Becoming the Villain’s Family - Chapter 262

Chapter 262

“How is Madam’s condition?”

“The same, nothing much. It worsened overnight, and she barely managed to get some sleep in the morning.”

“Is there any sign of improvement at all?”

“If there were, would the Grand Duke do something like that? Her condition is deteriorating day by day, and it looks like several physicians are going to die… Oh, Young Master!”

The servants, conversing with a mixture of concern and fear, noticed Lloyd and quickly bowed.

“Mother, if she’s very pain, call me.”

That meant calling for him when her condition had worsened.

“What? Oh, yes.”

The servants understood a moment too late and nodded.

Lloyd walked past them indifferently.

This was all routine for him.

Having experienced it since birth, he didn’t have the luxury to cry about it now.

‘I’ve never cried.’

The white eyes that always appeared in Lloyd’s nightmares.

It was much later that he learned the owner of those eyes was the previous Grand Duke Valentine.

Lloyd was supposed to have forgotten that incident, but thanks to the nightmares, he vividly remembered everything.

‘Cursed blood.’

Lloyd muttered to himself.

‘I shouldn’t have been born.’

Mother was always sick.

Up until a month ago, she hadn’t been this sick.

A week ago, she hadn’t been this frail.

Just yesterday, she hadn’t been coughing up blood…

Those were the days.

Her condition only grew worse with each passing day.

And Father, who knew what he was thinking?

Whenever he found the opportunity, he would crush people, threaten them, toy with their lives, and mock them before brutally murdering them.

‘Madness.’

Lloyd had learned the meaning of that word not too long ago.

It was a concept difficult for a child to grasp, but he easily understood the meaning of the word.

It was a term referring to someone like the previous Grand Duke Valentine.

And it would probably refer to his own future that would come someday.

‘I was born to die.’

Lloyd recalled his memories and the eyes of the former Grand Duke.

He saw ‘death’ vividly in those eyes.

The moment when the light disappeared in an instant, and it became nothing.

It truly was nothing.

It was no different from a pebble on the roadside.

That was what death was.

‘So I am nothing.’

* * *

Lloyd lived as nothing.

It wasn’t particularly difficult.

Everything was already in place.

Of course, Sabina was a loving and kind mother. But when her condition worsened, she pushed everything away.

The treatments, Tristan, Lloyd.

Rejected, Lloyd aimlessly loitered in front of the door.

When he was allowed to enter the room, he spent long nights sleepless and awake.

Alongside his mother, groaning in pain and screaming.

And Tristan…

‘A madman.’

Young Lloyd harshly criticized his father.

That’s how Lloyd ate enough not to die and slept enough not to die.

He moved according to the routine.

During that time, the only difference between Lloyd and dolls on a string was that he could breathe.

‘Lloyd, would you like to learn the sword?’

A little change in his life came thanks to Sabina’s suggestion.

Sword training time.

Lloyd voluntarily stepped forward only at that moment.

Swinging the sword gave him a profound sense of liberation.

It felt like he was freeing himself from the suffocating fate day by day.

“Wow, when you’re thirteen years old, you’ll be sparring with the Black Falcons, right?”

Of course, he had just turned three, so he was not swinging the sword but being swung by the sword.

“What is sparring?”

“Well… It’s a competition of skill? Usually, it’s done between evenly matched skilled people.”

“…”

“Two people, same strength, fight!”

Seeing Lloyd’s expression gradually cooling, Dustin urgently shouted.

In a few years, he had earned recognition and become the head of the Black Falcon.

And from this year, he was in charge of Lloyd’s sword training.

“Thirteen?”

How far away was that exactly?

Lloyd grumbled discontentedly, panting heavily.

Ten years later for a three-year-old was an incredibly distant future.

“Look at this. Ha!”

Dustin swung the sword towards Lloyd with a fierce enthusiastic sound.

Lloyd didn’t dodge.

He just fixed his gaze keenly and adjusted his grip on the sword before flinching.

“You can naturally visualize how to counter, right? When I check the grip and where your gaze moves, it just comes naturally.”

The knight who withdrew his sword murmured in admiration.

In other words, it meant Lloyd was a genius.

Instinctively knowing the path of the sword, yet his small and short body couldn’t keep up with his mind at all.

In fact, Sabina was a genius in swordsmanship, and Tristan, a Valentine, was no exception.

Lloyd, the child of those two, might not have known that his exceptional talent was somewhat natural.

“When body moves as I want?”

“Depending on the training, it’ll be different, right?”

“Then more train.”

“What? That’s a bit…”

Dustin suddenly looked around at the setting sun that had painted the sky a deep red.

“If you push yourself too hard and collapse…”

“I won’t.”

I’m the one who will collapse.

Do you think everyone in the world can stay up day and night like you, Young Master? Do you think you can survive on very little food and grow strong? Dustin swallowed down his mounting frustration, and corrected Lloyd’s posture again.

He had no choice but to accept fate.

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