The Scum Emperor's Redemption System

The procession wove through the grim remnants of slaughter, an uncanny silence blanketing the ruin. Soldiers shepherded the two children forward, hands clamped over small eyes to shield them from the horrors strewn across the ground.

Corpses, twisted and torn, sprawled in grotesque poses. The mayor's grand building, once a symbol of order, now lay in a heap of rubble, indistinguishable from the chaos around it.

Some soldiers knelt to examine the fallen, their faces hardening at the signs of savagery. The injuries weren't clean cuts or bullet wounds—they were ragged, as though inflicted by jaws. Beasts. It had to be the forest animals.

The Peliotus tribe had always been intertwined with the wild, their bloodlines bound to creatures of the shadowed woods. This... this was their work, their curse.

The group pressed onward, leaving the shattered city behind, its cracked stone streets giving way to the softer paths of the farmlands.

Here, too, devastation reigned. Crops had been trampled, fields burned to ash. The expanse stretched out bleak and empty, a graveyard of toil and harvest. Ahead, towering trees loomed, their branches twisting like gnarled claws.

Their dense canopy strangled the sunlight, casting the road in an unnatural gloom.

"Are we close?" one soldier asked, his voice hushed as though afraid to disturb the oppressive quiet.n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

The boy, perched on his shoulder, nodded solemnly. His small hand rose, pointing toward the shadowed treeline ahead.

The soldiers marched on, flags raised high, a feeble assertion of purpose amidst encroaching dread. The air grew thick, stifling. Though the sun was smothered by leaves, an unnatural heat seemed to swell, seeping through the layers of armor and flesh.

Darkness reigned here, not the soothing kind of night, but a suffocating, sentient presence.

The column of soldiers halted abruptly as the boy shifted, an unnatural energy rippling through his small frame.

"What's wrong?" the soldier asked, glancing back.

Stab!

A dagger slid deep into his skull.

The child along leapt from his shoulders with a feral swiftness, disappearing into the trees.

The soldier's body crumpled, lifeless.

Gasps echoed as the same fate befell another soldier, the other young girl driving a blade into his throat before darting away, a ghost among shadows. The others froze, disbelief and horror rooting them to the spot.

Blood pooled beneath the fallen men, dark and glistening in the dim light. Their eyes were wide, glassy with the shock of betrayal, their souls extinguished in an instant.

The children—they had turned, swift and merciless. Those small hands, those innocent eyes... the illusion was shattered. In the stifling air, a new dread began to blossom, whispering of a deeper darkness still to come.

"Y-Your Majesty, we may have fallen into a tr—" Uzak's warning choked off, his voice swallowed by a sinister shift in the forest's shadows. Then, dozens of eyes flickered to life amidst the gloom, glinting like shards of glass.

Argider's breath hitched, a cold knot forming in her chest. Panic swelled as realization clawed its way through her mind.

Those children—those small, trembling hands she'd sought to shield—had been traitors. But why? They'd seemed so ordinary, so vulnerable. And yet, as the treeline stirred, the truth loomed monstrous before her.

Men emerged from the dense tangle of branches, their forms massive and unyielding. They were fewer than the Valtirium army, but their sheer size and presence eclipsed any advantage in numbers.

They moved with an unsettling ease, as if this wasn't battle but some twisted game they relished.

"Kill the Valtirium bastards!" a guttural voice roared from among the Peliotus warriors, their words slicing through the tense air like a blade.

Chaos erupted.

Argider's gaze darted wildly, her thoughts a storm of fury and betrayal. This wasn't just a skirmish—it was a reckoning, and the forest itself seemed to exult in the ambush.

Leaves whispered secrets to the advancing enemy, shadows wrapped around them like cloaks, and the suffocating heat grew heavier, oppressive.

The enemy's laughter echoed, low and mocking, their massive forms closing the distance with feral precision.

The Valtirium soldiers readied their weapons, but their formation was already breaking, uncertainty and fear spreading like wildfire.

Argider's hands tightened on the hilt of her sword. She couldn't afford to falter. Not here. Not now. As the first clash of steel erupted, she shouted a command into the chaos, her voice a desperate plea to rally her forces: "Stand your ground! Fight!"

As the soldier stepped back, an unsettling sensation crept over him. His shadow—no, not just his shadow, something darker—seemed to stretch out, growing larger, more menacing with each step. He paused, a chill skittering down his spine. Was it a trick of the sky?

"Commander Uzak!" a soldier cried out, his voice high with terror, as the enemy descended upon them.

Slowly, he tilted his head upward, and his blood ran cold.

Above him loomed a monstrous form, saliva dripping from jagged jaws. Massive teeth, gleaming and razor-sharp, filled a mouth that could consume him whole. And the eyes—those terrible, bloodshot scowl—stared down at him with a hunger beyond anything human.

They looked raw and primal—having an evident sign of insatiable bloodlust in its eyes.

"Grrrr…"

The soldier stumbled, his bravado shattered as he fell to his knees. "What the fuck?!"

It stepped forward, each footfall sending vibrations through the ground. "Human..." the beast growled, its voice low and unearthly.

"NO!" His voice cracked as he tried to scramble away. One massive paw pressed him down like an insect, holding him in place with effortless cruelty.

Their pleas turned to frantic screams as their jaws closed around him, each head tearing into his flesh, shredding him apart in a bloody frenzy until he was nothing but a smear of blood and bone in the mud and ate each piece of him.

Blood sprayed across the battlefield in crimson arcs, staining the churned earth as screams of the dying painted a symphony of despair. Among the chaos, Lhanorio stood, bound but defiant, his wild laughter piercing the cacophony like a blade.

"Hah! Yes! Grind these Valtirium dogs into the dirt!" he roared, his voice a feral snarl, teeth bared like a wolf that knew its end but would die laughing. His words were spat into the storm of carnage, even as the blood-soaked air seemed to choke out hope itself.

"Take these ropes off me!" Lhanorio bellowed, his fury an inferno behind his eyes. His body trembled against his restraints, not from fear, but from the rage of a man robbed of his sword.

Figures moved toward him—warriors clad in battered armor, faces shadowed by the smoke of burning flesh.

For a fleeting moment, there was a spark of belief in his gaze. But as the glint of their blades caught the blood-red sun, he understood.

"You dare?" he growled, his voice dropping to a venomous whisper.

One of the men sneered, the words venomous and cold. "You are undeserving."

The sword came down in a single, brutal arc, and Lhanorio's defiance was silenced. Blood sprayed in a sickening fan, and his head tumbled to the ground, the look of mockery still etched into his face.

Argider froze, her chest seizing as bile rose in her throat. "No…" she whispered, stumbling backward as her stomach clenched. She had witnessed death before, but this—this was monstrous.

The severed head rolled to her feet, eyes dulling, mouth slightly ajar as though it still laughed at the absurdity of it all.

Argider couldn't hold it back. She turned, vomiting into the dirt, her trembling hands clawing at the ground as if to anchor herself to reality.

"Monsters," she muttered through ragged breaths, tears streaking her ash-covered face. "They're fucking monsters…"

Ah, everything was guilt-inducing these days, wasn't it? Soldiers were out there dying for her, the Emperor, and she couldn't wrap her head around it. The sheer weight of it all pressed against her chest like an unrelenting storm.

Was she deserving of their sacrifice? Absolutely not, or so she thought. Every calamity seemed to trace back to her—like a chaos magnet in royal regalia.

"Your Imperial Majesty!" came Fialova's urgent voice, cutting through the din. In a flash of electric brilliance, she zapped a pair of snarling beasts mid-pounce with her new lightning magic.

Sparks danced in the air as Fialova slid to a stop, arms wrapping firmly around Argider's waist in a way that was almost too practiced.

"Ah!" Argider yelped, her thoughts completely derailed. Her golden eyes blinked wide as she stared at her savior. "F-Fialova, what on earth—?!"

"Why do you look so shocked?" Fialova's grin was practically glowing. "I am your fiancée, after all."

The soldiers nearby froze as one. Every single head snapped toward the pair, their expressions a mix of bewilderment, alarm, and...was that suppressed judgement?

"W-Wait!" Argider flailed, her voice rising an octave. "It's not what you think! I'm not fooling around, I swear!"

The soldiers didn't look convinced. A few exchanged knowing glances, and one even coughed suspiciously into his gauntlet. Argider buried her burning face in her hands. This day just kept getting worse.