Episode 31 – Blood Ties III
“Everyone… they all died—”
Tayla’s tears no longer stopped.
It was unclear whose death she was grieving for. Perhaps she was recalling the moment each family member died, one by one.
Her hands were clasped tightly together atop her knees.
Then, little by little, Tayla began to speak about the truth behind their family’s deaths.
Putting together everything she said, the tragedy that struck the village was famine.
For several months, drought had continued, and the rain had stopped.
Water had still been drawn from the nearby river, but Nada knew that water was distributed by the village’s landowners. His family wasn’t of high status, so they were likely among the last to receive any.
So their crops stopped growing.
At the same time, the amount of food at each meal began to decrease.
But their father and older brother, Karol—the pillars of the household—could not have their portions reduced. The ones who suffered the brunt of it were Shama and Claire, who were still growing. The two who normally ate the most had their meals cut.
Tayla was still small enough that even meager meals were enough for her.
But their mother, pitying them, cut her own food and gave it to Shama and Claire. Her body eventually gave out—the first to die.
In her last week, she ate almost nothing, yet she continued to work for the family.
Even as her cheeks hollowed and her arms thinned, she kept working for everyone.
It was around that time that an epidemic swept through the famine-stricken village.
It had been spreading in nearby villages as well, and people began dying one after another.
Their mother, weakened from malnutrition and without any resistance to illness, died almost instantly.
The family mourned her.
But the one who was driven the most insane by her death was not Karol, nor Tayla, the youngest.
Nor was it Shama or Claire.
“It was after Mother was buried… Father started laughing.”
—It was their father.
Tayla said their father went mad.
From that day on, he often began laughing disturbingly.
Right after their mother’s death, he drowned himself in alcohol. It seemed their mother had always been their father’s emotional support, and the moment she was gone, something inside him broke.
Even when Nada still lived in the village, he remembered his father relying on his mother for just about everything.
So their father stopped working the fields and spent his days drinking.
Karol confronted him head-on, criticizing him, but their father ignored him and even used up the family’s precious living expenses to buy more alcohol.
When there was no money left, and he could no longer afford to drink, he hung himself.
“After that… Karol-nii tried his best, but…”
There was no money left in the house. Their father had turned everything into alcohol.
Even so, Karol tried desperately to keep the household functioning, but few would lend money to someone who had only recently reached adulthood, and the crops still refused to grow. Their daily meals became little more than weeds and the sparse bounty of the forest.
They survived by selling off small portions of their farmland at a time.
The fields shrank, but the crops didn’t increase.
Yet every day, their hunger only grew.
Even then, Tayla—as the youngest—apparently still managed to get food now and then. Shama and Claire gave her portions of theirs.
But by that time, Claire and Shama, whose bodies had already grown, both caught the epidemic. Day by day, they weakened.
Karol struggled desperately to find money, but the famine showed no signs of ending, and the epidemic only worsened.
Few people visited the village anymore—merchants and slave traders alike stopped coming.
Farmland throughout the village was abandoned as families with no successors died out.
Of course, the fields Karol had sold were the same.
The remaining farmland couldn’t be sold, and the neighboring plots gradually fell into ruin as well.
No matter how hard Karol worked, nothing changed.
As a result of the illness, Shama was the first to die.
While listening to the story, Nada thought that, of course, the disease was one cause, but another reason must have been malnutrition. He simply didn’t have the nourishment needed to fight the sickness.
Karol, while tilling the fields, tried every day to find something—anything—to eat by venturing into the mountains, but unfortunately, it was winter at the time, and there were barely any nuts or fruits.
Tayla, lacking nutrition, survived by gnawing on wild grasses nearby, and before long, Claire also succumbed to the disease and died.
The ones left were Tayla and Karol, but by then Karol had already contracted the epidemic. On top of that, although he continued going into the mountains every day while still working the fields, he ate very little, and his body had already grown thin.
Karol, fulfilling his role as the eldest son, pushed his body to keep his younger siblings alive.
But with Claire’s death, he finally reached his limit. The night after burying Claire, he passed away in his sleep.
At first, Tayla thought he was simply asleep, but no matter how much she shook him, he didn’t wake, and he wasn’t breathing.
It also wasn’t the first time she had witnessed death, so after her father, mother, sister, and brother all died, she understood immediately that Karol had died as well.
“And then… somehow, I managed to make a grave for Karol-nii…”
Having already made several graves, Tayla knew how to make one more. What was difficult, she said, was carrying Karol out of the house and digging the hole.
A day passed after she buried Karol.
On the first night, she screamed and cried because no one was left.
While eating the food her brother had left for her and drowning in memories of her family, she remembered how Claire and Shama had once talked about Nada, the older brother who had gone to the dungeon city.
So Tayla decided to head for the dungeon city as well.
She said she did reach the town, but the next thing she knew, she had woken up in this bed.
“And that’s how… I ended up here…”
“I see—”
Even after learning of his family’s deaths, Nada had no other reaction.
It didn’t feel real.
Even after being told that his stern and powerful father, his mother who worked hard with gentle devotion, his older brother who was larger than him and worked tirelessly as the heir, and the younger siblings who always followed behind him had all died—he still felt as if they might be alive if he returned to that village.
No—he understood that they were dead.
His own sister—Tayla—was the one telling him, after all.
He had already seen countless deaths in his life.
When he first entered the academy, he had seen an adventurer die right before his eyes.
Members of his own party had gone missing inside the dungeon and simply never returned.
What he felt now was similar to those times.
They should be dead—he knew that in his head.
But his heart refused to accept it.
A hollow space formed in his chest, and he continued living with it.
That void would never be filled, nor healed.
With time, he would merely forget that the empty space existed.
In the first place, Nada didn’t even understand what feelings he had held toward his family.
Affection? Hatred? Anger? Sadness?
He had indeed left home, but he didn’t think he had held resentment.
It couldn’t be helped.
That was all he could think of.
He was the second son, larger than his other siblings.
The amount of food his family could give him was never enough, so he became an adventurer for the sole purpose of filling his stomach.
He had become an adventurer because staying in that house left his hunger perpetually unsatisfied.
But no matter how much oatmeal he could fill himself with in this profession, Nada never felt satisfied.
Even now.
His heart remained empty, so he felt no grief, no anger, no joy.
Even hearing that his family had died—even hearing that Shama and Claire, the ones he had loved most and cherished the most, were dead—no emotion rose within him. No words came. No tears came.
Even if his mind told him that all of those reactions would be “normal,” the only thing Nada could do was nod.
“Hey, Dan. How’s Tayla doing? Is she suffering from the same illness?”
“No. As far as I can tell, aside from being a little malnourished and still a bit fatigued, she’s healthy.”
“I see. Thanks. Then, Tayla, first, let’s get you some food ready. Eat plenty, then sleep and recover your strength. We’ll talk after that—”
Nada calmly did what he could in the moment.
Iris and Dan said nothing.
After filling her stomach, Tayla quickly fell asleep on Nada’s bed. Iris gently stroked her head, then turned her face toward Nada.
“…What are you going to do?”
“I've already decided what to do.”
“What’s that? Don’t tell me you’re planning to cry? If you want, I can lend you my chest, you know? Though it won’t come cheap. After all, you’d be crying on the hero of the Academy’s chest—”
Iris smacked her ample chest with her free hand.
It bounced dramatically.
But Nada didn’t even look at it. Staring at Tayla’s face, which reminded him of her little sister and her mother, he said,
“Sorry, but I’m not planning on that. My tears dried up a long time ago.”
“Liar. If that’s true, then why does your face look so terrible? Right, Dan?”
“Yeah. The only other time I’ve seen that expression was right before you went off to fight the gargoyle.”
Seeing the resemblance between Nada’s current face and the one he had before that battle, Dan looked worried.
“…Unfortunately, there’s nothing for me to fight this time. The ones who took my family’s lives weren’t bandits or knights—it was famine and disease. What am I supposed to cut down? And besides, when it comes to what I can do now… there’s only one answer.”
“And that is?”
Dan tilted his head.
“—I’m going home. Seems the heavens are telling me it’s about time I put an end to it. Iris, I’ve got a favor to ask.”
“…You’ll owe me one.”
“Appreciated—”
Yeah. That’s right.
Nada couldn’t even clench his fists.
Even if no one alive remained there—even if only his family’s graves were left—he still had to go.
He had to visit their graves and say his final goodbyes.
This was closure.
As a family member, as someone tied to them by blood.
Until now, he’d hated the idea of returning home or facing his family. But this was something he had to overcome. The day had finally arrived. Somewhere in his heart, Nada knew this day would come eventually—but he never thought it would come this soon.
And, if possible—
“Yeah. That’s right. Five days after Tayla wakes up, once everything’s prepared, I’ll return to my hometown. I have to go back—”
Nada said weakly.
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