanish like this, the Natalin people turned to other gods for prayer, but it was the God of Night and Death who ultimately answered and accepted them. A powerful dark sorcerer emerged from the tribe, successfully leading them to a firm foothold in Port Morris and gradually regaining their strength. Ole was the son of this dark sorcerer.
Those who go to death live for death; they are those abandoned by the gods, yet also those accepted by them. Ole grew up hearing this history, and like everyone around him, he held Samuel, the god of night and death, in awe and gratitude. But when he learned that his friend was a nonbeliever, despised by all believers of any god, he found it difficult to accept for a long time.
In the end, it was Maxine who woke him up with a scolding.
"Strictly speaking, you both abandoned Utoska, the God of Storms. What's the difference between you and him? If Utoska didn't come to condemn your betrayal, what qualifications do you have to judge him?"
The red-haired girl caught him and dragged him to Azuka by his ear without mercy: "Just because he's a Faithless, does that mean he's not the Azuka we know?!"
"—And you!" Maxine glared fiercely at the other troublesome fellow. Ole swore he saw his friend subconsciously lean back, his expression frozen for a moment. "We've been through so much together, what can't we talk about together? Ole's brain is too slow, you know that. Rather than waiting for him to figure it out on his own, it's better to have a fight!"
"I'll give you two ten minutes to make peace!" She roughly grabbed their hands, one on each side, and pressed them together viciously. "Otherwise, I'll beat you both up one by one—don't think I can't do it. I can always pick on you when you're eating or sleeping, and I'll annoy you to death until you two make peace!"
...It seems that from that time on, Azuka became particularly fond of using violence to negotiate with him.
"...What do you want to say?" Azuka slowly lowered his eyes.
"What I mean is, if this is truly your decision, I'm willing to believe you have your reasons." Ole came to his senses and emphasized the word "yourself." Seeing the other party staring at him, he couldn't help but cough awkwardly. "After all, I've let go of such blasphemous things, so this one won't make a difference. Besides, you're my brother after all. I can't stop you. I can't just watch you die in front of me."
"But I don't trust that guy," he emphasized with a stern face. "I still think he has evil intentions. A madman who once started a war to destroy the world, a tyrant who slaughtered countless believers. Now he tells me that he wants to capture a god - what do you think I will think? Does he want to become a god? Or does he want to destroy the world? To me, there is no difference between the two."
"...Want to make a bet?" Azuka sighed softly.
Ole stared at him warily: "What bet?"
"I want you to obey all the professor's instructions you can accept, and then use your eyes to see, your ears to hear, and your mind to think. You can retain your prejudices, but you must spend a month with him. Just one month." The savior looked at him calmly. "If you don't change your mind about him after a month, I will give up the idea of capturing the god and leave White Tower University with you."
His voice became softer and softer. “But if you admit that your mind has changed, you will have to obey me from now on.”
Ole was silent for a moment. "...It seems the success of this bet depends entirely on my thoughts and words."
"But I believe you wouldn't lie to win the bet, right?" The other man chuckled softly, "After all, I trust you just as much because you're Ole, and you're my brother."
The assassin stared at him for a moment, then suddenly scratched his hair in annoyance and uttered an evil tut: "I always feel like you're trying to trick me."
“—but I agreed.”
He suddenly took out a stick-like object tightly wrapped in cloth from somewhere and threw it into his friend's arms.
"I brought your sword back." He snorted softly, "You're welcome."
Azuka took the Breath of Storm, which had accompanied him for many years, and was silent for a moment: "What about the Bloody Duke...?"
"That damn old man gave up on me a long time ago." Orel sneered, "Before I left, I told him to clean his neck. I'll come and take his head when I'm free."
Seeing that the man still looked serious, he casually said, "Don't worry, he only knows that I took the sword, but he doesn't know where I took it. He won't bring trouble to Baita University."
The author has something to say:
Ole, our cold-blooded killer male second, holding the hot-blooded idiot script
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