Chapter 37
It was because the great calamity was vomiting up the corpses it had already swallowed.
It meant it had already consumed all it could—draining every last bit of life from them.
“Damn it. Goddamn it!”
Karl rushed toward the calamity and seized the end of its tongue, which was spewing out shriveled chunks of corpses.
It normally took fifty trained soldiers working together to rip apart the tongue of such a calamity, but Karl was the head of the Fenril tribe. With just his two hands, he tore the monster apart with brute force.
As it was shredded by raw, unrestrained strength, the calamity heaved a final, hot breath, then collapsed to the ground, crumbling into black dust. It had breathed its last.
“Lala! Theo!”
Bodies were piled up like a mountain, scattered pieces regurgitated by the beast. Karl frantically searched for the children among the remains.
Even while desperately digging through the corpses, Karl already suspected the truth—that he would not find them alive.
He had lost his home to a calamity once before. He remembered all too well how even a minor calamity could swallow everything within several kilometers.
Now that the beast had appeared inside the camp, there was no chance the children had survived. They couldn’t have escaped the containment zone.
Their life forces had likely been sucked away in an instant—just like that day ten years ago.
“Please… Kids, answer me… please…”
Even knowing the truth, Karl couldn’t stop himself. Like a man possessed, he tore through the mound of bodies.
He was the only one left alive in this area. He searched every corpse, but the children were nowhere to be found. The devastation swallowed him whole.
Why…
Karl lived only for the Fenril.
His heart, his body—everything about him existed solely to protect his people. He had been made that way, raised that way. His entire worth lay in guarding his clan.
With cold, blood-red eyes, he looked around the camp.
It was a vision of hell. Now, only he remained of the Fenril tribe.
No home. No family. Just one man left behind in a field of ruins, with nowhere to return to, nowhere to go.
Instead of tears, Karl let out a bitter, deranged laugh.
“There’s no point in living in a world where the clan is dead.”
He who had failed in his duty had no right to live.
He didn’t want to kill the calamity. He wanted to destroy himself.
“What kind of tribal leader am I?”
Ten years ago, Karl had already failed to protect the kingdom from the Great Calamity. The only reason he’d been allowed to keep breathing was because young Fenril children had survived.
Because he still had a duty to fulfill.
He felt hot blood seep from his eyes. He stood up, shaking with rage.
It felt like walking through endless fog.
The remains of the calamity crumbled into powder in his hand.
They called these monsters “calamities” because they consumed and destroyed everything they touched.
“Then maybe… I’m the real calamity.”
I always destroy what I should protect. I turn everything into ruins. I must be the true disaster.
With blood streaming from his eyes, Karl stared blankly up at the clear sky.
He no longer had a reason to live. With cold determination, he grabbed the iron bars that divided the sectors of the camp and tore them off with his bare hands.
At the very moment he raised them to impale his own neck—
“Your only worth lies in eliminating Fenril’s enemies.”
A voice echoed in his mind.
And in that instant, he remembered.
There was still one duty left.
He had to drag the one who had wished for the children’s deaths down to hell with him—
Crunch. The sound of his own teeth grinding rang in his ears like it was coming from far away.
The ground beneath his feet collapsed into an abyss of despair.
Then—
“Karl hyung?”
The camp’s gate opened, and Theodore’s voice called out.
Was it a hallucination? Had he finally lost his mind?
With empty eyes, Karl lifted his head.
“….”
Luca holding cotton candy, Theodore clutching gold-foil chocolates—and Lala, asleep in the arms of a woman.
“You… you’re… alive…”
A hoarse, metallic rasp came from his throat. Whether it was a dream or reality, Karl couldn’t think. He scrambled to his feet to run toward them, but his legs gave out and he collapsed pitifully.
The woman, watching him in silence, handed Lala to Theodore and slowly approached him.
A familiar face.
Odette.
That hauntingly beautiful face.
A woman from a distant memory, sitting on a royal bench, laughing with a bird perched on her finger.
Despite her reputation as the worst villainess, the way she walked toward him with the light behind her made her seem like a saint.
“Your entire tribe is safe.”
Odette knelt calmly in front of him and wiped the bloody tears from his face with her bare hands. Her gentle voice was soft as a flute.
“No one died.”
He stared at her, stunned. She smiled gently, cupping his cheeks with both hands.
“So, there’s no need to cry.”
Pulled from the depths of hell, Karl could do nothing but surrender to the relief.
* * *
‘Still… something’s off.’
Every time she touched Karl’s scarred face, a chill ran down her spine.
Even though he hadn’t awakened yet, he radiated the pressure of a transcendent being.
And besides—he was the one who had once cut off her head in her past life. With a flash of his axe, he had severed her neck in the most brutal way.
‘Still, I have to calm him down somehow.’
Because the moment I thought “Check status window,” this popped up:
[ Due to ‘Karl’s’ state of despair, hostility check is unavailable. ]
[ The necklace’s usage count will not be consumed. (Remaining uses: 2) ]
It was a status window I had never seen in the game, and frankly, it was baffling. But I needed to check his hostility.
“Karl.”
I whispered his name in the gentlest voice I could manage. My most important chess piece.
I was trying desperately to earn even a sliver of his favor.
“You’re drenched in sweat. Did you run here and get covered in dust?”
But those red eyes staring at me remained eerily lifeless, completely turned around.
Maybe one lucky sign? When I tried saying “Check hostility,” I didn’t get this dreaded message:
[ Warning! Hostility has already reached 100. Hostility cannot be decreased. ]
In <The One Who Saves the Ruined Ending>, it was an unbreakable rule—if a male lead’s hostility hit 100 once, it could never be lowered again.
‘Since I didn’t get that warning, Karl’s hostility must still be under 100.’
And that meant I still had a chance.
I recalled the Karl from the game. In a moment like this, what words would calm him the most?
“It wasn’t Odette. In the end, it was me who ruined the tribe. I never should’ve been born.”
Recalling that line, I carefully opened my mouth. This was probably the only way to pull Karl out of his despair.
I gently embraced him, rubbed his back, and said:
“The children are all alive. Nothing is broken. You don’t have to despair. Nothing bad that happened was your fault.”
“…”
“You haven’t ruined anything.”
Karl, who had been trembling uncontrollably, slowly began to calm down. The man in my arms, little by little, was coming back to himself.
‘Good. That’s a relief.’
Karl’s personality was obsessively devoted to the Fenril Kingdom—to the point it bordered on pathology.
There was even a scene where he willingly gave his life just to recover the bodies of his fallen clan.
‘It wasn’t duty. It was obsession. A sickness.’
And now, I had saved the children. I had become, in Karl’s eyes, the savior of Fenril’s future.
[ ‘Karl’s’ despair state will soon be lifted. ]
Not long after, the long-awaited status window finally popped up.
At the same time, Karl’s now-sane back muscles tensed. He’d realized he was being held in my arms.
I thought he’d throw me off immediately, but surprisingly, he stayed still.
That gave me hope. Things really were different from my previous life.
‘Looks like I can use Karl for my revenge after all.’
And with the status window at my disposal, if I just monitored his hostility…
But my smile didn’t last long.
[ Hostility: Unavailable (Conditions not met) ]
[ Due to the necklace’s ‘incomplete’ state, you cannot view ‘Karl’s’ hostility. ]
‘What the hell?’
A ridiculous alert I had never seen in the game had just appeared.
