The Tyrant Of The Red Throne

CHAPTER 2 The Baby's Cry and the Martyr's Awakening

Cold.

That was the only thing left when death finally embraced you. The agonizing pain from his shattered ribs and punctured lungs slowly faded, replaced by a freezing emptiness. In that absolute darkness, Roy Jecoriah's consciousness drifted like a dry leaf swept away by the current of a pitch-black river.

He no longer heard the laughter of the monsters outside his cabin. He no longer smelled the smoke or the metallic stench of his father's blood. All his senses were dead. Was this the end of a tragedy he hadn't even had time to understand? Dying as a helpless village boy beneath the ruins of his own home?

But right in the middle of the dead silence of his inner hell, a faint sound pierced the veil between life and death.

"Waaah, waaaah!"

A baby's cry. Fragile, pitiful, and full of despair. That cry from the neighboring cabin acted like a hook that forcefully snagged Roy's consciousness, dragging him back from the bottom of death's abyss.

Instantly, in the pitch-black of his mind, a spark as small as a pinhead ignited. The spark grew, pulsing to the rhythm of the baby's cries, until it finally exploded into a sea of blood-red flames.

Roy's body didn't move in the real world, but behind his closed eyelids, ancient runes began to crawl wildly across his vision. These letters weren't writing from any modern human civilization, but glowing carvings of blood, burning into his corneas and forcing his brain to translate them into a language he could understand.

A system interface made entirely of blood drops hovered in his vision, accompanied by an ancient whisper that echoed across the walls of his skull.

[Absolute Despair Condition Met.]

[Physical Vessel Destroyed: 90%.]

[Ancient Blood Circuit Detected in Genetics.]

[Activating: Martyr's Blood Art.]

"What, what is this?" Roy thought to himself. His voice in his subconscious sounded shaky, more like the sobs of a little child lost in a storm. "I'm already dead, just let me die."

[Death is a privilege for the weak,] the ancient voice replied. It wasn't a mechanical sound, but the echo of thousands of souls groaning in a single breath.

[The blood in your veins is the blood of forgotten tyrants. It refuses to freeze. Do you want to live? Do you want to take revenge on the devils who tore your family apart?]

The memory of Elara's severed head, the Beast Man's raspy laughter, and his father's ruined body slammed back into Roy's mind like a sledgehammer. A hatred as cold as ice began to boil in his chest once again.

"Live? For what?!" Roy screamed in his mind. "My family is dead! I couldn't save anyone! I'm nothing but a bug!"

[Then stop being a bug,] the system replied with an absolutely merciless tone. The bloody runes in Roy's eyes shifted again, forming a series of sentences that explained a very cruel new reality.

[The Martyr's Blood Art is not some magic learned from the books of long-lived races. It is a curse of absolute exchange. Mana and natural energy are far too weak to reverse fate. This system requires a fuel much purer than mere physical energy.]

An illusory scale appeared in front of Roy. On one side, there was enough power to blow away the rubble crushing his chest. But on the other side, the scale was completely empty, waiting for the 'price' to be paid.

[It consumes souls. It consumes your humanity. It consumes happy memories as the fuel for absolute magic. The greater the power you ask for, the more precious the memory you must burn.]

"Memories?" Roy was stunned.

[Warning. To lift the massive teak beam off your chest and forcefully heal your ribs, you require Tier Three Physical Output. The equivalent transaction price, the memory of the warmth of your mother's embrace.]

Roy's chest felt incredibly tight, not because of the wood crushing him in the real world, but because of the system's demand.

Suddenly, a memory played in his head with crystal clarity. A memory from ten years ago. It was the first brutally harsh winter in Oakhaven. Little Roy was shivering violently from a fever. His father hadn't returned from hunting, and they had run completely out of firewood.

In that memory, his mother held Roy's tiny body tight all night long. She rubbed his back with her rough hands, yet they felt so incredibly warm. The smell of bread dough and his mother's sweat filled Roy's nose. A soft hum came from his mother's lips, singing a lullaby until Roy's fever finally broke.

"Mom is right here, Roy. As long as I'm holding you, the snow monsters can't ever touch you." His mother's gentle voice in that memory felt so real. So deeply soothing.

It was the most precious memory he kept tucked away in the corner of his heart. The anchor that always kept him a cheerful village boy, no matter how hard his days were.

[The system requires confirmation. Time in the real world is still ticking. The Beast Men out there are hunting down the source of that baby's cry.]

[Make your choice. Die taking this warm memory to your grave, or give it to me, and you can stand up and slaughter them all.]

"No, please not that one," Roy cried in his darkness. "Just take my hands! Take my eyes! Don't take her away from me! That's all I have left of my mom!"

[Your physical organs are worthless. The balance of Aethelgard can only be torn apart by sacrificing a fragment of your soul. You have ten seconds before your brain dies from oxygen deprivation. Ten. Nine,]

At the same time, faintly from the real world, Roy's ears caught the sound of heavy footsteps crunching over the ruins.

"Hey! There's a human baby in the cabin next door! Sounds pretty damn tasty!" the rough laughter of a Beast Man echoed out.

"Let me go grab it. I love chewing on their ribs while they're still nice and soft!" another monster replied.

"Eight, seven,"

Elara's blood dripping onto Roy's cheek felt freezing cold. The monsters' laughter swirled in his head, mocking his total helplessness. The agonizing pain of losing his family and his absolute rage violently collided, completely shattering whatever traces of naivety were left in his soul.

"Six, five,"

"Dammit," Roy bit his imaginary lip until it bled. Tears of pure despair streamed down his face. If he died right now, this fury would never be avenged. That crying baby out there would meet the exact same fate as his little sister.

In this world, gods didn't answer the prayers of the dead. Only devils answered the screams of vengeance.

"Three, two,"

"TAKE IT!" Roy roared. His voice exploded with unimaginable grief and rage. "TAKE IT ALL, YOU BASTARD! TAKE THAT MEMORY AND GIVE ME THE POWER TO SEND THEM STRAIGHT TO HELL!"

[Transaction Accepted. Recalibrating Host's Humanity.]

In that exact second, the warm memory of his mother playing in Roy's head began to blur. The face of the woman holding him on that cold winter night was suddenly covered in gray static, just like a painting doused in acid.

Roy tried to reach out for the fading image. "Mom!"

The image crumbled into dust. The warmth of her touch vanished completely. The smell of bread dough faded without a single trace. The lullaby in his ears turned into a dead, absolute silence.

In just a single breath, Roy Jecoriah lost his very first sense of safety. When he tried to picture his mother's face, the only thing left was a cold, logical fact, I had a mother, and she is dead. There was no longing. There was no suffocating sadness. The space in his heart where that memory used to live had now turned into a black hole, freezing his sanity solid.

The system had taken its price in full. And in return, the curse went to work.

In the real world, Roy's eyes snapped wide open.

His retinas no longer reflected the warm caramel brown of a typical village boy. His eyes were glowing a deep, intense blood red.

His heart, which had almost completely stopped just a second ago, was now pounding with the raw power of a steam engine. The blood in his veins boiled with an unnatural heat. The cells around his shattered ribs were forcefully knit back together by a web of jagged, dark red magic, completely bypassing the pain and focusing purely on raw functionality.

Roy was no longer gasping for air. He took a deep, steady breath of the smoke-filled oxygen. His eyes locked onto the massive wooden beam crushing his chest.

Without making a single sound, Roy raised both of his hands, pressing his palms flat against the teak beam. The muscles in his arms tensed up. His veins bulged beneath his skin, radiating a faint red glow.

"Get off my body," he whispered coldly. His voice wasn't shaking anymore.

CRAAAACK!

With one violent shove that completely defied human logic, the wooden beam weighing hundreds of pounds was lifted up, then launched into the air like it was nothing but a dry twig.

BOOOOM!

The remaining ruins of the Jecoriah family cabin exploded in every direction, kicking up a storm of dust and wood splinters into the hellish night.

The heavy footsteps of the Beast Man outside the cabin stopped dead in their tracks. The dust was slowly swept away by the night breeze.

From within the wreckage, Roy stood up tall. His clothes were shredded and soaked in blood. His posture, which had been hunched and terrified before, was now perfectly straight. The air around him felt incredibly heavy, thick with a murderous aura so intense it actually made the surrounding flames dim.

But the most terrifying part was his face.

The drops of Elara's blood coating Roy's face didn't drip down or dry up. Instead, the blood came alive, crawling down his jawline and pooling in the air right in front of his right palm. In a flash, the crimson liquid crystallized with a sickening crunch, forming an arm-length dagger made entirely of razor-sharp, solid blood.

A Beast Man covered in dirty gray fur, who just happened to be passing by to look for the baby, turned toward the exploded cabin. It saw Roy gripping the crimson dagger.

At first, the seven-foot-tall monster was startled, but a split second later, its lips curled upward into a mocking smirk, flashing its yellow fangs.

"Oh? Looks like that little worm is still alive after all," the Beast Man casually sneered, twirling a blood-stained warhammer in its hand. "You've got some cheap magic trick."

The monster's smirk never got the chance to fully form.

Roy vanished from where he stood. He was nothing but a blur tearing through the dusty air.

In a fraction of a second, Roy was already standing right behind the Beast Man. There was no battle cry. There was no hesitation. Roy's red eyes stared blankly into the pitch-black night.

There was a very soft, yet utterly deadly, sound of tearing flesh.

The giant blood spike had pierced straight through the back of the Beast Man's neck and ripped out of its throat, protruding from the front. Fresh monster blood dripped from the tip of the crystal dagger.

The monster didn't even have time to realize it was dead. Its eyes bugged out, its warhammer thudded heavily onto the ground, and then its massive body collapsed helplessly onto its own knees.

Roy yanked his blood spike out of the enemy's neck with a stiff, static motion. He stared down at the corpse at his feet, then slowly lifted his face to gaze out at the burning village, waiting for more devils to slaughter.

Tonight, a village boy had died.

Tonight, the Blood Martyr was born.