At Ryan’s words, the Earl of Wallace momentarily wore a blank expression.

Though he couldn’t openly show approval, he had expected Ryan to be secretly pleased, but what appeared on Ryan’s face was an expression of deep contempt. Along with pity, as if looking at the most foolish and pitiful thing in the world.

Ryan swallowed a sigh that was about to escape.

‘What a stupid fellow.’

It was simply laughable that the earl still thought he would cling to such things.

If Baron Stanford had been here, he would have smiled bitterly, saying that the Earl of Wallace couldn’t be entirely blamed. After all, it was true that Ryan had shown interest in that position during his childhood.

‘It couldn’t be helped!’

Ryan glared at the Earl of Wallace, who was staring at him with a foolish face, and recalled the contract they had made when he was young.

***

“Go to the monastery. Then I’ll make sure your mother can live comfortably, and you too will have enough money to live on after you become an adult.”

The earl, who had come to the gravedigger’s house, spoke while covering his mouth and nose with a handkerchief as if he didn’t even want to breathe there.

“I don’t need to explain what a great opportunity this is for someone like you.”

With an expression like looking down at an insect, the earl spoke to his son whom he was meeting for the first time.

Ryan’s lips twisted at his gaze.

Ryan had started working as soon as he could walk and talk, like other street boys.

On rainy days, when he endured pain as if his fingers were falling off to make deliveries, only to receive curses and phlegm-filled spit instead of money because the goods got wet, he too had imagined:

What if he had been a nobleman? Or even if not a nobleman, what if he had been a child from a slightly wealthier family…

It wasn’t just Ryan; it was a fantasy that all the alley children occasionally had.

Those fantasies of being taken to a house with good sunlight and a warm fireplace, rather than a dark alley, by a father they didn’t even know, if only he had money.

Of course, he thought such things would never happen, but Ryan was also dreaming in increasingly detailed sweet fantasies. That everyone sincerely wished for such a future. And now what he thought was just a dream was happening to him.

But Ryan wasn’t simply happy.

Poverty had taught him sharpness and sensitivity. Moreover, from the earl’s gaze looking down on him, Ryan could immediately detect that something was hidden in this seemingly beneficial deal.

For a moment, the earl looked at him with a hardened expression at Ryan’s words.

“Ryan, what are you doing? Be respectful.”

From behind Ryan, his mother tried to apologize with a surprised voice, but Ryan ignored her and continued to glare at the earl.

“You’re not even taking me with you now, and suddenly a monastery? Why should I go to such a place? What’s your scheme?”

At Ryan’s thorny words, the corners of the earl’s eyes coldly rose. The next moment.

The earl mercilessly struck Ryan’s face with the cane he was holding.

With a dull sound, Ryan fell to the floor. But Ryan’s mother didn’t even think of stopping the earl; she just stood there blankly.

The earl’s cane struck the fallen Ryan several more times. Only when blood splattered on the floor did he stop.

“Low-born with a low-born mouth.”

At the earl’s words, Ryan spat out blood-mixed saliva and glared at him with even sharper eyes. But that was as far as it went.

If a lowly boy from the alleys did anything more against an earl, no one would question it even if his wrists were cut off.

The earl looked at Ryan for a moment longer, then put his hand into a pocket of his clothes. Then he took out a jingling pouch and threw it in front of Ryan’s mother.

“These are Selmark gold coins. Even ignorant people like you know that if you take them intact, they can be immediately exchanged for money.”

A currency made to be reliable for easy transactions without letters like checks. It was also the most valuable thing known to people in these back alleys.

As soon as she heard those words, Ryan’s mother immediately grabbed the pouch as if she would rush at it and checked inside.

The color of gold, which even those unfamiliar with money could easily confirm as real, was revealed. The flag of Albion engraved on it was also clear.

“This should be enough payment for raising him!”

“Of course! Of course, my lord!”

Ryan was left speechless at the sight of his mother bowing deeply with a bright smile.

In Albion, minors are considered the property of their parents. And now, his mother had sold him to his father.

The earl went outside as if he had nothing more to say. Then two sturdy men came in and carried Ryan out.

Outside was a carriage that had arrived at some unknown time.

Even from a distance, it wasn’t a rickety carriage. It was a hard carriage, like one used to transport prisoners or corpses.

“Let go, I want to see my mother.”

When they reached the carriage, Ryan roughly shook off the men holding him. He looked toward the house, but far from following him out, his mother immediately closed the door.

He hadn’t expected much, but a greater sense of loss than he had anticipated washed over him.

After all, she was still family to Ryan, however minimal. Though she hadn’t particularly treated him well, he hadn’t expected her to throw him away so easily.

After looking at the door with a clouded expression for a moment, Ryan turned his head. Then he spoke to the earl who was looking at him through the open carriage door.

“What do I need to do?”

At his now more composed tone, the earl snorted and replied:

“First, you need to be shut away in a monastery until you come of age.”

“Why must I do that?”

“What does it matter to you what you do?”

Before the earl could speak, Ryan opened his mouth first.

“Since I’ve received your money, I can live better without doing anything unnecessary, My Lord.”

At Ryan’s words calling him “My Lord,” the Earl of Wallace looked somewhat satisfied.

His attitude becoming docile as soon as he realized he had been sold, and not crying or begging but calmly trying to accept the situation.

This attitude, unlike that of a street child, made the earl feel not entirely displeased, thinking it must be due to his lineage.

‘Better than rebelling and causing a fuss trying to escape, he’ll be more obedient if handled properly!’

The earl explained with a somewhat lightened heart.

“I have a son. A precious child. But the astrologers said you had taken all of his luck. It’s the same story, but Vivian…”

Having unconsciously uttered Vivian’s name, the Earl of Wallace cleared his throat and cut off his words.

“Anyway, they said that you must be placed in a deep monastery for that luck to return to my son. You just need to stay there until you come of age. After that, we’ll have no more business.”

It was a lie. But it was also the truth.

The astrologers had said that Ryan should stay in a monastery until he came of age. That he needed to live quietly in a place that was practically isolated from people, at least until he became an adult.

After that… they said he should die!

He couldn’t be killed inside the monastery.

They would accept Ryan at his request, but they wouldn’t dispose of a corpse. They were accepting Ryan for the “reformation of a corrupt bastard,” not particularly to accommodate the earl’s circumstances.

If he carelessly acted within the monastery, who knew what those people, recommended for their religious devotion, might say. Besides, it was much better outside the monastery than inside to avoid others’ eyes.

It was also easier to hire people who would do such work.

The earl smiled and said:

“After that, you will receive sufficient compensation.”

Looking at the earl, Ryan instinctively realized. That too was a lie.

After that, Ryan was immediately sent to the monastery.

Everyone there knew Ryan was an illegitimate child. And it was a very old-fashioned monastery with outdated beliefs.

In other words, Ryan was considered even dirtier and more impure than a rat there.

Ryan gritted his teeth and endured. He had nowhere else to go anyway. So he had to survive in this place until he came of age.

Then he met Baron Stanford.

Thanks to him, Ryan was able to escape from the monastery with not much time left before he would come of age.

He fled to survive, but more than that, he wanted to strike back at the earl who was probably feeling relieved, thinking that everything concerning Ryan was over.

Indeed, it was as he expected.

According to what Baron Stanford found out, the Wallace family had been turned upside down.

From the Earl of Wallace to his wife Vivian, who was the actual head of the family, they were all frantically searching for him to kill him.

In a world where trains were racing and flying machines were being built in some places, it was both strange and fortunate that there were still people who believed in astrologers’ words and tried to curse others.

He didn’t particularly think about taking revenge on them. He just wanted to see them go crazy over the fact that he was alive.

After that, Ryan just lived on. Because he didn’t know what to live for.

Entering the military and frantically achieving merits was just the result of doing whatever came his way because he didn’t know what to do.

So it was empty.

Despite the increasing medals, he continued to feel only emptiness.

Many things came with the medals, but the big hole inside him couldn’t be filled no matter how many great things were poured into it.

Ryan had no doubt that someday that hole would swallow him.

That’s why he didn’t particularly react when Huinak was overturned. If he was going to be swallowed anyway, it didn’t matter what he did.

While suffocating in that terrible emptiness.

Ryan recalled the cheerful sound he had heard by chance.

It was the sound of Eloise taking a big bite of an apple pastry, thinking no one was around.

‘It was nothing special.’

Now that he thought about it, he could understand.

In that moment when he heard that sound, just one among tens of thousands of sounds filling a day.

Ryan forgot the existence of his enormous emptiness for the first time.