Beast Slayer Online: Initialization
Copyright© 2026 by CaffeinatedTales
Chapter 117: The Marsh Claimed Another Soul
“No, no! I will not run! I will not run!”
Curled in the corner of the doorframe with his head in his arms, the face once praised across Temeria now showed only raw panic and bewilderment. A shard of plate armor had just flown past him, one step from tearing into the blood vessels in his neck.
One step.
Would he have that luck again? Did he dare wager on it?
His mind had cracked under the fright.
Lannor crouched beside him and gently brushed splinters from his shoulder.
“Whether you run is not for you to decide, my lord count. That is for me to decide.”
“This is my thanks for showing me hell.”
His hand was gentle. His voice was gentle. Only the eyes looking down at Count Stessa were cold enough to seep into the bones.
“Back in my homeland, there is a parable about hell. The details do not matter. Put simply, hell is a shit pit where ordinary people, driven by greed and ugliness, torment one another because if they cannot gain anything, they would rather no one else gain anything either.”
“Sounds common enough, does it not?”
Lannor gave a soft laugh where he crouched, but that easy tone made Stessa shudder.
“Until I saw what you did in the cellar of this estate, my lord count, I never understood what it meant.”
The lightness drained from his voice. What remained was calm, and that calm offered no comfort. It was like a blade drawn from still black ice.
Lannor described what he had seen in that same tone.
“Your cellar was not especially bloody or filthy. The real means of intimidation was nothing more than hanging one child up and bleeding him. Only one child. Only one basin of blood. Do you know what truly frightened me?”
“Not the little toys you used to teach them bed tricks. No. It was the way you divided those children into better and worse.”
“The obedient ones, the children who performed well in their training as slaves, you gave them better food and clothing. You smiled at them, indulged them, granted what they asked. You taught them to look down on the children who performed poorly, meaning the ones who still had some spirit left.”
“A splendid example of management, my lord count.”
Lannor clapped softly, as if he could hardly restrain his admiration.
“You gave a group of slaves, whose lives were only a little less miserable, a sense of superiority over slaves whose lives were worse.”
“I recognized one of your ‘excellent pupils’. No, I should say I had seen him before.”
“When I saw that child on the beach camp in Velen, he was yellow-faced and thin enough that I could have closed one hand around both his arms. But even in that state, when chaos broke out in the camp, he still opened his arms and gathered the smaller children close, comforting them, even though he might have died in the next breath. But now...”
“My lord count, do you know what he looked like when I saw him again in your cellar?”
Lannor asked it like a host inviting an answer from the audience.
Count Stessa only buried his head deeper into his arms.
“He is well fed now. His face is delicate and pretty. His clothes are fine and elegant, enough to make him look like a noble boy. For a moment, I was even glad to see him that way. Until he stood outside the cage and spat, laughing, at the slave children inside, the ones in rags, the ones eating scraps. As if he were teasing dogs.”
Lannor reached into the count’s arms.
His hand closed over the nobleman’s skull. Under Stessa’s pained, terrified stare, Lannor hauled him upright by the head.