Volume 1: Path - [Envy Arc]
Chapter 51: Zelus
Just then, his view got sucked into the boy's head, and then Caelus opened his eyes as he saw the view in front of him of a room. It was a noble's room because the room looked so luxurious with many things around the room.
On the bed, he saw a woman giving birth and a doctor who was a woman; she had black hair and black eyes, and a doctor's suit on.
Caelus didn't want to look at the view in front of him; he is not the type of person who will look at others like that, and it is a bad thing to do. He has his morals.
Caelus tried to look away, but it didn't work because he couldn't look away from the view as if he were being forced to see it.
In a few minutes, a baby was born with a cry coming out of that baby's mouth. The doctor who took the baby out of the woman's womb looked at the baby's face and felt disgusted immediately.
A man stood beside the woman, near the bed, as he looked at her lying on it. When he saw the baby given to him by the doctor, he felt disgusted by the baby's appearance.
He saw the face of the baby; the baby's face was ugly with sunken cheeks, swollen eyes, and a mouth twisted as if it could never smile. The skin was pale and waxy, like candle fat, and the child's eyes were big and green.
He was about to throw down on the ground when the man saw the baby's face but was stopped by the doctor saying, "Sir, please do not do this in front of us doctors, and we doctors do not want to see some living being being harmed, so please do this either after we are gone or abandon him."
"Hmph." With that, the man put the baby into the cradle as he felt disgusted and went out of the room with a distasteful look.
The woman who just gave birth to the baby looked at the baby with disgust too; she gave birth to two children before—one is a girl and the other is a boy—and right now another boy. She hoped it was a beautiful boy just like the first son, but who would have thought it would become like this? This is what her inner monologue is telling Caelus.
He keeps hearing their voices in his mind, all their thoughts.
Caelus is feeling disgusted about how these guys are looking at a small baby who was just born, and not even a minute has passed. They are ignoring the baby just because of the looks.
A day had passed by since the baby was born, and many rumors started spreading about how the Lord of Montana City's wife had given birth to a baby who is the ugliest thing ever. And some discussed that the lord of the city will throw and kill the baby.
But if he does that, the citizens will think Lord doesn't like people who are not worthy to be useless and don't care, which will ruin his reputation, causing him to let the baby live.
As for food, they are feeding the baby milk, of course, a plastic bottle of milk given to the baby by a maid, and that maid doesn't like doing her job, which is feeding and taking care of the baby, the second son.
She got pushed to do the work instead of the other maids.
She despises the baby, but if she were to kill him, the Lord would blame her for killing the baby and kill her and not ruin her reputation, which is why she has to take care of the baby carefully.
For a few days, many disgusting things happened that made Caelus get more disgusted with these people because the way they are treating the baby is so horrible; the maid, despite not liking him, is the one who is taking care of him due to not wanting to die.
No one, not even the Lord, his wife, or the baby's siblings, came to meet the baby, and the baby's condition is bad; his body is sickly.
Just like that, three years passed by. The baby was not given any name, but he just chose one from a book he read, so his name is Zelus.
Zelus asked the maid who was taking care of him about why everyone despises him, and the answer he got was straightforward: "Because you were born as the ugliest one. Even I am having a hard time taking care of you. Why were you born in this world?"
Zelus didn't understand the sentence meaning, so he left it, and one day he tried to play with his brother and sister but got pushed down and got kicked out of the garden, saying, "Don't come out and let others see your ugly face, for you to be born has already put enough shame on the family, and with you showing up outside, it's going to make us more shameful. Just go and die already; nobody wants you."
Zelus didn't get what they were talking about since he has not received proper education from anyone; he looked at his brother and sister doing a sword fight, and so he was interested in doing it too, so in the night when everyone was asleep, he went to the grounds to learn it, and he did this for two years, yet he can't even do a proper sword fight, yet his sister, who was five when he was three, could easily do it.
In the two years of time, he learned many things and understood many things, like why everyone despises him: it is because of his face. He tried to talk to his parents, but both of them kicked him out of their rooms and locked him up in his room, not even allowing him to go out of his room.
And in that moment, many times Zelus's siblings came to bully him by hitting him and letting him lick the floor clean and hitting him with a stick. Zelus started to feel hatred and envy towards his family; all he wanted from his family was love, but instead of getting love, what he got was hatred, and this caused Zelus to feel envy of his siblings, who were receiving everything from his parents.
"I want to be like them. Why, why, why... what did I do to be born into this world like this? If only I could be like them, if only I could have a beautiful and handsome face, if only I had talent in swordplay, if only I were useful to my parents, if only... if only, if only I..." Zelus fell down on the floor, with these thoughts in his mind, as the siblings looked at their disgusting little brother falling down on the floor while in the middle of cleaning the floor.
"He can't even clean the floor with his tongue properly, useless." The brother, who is the eldest, said as he hit Zelus with a stick as hard as he could on the back of Zelus and gave the stick to his younger sister, and went away from Zelus's room.
"Worthless disgusting bastard." As she said, she hit Zelus on the same spot as her big brother, and that hit caused Zelus to vomit out blood, and his limbs got up in the air, and he fell back down; he fell into a coma for a few days.
When he woke up, he felt hungry. He peeped out of the window of his room, his room, which is small with four walls around him and only one window for ventilation, which is in the middle wall.
He saw kids of his age playing around with each other, some parents taking their children out walking around and smiling happily, and some even feeding their kids food into their mouths.
"How enviable. I wish I could at least be born in a small family like that; maybe they would raise me well, or maybe not. With an ugly face and sickly body like mine, there is no way they could raise me; rather, they would bury me the moment I was born. I wish my parents did that to me. I hate myself. Why did I have to be born like this? In the books I read, they say gods make everyone equal." Zelus looked outside at the sky this time as if asking the gods themselves. He said it out loud, but his voice was neither loud nor medium; it was too small because he had almost lost his voice from muttering to himself about how he wanted to be someone like this and that.
"Tell me, gods, is this how you all treat everyone equally? What did I do to deserve such a life? Is it wrong for me to be born into this world? What is the purpose of my being in this world? Is it just so I should be treated as a dummy for others to hit and tell the word 'disgusting' every time they see me?" Zelus asked his questions, but there was no answer to his questions; there were no gods who replied to his questions, and even nature ignored him.
"Sigh, so even gods are ignoring me. Am I that disgusting? If I am, then why don't you gods just kill me? I am so scared to even kill myself. If only some creature would come and bite my head off without me even knowing, it would have been better. I don't want to die in pain. Please, at least kill me." Zelus, who was already hungry, felt intense hunger, and he looked around the empty room that had nothing but himself; even the window was closed to jump out of the room, and he didn't know any ways to kill himself due to not much knowledge.
Due to how Zelus is feeling, Caelus, who is watching Zelus grow up from a little baby to a 10-year-old boy, is feeling a huge amount of envy from Zelus, and this huge envy is getting absorbed into him, and as the envy is getting more and more absorbed by him, he is getting devoured by Zelus and becoming one with him, and Caelus, using his mental strength, started resisting the envy being absorbed by him, but it's to no avail; the envy can't be absorbed. The only thing that can be resisted is that he should not become one with Zelus. Caelus's instincts are telling him that if he does become one, then Zelus will become him, and Caelus's consciousness will be gone, replaced by Zelus. Which Caelus doesn't want to?
But right now, the battle between each other is the same cause. Caelus had an advantage in his mind space earlier, but not now, because this is not the mind space he is in right now; he is in the memories of the figure he fought in his mind space, and that guy's name is Zelus.
[End Of Chapter 51]