The foul odor of rotting flesh assaulted Leonidas. He could barely afford a marker for his mother’s grave, so how could he afford a casket?

Without a choice, Leonidas could only enlist the help of the women from the brothel to sow together his mother’s various outfits into a large patchwork sheet he could wrap her body with. About the only good thing was that he had managed to find a patch of wild poisonous plants to add in, saving his mother’s corpse from the fate of being ravaged by insects and beasts.

It looked quite ridiculous after being unearthed, even worse when accounting for all the soil, maggots and worms, but Leonidas still treated it with all the care he could muster.

Slowly lowering himself into the deep hole, Leonidas’ head still managed to barely peak over the edge with his slouch.

Without a care for the gross state of his mother’s wrappings, he lowered his tail and balanced her rigid corpse on it. After securing it with a single wrap-around, Leonidas clenched his jaw, digging up all the remaining strength he had in an attempt to crawl out.

By now, the sun had long since set. It was already into the second day of the time limit Gauteron had given Leonidas. Under such dim lighting, even Leonidas’ usually striking red hair was muted.

Unsurprisingly, Leonidas gained the red hair his mother was so loved for in her line of work. Though, his hair was quite coarse and even felt somewhat like steel needles if caught at the right angle.

Leonidas’ tail was a lot like this too. Not only was it the same fiery shade of red, it was much longer than a normal Half-Beast’s tail being at about two meters long alone and was also covered in the same coarse hair. Though, since these hairs were far shorter, their sharpness was more apparent.

It would be great if Leonidas could use his tail in battle, but it was filled with the same heavy bones the rest of his body was afflicted with. Using it for slow, large movements like this was about the best he could do.

The coarse ground that Leonidas had hated so much on the way down helped him greatly on the way up. He was able to easily gain footholds, digging his toes and fingers into the dirt wall for leverage.

It was at that moment, though, that a sound caused Leonidas’ sharp ears to twitch. Whether it was Lower Ogres or Red Foxes, both were quite known for their sensory abilities. Ogres had poor sight, but great hearing. Red Foxes had both great sight and hearing. Leonidas wasn’t lucky enough to get the best of both, so he was stuck with mediocre eyesight, but higher-than-average hearing.

It could be said that the only good thing he had gotten from his parents’ union was this. Oh, and his biting strength was excellent as well, more so due to the strength of his bones and the length of his canines. Not that he got the opportunity to use it much considering how poor his diet was.

Leonidas sighed because he knew exactly what the sound was the moment he heard it. It was a pouch of coins.

As handsome as Leonidas was after inheriting his mother’s looks, it wasn’t a surprise that his mother was a very popular whore. What Leonidas didn’t know until she died was that she hadn’t used all that money on her new outfits, she had saved a large portion of it.

After she died, Leonidas found that pouch and a letter.

He had already lost count of the number of times he had read his mother’s final words. Even now, it was tucked into a pocket by his chest, remaining close to his heart.

In that pouch, there were exactly 74 silver and 39 copper coins. This was the equivalent of 7439 copper coins, an amount of wealth that Leonidas didn’t think he would see in this lifetime. Yet, there it had been, sitting in a hidden compartment of his mother’s room.

However, when he saw such a sum of money, this wasn’t what he experienced at all. What he saw was beyond the heft of the pouch and the size of the sum.

A single night with his mother cost 30 coppers. Of those 30 coppers, if the House Lady was in a good mood, his mother would see five. If she was in a bad mood, his mother would be lucky to see even one.

Even with the most optimistic of calculations, his mother would have had to sleep with a man over 1400 times to gather such a sum. And, none of this included what she would have had to spend to raise him, to buy her outfits, to keep herself fed… The list was endless.

When he saw this money Leonidas saw all his mother’s hardships, he saw the abuse she suffered through, the humiliation, the pain. He remembered the nights when her face was marred by bruises and the days she came home with broken limbs.

And in all that time, Leonidas had never seen her break down even once. Even when she had grown old, too aged to earn as much as she had in the past, she continued to weather the storm, slowly saving up this money piece by piece for the sake of giving her son a chance.

Then, one day, her luck finally ran out.

She was already used goods in the eyes of the House Lady. Her face no longer as pretty, destroyed by age and constant abuse, Leonidas’ mother became nothing more than a plaything for those with the sickest of fetishes, the sorts of customers the House Lady didn’t want to waste her ‘good girls’ on.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

It was at the hands of one of these beasts that his mother died and her years of effort came to an end. When Leonidas got her corpse, he couldn’t even recognize his own mother.

Leonidas sat at the edge of the deep hole. Reaching his tail down, he brought up the pouch he had buried with his mother.

He remembered that it was this pouch that made him resolve himself to use his final line of hope and go to Gauteron despite knowing exactly what that bastard wanted. But in the end, he wasn’t able to do it.

“… I’m not as strong as you…”

Leonidas could no longer hold back his tears, his deep voice rumbling through the night and his eyes becoming an even deeper shade of crimson. He gripped the pouch in his hands, his mother’s corpse laying before him.

…

Leonidas was unsure of how much time passed with him in such a state. But, long before the sun rose, his sharp ears twitched again. This time, however, there was no second pouch. Someone was coming.

***

“How the hell do we even find this damned thing? These fucking trees won’t get out of the way. I’ve been stabbed in the ass twice already by these damned things!”

“Who knows where that little son of a whore buried her? Just keep shining that light, we’ll find it eventually. It’s not like there’s a lot of ground to cover.”

The two voices grumbled back and forth. Despite obviously coming from men, they sounded a bit more high-pitched than they should. With Leonidas’ hearing, he was easily able to pick out these slight changes.

Leonidas’ fists clenched. He had come to take his mother’s corpse away as soon as he could because he thought that Gauteron would do something like this. However, his body was so weak that he still didn’t manage to make it in time.

Those men with the high-pitched voices were the butlers Gauteron kept around his home. The Knight had a proclivity toward men, but according to the rumors, didn’t like the look of their family jewels nor the liquids they produced. So, all the toys he kept by his side had been snipped.

Why would Gauteron give him three days and then go back on his word?

Leonidas shook his head. Why would he even waste time thinking such thoughts? Did the people of this world ever need a reason why? Didn’t they just do as they pleased?

Leonidas calmed his breathing. He looked toward the wrapping of his mom’s corpse and back toward the sound of the voices.

It was dark and this small patch of burnt forest covered about 2500 square meters. If he was lucky, he wouldn’t cross paths with them. If he was unlucky, they would lock eyes in just a few dozen more seconds.

Unfortunately, with so many bent-out-of-shape trees, there were only so many locations Leonidas had the space to bury his mother. The only place with enough clearing for a grave was near the cliff edge. And, since this was just a corner of Gauteron’s land, all paths converged to this place.

Leonidas was sure that if he was found here the punishment wouldn’t be light. In his bullshit decree, Gauteron had said that if he was caught on the latter’s property, he would receive ten lashes.

This didn’t sound like much, but when given at the hands of a person with strength, such an amount was enough to kill him.

What Leonidas feared the most, though, was that Gauteron would spare his life and then run him into the ground as one of his toys.

Even knowing all of this, realizing that his body was too weak, that he couldn’t carry himself and his mother’s body to safety, and that the only weapon he had to his name was the very same small butter knife he had used to carve out her gravestone… Leonidas simply blankly stared into the distance, his dried tears leaving salty streaks along his cheeks.

High in the sky, the moonlight shone a violet hue. It was quite the sinister backdrop. Wasn’t this full moon quite beautiful, though? It was a nice night to die, don’t you think? Leonidas’ thoughts seemed to whisper to him.

The movements hardly registered in Leonidas’ mind. The butter knife he held in a chest pocket by his mother’s letter had already appeared. His crimson gaze was completely vacant as he held its blunt tip to his neck.

He would rather die than become that man’s plaything. He was indeed weaker than his mother, he wouldn’t be able to endure such a thing, even if it was for the sake of a brighter future.

His corpse would probably be pissed on after he died, but so what? The world hardly cared when he lived and breathed, so why should he care while dead and gone?

Despite the terrible cuts and bruises that covered his hand from digging his mother’s corpse up, his hands were incomparably steady. The rusted butter knife even seemed to gleam just that small bit beneath the violet rays of the moon above.

Leonidas’ mind became completely empty and free. He seemed to be able to hear the sound of his own heartbeat and all his pain seemed to come into focus, yet he still felt detached from it all.

Somehow, though, there was this singular cut along his finger that caught his attention. His darker-than-usual blood dripped out from it. Even though both his hands had long since been caked by his running and dried blood, this particular drop stood out amongst all the others.

‘Oh… That’s right…’

When Leonidas had been reaching for his butterknife, he hadn’t registered when his finger was slit across the edge of his mother’s letter. He had already been numbed to the pain. What was a single paper cut worth to him?

Still, at that moment, it felt as though a fire had been lit within it. It was so small and insignificant, yet it hurt more than all of Leonidas’ other injuries combined.

The last line of his mother’s letter seared itself into his brain, branding his mind with an indelible memory.

‘Live on, my son.’

‘Love, mom.’

Leonidas stood. Grasping his mother’s corpse into his arms, uncaring for the foul stench that burnt the hairs of his nose, he trudged forward with slow, deliberate steps.

His breathing was labored. After hours of hard work to dig his mother out, he was cold, tired, hungry… But he continued to walk.

Soon, he made his way to the cliff’s edge, the moonlight shining down on his dirtied, red hair. He held his mother’s corpse in his arms, his heart quivering.

Down below, the dark expanse of the ocean whipped and whined, its waves seemingly wanting to swallow the cliff’s face whole.

Leonidas looked down. There was just one ledge about 10 meters below. He didn’t have the strength to survive such a jump. And, even if he did, he didn’t have the strength to climb back up.

‘One day I’ll give you a burial ground no one dares to touch, a tombstone no one dares to desecrate… A son no one dares to slight. I promise this to you, mother. Your hard work, your tears, your strife. I’ll make sure none of it goes to waste.’

Leonidas dropped his mother’s corpse down, watching as it rebounded up before settling down on the ledge below. He had no doubt that if it wasn’t for the wrapping around her, her shattered bones would have launched in every direction. Just seeing this filled him with rage, but it was the best he could do.

Turning back, Leonidas entered the burnt forest once again, his steps aimed right toward the two voices.