I Just Wanted to Avoid Death - Chapter 173
Did you get hooked and started binge reading too fast? IJWTAD has advance chapters now available on ko-fi! Check it out!
From that day on, ‘Yeshion’s’ life had completely turned upside down.
“So you’re good at following orders after all. I thought you’d be dead by now. Now, the next task… take care of this on your way back to the temple. You’ll see a carriage to your left when you exit. Just sprinkle this on the wheel.”
Yeshion opened the vial and gave it a slight sniff. His expression hardened.
It was a corrosive agent. If it made contact with the wheel, the metal holding the wheel in place could eventually dissolve.
In other words, not only the passenger but the coachman might die as well.
“You’re going to do it anyway, so stop making that face every time you get a mission.”
“……”
“Not going to answer me?”
“…Yes.”
Yeshion, who once acted with arrogant pride, now hung his head low in submission. And every time he completed a mission perfectly, he was pointed at and called a truly wicked bastard.
They probably meant it as praise in their own twisted way, but to Yeshion, those words burned his heart. He wanted to destroy the Imperial Family, not aid these people in their affairs.
‘But now that it has come to this…’
At some point, even his desperate desire for revenge had started to fade.
He needed to know who he was following to find even a weakness. Yeshion only knew they were enemies of the temple.
He didn’t know whose side he was on. He didn’t know who he was following. He only obeyed because he was afraid of being beaten, and as he did, the number of dead piled up.
He could no longer count how many corpses he stood atop.
One year. Then two.
Time flowed endlessly while he failed to find a way out from among them.
“Priest Yeshion.”
That day, he had refused a mission to kill a child.
Baine beat him harshly for growing rebellious, and Yeshion, face swollen with bruises, kept his head down as he returned to the temple.
“…Eldis.”
Yeshion looked at Eldis with dead eyes.
They’d pretended not to know each other for years now. The man who once scolded him for every little thing had long since gone quiet, and had distanced himself from Yeshion.
“I know this isn’t… why I asked to be brought to the temple.”
“……”
“This will be the last time I ask. I’ve been granted an opportunity to soon become Archpriest.”
“…And?”
“Please let me help you.”
His face was resolute, but Yeshion only laughed quietly.
“You fool.”
Had he been the naïve Yeshion of long ago, he might have grabbed Eldis’s hand and said yes without hesitation.
But this Yeshion had already tried and failed to escape more than once.
“How did you even get mixed up with those people? Let me help you. It’s not too late. There must be a way out. First, we’ll tell the senior priests the truth—”
His voice was desperate.
He was begging to be told what was going on, and seeing his pleading look made ‘Yeshion’ clench his fists.
His goal of revenge had long since lost its light. By now, ‘Yeshion’ was nothing more than someone who had willingly walked into the lion’s mouth, and every person who reached out a hand to save him… died because of him.
Someone had once followed Yeshion, and someone else had once promised to help if he just gave them word.
But they were all dead now.
They were all daed because of him.
Yeshion was that kind of person. Foolish. Clueless. Ignorant of how the world worked. A person who only brought harm to everyone around him.
Foolishness was a sin, and Yeshion, steeped in that sin, was toyed with in the hands of his enemies.
“…Shut up.”
“……”
“Just because you’re a priest too, you think you’re my equal?”
He didn’t want pity. Pity for him only ever ended in someone else’s death.
So in the end, Yeshion remained alone forever.
Every time Eldis reached out with concern over a severe injury, he slapped his hand away, and called him a lowly servant. The humiliation he suffered at their hands grew worse with time, and so did the sorrow that was too heavy to bear.
Foolishly, ‘Yesion’ realized far too late that revenge is something only those with fortitude can afford to pursue.
And so, after several years of working under them, after condemning a newborn child to death, the guilt crushed Yeshion completely. He felt that if things went on like this, he would eventually end his own life.
So he said it.
