Astartes of the Bear School

Chapter 1988 1960. Psychological Burden
"You were here after all."

After entering the alley, Lan En glanced briefly at the mixed-race people around him, as well as the obese figure of the Child of Omens, and spoke to Torisia.

This was the first time he had seen what the Child of Ominous Signs looked like since arriving at the border.

"How did you know?" Torisia's brows, which were barely covered by her veil and headscarf, furrowed.

Upon hearing this, Lan En naturally stopped his steps, which were about to continue approaching, and instead stopped at a distance that would not cause any resistance.

Although he had only been away from Rodel for a month, Lan En could clearly sense that Torisha was different from before.

Before this, she was a cheerful and enthusiastic woman. Upon seeing Lann, who seemed rather suspicious, and after assuming he was a Faded One, she led him all the way to Rodel and introduced him to the Round Table Hall.

After Dolores disappeared, despite having no fighting skills whatsoever, she still mustered up the courage to keep searching for clues. Eventually, she met Lann and together they found the invisible mage tower.

However, Lan En keenly observed that Torisha habitually took a deep breath before speaking.

It's like being so mentally and physically exhausted that every time you speak, it's like draining yourself. Every time you speak, you have to take a deep breath to give yourself a brief respite.

My mood affected my voice.

The voice coming from behind the perfumer's veil was no longer like it was a month ago. Although the entire Golden Dynasty had undergone tremendous changes, at most it was just a little confused.

Torisha's voice now sounded tired and soft, as if she was afraid of expending too much energy, too weary to say more, but had no choice but to speak.

Lan En was no stranger to this tone.

Yharnam, trapped in the dream of the ancient gods, is a world where the flames are about to go out... Most of the people there have been ravaged by the environment to this extent.

He speaks as if in a dream. His voice is soft, and his topics always drift off into the distance.

However, there is no doubt that although the current Golden Dynasty is far from what it was when the Golden Law still existed, it is still far better than Bianan and the End of Fire.

The collapse of the principles governing the world seems to have affected conceptual matters more than the material world itself.

“Two perfumers were called over to work in the round table hall,” Lan En said calmly, his thoughts fleeting. “I asked them, and they gave me this address.”

Torisha remained silent in the face of Lann's words. The bastards and the sons of ominous signs, including the bastard huddled in the corner with his stomach pierced, all stared intently at the 'outsider' who had intruded into their group.

After a long silence, Lan En finally spoke first.

He pointed to the alleyway exit behind him: "Want to talk alone?"

As soon as he said that, he could clearly feel the mixed-race and evil omen children looking at him with even more tension and resistance.

Fortunately, Torisha agreed to the Witcher's proposal without much hesitation.

The two silently stepped out of the shadows of the alley and stood once again under the golden tree's glow.

However, none of them showed any signs of comfort or relaxation, as if the change in light and dark did not actually exist.

Torisha looked exhausted, leaning against the pristine white wall of the Rodel building, and slowly slid down to sit on the ground.

“You’ve met my colleagues,” Torisa said with a sigh, “so you must know the current situation, right, Lann?”

The Witcher leaned his shoulder against the wall on the other side of the alley and glanced down at Torisha.

“Yes, the Blessed King ordered perfumers to the battlefield. When I saw your two colleagues, they were wondering if they could get any help from the Round Table Hall. And when they talked about you, they seemed... not quite understanding.”

Lan En chose a rather tactful way to describe it.

But Torisha seemed to have grown a lot, and she just scoffed at the statement behind her veil.

"Ha! Of course, they won't understand me. We're all going to the battlefield, but I'm the only one who's spontaneously gathered around me, a bunch of bastards, even some sons of evil. With these people around, I'm safer than any other perfumer. But now I'm also more hesitant and in pain than any other perfumer."

Before them lay the deserted streets of Rodel, empty due to the war. At this hour, only the resounding footsteps of the patrolling Rodel knights and their own voices echoed through the streets.

The abrupt yet subtle sound only served to highlight the deathly stillness and desolation of this magnificent and splendid city.

Torisha told Lann about the Child of the Ominous.

In Rodel, a being like the Child of Ominous Signs, which is intolerable under the Golden Law and threatens the stable reincarnation of the people of the Golden Tree, should be killed immediately upon its appearance.

Being thrown into the royal city's sewers in childhood is already a form of 'mercy'.

Recently, as the fighting between the demigod alliance outside the city intensifies, they have also been throwing numerous weapons into the royal city's sewer system. Their simple intention is to arm the sons of evil within the sewers, hoping they will rise to the surface and cause trouble for Rodel.

Given the treatment the Sons of Ominousness received within the Golden Dynasty, their actions after acquiring weapons were almost predictable.

The so-called ominous sign is that the humans in the border area are regressing to their ancestral ways, returning to the life-forging furnace of ancient times.

This gives the children of ominous signs a natural advantage in physical talent. Even if they live and grow up in the sewers of the royal city, they will generally grow into fat and strong men, with one hand capable of holding a dead person.

Without any training or proper nutrition, their physical bodies alone are enough to allow them to immediately engage in combat with ordinary knights of Rodel once they acquire weapons.

After acquiring weapons, the sons of ominous signs from the royal city's sewers did indeed swarm out, causing considerable destruction.

Overall, Rodel remained an impregnable fortress. It wasn't something that a mere few dozen or a few hundred sons of ill omen could suddenly appear within its walls and cause widespread chaos.

Surprisingly, quite a few of these ominous children, who should have been utterly hostile to the Golden Dynasty, actually turned around and wanted to stay by her side to protect her.

Lan En knew what was going on because he had read Torisha's research articles and knew just how much effort this perfumer had put into her ideals.

'Want to cure the abnormalities in hybrids and children of ominous signs'... The hybrids and children of ominous signs would probably be utterly astonished just to hear that someone in the Golden Dynasty had such a thought.

Not to mention, Torisha really got things done. Her various research records and treatment plans all bear solid evidence.

Therefore, even looking at the entire Asian Plateau, Tolissa is quite famous among mixed-race groups.

"I'm... conflicted right now, Lann." Torisha clutched her head, her usually neatly folded headscarf now a mess. "I... I'm terrified of going to the battlefield. I feel a little relieved that they're willing to help me. But if they help me, they'll definitely get hurt too... Is my relief despicable?"

“Fear of being hurt is a human instinct,” the Witcher said calmly, looking at her. “But having empathy and compassion is also a human instinct.”

"Given your current situation, no one has the right to call you despicable, Torisa. Don't overthink it."

The perfumer clutched his head and shook it repeatedly, his voice filled with sorrow: "If I did nothing wrong, why am I in so much pain? And why has the border region become like this?"

The Witcher sighed: "The main disaster in the borderlands right now comes from the breaking of the Elden Ring. This isn't something that can be solved by blaming someone or defeating that person."

"To bring order to the world, we must reshape the legal system. This is not simply a matter of defeating someone; rather, it requires defeating everything that stands in our way."

"And what about them?" The perfumer's eyes, peeking out from behind the alley, lingered in thought. "And what about us? At this juncture, what should we, them and us, do?"

“You know what, Lann? The way they looked at me was like they were looking at…a mother.”

Feelings are the result of two-way communication. The mixed-race children and the children of ominous signs look at Torisha with admiration, and with Torisha's kindness, she unconsciously takes on a psychological burden close to that of a mother.

Perhaps neither the hybrids nor the children of ominous signs wanted to burden her with this responsibility, but it was simply Torisha's nature. She couldn't escape it.

Now, what torments Torisha is not anyone else, but the psychological burden of seeing herself as a mother.

Tolissa gazed back into the dark alley, unable to see its end, her vision unable to penetrate the darkness. But those bastards, those children of omens, though twisted and ugly, their eyes brimming with emotion seemed to be right before her eyes, lingering there, impossible to shake off.

Those adoring eyes, and her own helplessness, made Torisha feel like her head was throbbing!

She clutched her head tightly and shook it violently.

What else could she do? She was going to war, and she was afraid. The bastards and the sons of evil wanted to protect her.

The more she thought about it, the heavier Torisha's feelings and burdens seemed to become.

But just when she felt like she was about to break her neck...

"Snapped!"

Lann grabbed Torisha's wrist, stopping her incessant head shaking.

The perfumer's eyes were now vacant and unfocused; he simply stared blankly at the sky as he looked up.

“We little people can’t do anything about things as big as restoring the world to normal. But,” the Witcher said, pressing his hand on Torisha’s wrist and staring directly into her eyes, “it’s enough to end this battle.”

Unlike Torisha's vacant, listless eyes, which reflected her helplessness in changing the situation.

The Witcher's eyes were calm and resolute.

Like a sharp blade, it pierced straight into Torisa's confused mind, leaving her dazzled.

(End of this chapter)