I Picked Up an Abandoned Villain in the Polar Region

Episode 55

 

As his vision blurred, everything in front of him became blurry, too. But strangely, in the midst of this blurring, there were things that became clearer.

The words Brody had said earlier and the voices from his past that had been haunting him began to seep into his mind along with the thick fog.

‘This is all your fault. Look at what you’ve been doing these past few days. You’ve been acting completely selfish. You act like you’re the only one having a hard time, and you’re the only one tired. How long do I have to put up with this? Why do I have to be the only one putting up with this?’

Brody’s voice filled with resentment.

‘I always supported my brother. But my brother always thought only of himself. That’s it! Even though you have been so selfish and have trampled on my heart, I have endured it and continued to live. But I will not endure this any longer.’

The voice of his brother who warned him for the last time

‘If you had shown yourself to be trustworthy on a regular basis, this wouldn’t have happened!’

His father’s voice, which was always pressuring and scolding him.

“Stop, stop!”

Kyle clutched his head and screamed in pain as the words were repeated without stopping.

Then, when Ron’s crying, which he hated hearing so much, pierced his ears like tinnitus, he sat down, feeling like he was going to faint.

At that moment his foot slipped, and his body fell down the valley.

His head hit the rock hard, making his vision flicker.

‘…Why do I have to endure this alone…’

The sounds that had been bothering him all along began to fade away.

Kyle closed his eyes after staring blankly at the darkness in front of him.

.

.

The rain was still pouring down and the air was so foggy that it was difficult to see ahead.

In a valley full of rocks, covered in fog, raindrops continued to fall from the sky. It had been raining for two days.

There was a man walking through this foggy valley.

The man walking with a more haggard appearance than two days ago was Kyle.

His legs were unsteady, and there was a dried bloodstain on the back of his head.

Kyle’s neck was soaked with blood, but he didn’t seem to care. He just walked, seemingly oblivious to the fact that he had been seriously injured.

He thought he was walking south, but in reality he had completely lost his sense of direction.

If he had known where he was going, he would have felt strange seeing himself wandering around the same place for two days now.

Kyle, half-mad, walked without stopping, his eyes empty and as if possessed by something.

He was still tormented by the sounds that burrowed into his ears, sounds that were constant and gnawing at his soul.

The words Brody shouted in a resentful voice, words heard from the past and the baby’s creepy cry.

He was staggering forward with an exhausted mind in a valley covered in fog like a swamp.

As he strayed slightly from the path he had been following, a lake he had never seen before appeared before him.

It was a large lake with mist floating far above the surface. Kyle looked at the water and headed towards it.

His steps were so fast that he felt like he might collapse at any moment. As soon as Kyle reached the water’s edge, his legs gave out and he collapsed.

After starving for several days, he bent down to the lake to drink water.

The water was not clear, but black and cloudy.

Exhausted from thirst, he tried to drink the water without thinking.

But the moment he saw his own reflection in the black water like a mirror, his movements stopped.

Kyle stared blankly at the water and then burst out laughing.

“Ha.”

He looked like a total mess.

Even when he looked at himself reflected in the water, he felt it was pitiful and miserable.

Kyle stared at himself like that, lost in thought.

His eyes were empty as if they had drained of emotion and his appearance was haggard.

It was the first time in a long time that he saw himself. He was sure it wasn’t like this the last time he saw it.

When on earth did I become so broken? When did my body and mind start to fall apart?

Kyle slowly went back to his memories.

Then he remembered the moment when he fell alone on the cold snowfield and almost died.

Was it from that time?

“…No.”

He shook his head slowly. It wasn’t then that everything started to go wrong.

It must have been even further back in the past.

Maybe it was from the moment this miserable life began.

 

***

 

Kyle Roden’s life had not been smooth since his childhood.

Even though he was born as the eldest son of the leader of a great wolf pack and was later chosen as the successor, it didn’t change anything.

His life, which should have been filled with loving expectations, was always filled with anxious gazes.

And it all started with his father, Alexander Roden, the leader of the Black Wolf Pack.

“They fled to the Northern Erbe Plateau? Then what about Erbe?”

Kyle, who had been called to his father’s office early in the morning, stopped walking quietly when he heard his father’s voice coming through the open door.

If he was talking about Erbe of the Northern Plateau, he was referring to his uncle, Fabian Erbe.

His uncle lost the position of successor to his younger brother before Kyle was born and fled north.

The butler answered his father’s question.

“Yes, I heard that Erbe took in those who had deserted our pack..”

Not long ago, there was an incident where two brothers who had committed a sin left the black wolf pack.

It seemed that they had gone north and went under Erbe’s command.

Kyle studied his father through the crack in the door.

His father was pressing his temple and letting out a sigh. It was a behavior that came out when he was feeling quite troubled.

“Any other movements?”

“Nothing has been discovered yet.”

In fact, there hadn’t been any notable movement from them in the past few decades.

But still, his father gave orders to the butler with eyes filled with hostility and wariness.

“Keep an eye on it. If you see any suspicious activity, report it immediately.”

“Yes, I understand.”

His father was afraid of his uncle all his life.

Because he was the one who took over the position of successor that had belonged to his uncle 20 years ago and became the leader.

He was stronger and more outstanding than his older brother in his youth, so he overthrew his older brother, who was the leader, and took his place.

As a result, his uncle was driven out from the beautiful Valley of Roden to the north, lost his name, ‘Roden’, and lived in a pack called Erbe.

To this day.

Wasn’t it said that the one who did wrong would suffer the consequences themselves?

After driving out his brother, father lived his entire life in fear.

Since it was a position obtained through rebellion, he always thought that his brother would come for revenge.

And this fear made father always obsessed with strong power.

Because he believed that he had to become stronger to protect this position and his group.

Kyle sighed in annoyance at the frozen atmosphere in the office.

Whenever the name of his uncle, whose face he had never even known, came up, his father’s already sharp nerves became even more tense.

He was already getting irritated at the thought of going to that icy office and seeing his father.

It would be a bad thing if he stood out at a time like now when his father’s temper was extremely sensitive.

He could tell because he had a history of growing up under a sensitive father all his life.

Kyle pretended he didn’t hear his father’s call for the time being and turned around to come back later.

But at that moment, someone who was coming here blocked his path.

“Brother, have you come to see Father?”

It was his younger brother, Abel.

Unlike Kyle, who resembled his father with dark blue hair and a sharp-looking face, Abel resembled his mother Eliza with dark brown hair and a gentle expression that matched his personality.

Abel approached his brother with an affectionate smile.

But that affection that everyone loved didn’t work on him.

Kyle’s expression turned nervous as his father realized he had arrived after hearing his brother calling him from inside.

“You are useless.”

As always, Abel was of no help to him.

It wasn’t just his appearance now. To Kyle, Abel’s mere existence was an obstacle and a threat in his path.

As he grew older, Abel’s strength grew and his position became more solid.

“Kyle, what are you doing instead of coming in!”

Kyle sighed as he heard his father’s voice calling him from inside.

And as he entered the room with his younger brother Abel, his father asked Abel in a much calmer voice than before, which was full of anger.

“Abel, why did you come when I didn’t call you?”

Abel smiled gently and said that he just had something trivial to ask.

He could come to see father with trivial questions.

It was the complete opposite of Kyle, who would come home with a grimace every time his father called.

This also meant that the relationship between his father and younger brother was peaceful.

On the other hand, Kyle, who was not at peace with his father, felt awkward being between his father and brother who spoke in a gentle tone, so he interrupted their conversation in an even more harsh voice and asked.

“Why did you call me?”

His sentence meant: ‘if you had something to say, say it quickly.’

His father’s expression hardened as he noticed his sly intentions.

Abel’s expression, which had been softened, also became cold when he turned to Kyle.

Kyle’s father looked at him harshly, then said.

“I heard you came home late last night.”

Kyle was sick and tired of the fact that at the age of twenty-four, he still treated him like a father checking his young son’s homework.

So he just gave a vague answer.

“I was on patrol.”

But the moment he finished answering, an ink bottle flew straight at his head.

The ink bottle fell to the floor with a dull thud, shattering loudly.

Kyle’s forehead was hit by the sharp end of the ink bottle, making him dizzy for a moment.

As his vision flickered repeatedly, he took a deep breath.

And the moment he came to his senses, he heard his father screaming.

“How dare you lie to me? Then who was it that disturbed Baldwin’s land last night?”