Mercy

An entire month had passed since Seth departed for the Kingdom of Pain, and he had just arrived close to the capital of the Curse Kingdom. During the past timeline, Curse was one of the few places he had never even stepped in.

There were many reasons for that, but the main one was the place never had anything that would interest him. He knew it as a brutal and barbaric place that never received any travelers.

Seth changed his looks to resemble those of a Curse citizen and covered his body with clothes made entirely of animal pelts.

The Curse Kingdom’s capital was relatively lax in security, the two guards at the gate not even sparing Seth a look as he walked right in.

‘I wonder why they are even here…’ thought Seth as he went inside the ‘city’. The view right after entering inside made him think back to the condition the Blood Kingdom was in when he had just arrived from Oath.

The people were all dirty, and their houses were just as flimsy as the huts of the Blood Kingdom. If Seth were to point out a difference, it would be the lack of random crimes and the smell of feces being replaced with one of sweat.

The system took it upon itself to give Seth a bit of information.

<There are latrines dug up into each household, as well as public ones that everyone is free to use.>

Seth nodded, figuring the system was the same as the one in Oath and many other kingdoms.

<Crimes are not common because every conflict will be settled with a duel in the arenas spread around the city.>

<Whoever is strongest will have the say inside the same social class. Because they respected strength, the Curse Kingdom’s fighting force was one of the strongest out of all the other kingdoms in the alliance. Everyone inside the kingdom had to learn how to fight to survive.>

‘What about their king? Hereditary?’ asked Seth while making his way through the streets.

<Affirmative. The Royal Family has been the same since the first settlement was formed here. That’s when the code of honor and blood was formed, doubling as the kingdom’s official law.>

< Its laws are quite basic and are the following.>

<The blood of new will always be below the blood of old.>

<Strength is law, and the old is strength.>

<Outsider blood is mute>

<The old must guide the new.>

<The new must respect and protect the old.>

<More laws were added with time, mostly situational ones, but these old laws still rule over the kingdom.>

<The blood of the old represents the pure families of the first inhabitants. Since their way of life was always simple and animalistic, each family would have 20 or so children, sometimes even more.>

<The blood was kept pure by having the men in the family fight for the right to old blood. The winner will choose one of his sisters and form a new family, while the losers will be downgraded to the rank of new blood.>

‘Incest? No wonder they are all so… simple-minded.’

<Affirmative. Also, the rules are slightly different for the royal family, which is the family that led the settlement to its creation. The king will have more children than the other ‘old’ blood families.>

<Once the princes are of age, they will fight for the crown. Once one wins and is crowned king, the concept of a queen doesn’t exist. The king will have to mate repeatedly with all his sisters, almost nonstop, for an entire year. That is the royal year, and all the boys born in that period will have a claim to the throne.>

<All his children after that year will be split. The woman will have the right to live and serve as a mating partner for the following king, but all men will be killed at birth.>

<Once a new king is crowned, the old king will be killed, and his heart will be fed to the new one.

‘Quite the brutal tradition. How many children does Adalwolf have?’

<215, all ranging from the age of 12 to 13. And 391 girls of all other age ranges.>

Seth’s eyes widened in surprise, and he asked: “And how many of his children have been killed?’

<813 boys have been killed.>

‘Does the king here only knows how to fuck?’

< Adalwolf’s one of the kings with fewer children; there have been kings with more than 4000 children, both dead and alive combined.>

‘What will happen if the king is chosen and he dies right after?’

<His brothers that survive the selection are not killed but forced to work in the mines while being considered inferior blood. If the king dies, a new selection will be held amongst the inferior blood. The one that wins will be forced to mate with all his sisters before getting sent again into the mines.>

<His children will have to fight against the children of the other old blood of age as well>

<Whoever wins will be crowned king, and if a noble child succeeds, the royal family will be replaced, but that has never happened.>

The more he listened to the laws and traditions of the kingdom, the more happy Seth felt for not being born there. Changing his vision, he could see the people appeared generally happy, which to him was impossible even to understand.

‘This will be the hardest kingdom to ever get under my reign… As long as they don’t want change and keep this attitude towards outsiders, altering their ways will be impossible in a peaceful manner.’

Seth continued walking forward, getting a real-time explanation about everything around him from the system. What surprised him was that there was no public sex.

<The new blood males and females mate for life, and cheating is punished with the decapitation of both parties. The one cheated on will be blamed for not being able to control their partner, and the cheating one will be blamed for breaking the law. Due to this, while public sex is not outright prohibited, no new blood members will do it.>

<That being said, things will change once host reaches the old blood area.>

Seth’s interest was piqued, and he asked for directions, heading for the residential area of the ‘old blood’ members of the society, the Curse nobility. Once he reached that area, Seth was immediately met with loud moans, screams, cries, and roars.

As he followed the sound, he found it was coming from a man raping two young girls in broad daylight.

<Due to their status as old blood, any new blood woman that had reached the bleeding age can be taken as their sex toy as long as they are not bound in a mating ritual with other new blood males.>

<This leads horny old blood members to pick the youngest women.>

Seth sighed and asked: ‘What is their fate?’

<They will either be killed during sex or thrown out by their master. Being women and already sullied, they will have no status in society and would be considered even less than animals. Most of them end up as food for animals, beaten for fun, or if they are lucky enough, they could leave their colony and live in the wild.>

<There are even a few tribes of those women that had formed, dedicated only to receiving and caring for these women.>

‘Hmm, this information might prove useful in the future.’

Seth continued traveling deeper into the city, the things he saw inside the old blood zones even making his stomach churn.

‘Maybe wiping them all out of existence would be a service for everyone…’ thought Seth, turning around with a sigh.

He had seen enough and was planning to leave the capital of the Curse Kingdom. His interest in the place had entirely died after everything he had witnessed.

On the way back, he caught sight of even more atrocities, but there was one that had him halt in his tracks.

A lifeless woman was being toyed with by a savage-looking man. That was not out of order since scenes like that could be spotted all over the old blood area.

What truly marked him was the fact that the woman’s limbs had been amputated and burned. It was also clearly done intentionally.

As his destruction source started churning, a notification appeared in his vision.

<Acting now might ruin host’s plans. If host truly wishes to do something, host can challenge him to a life-and-death duel.>

Seth closed his eyes and took a deep breath, his source stopping its rotation. He then began heading towards the man.

The man was so busy with his ‘work’ that he didn’t even notice Seth approaching. Seth arrived next to him and kicked the man’s waist, propelling him out of the woman and making him slide across the ground for over ten feet.

The man was fuming and looked up only to see a face he didn’t recognize was now covering his toy’s body with the pelt he was wearing above his waist.

“What do you think you’re doing, madblood?”

Seth sighed and didn’t even turn to look at the man: “I challenge you to an official life-and-death duel.”

“Who are you?” asked the man, looking Seth up and down. He couldn’t understand why someone would ruin his fun and challenge him out of the blue.

“What does it matter to you? Come to the arena.” Said Seth, lifting the nonrespondent woman and starting to walk toward the arena.

The man stood up and didn’t even bother wearing anything to cover his thing as he started following after Seth. A challenge must be agreed to, so he only looked forward to killing the brat in front of him.

He kept throwing insults and curses the entire way, but Seth ignored him completely.

‘Is there any chance she will recover?’

<…Negative. Her will to live is gone, and her soul is already crushed. The most host could do is to release it from its prison and send it back to the spirit pool.>

Seth nodded and whispered: “I’m going to let you witness the fate of the one that did this to you. Then I will give you the peace you long for.”

The proceedings for taking part in a life-and-death duel were relatively simple. All one had to do was request a dueling stage and wait for one to be freed. Seth was lucky since he found one open as soon as he arrived and started walking toward it.

When they reached the stage, it was nothing more than a small area surrounded by a fence made out of wood. There was also a weapon rack filled with iron weapons on the side, all rusted and bloody.

Seth indifferently picked a greatsword from the rack and walked inside. He placed the woman’s unmoving body inside the arena, setting her so her eyes could see what was happening.

The other man also picked a weapon, which was a spiked flail that was just as rusted as Seth’s greatsword.

There was no referee or anything like that, and everything was allowed in a life-and-death arena.

Seth watched as the man passed the fence from the opposite side and readied his flail.

“I’m going to - “the man started speaking, about to threaten Seth, but Seth couldn’t care less as he charged forward.

The man raised his flail to defend, not expecting Seth to attack right away, but a flail was not the best weapon to use in defense. Seth’s sword moved towards the man’s neck before changing direction, cleaving all of the man’s fingers holding onto the flail.

His greatsword was nowhere sharp enough for that, but Seth made sure to add a thin line of destruction over its blade.

“AAAA,” the man let out a blood-curdling scream as he tried to pick up the flail with his other hand. Still, Seth didn’t let him, delivering a hard kick to the man’s abdomen, propelling him right into the fence.

Seth started walking towards the man, blood slowly leaking from the blade of his greatsword. Looking into the man’s bloodshot eyes, Seth bent his head to the side and asked: “What? Does it hurt?”

Looking back at Seth’s clear eyes, the man could feel his entire soul shudder, and for some unknown reason, he couldn’t even move a single muscle to fight back.

Seth arrived before the man and said: “Don’t worry. I still have time to spend with you. Once I’m done... Haha…”

Having finished his words with a sinister laugh, Seth grabbed his hair and threw him towards the center of the arena so hard that the man’s scalp broke apart from his skull.

Another blood-curdling scream followed, but Seth ignored it as he threw the bloodied chunk of flesh and hair, approaching the man again. “If you wonder why this is happening, know it’s all for that girl.”

After telling him the reason for all that was happening to him, Seth pointed his sword toward the man’s ankles. He slowly traced it over his body, a small amount of blood following his blade wherever it went.

The man kept screaming as hard as his lungs would let him, but even the bliss of unconsciousness was not given to him. Seth used a bit of lust energy to keep him awake whenever he looked like he was about to pass out.

After a slow and painful process that took over an entire hour, Seth was done with tracing bloody lines across his whole body.

The man was about to pass out more than a hundred times over. Still, Seth would fill him with lust energy, replenishing his stamina and keeping him lucid throughout the process.

The constant screams and yells had managed to gather quite a big crowd, but no one intervened, simply laughing while enjoying the show.

As the man felt Seth stop cutting into his skin, he thought it was over, and even his screams stopped for a moment, but he didn’t know it was just the beginning.

With no trace of mercy, Seth bent down and dug his fingers under his skin, pulling up to peel it off his flesh.

The man barely managed to take a breath and started screaming again. Even the laughing crowd turned silent as they watched Seth peel off the man’s skin under his horror-filled screams.

Seth took his sweet time once more, keeping him conscious until he was nothing more than a bloodied flesh bag.

Looking at the flayed man, Seth sighed and wished he wouldn’t have had to do it out in the open. He could have healed him and repeated the process if he was somewhere else, but alas...

Seth then grabbed the man’s neck and dragged him towards the opposite corner of the woman before tying him to the fence using his own skin.

Looking at his still-hard dick due to all the lust energy Seth had pushed inside his body, Seth grabbed it with his hand and twisted it while pulling hard on it.

Under another one of the man’s screams, his entire dick ripped out, leaving only a stump with blood flowing freely.

Seth threw it to the ground before wiping his bloodied hands on his clothes and turning around, slowly walking towards the woman. Sitting down next to the member-less woman, he watched as the man slowly died.

With Seth’s lust energy replenishing the man’s vitality, it took 30 or so minutes until the man drew his last breath.

Sighing, once the man had died, Seth whispered gently: “I hope your soul can rest in peace in the spirit pool.”

Once his words ended, a thin thread of destruction pierced the woman’s heart, and her head fell forward lifelessly.

Seth finally stood up and jumped over the arena’s fence, walking through the crowd gathered there.

“Brother, please wait. You must coll - “yelled one of the arena supervisors, but Seth interrupted him with a raised hand: “I don’t care about his possessions. If you don’t shut up, you’re next.”

The man instantly shut up, and Seth continued on his way out of the city.

“Once this war is over, I might just wipe this place off the map. It will be a mercy for the innocent.”