I Just Wanted to Avoid Death - Chapter 126
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A year passed like that.
When he was living each day just barely surviving, a miracle occurred.
Divine power descended into Eldis’s body.
The moment a divine oracle declared that the blessing of the gods had fallen upon the slums, the way people looked at Eldis changed.
Those who had once beaten him daily began bringing him food. Some knelt before him, begging for forgiveness, while others pleaded to be taken to the temple.
“And then, my father came to see me.”
He hadn’t brought Eldis’s mother—he’d come alone.
Without warning, he held out his hand to Eldis. He said that since he’d raised and fed him all this time, Eldis owed him a reward now that he was going to the temple.
“Wait, hold on. After treating you like that, he came back just to demand compensation?”
When Yeshion cursed Eldis’s father with his eyes, Eldis offered a quiet smile. For some reason, that smile looked sad, and Yeshion found his fist clenching tightly before he realized it.
“That part… I could still endure.”
“……”
“If only I hadn’t learned that my father killed my mother.”
“Killed her…?”
“Yes.”
At first, he didn’t know his father had killed his mother.
But the night he received word from the temple telling him to prepare, that he’d soon be departing, his father came home drunk and reeking of alcohol, mumbling incoherently.
“Tha… That b***h, if she hadn’t gone on and on… tsk, she would’ve seen the brat get into the temple, hic—just fine.”
He felt the blood drain from his body.
Driven by disbelief, Eldis had pressed on with relentless questions, and he learned what he hadn’t known.
“She kept yappin’ on about how she couldn’t just leave you behind…”
His mother hadn’t intended to abandon him.
“Tsk, and where was she planning to go, huh? Ended up just croaking. I just gave her a little smack, is all. Damn woman had bad luck, that’s all. Ah, this kinda stuff—if you pray hard enough, the gods’ll forgive you, right?”
That smile—showing pitch-black teeth—was something out of a nightmare.
Yes, that man was a demon.
Eldis had always believed poverty was the demon. But the real demon was elsewhere. A man who painted everything around him in blood for the sake of his own selfish desires.
Yes, he was the demon.
“Consumed by pure hatred… I killed my father.”
To have hated someone enough to kill them, and for that someone to be one’s own blood—one’s father. It was something the temple strictly forbade: run from hatred, never confront it.
But Eldis had faced it.
He faced it, and lost.
“…Wait, is that why… you were punished by the gods?”
Eldis merely smiled, offering no answer.
Yeshion was dumbfounded.
Yes, he killed his father, but that man’s actions were utterly unforgivable. The hatred and cruelty he inflicted… even if his corpse were strung up on display, it wouldn’t be enough.
And yet, to be divinely punished just for killing such a man?
As Yeshion wore a face full of disbelief, Eldis gently tapped his clenched fist with the tip of a finger and continued.
“I thought I would have to carry that punishment for the rest of my life.”
“……”
“Even now… if the same thing happened again, I’d do it all the same.”
To receive forgiveness from the gods, one must truly repent for their sins. But Eldis had never repented for that day. Even now, he lived with his life steeped in fury toward his father.
So he worked endlessly… desperately… to ensure no one could find fault with him.
Because if someone carrying divine punishment committed another misdeed, his worth as a priest would be called into question.
And so, Eldis hid everything.
All his emotions, reflections, even his heart. He pressed them down and buried them.
If nothing problematic ever arose, then no one would question whether he bore divine punishment.
“It was from that moment that I began to see you as special.”
“Ah…”
“Divine punishment… no matter how powerful your divine power is, it’s something you can’t heal.”
