As I walked between the tall trees standing like ghosts, the crunch of fallen leaves echoed beneath my feet. The cabin was hidden in a small clearing among the dense woods.

From afar, it looked picturesque—like something out of a storybook. But as I approached, it became clear how small and shabby it really was.

The logs that formed the walls had gaps everywhere, the roof was a haphazard arrangement of branches, and the door didn't even close properly, being nailed to the doorframe to hold it in place.

If it rained, the water would probably leak straight in.

The door wasn’t just closed—it was secured from the outside, which made it clear that nobody was home.

I called out loudly to the surroundings.

“Is anyone there? Hello? Is anyone home?”

I shouted several times, but no one responded.

Peeking through the crack of the door, I saw that it was clearly lived in—someone had left their belongings and signs of their daily life scattered inside.

Whoever lived here wasn’t just out visiting neighbors in the woods. They were likely off checking traps or hunting.

I decided to sit a little ways away from the cabin and wait for the owner to return.

‘Sigh, I feel strangely nervous.’

Ever since I was born into this world, I’d only ever been with my parents.

This was my first time meeting someone outside my family.

Suddenly, I began to worry whether we’d even be able to communicate.

My father was from this country, the Kingdom of Arenon, but my mother was from a place called Enorthos, a large autonomous region.

Enorthos was a country beyond the eastern mountain range, inhabited by numerous tribes often labeled as barbarians or savage warriors.

Since my parents were from different countries, their native languages also differed.

There was a common language on this continent that allowed people to communicate, but my mother had a noticeably different accent from my father, even though they spoke the same shared tongue.

And the common language was something one had to learn deliberately.

I heard that my mother had learned it to work as a mercenary.

I wasn’t sure who this cabin’s owner might be, but if they were just an ordinary commoner, there was a chance they might not know the common language.

‘What if we can’t even understand each other?’

If the cabin owner was from this country, the language I learned from my father would work.

‘But even that is doubtful.’

My father used a very refined way of speaking, probably due to his noble upbringing. The language of ordinary commoners may be different.

If language didn’t work, I might have to use gestures. It felt like I was venturing into the unknown, and that thought was both thrilling and nerve-wracking.

To be honest, I hoped the cabin’s owner might be a beautiful woman, but considering that this was my first encounter with someone other than my family, I didn’t mind if it turned out to be a middle-aged man or even an old grandpa. I was genuinely excited.

I waited for about two hours.

Rella, the little bird on my head, chirped in hunger, pecking at me, and I was beginning to feel quite hungry myself.

The cabin owner could have gone hunting far away. Sometimes, hunters followed prey for days, which meant they might not return for quite a while.

Just as I was getting disappointed and thinking of finding something to eat, I heard the sound of twigs snapping in the forest.

The owner was finally returning.

I quickly got to my feet.

I let my arms hang loose by my sides to show that I meant no harm.

And I pulled the corners of my lips into a smile.

I take after my mother, and my face can look somewhat intimidating. At the very least, I could use a smile to soften the severity.

There's an old saying that people can’t spit at a smiling face.

Trying to calm my pounding heart, I looked at the person emerging from the woods.

He was carrying a large, gray rabbit in one hand.

It was an elderly man, his hair completely white with age.

The man’s eyes widened at the sight of me, and the rabbit slipped from his hand, falling to the ground.

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Life is a Series of Hardships

His life, especially, had been like that.

Every time he thought he had something, it slipped right through his fingers.

Although he was born the fifth son of a noble family, it was a poor barony.

And as it turned out, his mother had had an illicit affair, and he was the result of that infidelity.

When he was still just an infant—too young to remember anything—he was expelled from the family alongside his mother.

His mother’s family wouldn’t take them in either, and until he was ten years old, he lived like a stray among commoners.

When he turned ten, he thought his life might finally be turning around.

Someone from his biological father’s family came to get him—the other two sons of the man his mother had been involved with had died, and they needed an heir.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

However, they didn’t take his mother along.

His mother accepted some money and handed him over to a representative of his biological father.

He became the son of his biological father and the father’s wife.

The following five years were hard.

He might have returned to being a noble, but he was far from welcomed.

His stepmother loathed him, and his father was indifferent.

He spent his days being beaten by harsh tutors, studying, and wielding a sword.

After five long years, he finally managed to acquire some of the manners of a noble.

That was when he was suddenly given a fiancée.

She was from a family of low rank, but she was extraordinarily beautiful.

Though it wasn’t a formal engagement, he was told that, barring any unusual events, they’d be formally engaged within three years.

His fiancée hated him, but he didn’t mind.

She was so beautiful that he felt he could endure cold treatment from his family if he could only have her.

But before the engagement could be made official, she became the lover of the heir to the most powerful Duke’s family in the country—the Valter family.

The Duke’s son, Klaus, was famous for his beauty.

There was even a rumor that birds, seeing Klaus, forgot how to flap their wings and fell from the sky.

He had seen Klaus from afar, and the rumor seemed credible. Klaus was beautiful enough that one might actually believe he wasn’t human—perhaps an angel or a demon walking the earth.

Klaus’s platinum hair and the violet eyes that were said to appear only in the Duke’s family or the royal family made him look almost otherworldly.

He could see why people might suspect that Klaus wasn’t entirely human.

With such beauty, such suspicions were natural.

If Klaus hadn’t been involved, he might have thought the Duke’s family had been the ones to take his fiancée away.

She was certainly beautiful enough.

But Klaus was dozens of times more beautiful than she was.

The fiancée’s family probably laid a clever trap for Klaus to benefit from the association with the Duke’s family.

For nobles, the prosperity of their family came first.

His heart felt like it was shattering from the betrayal, but he cried and let go of his love.

A few years later, she secretly came to visit him.

Apparently, Klaus wasn’t interested in her at all.

Klaus already had a mistress and dozens of lovers more beautiful than she was.

She wept, telling him she was so lonely and sad that she wanted to die.

He comforted her, and the next thing he knew, they were in bed together.

She was the woman he had once loved.

After the first encounter, it became easy to meet again and again, until she eventually became pregnant.

He decided to throw away everything—his family, his reputation—if only he could be with her and their child.

He proposed they run away together, but she refused.

Instead, she insisted that they could never meet again and that, even if they ran into each other by chance, he should pretend not to know her.

It was only then that he realized.

His hair was thin and pale yellow, almost white.

She must have hoped the child would be born with hair resembling Klaus’s platinum shade.

That must have been why she had deliberately slept with him.

The eye color didn’t matter—violet eyes were rare, even within the Duke’s family.

In fact, aside from Duke Valther and Klaus, no one else in the family had violet eyes.

Klaus had several siblings, but he was the only one with those distinctive eyes.

Later, his former fiancée gave birth to a son.

Whether the Duke’s family had discovered their secret or it was simply a coincidence, his family collapsed overnight.

Still, he had been ready to be content as long as the woman he loved and his child were doing well.

He had no real ties to his family anyway.

But one day, she, too, was gone.

‘Helga….’

The rabbit he had been holding slipped from his hand, dropping to the ground.

He drew the sword hanging from his waist.

Ever since he’d heard that Helga, the barbarian warrior, had entered the Cursed Forest, he’d come here to follow her without even knowing where she was.

He settled near the edge of the forest, carrying his sword with him every day, waiting for the chance to kill that damned warrior.

He hadn’t let go of that sword even in his sleep.

Even in his dreams, he always carried the blade.

And now, the face of Helga—the face he had never forgotten—was right before him.

He gripped his sword with both hands and charged.

“Helgaaaaaaaa!”

It was all because that damned barbarian Helga had fallen for Klaus.

To have Klaus for herself, Helga had slaughtered the Duke’s guards, mistresses, and lovers, and then kidnapped him.

His love had died that day.

“Die, Helga!”

He had kept his wretched life going for this moment.

Even when his hair turned completely white in just a few days, and he aged almost overnight from despair, he had lived on, driven by a single obsession—to kill that woman.

Life had been a living hell, yet he refused to die, dragging himself through each day, striving toward this one goal.

He swung his sword with all his strength.

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At first, I thought he was a madman or senile.

If someone suddenly rushed at you with a sword, wouldn’t you think the same?

Since my death in my previous life had been in a somewhat similar situation, I froze for a moment.

Damn it, I was startled.

But the moment he shouted “Helga,” my mother’s name, as he charged, I realized.

This man was my mother’s enemy.

I didn’t know what had happened between them, but it seemed he was living here in the forest, waiting for a chance to kill her.

I pulled the axe from my back.

My mother always said:

If someone attacks you, kill them.

Leave no one alive.

If you show weakness even once, every enemy who had been lurking will pounce.

I always thought that was just a combat mindset.

But perhaps my mother wasn’t speaking metaphorically.

If you have enemies and grudges as vast as the world, the moment you’re seen as weak, they’ll come at you relentlessly.

And then, no matter how strong you are, you’ll eventually die.

The old man’s heavy sword whistled through the air, aiming for my shoulder.

I leaned to avoid the blade, gripping my axe tightly.

The sword instantly changed direction, coming back at me.

The old man seemed to be someone who had learned how to wield a sword properly.

There was no wasted movement.

Rella, perched on my head, flapped her wings frantically and squawked.

She dug her claws into my hair, clinging so hard it hurt.

Keeping one hand over my head to secure Rella, I swung my axe upward.

Boom!

The axe met the descending sword, steel clashing against steel, the sound ringing out through the forest.

“Ugh!”

The old man let out a muffled cry as his sword flew out of his hands and clattered to the ground.

His wrist was probably shattered.

He glared at me without even trying to retrieve the sword.

“Helgaaaaa!”

He screamed her name, his voice dripping with hatred.

I sliced the air with my axe, speaking calmly.

“Helga is my mother.”

“!”

The old man’s eyes widened, and almost simultaneously, my axe struck his neck.

His head fell to the ground, and for a moment, I stared at it.

Just moments ago, this head had moved, spoken, belonged to a living person. Yet now that it was severed from the body, it no longer felt human to me.

It looked like a doll made of flour.

It felt strangely unreal.

“…”

This was the first time I had killed a person.

I had expected to feel some shock, but surprisingly, I felt nothing at all.

With a long sigh, I began searching the cabin for anything useful.

From the perspective of my previous life, this would be considered looting, but it’s not like the dead need their belongings.

And it didn’t seem like anyone else lived here.

However, this man seemed even poorer than us.

He had no dried meat stored, nor much firewood.

The sword seemed decent enough, but my weapon was an axe, not a sword.

It was useless to me.

There was an extra pair of shoes, but they didn’t fit me.

That was a bit disappointing.

Still, I found some flour and a few silver and copper coins.

Perhaps he sold rabbit pelts or hunted animals to earn some money.

That must mean there was a village nearby.

‘Which means I really must be close to the forest’s edge.’

After gathering the coins and flour, I left the cabin.

It took a long walk, but by the time the sky had turned a deep red, I had arrived at an open field.

The wide, clear space seemed perfect for camping.

“Peep-peep-peep-peep!”

Rella flapped her wings noisily on my head.

I wasn’t sure if she liked the open field or if she was hungry.

Rella was still a baby, always whining about being hungry, no matter the time.

Maybe it was both.

“All right, just hold on a little longer.”

I reassured Rella while preparing to light a fire, then paused, my hands freezing mid-action.

“Wait, could it be…?”

Was it possible that the reason it took me fourteen years to be acknowledged as a warrior was not because I had nearly died to that mother bear?

It may have had nothing to do with that.

Could it be simply because my mother had too many enemies? And that she wanted to teach me as much as possible before I left home?

The more I thought about it, the more it made sense.

“…Hah.”

If that’s the case, she should have just told me.

Mother, I will truly hold a grudge for this.