Hard Carried by My Sword-Chapter 175

Among the continent’s few great powers, the Clyde Empire was considered the top. It was a nation that had written centuries of history as conqueror, ruler, and invader under an absolute monarchy.

At its height—though it failed—it sent not one but several expeditions of hundreds of thousands across the Titan Mountains. Even today, because of those wars of conquest, the nations along its borders paid tribute of their own accord.

From its beginning, through its golden age, and even now, the Empire had never once fallen from its place as a great power. It prospered, it flourished, and it thrived.

Drawing in the wealth of its neighbors, Clyde spared nothing in adorning itself, standing at the pinnacle of culture and luxury. The Imperial capital, Kalelum, showed that better than anything else.

Even the towering walls were carved with beautiful reliefs, and the marble-paved roads looked less like streets and more like works of art. The buildings that rose like towers were a sight rarely seen outside the Empire. However, the most magnificent building was known to all.

The White Peak Palace. The heart of the Clyde royal family. It was the seat of the Emperor, the ruler of this vast and glorious Empire. Its gardens alone outstripped the land of many small lords, and heavily armed guards stood at intervals of only a few meters, eyes sharp all day.

The outer walls, thirty meters high, could serve as fortifications themselves. Within, no fewer than a hundred magic formations pulsed unseen.

Even without reinforcements, the stationed garrison could withstand several sneak attacks of Swordmaster rank. It was the greatest fortress on the continent, not only functional but beautiful, the beating heart of the strongest nation in existence.

And yet, within those walls, what echoed was not music or splendor but the anguished screams of blood-soaked despair.

“Your Majesty! Please, I beg you, hear me just this once!”

An old man smashed his forehead against the tiled floor until blood dripped down his face, but he did not stop. This man was Marquis Walber.

For eleven generations, his house had served Clyde with loyalty, a great lord wielding immense influence in the Empire’s west. Yet here he was, reduced to tatters, begging for mercy before his Emperor.

On the dais above him, seated upon the throne, was the Mad Emperor, Nex Imperium Gladius Pon Clyde. Pale-gold hair, cold blue eyes sharp as blades, and a face devoid of expression, lent his features a cruelty beyond words as he exuded the Aura of a sovereign who could crush others with a glance alone.

A silence of only a few seconds left Walber trembling. Nex looked down upon him lazily and spoke.

“Speak.”

At his Emperor’s permission, the marquis pleaded desperately.

“For failing to fulfill Your Majesty’s decree exactly as demanded, I will accept any punishment. I surrender my lands to be taken as crown territory, my fortune, my title—everything I have. But please, spare only my wife and children!”

He had laid down everything he could. It was enough to touch any man’s heart when another pleaded so desperately for the sake of his loved ones. And this was Marquis Walber, one of the ten greatest nobles, below only the dukes and the royal family themselves. Even the other chained lords, dragged here in disgrace, looked on with disbelief.

However, the Emperor did not even twitch a brow.

“You are still deluded,” he scoffed. “Your land, your wealth, your title—none of these were ever yours to begin with. And now you say you will give them to me in exchange for mercy?”

A chill killing intent filled Nex’s blue eyes. The air of the audience hall froze like ice, heavy enough to crush the lungs of those who weren’t even the target.

Walber, the sole target in this terrifying room, convulsed where he prostrated.

“I expected no better. From birth, you called yourselves ‘blue blood,’ burying your snouts in this land like parasites, sucking it dry. You cannot even see what is wrong, or when it all went wrong.”

Nex drummed his fingers on the throne’s armrest, his expression flat once more. No one understood him. No one knew what this mad emperor wanted, or what answers he sought. Born and bred as nobles, they could not comprehend.

The Emperor’s verdict fell.

“You are unworthy,” he declared. “You are nobles only because you were born to noble wombs, and slaves only because you were born to slaves. You think that by chance of birth alone you are entitled to wealth and power, and that wielding them is your natural right.”

The Emperor, who should have benefited the most from the caste system, was the last who should have said such words—yet none dared to speak up.

The cold feeling on their napes warned them: speak, and die.

And those who knew the Emperor’s origins especially kept their silence. The beneficiary of privilege? The moment anyone dared speak such words before Nex, their entire bloodline would be burned at the stake.

“I will not persuade. I will not understand. I will not forgive,” he said, denying their existence three times, and lowered his hand. “Execute them.”

At once, the guards drew steel and cut down the nobles standing behind Walber.

It was a scene straight out of hell. The reek of blood filled the hall, severed heads rolled across the marble, eyes wide, unable to believe the fact that they had just lost their lives. Headless bodies crumpled to the floor like discarded dolls.

Walber leaped to his feet, screaming.

“You bastard! You vile, monstrous bastard child! How dare you treat us like—”

“Insolence.”

Before he could finish, his head flew from his shoulders. A guard had already stepped forward and swung his sword.

The execution ended there, Walber among the dead. Silence fell over the hall. Guards gathered the corpses and mopped up the pools of blood.

The Emperor watched and murmured softly, “Once I have purged the remnants of the old age, I will open a new world. A world where all are equal, no matter their birth... and only I can bring it forth.”

The eyes that had once gleamed with intellect and cold irony now wavered, unfocused, consumed by madness and chaos.

The Mad Emperor Nex. That was the name now drowning the Clyde Empire in blood.

***

In a secret passage of the White Peak Palace—a place no one but the royal family should have known—two men stood. To their eyes, the adamantium walls were nothing. They peered through with ease, watching in real time as Marquis Walber and the other nobles were beheaded.

Blood spurted like fountains, and bodies fell like scarecrows as nobles who once flaunted themselves in silks and gold worth tens of thousands died like trash, rolling limply on the floor.

“Pfft... puhuhuhu, hahahahaha!”

One of the men burst out laughing at the spectacle and said, “Magnificent! Those stiff necks dropping like sheaves of grain, that’s just brilliant! Fantastic! That’s my brother indeed. How long have you worked to stage this performance?”

The other man, calm and tall, replied, “Fifty years...”

“Fifty! Hah! Your patience is something I could never imitate. Most of our brothers in Chaos have no patience at all, but you—you’re an oddity. To infiltrate into your own plan and wait fifty years for a plan? I’d die before I tried something like that.”

The frivolous one was named Nekator, the Bishop of Destruction. One of Evil’s Nine Hells, he narrowed his eyes like a snake as he looked at him.

Though Irexana had cut their number to eight, as long as one archbishop survived, they could always replenish. Considering that each was on par with a cardinal of the Holy Church, a Master in their own right, and a threat to the entire world, their availability through an archbishop was almost unfair.

“Let me in on your trick, will you? If my eyes weren’t failing me, that Emperor was born with a ‘good nature.’ The makings of a great king. How did you twist him so far?” Nekator asked as he grinned with eager curiosity. “Drugs? Women? A curse laid on him in childhood?”

The tall man, Mors, Bishop of Chaos, spoke flatly.

“No. None of those. I only gave him a nudge. His descent into madness came from his own ideals running rampant.”

“Ideals? That lunatic?”

“You know Nex’s birth story, don’t you?”

“Of course.”

By rights, Emperor Nex should never have been Emperor at all. He was born from the lust of the previous emperor with a prostitute, tainting noble blood with the base and unclean.

He was a disgrace, less than a half-blood. Yet he was still of royal flesh, and the emperor could not abandon him outright. So Nex was shut away in a side palace.

His mother died there. She bore a prince with her lowly body, and for that, they told her she should count herself blessed. After spewing that nonsense, they cut off her head.

Nex was three years old when he witnessed all of it. That memory carved itself deepest into his mind.

Mors continued, “From then on, Nex wondered. Why must his mother die so wretchedly? Why could the emperor indulge his lust and yet be praised as great?”

No one taught the boy. So, he sought his own answer.

After years of thought, he found the root of all evil: the caste system. A structure that gave power and rights to the unworthy, that decided happiness and misery at birth alone.

Though born royal, he conceived of tearing the system down. It was the first stirring of the Mad Emperor’s dream.

Perhaps, had it gone differently, he might have truly destroyed the caste system and built a world where men were valued by strength and talent, not birth. He could have been the one to bring forth a world without wasteful discrimination.

However, one problem arose.

“We made him Emperor.”

It was the Evil Order, of all things, that raised up the child no one else would guide. A king who should have been a great one became a tyrant instead.

His dream of shattering the caste system twisted into blind hatred of those who benefited from it: nobles and royals. The massacre just now was only one step of that.

“The kindness that was aimed toward him was with malicious intent, and such malicious kindness is, at the end of the day, evil. Nex only used his childhood hatred to justify his ideals.”

“Still with your endless human-watching? You’re insufferable,” Nekator muttered. “You’re easier to talk to than most Chaos, but in the end, you’re as mad as the rest. I prefer things to be simple. Line them up, cut them down. Like just now. Isn’t that better?”

Mors offered no response, so Nekator decided to talk more.

“Tch. Our tastes differ too much. Still, thanks for the show. I’ll be off. See you later.”

With that, the Bishop of Destruction left. Mors stood motionless for hours, like a statue. Then, finally, a thin smile curved his lips—twisted from the root, befitting the Bishop of Chaos.

“Fool. He doesn’t understand that the sweetest flavor is in the torment of those caught between good and evil. Just killing, just breaking—that’s no different from a child smashing their toys. That’s no good. We must savor what we can, mustn’t we?”

Had anyone heard him, they would have called it the voice of a demon. To him, a man’s anguish tasted like honey. That was the feelings of one born human, but no longer anything human at all. 𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺

Mors, Bishop of Chaos, gazed down upon Nex on the throne with a look of... mercy.

“Now, let the play begin. Show me your ideals, my son,” sneered Mors, the Grand Chancellor of the Clyde Empire.

And then, he vanished into the secret passage. The beginning of Chaos, having been planned for fifty years, perhaps even earlier, had finally been set in motion.