SSS Awakening: All My Clones Have Divine Bloodlines!

Chapter 159: No Longer Running

Since he was little, Vincent never had the chance to enjoy his parents’ love. At the age of 3, his mother died giving birth to his little brother.

His father, already distant, grew even colder from that day on.

Little Vincent found himself growing up under his father’s rigid rule from then on, a rigid education, strict discipline, harsh training, everything except the warmth of a family.

That was something he would never come to know.

His life turned gray and colorless from that point forward, and even his brother’s birth did nothing to change that. If anything, it only brought resentment, because in his young mind, his brother had been the one who took his mother away.

If it hadn’t been for one particular person back then, Vincent truly feared that resentment could have grown into something far more dangerous.

That person was Celeste, a slave who worked in the manor.

For as long as he could remember, she’d probably been the only person in the manor who treated him with any warmth.

The other servants feared him, or rather, they feared his father, and because of that, they always hid behind a mask of respect whenever they interacted with him, keeping their distance whenever they weren’t forced to approach him.

The same was true for the meals they prepared, the gestures they made, and the words they spoke.

Everything was fake.

And no matter how young he was, Vincent could feel it.

But he never felt any of that from Celeste.

Although she had no blood relation to him whatsoever, she treated him with kindness.

She comforted him whenever he was injured during training. She would secretly prepare delicious food for him, things that would have angered his father if he ever found out.

She even had a son and a daughter, both only a few years younger than him, yet she still treated Vincent almost as if he were her own child.

And with time, he began to treasure that.

Perhaps it was because he had been missing a mother’s presence, or maybe it was something else, he didn’t know, and back then, it didn’t matter to him at all.

She was kind to him in every way, and over time, she became a part of Vincent’s life.

Until...

At the age of 8, everything changed.

Her husband, also a slave of the family, had recently died. Her daughter had been taken away by an instructor after her talent awakened. And then she found herself in the grip of his father, who’d always had an interest in her, and finally decided to make his move.

Vincent never learned exactly what happened that night.

But it was a night that would remain engraved in his memory forever.

He still remembered the gentle smile on her face, the way she’d tried so hard to make everything seem fine, unable to hide the sadness in her eyes from him.

"Please... give this to my daughter," she said.

Those were the last words he ever heard from her.

Words he didn’t understand back then, and only understood the next morning, in the worst way possible.

She was dead. Killed by his father.

Something had gone wrong that night. He didn’t know what, but he knew his father was behind it, and from that day on, he began to hate his own family more and more.

So much so that, in his rage and grief, he left the manor at a young age and transferred to the academy.

He couldn’t stand to stay in that manor any longer, so he ran. And from then on, that was the only thing he ever did.

Run.

Until today. Today, he wouldn’t run anymore. He’d finally found the strength to do what he never had the courage to do in all these years.

He raised his gaze and saw the conflict written across the young girl’s face, now a reflection of her mother.

He understood the anger she felt, toward him, toward his family, it was the same anger he himself had once felt toward his father. So he understood it.

Without meaning to, a smile broke across his face at the sight.

It was the first time since he’d transferred to the academy that he’d shown any expression other than indifference or coldness.

Even Selena seemed caught off guard by it.

She couldn’t recall ever seeing him with any expression but his usual one, and she certainly didn’t understand why, in a situation like this, with him dying, he would smile like that.

For a moment, she thought he might have already lost his mind.

But she quickly realized she was wrong.

Because tears began flowing down from the figure in front of her.

"I’m sorry," he said, his voice trembled slightly.

Selena was caught off guard by those words, but she didn’t have the chance to ask anything else.

"Take this. Your mother wanted you to have it," he said, pulling a small pouch made of animal hide from his waist.

It looked like an ordinary coin purse, but Selena immediately understood that it was a spatial item.

She wanted to ask what it was, what he meant by those words, but he pulled free of her grip and shouted:

"Run. I’ll hold them off," he said.

Selena wanted to argue, confused by the sudden turn of events, but when she saw his eyes, she stopped. She wasn’t sure why, but something in them told her these were the words of a man who had already accepted his fate.

She felt no sympathy for him, no sadness for what was about to happen to him. But for the first time in a long time, she no longer saw him as an enemy.

She wasn’t sure why, but she didn’t stay to find out.

Those creatures had already closed in on the two of them, and in moments they would seal off every way out. So she gritted her teeth and ran.

Vincent watched her disappear into the trees, and the instant he lost sight of her, he felt the weight on his chest ease.

He’d finally freed himself of it.

The Forsaken reached him moments later. He felt claws sink into flesh, teeth closing around him, but by then the pain already felt distant, almost foreign. He accepted his fate.

Just as his strength began to fail him, his vision darkening, he noticed something strange happening a little further off, near the tree where Percival was still pinned: the Forsaken gathered there had started pulling back, as if on high alert.

In his last moments of clarity, he saw his brother’s body, still nailed to the tree, begin to shake, wracked by convulsions, then twist and swell in some unnatural, exaggerated way.

A deep growl rolled through the air moments later, something guttural, not human, but not quite animal either.

But Vincent never got to see what happened next.

The darkness took him first.