“Take him away.”

Those icy words sounded like a death sentence for the boy.

The moment the words left their mouth, the two Blood Clan knights standing before him wordlessly gestured for Sang to follow, palms facing a carriage up ahead.

Sang had no way to refuse. He gritted his teeth, worked up his courage, and climbed aboard.

Kahn Town was poor and backward, especially the orphanage out in the suburbs. Even the road outside was a muddy, uneven mess, and after the midsummer downpours had battered it, it was nearly impassable. Every step was a struggle. Every step left him filthy.

Even so,

Sang still walked resolutely in the direction opposite the orphanage.

He could have been the first to contaminate his own blood, but he thought of Luna and Adolf right away, and ended up being chosen instead. He could have tried to run away, too, but he thought of everyone at the orphanage and chose to leave with the Blood Clan knights.

As Sang walked step by step toward the carriage, he couldn’t help repeating to himself, “If fate is unfair, then I’ll fight it to the bitter end!”

Sigh.

Forget it. I don’t want to fight after all. Life was exhausting enough in my last life. I’d hoped to spend this one quietly doing nothing, but look how things turned out.

Fight my ass. If I die, I die.

And then,

the carriage set off under the escort of a group of knights.

They really were knights from Central—and knights of House Capet, no less. Their discipline was downright terrifying. Every one of them was like an iron man, carrying out their orders without the slightest delay. They even ignored Baron Ben Loren’s invitation to the banquet. The whole operation was smooth as silk.

Civilization and technology in this world were extremely backward, and carriages were the main means of transportation.

Sang had never ridden in such a luxurious carriage before, but he had no mind to enjoy it. He might have been an optimist, but he was still just a teenager who wasn’t all that mature. He was suddenly leaving the town where he’d been born and raised for fourteen years, and heading somewhere far away, full of danger and with no telling whether he’d live or die. His feelings were a tangled mess.

More than anything, he felt anxious and reluctant to leave.

At that moment, he felt like he was walking toward a bottomless abyss. He wished a light would appear up ahead. If there was no light, then at least a ray of dawn.

Just as young Sang was thinking this,

the shouts of a boy and a girl suddenly rang out from beyond the carriage.

“Sang!”

“Watermelon!”

Almost at the same time, young Sang stuck his head out of the carriage. It had reached the road not far from the tree that served as their secret base. Luna and Adolf were standing beneath it, shouting toward him.

Maybe it was just his imagination.

At that moment, Sang felt as if he’d glimpsed a ray of light in this miserable world. His spirits lifted, and he called, “Luna! Adolf! I’m here!”

Back in Kahn Town, Luna and Adolf hadn’t dared to offend the Blood Clan, so they’d stayed quiet and hadn’t even dared to say goodbye. Now, even though there was still some danger, they simply couldn’t bear to let the childhood bond between the three of them end without a word.

No matter what, they had to say a proper goodbye.

So, in the end, they came after all.

Just then, the Blood Clan knights escorting Sang noticed the boy and girl in the distance. They paused briefly. The knight at the head turned toward the two beneath the tree and took a stance as if ready to draw his sword.

Sang noticed the gesture, of course. He finally couldn’t take it anymore and shouted, “Stop! If you hurt either of them, I…I…I’ll smash my head against something right here! Then you’ll have a real problem!”

Sang wasn’t stupid.

He knew exactly where he stood. As the True Ancestor’s Blood Servant, he was like the True Ancestor’s clothes—well… the “clothes” in “women are like clothes.”

He still wasn’t treated with respect or granted human rights, but if anything happened to the True Ancestor’s clothes, none of these Blood Clan members would get away with it.

At his words, the Blood Clan knight seemed to waver. He paused, lowered the hand resting on his sword hilt, then waved them on and said coldly, “No stopping. Keep moving!”

Sang couldn’t help but think, a black line across his forehead: So much for having any rights. They wouldn’t even let him say goodbye.

The next second,

Sang seemed to remember something. With what little time he had left, he hurriedly pulled a crude wooden harmonica from his pocket and threw it with all his might toward the tree, dozens of meters away.

The harmonica followed an arc through the air and dropped into Luna’s open hands.

“I almost forgot—this is your birthday present! Happy coming-of-age, Luna!” Sang, who was usually lazy and laid-back, suddenly broke into a bright, sunny smile, radiant as the midsummer sun.

“Happy birthday to you, too, Watermelon!” Luna shouted with all her strength.

Sang called out again, “Luna! Adolf! We’ll definitely see each other again!”

“We will!” Luna and Adolf shouted in unison.

He’d found a reason to keep living!

It was only a tiny bit of encouragement and comfort, but to young Sang, living alone in a miserable world, it was a precious hope.

No matter what lay ahead, he would survive!

……

As mentioned earlier,

this was a world ruled by the Blood Clan. It wasn’t even really suited to be called a country. Generally speaking, it went by only three names: the Blood Dynasty, the Blood Empire, and the Night Kingdom.

All of those names raised another question: where was the capital?

There was no capital, but there was a place much like one: Central (the Hub). Strictly speaking, the entire world belonged to the True Ancestor, but that particular territory was administered by Duke Capet.

When he was very young,

Sang had begged Lillian, the orphanage director, for a long time so he could learn as much about this world as possible. In the end, he got his hands on a map. He’d thought it was a map of the world, but it turned out to show only this continent.

There was nothing to be done about that.

There was no Magellan in this world, and with technology so underdeveloped, people still firmly believed the world was flat, with a round sky above it.

Sang remained convinced that other continents had to exist beyond this one.

Could he propose the theory that “the place we live on is actually a sphere” and become an era-defining scholar? Well… for one thing, Sang was too laid-back to become a great scholar. For another, he was afraid that proposing such a shocking theory in this world would get him branded a heretic and burned at the stake.

This was getting a little off topic.

Going by what he remembered from the map of the continent he’d seen as a child, this landmass was vast—about half the size of a continent in his old world. Kahn Town was in a remote region to the east. The Hub was not only the center of power, but also the geographical center. It was about three thousand kilometers from Kahn Town to the Hub. By carriage, traveling day and night, the journey would take roughly half a month.

In any case, it was going to be a long, grueling journey.

Sang wanted it to go slower and faster at the same time. His feelings were a mess.