Lucian stood in the deep snow that reached his knees, the biting wind slicing across his face like a knife.
Yet he did not feel cold at all.
If anything, the icy chill felt strangely refreshing against his skin.
"Where the hell is this anyway..."
Lucian muttered under his breath as he looked around.
Everything was white as far as the eye could see, with nothing but endless snow stretching across the landscape. Only in the distance were there several dark figures gathered together, their silhouettes barely visible through the swirling snow.
He narrowed his eyes and took a closer look.
Apparently, they were a group of beggars, roughly a hundred people in total, including men and women of all ages.
He immediately activated Absolute Hit and instantly teleported closer.
Once he was near enough to see them clearly, the miserable condition of the beggars became impossible to ignore.
Every one of them was gaunt and emaciated, their faces sallow and their clothes tattered, while their frail bodies trembled uncontrollably in the freezing wind. They had crowded into a shallow depression beneath a rock that could barely shelter them from the worst of the wind, where they had managed to light a small, pitiful campfire.
However, the flames flickered weakly, looking as though they might be extinguished at any moment.
A small amount of unrecognizable mush simmered inside a battered pot.
It was thin and watery, with not even a trace of oil floating on its surface, yet the surrounding beggars continued to stare at it hungrily, swallowing repeatedly as though merely looking at the food could ease their hunger.
"The wars have died down a little lately, so things have gotten a bit easier."
"I heard the king of Hyperborea died without leaving an heir, and now the nobles are fighting over power, so they don't have time to wage wars against other countries."
"Hah, that's not something we gotta worry about. We should just think about where we're gonna beg tomorrow. Being able to survive is already good enough."
"Hey, who's that?"
As they chatted depressedly, one of the beggars finally noticed Lucian.
Lucian's appearance was simply too conspicuous to go unnoticed. He was impeccably dressed, his face healthy and ruddy, and he looked so relaxed in the freezing snow that he could have been someone who had come here on vacation.
Compared to the miserable state of the beggars around him, the difference was so stark that it seemed as though they belonged to two completely different worlds.
Hearing the words of their companion, the other beggars finally noticed Lucian as well.
At first, several of them instinctively shrank back, their eyes filled with fear and uncertainty, but their instinct to survive quickly overwhelmed that fear.
"M-Milord... please, have mercy, give us something to eat..."
An old man who was so thin that he seemed to consist of little more than skin and bones tremblingly opened his mouth and begged with a hoarse and dry voice that sounded so weak that it was almost completely swallowed by the howling wind.
However, that single plea seemed to flip a switch.
In the next second, the remaining beggars quickly followed suit.
One after another, they struggled to get up and staggered toward Lucian, their weakened legs barely able to support their bodies. Some could not even stand and instead crawled toward him on their knees, desperate to get as close as possible.
*THUD!*
All the beggars dropped to their knees in the snow directly in front of Lucian.
"Milord, please have mercy on us!"
"Please, give us something to eat! My child is starving to death!"
"Please, I'm begging you..."
All of them kowtowed repeatedly as they pleaded with him, their filthy faces streaked with a mixture of melting snow and tears. Their eyes were filled with despair, along with the last traces of humble hope they had managed to cling to.
A few of them even gathered the courage to reach toward the hem of Lucian's expensive clothes, only to hesitate halfway through, afraid that their filthy hands would stain the fine fabric. In the end, they withdrew their hands and could only continue kowtowing in the snow.
Lucian found himself surrounded by them.
Amid the bone-chilling wind, a foul odor wafted toward him, a mixture of sweat, mildew, and the sour, unpleasant smell of people who had gone far too long without being able to wash themselves properly.
It was difficult to endure.
Lucian frowned slightly.
'Tsk, what kind of opening is this... getting surrounded by beggars right away?'
It was not that he looked down on them. Rather, the sight simply made him sigh inwardly at the state of this world.
If he remembered correctly, Cerydra had been an ordinary refugee when she was young. After being driven from her home by war and losing both of her parents, she had been forced to survive by begging from place to place while still very young.
If the System brought him here, did that mean she was somewhere among these beggars?
Instead of immediately responding to the desperate beggars surrounding him, Lucian swept his gaze across the crowd, carefully observing each person as he searched for the protagonist of the script.
At the outer edge of the beggar camp, meanwhile, a small figure was desperately curling herself into as tight a ball as possible, trying to minimize the amount of body heat she lost to the freezing air.
It was none other than Cerydra, though she was currently not yet named Cerydra.
She had just turned ten years old this year and had already spent more than a year wandering as a refugee, yet her appearance made her seem no older than seven or eight. Long-term malnutrition had left her painfully thin and undersized, while the ragged, flimsy clothes hanging from her body did almost nothing to protect her from the biting wind.
Her small face had turned pale blue from the cold, and her cracked lips were nearly devoid of color. Her tangled blue-white hair was a complete mess atop her head, with snowflakes and dried mud clinging to the strands.
Only her eyes remained strikingly vivid.
Both eyes were large and bright, like two gemstones embedded in her thin, gaunt face, yet there was no innocence in them at this moment. Instead, they were filled with wariness as she tightly hugged half a blackened piece of coarse-grain bread against her chest, clutching it so firmly that the hardened thing looked as though it could have been used as a weapon.
It was the food she had begged from a passing soldier the previous day after kowtowing more than a hundred times.
It was her life.
'If I eat one bite today and one bite tomorrow, I should be able to live for two more days... Papa, Mama, I'm listening to you, and I'm doing my best to stay alive...'
Cerydra silently repeated those words to herself internally, as though they were a promise she had made to her deceased parents.
But just then, several dirty hands suddenly reached toward her.
Before Cerydra could react, one of them snatched the small piece of bread from her arms.
"Ah! Mine! Give it back!"
Cerydra let out a sharp cry and immediately lunged forward at the ones who had stolen her bread.
They were two older boys who looked as though they were approaching adulthood, considerably taller and stronger than her, though they too were gaunt and malnourished, their hollow faces revealing just how desperately hungry they were.
Their eyes, however, gleamed with the feral light of starving wolves.
"Get lost! You got food and won't share it, you selfish little brat!"
One of the boys yelled and viciously shoved Cerydra aside.
He himself was so hungry that he should barely have had any strength left, yet she still felt an alarming amount of force behind the blow.
"AHH!"
Cerydra cried out as her small body was sent tumbling into the snow, her forehead striking a patch of hardened ice with a dull crack.
In that instant, the skin of her forehead split open, and blood began flowing from the wound, mixing with the snow as it ran down her face and covered one of her eyes.
"Give... it back..."
Cerydra seemed almost incapable of feeling the pain.
After scrambling back to her feet, she immediately charged toward them again, reaching desperately for the bread that had been stolen from her.
"What's the point of you eating it?! We're way more useful than some little brat like you!"
Irritated, the other boy stepped forward and kicked Cerydra directly in the stomach.
"Urgh!"
Having been suddenly kicked without mercy, little Cerydra was forced to curl into herself from the pain, and the small amount of tree bark she had struggled to swallow that morning came back up.
Tears immediately welled in her eyes and spilled down her cheeks, mixing with the blood from her forehead and the dirty snow beneath her.
Seeing her state, the two boys paid her no attention and immediately tore into the stolen bread, devouring it with desperate hunger.
In just two or three bites, the precious food that Cerydra had fought so hard to obtain had disappeared into their stomachs. When they finished, they even turned back and gave her smug, provocative looks, as though they were proud of what they had done.
"Survival of the fittest, so don't blame us. If you wanna blame someone, blame yourself for being too weak, and blame this unfair world."
At the same time, the other beggars nearby witnessed everything.
Some simply watched with numb expressions, acting as though they had seen nothing at all. Others quietly turned their heads away, unable to bear watching, while a few even had a faint trace of relief in their eyes, secretly grateful that the person whose food had been stolen was not them.
No one helped her.
No one said a word.
In this damned world, being able to survive on their own was already difficult enough.
Who had the time or energy to worry about someone else?
Cerydra lay sprawled in the freezing snow, her stomach twisting with pain as though a knife were being violently turned inside it. Thankfully, the wound on her forehead hurt less than she expected, because the cold had already frozen the blood around it and numbed the flesh.
At this moment, she couldn't help but question reality.
Why?
Why could they simply take the food she relied on to survive?
Why did she have to suffer this kind of hardship and humiliation?
Why did good people never receive good fortune?
Had she done something wrong?
Cerydra raised her head and stared at the gray, merciless sky, watching the snow continue to fall without the slightest concern for the suffering beneath it.
As she gazed upward, a deep resentment slowly rose from the bottom of her heart.
She hated this unjust world!
She hated those so-called gods called Titans who stood high above mortals yet never spared even a glance for the suffering of those below!
She hated the nobles who had started the wars and driven countless people from their homes!
She hated everything!
Cold snow continued to fall upon Cerydra's burning face relentlessly, but it could not extinguish the hatred blazing fiercely within her heart.
Cerydra clenched her tiny fists until her fingernails dug into her frozen flesh, yet she did not feel the slightest pain.
Were the Titans all blind?
Why did they not punish the wicked?
Why did they only make the weak suffer?
If she could survive...
If she had strength...
She would definitely change all of this!
She would make everyone who had bullied her pay the price!
She would conquer the fate of injustice that plagued this world!
Just like that, Cerydra's hatred and ambition began to grow wildly within her heart, spreading like poisonous weeds that refused to die even beneath the frozen earth.
And at that very moment, someone stepped forward and spoke with a smile.
"Survival of the fittest, so don't blame us. If you wanna blame someone, blame yourself for being too weak, and blame this unfair world, huh..."
===
[A bonus chapter for reaching 400 Power Stones]
[Support and get early access to upcoming chapters at: patreon.com/VALRRR]